3 out of 4 stars
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The Strange and Savage Life of a Brass Key Journalist is a strange and surreal tale. The book attempts to deal with concepts like the meaning of words and the aim of newspapers, words and books with a postmodern style of writing. The book is co-authored by Aaron Spriggs and Brian Kaufman. The book is set in the steampunk age in America where steam engines are becoming prolific.
This book is both hard and partly pointless to summarise. The plot is only secondary in this book. It is simply a vehicle to carry on the narrative and tell the tale. The key protagonist is Samuel Johnson who is referred to as Uncle Sam. His key distinguishing feature is his left prosthetic arm which is a brass typewriter. As a journalist with flexible ethical standards, he publishes far-fetched stories in his newspaper, the Frontier Phoenix. He defends his actions by claiming the articles serve as entertainment. However, his antics frequently get him and his companions into trouble. One of his companions is Jebediah Young, a photographer who ends up as a permanent fixture. Later on, they are joined by Jaelle, a mysterious Romani fortune-teller. Together, the three characters journey on trains in search of stories and inspiration. Uncle Sam makes a decision to write a novel about words and their function, and the manner of writing in his books is a key focus of this book. The book is for adults only, as there are quite a few instances of consumption of alcohol and drugs. There are also explicit descriptions of sexual activity and other adult content.
The best part of this book is the light-hearted nature of writing. There are jokes tossed in everywhere. While some are pretty subtle, they are delightful with context. The humour is well complemented by absurdity in the book that Uncle Sam writes. As Uncle Sam rhapsodises about the importance of punctuation, we cannot help but smile. Even relatively serious issues are presented with clever and funny euphemisms that make it amusing. For example, Uncle Sam and Jeb use the poisonous secretion of toads as the base ingredient for a drug. However, their actions are described as ‘licking toads, which cracked me up. Above all, the footnotes act as a running gag. They feature inane trivia and explanatory notes which complement the story quite nicely. This remarkable use of humour really sets this book apart.
The other aspect of this book that I enjoyed is something that is pretty common across books in post-modern style. The unreliability of the narrator and the frequent breakdown of the fourth wall are both heavily in evidence. There are frequent instances where the narrator ratchets up the tension, only for us to find out a few pages later that the narrator was lying for dramatic effect. This adds flavour to the story as we are constantly second-guessing what we are told by the narrator. We also see the fourth wall breakdown when Uncle Sam ends up arguing with the narrator. The narrator also addresses the reader directly, either on the page or via the footnotes and these incidents were also pretty appealing and kept my interest.
One major problem that I had with the book was the pacing of the story. The book felt much longer to me than it actually was due to the fact that there was often a paucity of any progression in the story. There would be funny incidents as well as excerpts from the novel of Uncle Sam. However, there were portions that were dreary because of a lack of progression of the story. With a bit of editing in those areas, the narrative can be made tighter and more compelling. Secondly, I felt that there was a huge missed opportunity in terms of a lack of character depth in both Jeb and Jaelle. While hints about their backgrounds are often dropped (Jeb being a Mormon or Jaelle carrying knives), they are not expanded upon. A few subplots based on these characters would certainly help with the pacing, while also fleshing them out much more.
I would recommend this book to readers who enjoy books in the post-modern style. The narrative goes against most conventional ideas about narration, plot or character. As a result, readers who go in expecting a standard novel will certainly be in for a surprise. This book could potentially serve as an introduction to an open-minded reader to the postmodern genre. Also, I reiterate that this book has adult content and is certainly not for children. I rate this book 3 out of 4 stars as it was mostly enjoyable, but had a few issues.
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The Strange and Savage Life of a Brass-Key Journalist
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