One of the things we writers like to talk about are the so-called “rules of writing”, if such things even exist. Mostly, we come down on the side that there are no rules. But I don’t know that I’ve ever met a book quite as dedicated to rule-breaking as this one.

It’s not just the “usual” writing rules that get violated in Awful, Ohio. The basic rules of spelling and grammar come in for a sound thrashing as well. On the first page, the author uses “was” when it should be “were.”

And then there’s the matter of the words themselves. What are words, after all? Nothing but symbols, signifying sounds, that we, as a society, mutually agree to mean things. There’s nothing inherent in them that says the symbols composing the term “elephant” must correspond to the thing they describe. If language had evolved differently, “elephant” might have meant what we mean when we say “teacup” instead. It’s arbitrary. And yet, language works because speakers of a given language are trained to follow these conventions. Words are ultimately just agreements between writers and readers.

Except not in Awful, Ohio. Frequently, the author uses some word that just cannot mean what it is conventionally understood to mean in the context.

Not to say that there aren’t clues. For example, the word “ration”, which can be either a noun referring to some limited quantity of something distributed according to a schedule, or a verb meaning the act of distributing same, is here used to mean “rationality.” Clearly, the words have some etymological connection, but this is in no way a standard usage.

I’ve often criticized Lovecraft for his overuse of adjectives and repetitive, long sentences. But in HPL’s prose, the overused adjectives typically meant the thing they were generally understood to mean. Now imagine if they didn’t. Imagine if sometimes, in one of his fits of purple verbiage, the horror-master of Providence had just started throwing out malapropisms and you had to guess what he actually meant. That happens frequently here.

In short, the author has chosen to break the most basic rule in all of communication, the fundamental agreement as to what things mean. Clearly, he is far more committed to the idea of rule-breaking than even I am, and I think of myself as a real iconoclast.

That’s an introduction to the prose style. I say “introduction” because I suspect linguists could write whole papers, perhaps hold whole conferences, analyzing the writing in this novel. But we haven’t the time for that now, we have to get along to the plot, which is the story of a man named Troy Slushy. Troy has grown bored with his factory job in the town of Awful, and just wants to get away from it all and spend time with his wife, Lacy.

Troy’s plan for how to escape the tyranny of the industrial labor force is an unusual one: to destroy the sun. His reasoning is, since the sun wakes people up to go to work, eliminating it means they wouldn’t have to. This is of course the same sort of confused logic underlying cargo cults, but we can ignore that for now. Things are going to get much weirder before we are through.

While plotting to destroy the sun, Troy still has to go to clock in at his place of employment, Mad Ted’s Uckin Hot Auce factory. Now, you might say, shouldn’t that be “hot sauce”? Well, it might. Throughout the text, the product the factory makes is called “hot sauce.” But the factory name is always written without the “S”. Why is this? We don’t know.

The aforesaid “Mad Ted” is a dictatorial figure who oversees the workers on his hot sauce assembly line from a mirrored pod hanging over the factory floor. Mad Ted is reclusive and mysterious, and what little information is available about him comes from the dubious source of an investigative reporter named Wilsie McHickoryboob.

If you haven’t noticed yet, the names in this book are absolutely bonkers. Later on, we meet Doink McTriggers and Sammy Ammo. The latter was once a kindly transient named Samuel Amiable, but changed his name when he was transformed into a ruthless criminal.

I think you’re starting to get an idea of how insane this book is. But really, I’ve only scratched the surface of it. Our author sometimes gleefully ignores the rules of basic causality, which makes for a very unpredictable plot.

Now, here’s the part that may surprise you.

I really enjoyed this book. The way the story works out is quite funny, and in the end, surprisingly satisfying. One thing that doesn’t become clear until fairly late in the game is that the plot does have a certain logic to it; albeit a very strange logic.

I heard about this book from a friend who did not finish it. I read it and enjoyed it, so recommended it to another friend who likes wacky humor. He also did not finish it.

So, 66.67% of those polled couldn’t stand it. But that’s a small sample size. I’m sure if we cast a wider net, we could get those numbers up to more like 90%-95%, at least.

I’m under no illusions about this. Most people who attempt to read this are going to give up because it’s so bizarre in so many ways. The writing is truly hard to decipher in points. Sometimes a book is hard to read because the author uses too many large, obscure words. Sometimes a book is hard to read because of basic mistakes in grammar and spelling. It’s rare to find a book that is hard to read because of both. Usually sesquipedalian types have a good handle on the fundamentals.

But I could get past this. And the reason is simply that I respect a willingness to experiment and try different things. Anytime you do that, you’re risking disastrous, embarrassing failure. But you’ve got to do it if you want any hope of ever hitting it big. Everybody remembers the moon landing. Almost nobody remembers all the test rockets that blew up on the launchpad. But you can’t get the one without the other.

If you like extremely strange, wildly experimental fiction, and can look past a whole slew of typos, grammatical errors, and just flat-out incomprehensible things, Awful, Ohio is a surprisingly fun story.