Duncan B. Barlow, Super Cell Anemia, Afterbirth Books, 2008.
"A man who is obsessed with germs is obliged to bite on copper strips to keep from electrocuting himself - or others. While chased by a mutant cat man, suspected by the police, and desperately searching for a cure, it's no wonder that dating presents a particular challenge."
“In Barlow’s Cincinnati-gone-strange, a germ-obsessed electrified man finds himself at the mercy of a mutant cat man, an odd doctor, misguided policemen, and (perhaps worst of all) the terrors of dating. Unrelentingly bizarre and mysterious, unsettling in all the right ways, Super Cell Anemia is a strange and powerful debut.”— Brian Evenson
“Prepare yourself, good reader, for you are about to have the great fortune of meeting Gilles, dreamer of dark and beautiful dreams, spinner of strange syntax, copper biter, spark shooter, cat chaser, tunnel explorer, vigilant neighbor and, most importantly, hero of this knockout novel. Go ahead, try it, see for yourself (the guy, like the book, is high-voltage)... shake his hand...” —Laird Hunt
"In Cincinnati, there lives a man who sometimes emits an electric spark so strong that it burns holes in fences and household furniture. He spends his days and nights either at the office of a somewhat dubious occultist physician, with a Russian dancer who works at a sex shop, or in pursuit of a mutant half-man/half-cat through the abandoned subway tunnels beneath the city. The man’s name is Gilles and he is the protagonist of Duncan B. Barlow’s mysterious and strange new novel, Super Cell Anemia. Through first-person journal entries, third-person narrative, and the occasional tract of modern anthroposophy, Super Cell Anemia offers a wide-ranging jaunt into a gnarly and somewhat schizophrenic urban universe.
Set over a period of thirteen days, the novel follows its main character through an extraordinary series of events and acquaintances. Gilles, an obsessive-compulsive young man afflicted by a rare illness that causes his muscles to generate large amounts of electricity, has moved to Cincinnati in order to be close to Dr. Moore, the only physician who has been able to help his suffering (all the others just sent him to a psychiatrist, assuming the illness to be psychosomatic). Dr. Moore has suggested that Gilles is in need of a muscle transplant and has prescribed copper strips for him to chew on as a way to control the potentially lethal electric surges in his body.
Although the novel utilizes some conventions of speculative fiction, the premise of Super Cell Anemia owes as much to the legacy of Kierkegaard and Kafka as it does to H. G. Wells and Edgar Allen Poe. Questions regarding illness and perception figure heavily into the novel’s conceit, providing an intriguing search for rationality in a world generally characterized by irrationality and medical confusion. The language of the novel is often laden with a gothic lyricism:
Gilles attempts to sit up, but four thick, black tentacles slither from the growing darkness and wrap around his chest. He can feel the bed sinking, and as it gains speed, he fears that his stomach might tear up through his mouth. For a moment, he can see himself with his stomach dangling out between his lips like a dripping wet balloon.
Between visits to his physician, Gilles lives a nervous and unconventional existence. He develops a fledgling, if somewhat challenged, romance with Charlie, a Russian immigrant’s daughter who was trained to be “the nation’s best dancer” but who now works in a sex shop. Part of Gilles’s time is spent attempting to understand why there is a mutant cat-man (whom Gilles dubs Calicoman) climbing up the side of his building at night. After some investigation, Gilles comes to believe that Calicoman is the leader of a local conspiracy to harvest human eggs and that two of Gilles’s neighbors are involved in the scheme—one of whom is sculpting regurgitated walnut seeds into small nests to serve as incubation chambers for the harvested eggs. Not all the people who live in Gilles’s apartment building are in on the conspiracy, however; Gilles’s landlord, an ingenuous and unexpectedly normal character named Roger, seems to be as surprised as the reader to find that one of his tenants is hiding nests made of regurgitated walnut seeds in heating ducts throughout the building.
