Ted Bundy (not the serial killer) is seemingly about to be hit head-on by a semi-truck. Just before the moment of impact, he contemplates Zeno’s Dichotomy Paradox: Travel over any finite distance can never be completed because it is always possible to split the distance into two parts. Therefore, all motion must be an illusion. Nevertheless, Bundy wakes up in the hospital after a very serious collision. He soon begins dreamlike time jumps to various stages of his life. Sometimes Ted’s traveling is while he’s unconscious; but medication, or lack of it, finds him having lucid visions while awake and able to communicate. His psychiatrist, the pointedly named Dr. Kant, believes he is suffering from a mental disorder in which his mind wants to go back in time to before his accident. Ted believes the visions are leading him towards something important.
“The name is tarnished, but you will bring some kind of good into this life, Teddy,” his mother tells the baby Ted in one of his hallucinatory flashbacks. Ted’s parents perhaps have a lot to answer for (besides the name for their son). His wayward, frequently drunken father reviews restaurant restrooms on a blog site (examples of which are scattered throughout the novel). Ted wrestles a life of dead-end jobs with the idea that something better is just up ahead.
This is a playful book. Cori H. Spenzich is not afraid to take chances with the form of the novel—not least with the appearance of an omniscient narrator, referred to as “The Narrator” throughout, whose asides include considering the tongue-twisting nature of the words “flaccid phallus” and how difficult they may be in a public reading or an audiobook recording. Also discussed are the problems with his pronoun, querying whether non-binary is more appropriate before deciding he does not care: “He/Him. He/Haw. He/llo.”
The pages of the book themselves become part of Spenzich’s playground, including some striking Charles Burns-meets-Raymond Pettibon-esque, black-and-white line art illustrations by Nicolae Negura; a business card for Jesus; and a calligram in the shape of a penis. At one point, in an attempt to clarify where the narrative is heading, The Narrator introduces an acrostic poem called “F.O.R.E.S.H.A.D.O.W.I.N.G.”, the last two lines of which are Narcoleptic Guy.
NOSTALGIA is a difficult book to categorize. Sometimes it leans into the fantastic and the macabre, but it is more in keeping with the absurdist surrealism of Kurt Vonnegut than the horror or sci-fi genres. There are still a few disturbing moments, including a nightmare vision of his grandmother: “tentacles whipped out of her mouth, pulling themselves past her teeth. Her dentures tumbled out across the ever-growing body of a squid emerging from the distant dimensions of her stomach.”
The idea for the novel evolved from the short story “The Suffering of Mr. Albert” (in the author’s well-received collection of experimental fiction, A Narrative in Flux). Spenzich does well in expanding his idea to novel length, though the frequent quirky pop cultural diversions and metatextual interventions from The Narrator occasionally derail the narrative just as it’s stepping up its pace.
Author Cori H. Spenzich writes with style and dry humor as he pinballs his characters around a world that is part dream, part harsh reality. Full of surprises and always inventive, NOSTALGIA is a perplexing, intelligent, and thoroughly engaging novel.
~Kent Lane for IndieReader