Book Review: The Reeking Hegs by Pete Peru and Lord Tupelo.

Superlative Wordplay, A Somewhat Incomprehensible Satire, or Hallucinatory Gibberish?

Take your pick of titles because, in my opinion, it could be any of them. It just depends on your tolerance for the absurd.

There were a few typos, although admittedly the text is bizarre enough that’s it’s hard to be sure they are typos. But when the synopsis says, “A work of purest purest fiction …,” I feel comfortable saying that some of what you are reading is a mistake. But even so, there is a case to be made for Superlative Wordplay. The prose is entertaining, filled with double meanings (“He came from a short but sturdy Indian race and was completely out of breath”), unusual but fathomable word choices (“I am as utterly despoiled as the out-of-date filling of a tuna mayo sandwich …”), and twists that occur mid-sentence (“The carver opened his gaping maw to reply but was cut short by a tidal wave”). There is also ample support for the third title, such as the following: “Flying fish fillets filled with dread unco mizzen mast crash of thunderclouds all demon gris in the firmament.” Huh? The prose is fun … but keeping up with the nonsense, the twists, and the double meanings is tiring. If the book was half its length that would have been enough for me. And if you are a fan of genres like police procedurals or hard science fiction where the fine line between technical accuracy and fiction drives your gut reaction, look elsewhere. If you try to “figure out” this book, you’ll only give yourself migraines.

So, which of the titles above is the one I’d choose if I had to … and I suppose I do since this is my review. I’d take number two, A Somewhat Incomprehensible Satire. Why? I’d say it’s satire because it makes use of many common satirical forms such as parody, burlesque, exaggeration, juxtaposition, and double entendre. And besides, that’s the way the author/publisher had it classified on Amazon (yeah, I cheated on this much of my choice). But satires are often written as social criticism and here, things become murkier. Just what is being satirized? At certain points in the novel, I would have said literature and the way authors take the meme of the latest best-seller and try to push it farther … sometimes right off the edge of a cliff. But in the end, I rejected that idea in favor of how commercialism impinges on nearly all aspects of life. In the book, advertisements are interjected into everything from politics to criminal justice, and vendors selling every sort of product seem never more than a few pages away.

How sure am I of my conclusion? About 2 percent, because I can’t shake the feeling that the author wrote this book for his own amusement and he’s chuckling now as he reads my review.

See on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3x2dZcK

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