Some books keep you at arms’ length from their characters misery. Ann Sterzinger shoves your nose in it, like you’re a misbehaving dog and the book is your mistake. In one sense, it’s very funny. In another sense, it’s not funny at all. It doesn’t matter who you are. If you’re made of carbon, SOMETHING in this book will hit too close to home.

Lester Reichertsen was a punk rock musician until his band kicked him out, seemingly on the verge of their big break. Now he’s living a fairly typical death in the world of academia. His dissertation is proving as painful as root canal surgery. He works as a put upon TA at the local college. He almost hates his son. He’s not drifting away from his wife, but only because they were probably never close to begin with. He is alienated from everyone, including himself. In short, he is a human anchor, plumbing the depths of the middle class by colliding with the bottom head-first. He’s a Holden Caulfield grown old enough to see himself become one of the phoneys.

The book is a succession of partly comic, partly ghastly events that illustrate the emptiness of his life. Encounters with his father and his father-in-law, unreconstructed narcissists both. A run-in with his old band. A young woman who might be the Lolita to his Humbert Humbert. All of it serves to reaffirm that he’s not insane, he’s just stuck in an insane world. How does he function? Is there ANY way to function?  As you approach the end of Nvsqvam, it’s with a growing sense of apprehension, as though the thinning sheaf of pages is a ticking bomb. There can’t possibly be an escape for Lester.

The book is intense and grim, but it’s funny, too. Sterzinger induces cringe-laughter so frequently that I think my neural pathways have been trained to never again do one without the other. Like A Confederacy of Dunces (a book this sometimes reminds me of) Nvsqvam‘s characters seem stylised and exaggerated without seeming fake. This is another one of those books where you’ll meet every jerk you’ve ever known in its pages, if you’re not careful.

It also has an interesting metafictional angle, similar to Will Self’s The Book of Dave (although Sterzinger doesn’t go as far with the concept). It’s written in a way that invokes an classical document, filled with footnotes to help explain 21st century culture to some far-future student. At first, these footnotes seemed distracting. But they’re hilarious, and soon one looks forward to them – it’s like the book just proffered you a hors d’ourve. And I liked the way the events of Lester’s life become intertwined with the classical text he’s writing his dissertation on.

As the book progresses, the early gathering of stormclouds builds to a cat-5 gale. Nvsqvam is an exhausting book, and reading in small passages is recommended and perhaps necessary.

But it’s honest, and that makes it all the more painful. The publisher printed the title of the book at the top of every page – in an eerie way, this almost seems to become part of the text. Occasionally, Lester has small reversals of fortune. Sometimes, there’s a ray of hope. But your false hope is crushed anew every time you turn the page by a reminder that no matter what’s happening, you’re still Nowhere.

George Orwell’s dystopian novel Eat Pray Love contains a plot device called a Memory Hole, where politically inconvenient documents are not just destroyed, but are removed from memory. In practice, we probably don’t need to destroy documents, we just need to make sure they’re on page 134 of a tumblr blog.

In 2005, symphonic metal band Nightwish went into a strange tailspin that ended with singer Tarja Turunen being ejected from the band. Why? We’re still not sure. The more you read about it, the less you understand. Reading about it unlearns things from your brain. Everyone says something different. It’s like the six or seven people involved live in eight or nine parallel universes.

In a valiant attempt to clear up the issue, Tarja’s husband Marcelo Cabuli gathered over 150 questions from the fans and wrote answers to them. He says many things that are…orthogonal to the recollections of various band members, but the fact that he typed nearly thirty thousand words defending his wife’s honour is impressive.

When I saw him post his answers, I thought “this is interesting” and “this will be gone from the internet someday”, so I saved it. And yes, it seems it is currently gone from the internet. So here it is reposted. The most fascinating part is where he implies Tuomas Holopainen was motivated by romantic rejection:

“36) Many people say that everything this happened because he Tuomas felt something for the Tarja and this feeling was not corresponded. It was the impression that passed. This can be answered? Or not?
Heluza Mercaus Viegas Brazil

Nightwish lyrics are Tuomas’ life diary, as it has been said. With this new information that I am sharing with you, please check once again some of them. We all can find amazing songs with beautiful lyrics full of poetry. Their meaning won’t remain that uncertain any longer.”

Imagine something. Is that too much to ask? It won’t take much effort, and when it really starts happening you won’t have to imagine any more.

Around 2020, a disease expresses itself in the human population. A very embarrassing and serious disease. It has some clinical name, but everyone on the street calls it “well, you know…that.”

It only affects men. The symptoms are a pretty quick death.

Maybe we can identify the pathogen responsible. Maybe it’s something too synergistic and vague to nail down – a complex multi-stage infection caused by the interaction of multiple benign bacteria.

But one thing’s clear: it’s universal, and it’s incubating in anyone. There’s nowhere to quarantine so it won’t get out, and nowhere to quarantine to stop it from getting in.

But one group is spared: gay men.

To be more exact, men who have been sodomised.

This disturbing fact provokes the kind of consternation-fuelled investigation where you can almost imagine sweat dripping off the researchers’ fingers. Yes, it’s true. If you’ve taken it up the ass, you will not get the disease.

Ipso facto, if you do not wish to get the disease, you must take it up the ass.

We try to find a more…dignified way of conferring protection, but no dice. Artificially douching your colon with a man’s semen doesn’t work. Likewise, anal penetration is not the trigger. Those who practice “pegging” are dying at the same rate as everyone else. You have to actually have a gay man ejaculate into your asshole if you want to stay alive. Why? How does this work?

Good question, but until we figure it out…how badly do you want to live?

Society now looks quite a bit different.

The gay bathhouses of the 1960s are reopened, and become filled with men with shivering hands, thousand-yard stares, and evasive speech.

Fashion designers, architects, and artists have an excellent survival rate. The theme of the age for doctoral theses becomes something like “Anal Lube Hermeneutics – Towards an Understanding of Post-Plague Survivor’s Guilt Through the Work of Foucault.”

Members of the clergy and mullahs survive at far higher rates than average. They credit spiritual benediction and prayer for their survival.

The incumbent President of the United States – a family-values Baptist from Alabama – makes the controversial decision to have gay sex and save his own life. Everything’s handled with the utmost discretion, but unfortunately the gay “donor” had a tiny spycam in his pubic hair. The video is sold to the Daily Mail for a record-setting eighty million dollars.

Mostly, things become very, very awkward.

You’ll be meet a well-dressed businessman in Fleet Street or New York, shake his hand, and then break off eye contact as soon as possible. You’ll both be thinking the same thing. Very recently, perhaps only yesterday, you had another man on your back. And his balls were touching yours. Anyway, what’s the Stockholm Securities Exchange doing?

And there’s always troubling warnings from the CDC and NIH labs. The plague is mutating, evolving. Who knows if gay sex will still be enough to confer protection tomorrow. Sometime soon, dog semen might be the cure. Or dolphin semen. Whatever. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it – perhaps literally.