NP but Ned Beauman ( and his novel Madness is Better than Defeat)

[Mark Kohut]

Ways it shows some Pynchon influence, perhaps, particularly to Gravity's
Rainbow, I suggest.

Lists, the compressed suggestive 'realism' of lists used to define at
length.

Sex scenes not of lovemaking or even lust-sharing but of psychologically
"sick" larger meanings, such as ye old Power-dominance.
A key rape scene alluded to more than once and late in the novel, because a
pregnancy happened, a verbal connection
to the 'word'..."The woman was of no consequence, like a speaker in
tongues, she was only a conduit for a word sent
down from above". .....Late in the novel sex is overtly talked of as power.

scenes broken by sprocket-like divisions (only they are like an designed
infinity sign enclosed in header-footer double lines.)

Quite hard to follow the jumping-around actions (in time as well as place)
without taking notes....(like the first time we---I--at least,  read GR).

An over the top hallucinogenic loss of consciousness and memory scene akin
to THAT scene in GR.

CIA, as mentioned, shadowy and unclear: making a movie, a popular culture
artifact of Hearts in Darkness deep in a jungle where
they encounter new gods.......and heart of darkness events, of course.

Flat (for comic and horror and symbolic effect) characters--yet multivalent
events.

Leibnitz as a quoted Meaning Giver by one; stuff {from Monadology) about
seeing the world, we humans, in a machine-like but
interior room-like way....Temple-like even?? I I might be being very stupid
here and missing the thrust of more quotes.

Conspiracy. spying. ....gods temple in the jungle, a kind of lost/hidden
world ala the same in TRP.

He has this word: treasoning.