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The Last Projector
In this hysterical fever dream of a novel, meet an unhinged paramedic turned porn director uprooted from an ever-shifting '80s fantasy. Discover a crime that circles back through time to a far-reaching cover-up in the back of an ambulance. Reveal a manic tattoo obsession and how it conspires to ruin the integrity of a film and corrupt identity itself. Unravel the mystery surrounding three generations of women and the one secret they share. And follow two amateur terrorists, whose unlikely love story rushes headlong toward a drive-in apocalypse.
530 pages, Hardcover
First published September 9, 2014
8 people are currently reading
646 people want to read
About the author
David James Keaton
54 books182 followersDavid James Keaton received his MFA from the University of Pittsburgh and was the co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Flywheel Magazine. His first collection of fiction, FISH BITES COP! Stories To Bash Authorities, was named the 2014 Short Story Collection of the Year by This Is Horror. Kirkus spotlighted his debut novel, THE LAST PROJECTOR, calling it "rapidly paced and loaded with humor... a loopy, appealing mix of popular culture and thoroughly crazy people." His second collection of fiction, STEALING PROPELLER HATS FROM THE DEAD, received a Starred Review from Publishers Weekly, who said, "The author's joy in his subject matter is obvious, often expressed with a sly wink and a wicked smile. Decay, both existential and physical, has never looked so good.” His last novel, HEAD CLEANER, was recommended by Booklist and Library Journal, who called it "light and breezy with dark undercurrents that keep the reader off-kilter" as well as "great fun." He also teaches composition and creative writing at Santa Clara University in California.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
June 2, 2015
An absolutely insane novel, made up of three (elaborately) nested narratives: a porn director gradually going insane because of his odd hatred of tattoos; a young-ish couple (I was never able to figure out how old they were, actually, but that's definitely a pattern with a lot of this book) who really hate police officers, and make a plan to blow one's head off with a bomb; and a much stranger, third narrative about a paramedic and a woman who nearly died while having sex in a car, which starts off in the background but takes over the book in the most elaborate, fascinating way. This book is all voice and dialogue--there's very little exposition, in the traditional sense, but this kind of propulsive, elaborate digression, mostly focused around pulpy 70s and 80s film. The nested narratives remind me of David Lynch in a very specific sense (it bothers me to say that since everything gets compared to Lynch, but seriously): they sit together, inside and around each other so strangely, and with a such peculiar, asymmetric logic. Time and scene don't behave the way they should, and the narrative eventually seems both elaborately constructed and shapeless; sometimes the book gives us keys to itself, but eventually we realize we have a ring full of keys but we don't know where the door is. There are things about this book that will bother a lot of readers (in particular, I missed most of the movie references, and I could have gone without about 100 pages of the conversations between Billy and Bully), but I think Keaton realizes the last thing the world needs is another difficult novel, so along the way it never forgets to be a lot of fun. It's genuinely one of the funniest books I've ever read, and though already long patches of the novel are missing in my head, the standout scenes are incredible: Joe Fuck and his broken penis; an argument on the realest fake road in any amusement park ever; a man with an eviscerated penis getting his eyes gouged out on the beach. And all kind of random things about dogs. It's rare to see a book this long from a small press, but I think this one was definitely worth taking a chance on.
November 21, 2014
This is going to be a polarizing novel. Some people will call it genius, others will burn crosses in front of David James Keaton's house (and I could see multiple reasons why they would do so). Point is, it'll be impossible for you to have weak feelings about THE LAST PROJECTOR.
The best way I can describe it is that it's a schizophrenic mystery. In a typical mystery, you're supposed to gather clues from the intrigue, but since David James Keaton is a mean bastard, he buried them within the very fabric of reality, and before you know it, you'll be doubting every line you read, going insane and smear the walls with your own poo.
Still, Keaton keeps it fun and goofy and it helps as much as it is a distraction from the quest that is this novel. David James Keaton is like that strange cousin who keeps you awake for 48h straight, buzzing with energy. You love him, but you'd want him to go to bed sometimes. I grudgingly loved THE LAST PROJECTOR, but it's NOT for everybody. Only the strong will survive it.
