“I read somewhere
that human beings are genetically predisposed to record history. We believe it
will prevent us from doing stupid things in the future. But even though we
dutifully archived elaborate records of everything we’ve ever done, we also
managed to keep on doing dumber and dumber sh*t. This is my history. There are
things in here: babies with two heads, insects as big as refrigerators, God,
the devil, limbless warriors, rocket ships, sex, diving bells, theft, wars,
monsters, internal combustion engines, love, cigarettes, joy, bomb shelters,
pizza and cruelty. Just like it’s always been.”
So opens possibly the craziest narrative you may have read
to date, Andrew Smith’s “Grasshopper Jungle” (Dutton Books, $18.99, ages 16-18.)
There truly is no better way to discuss this book than to get out of the
character’s way and unleash his voice. Smith brings together the styles of
Francesca Lia Block, Lewis Nordan and what can only be his own twisted soul in
this story of science, evil geniuses, man-eating bugs and eternal libidinousness.
Austin Szerba is the tenth-grade historian of Ealing, Iowa. Austin
records his life, the lives of his neighbors and town in tall stacks of
journals. His best friend Robby Brees is a funny, handsome gay classmate. And
that is part of the story that Austin fills his journal up with: if Austin
loves Robby and is attracted to him, does that mean he is gay? Even
though Shann, his girlfriend since seventh grade, drives him to extremes of
lustful fantasy at every second?
Working in an antique shop called From Attic to Seller
makes sense for a budding historian. One night, he and Robby decide to
investigate the back room. It is not a good idea. A baby with two heads waves
vaguely in a globe. Glow-in-the dark pulsating goo lights the dark. Most
horrifically, in a large glass case, labeled “McKeon Industries
1969-Unstoppable Soldier-Strand 4-VG-12” float grasshoppers “as big as
middle-school kids.” At the same time Robby and Austin stand slack-jawed and
horrified in front of these things, a group of neighborhood bullies break in to
steal things in the store. They smash one of the globes in the parking lot. And
that is REALLY not a good idea.
Repeating phrases like “It was not a good idea,” “real
dynamo,” “And that was our day. You know what I mean,” become a
lexicon of double-entendre in this hilarious, lewd, beautifully written book.
The narrative voice is so authentically a 16-year old boy’s that obsessions
with sex, swearing, excrement and body parts in one’s nether regions feel natural.
Like so many great books, it is studded with sentences that need to be said out
loud over and over, if you can say them with a straight face. A dark, dark
humor lights this book up like the gelatinous goo in a dark room. Consider this
passage:
“Robby and I were the gods of concrete rivers, and
history does prove to us that wherever boys ride bicycles, paved roadways
ribbon along afterward like intestinal tapeworms. So the mall went up--built
like a row of happy lower teeth--grinned for a while, and then about a year ago
some of the shops there began shutting down, blackening out like cavities when
people left our town for other, better places.”
Passages like this build a world we might recognize, or if
not, that we understand. Smith writes with a poetry that celebrates and
clarifies how a teenager might see a crumbling town filled with crumbling
people.
But routine crumbling has not yet begun. When the smashed
globe unleashes Unstoppable Soldiers—that is, bullet-proof six-foot tall
grasshoppers, voraciously hungry and profoundly ready to reproduce—they begin
noshing on townspeople. That’s when Robby, Shann and Austin find Eden, a
generously appointed time capsule from the 1960’s. Created by the evil genius
responsible for the mysteries of the back room of Attic to Cellar, it is meant
to house New Humans after an apocalypse.
What an interesting situation for a teenage historian! What
a complexity of past, present and future! Austin’s mind is a stew of Polish
history, his family’s lineage, his dog Ingrid, his lust and love for both his
best friend and his girlfriend, cigarettes, prehistoric paintings, Saint
Kazimierz, and his mother’s tranquilizers. As chaos grips Ealing, Iowa, Robby,
Shann and Austin must build their own history, their own definitions of
themselves, and a future previously unimagined. Austin ends his narrative
having learned a profound truth about the nature of historians and history
itself.
For brave-hearted souls undisturbed by mature themes, this
book is highly recommended.
