Absinth / The Song of Synth

The Song of Synth is, to an extent, informed by radical politics, something of a turn-off to establishment publishing unless it is made to seem a form of fashion or incarnated as wishy-washy liberal cant, the book could be marketed in a number of ways that would not appear in the least transgressive. Indeed, on one level The Song of Synth might well be perceived as a science fiction novel that explores a personal odyssey through the process of detox and rehab, a kind of Pilgrim's Progress for the narcotized. Doubinsky owes something to Burroughs not only in the sly ironies and anarchies of his style but in the mix of highly analytical intelligence and unrestrained imagination he brings to his work. Like Burroughs, he's a cold-blooded satirist with the sensibility of a poet.

The other writer whose influence looms large in this book is Michael Moorcock; not only is Absinth dedicated to him, and its episodic, non-linear structure in part an homage to such Moorcock novels as The Condition of Muzak and Mother London, but a certain famous or infamous creation of Moorcock's even drops in from the Multiverse to say hello, looking none the worse for wear. As well, you'll meet Iris, a fortune-teller able to see not the future but weirdly anachronistic versions of the past. Sid Saperstein, a shameless huckster chosen to publish a sacred manuscript whose message will shake heaven and earth alike. Hermes, the Greek messenger god, dispatched by Zeus to sound out his fellow deities, still smarting from the licking they took two thousand years ago, on how best to take advantage of the coming changes, whatever they may be. And God Himself, whose enigmatic voice addresses us throughout the novel in the contemporary koans of advertising lingo.