Wow...let me try to collect my thoughts. I was quite close to giving this 4 stars, or 2. This is a biography of a fictional writer. One of those fringe experimental types.
Take every parody you've ever seen of the kind of people who make one man shows, or do performance art. Mix in William S. Burroughs using his cut-up technique, a dash of Lovecraft, add a sprinkling of Andy Kaufman, maybe a touch of Alan Moore, Hunter S. Thompson or Michael Moorcock during his Jerry Cornelius writings. Oh and pour in some of Frank from the film 'Frank'.

So to try to find the point i lost somewhere above. This is a biography about a guy that writes complete bollocks. I mean it is the worst kind of 60's experimental garbage. Its a very well told bio, and is best when it interweaves with the real world.

The problem is that all the quotes from Lint are such nonsense, somehow even the fact that this is a satire doesn't lessen their annoyance... and yet and yet. After about a third of the way through i actually found some of the nonsense making sense. I can't tell whether the author was getting less obtuse or the text actually rewired my brain.

It helps that tv and film are mixed in, did you know Lint wrote an used script for the Star-Trek animated show? He didn't because he's fictional but still .

By the end i think i'm adding this to my reread list if only to see if the first third is still as annoying. If you've ever read any surreal or really artistic or experimental fiction, or experienced that kind of stuff in film, music or theatre then you might get a kick out this.
Or you might want to hunt down the author and club them to death with an imaginary wedge, or maybe both .

I think this might be the least insightful review i've ever written :lol. ( )

what. the. fuck.

I have no idea what to think of this book. in part it was the funniest thing I've ever read, at other points it was completely baffling bollocks.

confusing, hilarious and incomprehensible. ( )

Absurdist fictional biography of an Asimovian Pulp writer without the talent.

The surrealist and intentionally underground tone of the book reminds me of Derek and Clive. And the 10th chapter *Catty and the Major* features a horrifying children's cartoon shared on recycled VHS by aficionados as with D&C.

Lint's fractured book synopses read like Aylett's real-life bedside table fragments. Half formed ideas for implausible and impossible stories. Summaries that work as trailers, but not features (a hotel with each floor is located in a different year). Lines too good to leave in a notebook and needing a form to be released.

Bonkers. Stark raving bonkers. But also brilliant. From its opening epigraph to its closing acknowledgements, this fictional biography of science fiction “legend” Jeff Lint is a breathtaking tour-de-force. It traces Lint’s life from his birth in 1928 to his death in 1994. Typically, Lint’s death was immediately preceded by a near-death experience. He was that kind of guy.

Lint’s life, such as it was, really began when he sought to publish his first stories during the hey-day of pulp science fiction. Lint’s stories were beyond the edge of sensible. So much so that quoting from any of them would render this account senseless. And his periodic forays into other media — comics, film, even pop music — were equally bizarre and disastrous. It’s the kind of life you won’t struggle to remember.

Aylett’s attention to detail is astounding. There is a bibliography at the end that stretches to a hundred blissfully imagined publications. He provides pages of “Lint Quotations” with such memorable lines as, “When the abyss gazes into you, bill it.” And there is a comprehensive 11 page index. Did I mention it was bonkers?

The downside of all this inventiveness is that reading the book is exhausting. Even a few pages at a time. I kept wondering how exhausting it must have been for Steve Aylett to write. And why. Certainly he has created something utterly unique. We can only hope it remains that way.

Cautiously recommended to those who either already are bonkers, or are hoping to go there. ( )

Mildly amusing but goes on too long in the same vein. Might have been better as a short. ( )