On Ryan Boudinot

In this review, we will consider the new novel by Ryan Boudinot as though it were a German chocolate cake. We have arrived at this approach after having rejected an earlier one, in which Blueprints of the Afterlife was interpreted as an allegory for the author’s time working at the Microsoft corporation. Unfortunately, the author never worked for the Microsoft corporation.

Like German chocolate cake, Boudinot’s novel—his third work after the extremely promising collection of stories The Littlest Hitler and the novel Misconception—has a diverse and rich family of ingredients. We might speak of certain literary components, such as the work of Kurt Vonnegut, the work of Richard Brautigan, the work of Tom Robbins, and/or the work of Haruki Murakami; these might stand for a square of German sweet chocolate, two and a half cups of cake flour, etc. Or, while on the subject of ingredients, we might refer to the author’s coming of age in the Pacific Northwest (one-half teaspoon shortening) or his facility with all things cinematic (buttermilk).

Each of these ingredients could be held responsible for the speculative-fiction preoccupations of Blueprints of the Afterlife, which include time travel, a replica of Manhattan under construction in Puget Sound, and a dishwasher who suffers from fugue states (a.k.a. ennui, an actual diagnosable malady in the novel’s alternative future). The story takes place during a historical epoch known as the Age of Fucked Up Shit. Beat the flour mixture alternately with the buttermilk.

A mere description of ingredients, however, fails to take into account the transformative process of reading Blueprints of the Afterlife, whose howls of dissatisfaction with what American culture is (for such is almost all speculative fiction) are kaleidoscopic, provocative, in-your-face, restless, sad. Boudinot’s earlier work, which was often very funny and which often featured an admirable sympathy for the gentler human emotions, does not prepare us for the savagery and darkness of the satire here, nor does it prepare us for the great sorrow that lies behind it. The transformative aspect of the reading experience, in which you are challenged to rise to the occasion—in a good way—is like unto the way that vigorous beating is required for the sheer magnificence of German chocolate cake.

Here’s a passage about a sentient glacier:

Several theories emerged to explain the origin...