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ABOUT The Infinite Atrocity is a novel written by Kane X. Faucher and published in 2012 by the US independent publisher, Civil Coping Mechanisms. It is considered a “sophisticated horror” in a similar way Alan Moore’s tenure in the series Swamp Thing was labeled “sophisticated suspense” as a means of reclassifying the genre and circumventing the Comics Code Authority. Cover image by Matina Stamatakis |
Synopsis:
First they burn the books, and then the bodies follow...
Fire is razing the Infinite Library. A villainous psychoanalyst has found a way to harness the collective id to launch his sadistic art movement and eventually seize political power. A long dormant volcano in Russia is becoming active. Nothing is left untouched by the ripple effect of a long incubating atrocity. Fire and blood and steel and stone. Hapless bibliophile Alberto Gimaldi returns as the author of the atrocity, although his version is being sabotaged by Castellemare's trickery. Can Gimaldi break the Codex Seraphinianus before Castellemare takes control of the plot? A novel of sophisticated horror that asks the questions what is the ethical limit of art? What would a world governed by the id look like? The Infinite Atrocity.
Fire is razing the Infinite Library. A villainous psychoanalyst has found a way to harness the collective id to launch his sadistic art movement and eventually seize political power. A long dormant volcano in Russia is becoming active. Nothing is left untouched by the ripple effect of a long incubating atrocity. Fire and blood and steel and stone. Hapless bibliophile Alberto Gimaldi returns as the author of the atrocity, although his version is being sabotaged by Castellemare's trickery. Can Gimaldi break the Codex Seraphinianus before Castellemare takes control of the plot? A novel of sophisticated horror that asks the questions what is the ethical limit of art? What would a world governed by the id look like? The Infinite Atrocity.
Characters
Alberto Gimaldi / Gimaldo
Thomas von Castellemare / Thomasz Kastellemarovic
Anton Setzer
Jorge Luis Borges
Dr Edward Albrecht
Alexa Richter
Jakob Sigurdsson
Daxon von Zandt
Other members: Ensopht-Joe, The Third Man, Tariq, Leopold, Dr Aymer, Wally Wyman, et al.
Thomas von Castellemare / Thomasz Kastellemarovic
Anton Setzer
Jorge Luis Borges
Dr Edward Albrecht
Alexa Richter
Jakob Sigurdsson
Daxon von Zandt
Other members: Ensopht-Joe, The Third Man, Tariq, Leopold, Dr Aymer, Wally Wyman, et al.
Rationale/Themes
In contrast to the first volume’s reliance on flat characters, the characters in this volume are hyperbolically opposite: full-bodied and vitalist, almost caricatures of the grotesque. The use of frame tales continue, but also involves dual versions of the same main plot. The one character’s version of the plot, as attributed to him by the narrative determinism of the Library, is sabotaged by the editorial interventions of his “nemesis” (it should be noted that none of the novels relies on strict binaries of hero/villain, etc.). Triadic character formations throughout this novel are reiterated. The character of Dr Edward Albrecht is a distillation of historical tyrants, despots, and deviants. The novel takes certain conceptual liberties with psychoanalysis with respect to one of the central pivots: the collective id and how it operates in the redevelopment of the ego and superego. The concept of atrocity is multi-layered, not only asking after the question of the ethical limits of art, but also including the idea of book burning (biblioclasm), embodied symbols of the id (volcano, fire), inscription upon flesh (merger of bodies, text, and immolation), and drawn from real world observations of an increasing climate of hostility, intolerance, and violence. In this way, the mutable concept of the atrocity functions as a parable, a symbol, and an allegory.
One of the key real-world texts used as a plot device in this novel would be Luigi Serafini’s Codex Seraphinianus. The text is positioned as “revelatory,” but recedes from this somewhat cliche formulation. In essence, to decipher is to destroy, and this (in addition to Setzer’s mathematical explanation of the Library), resolves the issue of the first novel’s reliance on mystery and information by means of the double movement of revelation and destruction (those who are familiar with Heidegger’s notion of aletheia - or, the way by which truth reveals itself will note the “twist” in this formulation that extends back to the Hegelian Aufhebung by ensuring that the remainder of all dialectical exchanges is the product of ash and grey - nothing can be resolved without courting the thing’s annihilation).
