DEFAULT

by Anjo Bordell

Before the Pandemic, the Forever Wars, 9/11, and a very disappointing Y2K, we had the 90s, which was basically the 80s, which was really the tail end of the 50s. But bored with Happy Days and sock hops, we upgraded to a Cold War victory, and America found itself flush with renewed optimism and confidence, all eyes on a dazzling future. Not so fast.Raw deals and tough luck, shenanigans and DEFAULT chronicles one massive hijink told from both ends, all overseen by a ubiquitous right-wing tabloid that drags the reluctant Anjo Bordell from the American South to an accidental enlistment into the Marines, to the phantoms of California, and to the back alleys of Shanghai, where two threads converge and boil over as Bordell’s rent finally comes due.It’s picaresque, it’s satire, a kick in the pants to the heroes and institutions Americans hold dear. And what is America today if not an obsolete collection of slogans and euphemisms, pretense and nonsense? A parody of itself, a tabloid of epic proportions.Meticulously penned in the confines of the author’s dingy Shanghai apartment, DEFAULT is a bombastic tribute to the conclusion of the American Century. Amid falling plaster and leaking pipes, he resolved to bestow upon the world this gift, this offering, as gratitude for having survived the meat grinder for so many years. This is his evidence, Exhibit A, a testament to his time on this infernal planet. On behalf of a grateful nation.

451 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 4, 2014

Reviews

[F.E. Beyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tapped out in a mouldy Shanghai apartment, the paranoiac writing in DEFAULT makes me want to tell the author to lay off the weed. But no lazy pot smoker could write such energetic sentences. Impending doom hovers over Anjo Bordell, author and protagonist of this satirical novel. It’s a send-up of American military chauvinism, another valuable addition to the collection. Think Vonnegut, think Heller I guess. But then it’s also William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch without the drugs; the narrative lurches all over the shop. Bordell joins the marines and bounces from disaster to disaster before washing up in Shanghai with his guide Sam – a barman he met in L.A.’s Chinatown when out drinking with his marine buddies.

And what about us? We tell him our names. “Anjo?” Sam says, cocking his head. “Ah, like dead person with wings.” Dane spews Tsing Tao across the bar. He’s laughing, apologizing, wiping up his mess. “Your friend have some problem?” Sam says. “He’s culturally insensitive, that’s all.” “What meaning?” “Never mind.”

In China things don’t lighten up: landlords, police, and taxi drivers are all looking to take Anjo out. As a foreigner, he feels eyes on him. He can’t get a coffee without a punch up. I don’t know where in Shanghai Bordell was hanging out, but I did relate to his travails buying clothes in a crowded market and being sick in an apartment with busted heating. He's not writing a tourist brochure. I hate to call this post-modern – but you do wonder what the fuck is happening half the time. A muscular mash-up of marine speak and Chinglish, this is a work of near-genius – not for the whole package, but for the oddball conversations that keep coming.

“In a minute,” I said. “Your forearm—just brilliant. Some kind of electric chicken?” “My God, Americans. It’s a liver bird.” “A what?” “Liver, like diver.” “Ah,” I said. “Rhyming slang.” “Good grief. It’s the symbol of my city back in Australia. From the medieval times.” “Medieval Australia?” “Exactly,” he said, quite satisfied with himself. He finished his drink.

Will we get more from Anjo Bordell?

[Isham Cook · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unique autofiction that seemingly recounts the author's disastrous experience in the Marines (there is too much insider detail for it not to be authentic), after a snowballing series of scandals sparked by a fellow Marine's fatal accident Bordell (he uses his own name) was implicated in during seaborne training in stormy weather. Much of the narrative hangs on a dramatic thread as to whether our protagonist is given an honorable or dishonorable discharge—culminating in a frantic escape and run to LAX—and China, where the nonlinear novel opens, and Bordell's Chinese masseuse girlfriend has apparently been killed in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. It's all told with panache in a breathless, unstoppable, at once foul-mouthed and poetic stream-of-consciousness outpouring, with echoes of Kerouac:

"We serpentined north, a single segment of a giant, glowing tapeworm, winding its way into the belly of the aging whore—this seductive, mythological temptress, Los Angeles.... Impossible interchanges, a million brake lights. I felt I’d been injected into some infernal creation too big, too wicked and malignant for comprehension. I was a small-town antigen adrift inside an organic monstrosity whose immune response could be awakened by the slightest provocation. This was different from the animal eyes of Oceanside. That was local, confined. This was cosmic. A supernatural pressure cooker inching toward the red, where I was being compelled by a swirling phantom force to commit something diabolical."

Joycean puddles of outright confusion add to the mix as the dialogue lurches practically mid-sentence between Marine headquarters and Shanghai, and the reader is left wondering what the hell is going on. Well, it's what happens when an adrenaline-blitzed Marine crashes and burns in a place just as strange as Oceanside, CA—the still flamboyant China of the 2000s before She took over, the China of "two-wheeled phantoms—reapers!—zipping down crowded sidewalks, knocking pedestrians and briefcases and baozi back into the street to be mowed down by speeding black Audis. Out of the way! That noise—an ambulance? VIPs! Big bosses coming through!" Yet I wished more of the narrative had been set in China to give the novel clearer symmetry and flesh out the connections between the two simultaneous locales instead of leaving the reader floundering at times. A second reading will help, but even better would be a sequel.