Pontypool Changes Everything

by Tony Burgess

The dark side of humanity is explored in this electrifying science fiction thriller in which an epidemic virus terrorizes the earth. Causing its inhabitants to strike out on murderous rampages, the virus is caught through conversation and, once contracted, leads its host on a strange journey—into another world where the undead roam the streets of the smallest towns and largest cities, hungry for human flesh. Describing in chilling detail what it would be like if thousands suddenly caught such a virus and struck out on a mass, never-ending, cannibalistic spree, this terrifying narrative is perfect for those who are ready to explore their darkest secret imaginings through a sinister and compelling literary work of art. This new edition includes a new afterword on the making of the new motion picture.

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Zombies, Science Fiction, Apocalyptic, Canada, Post Apocalyptic

280 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 1, 1998

About the author

Tony Burgess is a Canadian novelist and screenwriter. His most notable works include the 1998 novel Pontypool Changes Everything and the screenplay for the film adaptation of that same novel, "Pontypool" (2008).

Burgess’ unique style of writing has been called literary horror fiction and described as ”blended ultra-violent horror and absurdist humour, inflicting nightmarish narratives on the quirky citizens of small-town Ontario: think H. P. Lovecraft meets Stephen Leacock.

Reviews

[Nate D · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have a thing for experimental and deconstructed genre fiction. Particularly sci-fi and horror. Having seen the cool, clever Pontypool film, I knew this was about zombie-ism spread via language, for a kind of pulp Ben Marcus, straighter but still sharp . But the film turns out to be an aside to this book, a riff, an alternate version, a parallel, a development cutting across this book at a right angle with only a single character and a couple plot-points' intersection. But then, the deconstructed format of this book means that it's actually entirely composed of riffs, asides, rethinkings, and alternate versions. It's almost impossible to get a handle on the prime level of understanding at the bottom of the book since it's always echoing back up to the top, altered, particularly in the superior first half, titled "Autobiography", which may detail the early stages of an outbreak of vicious cannibalism, or the experiences of a garbage man who loses his grip, or some combination or outside imagining thereof. In the second half, "Novel", we eventually get to a chapter called "Zombies Explained to Us" which contains many intellectually thrilling (though not always action-reflected) ideas about subliminal infection and reality as host, including this: "...almost instantly, the virus appears in a concept of itself. This causes all sorts of havoc." And indeed, as the novel collapses into successive self-images, all is absolutely havoc.

These problems with consciousness and deep-language structures are often cited as the possible source for certain idiosyncrasies of the wording that pepper the novel, often in paragraph-long bursts. That's possible, but whereas they've been called gibberish, they seem to me more like just very beautiful and original description, whether disease-or-mental-illness-induced or not. Listen:

The view through the binoculars is cool. The lemon-colored leaves on the undersides of branches are crisp. The sky is fixed through the trees in an ice-blue lattice. A refrigerator. Greg shivers.

Now, Greg may be having some perceptual or synaesthetic problems here, but I don't even need to justify it so far. It's just lovely, a refreshment from the zombie-movie brutality and gore that often surges to the forefront.

There have been two killings. Maybe a third. And nearly a fourth. But for now, the killings are a pair, a couple. And like couples do, the Killings look for what they have in common. They stand in a line like all the other couples. Like other couples, the killings share financial burden, discovering that as two, they can afford so much more. They can take trips and buy things that as single nouns or verbs they never could. The Killings are combining their relatively limited horizons into something without limits, something dreamy.

[PUMPKINHEAD · Rating 4 out of 5]

Trippy, unnerving horror. Just when you think you're already in the deep end, 'Pontypool changes everything' submerges you even further.

This novel is crazy. But crazy-good. It's like reading the fiction of a certified lunatic, albeit a very talented one. Simply put, Pontypool is a zombie story, but one unlike anything you've ever read before. Burgess doesn't just turn the genre on its head, he decapitates it, then sews on a Frankenstein-like replacement made from sections of his own fractured psyche.

Breathing new life into an overplayed genre, Burgess envisions an undead-type infection (something akin to '28 Days Later') that is spread through sound, making for an incredible play on words and use of language. The novel follows a number of strange characters with their own agendas who are navigating an epidemic as it increasingly infects everyone around them. Burgess's writing is poetic, unhinged, and above all genuinely frightening. It does, however, have a habit of losing you in places. So be warned.

As insane and experimental as much of it is, the book is also incredibly addictive and compelling, even when you're not sure what you're reading or where the plot is going. You just have to hold on, white-knuckled, and go along with the ride as it whips you along. It really feels like you may get thrown from this rollercoaster every now and then, but hold tight. You might get banged up a bit, but the ride is totally worth it.

[Dr. Cat in the Brain · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this book up because I remembered the movie and figured: Zombies! Good clean fun!

But when I got into the first chapter I realised I had made a tragic mistake.

This book is CANADIAN.

So you know what that means.

Things are gonna get weird.

Things are gonna get all Edward Albee in this house.

Canadians can't write normal books about zombies or slashers or serial killers. They can't even write normal poetry. Nah, Canadians collectively made a deal with a great mind-controlling crab in Lake Superior.

In exchange for free healthcare everything we write has to be a little odd. Everything is just a bit off.

It's all part of the plan you see, to introduce enough strange thought into the universe to create a 10th dimensional mathematical rift that....ahhhh never-mind. It's too complicated.

Besides, SPOILERS. You'll find out in 2027.

YOU'LL SEE. THE GREAT HATCHING WILL COME AND...did somebody say Hockey?

So every Canadian work of writing or fiction always has to turn into some kind of bizarre head trip. And if it doesn't make sense in the finale? Oh well! It's the journey, not the destination! Tsal ta emoc sah dlihc eht ;dnuorg sti no selbmert rewot eht. Ssap ot emoc sah tsrow eht, ssak-emoc-alammoc. Get ready for lift-off because we're heading to the Mushroom Kingdom!

If you thought the movie Pontypool was strange with a virus hidden in language turning people into zombies, oh man. Oh cheeseburgers. Oh ducks and batteries. The book makes A24 films look like Friday the 13th sequels.

8/10. Absurdist horror masterpiece. Prime Canadian bacon. Prepare thy eggs.


Part of my big, yucky, Halloween review round up:
www.patreon.com/posts/74021554

[Ruby Tombstone Lives! · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish I had the words to tell you how wonderful this book really is. It's a book full of lyrical prose, beautiful and terrible imagery, important and wondrous ideas, humour and hardcore horror. Centred around the idea of a zombie virus transmitted by language, the book touches on eye-opening concepts incorporating semiotics and neurolinguistics, as well as tapping into what it means to have a brain injury or mental illness. The horror comes not only from the physical suffering of the victims in the story, but from the idea of what it might be to lose control of one's own faculties, or to be fundamentally misunderstood by the rest of society. There are the themes of forgiveness, taboo, addiction and family which also run through the book.
There are books which have taken me an extraordinarily long time to read because the writing style was so dense, but this is certainly not one of them. I did take a long time reading it, but because I wanted to re-examine every paragraph to see what I missed on first reading. I got the sense that I could continue to re-read this book for years to come and still discover new ideas in its pages. The chapters are mercifully short, which makes the book seem like it flies by regardless.
The book is in two parts, and I have to say, the first was more cohesive than the second. In the second part, Burgess seems to get overexcited - trying to express too many ideas all at once, and not exploring any of them in great depth. In the Afterword, Burgess practically apologises for the book, and admits to having written the book as an experiment for himself, never really believing it would be read. I can certainly forgive him this, but I understand that the book may not be everyone's cup of tea. It is by no means a mainstream read, and readers who dislike horror, sexual taboos or the surreal may not be able to see past that.
I won't give away any spoilers but near the end, Chapter 23 (The Worst Winter Ever) is wonderful. Even if you put the book down and decide not to finish it, please skip to this chapter and read. The chapter consists of dozens of stand-alone vignettes of people experiencing the zombie apocalypse. It is a great example of Burgess' writing style, even without the neurolinguistic theories.
In case anyone is in any doubt, I do believe that this is a GREAT and IMPORTANT book, and it will join the handful of my all time favourites to be read again and again.

NOTE - Yes there was a movie made about 10 years after the book. Both movie and book are brilliant, and Tony Burgess wrote the movie's screenplay. They are very different stories, in fact the only thing they have in common is the virus. It really doesn't matter if you see one or the other first.

[DeAnna Knippling · Rating 5 out of 5]

Before there was meaning, there was a virus that became entertwined with, and created, life itself. It's in everyone's DNA already; you're already "infected."

If you hear someone in whom this virus has been awakened, you start to lose meaning, until this loss of meaning makes it impossible to distinguish whether meaning exists or not. Hint: it doesn't really.

Where the virus is too strong, it extinguishes itself, kills everyone, burns itself out. Weaker strands survive, allowing the illusion of meaning to continue. But the virus is still the there, waiting to break through meaning, and cause violence.

--So I really enjoyed this. The beginning almost makes sense, and then it breaks away from plot to a more direct experience of different types of mental/meaning breakdown. Then the plot resumes as society "recovers," and we see the virus, entertwined with life, once again making its move--but this time, by reproducing more normally.

How do memes work? How does fascism work? The same way as a virus? How is meaning virus-like?

If you're looking for a brainless zombie tale (no bad thing!), look elsewhere; if you like Italo Calvino, immediately gravitate in this direction.

[Lewis Rees · Rating 1 out of 5]

Rarely do I find a book that affects me in the same way that Pontypool did.
That is, rarely do I find a book so utterly terrible that I had to stop reading it.

Ostentibly the basis for the brilliant film Pontypool (Although, at 70% of the way through the novel, nothing had turned up besides the main character of said film, the eponomous town and the virus.)

The thing is, the core conceit here is absolutely brilliant: A fresh, inventive take on a genre that's been played out in every conceivable way, on every conceivable stage.

However, I found Pontypool changes everything to be an utterly trying effort with characters I found impossible to sympathize with. True, there was some decent imagery, and I can see a genuinely good book hiding beneath a surface of self-indulgent experimentation and trying post-modernism. Had the book been stripped to the bones and left us with this fresh idea, I would no doubt be raving about it.

Usually I can't stand it when a film doesn't stick to the story of the book, at least in some ways, but in this case it worked one hundred perecent to the film's advantage. I have never read a book so terrible that got made into a film that good before. I implore you all to skip this poor effort at a book and instead see the far superior film it inspired.

[Sean Fitzpatrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pontypool Changes Everyting defies definition in a lot of ways. One of the biggest complaints that gets leveed against it (at least by people that I know) is that it is supposed to be a book about a zombie outbreak and, yet, the zombies in the book are more conceptual than literal. It is difficult to feel afraid of the zombies. But the novel's abstraction is its greatest strength because, at its core, it is a indefatigably complex horror novel.

The scariness in Pontypool Changes Everything (which, especially in a book like this, should be separated from its horror elements) stems from the virus itself. The idea that a lethal contagion could spread through language is unbelievably terrifying, mostly because the virus can be spread through the act of telling somebody not to speak (and therefore spread the virus). The fright of a disease that cannot be cured because it disposes with communication is insurmountable in the novel. This is why the book immediately interrupts its own intelligibility. The book, through a great and absolutely-not-heavy-handed metafictional turn, is infected with the very disease that infects its subjects. It lacks the ability to communicate and rages at the reader because of that incommunicability. Consequently, the destruction that the virus produces is total, which brings to mind my second point.

The arbitrary violence that the disease produces in people is shocking. The fright may not come from the zombie attack, but the novel, through the ingenious device of giving the reader a glimpse into the mind of the infected, adds terror by showing how the infected people transform from relatively high-functioning individuals to snarling murderers. The manifestation of the violence in the novel is completely untempered. Once the first zombie enters the story, the gore piles up. This is, without a doubt, the most horrific book I have ever read. From images of patients being liquified under a crush of people at a local doctor's office to scenes where a father administering painkillers to his drug-addicted infant son to simply stop the boy from going into withdrawal, from passages depicting a TV news anchor engaging in forced pan-sexual intercourse with his interns to the dreamlike moments wherein a brother and sister subsist on zombie meat and eventually copulate and produce a zombie baby, the book is full of imagery and complex symbolism that is hauntingly disturbing and, sometimes, shockingly hilarious. The extremity of the horror in the novel never feels over-the-top, however, because the story is about what people do to one another and what people are capable of when their minds are pushed to the extremities of aphasic rage. The books is also not simple-minded, and does not make the zombies the solely evil presence in the story. People are equally responsible for horrific deeds, and it is the relentless depiction of human depravity that makes the book difficult to get through.

But just because it is difficult does not mean it is not worthwhile. The novel contains beautifully written passages that would be a wonder for anybody interested in the written word. Furthermore, Burgess makes the reader painfully aware of the beauty of Ontario's northern regions while, simultaneously, showing the depravity of the people who live there. Structurally, the novel is divided into two vexing parts: Autobiography and Novel. The play of fiction and nonfiction is difficult, especially because the events in both parts are unrealistic. The dipartite form gestures toward the complex nature of the human mind's ability to understand things. Basically, humans need to know whether something is real or fake. This fundamental categorization of events is the foundation for the rest of our understanding. By depriving readers of this basic understanding between factual and fictional, Burgess makes the story much more unsettling and destabilizing. Did language really cause people to kill and eat each other in Pontypool? The reader is left to decide.

Pontypool Changes Everything is complex to the core, but this makes it fun and unpredictable. Many of the shocks and scares are incredibly surprising, and the story also contains touching and heartbreaking moments of desperate intimacy between people that are simply going to die. The deadly fatalism of the story makes it one for contemplation. From the outset, it is known that many characters will not make it out of the book alive. Like viewers watching Hitchcock's "Psycho" for the first time and seeing Janet Leigh get killed in the first third of the film, the reader of Pontypool will desperately grasp for characters and subjectivities to latch on to. But there are none to be had. Instead, the reader looks for why humanity is killing itself and how a human invention such as language can infect the brain. It is a book that has especial relevance now, with the ever-present manipulation of images and events by news networks. The corruptibility of language and the human mind is the main focus of the story, which is both entertaining and enlightening.

I imagine a lot of readers will hear the concept of the book (Zombies are infected through language?!?!) and be put off by its apparent lack of believability. But to those readers who say that, I question the validity of any zombie virus -- can radiation REALLY produce the zombies that crop up in Romero's (and many of his imitator's) films? are the zombies in 28 Days Later REALLY just infected with rage? does the Necronomicon in Evil Dead REALLY just raise the dead through the utterance of its ritualistic passages? By bringing these works up, I do not mean to disparage the efforts of their creators. Instead, I intend to point out the intrinsic flimsiness of the zombie-horror genre. And yet, the genre is thrilling and thought-provoking. If you cannot suspend your disbelief with this book, then you do not deserve Pontypool Changes Everything.

[Siri · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked the movie and was fascinated by its premise that a deadly virus could be created by and spread through the spoken English language.

The book version, though, is kinda like if the screenplay contracted the virus it depicts and becomes a weird disturbing verbal slosh. The author apologizes for the book in the afterword (with the "I was a heady young semiotician!" excuse) and rather than coming off like a sadistic jackass, it made me appreciate his sense of humor and the lengths he went to to rework the story for a broader audience on film.

[Queralt✨ · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pontypool Changes Everything follows Les, who has psychosis, during what may be a zombie apocalypse: language becomes contagious and words become a virus that drives people insane. The virus/disease presents itself in three stages: aphasia, stillness, and... revenge with a healthy dose of cannibalism.