The character of Gilles’s physician plays a central role in the novel. Because of his position, we might assume he is able to provide some answers for Gilles, whose world is characterized almost entirely by uncertainty. But Dr. Moore is also an outcast among the scientific community because of his passionate advocacy of the theories of Rudolph Steiner, the anthroposophist whose theories of education founded the Waldorf Schools and whose agricultural ideas were the first attempts at biodynamic farming. The novel has sporadic excerpts from Moore’s writings regarding “Spirit-Science” (the coming together of divine and corporeal realities that he believes Gilles’s electro-magnetic muscular condition embodies), as well as his social theories on community building. But the writings of Gilles’s physician are in a curiously antiquated dialect, and read like 19th-century religious tracts of an aristocratic prelate: “If a human lacks a connection to his spiritual side, he might never come to experience his full potential as a functioning member of society. Just as a blind man will never see, a percentage of degenerates will never come to good.” Although the doctor is represented as honest in his enthusiasm for his medical and spiritual causes, he also appears out of touch and not quite trustworthy in his analysis of Gilles’s condition or his own medical and theoretical pontifications.
Constructed as a story of intrigue, Super Cell Anemia relies less on questions of narrative suspense than on its own inexplicable oddness to drive the plot. The reader is not so much compelled through the pages to find out whether someone will catch the Calicoman in the act of harvesting human eggs or whether the police (who have it out for Gilles after he called them on a false alarm) will arrest Gilles for a crime he never committed. Instead, a progression of poignantly bizarre circumstances cause Gilles (and the reader) to keep pushing forward in the hope of arriving at some explanation for what is happening. Despite the surreal quality of the novel, Gilles’s quest for understanding is at root a human one, and the reader consistently identifies with Gilles’s sense of unease and desire to get a firm grasp on his bizarre existence. But Barlow hedges in proffering any physical rationale for the narrative’s obscurity; rather than hone in on a “solution” to the novel’s mysteries, he instead drives the story deeper into its own uncanny nightmare. Gilles’s search for answers over the course of the book develops from being generally hopeful to one characterized by insecurity and paranoia. One night, he follows Calicoman into the subway tunnels beneath the city and observes a woman there he believes is Charlie’s co-worker, becoming convinced that even Charlie is involved in Calicoman’s conspiracy. As Gilles’s suspicions about those around him increase, the reader is forced to question the “truth” of the narrative, giving rise to the possibility that the story is less a recounting of events than a psychic contrivance of its protagonist—a sort of oneiric travelogue of a paranoid subconscious struggling to live in multiple realities. The final pages of the novel bring this issue of diegetic reliability to the fore, when Gilles’s confesses to Charlie his reluctance to trust people and his fear that everyone in the world is against him. Although Charlie suggests this fear is understandable considering his relationship with his mentally ill mother, for the reader, this admission addresses an issue that has dogged the story since the first paragraph, which indicated that all the doctors Gilles had ever seen said his afflictions were psychosomatic. Although the question of which reality is the “real” one is never entirely resolved, the novel does deal with Gilles’s own lack of mental self-control. Without giving away the surprise of the book’s ending, suffice it to say that the last moments of the novel are intensely unexpected and force the reader into reconsidering the events of the last 236 pages.
A striking and often gripping debut novel by a writer with a prolific and energetic imagination, Super Cell Anemia is charismatic, intelligent, and driven by an intellectual curiosity that substantiates its extreme imbrication of dream, illness, and reality." - Christopher Lura
"Super Cell Anemia is the first novel by author Duncan b. Barlow. From doing some snooping online, I found several of his short stories, a few critical articles, and a ton of sources about his former music career (he was a touring punk musician for many years before he quit and got his PhD in English). The novel was recommended to me from a friend who is an avid follower of Brian Evenson's work (Evenson does a quote for the back jacket of this book). This book plays with many genre conventions, but never completely commits to the genre, making it a strange but enjoyable read.
The book centers around a strange, germ obsessed character named Gilles. Gilles has a problem whereby his body produces way too much energy and as a result of this, he begins shocking things. He fears that he may explode and begins to see a strange doctor name Dr. Moore. Gilles' paranoia begins to get the best of him and he believes that the doctor and his newly acquired love interest, Charlie, are out to get him. Throw in a strange hybrid Calicoman, a group of homeless ruffians, two misguided policemen, a man who regurgitates sunflower seeds to make sculptures, and an abandoned subway system and one can begin to see how deep and rich the world Barlow creates truly is.
