M. John Harrison’s The End of Everything: A Deconstructed Review
by Luke Dylan Ramsey
1. John Lennon’s “Imagine” (An Introduction)
A world where everyone’s reality is different. A disconnected, fraying, ramshackle, fragmented world. World as infinite suburb, or exurb. World as unending stasis. World as eternal coast, or ocean. A world featuring drifting, lurking dark patches that cause disconcerting visions & bad vibes. An endlessly interpretable world. A world sans consequences or logic. A world invaded by incomprehensible trans-dimensional entities.
Called the iGhetti, these entities sort of ghost through the book; they are a spectacular Macguffin.
2. Five Scare Quotes From A (Mostly) Non-Scary Book
a. They had seemed at first like neither a thing nor a picture of a thing: they seemed to extrude from a space that wasn’t quite in the world.
b. None of this made any sense to Marnie. In that, she shared the situation of around eight billion other human beings on the planet.
c. ‘Of course, I don’t suppose any of us know quite what season it is now.’
d. Lounging about—awkward, unformed, dressed in equally strange clothes—they gave rise to a small but startling revelation every time they moved, as if emitting sparks, or a kind of music, while replicating the mechanical styles of the organ grinder’s monkey.
e. They were an aquatint; simultaneously they were the inevitable early-Cubist shattering of the visible. They didn’t seem to notice how unusual everything was.
3. Notes From The Above (Further Reading)
“The Royal Zoo is Closed” by Laird Barron
Nova Swing by M. John Harrison
The Southern Reach Series by Jeff VanderMeer
Roadside Picnic by Boris & Arkady Strugatsky
Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem
4. Observations
The dead spot on my car’s dashboard display is growing. My car does not have cruise control; I oft worry I will die withinside its all too metallic confines. The author I thought of most while reading The End of Everything was J.G. Ballard.
I collect Ballard & like him I too want to fuck Ronald Reagan. The End of Everything is a heady mixture of Ballard’s obsession with liminal zones, his predilection for wily antiheroes you both love & hate, &, most of all, his lucid & crystalline yet altogether detached prose.
Hints of a Ballardian psychogeography susurrate throughout the book as well, although, alas, to love Ballard is to see the man everywhere.
5. Sea Changes For Us All As We Escape From The Sea: A Poem
the world has ended
the world has somehow ended & I…
I don’t know
what to do
with myself
6. Why Am I So Wise? (A Word To The Wise)
Ignore the dust jacket summary of this book. Go ahead & ignore the summary on Amazon, too. They are at best a gimmicky misdirect & at worst deliberately facile. I highly doubt Harrison wrote these summaries himself; they reek of corporate malaise.
Speaking of the physical copies of this book, the British first edition is a thing to behold. Featuring paper with painted edges & striking cover art, Serpent’s Tail (Harrison’s British publisher) should be commended on the book’s exquisite look.
7. Turn Me On Again (A List Of Players)
A gaggle of unnamed children (they play with the ashes of civilization)
Alice Menard (Philip’s on & off lover)
Andrew (a lost dog)
Artefact, the (some type of alien entity arisen from the sea)
Baker twins, the (one of them sins & is punished)
England (largely fucked)
Fruit girl, the (just another artefact)
Gaufs, the (a pair of squirrelly businessman)
Giovana (Marnie’s Karen neighbor)
Hampson (a mad scientist that belongs in a Krasznahorkai novel)
H.R. Giger (mentioned once)
iGhetti, the (aliens)
London (partially occupied by the iGhetti)
Lost continent, the (Europe, presumably)
Marnie (Philip’s aunt, local yokel)
Old man, the (farmer)
Philip Tennent (Marnie’s nephew, a beachcomber turned babysitter)
8. This Is Not The End (What Type Of Slop Is This, Bro?)
Everything today is some kinda slop. Literally everything. The universe? That’s infinityslop. Cars? Transposlop. The moon? Skyslop. This is true whether you wish to acknowledge it or not. So… what kinda slop is The End of Everything?
I would call the book qualityslop, although it features elements of litslop, sci-fislop, & Weirdslop, & there’s even some fantasyslop and horrorslop kinda stuff mixed in there, too.
Speaking of sloppiness (you should see my condo), there is a certain, ahem, loosey-goosey-ness to the prose, information sequencing, & plot. The book reads as if it were composed mostly by sight & feel; I doubt Harrison was working from a strict outline, but I could be wrong.
9. Reality Awaits Us All (Concluding Remarks)
The End of Everything, much like any other apocalypse, is impossible to wrap your head around. This mode is typical for Harrison, methinks. You could imprint more than a few allegories onto the book. Brexit, the consequences of xenophobia, the breakdown of trust in societal pillars, endless yet distant wars, the ways we monetize nostalgia…
I almost unequivocally love The End of Everything. 9/10.