The Revisionaries

October 1, 2019
Sprawling, postmodern shaggy dog debut novel about a strange city made even stranger by new arrivals from the hinterlands. Someplace in the decaying industrial heartland, inside a "gray donut of shuttered factories," lies a place called "Loony Island," most of whose residents live in Stalinist apartment blocks. The name is well earned if accidental, for in one of its quadrants stands a psychiatric hospital whose residents have been released to the streets, ministered to by an apparently self-appointed priest, bearded and denim-clad, who funds his church by means of a fat trust fund. Alas, Loony Island is run by a cabal of criminals who don't have much time for the new insane constituency except to figure out how to rob them, of which Father Julius decidedly doesn't approve. Among the bad guys are a would-be writer who's "shit at it" and a young woman, tough as iron, who is far and away more competent than anyone else in the gang. Their efforts pale against the arrival of a very bad man from Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, home of Dollyworld and some very strange doings. Morris is on the trail of a young man named Gordy who appears to Father Julius as a flickering apparition. Morris, a Keyser Söze of the Smokies, drops his enemies, perceived and real, into "oubliettes," or dungeonlike boxes, of which he is the proud inventor; it makes good sense, then, that he should tumble into a sewer whose manhole cover has been spirited away by the local tweakers. What Gordy has that Morris wants is--well, call it an instrument that allows "control over everything in the universe." Against this background there are all sorts of memorable characters, including murderous rednecks from the Deliverance cutting-room floor, a bearded lady from a traveling circus, and the ever elusive Gordy's worried father, who swears that he'll never go back to Pigeon Forge as long as he lives. If the yarn doesn't always add up and runs a bit long, it's good fun to wind the characters up and watch them go. Moxon's storyline isn't easy to follow, but it makes for a tasty entertainment.

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October 21, 2019
Moxon’s antic debut starts off anchored in a particular, if fantastic, place and time, and then dissolves into a less than coherent dissertation on authorship and free will. The first section is set in an inner-city neighborhood of an unnamed industrial city. Here the life of a street preacher with a mysterious source of funding intersects with those of a gang leader, an addled man searching for his son, a young man whose physical form is intermittently perceptible by the people he’s with, a bunch of red-clad ninjas, and the “loonies” newly released from the local mental institution and hopped up on amphetamines. The novel then jumps to an alternative history of Pigeon Forge, Tenn., from the 19th century up to the present, in which a lottery ticket and a fountain dispensing water with amnesiac properties figure prominently. Back in the city, it becomes evident that these characters are the creations of one or more authors, and may in fact be comic book cats. Even at more than 600 pages, the novel’s plot and characters remain curiously undeveloped, and the barrage of verbiage, on subjects such as the properties of the first 10 dimensions of existence, often spins in circles. Even the most patient readers may wish for things to speed up.

Starred review from November 1, 2019
This sprawling, mesmerizing, unforgettable first novel begins with a psychiatric hospital on the aptly named Loony Island releasing all its residents as a result of a well-intentioned but poorly executed government policy. Soon people begin to see odd things. Julius, a compassionate if questionably qualified priest, believes he sees a man flickering in and out of the world; Boyd, a local cat burglar, witnesses another man fold up and disappear. These bizarre happenings set in motion an astonishing narrative that encompasses a huge sweep of history, from America's founding to the present, and involves a series of magical realist events, including a fantastical circus and an underground world of crime. With typographical changes indicating switching between characters, Moxon's intricately constructed apocalyptic caper is teeming with philosophical concepts. For fans of Mark Danielewski, David Foster Wallace (particularly Infinite Jest, 1996), Sergio De La Pava, and other fiercely ambitious writers, it sometimes feels like Moxon is a puppet master who has lost all control, only to masterfully pick up the strings to get his marionettes dancing again in an entirely unexpected way. Delving into memory and belief as well as complex questions about authorship and ownership, Moxon's astounding novel, bursting at the seams with ideas and pathos, is a breathless demonstration of masterful storytelling.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)