Book Review: "Cryptofauna" by Patrick Canning (2019)
I’m glad that I often found myself with a glass of decent Scotch or, at the very least, a Jack and Coke handy for a good portion of the time I was reading Cryptofauna by Patrick Canning. If I still did acid and magic mushrooms, I’d have eaten the fuck out of them for this experience. It’s the kind of thing that the stoic and anchored mind will not be able to properly absorb. Fortunately, the stoic and anchored mind generally doesn’t spend much time reading fantastically weird fiction anyways, so it all works out.
The definition at the beginning of the book defines cryptofauna as “rarely seen animals or persons of great influence or effect, that may be extinct or entirely mythological”. It’s a succinct way of wrapping up a concept with near limitless potential for future stories in a bizarro universe.
Jim is your protagonist, a janitor at St. Militrude’s Home for the Insane and Elderly. He’s preparing to commit suicide by downing a fatal dose of dikatharide olanzapine with a can of root beer. He just doesn’t see much reason to continue living, the classic existential crisis. Before he can perform the act, however, one of the home’s more colorful residents, a giant of a man named Oz, bursts into his room and coaxes him into becoming an Operator in a cosmic game called “Cryptofauna” that pits him against a preordained opposite seeking to kill him while causing all sorts of chaos big and small. Jim is just curious enough to hear the insanity out, but it isn’t long before he’s sucked into a world of shape-changing Jinns, crazy painters, psychically-linked dogs, painters afraid of the color blue, ancient demons, and maybe even an apocalypse. Along the way he’ll learn the secrets of near-immortality in an underground French monastery and assemble a family of odd friends (called a Combination) to assist him in his battle against the sinister Boyd and his Mentor, Nero. He might even fall helplessly in love.
Believe me when I tell you that the bare description you’ve just read doesn’t scratch the surface of the wonderfully fucked up world in these pages. At first, I was overwhelmed with the pace and variety of oddity that came hurtling at me, but luckily Patrick Canning is a writer with the gift of gab who also understands the structure of the craft that simply must exist to tell a story that makes you invest that piece of your heart that a good story inevitably does. It takes a bit of time for the framework to become evident, but once it does you stop what you’re doing and just keep reading.
There were a ton of great lines that I wrote down in my notes while thinking, “Shit! I wish I’d written that!” Such witticisms include:
“He was thick- not fat, but thick- like a generous slab of lean beef.”
“Humor was a cow on the railroad tracks or a catheter tube two sizes too big: trying to force it didn’t do any favors.”
“So Jim became cranky. A snapping turtle on her period that just quit smoking would have told him to dial it back a bit.”
“Nero had painted a smile on the devil and got him to say please and thank you.”
You get what I’m driving at, I’m sure. That turn of phrase is the smack in the veins of the book nerd. It just brings a smile to your face that’s 100% natural and unforced. I laughed out loud so many times reading Cryptofauna that I probably looked a bit loony myself, and I’m okay with that. There was one line that beautifully summarizes the delicate balance of insanity and heart that runs the story:
“Crytofauna’s like most any game, it rewards playing from the mind, heart, and gut. You gotta choose which to use when.” (Whip the Jinn speaking to Jim)
That phrase is absolute perfection. Behind all of the craziness there’s an honest-to-God moral to the story. The point of the whole affair (aside from the importance of friendship, education, and universal balance) is that there’s nobility in living. Floccinaucinihilipilification is a real world (LOOK IT UP), and in Cryptofauna it means that death is worthless. You’ve got to dig a bit to get it, but it’s utterly sublime when you do. There’s an attention to detail for the sheer minutiae of weirdness that is staggering; the rapid-fire wittiness is connected by sheer heart and packed with lethal doses of intellect that’ll have you Googling shit while you’re reading. Cryptofauna is as uniquely and strangely human a book as I’ve ever read. It’s not “700 monkey with 700 typewriters for 700 years”…it’s the one criminally insane monkey that observed them the whole time and then started writing!
Jim is a fantastic everyman protagonist who’s surrounded by a diverse cast of allies. Boyd, the evil antagonist, is the embodiment of the old expression about the banality of evil. He’s the literal “there is no reason” Bond villain. It’s a classic story injected into a metaphorical hot dog-filled Twinkie with what the fuck filling. The introduction of the character of Buck and her time at Asphyxia House begs for a companion short story. The Machine Tumor is pure nightmare fuel worthy of any straight horror story, and Bo Peep is just fucking wrong on every level. For Christ’s sake, there’s a group of leather-clad gay bikers with a fetish for rawhide called The Pink Panthers! If that doesn’t sell you, then you’re a little dead inside (or extremely homophobic). Also, I have a strange urge to get lit on Marshmallow Bears.
The closest comparison that I can come up with for the joy of discovering Patrick Canning via Cryptofauna is when I first read Gil’s All-Fright Diner by A. Lee Martinez. If you’ve read Martinez, then you know what high praise that is. I feel like the two stories exist in the same universe. It’s the kind of book that wouldn’t have been able to see the light of day in the ‘70s or ‘80s, but in the Twilight Zone we live in now it’s legitimately harmonious.
So, yeah- I really liked it. I’m kind of hoping to be chosen as an Operator now.
Amazon Link:
Patrick Canning website:
