MAIS QUE FOUTENT LES EDITEURS (Part 6)

THE LOONY, Christopher Wunderlee.
Albert Locner est astrophysicien. Albert Locner a des hommes à ses trousses. Albert Locner a des secrets. Albert Locner aurait-il aidé le gouvernement américain a simuler l'aterrisage sur la Lune d'Apollo? Serait-il responsable de l'assassinat de JFK? Pynchonien dans les idées, dans la structure, dans la langue même ce coup de chapeau à Gravity's Rainbow aurait pu être rien moins que sympathique sans la langue, remarquable, de Christopher Wunderlee, qui catapulte The Loony bien au-delà du simple hommage. Disons que Gravity's Rainbow est la première escale de cet Apollo, promis à de biens jolis voyages. Christopher Wunderlee est poète, The Loony (une centaine de pages) est son premier roman. Et Wikipedia est, cette fois, d'une justesse rare :
"In 2005, the Loony appeared, the story of an estranged scientist’s supposed role in faking the Project Apollo moon missions in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Again, the title of the book mirrors the subject matter, as the protagonist appears to be either suffering from ‘lunacy’ or he is the victim of an elaborate conspiracy to keep it secret that the Apollo missions were faked. The main characters are Albert Locner, an astrophysicist who becomes embroiled in the plot. An apparitional love interest named Harris who is allegedly a military spy who uses sex to blackmail prominent enemies of the state and/or another victim of the plot. And, “the Colonel”, who is either the military officer in charge of Lochner’s case or a psychiatrist. It has been suggested that they are postmodern counterparts to Dante, Beatrice and the Devil, or Don Quixote, Dulcinea, and the narrator. The story, using experimental narration, follows Albert Lochner’s life from conception to his downfall, when he joins the team to fake the lunar landings. After they accomplish their goal and fool the world, Lochner is blackmailed when Harris is supposedly abducted. In order to save her, he must agree to a number of unspecified demands, one of which is that he spends several years being driven randomly around the U.S. by two agents, why is never explained. He later escapes to find Harris, in attempt to discover whether she was truly a victim or an accomplice in the conspiracy. The plot is infused with unique devices, including the repetitive use of lines from David Bowie’s Space Oddity song, “out-of-room-voices” who chime in to offer commentary or break into song (it has been suggested that these ‘voices’ are actually patients at a psychiatric ward and that the entire or at least some part of the book takes place there) and “file footage”, or scenes from movies, television shows, propaganda films, and other media (again, potentially simply what is playing on the television at the hospital). These plot devices combine with the unique, loquacious prose style to mirror a state of lunacy, whether this is because the protagonist is indeed mentally ill or because of the situation he finds himself in is the big unanswered question of the novella. Because of its symbolic parallels, stylistic innovations, and distinctive narrative style, The Loony is considered a groundbreaking work of fiction. Comparisons of the novella were made to Thomas Pynchon, William Gaddis, Joseph Heller, and Vladimir Nabokov."