D. Harlan Wilson | 2020
The first three words in Outré appear in the ZEROTH section. These first three words are: “Cast. Donny Ennui,”
The final three words in Outré appear in the BIBLIOGRAPHY: “All rights unnerved.’
Ballardian high-rises encircle this future Earth, piercing the core. It’s not our future Earth, but it might be our future. It would be incorrect to describe the narrative as linear, non-linear or circulatory, just as it would be incorrect to describe Outré as easy to understand or difficult to understand. Outré’s structure is heat-stressed meshed girders; its filling is soft body parts and quantum semi-conductors. In the mind’s eye: multiple flashbulb flares, like exponentially sped up footage of endless thermonuclear detonations. Human Shadow of Death (actor’s version).
In INTERBEING, a whale crashes down near the town of Strychnine Heights. Carnage for the cetacean; weird fractured time-stream causality elsewhere.
The INTERMEZZO is Outré’s Wilsonian Lagrange point. Here, the immense gravitational forces exerted by sections 0, 1, 2, 3 and INTERBEING are neutralised by a single sentence.
Presidential decomposition. Travis Doom forgot to groom. DOWN-ANGLE SHOT from the mezzanine. Stanley Kubrick. Zarathustrian wildcard. Toxins emitted by the dead skywhale. The only difference between mammals and reptiles is body heat. Gary the Cervix. Bones of a ribcage encircle me like Stonehenge. David Lynch. The techno-spartans will evolve quickly, aided by better diets.
At times, Outré is reminiscent of JG Ballard’s The Atrocity Exhibition, but with a harder, serrated edge and extra helpings of pop culture.
The memory ends here.
©Dan McNeil 2021