The best way I can describe it is that it's a schizophrenic mystery. In a typical mystery, you're supposed to gather clues from the intrigue, but since David James Keaton is a mean bastard, he buried them within the very fabric of reality, and before you know it, you'll be doubting every line you read, going insane and smear the walls with your own poo.
Still, Keaton keeps it fun and goofy and it helps as much as it is a distraction from the quest that is this novel. David James Keaton is like that strange cousin who keeps you awake for 48h straight, buzzing with energy. You love him, but you'd want him to go to bed sometimes. I grudgingly loved THE LAST PROJECTOR, but it's NOT for everybody. Only the strong will survive it.
March 29, 2015
"You’ll either love it or hate it. Although, in my experience, if something is ever described as 'love it or hate it,' it is, without fail, fucking terrible. I've studied this phrase for a decade, and so far there have been no exceptions." -The Last Projector, page 61
January 3, 2015
Let me sum this book up in six words: even the epilogues contain car crashes. David James Keaton's The Last Projector contains a villain who ejaculates into flytraps, a legion of doppelgangers making the world's worst art film, a rap song based on The Thing, and about a dozen fictional cars that I'd guess have their origins in the Grand Theft Auto series--a repeated reference within the novel. The Last Projector isn't really a traditional novel though. Like Dave Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, it's more of a virtual reality simulation of what it's like to be David James Keaton or, at the very least, what it's like to be sucked into a conversation with David James Keaton. The book is a terribly offensive romp that tangles as it untangles its violent mysteries, but the plot is really a springboard for Keaton to launch into one conversational riff after another. His characters are obsessed with '80s films, Evel Knievel, thumb-wrestling, a Model T theme park ride, and songs about dogs--although there surprisingly isn't a DMX reference until nearly the book's end--and you find yourself unnerved when they become your obsessions too. Let me finish by reviewing the book on its own terms--movie references. David James Keaton's The Last Projector is the literary equivalent of the climax to Tin Cup.
January 16, 2015
A TOP SHELF review, originally published in the January 16, 2015 edition of The Monitor
The Last Projector (Broken River Books)is the first novel by David James Keaton, a prolific writer of short stories. The sprawling yet ever-twisting plot follows three basic narrative threads: Billy and Bully are a young Bonnie and Clyde sort of couple with a bizarre plan to strap a bomb to a police officer in order to free his K9 partner; Larry is an aging and tattoo-obsessed director of pornography who in his free time is making a real film about an incident from his past using actors from his adult movies; Jack is an EMT obsessed with the welfare of Jacki, who survived a car accident six years ago only to become the victim of a serial rapist with an insane multi-generational breeding plan.
The tricky thing is that these rambling, dialogue-heavy stories intersect in ways that are on the surface impossible, violating not only storytelling mechanics but time itself. Jack’s story, for example, is being filmed by Larry (as far as the many pop culture references indicate) before it ever happened, and the revelation of the identity of Bully similarly defies logic. Every time you think you can tell how the story is going to gel together and conclude, it shatters and reforms itself like some ever-evolving virus.
Keaton resists any traditional relationship between author and reader, deliberately unmooring the text from the hoary tools we use to extract meaning from a text. The result is akin to Samuel Beckett on meth: a nervous, chatty absurd that forces us to confront a novel whose author is as unreliable or absent as God in an agnostic or atheistic universe.
“Well, that’s proof that you’re just like that Bugs Bunny cartoon with that giant pencil just drawing shit around you as it goes, making it up on the spot.”
“Huh?”
“When you hear a deep cut that would never be on the radio, that’s the writer up there, in the zone, cranking music in the background.”
The Last Projector (Broken River Books)is the first novel by David James Keaton, a prolific writer of short stories. The sprawling yet ever-twisting plot follows three basic narrative threads: Billy and Bully are a young Bonnie and Clyde sort of couple with a bizarre plan to strap a bomb to a police officer in order to free his K9 partner; Larry is an aging and tattoo-obsessed director of pornography who in his free time is making a real film about an incident from his past using actors from his adult movies; Jack is an EMT obsessed with the welfare of Jacki, who survived a car accident six years ago only to become the victim of a serial rapist with an insane multi-generational breeding plan.
