Noir Neurosis

NATHAN LARSON, RENOWNED film composer and guitarist in bands Shudder to Think, Hot One and A Camp, has written a novel. Of course, successful artists from other mediums entering the world of literature predominantly evoke negative responses ranging from cool disregard to firebreathing disdain, so let us then dispense with the immediate, inescapable and, some would argue, damning facts. Larson’s debut novel is titled The Dewey Decimal System and its protagonist is a character named Dewey Decimal who has an obsessive-compulsive system that dictates his habits and behavior. He lives in the public library in a near-future dystopian New York. He has a mysterious military past and amnesia. He wears a porkpie hat and pinstriped suits and humorously fusses over their mussing in gunfights and car chases. These are tropes, as binding a set of artistic physics as exists, which power the world of any genre fiction, be it hardboiled noir or young adult vampire novels. That Larson, an artist still most associated with the idiom-splaying Shudder to Think, would engage in such well-paved paths in his first published work could be construed as a surprise and/ or disappointment by some, but Larson finds it decidedly otherwise.

"I’m a big fan of classic noir," says Larson, "but I don’t know if I would have set out to write a ‘genre’ book, had my wise editor not pointed me down that road. I have a tendency towards tangents and long digressions, and that might have gotten the better of me, especially in a debut novel, had not the parameters of the genre been there to keep me in check and on track. Really, it was a blessing."

Indeed, The Dewey Decimal System is a winningly tight, concise and high-impact book, a violent, exhilarating odyssey that pitches its protagonist through a gratuitously detailed future New York. While the more thoughtful parallels between the mercenary and, at times, murderous life of Dewey Decimal and that of a United States that would incite the sort of widespread terrorist attacks the book imagines as pretext are clear and present, Larson extols a cheerful modesty about the book’s thematic gravitas.

In speaking about the high/low art dichotomies of both the novel and his work in bands, he states, "I would have to say that by nature, rock music and the noir ‘detective’ novel would have to qualify as low art, if only in the sense that they are designed to be consumed by large numbers of people across the spectrum of interests and backgrounds. This book is certainly intended to be a quick and enjoyable read, something you could kill off in a day. On the other hand, of course, I hope there are more profound aspects to it, but they’re secondary."

Removed from the pretense of high literature, the novel proves an almost joyful retreat from the avant-garde into sheer blissed-out genre fiction, an exercise in acerbic contemplation and spy-movie set pieces.

Already deep into a second novel featuring the character of Decimal and projecting a third, Larson seems a man gleefully possessed. "This Dewey character has moved into my skull and is not easily evicted. He’s a survivor and will not go down quietly. In a sense I feel bad for the guy, because as much as he wants to duck his past, it will catch up with him in the fullness of time."

The book’s end finds Dewey essentially severing all opportunities to learn more of the buried secrets of his forgotten and potentially less monstrous past, choosing the life of a ribald sociopath but still motored forward by occasional acts of kindness and humanity. This puts him at a rather strong clean slate for continued noir adventures and Larson proves that, like the masters past that he cites as inspiration—Jim Thompson, Charlie Houston—he is apt at this kind of resetting in the closing act to clear the path to our man’s next installment. At 40, Larson seems exquisitely happy to be entering another art medium full-bore. " I am actively working at becoming a writer—learning, trial and error—but I’m not there yet, which is kind of a nice place to be, because I can continue to just enjoy being a fan and a reader without any of the attendant feelings of unworthiness.

"[It's] not exactly so with music," he says, "but I feel like everybody has got their strengths and weaknesses, and rarely am filled with a sense that I can do that better. I don’t understand that kind of negative energy. There’s room for all of us." 

>>NATHAN LARSON May 19, Word Bookstore, 

126 Franklin St. (at Milton St.), Brooklyn, 

718-383- 0096; 7:30, Free.