The novel is split into three sections (a nested mini-trilogy in this middle book): Superego, Id, Ego. The first section deals ostensibly with science, narratively setting down the “ground rules” for the atrocity. The second section delves into how art functions as a conduit of destructive drives, giving these expression. Finally, the third section takes on politics as the merger of function and form united in synthetic expression. The three sections follow developmental phases as different regions of the psyche mirror the progress from science to art to politics.
The notion of applying a series of functions by which the atrocity becomes manifest, and how it is done, seems to share a familiar space with how neoliberalizing logics work as auto-regulatory mechanisms. This is not a coincidental as much as it is a mimicry of the same operation. The totalizing aspects of the neoliberal spectacle which absorbs all micropolitical resistance only to reinforce itself, how this logic can metastasize in space due to its resilient adaptive qualities, is part and parcel of how the atrocity (or atrocities) play themselves out. Where there is atrocity - or neoliberal practices - there is no hope of resistance, but only the retrenchment of social needs in favour of a compliance model linked to a mystic economic determinism that has been naturalized in everyday discourse and behaviour. Grim? Yes.
One of the key real-world texts used as a plot device in this novel would be Luigi Serafini’s Codex Seraphinianus. The text is positioned as “revelatory,” but recedes from this somewhat cliche formulation. In essence, to decipher is to destroy, and this (in addition to Setzer’s mathematical explanation of the Library), resolves the issue of the first novel’s reliance on mystery and information by means of the double movement of revelation and destruction (those who are familiar with Heidegger’s notion of aletheia - or, the way by which truth reveals itself will note the “twist” in this formulation that extends back to the Hegelian Aufhebung by ensuring that the remainder of all dialectical exchanges is the product of ash and grey - nothing can be resolved without courting the thing’s annihilation).
The novel is split into three sections (a nested mini-trilogy in this middle book): Superego, Id, Ego. The first section deals ostensibly with science, narratively setting down the “ground rules” for the atrocity. The second section delves into how art functions as a conduit of destructive drives, giving these expression. Finally, the third section takes on politics as the merger of function and form united in synthetic expression. The three sections follow developmental phases as different regions of the psyche mirror the progress from science to art to politics.
The notion of applying a series of functions by which the atrocity becomes manifest, and how it is done, seems to share a familiar space with how neoliberalizing logics work as auto-regulatory mechanisms. This is not a coincidental as much as it is a mimicry of the same operation. The totalizing aspects of the neoliberal spectacle which absorbs all micropolitical resistance only to reinforce itself, how this logic can metastasize in space due to its resilient adaptive qualities, is part and parcel of how the atrocity (or atrocities) play themselves out. Where there is atrocity - or neoliberal practices - there is no hope of resistance, but only the retrenchment of social needs in favour of a compliance model linked to a mystic economic determinism that has been naturalized in everyday discourse and behaviour. Grim? Yes.
Sources
The first chapter was published in the January 2012 edition of The Big Stupid Review.
The Making Of...
Only some of the character names and very select concepts survive from the first attempted novel, I.sex Cosmogia Assimilus, written in 1997. After several revisions and heavy refurbishing, some of the core, nascent ideas were re-purposed to become the second part of the trilogy. I spent the better part of 2011 constructing and revising this volume, aided in part by both a renewed interest in the Codex Seraphinianus and private study of Cantor’s continuum hypothesis and set theory. Some of the content is rather disturbing which made writing this occasionally quite difficult. In the run-up to release, I have constructed and supplied Serafini-esque images.
Influences
David Bowie’s concept album Outside asks the question of the ethical limits of art; G.K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday, the movie Se7en, Suetonius’ Lives of the Caesars, a considerable amount of research into Nazism, the works of Freud and Lacan, set theory, punditry and polemics, medieval and early renaissance illustration.
The Ideal Reader
Those with a penchant for reading about art, psychoanalysis, and despotism.
Praise/Press
Links
TBD