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he most unsettling thing about David Ohle’s books isn’t that they describe a world that sounds like hell. It’s that they describe a world that sounds like ours — AND hell — at the same time. You find yourself recoiling from the chaos and disease that surround his characters, until you realize how familiar it appears. A disembodied government makes nonsensical decisions that disrupt its citizens’ lives. Parasites proliferate. Feces dot the streets and people gingerly step over and ignore them. Food is bloated with chemicals, water is sewerage, and a sedative called willywack keeps everyone relaxed. The detached citizenry discusses such horrors with a mix of mild interest and boredom.
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Ohle’s first book, Motorman, was released in 1972 to underground acclaim. But the fan base it earned him had to wait another thirty-two years for his next effort, The Age of Sinatra, a dystopian story of the world after an event of mass amnesia known as the Forgetting. With his third novel, The Pisstown Chaos, Ohle elaborates on this world, making it even more repugnant. The populace is divided into two segments: the stinkers, who suffer from a grotesque parasitical infection, and the rest of the public, who are routinely ordered by the government to mate with the stinkers. An aloof presidential figure named Reverend Hooker claims these mating orders will help spread the parasite thin. Meanwhile, "the Chaos," an event widely discussed but little understood, is said to be spreading.
Ohle has a knack for generating suspense by not revealing the details you most want to know: at no point in the book is there an explicit description of the Chaos, the parasite, the city’s layout or the Reverend Hooker. It’s just frustrating enough to keep you reading long after his gore has given you a stomachache. Ohle spoke to Hooksexup about the parallels between his books and real life, his love for disease, and why his stinkers aren’t zombies — a genre character for which he harbors an intense distaste. — Will Doig
I get the impression you were the kid who dissected insects in his bedroom while everyone else was playing duck-duck-goose.
To some degree. I took a lot of biology courses, entomology and ornithology, things like that. And I grew up in New Orleans. There are lots of frogs and lizards and things around there.
Do you think that swampy environment influenced your writing?
It probably did. I also grew up between a racetrack and a cemetery. I spent a lot of time playing in that cemetery. And there’s the great mystical voodoo tradition down there. Also, growing up Catholic, I was instilled with those rituals and traditions.
And Catholicism can be pretty dark.
Definitely. I don’t think I’m a dark individual, however.
Well, your books are disturbing, but they’re also pretty funny.
That’s pretty much it. I find humor in the ugliest places.
They also don’t feel like they’re set in some far-off dystopian future — they somehow feel right around the corner. Do you foresee the world soon resembling the world in your books?
In some ways, it already does. When I wrote Motorman back in the early ’70s, heart transplants were a thing of the future, and my character has already had one. So I do sense some trends that will lead — maybe not to exactly what’s going on in these books, but something similar. Obviously, [in The Pisstown Chaos] people are going around in pedal cars, and it’s pretty obvious to everyone that eventually there will be no more oil.
It’s impossible to read the book without constantly thinking, what are each of these things supposed to represent? Are the stinkers illegal immigrants? Is the parasite AIDS? Is Reverend Hooker supposed to be George Bush? Do you think about these sorts of parallels while you’re writing?
Sometimes I discover that after I’ve written, I’m thinking, Oh, that looks a lot like George Bush. But I think that comes from impulses I’m carrying around that I’m not consciously aware of. And I do look at things that are out there, like Herman Hooker — he’s not made up. He was an old preacher back in the early 1800s. So I wouldn’t say George Bush is exactly that character, but the whole idea of religious political power is exemplified in Herman Hooker, yes.
Do you think Americans fear chaos more than most cultures?
I do. In The Age of Sinatra, someone says in passing, "The Pisstown Chaos is spreading through the countryside." And I thought, in the next novel I’ll explore this chaos thing. But even I don’t know what the chaos is exactly. I just know people are afraid of it and it’s happening. It’s just sort of a general idea that chaos will break out somewhere, at some time.
The details of these things are often vague in your books. People keep asking me what your books are about, and I don’t know what to tell them. All I can think to say is, "They’re about zombies." Even though the stinkers aren’t really zombies.
It’s funny, I teach a course in speedwriting at the University of Kansas, and they always ask me in the first class, "Is there anything we should not write about?" And I always say, "Yes. Zombies." For some reason, I can’t stand it when they start writing these little screenplays about zombies. I mean, the issue is resolved. There is no more of interest in zombies.
I guess zombies are pretty one-dimensional.
I was just watching something on TV the other day, Night of the Living Dead or something like that, and I just — I don’t know. It’s been done. So my stinkers aren’t zombies. They’re just sick people.
Yeah, they sort of get along with the non-stinkers pretty well. They even have sex with them.
Yes, in The Age of Sinatra , there’s a sex scene in there between a settler woman and an alien. In fact, I did a reading of it in New York. It’s on YouTube. On the other hand, this particular parasite [in The Pisstown Chaos] is passed along by kissing, not by sex.
Readers might assume you’re a hypochondriac, because of all the disease in your books.
A hypochondriac? Me? No. I avoid doctors as much as possible. That’s just part of my biology. I read lots about parasites. Most of my reading is nonfiction; I hardly ever read fiction anymore.
Do you think our society is too obsessed with cleanliness and disinfection?
Yeah, I think so. Kids that grow up on farms have fewer allergies, I think, because they’re always around bacteria and dirt. You stay a bit healthier if you play around in the mud sometimes.
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