The tricky thing is that these rambling, dialogue-heavy stories intersect in ways that are on the surface impossible, violating not only storytelling mechanics but time itself. Jack’s story, for example, is being filmed by Larry (as far as the many pop culture references indicate) before it ever happened, and the revelation of the identity of Bully similarly defies logic. Every time you think you can tell how the story is going to gel together and conclude, it shatters and reforms itself like some ever-evolving virus.
Keaton resists any traditional relationship between author and reader, deliberately unmooring the text from the hoary tools we use to extract meaning from a text. The result is akin to Samuel Beckett on meth: a nervous, chatty absurd that forces us to confront a novel whose author is as unreliable or absent as God in an agnostic or atheistic universe.
June 5, 2015
This is maybe the wildest novel I've ever read. It's actually kind of difficult to talk about or review in any meaningful way, but I also think it's the best book to come out of indie lit maybe ever.
It's hilarious and difficult and endlessly enjoyable and readable, though you'll be squinting at the page trying to make sense of everything. It's a book riddled with popculture unstuck from time and kind of tossed across decades. It's a book where characters become unglued from their identities and reality itself, but somehow this never strays from realism. It's firmly grounded in reality but also plays with that reality in some of the most interesting ways I've seen.
You'll probably get lost but it won't matter. Where you're going and where you came from also don't matter. Just keep reading because the words will guide you in all kinds of new directions. It's like an octopus sending tentacles out in every direction, grasping at what seems inconsequential or even nonsensical only to hit you in the face hours later with revelations that are both kind of absurd and eerily important.
Keaton's really done something else with this book. It's hard to articulate what he's doing, but managed to make a difficult novel so readable and fun and addictive while also making its own difficultness kind of selfconscious and not very important.
It's mesmerising.
The whole way the narrative works is insane and should not be replicated by anyone ever, but it absolutely works here by sheer force of Keaton's addictive and hilarious and insightful voice.
I don't really know what to say about it except that you should read it.
Yeah, I'm sticking with it:
This is the best book published by an independent small press.
It's also probably the most ambitious.
It's hilarious and difficult and endlessly enjoyable and readable, though you'll be squinting at the page trying to make sense of everything. It's a book riddled with popculture unstuck from time and kind of tossed across decades. It's a book where characters become unglued from their identities and reality itself, but somehow this never strays from realism. It's firmly grounded in reality but also plays with that reality in some of the most interesting ways I've seen.
You'll probably get lost but it won't matter. Where you're going and where you came from also don't matter. Just keep reading because the words will guide you in all kinds of new directions. It's like an octopus sending tentacles out in every direction, grasping at what seems inconsequential or even nonsensical only to hit you in the face hours later with revelations that are both kind of absurd and eerily important.
Keaton's really done something else with this book. It's hard to articulate what he's doing, but managed to make a difficult novel so readable and fun and addictive while also making its own difficultness kind of selfconscious and not very important.
It's mesmerising.
The whole way the narrative works is insane and should not be replicated by anyone ever, but it absolutely works here by sheer force of Keaton's addictive and hilarious and insightful voice.
I don't really know what to say about it except that you should read it.
Yeah, I'm sticking with it:
This is the best book published by an independent small press.
It's also probably the most ambitious.
February 18, 2015
For me, THE LAST PROJECTOR by David James Keaton is a hefty volume, not unlike the Holy Bible (King James Version). As the Bible does for some folks, THE LAST PROJECTOR speaks to me, as though it had been written for me. Unlike the Bible, you don't have to skip around to get to the good parts.
Watch John Carpenter's THE THING.
Read THE LAST PROJECTOR.
And get that man some breakfast.
Watch John Carpenter's THE THING.
Read THE LAST PROJECTOR.
And get that man some breakfast.
