Dr. Identity Read online

  Dr. Id-entity,

  OR,

  Farewell to Plaquedemia,

  A

  P U L P S C I E N C E F I C T I O N

  N O V E L.

  Book One of the Scikungfi Trilogy

  T H E F I R S T E D I T I O N

  Edited by Dr. Master Master Stanley Ashenbach Esquire

  HYATTSVILLE:

  Printed by RAW DOG SCREAMING PRESS in Maryland,

  and for STICK FIGURE INCORPORATED in Pseudofolliculitis City.

  MMVII.

  acclaim for d. harlan wilson & dr. identity

  ———

  “D. Harlan Wilson is my favorite author. His books are really great!”

  Franz Kafka

  “Amazing. Brilliant. Dr. Identity blew me away.”

  Walter Cronkite

  “Postmodernism is dead. D. Harlan Wilson is alive.”

  Fredric Jameson

  “Science fiction this gripping is a rare thing. Think Quentin Tarantino meets Isaac Asimov. Think William Gibson meets Jorge Luis Borges. Think the Macho Man Randy Savage body slams George Orwell. In this gritty, gruesome technoir, Wilson depicts an imploded world in which humanity has succumbed to the mistress of technology: people willfully replace themselves with androids on a daily basis, jetpacks and propeller beanies are the dominant mode of transportation, members of the ‘Papanazi’ are more numerous than businessmen, and ultraviolent ‘scikungfi’ fights materialize on every seedy street corner and flyway. Dr. Identity is the next evolutionary stage in literature. A dangerous read in every way.”

  The Boston Post

  “Breathtaking prose. Wilson is the real deal. And he’s not even gay!”

  Gertrude Stein

  “Breathtaking prose. Wilson is the real deal. And he’s not even gay!”

  Ernest Hemingway

  “I wish I could write fiction like that fuckin’ D. Harlan Wilson!”

  Vladimir Nabokov

  “Dr. Wilson is a plaquedemic to be reckoned with. His writing will kick your ass and take your name—Agent Smith style.”

  Hugo Weaving

  “Oui oui!”

  The Paris Review

  “There’s 99.9% of the science fiction genre, and there’s D. Harlan Wilson.”

  Amazing Stories

  “Wilson is an episteme in and of himself. History is history because he says so.”

  Michel Foucault

  “Dr. Identity is an original book with a unique plot and lots of suspense.”

  Condoleezza Rice

  “This novel is too mindblowing, too inconceivable, too utterly perfect to actually exist. I don’t believe in this novel, and you can’t make me.”

  Norman Mailer

  “In Wilson, the twenty-first century has found its first and last authentic voice.”

  Fortnightly Review

  “I can’t say enough about this book! I laughed all the way through it! Ha! I don’t really understand it. It doesn’t go in a straight line, as it were. It has no discernable purpose and the characters are as flat as manholes. But it’s so goddamn funny! Ha!”

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  “Is D. Harlan Wilson a cartoon?”

  Philip K. Dick

  “D. Harlan Wilson is Philip K. Dick’s ghost.”

  Horselover Fat

  “Monstrous. Beautiful.”

  Newsweek

  “If I have another party, I’m asking D. Harlan Wilson to buy the flowers.”

  Virginia Woolf

  “Dr. Identity is like my chicken: fingerlickin’ good.”

  Colonel Sanders

  “Badass.”

  Lance Henriksen

  “The most important book of the twenty-first century. Probably the most important book ever written. Dr. Identity reaches new literary heights. A truly remarkable work written by a bona fide genius.”

  The Daily Standard

  “My son is talented and artistic and smart and a marvelous teacher!”

  D. Harlan Wilson’s Mom

  “What can I say? Dr. Identity is what happens when you do it like Big Daddy Wilson.”

  Jacques Derrida

  “If I weren’t me, I’d want to be D. Harlan Wilson.”

  Igsnay Bürdd

  “Quick-witted, misogynistic commedia del foul at its best.”