I must say, though, respectfully... what the fuck? It had good parts, but for the most part, it was so confusing and I couldn't tell what was up (or down) (or sideways). The story is told in two parts. Autobiography following Les was just nonsensical, I struggled. And Novel was okay(ish), but I was already disenchanted with the whole thing and I couldn't unconfuse my brain (?).

I must say, reading about a woman pleasuring herself with a coffee table was not on my 2025 bingo card.



Content warning for zoophilia involving a minor and fantasizing about killing a baby.

[Paul Mcfarland · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a story that is difficult to describe in a few paragraphs. It is on one level an account of the spread of an infectious disorder across the area around a small town in Ontario, Canada. It is on another level an attempt, I believe, to give an insight into madness.

It works I feel on both levels. As a Zombie Novel if produces several new ideas, chief among them the idea that an infection can be spread by language itself. This is an idea that was approached by Henry Kuttner in his short story "Nothing but Gingerbread Left" and to an extent by Stephen King in his novel “Cell”. However, Mr. Burgess plows enough entirely new ground in this book to be a good country mile from anything derivative.

This is not going to be a book for everyone. I suspect that folks seeking a Zombie tale are not going to want to take the effort to get through this one. I also suspect that some folks will be offended by a goodly amount of gore and a bit of slightly warped sexuality. But if you are up for a challenge, I would really recommend this read. Mr. Burgess has made a very close approach to “Finnegans Wake” with Zombies.

I thought the story was good fun and give it an easy five for its value both as entertainment and as somewhat of a peek into what paranoid schizophrenia might be like.

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

As anyone who saw me reading this is well aware, this isn't really a book about zombies. I mean, it is. But it's also about language. Burgess' fascination with language and semiotics underpins this entire work, a fact that endows the novel with a linguistic playfulness while allowing the author to toy and tinker with ideas of lanuage, concept and understanding. The novel sort of meanders, occasionally becoming surreal and almost dadaist, and though this may detract from the work as a whole, it doesn't interfere with Burgess' main concerns... If language creates the framework of conception, what is lost when our grasp of language disappears? Do the specificities of syntax really root us in reality? Is language what prevents us from a life of zombiehood? If we cannot understand each other, will it help to try to crawl into each other's mouths?

I enjoyed this book less than I anticipated, but I also found it more thought-provoking than I thought I would.

[Greg · Rating 1 out of 5]

Put this one in the self-indulgent look-how-clever-I-can-write category - post modern crap dressed up like a messy zombie novel. I like similes & metaphors as much as the next reader, but having them thrown at you machine gun style - sometimes all in one sentence - is not experimental or enjoyable. It's bad writing, folks. The emperor isn't wearing any clothes. There. I said it. Don't waste your time.

[Ange ⚕ angethology · Rating 3 out of 5]

".. Its existence is incomprehensible because it exists contrary to the way our rational minds comprehend. And because the virus is situated, quite physically, anterior to the process of comprehension itself."

"Pontypool Changes Everything" is a strange meta, experimental novel about a viral zombie outbreak that envelops a small town, Pontypool. Following a couple of different people's perspectives until some of their demise, we get a deconstructed, non-linear narrative that include alternate events, an "autobiography," and an interview-like medium where the origin of the virus is revealed. Much like the actual structure of the novel, the virus embodies chaos, backtracking and questioning our understanding of language and concepts: *The virus bit wildly at the exterior shimmer of the paradigms, jamming selection with pointed double fangs. "

Zombies in all kinds of media are often portrayed as either cannibalistic, ravenous and senselessly violent beings or a tractable, hivemind that have no purpose besides chasing their next meal. What's different in this book is that the transformation of zombies is slow and also integral to our understanding of the virus. The process very much mirrors an alienation that humans can often relate to, especially for certain diseases (like dementia) where our communication becomes less and less reliable. All meaning is broken down into more itemized, interchangeable linguistic units that are corrupted, and before fully turning into a zombie, one almost falls into a state of depression and isolation. Once nothing makes sense anymore, that's when the zombies complete their "transformation" and start resorting to full-blown, unfettered violence. Not being able to have meaningful connections and comprehend anything pushes their systems over the edge.

The virus disseminating through language inevitably encourages humans to communicate as minimally as possible, however — and the irony is, that non infected ones too, become isolated and alienated, also resorting to violence, and perhaps also with their own comprehension being distorted. This novel, like many experimental and genre-bending books, feels surreal and confusing. The discussion about the origin of the virus is probably my favorite part, and while I can appreciate the characters' descent into madness, it becomes easy to lose track of what's happening. You could almost say it makes the experience of reading more immersive, but instead of a hypnotic alluring chaos, it sometimes made me tempted to skim certain parts. I appreciate that this is an incredibly unique and philosophical book that transcends the multiple genres it falls into, even though it almost triggers me to become a zombie myself with its language.

[Katie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a tough one. The use of language and writing style in this book is a bit overcooked for my taste I think.
You know what it's like? It's like this one time I took this turbo kick class and it was so over choreographed that I spent the whole time just trying to figure out each move and by the time I did we were on to another one. So in the end I just felt confused and didn't get near the workout that I could have. It's like that.

[Robert Beveridge · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tony Burgess, Pontypool Changes Everything (ECW Press, 1998)

And the award for most-adapted screenplay goes to Bruce McDonald's Pontypool, one of the best films of 2008. I say “most-adapted” because Burgess' screenplay for the film and the book Burgess wrote ten years before the film was released are two entirely different animals. One can't really say that the book is better than the movie or vice versa when comparing them against one another; they must be looked at as two entirely separate, or at best tangentially related, pieces of work. That said, the movie is better than the book (and according to his afterword, Mr. Burgess agrees with me). While I'd recommend the movie to anyone, the book requires a certain mindset, as well as an ability to put up with (or enjoy) writing that can only be described as hallucinatory; you'll often wonder what it is, exactly, you're reading. Also in that afterword, Burgess mentions that he wrote the book just after graduating university with a semiotics degree. Be warned, he uses it extensively, and not just in the inventive method of viral transmission that underlies both book and film. (I should also mention as a side note for my American readers that ECW Press, despite its recent forays into the memoirs of professional wrestlers, has nothing to do with Extreme Championship Wrestling—though since those memoirs are the only ECW books widely available in America, one can be forgiven for thinking so.)

In the movie, we see the genesis of the plague. In the book, the plague has always existed; it has evolved along with humans. As with many zombie plagues, no one really knows what triggered it, though a few hypotheses are offered by various people throughout the book. Also unlike the movie, which focuses on Grant Mazzy (who is changed from a television personality into a radio DJ), the book is an ensemble piece. Mazzy, in fact, is the only major character in the book to survive the transition relatively intact. You will meet very few people here you recognize, if you've seen the film. The book is divided into two sections. The first of them follows Les Reardon, a mentally ill drama coach, as he wanders through the beginnings of the zombie plague looking for his wife and infant son (this section of the book is called Autobiography, by the way). We have to wonder, though, given his mental condition, how much of what he sees is real. Then comes the second part of the book (Novel), which focuses on two other characters, Julie and Jim. They are the children of the zombie couple Les Reardon stole a car from in Autobiography, and one of the few places the two parts of the novel cross is in showing that scene from a different perspective early in Novel.

I have not tried to outline a plot in that synopsis because (a) the plot of each section of the book is entirely different (though both do move toward a single point; pay attention, however, or you'll miss the single sentence that connects the two), and (b) plot is, at best, a tertiary consideration in Pontypool Changes Everything. This is a book that is about its language more than anything else (kind of the literary equivalent of a Godard film). This is, of necessity, going to make it a vertical-market item, and I should stress here that you shouldn't by the book just because you liked the movie, in case you haven't already gotten that from what's above. That said, of the writers who engage in this sort of literary masturbation, Burgess is one of the most readable I've come across; he's certainly orders of magnitude better than, say, Claude Simon. Actually, now that I think about it, there are some parallels to be made with Georges Bataille (especially in Novel), and because I'm thick, I completely missed the fact that the entire Novel section is an allusion to Truffaut until just now (Jules and Jim? Yes, I caught the reference, you'd have to be an idiot not to, but I never made the structural connection until I started writing this paragraph). Given that, while Pontypool Changes Everything is probably a serviceable introduction to this kind of writing, you may be better off starting with a book whose shock value is up front and in your face (the classic example, and my strongest recommendation, would be Bataille's Story of the Eye); Burgess is just as interested in transgressive realms here, and if you can't make it through Story of the Eye there's stuff in Novel that's guaranteed to squick you out, but Burgess' aim is to seduce the reader with Autobiography, a much more conventional (as regards its conformation to societal norms) piece of writing. There's a lot to be said here about the breakdown of society and how humans go back to being savages, but I'm probably not the one to say it.

My rating for this book has been all over the place; I've changed it four times as I've been writing this review, in fact, as I understand more about what (I think, anyway) Burgess was trying to do. Thank your lucky stars Pontypool was directed by Bruce McDonald instead of Godard (or any of the other New Wave directors who may still be alive and working); he probably would have tried to make a film out of the book, rather than Burgess' endlessly-modified screenplay. There are very few books I've read that I'd consider unfilmable, and this is one of them. I'm still not entirely sure I liked it, per se, though I respect what Burgess was trying to do with it (more so now that I've made all those connections). And now I think it's even more of a vertical-market book than I did originally; it's not for semioticians, it's not for zombie fans, it's for semiotician zombie fans. There can't be all that many of those around. ***

[Kirsty Carson · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF @37%
Too confusing for me to follow and just couldn’t get into it.

[Bill Coffin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sweet Jesus, what a disastrous spew of a creative writing class gone wrong this novel turned out to be.

I enjoy zombie movies quite a bit and when I saw 2009's Pontypool, a clever, tight, engaging story about a shock-jock trapped in his radio station as the local countryside falls prey to a most peculiar form of zombie virus, I swore to myself that I would read the novel from which the film was adapted. What a mistake that proved to be.

In Pontypool Changes Everything, the land is swept by a language-borne zombie virus, like an earworm you get from listening to that maddening "Cups" song, except that instead of simply being annoyed, your brain short-circuits, you try to escape your own mind by tearing yourself apart and then by savaging anybody nearby. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, nor is it supposed to. It is a scenario where language itself is the thing that truly turns people into monsters, and the story around it is one largely hung on a character who is already mentally unstable to begin with. To double down on that, the novel is told in a manner as if the novel itself is behaving as an infected Pontypool brain might behave, with insanity shot throughout and a lot of words having completely broken relationships with each other. It's like if George Romero decided to become a slam poet instead of a filmmaker and while recovering from a stroke, produced a 276-page treatise on how doomed rural Ontario would be if the zombies came.

On one hand, this is a really bold concept, perhaps one shared at a writer's retreat while sharing drinks. On the other hand, this is a really terrible way in which to write, you know...a book. By wielding the same kind of insanity in the prose that the story tries to describe, Burgess commits that pathetic fallacy wherein one re-enacts something on the page rather than describes it, perhaps without regard to how much it may derail the larger storytelling effort. It's the kind of thing you see in stories when rather than writing, "He laughed loud and hard for quite a long time," the author instead writes "HA HA HA HA HA" for seven pages. We get the point. The guy's laughing. No need to beat us up over it. Some authors see no problem with this, as it immerses the reader most directly into the narrative. Those authors must not care if anybody sticks around long enough to see how their stories end.

I have to applaud Burgess for having the vision to try something so unconventional as Pontypool Changes Everything. To be fair, had this been a short story, it probably would have worked well. But on the scale of a novel, even one as short as this, you realize that by the time you are 20% in, this steaming pile of crazy is as good as it is ever going to get, and you can just flip to the last chapter, knowing that whatever you miss along the way will be so unreliable and undecipherable as to not matter.

The problem with Pontypool Changes Everything isn't that it fails to deliver conventional tropes of zombie stories in a straightforward sequence. The problem is that it forgets that a novel is meant to communicate something to its readers, and all this novel communicates is that the message has been lost along the way. We are reduced to the literary equivalent of trying to watch a television show that is 90% static, giving the author the benefit of the doubt that behind it all is something we would find quite engaging if only we had the opportunity to engage it.

One might enjoy Pontypool Changes Everything if having come to it first from watching the movie Pontypool and *then* reading the novel as a companion piece, knowing what they were really in for. In that order, the immersive effect of how this novel is written might work. The chances are just as good, however, that even knowing beforehand the themes of linguistic disintegration and madness, the reader would still abandon this mess of a novel.

By author Tony Burgess's own admission, this novel was really all about his own playing with language; it wasn't entirely meant to be read, and his afterword for the new edition was, in his words, an apology. For in asking us to read this novel, he ends it by admitting that perhaps we never should have in the first place. Now he tells us.

[Brendan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Somewhere in Northern Ontario, near a town called Pontypool, a rabies-like virus has made the jump from biological threat to meme, riding existing sounds from one person to the next and driving them mad. The poor bastards who get infected first lose touch with reality, and then, in frustration, they attack the people around them in a horrorshow of gore and sudden violence. But before they become violent, they spend a lot of time walking around, speaking words that are more or less nonsense, but carry the same infectious meme that overwhelmed them. Oh, in case I'm being too cryptic, they're zombies.

It's a compelling read, but a challenging one. A few thoughts:

The book tells the story of the outbreak from a variety of viewpoints, following several different characters as they descend down the rabbit hole of the disease, then shifting to the omniscient narrator to provide rapid-fire descriptions of the wide-spread ramifications of the outbreak.
Burgess' writing style employs a deep vocabulary and a sudden brutality that serves the mesmerizing nature of the story and the disease well. It also uses a free-wheeling narrative style that's pretty disconcerting and difficult to follow. I understand this to be the idea that the book's story is breaking down in sense the same way the zombies' minds are breaking down.
One of the driving horrors of the book is the invisibility of the disease -- there are several characters whom we suspect are infected, but may in fact just have gone mad in a kind of contact high. Some of the events toward the end of the book are so bizarre that it's difficult to tell what we're supposed to make of them: are they supposed to have happened? If so, not enough explanation. Are they fantasies in one of the insane minds? If so, which one, given that the narrator doesn't help us distinguish that. Or perhaps that's the point, that we're going just as mad from our detached narrator's chair.
In the Afterward to this new edition (published after the movie was made), the author apologizes for the book, suggesting that it isn't as good as he would like but that he resisted tampering with it. He confesses that he wrote it shortly after graduating with a degree in semiotics, and there are bits that only make sense if you have that rare bit of jargon installed in your brain. He throws around words like syntagm and paradigm and linguistic terms like dipthong. It's not too overwhelming, but clearly reflects his recent grad school experience.
Alas, the book doesn't hold together for me in its conclusion. I can't say whether this reflects a narrative flaw or my own inability to parse the increasingly mad events that occur in the late pieces of the book, or if another read would clear it up for me. But ultimately I came away less satisfied than I was with the movie version of the same narrative (which evolves in an entirely different way).

It's a good book, better than many of the straight-forward zombie stories that focus just on killing and use conventional storytelling styles. Worth a read if you like capital L literature and zombies.

[ipso · Rating 3 out of 5]

Edit: An experiment to riff on the book’s self-conscious style in jabber didn't work too well. Calling an author’s first few chapters pretentious, in a review where the first two paragraphs are overly pretentious. Calling and author drunk and stoned, while being drunk and stoned. Talking about lack of structure in a style itself without structure – etc. I retract.

[Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Always and forever 5 stars. I think this is the 3rd time I’ve read this and every time it takes my breath away. Is it post modern nonsense? Sure whatever, but honestly I don’t care. Burgess’s ability to blend metaphor with reality with writing style into something you have to dive completely through before you ever understand is something that will blow me away every time I read it. Favorite book, favorite author.

[Hovo Arakelian · Rating 2 out of 5]

An interesting story, ruined by entire chapters worth of word salads, filled with metaphors that go nowhere. While I can appreciate the author's experimentation with language, I did not enjoy any of it.

I did finish it though, so I guess that means something.

[Christi Nogle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Glad I picked this up!

I had seen the movie years ago and enjoyed it, but I didn’t realize the book had a much wider scope and more experimental approach. Some incredible, memorable images here. I just re-watched the movie alongside this and was especially interested in the author’s afterword about the screenwriting and filmmaking experience.

[Kate Sherrod · Rating 4 out of 5]

This it's my year for completely bugnuts reading, it would seem. Pontypool Changes Everything is a bizarre maelstrom of language-drunk Ontario gothic in the vein of the famously gory and disgusting Avatar comic Crossed. Deep in that vein. Tearing that vein out with snaggly bloodstained teeth and flinging it around like a mad dog. A mad dog that quotes Ovid and makes weird puns.

It has some of the trappings of a (yawn) zombie story -- probably just enough of same to piss off serious zombie fans looking for the mixture, same as before -- but it is so much more interesting than that, that I refuse to use the Z word again in this post.*

For one thing, it's very interestingly, sometimes surreally, written, with lines like "The tofu cube of brain walks down the wall on its slippery corners and covers the black spider hole left by the bullet."
I can totally see, in my mind's eye, what a Jacen Burroughs drawing of that would look like. Totally. But there are humdrum zombie novels full of lines like that.

No, what really sets Pontypool Changes Everything apart is the weirdo literary accomplishment it represents, for not only does it depict a highly virulent disease that is transmitted via spoken language (yeah, if the nam-shub/meme/language games were your favorite part of Snow Crash, here's a new book for your favorites shelf), but it also puts the reader pretty much directly takes the reader inside the subjective experience of the infected; every single viewpoint character (at least until the weirdo pseudo-pastoral last chapter or so) is in some stage of losing his or her grip on ordinary thought processes and language (the first symptom of the disease is aphasia), and once the strangeness of the resulting prose settles into the reader's brain, well, we're already slavering through suburban Toronto and the forests beyond the 'burbs, our necks snapped, our jaws slack, looking for someone's face to attack.

An afterword by Burgess expresses his regret at having written this novel, half grand Guignol, half post-modern experiment. I can't really say I regret reading it, but I think I can understand where the author is coming from. His experiment is not entirely successful, but it's interesting and unusual and (mostly) entertaining, and worth a look if you're in the mood for something a little different. I was, and had fun reading it, until the really pretty incomprehensible ending anyway.

*I submit that "cannibal berserker" is a better term for what the characters -- and, vicariously, Burgess' readers -- become, anyway.

[John Wiswell · Rating 3 out of 5]

On the one hand, this book has a radical central idea. It’s a Weird Plague story about a disease that hides inside of language. Once you hear and think about the wrong sentences, it infects your mind, driving you to seek revenge against anyone that you have a grudge against. Eventually this language-centric plague drives people to eat each other’s mouths.

That’s only the pathology of the disease, which is minuscule in the face of what society goes through. This isn’t the story of an attractive couple in tank tops fighting off zombies. Everyday survivors casually notice mounds of bodies without understand where they came from. People experience vivid and disturbing fantasies that come from nowhere. Support groups spring up without many of the participants knowing why. People mistake heroin for baby formula. It is as though everyone’s ability to socialize is melting.

Chances are that if you’re interested in the book, then you liked Burgess’s movie, simply titled Pontypool. That movie was extremely weird by movie standards. This book, being told in language as people’s ability to understand it mutates, is a far sight weirder.

So that’s the one hand. That’s the good hand.

The bad hand is how much of the novel is edgy for no good reason. One instance of a kid crying because he sexually assaulted his dog has a massive impact. But killing a baby with heroin? Orgies at therapy groups? Envelope-pushing stuff comes up until it’s tedious. It gets in the way of character psychology. It’s like the book isn’t confident in its core premise and amazing prose, and keeps resorting to button-pushing stunts in order to prove it’s really cool.

After being enamored with the many successes of the first half, I had to put Pontypool Changes Everything down for a week. It began feeling like tutoring a prize student who abruptly hits their edge lord phase.

This novel is utterly worth reading. But you have to be ready for everything it’s going to do.