January 1, 2020
I’m not sure how to talk about this book. I’ll be honest and say up front that the whole point of this book seems to be to f*ck with the reader’s head. And it does that in spades.
I had a hate/gotta see what happens relationship throughout my read. No matter how frustrating it was I kept coming back to it. I couldn’t just put it away.
And, it really messed with my dreams which I’m taking to mean that there was a lot of processing going on as I slept.
Can I recommend this book? I honestly don’t know. If you are willing to work and are okay with no closure it might be for you.
I had a hate/gotta see what happens relationship throughout my read. No matter how frustrating it was I kept coming back to it. I couldn’t just put it away.
And, it really messed with my dreams which I’m taking to mean that there was a lot of processing going on as I slept.
Can I recommend this book? I honestly don’t know. If you are willing to work and are okay with no closure it might be for you.
November 14, 2014
Hear the entire review on our website: http://www.bookedpodcast.com/2014/11/...
September 6, 2021
So not sure I understood every reference or turn of this cinephile labyrinth, and people could probably ask me about elements of it and I'd get it wrong, because it's a book that needs multiple rereads, but what I did understand and takeaway from it I absolutely loved. Characters, trivia, movies, evil. So so much to love in this. Exists in my mind as a foggy mystery, only being cleared through another read and those bright lights of an ambulance.
May 16, 2015
The Last Projector is a hysterical and hypnotic slipstream of anachronism and anarchy. David James Keaton’s novel reads like a stream-of-consciousness scroll that bounces through time from the 1970s to the present, or even the future, though most of the story seems to be seated in some version of the American ‘80s. The characters are wild and the plot is fascinating, if at points it becomes nearly indecipherable, and the prose is razor sharp and laugh-out-loud funny.
Reluctant pornograhper Larry is one of the compelling, crazy and very human characters in the novel. Larry isn’t his real name. He’s a filmmaker dreaming of full time TV commercial work and making a real movie, one on 35mm, while shooting porn and battling the seemingly unstoppable growth of tattoos on his actors bodies. It says something when the actor with breakfast, a Denny’s Grand Slam, inked on his head is the least problematic of the bunch. His name is Head Breakfast, not his real name, and “Hey, what could you do? Motherfucker loved breakfast.” Enough said.
Billy and Bully are two more of the colorful cast of characters. Their relationship is founded on stories of questionable veracity, discussions of movies of questionable reality and a grudge against law enforcement of questionable sanity. The characters make a deep study of neck bombs in film and the films of John Carpenter. They discuss the merits of the film work of Rowdy Roddy Piper. Billy sings to Bully his charmingly obscene theme song for his dog Shaft and makes insightful comments on Shaft In Africa. The then there’s the rap tribute to John Carpenter’s The Thing, “The Rap’s The Thing”, itself worth the price of admission.
This isn’t a novel for everybody, as it ranges from absurd to vague, brilliant to bizarre. Along the way, though, it never fails to be less than fascinating and Keaton’s command of his prose is honestly beautiful. It’s a book that demands that the reader work for every page, scene and chapter, to exert intellectual effort to understand every twist and revelation, and it is effort that is rewarded with a reading experience quite unlike any other. The Last Projector is a book that is tough to put down, and not just because the reader wants to find out what happens next, but because the reader will also want to try and find out what just happened.
Reluctant pornograhper Larry is one of the compelling, crazy and very human characters in the novel. Larry isn’t his real name. He’s a filmmaker dreaming of full time TV commercial work and making a real movie, one on 35mm, while shooting porn and battling the seemingly unstoppable growth of tattoos on his actors bodies. It says something when the actor with breakfast, a Denny’s Grand Slam, inked on his head is the least problematic of the bunch. His name is Head Breakfast, not his real name, and “Hey, what could you do? Motherfucker loved breakfast.” Enough said.
Billy and Bully are two more of the colorful cast of characters. Their relationship is founded on stories of questionable veracity, discussions of movies of questionable reality and a grudge against law enforcement of questionable sanity. The characters make a deep study of neck bombs in film and the films of John Carpenter. They discuss the merits of the film work of Rowdy Roddy Piper. Billy sings to Bully his charmingly obscene theme song for his dog Shaft and makes insightful comments on Shaft In Africa. The then there’s the rap tribute to John Carpenter’s The Thing, “The Rap’s The Thing”, itself worth the price of admission.
This isn’t a novel for everybody, as it ranges from absurd to vague, brilliant to bizarre. Along the way, though, it never fails to be less than fascinating and Keaton’s command of his prose is honestly beautiful. It’s a book that demands that the reader work for every page, scene and chapter, to exert intellectual effort to understand every twist and revelation, and it is effort that is rewarded with a reading experience quite unlike any other. The Last Projector is a book that is tough to put down, and not just because the reader wants to find out what happens next, but because the reader will also want to try and find out what just happened.
February 20, 2015
I got this book by GoodReads giveaways in exchange for an honest review.
I don't really know what to think about this book. It made me think of things an old friend told me when he was on an acid trip. If I had wrote down all his trip stories and glued them together with psychedelic glue, it could have given this story. lolll
Sometimes, this novel (is it a novel?) made me think of J.G. Ballard's novel titled Crash, sometimes it felt like that movie in which the MCs were caught in a strange video game (virtual reality) and never knowing if they were still in the game or not anymore. I felt a little like them while reading this book.
I went on reading it because I felt forced to try to find some clues on where the f*ck this story is going?
So either it's a great novel, or it's madness. But maybe it's both. ;)
I don't really know what to think about this book. It made me think of things an old friend told me when he was on an acid trip. If I had wrote down all his trip stories and glued them together with psychedelic glue, it could have given this story. lolll
Sometimes, this novel (is it a novel?) made me think of J.G. Ballard's novel titled Crash, sometimes it felt like that movie in which the MCs were caught in a strange video game (virtual reality) and never knowing if they were still in the game or not anymore. I felt a little like them while reading this book.
I went on reading it because I felt forced to try to find some clues on where the f*ck this story is going?
So either it's a great novel, or it's madness. But maybe it's both. ;)
October 1, 2016
What a wonderfully bizarre mind-fuck of a novel!
Review to come
Review to come
March 15, 2022
Every blue moon you stumble across a book like no other. The Last Projector is one of those books. It was basically thrown into my face one day when I was raving about how good the movie "Under the Silver Lake" is on Twitter. Someone replied to me saying how eerily similar The Last Projector and Under the Silver Lake are. I bought the book and started reading it immediately. At first I was lost, confused and wasn't sure if I liked the seediness of it, but all of that changed once I really got to the meat of the novel.
This book is like listening to the schizophrenic rantings of a man trying to recount a movie thats never existed. It's like House of Leaves meets Blue Velvet. I can't think of a better word to describe this book other than Lynchian. It serves as one of the darkest comedies I have ever had the pleasure of reading. It's like a movie but It isn't. This is a horrible, absurd nightmare of a story that only gets better with each chapter. It isnt until revelations are revealed toward the end, when we finally start to see through the eyes of the bat shit wackos we're following, when we really start to understand the story in its entirety.
This book is like listening to the schizophrenic rantings of a man trying to recount a movie thats never existed. It's like House of Leaves meets Blue Velvet. I can't think of a better word to describe this book other than Lynchian. It serves as one of the darkest comedies I have ever had the pleasure of reading. It's like a movie but It isn't. This is a horrible, absurd nightmare of a story that only gets better with each chapter. It isnt until revelations are revealed toward the end, when we finally start to see through the eyes of the bat shit wackos we're following, when we really start to understand the story in its entirety.
December 9, 2014
This review was originally published at DigBoston.com
( http://digboston.com/boston-arts-thea... )
“You’ll either love it or hate it. Although, in my experience, if something is ever described as ‘love it or hate it,’ it is, without fail, fucking terrible.”
—The Last Projector
I don’t usually like being confused this much.
Are you familiar with choogling? No? Good. Shut up, seriously, I don’t care anymore. The Last Projector is a time-choogling rabbit punch to your skull candy that never forgets to keep the conversation interesting. It’s also David James Keaton debut novel following closely on the heels of his collection Fish Bites Cop! Stories to Bash Authorities.
It feels like a long hibernating story that’s only gotten weirder and more pissed off, whatever it is, the longer its been kept from civilization. I’m paraphrasing John Carpenter’s masterpiece The Thing here for good reason; not only is The Last Projector partly a meditation on cult movies of the ‘70s and ‘80s it also contains a rap song written about John Carpenter’s The Thing. The song is called The Rap Is The Thing ( Or Your Blood’s Gonna Scream) and yes, it is excellent, and yes, you can hear it
here:
http://digboston.com/boston-arts-thea...
But that original rap song is only like the 5th coolest thing about this novel. Some books define categorization, and then some books like The Last Projector actually wriggle free from your grasp like greased up marmosets furiously doing the Sprocket’s dance. Ostensibly the book is about a paramedic named Jack who now goes by Larry and who directs porn while also guerilla filmmaking a straight movie on his off hours about his former life as a paramedic. Larry the porn director is losing what’s left of his mind along with his artistic integrity and both of these seem to revolve around his obsession with tattoos and how they’re destroying the authenticity and continuity of his porn movies. Sounds reasonable, right? There’s also another story about two teenagers who might as well be auditioning for Christian Slater and Wynona Rider’s roles in Heathers that are grimly fixated on a local cop and his K9 partner. Still with me? Then there’s a whole thing about a woman named Jacki who survived a very strange car crash years ago who might be tied up with Jack/Larry the paramedic turned porno director. And everyone seems to have a doppelganger or a doggerganger (dogs are important to this story) for some reason. Confused? You’re welcome.
The disparate elements and characters begin to coalesce after a while but just as soon as you start to think you know where this fucking book is headed the plot points and the story beats metastasize, turn corrupt and grow gnarled on you. That’s a compliment. Because Keaton’s voice, his direction is solid. Even if we’re lost it feels like it’s because he wants us to be. And most importantly, yeah, we’re lost, but the author isn’t. Time and identity is played very slippery here, you’re never quite sure what decade things are taking place in or who anyone really is. Or if they’re only one person. Aiding and abetting this swirling dream state feel here are mentions of the movie Saw Part VXIII and when one character sees a poster for Cronenberg’s The Fly and remarks having no memory of ever hearing about the film existing.
“Music, movies, and books followed you forward and back. Time was broken when it came to media objects. Occasionally, time could break when it came to music. But time would always be broken when it came to movies.”
Underneath all this ornate dressing and psychedelic framing is a story about identity, regret and the peril and untrustworthiness of memory. How nothing is the way you remember it and if all we really are is merely a summation of that unreliable memory how can we really be sure who we are in the first place? All this existential digging and the book’s other ruminations on gritty and brutal topics like rape, murder and insanity might be excessive and depressing if not for Keaton’s knack for Altmanesque dialogue and angular, swift prose. His screwball characters easily drop into exchanges that seem like back alley sonnets or dive bar philosophical debates with aplomb and flourish. The dialogue reaches that perfect teeter-totter between stylized and natural. No one talks like this in real life per se but it’s not far off. More like the way you remember some of your best tangents and conversations than how they were actually spoken.
Likewise the narration is never stymied by too much over production or is it too stark to be inviting. Like a good rhythm section it knows when to hang back and support and then, when the time is right, it knows when to make with the flashy fills.
“Heart pounding in panic, he went back to something a little more high-end instead, safer, shriller. Squier.”
Judging from the title of his first collection of stories author David James Keaton has a bit of a problem with authority figures and this trend is thankfully continued with The Last Projector where it reaches its unavoidable conclusion. And I’m not talking about Officer Bigbee, the dipshit, belligerent cop that the two teenager characters in Projector are considering using a bomb on, he’s a fascinating fascist but he’s not our endboss. No, with this novel Keaton sets his sights on the ultimate authority figure: himself, the author. The idea of an author, an all knowing, information controlling, giving and at times withholding fictional godhead, this is what Keaton seems to take umbrage with the most and poke fun at with his unorthodox, convention shirking stylings. With his tense changes and reality warping. He doesn’t so much break the fourth wall as much as he slaps a big fat ass against it and asks how much it likes its fresh pressed ham.