  James Fenimore Cooper

  “D. Harlan Wilson is very tall. He’s like six and a half feet tall!”

  Kathy Acker

  “A narratological feat of strength.”

  Nickelodeon

  “Scientifiction of the utmost caliber.”

  John W. Campbell

  “D. Harlan’s kiss is on my list.”

  Daryl Hall

  “Not an Oprah book.”

  Oprah Winfrey

  “Professor Wilson is a big fan of my musicals. He always talks about me. Last year he taught Cats in a LACT (Literature about Creatures with Tails) course. He sends me postcards all the time. Once he sent me a singing telegram for my birthday. How bad could his writing be?”

  Andrew Lloyd Weber

  “Enter the quixotic cityscape of Bliptown, home to a nameless English professor and his psychotic mechanical sidekick. Following the accidental murder of a student, the ‘Dystopian Duo,’ as the media calls them, set out on a dazzling journey to the end of the night…Nothing is taboo here. Taboo is a normative condition, in fact. And yet Dr. Identity is among the classiest, most sophisticated works ever written—at once a cult favorite and a canonical jewel.”

  Le Figaro

  “No one writes gooder than D.!”

  John Steinbeck

  “Wilson’s Puerto Rican roots really come out in his debut novel. An elegiac and moving storyteller, he has a real genius for the material of personal experience…Unforgettable, rich and lively.”

  Vogue

  “D. Harlan Wilson’s prose can cut tin cans in half.”

  Grover Cleveland

  “Dr. Identity deserves to be read aloud by me. This book and my larynx were born for one another.”

  Charlton Heston

  “I have to admit, next to this remarkable novel, Invisible Man looks like a Harlequin Romance.”

  Ralph Ellison

  “Dr. Identity is the chicest, manliest character to hit the bookshelves since Jane Austen’s Mr. Darcy.”

  Las Vegas Weekly

  “Yo D.!”

  Fritz Lang

  “D. Harlan Wilson is a sentient exclamation point.”

  Stanley Ashenbach

  “The special effects in this book put films like The Matrix and its successors to shame. Eat your heart out Keanu! Sometimes the action seems a bit too choreographed for its own good, but that’s a small price to pay for this stunning tour de force of contemporary bookmaking. Dr. Identity deserves a catalog of sequels the likes of the Friday the 13th series. Other Winter blockbusters will shrink in comparison. Wilson cleverly pulls back curtain after curtain only to expose another curtain. His novel is kinetic, atmospheric, moody, dark, creamy, and downright hilarious (not to mention elaborately plotted, androgynously gorgeous, and brilliantly realized). Finally a piece of literature that delivers.”

  Curious George Journal

  “A gold-plated toilet bowl of sci-fi meatloaf.”

  Meatloaf

  “Unrelenting suspense. Unabashed foresight.”

  The Teufelsdröckh Review

  “The future is Dr. Identity.”

  Alfred Bester

  “Pussies don’t read D. Harlan Wilson.”

  Gary Busey

  “Sensational and singularly convincing.”

  Fantastic Story Quarterly

  “Wow. This is some book.”

  Thomas Pynchon

  “A real edge-of-your-seat page-turner…Stark an
d gripping…Absorbing…Chilling…Complex and convincing…Awe-inspiring…[Wilson] brings the food to the table and eats it all himself…Relentlessly intense. Kung fu (not to mention Asian culture in general) will never be the same…Ignites like a flamethrower, burns like a forest fire…Impossible to put down…A terrific read…Compassionate, superbly [argued,] [fluidly written…Fascinating]…Original…More fun than a pocket full of dynamite.”

  Life Magazine

  “I like his verbs. His nouns and prepositions are ok. But his verbs are straight outta Schoolhouse Rock!”

  Fifth Grade Student

  “Few authors have the ability to deploy gerunds with the skill and precision of D. Harlan Wilson.”

  William Strunk, Jr.

