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Juggling Fake Aliens Etc. – Review of Robert Perchan’s Tropic of Scorpio

What are we going to do with ourselves when the ultra-elite start tinkering with their genetics to become taller, smarter, and more beautiful? What will you, in particular, think when your ex-girlfriend fakes her own death only to return from the heavens in an airship, dressed as an alien? And what if you suspect she’s being augmented just like one of the ultra-elite, but you can’t quite tell through the alien suit?

These are just a few of the questions vaguely floating through my mind as I work my way through the opening pages of Robert Perchan’s Tropic of Scorpio. At least one question has been answered so far. Is this a science fiction book? No, not exactly. At least, it’s not an alien-invasion story. The girl in the alien suit had me wondering about that for a moment.

I read a fair share of strange fiction. It comes with the territory as the editor of a journal called Jokes Review. One thing that always holds true: Fiction with strange or weird elements works best when those elements are grounded in serious or thought-provoking themes. You’ve got to have a least a little social commentary, a little satire, a little pop psychology.

In this respect, Tropic of Scorpio succeeds brilliantly. Frankly, it’s hard to discern the limits of the social commentary and the satire in Perchan’s work. There’s so much of it you’d almost think Tropic would be as impenetrable as a Thomas Pynchon novel. Instead, even from the opening lines, Tropic is a straightforward read with snappy, unpretentious, fun prose.

Yes there are aliens and some kind of ultra-elites augmenting their bodies. And yes the story takes place on a remote South Korean island where every local character seems to be implicated in one uncanny subplot or another. And one local lady—partially augmented—eats mice at the bar for a reason that’s never entirely clear. But no matter how strange the story gets, Perchan holds his world together masterfully—even as the world crumbles around the ill-fated protagonist, Harold Ratner.

I won’t attempt to describe or parse the social commentary presented in Tropic of Scorpio. I’d be happy to get into it in a noisy dive bar with a few pitchers of beer, perhaps. But it’s a little too illusive and much too dangerous to discuss here. Suffice it to say—well, yeah, there are those questions. And many others.

On another level, it’s worth noting that Tropic of Scorpio essentially serves as a canvas for Perchan’s dark and absurdist humor to flourish. When Harold Ratner isn’t getting spooked by his ex-girlfriend in an alien suit, he teaches comedy to a group of aspiring standup comedians. Several chapters—and in fact large chunks of the book—are dedicated to either comedy lessons or comedy routines. This strikes me as a risky call on Perchan’s part, as what tends to pass as standup comedy so often falls flat in writing. But many of these passages are genuinely hilarious, and they’re always entertaining to read—even when intentionally written to be awkward or cheesy.

How Perchan managed to juggle fake aliens, body modification, socioeconomic class division, culture division, something about human evolution, and comedy lessons all in the same short novel…really is a thing to behold. And certainly a thing to read. With just a few questions left over.

 

Tropic of Scorpio (Spuyten Duyvil Books, Brooklyn 2022) Fiction

Last Notes from a Split Peninsula: Poems and Prose Poems  (UnCollected Press, Ellicott City MD 2021) Poetry

Overdressed to Kill (Backwaters Press, Omaha 2006) Poetry Chapbook (Winner of the 2005 Weldon Kees Poetry Chapbook Award)

Mythic Instinct Afternoon (Poetry West Press, Colorado Springs 2005) Poetry Chapbook (Winner of the 2005 Poetry West Chapbook Award)

A Foreign Student’s Guide to Three Classic American Modern Novels: Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, and Faulkner’s Light in August (Hyung Seul Publishers, Seoul 2003)

Fluid in Darkness, Frozen in Light (Pearl Editions, Long Beach 2000) Poetry (Winner of the 1999 Pearl Poetry Prize)

Perchan’s Chorea: Eros and Exile (Watermark Books, Wichita 1991) Fiction

 

To buy any of these books go to:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=robert+perchan

 

Perchan’s Chorea: Eros and Exile is out of print big time.   You might contact the author for a copy.  He sprang for a boxful before they commenced the shredding.

 

Reviews of Perchan’s Chorea: Eros and Exile

From Publishers Weekly

This pleasingly off-center novella by an American professor at a South Korean university comprises sketches and prose poems; it’s an East-West swap meet of linguistic anecdotes, word lists, news clips, film and book reviews, TV cartoons, an account of plastic surgery, advice to the lovelorn and Korean erotica. The setting is the cohabitation of a poet and a prostitute who engage in a lively exchange of cultural oddities, nearly all of them rooted in the body. The punning title links the country’s name with both a sexually transmitted disease and a spasmodic tic. The Korean word for a woman’s breast, which translates as “milk room,” prompts images of her body as a house with corridors. Recipes for home medicaments and food can be viscerally revolting, or comic–as when a woman unleashes a stream of “scolding” invective against a pot of boiling clams because the recipe instructs her to “scald” them. Perchan interjects pithy observations on the varieties of Buddha, e.g., Edgar Allan Buddha, “on the edge–or in the Pit”; and Buddha, M.B.A., “on the path of Tao-Jones.” A persistent reference to the culture’s demeaning treatment of women runs through the book’s wealth of serious fun.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

A happy surprise, this little elegant book about venery and scrutability and foreignness and style. Perchan, Cleveland-raised, teaches college in Korea, and his base of operations feeds his predilection for aphoristic, Latinate, dying-fall prose. Whether it’s the deadpan reprinting of letters to the Korea Herald (proof that cultures themselves get all tangled up in their own expectations of tradition and change), or semi-scientific classifications of Korean female pubic-hair patterns, or hilarious dialogues between the author-persona and his hardly respectable girlfriends, Perchan trains on whatever’s Korean a gimlet-eye and sad amusement; the poise of the style and the epigrammatic posture bring a less dour Edward Dahlberg, or Cyril Connolly, or even Catullus, to mind. “The Korean Government is threatening harsh measures in a crackdown on alcohol-related births. The republic, in fact, leads the world in the export of babies for adoption. Like storks, young world-travelers with empty pockets can hitch a free flight stateside by accompanying an orphan to its new home across the water. As a thrilled childless couple waits expectantly at the LAX arrival gate, Korean Air Flight 006 touches on the runway, its huge pneumatic tires smoking and hissing that first passionate, drunken kiss now very far away.” A lovely book. — Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

 

 

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