Learn to enjoy confusion, get familiar with choogling.
( http://digboston.com/boston-arts-thea... )
“You’ll either love it or hate it. Although, in my experience, if something is ever described as ‘love it or hate it,’ it is, without fail, fucking terrible.”
—The Last Projector
I don’t usually like being confused this much.
Are you familiar with choogling? No? Good. Shut up, seriously, I don’t care anymore. The Last Projector is a time-choogling rabbit punch to your skull candy that never forgets to keep the conversation interesting. It’s also David James Keaton debut novel following closely on the heels of his collection Fish Bites Cop! Stories to Bash Authorities.
It feels like a long hibernating story that’s only gotten weirder and more pissed off, whatever it is, the longer its been kept from civilization. I’m paraphrasing John Carpenter’s masterpiece The Thing here for good reason; not only is The Last Projector partly a meditation on cult movies of the ‘70s and ‘80s it also contains a rap song written about John Carpenter’s The Thing. The song is called The Rap Is The Thing ( Or Your Blood’s Gonna Scream) and yes, it is excellent, and yes, you can hear it
here:
http://digboston.com/boston-arts-thea...
But that original rap song is only like the 5th coolest thing about this novel. Some books define categorization, and then some books like The Last Projector actually wriggle free from your grasp like greased up marmosets furiously doing the Sprocket’s dance. Ostensibly the book is about a paramedic named Jack who now goes by Larry and who directs porn while also guerilla filmmaking a straight movie on his off hours about his former life as a paramedic. Larry the porn director is losing what’s left of his mind along with his artistic integrity and both of these seem to revolve around his obsession with tattoos and how they’re destroying the authenticity and continuity of his porn movies. Sounds reasonable, right? There’s also another story about two teenagers who might as well be auditioning for Christian Slater and Wynona Rider’s roles in Heathers that are grimly fixated on a local cop and his K9 partner. Still with me? Then there’s a whole thing about a woman named Jacki who survived a very strange car crash years ago who might be tied up with Jack/Larry the paramedic turned porno director. And everyone seems to have a doppelganger or a doggerganger (dogs are important to this story) for some reason. Confused? You’re welcome.
The disparate elements and characters begin to coalesce after a while but just as soon as you start to think you know where this fucking book is headed the plot points and the story beats metastasize, turn corrupt and grow gnarled on you. That’s a compliment. Because Keaton’s voice, his direction is solid. Even if we’re lost it feels like it’s because he wants us to be. And most importantly, yeah, we’re lost, but the author isn’t. Time and identity is played very slippery here, you’re never quite sure what decade things are taking place in or who anyone really is. Or if they’re only one person. Aiding and abetting this swirling dream state feel here are mentions of the movie Saw Part VXIII and when one character sees a poster for Cronenberg’s The Fly and remarks having no memory of ever hearing about the film existing.
“Music, movies, and books followed you forward and back. Time was broken when it came to media objects. Occasionally, time could break when it came to music. But time would always be broken when it came to movies.”
Underneath all this ornate dressing and psychedelic framing is a story about identity, regret and the peril and untrustworthiness of memory. How nothing is the way you remember it and if all we really are is merely a summation of that unreliable memory how can we really be sure who we are in the first place? All this existential digging and the book’s other ruminations on gritty and brutal topics like rape, murder and insanity might be excessive and depressing if not for Keaton’s knack for Altmanesque dialogue and angular, swift prose. His screwball characters easily drop into exchanges that seem like back alley sonnets or dive bar philosophical debates with aplomb and flourish. The dialogue reaches that perfect teeter-totter between stylized and natural. No one talks like this in real life per se but it’s not far off. More like the way you remember some of your best tangents and conversations than how they were actually spoken.
Likewise the narration is never stymied by too much over production or is it too stark to be inviting. Like a good rhythm section it knows when to hang back and support and then, when the time is right, it knows when to make with the flashy fills.