  “Wilson is a scumbag, and his new novel—I won’t even say its name—is basically a fictionalized version of Mein Kampf. This author is a menace and a shiteating pimp. Given the opportunity I would rip out his Adam’s apple and piss on his corpse. If ever a book should be burned, this is the one.”

  Anne Coulter

  “Murder achieves new heights in Dr. Identity. At last, here is a piece of literature that articulates the prickly art of death-dealing with a sense of style. Ha ha ha goes Saucy Jack.”

  Jack the Ripper

  “Dr. Identity is like the sound of a million cow bells going dink-dink-dink in the sky.”

  Christopher Walken

  “In the wake of Dr. Identity, capitalist schiz-flows will never be the same.”

  Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari

  “Hiyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!”

  Bruce Lee

  “Hiyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!”

  Howard Dean

  “Kaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahn!!!”

  James T. Kirk

  “To be the man, you gotta beat the man. Wooooh!!!”

  Ric Flair

  “Naw mean?”

  Custodian at Stick Figure University

  “A handsome read.”

  Calvin Klein

  “Someday people will look back at the twenty-first century and say: ‘That was the era of Dr. Identity.’”

  Pall Mall Gazette

  “D. Harlan Wilson writes voodoo architecture of the soul.”

  Frank Lloyd Wright

  “D. Harlan Wilson is the kind of motherfucking Yankee you want on your team.”

  William Faulkner

  “D. Harlan Wilson’s fiction is the equivalent of the Bee Gees Greatest Hits on steroids.”

  Scientific Amerikan

  “At the core of this thrilling tale is a revelation of the (post)human condition. [Wilson] exposes the gruesome underbelly of a dystopia shaped by absurdist laws, madcap ideologies and technologized desires. Dr. Identity represents the nightmare of reason. It satirizes the machinery of existence. It poses as a tightly clenched sphincter with glitter sprinkled on top. This book doesn’t have teeth. It has fangs, and if you bite it, it will bite you back.”

  Tyra Banks

  ———

  (DISCLAIMER: Any resemblance in the above narrative to actual people or publications living or dead or defunct is merely coincidence and should not be taken literally, metaphorically, viscerally, teleologically or otherwise. Blurbs originally written in French, Russian and German translated by Stanley Ashenbach.)

  For Stanley, who died in Venice

  Dr. Identity © 2007 by D. Harlan Wilson

  All rights reserved

  Published by Raw Dog Screaming Press,

  Hyattsville, MD

  Hardcover Edition

  Cover image: Morten Bak

  Book design: Jennifer Barnes

  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN 978-1-933293-23-3

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2006938877

  www.rawdogscreaming.com

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  null dostoevsky & lucille

  ein advanced neurorealism

  zwei luge

  drei plaquedemics at large

  vier incognito

  fünf littleoldladyville, part 1

  sechs achtung 66.799 & co.

  sieben littleoldladyville, part 2

  acht the wife-thing & other minutia

  neun in the hall of the mountain kings

  zehn smaug turbo gt

  elf dr. blah blah blah, a comic book

  zwölf cronenberg cirque

  dreizehn schizoverse, part 1

  vierzehn excerpt from “the post(post)/post-post+postmodern icklyophobe: ultra/counterhyper-nihilism in fiona birdwater’s megaanti-micronovel, the ypsilanti factor”

  fünfzehn the briefcase

  sechzehn schizoverse, part 2

  siebzehn dream of the brown lady

  achtzehn battle royal

  neunzehn death of a salesman

  zwanzig barracuda vs. bogue

  einundzwanaig papanazi kontrol

  zweiundzwanzig dénoument

  identity n. 2. The set of behavioral or personal traits by which an individual is recognizable as a member of a group. 3. The quality or condition of being the same as something else.

  plaque n. 3.b. A deposit of fatty material on the inner lining of the arterial wall, characteristic of atherosclerosis. c. A scaly patch formed on the skin by psoriasis. d. A film of mucous and bacteria on the tooth surface.

  academic adj. 4. Scholarly to the point of being unaware of the outside world. 8. Having no practical purpose or use.

