Plumbum by David Foster (1983)

I'm going to come at this from four angles:

The first cornerstone is - YARB, YARB, YARB.

The second cornerstone is - hyperbole.

The third cornerstone is - intelligence.

The fourth cornerstone is - "intelligence".

How those four elements merge ought to give the picture. This novel is essentially about a rock band - thank heavens, you think, Foster in the contemporary period will at least obviate the need for the really poor historical vision of previous efforts (not that he would have regarded that as important). But of course this is the greatest rock band in the world, called heavy metal but somehow not feeling so. Inherent in the setting of the piece just after New Wave, and in the tone of his describing of them, is something a bit like the Divinyls with a bit of the Plasmatics curdling through. Some of his mooching around the live band world of the time is accurate - contrasts between band members, the political angles of members' approaches to life defining them and their annoyances with others, the secret and not so secret jibing based on those kinds of facts. Brothers in a band, too, is rich territory for comic contrast, and sexual tension with female lead singers is grist to that mill.

His tone reminds me of a drug addict, crossed-legged on the floor, circa 1978, bent over, hugging themselves, eyes closed tight and wrinkling, rocking back and forth, muttering and laughing insanely at something which has amused them. SHAKING with laughter, and lost in themselves entirely. I can't get that picture out of my head.

The hyperbole most define this thing. Early on they are kept within some sort of bounds as the catalogue goes on of the most amazing player, the hugest number of lovers, the wildest amount of money, the shabbiest possible gig, the most unscrupulous behaviour. All decorated with bursts of scabrous humour taken to the nth degree. And it's entertaining on the short scale, it passes time, though the reader is aware even then that the 'addict' is really just talking to themselves. The love of the tall story can transmit.

The wild career of the band reaches South East Asia, that typical late 70s transmutation-point, and after a little while it happens. The sense comes that Foster's painted himself into a corner or got bored. Along comes a fantastical 'manager' down the tiny Bangkok street in a giant prime-mover who whisks up the band at a particularly low ebb, and the whole opus flies off into comic-book territory, exponentialising the wild elements. Transferred to Calcutta to record the album which will break them, very quickly the musical talk falls away, and, for a while, this enters its most interesting territory. A mad life on those dirty streets for these Australian musos with gigantic personalities, and those of the Indian poor who surround them. Experiments in living everywhere, and shot through with comic-book exaggeration and impossible flights.

There is no question that this author, cross-legged and hugging himself, giggling madly, is not intelligent. The capacity for making connections, pulling them through one another backwards, and then making them resound humorously, is evident and is something. Too much of it is, though, arrived at and discarded like so much flotsam. It's a jumble with shards of beauty. Given that he has access to such beauty, I want it to add up to a damn sight more than this. It's a world where all is eventually in service of the hyperbolic - where the necessary softening of reflexivity, of emotion, of genuine gentleness is regarded as dismissable stupidity. So, intelligence, only so much in itself, put to the service of what?

Then follows an ill-defined period of world domination as the band achieve all that their hyperbolic talents would predicate. We see them last on their worldwide tour, personalities crumbling and reforming with all the extremity going on within them and all that they have access to. There is a gruesome section of Joycean-Ginsbergian blah-speak (presumably meant satirically, but it's hard to fathom the reasoning - that's probably asking too much) which 'elucidates' a mind-blowing performance near the end of the tour. Then some wandering in post-performance fuzz, still determined by its rad-extremity, its genuine sparks of cleverness, and its strangely monotone quality, its comic-book hardness.

There are also simple errors here - language such gutsy characters wouldn't use, for example. Are they rubbed away by the conflation of colour - politics, spirituality, ethics, the self, the world: all treated with irreverence and gaminess? This crazed mosaic of little snapped-off bits of observation, riffing with one another on occasion very impressively? Not utterly, but a lot can be said for this novel's gusto and brain-popping bravura, in their limited striation.

To bring it into full focus, mention will need to be made of that thing we do when reading a book which we may not often own up to. We get an impression of the writer in the words on the page, yes, but, reading behind that, we also get an impression of who it might be who is doing the writing. We come to some personal conclusions about the trembling soul which is trying to entertain us. And that's where my picture of this rocking, mad-laughing, closed-eyed, lost-to-all-but-himself addict comes in. Right or wrong, THAT's the impression this collection of words ultimately gives me. And almost all I can hear from them is YARB, YARB, YARB.

There must be a point in Foster's career where this hard shell of yell finally breaks and some soft goo oozes out. Roll on the ooze!