Read it...while you still can

 When Memories of the Year 2000 arrived in my hands, I was surprised by the size. As a sometimes ambitious reader, a tome is often a welcome thing, even if your average Miss Macintosh, My Darling is an exciting object that I’m slow to get through (assuming I’ll ever finish that book). But Bathsheba Monk’s novel (for lack of a better word) is an art-sized book just shy of 200 pages. In those pages are cut-and-paste text that formally imitates the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink narrative. Come to think of it, the metaphorical kitchen sink is in there as well, strewn somewhere along a collection of black and white sketches, ads, art, photos, quasi-propaganda posters, and hand-written asides assembled like a yearbook from the hilariously strange school you can’t forget attending, however much you wish you could.

This school has a teacher. A professor, actually, the narrator, a history prof conscribed (sorta— money is hard to refuse) by titans of industry Bill Gates and Michael Eisner to tell their story so that… you know what—it’s better you read the thing yourself. And the plot is tight despite a helluva lotta surrealist detours that make sense to anyone who’s ever read cyberpunk novels that only slightly distort reality in their funhouse mirrors. I could mention the shape-shifting characters that morph along with the bendy narrative, but, again, it’s better you read the thing. Suffice it to state that we have a Pegasus, an alligator (complete with Jonah-like plot turn), the before-mentioned Gates and Eisner as well as Jerry Springer and (guess who!) God himself. Most of these figures are self-serving— apt as the 20th century had just ended and the brave dumb world was before us. I can’t think of a better time to look back toward to measure all we’ve done, all that’s been wrought, all that’s coming. This might be a mess without the damn fine writing that moors the reader, much needed in this casually madcap tale. Memories’ balance requires control. A lot of it. Comparisons to stylistically daring masters like Lucy Ellmann and Kathy Acker abound, though Monk asserts herself with caustic, smart prose skewering a not so long ago era—a mere 25 years ago!—the culture of which seems damn quaint in comparison to the absurdity of today. We see seeds in this book that have long sprouted and, sadly, have much life ahead of them.

Yet, there’s something like catharsis in this book. Maybe in the humor, which is sharp. Maybe in the play, which is invigorating. And if in the end there is a message from the Almighty, unlike Douglas Adam’s Hitchhiker’s books wherein we see God’s final message to us in form of the ultimate dry joke, Monk’s divine missive is a paean to spontaneity, creativity— to humanity, really. In times as bleak as these, I’ll happily take it. --Vincent Francone

 When a Harvard history professor is approached by 2 billionaires to rewrite the definitive version of history, she agrees because of the enormous amount of $....but she soon reconsiders when she realizes the effect this will have on her granddaughter. She goes on the lam, pursued by them, a group of intellectuals, her ex-husbands who smell money, an alligator farmer, and yes, even G-- almighty. Her case is decided in the court of Jerry Springer. This book is not for you if you don't have both a sense of humor as well as a sense of history. Ms. Monk has done it again with outrageous but oddly believable characters and a take on the world that is biting and black but full of heart.