  —American Heritage College Dictionary

  00

  DOSTOEVSKY & LUCILLE – 1ST PERSON ('BLAH)

  I returned from the meeting with the chair of the department feeling embittered and hostile. The topic of discussion had been plastic forks. It wasn’t the topic’s first appearance. As always, I was blamed for the “unreasonably swift” depletion of the department’s supply. The reason? Gilbert Hemingway once caught me removing two forks from the utensil drawer.

  “Fork hog,” he muttered, spying on me from down the hallway.

  I squinted at him. “Excuse me?”

  His square, bearded head angled out of his office door. The head disappeared from view as if yanked by a string and the door slammed shut.

  He confronted me about the issue later that afternoon in the men’s room. I was halfway finished with my business when he sidled up to the urinal next to me.

  “I saw you,” he whispered, raising a bristly eyebrow.

  I squinted at him. “Excuse me?”

  He refused to believe me when I told him that the additional fork was for my officemate. After that, whenever the supply of forks went dry, he called me into his office and reprimanded me in various passive-aggressive ways. Sometimes he questioned my motives. Sometimes he insulted my character. Sometimes he threatened to cut utensil funding so as to force me to bring my own tackle into work. He never raised his voice or gesticulated in any way; he was invariably calm and pragmatic. Today, however, he threw a half-eaten plum at me. I was a relatively new assistant professor who had a long way to go before securing tenure. The gesture worried me.

  I returned to my office to find Bob Dostoevsky blowdrying his armpits. Like Gilbert Hemingway and the rest of the faculty employed by Corndog University’s English department, Bob had legally changed his surname to an author in his field who was of interest to him in some pedagogical or scholarly way. Additionally, he had done his best to dress himself up like the Russian novelist, sporting dimestore spectacles, a long greasy beard, and a motheaten overcoat. He had grafted eye bags onto his face, too. These were departmental requirements. When I was initially interviewed for the job by the search committee, I thought it was a joke. When I later accepted the job and moved to Bliptown, I discovered it was reality. I considered reporting the instance of absurdity to the HEA (Higher Education Armada). But I couldn’t afford to burn any bridges, and I had racked up unspeakable financial debt over the years. I needed a fulltime income. So I agreed to appropriate the surname of an unknown speculative fiction au
thor whose body of work, in my view, was vastly underrated, and while I refused to get plastic surgery, I tried my best to recreate myself in his image. Fortunately I looked a lot like him. My choice wasn’t well-received. But it was tolerated on the condition that my colleagues could refer to me by the nickname Blah Blah Blah.

  “’Blah!” Dostoevsky shouted over the blare of the hairdryer. “Hello there!” The size of the sweat rings on his underarms indicated that he had just come back from teaching class.

  “Hi Bob!” I shouted, and collapsed into my chair. The office we shared was a small, grimy dungeon. Its only light emanated from outmoded computer screens and a dim lamp that sat on Dostoevsky’s desk. The paint of its stony, gunmetal grey walls flaked off in places, and there were nicks, abrasions and skid marks everywhere. In one wall was a large hole. Now and then a wild lobster crawled out and harassed us. Books didn’t sit on shelves in neat, sequenced rows; they lay in dirty piles on the floor and on our desktops. There were no windows. The office was hardly the romantic portrait of plaquedemia I had envisioned when I decided to sell my soul to graduate school.

  Dostoevsky sweated like an animal. It took him nearly five minutes to blowdry each armpit, and when he finished, he blowdried his eyebrows. Then he turned the machine off and began to eat a banana.

  He peeled the fruit slowly, guardedly, with precision, as if it were a bomb and peeling it too fast would set it off. I tried to ignore him, observing him only out of the corners of my eyes while I prepared a lesson for my next class.