Review of The Alianthrope (Paperback)

Mr. Gangelhoff's magnum opus has caused a stirring success and with good reason. The Odyssean style narrative is in perpetual motion, engaging the reader at every turn to revel in the quirky, kinetic dance which is The Alianthrope. I liken the reading experience of The Alianthrope to the epic speediness of Philip K. Dick because, as with any of Dick's work, the visual construction of the words on the page encourage oculomotor coordinations to go into overdrive. I believe the locomotion of The Alianthrope and the reader's exercisedelineated above primarily motivate saccadic people, which is to say those who can effectively & with precision, give meaning to that strange French word, SACCADE, which describes the most elementary faculty that goes into reading. So when Mr. Gangelhoff says something in his own review of the book to the effect of, 'if you want to graduate from the ninth grade it may be a book worth looking into', he has a point, although one hopes the freshman has encountered things of this nature previously, as in perhaps the fourth or fifth grade.

In The Alianthrope we find characters cloaked in exquisite humor and mercurial impulses; everything is in a protean spin. Amongst a whirling salmagundi of humorous action and arcane references, we find that what at first appeared formidable and discouraging, in terms of language, has become fun and rather lighthearted. Mr. Gangelhoff is clearly not afraid to experiment with syntactical arrangements. Thus, for example, on page 299 Mr. Gangelhoff playfully employs a structurally unorthodox dialogue which bandies a mocking allusion to "postmodern verse" and carries with it a sense Derridian obloquy. Or perhaps obscenity.

Mr. Gangelhoff flips neologisms like a cook making a breakfast of champions might flip flapjacks. The reader is taken logo-dancing through the kitchens of Mr. Gangelhoff's new lexicon, a language spoken by a true logophile. In the book we find words like 'vaped'. We find examples everywhere of the author bending the parameters of the English language. On page 442 we can see such experimentation: "Yes, I've become the compleat anglophile," said Fandango. "A peon of Albion, I paean the pennons of Arthur! " Here the author is having homophonic fun with the language. The book is filled throughout with such linguistic fun. I intend to resume this review anon, and hope that it can be read as a benefit to those who have not yet had the ecstatic experience of The Alianthrope, but more importantly, that it be read by those who have and who know whereof I speak. This review is as yet in unfinished form.







Product Description
ALIENS INVADE EARTH AND STEAL ITS SCIENCE FICTION!


Aliens steal Earth's science fiction and disseminate it across the Universe.Coveted everywhere by all peoples, its possession causes a Universal War of Science Fiction.Only the sci fi fan extraordinaire, Sargon, abducted from Earth and prophesied to rule the Universe, can make the Universe safe for science fiction and return Earth to its rightful throne as the only legitimate birthplace of science fiction. Or can he?

About the Author
Rich Gangelhoff was born in 1957into a middle-class American family.He lived in England until his parents' death in a jet airplane struck by a stray missile, brought himin 1968 to Minnesota.Enraged by his bourgeois environment there,he fled the state in 1975.Dropped out of three universities by 1978, living off his inheritance, he insinuated himself into various libraries across the U.S.A.He then studied dishwashing for three years, after which Target, Inc. imprisoned him for another fourteen.He fled work one day in 1998 to focus on his magnum opus, The Alianthrope.He currently works in a used bookstore, in a self-imposed exile from nowhere.

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