Bad Monkeys
Bad Monkeys is Matt Ruff's fourth novel and was published in Germany in 2007. It was translated by Giovanni and Ditte Bandini . The corresponding audio book was published in February 2008 .
action
Homeless and drug addict Jane Charlotte is in the mental health department of a Las Vegas correctional facility. She is charged with the murder of a social worker of which she was a client.
The discussions with the doctor treating her, Dr. Vale form the framework of the novel until the end. Between these conversations, the doctor researches Jane's statements. He confronts the delusions of Jane , who suffers from severe personality disorders, with reality.
In her life story, Jane tells that her single mother forced her to take care of her hated little brother. For years she tortured him with the suggestion that she would hand him over to the man "who would catch the children for the gypsies".
When her carelessness really causes her brother to be killed by a serial killer, she is rejected by her mother. A police officer drives her to see relatives with whom the 14-year-old is spending her youth.
Jane accuses the caretaker of her school of being a wanted serial killer, but cannot prove what she said. She tells Dr. Vale that the caretaker then tried to kill her, but she managed to shoot him with a futuristic weapon that she received from a mysterious organization that also warned her. This organization combats evil under the motto “omnes mundum facimus” - “we all make the world”.
Although she cannot understand the meaning of these words, she waits the rest of her life for this organization to make contact with her again.
Jane had already smoked marijuana as an adolescent. During her studies, which she later dropped out, she used hallucinogenic drugs , later, when she kept her head above water with jobs, her drug abuse was multitoxic .
The organization didn't really get in touch with her until she was 38. This is equipped with super weapons and has set up an almost complete surveillance system for the whole of the USA.
She does her first job by killing a mass murderer who has not yet been discovered by the public. On this occasion she also reports that she shot Julius Deeds, who had been accused of manslaughter and who had previously brutally beaten her college friend Ganesh and her.
Dr. Vale confirms in the next session that knowing some details about Julius Deeds' murder suggests that she must at least have known someone who was present at the murder. He does not respond to her statements about the contract killing of the mass murderer. The doctor confronts her with the fact that the murdered person is by no means the felon she describes, but that the murdered person is most likely her college friend Ganesh. She explains the contradiction by saying that her organization manipulated the police files.
In the following, Jane reports on the complex structures of her organization, a friendly community whose members disguise themselves as clowns and engage in the joint fight against the secret organization of the Bad Monkeys, which promote evil. These arguments take on the character of a fantastic action film , in which, among other things, so-called X-drugs play a role, which not only influence perception but also reality.
In the closing scenes she tries to free her brother, who in her mind was not killed. Rather, he was kidnapped by the hostile organization as a child and turned to evil through brainwashing . Now he is one of the leaders of the Bad Monkeys.
When the doctor is called by his beeper and wants to leave, Jane transforms himself into her brother in Jane's perception. In her world of almighty organizations she will be executed by him.
Motifs
Jane's delusions
Jane never doubts the reality of her delusions, even if they contradict one another or are completely unrealistic. By skillfully switching between different narrative perspectives, Matt Ruff draws the reader into Jane's fantastic world and leaves some readers doubting the stringent structure of the novel.
abuse
Matt Ruff treats abuse in its various facets.
The fact that the secret organizations Jane believes in see the evil in the world primarily in sexual abuse may be due to Jane's feelings of guilt over her brother's death. According to her statement, as an adult she had sexual contacts with over two hundred adolescents . She only gives up such relationships when one of her victims attempts suicide.
The novel also describes the hell her little brother Phil lives in because he suffers from his sister's abuse of power .
In the person of the caretaker, Ruff describes the consequences of an unjustified allegation of sexual abuse. The caretaker has to change jobs.
A differentiated approach to perpetrators is reflected in the description of a doctor who collects images of young boys for obvious sexual reasons, but who excludes any implementation of his sexual fantasies.
reception
Peter Körte criticizes the change of narrative perspective - the book is “a disguised first-person story with a very unreliable and anything but sympathetic first-person narrator who has reason to manipulate her murderous confessions a little. But then you've read that better, for example in Stewart O'Nan's "Speed Queen" (1998), where media hype and the madness of a serial killer intertwine in a far more sinister way. With Matt Ruff the specific case disappeared because of all the ideas. "
According to Meike Fessman, the book is “Literature by inventors for inventors. She lives off the reader being deceived but not lied to. ” In her opinion, “ [Matt Ruff] is playing a clever game with the idea of good and bad, with the role of conscience and the question of personal guilt .... Janes Joke and rugged charm, their fighting spirit and their snobbery, but also the sociologically precise details from everyday American life, in the end, leave a stronger impression than the whole sci-fi tinkering. "
Brigitte Helbling warns the reader about the plot of the storyteller Matt Ruff: “Readers should be warned. Brother Philip is haunted wherever Jane Charlotte is. So you can safely count on the fact that - with a bang! As if a spaceship had just landed from Valis - the ground will be pulled from under your feet. "
Trivia
Ruff calls Bad Monkeys his " Philip K. Dick novel" . Because of this, he named the protagonist Jane Charlotte after Dick's twin sister who died in her childhood. Her brother is appropriately named "Phil".
Web links
- Bad Monkeys in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Bad Monkeys (2007); (German by Giovanni and Ditte Bandini: Carl Hanser Verlag February 2008 ISBN 978-3-446-23002-6 ), ISBN 978-0-7475-9171-9
- ↑ Frankfurter Allgemeine, March 15, 2008 One makes short work of angry apes
- ^ Süddeutsche Zeitung, June 5, 2008, From tinkerers for tinkerers
- ^ Welt online, March 9, 2008, Paranoid and talkative
- ^ Bad Monkeys - the origins of the story. Retrieved March 1, 2017 (American English).