The Iguana Complex by Darby Larson (A Review By Joseph Michael Owens)

Mud Luscious Press

Despite what you may have heard, Darby Larson is a lyricist. He might be the Eminem of prose fiction, but probably not. Perhaps he’s more like Sage Francis or one of the guys from Definitive Jux, but my guess is no. Hip-hop comparisons aside, Larson’s got some skills where putting words together is concerned. He’s definitely an artist who adeptly uses literary devices such as assonance, alliteration, wordplay and a little Derridean “difference/différance”.

So then what about The Iguana Complex? It’s, in a word, fantastic!

This little book (it’s just 46 pages) is the first Nephew imprint of Mud Luscious Press. Within the first couple pages, we are introduced to main characters, Cassandra and Smith who’s name is not actually Smith, but Freeman. We are initially led to believe that we are reading a play, or at least the description of a play or even, perhaps, a recounting of a play:

The crowd sobers when the loss of their leader is lost from the strange of the onstage.

But Larson does his best to keep his readers guessing the entire time at just what exactly he or she is really reading—is it a poem? a play? a dreamscape? a musizoological study? none and/or all of the above simultaneously and more?

…A Dreamer? Freeman sluicing the shuddering of the subject of this subject, this subsubject, this subthought and now center of his mind like a Dreamer? Freeman sluicing the shuddering of the subject of this subject, this subsubject, this subthought of his thought sluicing the shuddering of the subject of this subject… of his subthought of his subthought of his subthought of his.

Many paragraphs also literally fade in and out. Words dissolve and reappear; the paragraphs themselves fragment. Larson’s prose builds into a rhythm and then fades from black to gray to white. He sucks you into the flow of his words just long enough that when the sentences begin to fade, your brain automatically wants to fill in the gaps, which, speaking of, there is a liberal use of white space peppered in throughout the book. The actual structure and layout are yet another element of the narrative and another swatch in Larson’s creative palette.Font sizes also vary. Paragraphs turn into singsong strings of dialog and the text feels like it’s breathing, like it’s alive.

It beguttons the buttoning of alarms or the on of the radio. Somewhere pianoish, Rachmaninoffish. Awake. A little chilly… The crowd’s on their endingly feet singing neverendingly songs over and over, the song Cassandra beguttoned a day or so ago.

To me it’s very clear that Larson is having a fantastic time and, as a result, the reader will have a fantastic time as well. Like death and taxes, having fun reading The Iguana Complex is inevitable.

This is the part of my review where I contemplated telling readers that the complex story is so great that I don’t want to spoil anything with a detailed plot synopsis, but that’d only be partially true. I’ve read the book three times and I’m of the mind that the plot ostensibly defies synopsis. Most of the time, The Iguana Complex reads like a narrative that’s been fractured and reassembled into a series of meta-thoughts and -scenes. And that, in this case, is a good thing.

Friends and colleagues who have heard me raving about this book have, of course, asked me if they should read it too—and to them I say emphatically: yes! The best part is that Nephew editions are no longer only in max print runs of 150. The original limited supply of copies gave me an idea: i.e. Nephew readers could go all grassroots with this book! I envisioned a reader-loan program. It’d have been like back in the day when, in order to read, people shared books and magazines because they were often to poor to buy them on their own—because reading was basically a luxury—but by sharing, it also fostered a sort of literary community, an idea I’m totally into!

I’d even talked to Mud Luscious- and Nephew’s man-with-the-plan, J. A. Tyler (A Man of Glass and All the Ways We Have Failed, The Zoo, Inconceivable Wilson) about my idea and he was totally on board too.

However, in the end, the 150-book limited printing run game plan was tossed out and we’re all probably better off for it. Though I submit, this shouldn’t deter any of you from sharing these books. Word of mouth is still a pretty fantastic way to get people to read great writing, especially if you are excited about it! We should, I think, strive to have all of our books look like they were carried around in Huck Finn’s pocket for a week.

Okay, soapbox spiel over. This book is great and the second Nephew print, Meat Is All, looks pretty great too! Don’t sleep on these titles!

Here’s air things getting strickey.

Liszten.

**[Yes, the last 2 lines are spelled that way in the book.]

~~Joseph Michael Owens has written for PANK Magazine, The Rumpus, The Houston Literary Review, InDigest Magazine and Grey Sparrow Journal (CELJ’s Best New Literary Journal of 2010), where he is a regular contributor to its “Man on Campus” section and an associate editor. Additionally, his short story “We Always Trust Each Other, Except for When We Don’t” was nominated for both Dzanc Books‘ Best of the Web 2011 anthology and storySouth‘s Million Writers Award. Joe lives in Omaha with five dogs and one wife.~~