Duncan b. Barlow has a strange prose that reminds me of Franz Kafka's later work. It is dark but abounds with hope. It is political but in a very subversive way. Simply by choosing not to give into genre, is a political statement. "How is this?" you might ask. Barlow takes good care to walk a very difficult line between the real and the unreal. His work requires the reader to read actively, to make decisions and not expect the author spell it out for him. If you are expecting Barlow to tell you in the end "it was all a dream" or "he is insane," you won't get it. Barlow wants his readers to decide if Gilles is sane or insane. Whether or not Gilles is sane in an insane world or insane in a sane world is not an answer he wants to give easily; honestly, I don't think it matters because the end result is the same-Gilles is isolated.
Super Cell Anemia is a journey. The language and lovely dark images Barlow creates makes it a journey worth taking. If you are anything like me, you'll never want the story to end. I hope to read more from this author soon." - Donovan Mansfield
"Somewhere along the way, I read Super Cell Anemia by Duncan Barlow. Not that it is at all relevant to Thailand or this trip, but he gave me the book a long time ago and I hadn't gotten around to reading it and figured this was as good a time as any. Upon cracking the cover, I even discovered that he thanked me in the credits. Brian Evenson and Laird Hunt both blurbed the book, which was appropriate enough, as to me Duncan's writing style is like a hybrid between the two—macabre as Evenson, while being noir-sleuthy like Hunt.
Gilles is the electrically charged (literally), obsessive-compulsive, germophobe hero/anti-hero. He periodically needs to chomp on copper strips to diffuse excess charge that builds up in his body. This strange condition provides a certain tension to the book—when you're reading for a while and he hasn't discharged, you almost feel yourself charging with him, in need of release. In a paranoid and hyper-aware state, Gilles navigates through a world of bizarre characters including a calico-cat man, a strangely sympathetic landlord and his confidante Dr. Moore who strives to understand Gilles' ailments, though he appears to have ulterior motives of his own, to use Gilles as his guinea pig. And there's his love interest, Charlie, through which Duncan exposes the strangeness of human dating (when you stop to think about it) by breaking "contact" down to a molecular, germ-obsessed level.
I actually finished and left the book down on the beach in Krabi for some unsuspecting soul, the day after Xmas which was the fourth anniversary of the Tsunami, and I was watching a show on Thai TV on how animals can predict Tsunamis. In light of this, some of the wisdom Dr. Moore imparts on Gilles was especially interesting:
"Not quite, Gilles; you will find that when one is completely in touch with his body that it will send small electric impulses to the mind when there are movements that might affect him—specific movements that directly relate to the future of the said individual. I'm not saying I can predict the future, but I have learned to develop certain certain reliable hunches from the information my body generates by way of its electro-bodily reactions."
The book is full of such interesting well-researched anecdotes, that usually don't seem too forced or tangential. And even if they distract from the "story," what is it we read for anyway, these morsels of sensory interest? At times it was almost like reading an archaic lecture, or one or those old juju-science books like Devils, Drugs and Doctors. He even lists out categories in the book such as anthroposoph, psychosophy and pneumatosophy, which further break down into sub-categories of
understanding the senses
supersense in the human
inner forces
creative principle
electric currents and the senses
Appropriate enough for the censory name of this blog. There's even a bar in the book called the Frayed Knot—I'm assuming an inside reference to my favorite joke about the piece of the string that walks into a bar and orders a beer. Though the first mention it's called the Fayed Knot. There were a number of distracting typos in the book actually, which reflects on Afterbirth Books more than anything, and there's twelve pages of unsightly ads at the back of the book. Somehow this otherwise literary object got pulped, which I guess might make sense for it as it does fall somewhere in between (i.e. not overly pretentious or high-brow, but not mindless trash)—making it a good poolside read." - Derek White
"A few summers ago I visited Cincinnati. I found it boring, quiet, placid. There were parks and museums and golf courses everywhere. I saw families riding their bikes together. I saw happy children at the zoo, waddling along with ice cream cones. Moms in minivans zooming to Kroger. Cincinnati is the sort of place described as "globally aware" or "old world" or "charming." In short, it was nothing like the Cincinnati portrayed in Duncan Barlow’s debut novel, Super Cell Anemia. Barlow’s Cincinnati is much stranger and darker. It’s more like Cincinnati’s psychotic doppelgänger.
