Pros: a premise that could had led to a truly unique, intriguing novel
Cons: no attempt to bring that premise to fruition
The Bottom Line: Remember that annoying kid back in high school who refused to take anything seriously and wouldn't stop with his self indulgently pointless ramblings? He's written a novel...
What's worse, a novel devoid of any real merit, with nothing but pointless drivel and random ramblings throughout, or a novel with a few flashes of brilliance, but no ability to tie them together into a cohesive, worthwhile story?
Chris Genoa's debut novel, Foop! falls squarely into the latter category. Consider the opening scene of the book, which opens mid-action with our protagonist Joe being squeezed, against his better judgment, to shoot Abraham Lincoln in the back of his head on that fateful night in Ford's Theater all those years ago. You see, Joe works as a tour guide for Dactyl Inc., a company that, some unspecified point in the future where much of the novel is set, has developed a process for time travel and now offers commercial tours of the past for customers willing to cough up the scratch. Seems that one of these tourists decided to take it upon himself to accost John Wilkes Booth in the bar across from the theater shortly before the play was to begin, thus saving the sixteenth president from an untimely demise. And with Booth out of the picture, it's up to Joe to off Lincoln to ensure that the rest of the time tourists get to see the experience they paid for.
It's a brilliantly absurd premise to start out the book, tempered by some flippant, irreverent observation fro Genoa that doesn't really add anything but wackiness to the book (i.e. a lengthy discussion about how Abraham Lincoln, with his gangly, simian appearance, provides conclusive proof that there is an evolutionary link between apes and humans). The first few chapters vacillate between the truly intriguing comic sci-fi premise and the odd philosophical digressions. Together, these two elements represent two directions Genoa could have chosen for the rest of the book, and unfortunately for the readers, he chooses the latter.
Sure, the novel does continue on through a definite plot – Joe's boss, Mr. Burke, calls him in to offer a promotion to a secret position to investigate who has been going back in time, torturing a younger version of Burke, and delivering photographs of said torture to the present day Burke. There's so much promise in this premise, but Genoa seems completely uninterested letting this premise grow and blossom into a compelling, intricate plot. Rather, he strings together a few vignettes each loosely related to the overall plot (but completely unrelated to each other), and uses them as a springboard to launch into his wacky, self-indulgent linguistic masturbation, rambling on for pages at a time on random tangents that never build to a cohesive whole.
Take Joe's visit back to New Orleans in the early years of the twenty first century to spy on the birth of his boss and make sure nothing unusual happens. As Joe heads back to a New Orleans a few years before the city was destroyed by "Hurricane Wilma," (a fictitious passage that feels a little uncomfortable considering what happened a few short months after Foop! was first published), Genoa spends several pages likening the New Orleans city planning history to a happy-go-lucky child who's build an elaborate sand castle only to panic when he realizes the tide is coming in and he needs to dig moats in the sand and futilely try to shelter his creation with his body in an attempt to save it from it's inevitable destruction. There's wit and style in the description, and it's awfully amusing to read, but when you consider that Joe's actual visit to New Orleans is glossed over quickly, with none of the scant events that occur there having any bearing or impact on the book's overall plot, you can see that Genoa is far more interested in proving that he's witty and irreverent, and couldn't care all that much about crafting a strong, compelling plot.
As the novel goes on, time itself seems to be unraveling bit by bit, but Genoa never uses his story to explore any of the intriguing philosophical issues that arise. At one point, Joe starts to see the ghosts of his apartments former occupants. He could have spent some time discussing the way that visiting the past can cause present time to "skip" and bring back echoes of dead people, but rather than expanding on these themes that had arisen through the plot, Genoa simply sends Joe off to a bar to drink away his visions and to explore the way that conversations between bartenders and patrons have evolved to a point where each need only speak one word at a time, yet both can fully understand each other. ("What?" "Jack." "No." "Scotch." "Ten." "Tab?" "Card?" and so on...)
Elsewhere, we get three to four page tangents on everything from all the possible permutations of breakfast that Joe can have with the four items he has to choose from to little songs that people sing to themselves while playing bingo to the bizarre names that cult leaders choose for themselves. Again, each of these individual passages is amusing, but they never build into anything bigger. Trying to fit them into the context of a rich, deep novel is like trying to look at one of those 3-D stereogram pictures, only to find out that the 3-D picture hidden therein is nothing more than a flat, featureless plain.
Consider the following exchange between Joe and his boss:
Mr. Burke grabbed my arm, pulled me out the door with him, pinned me against the wall, and said, as if asking if it's bad when there's blood in your poo, "Let me ask you something. Do your ears hang low?"
"What?"
"You know... do they wobble to and fro?"
"Not really."
"I see." He thought about this. "Well, can you tie them in a know? Can you tie them in a bow?"
"Why do you want to know this?"
"Just answer me. Can you throw them over your shoulder."
"What do you mean? Like a Continental Soldier?"
"Yeah."
"No."
"Then it's hopeless."
I have to be honest with everybody here. Mr. Burke didn't really ask me all that stuff about my ears wobbling to and fro. He did pull me out of the room, he did pin me against the wall, and he did say something that lacked any semblance of meaning, at least to me, but it wasn't that exactly. In truth, I've forgotten what he said. But since it was meaningless I figure it won't matter much if I substitute something with an equal amount of meaningless.
It's not without its charm, but he's taken the long way around to tell us next to nothing. And it's not as though Genoa later comes back to revisit the scene and shed some new light upon it. Page after page we get examples of Genoa showing off his skills at pumping up the most mundane, insignificant information to show off his wordplay skills and wacky sense of humor, and then dropping the topic never to return to it again.
Which is why it's so frustrating to see the few flashes of brilliance in the novel. Joe witnessing a time-tourist sneaking away from the tour group to find and strangle his own infant self, disappearing in a bright flash of light. Joe traveling back to investigate his boss, only to find three versions of Mr. Burke at varying ages, each with a portable time travel device, fighting amongst one another and then chasing after each other through a time hole, unconcerned with the dangerous effects their fracas may have on the world. If Genoa had focused on events like these, he might have had quite the well-crafted irreverent sci-fi story on his hands, but he simply uses them as cast-off mortar to hold together his unconnected collections of pithy observances.
Perhaps if there weren't a whole host of masterfully crafted irreverent sci-fi/fantasy novels out there that skillfully blend wit, social commentary and compelling plot, I might have been able to enjoy Foop! more. But after reading most of the books that Douglas Adams, Christopher Moore, and Terry Pratchett have written (as well as the screenplays Charlie Kaufmann has created), I've come to recognize fine, eccentric, offbeat sci-fi and fantasy as something akin to a bullfight or a tango, where all the elements loop back upon one another, swirling together into an intricately choreographed dance where even the smallest elements are integral to the whole. Foop!, with its random, aimless tangents, its limp, inconsistent plot structure, and its hastily tacked on cop-out of a denouement, is less like a dance, and much more akin to a hyperactive child at a Mexican birthday party who's just been blindfolded, spun around, and handed a heavy stick to start swinging away at the piñata. There's plenty of fruitless flailing about, the end rewards are awfully small and stale, and somebody's probably going to end up battered and bruised before the whole experience is over.
I can't deny Genoa's irreverent sense of wit, but his is a writing style suited for short, comic essay and think pieces. Stretch his style out to a three hundred page novel, and the same problems arise that plague every Saturday Night Live skit transposed to the big screen. There may be a few flashes of brilliance, but any possible amusement gets lost in the self-importance, self-indulgence, and self-delusion that is necessary to build something so big out of so little substance.
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