SAVAGE RECREATION

In Bloom’s novella, an agent named Higgins, alias Mats Odon, works as customer relations for the powerful Mammoth organization, and his loyalties to both corporate and revolutionary causes result in a dramatic unravelling.

Having done many dubious tasks for Mammoth before, Higgins concludes that his latest assignment is “to be his last.” His character is counting down the final 89 days in his posting, ignoring corporate backstabbing and “a leaked coup” to focus on completing his assignments. The mysterious corporation has a powerful reach, both across the media and in individuals’ lives, with Higgins reflecting: “There was no destination to escape to. He’d still be seeking some thing and this was not a bother, only a truth.” Assuming his latest identity, Mats Odon, amid corporate pen-pushing, he reflects on “the revolution”—a movement of which he may once have been a part. However, he gave up its actions for a comfortable life with plenty of perks: “Selling out did not bother him.” A surprise meeting with Damascus Dieter, his billionaire boss, results in a deal of “a signing bonus and extra income, without extending his stay.” Soon, he meets an old revolutionary friend, resulting in Odon becoming “an agent double entwined,” going off the grid and selling out once again. After a blurry interlude of drinking, cigarettes, women, and implied drug-testing with a motley bunch of men—Gorey, Meyer, Alexey, and the Vet—the protagonist feel that he’s “lost his cool. He needed structure.” He tries to maintain the relationships in both halves of his life but feels as if he is in a “perpetual hallucination shared with witnessing pretenders.” As deceptions and realities become blurred, a dangerous drug Isos is nearing the mass market—and Odon is in danger of becoming addicted.

The conversations between the protagonist and other agents are straight out of a noir novel: no niceties, all punchy exchanges: “You dance behind closed doors in another man’s office” and “Shoddy work. Fucking goons. Never left anything right.” This makes the contrast between most characters and Tara Thames, a data analyst in the company, all the starker, as she discusses orgasms and sexual desire with her friends. The reader traverses through the hazy plot and the main character’s cynicism, all dispersed over short, snappy chapters. Between the rambling internal monologues and the switches from first- to third-person perspectives, Bloom ends up evoking the same ennui in the reader that the characters experience. Monologues are punctuated by references to George Bellows and Everett Shinn, two American realist painters known for their depictions of urban life, which seems to be a touchstone for “testosterone fueled madness” for Odon. Unlike the output of these painters, Bloom’s work is impressionistic, relying heavily on the vague shape of a plot instead of a solid, sustained one. Ostensibly a commentary on the soullessness of corporate America and the immoral pharmaceutical industry, the book’s salient points are obscured by the stream-of-consciousness style.

A nihilistic work whose central plot is overcome by rambling monologues about the troubled state of humanity.