I cannot summarize the plot of Super Cell Anemia. For one thing, it is too complex—a beautifully meandering work—and for another, it contains too many surprises. Suffice it to say that the novel begins with its protagonist, Gilles, waking with an abnormal pain—thunderous electrical jolts rumbling through his body. It concludes with a disturbing and unexpected disaster brought on by another kind of pain (the ending is the biggest surprise, so I cannot tell much). In between, Gilles controls the jolts by biting down on copper strips given to him by the enigmatic Dr. Moore; he constantly worries about germs, going as far as to clean his cuticles every night with a microscope and a thin sliver of wood soaked in isopropyl alcohol; he chases, and is chased by, a mutated cat-like man (the Calicoman); he struggles to find love with an attractive sex-shop worker and ballet dancer named Charlie; and he evades some suspicious policemen. Put together, it tells a story of fear versus desire, faith versus reason, and reality versus illusion.
But, ultimately, this fantastic debut novel succeeds not because of its plot or its characterization or its ideas; what makes Super Cell Anemia such a remarkable reading experience is its mind-jolting language. High-voltage similes crack and spark on the page, and there are enough electrifying vivid details in the book to light up a small room. I throw you a few instances: the Calicoman’s eyes peering through Gilles’s window are likened to "black coins floating in orbits of crème brûlée." The leaves of a tree are said to "clap together like an audience of tiny hands." Gray weather "creeps into the apartment like an old and sleepy white tiger." And a whisper in Gilles’s ear is "a breeze of peppermint laced with vodka." This is poetry of the most zestful and animated order; at the same time it is lucid and easily read. Barlow’s language has the sweet toxicity of a plum dipped in kerosene.
Overall, the result is an absorbing novel with a special appeal for readers who yearn for something exotic and challenging. Super Cell Anemia is one of the finest first novels I’ve read in a long time." - Jason Moore
"This is a debut novel, but I’ve been following the work of Duncan Barlow the artist for many years. My senior year of high school I would travel all over the Midwest to watch him play guitar in the legendary Louisville hardcore band Endpoint. On the surface Endpoint was just another hardcore act but their emotional shows and genre bending records played with convention. Barlow himself has said it seems like another lifetime. Duncan also played in bands such as the Lull Account, Step Down, By the Grace of God, Dbiddle and my favorite Guilt.
The most important thing for those of you unfamiliar with Duncan’s musical work is that it was always powerful, original and deeply creative. So the when the news came that one of my favorite presses was set to release barlow’s first novel I was excited. The novel Super Cell Anemia proves in the medium of prose that Duncan Barlow is an artist that values creative expression.
SCA is about Giles a germ-a-phobe who is so electrified that he relies on an experimental treatment (involving biting copper) to deal with his rare illness. Giles has moved to Cincinnati to continue this treatment and be close to his doctor. As you read the book you begin to wonder how much you can trust the journal entries that often competes with the present tense narrative.
There are two great strengths to this book. The first is the subtle nature of Barlow’s take on the absurd. I enjoy the over the top whacky-ness of some Bizarro authors like Bradley Sands (also an afterbirth author) and D.Harlan Wilson Especially but this book has different take. Like a slow burn gothic horror novel the moments of the absurd are peppered brilliantly through the first hundred pages. From there the strangeness of the book expands like lungs sucking in a deep breath.
The second strength is the structure. Giles neighbors get stranger, his doctor goes off on convincing pseudo scientific monologues and most unsettling is the half man calico cat Giles knows is stalking him.
This is an unsettling debut in all the right ways. Effectively organized through journal entries, narratives from shifting perspectives, and chapters focused on the various rooms and neighbors in Giles building are an inventive touch that relates to the character nicely. My favorite was room 104 where Giles obsesses over the sound of his neighbors late night pisses.
Super Cell Anemia is a doozy of a character based Bizzaro novel. Excellently written and everything I hoped for when I started it. Duncan Barlow has transcended my perceptions of him as an artist. He is a great novelist who happens to also be a pretty good musician. If you like a strange read this book needs to be on your TBR pile." - David Agranoff
