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James Lovegrove's Gig
by Eric Brown
Note: This piece also appears as the introduction
to Gig.
Kim
Aficionados of the work of James Lovegrove have come to expect the
unexpected. No two of his books are alike: The Hope was a fantastical
fable set aboard a vast ocean-going Liner; Escardy Gap, written
with Peter Crowther, a more traditional horror novel in the manner of
King; Days, a dystopic take on rampant consumerism; Foreigners
was Lovegrove writing futuristic science fiction, with aliens, but done
with idiosyncratic panache; Untied Kingdom, a British apocalypse
tale in the tradition of Wyndham and Christopher, and a satire on leadership
and its absence. What these disparate novels have in common, though,
is a thoroughgoing concern about the human condition allied to a rigorous,
scalpel-sharp prose style and a caustic observation of contemporary
trends.
The book you hold in your hands is no exception. Once again Lovegrove
rings the changes.
 Gig
is a novel presented as two novellas: an odd way of telling a story,
you might think. And yet, upon finishing the novellas, the reader becomes
aware that there was really never any other way of accomplishing the
bicameral parable that is the story of Kim/Mik. Gig had to be
told as two novellas. As a single novel, with characters and chapters
interleaved, the palindromic playfulness would have been missing, and
the subtle, singularly distinctive atmosphere created in each story
lost or diluted. And it made sense to publish them in the old Ace Double
back-to-back format, too -- though anyone hoping for the clichéd
Ace starship-and-alien derring-do will be disappointed. Lovegrove is
a more subtle wordsmith than that. Ever the story-teller, he combines
a sense of rarefied unease with a mystery that reverberates through
time, even though the story takes place over the course of a single
day.
One of the many delights of Kim, as we watch the eponymous
anti-heroine pass through an almost predestined picaresque, in the brilliantly
portrayed dystopia of Rotor City with its vanished past and vanquished
hope, is Lovegrove's skill and humanity in portraying the obsessional
behaviour of Kim Reid. She is victim not only of a stultifying and disenfranchised
society, but of forces that exert their influence from within her tortured
psyche and from without (one of the many polarisations in this mirror-image
of a book). Kim, for all her self-realised evil, is a sympathetic character,
adrift in a disaffected, run-down society, with only her singular quest
driving her on towards possible salvation, or destruction.
The bleakness of the vision is not without humour, however. The citizens
of Rotor City cling to the past, and especially to music, and in a satirical
dig at our weakness for nostalgia Lovegrove hilariously portrays a running
battle between two rival gangs of Beatle groupies. Contrast this with
the quietly understated horror in the shooting of Lime in chapter seven.
Gig is as much a comment on the nature of our materialistic
society as it is on the power of delusion and cult-worship. The rock-band
God Dog is a product of Rotor City -- the one vital commodity it has
produced since its once-thriving aero-industry was wound down. In Kim's
identification with God Dog, and its Messiah-like leader Mik Dyer, Lovegrove
effectively portrays a binary division of haves and have-nots -- yet
another reflection, a social palindrome to mirror the dozens of textual
palindromes gleefully scattered throughout the novellas.
In the denouement of Kim, Lovegrove answers many questions
but, with the skill we've come to expect from this writer, leaves many
more conundrums to be pondered.
Sator. Arepo. Tenet. Opera. Rotas.
Read on...
Mik
In
Gig James Lovegrove has created not only a pair of novellas that
will stand proudly alongside the many volumes about rock-stars and the
music business, but a convincing portrait of an ordinary individual
elevated to extraordinary, one could say almost messianic/demonic, heights...
or even depths.
Mik is channelled through the viewpoint of Dave Noon, but its
focus is Mik Dyer, leader of the rock band Dog God. Dave is Mik's life-long
friend, a man of little talent other than his unswerving devotion to
the rock-star. While Dave is pragmatic and literal-minded, Mik is enigmatic,
aloof, the victim of a sadistically brutal alcoholic father. The friendship
between Mik and Dave, their dependence upon each other for different
reasons, is one of the pivotal delights of Gig. To have portrayed
Mik without Dave would have been to portray a mysterious figure divorced
from the real world. In presenting Mik through Dave's eyes, Lovegrove
shows a man whose thoughts and actions are a response to past experience
-- and manages at the same time to generate reader sympathy without
sentimentality. Mik Dyer might be an adulated and mega-rich rock-star,
but he is also a man psychologically shaped by the past: he is real.
We believe in him because we know where he comes from, and the creation
of this belief is vital in sustaining reader-credulity in the light
of the story's riveting climax.
It is to Lovegrove's credit that he has managed to people the novella
with not just two fully-rounded, fleshed-out characters, but an entire
lesser cast of well-realised dramatis personae. The band's manager,
Melba Kramer, is a tough, avaricious, frighteningly cynical business-woman,
but is in no way a stereotype. Ronno Connor is a sleazy DJ whose antipathy
to Mik Dyer and the band during a radio interview is if anything made
more cynical by his casually friendly off-air asides. The other members
of Dog God come over as real people, too, in their response to the day-to-day
ennui that is a rock-star's lot, and in their strained relations with
the leader of their band. Convincing, too, is Lovegrove's portrayal
of the music business -- the industry and the music-making. He knows
his stuff, and his descriptions of the band's psycho-dynamic is as utterly
realistic as his rendering of their music, always a difficult feat for
a writer to accomplish successfully.
But the hub of the novella is the eponymous Mik, and his apotheosis.
The dawning awareness that all is not as it appears is testimony to
Lovegrove's skill in presenting just enough detail to keep the reader
wondering how much control Mik Dyer exerts over his own destiny. For
much of his life, Mik was a victim; quite how much he has turned the
tables and is now in control only becomes apparent in a carefully orchestrated
-- in both senses of the word -- finale.
And the palindromes... aha, the palindromes. They work on many levels,
in many ways. One of the incidental delights of Gig is discovering
how many of the tricky little devils exist within the book, which is
itself a palindrome.
James Lovegrove is a writer from who we should expect the unexpected,
and in Gig he has delivered a unique delight.
Eric Brown,
Cambridge,
February 2003
availability
Gig, a double novella by James Lovegrove
with an introduction by Eric Brown
Slipcased Hardcover (200 copies, ISBN 1902880846) £60 / $90 Trade
Hardcover (500 copies, ISBN 1902880838) £35 / $50
Published by PS Publishing,
April 2004
Back
to infinity plus introduces...
© Eric Brown 2004
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