[Chris Browning · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pontypool Changes Everything is one of the most exhausting, extraordinary and bizarre books I have ever read. Burgess has chosen a genre to nest in which expects gonzo thrills, and he sort of provides those but at a cost. For every moment of gruesome unpleasantness, there’s some serious fucking about with narrators, characters, genre tropes and especially language

Because Burgess is obsessed with language being unstable here. He creates metaphors that cut out the middle man and unsettle you as you try and get your bearings. Sentences break off into new directions. For a book ultimately about a disease that makes language unstable to think about and to articulate, he does this repeatedly as you read it

It’s possibly an even better trick than Danielewski plays with House of Leaves, because that’s about creating huge caverns of space for you to fill with your own ideas. Burgess wants to disrupt you and fling you about from chapter to chapter. It’s horrifying. It’s very funny. It’s incredibly sad. It has a tiny newborn baby biting off it’s own umbilical cord and giving the finger to it’s incestuous parents while shouting “fuck you” and running into a lake at about ninety miles an hour

I’ve no idea what it’s about, not fully. I still have no idea what the last chapter is REMOTELY about, but I suspect the final scene of the film suggests one answer. But by fuck, it does sort of do what the title states. It does change everything. I’m not going to be able to read this kind of horror novel in quite the same way again

Unbelievable. What a thing it is

[Meli · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am torn about how to rate this. It is a unique take on zombies, the writing is unique, the prose is beautifully grotesque, but it is often incomprehensible. I have tried 2 or 3 times over the years to read this and always hit a wall around the halfway mark. This time I was determined. It turns out it wasn't quite as difficult as I remembered, but was definitely challenging. That is partly due to the writing style. Early on there are many scenes with inanimate objects described as body parts or living things which is confusing at first.

For example:
"He doesn't see the resemblance between the handset and the tiny coffin of an infant. He squeezes the little dead hand in his, breaking its baby finger, making it cry."

The guy is making a call on his walkie-talkie... why is this shit so confusing? But the description is kinda cool at the same time.

Also, scenes jump from one perspective to the next. Many of the characters suffer from addiction or mental illness so it is difficult to understand if what is happening is real or imagined, metaphor or literal.

I would recommend this to someone looking for an offbeat zombie story that still acknowledges it is a zombie story. You know those zombie stories that never mention the Z word. Not Pontypool, they lean right in. If you want a story that has a unique representation of the virus but still has the hallmarks of zombie stories - gore, guts, violence - this might be for you. It just takes a little patience with the writing style.

[Alexis Winning · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poetic. Absurd. Surreal. Brilliant.

These are the only words to describe Pontypool. I love the idea of semiotics. My background is more the idea of semiotics used in performance, but I understand the literary theory as well. The zombie plague in Pontypool is spread through language, or rather the deconstruction of it, which is brilliant because this nonsensical story is told through words, and often does not make sense-that's the point.

It's definitely not a book for everyone. It's strange and nonlinear, which may frustrate some. Don't get me wrong, it's not a dense read by any means, you just have to get in the right mindset. Think zombie poetry on acid.

This is not a book with a cathartic ending. In fact, there is no catharsis-you're there for the ride, and hopefully you "get it". This is a book about communication, interpretation, our inner world, and how that translates intrapersonally. This book comments on mental illness and how we construct and interpret our world, but it also suggests that we may not be too far off from the labels of mental illness once we understand that we may not be able to understand. Make sense? No? That's the point.

[[Name Redacted] · Rating 1 out of 5]

Urgh. Bleh. Yargh.

A "1 star" book receiving an extra star for the quality of the underlying conceit, though the fact that that fascinating conceit takes a back seat to..incoherent drivel...almost knocks it back down to a single star.

How the gripping and atmospheric film "Pontypool" spun out of this repetitive, bloated mess is beyond me. It reads like the sort of thing I had to sit through when I was a Freshman Creative Writing major -- turgid with tortured metaphors, needless run-on sentences, and thoroughly unlikable characters. I understand that likable characters, beautiful prose and an interesting plot are considered "passe" in the world of "artistic literature", but those sentiments always feel terribly adolescent to me. For instance, I've met literally MILLIONS of people over the course of my life, and as repulsive as I find the bulk of humanity, I can assure you that the individuals who make up that humanity are by-and-large pleasant and likable beings.

In fact, the more I think about this book, the more certain I am that it deserves but a single star. I want the 9 hours back which it stole from my life.

[Shelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was amazed at the film, Pontypool. Such a small cast and tiny location work that packed an interesting punch without tons of gore. An old fashioned creepy movie. It was great and made me want to find the book so I could read it.

Unfortunately, the book is completely different from the movie (and was done on purpose as the author explains in the afterward), but that doesn't mean that it sucks or anything. It is just a different view on the virus that turns people into zombies. A broader look at how it sweeps across the province and how it affects the lives of the people it touches.

Now... Burgess is an aquired taste. His writing is full of images that don't necessarily make sense at the time you're reading them so can lead to confusion as to what is going on and, I'll admit, Pontypool is full of scenes like that, but each little story in the big story is actually kind of interesting to read.

Overall I like the book. I doubt it will tickle the fancy of many people, but I liked it.

[Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

As much as I like the ideas behind this book, i'm not so certain about its execution. There is something in the story itself, but the chaotic way that it's written means that reading it was mostly trying to get through a lot of word vomit to get to the enjoyment.

Its language is very specific as well, full of complicated metaphors that - especially at the beginning - make it a challenge to determine what exactly is going on. On the other hand, some of these wild descriptions were fantastic.

The three star rating is not because the book was mediocre - it's because I have extremely mixed feelings about it. The virus idea is great. The explanation sucks. I hate some characters. But I love their stories. And so on, and so on...