“Heart pounding in panic, he went back to something a little more high-end instead, safer, shriller. Squier.”
Judging from the title of his first collection of stories author David James Keaton has a bit of a problem with authority figures and this trend is thankfully continued with The Last Projector where it reaches its unavoidable conclusion. And I’m not talking about Officer Bigbee, the dipshit, belligerent cop that the two teenager characters in Projector are considering using a bomb on, he’s a fascinating fascist but he’s not our endboss. No, with this novel Keaton sets his sights on the ultimate authority figure: himself, the author. The idea of an author, an all knowing, information controlling, giving and at times withholding fictional godhead, this is what Keaton seems to take umbrage with the most and poke fun at with his unorthodox, convention shirking stylings. With his tense changes and reality warping. He doesn’t so much break the fourth wall as much as he slaps a big fat ass against it and asks how much it likes its fresh pressed ham.
Learn to enjoy confusion, get familiar with choogling.
June 2, 2019
This is like the "cool" film nerd got a literary bug but also had to compulsively name drop every love and affectation they picked up. It's fun!
Imagine the life of Sam Sylvia's (Marc Maron from Glow) life before wrestling. This is him making his artistic horror porn movies. And a bit of "Under the Silver Lake" but more interesting.
Imagine the life of Sam Sylvia's (Marc Maron from Glow) life before wrestling. This is him making his artistic horror porn movies. And a bit of "Under the Silver Lake" but more interesting.
March 4, 2023
3.5, the ending really is wild.
November 23, 2014
It took me a longer time to read The Last Projector than it normally does to read a book. You make an investment when you read a book like this. And you wouldn't make the investment if it wasn't throwing out dividends every time you picked it back up.
The Last Projector is an intricate play on the Act structure of most fiction, where cause and effect, time and place, even character are wound up like an inbred double-helix.
You have paramedic Jack Grinstead-turned-porn filmmaker Larry-turned Jack again as a character-within-the-character Larry's "real" film, shot on porn money behind the back of producer Damon.
You have Jacki and her daughter Toni, unwitting actresses in the psychodrama of Jack's alter ego (or would it be egos?) having to come to a realization about a car crash one night.
You have Billy, a young tough Clyde desperate to to impress Bully, a double-crossing Bonnie with a dangerous agenda.
Am I missing anything? Yeah, a million things. That's what makes this book great. A million things. Conversations past the left-hand wall of the stadium. Jumps in the narration that first jar you, then convince you that fiction should be that way. "Meta" elements that poke fun at every element of storytelling, both paper and film.
The story-lines blur in such a way that you begin to blur with them. I had to put the book down... at the end.
This is a challenging book, but completely worth taking up the challenge. Keaton has a very unique style, and it pumps heavy through the twisted veins of The Last Projector.
The Last Projector is an intricate play on the Act structure of most fiction, where cause and effect, time and place, even character are wound up like an inbred double-helix.
You have paramedic Jack Grinstead-turned-porn filmmaker Larry-turned Jack again as a character-within-the-character Larry's "real" film, shot on porn money behind the back of producer Damon.
You have Jacki and her daughter Toni, unwitting actresses in the psychodrama of Jack's alter ego (or would it be egos?) having to come to a realization about a car crash one night.
You have Billy, a young tough Clyde desperate to to impress Bully, a double-crossing Bonnie with a dangerous agenda.
Am I missing anything? Yeah, a million things. That's what makes this book great. A million things. Conversations past the left-hand wall of the stadium. Jumps in the narration that first jar you, then convince you that fiction should be that way. "Meta" elements that poke fun at every element of storytelling, both paper and film.
The story-lines blur in such a way that you begin to blur with them. I had to put the book down... at the end.
This is a challenging book, but completely worth taking up the challenge. Keaton has a very unique style, and it pumps heavy through the twisted veins of The Last Projector.
June 24, 2016
Surreal, narratively slippery crime fiction, like a temporally-loose INLAND EMPIRE with an bleakly humorous strain contained within it?
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