Revolting L.A.

>> Matthew Stokoe’s High Life examines the reptilian underbelly of the Hollywood dream

by JULIET WATERS

What a subtle, almost quaint little book American Psycho seems like-now that I’ve read High Life.
Matthew Stokoe’s surgical stab at L.A. noir is the first in a series called Little House on the Bowery, selected by queer punk icon Dennis Cooper and published by thriving New York underground press, Akashic Books. Set in the mid-’90s when Pam and Tommy were happy and Brad and Gwyneth were blond and probably getting married, High Life is the story of Jack, whose only dream is to be a tabloid television journalist. Okay scratch that, he also dreams of screwing dead girls, although this is a fantasy implanted by Ryan, a minor vice cop, who has taken it upon himself to find out who murdered Jack’s wife, Karen.

Karen’s body has been discovered disemboweled and pumped full of semen. The only leads Jack and Ryan have are: Karen was a hooker, Karen recently sold one of her kidneys for $30,000, and Karen had a tattoo on her shoulder that has been sliced off.

Ryan seems to have had some kind of relationship with Karen, which Jack starts to suspect when he notices Ryan stroking what’s left of Karen’s private parts in the morgue. Ryan suspects Jack, and at one point to taunt him gives him a picture of another dead girl sodomized by a crowbar, and forces him at gunpoint to masturbate, claiming he needs a DNA sample for the lab.

This isn’t exactly the start of Jack’s descent into extreme perversion. That pretty much started when he moved to L.A. and married a hooker. But the clunky premise Jack offers as a reason for telling us this story is that he’s really just an ordinary guy forced by circumstance to confront the evil that lurks within many of us.

Thus, in the right environment (i.e. L.A.), just about any guy might find himself turned on by a live sex show where an innocent girl is being raped to death with a jackhammer.

And given enough money, power and beauty, any girl might want to test the most extreme limits of morality. Enter Bella, Jack’s new girlfriend. A self-styled philanthropist at heart, she’s using the family money to finance a organ donor clinic, where she likes to do the operations herself, unfettered by anything as ordinary as a medical licence.

I could be accused of ruining the suspense by revealing some of these scenes, but believe me these are just a small sampling from a book filled with brutal, revolting sex, and as much feces and urine as you’re likely to see in a typical month of changing diapers. And suspense is really not the compelling element. It’s actually the unflinching blandness of Jack’s voice that is strangely addictive, not unlike the siren songs of the drones from Entertainment Tonight.

High Life could be read as a metaphor for the reptilian underbelly of the Hollywood dream. It could also be read as a relentless exercise in misogyny, though when you get to the jackhammer scene, mean, wordy criticism feels a little lame.

Despite all the numbing moments of brutality, however, there are a few exceptional moments of talented writing. Stokoe shows great insight into the architecture of envy, and there are times when he makes you feel clearly why fame and wealth feel desperately important to someone who has sunk to a certain level of soullessness.

It’s impossible to recommend this book. Hardcore Brett Easton Ellis fans may like it, though they may also be disappointed in the lack of satire. There are some funny lines, though it’s unclear how intentional they are. After finishing it, however, I will say I feel weirdly purged. As though I’ve now done an excruciating and thorough penance for every episode of E.T. I’ve ever watched. :

High Life, by Matthew Stokoe, Akashic Books, pb, 328pp, $16.95 (U.S.), available online at www.akashicbooks.com