Lexicon Review

A sci-fi thriller steeped in the history of language.

Words possess an unimaginable amount of power. Advertising, storytelling, teaching, debating; words don’t just allow us to communicate with each other, they open the possibility of putting a thought into someone else’s head. A means to inject some foreign piece of information or way of thinking that didn’t originate there. Max Barry extrapolates this concept in his sci-fi thriller Lexicon, released last summer, and builds a world where those who truly harness word’s power are able to effortlessly control the minds of their victims.

In Lexicon, a secret organization has discovered that every person on the planet belongs to a particular segment, a group of like-minded individuals who think and process information in the same way. Each segment of people is vulnerable to a unique set of what seem to be nonsense words–contrex helo siq rattrak for instance. Upon hearing the words specific to his segment, a person becomes servant to the speaker, following commands in a hypnotic state, unaware and unable to stop. These commands can range from happily handing over a car to unflinchingly committing suicide on the spot.

The organization has instituted a program to seek out and train children who may possess the ability to effectively command words, preparing them to eventually work for the organization. It’s Harry-Potter-meets-the-Matrix, with kids sharpening their skills in a private institute before participating in some grander conspiratorial scheme.

Lexicon follows the interweaving stories of Emily Ruff, a 16-year-old grifter making her way through the organization’s academy, and Wil Parke, a man who unknowingly possesses the unique ability to resist the influence of words. Emily’s story takes place years before the novel’s central event–the unleashing of an all-powerful “bareword” that is able to control any person who sees or hears it regardless of segment–while Wil’s story follows the events directly after, dealing specifically with the fact that he is the only person to have avoided the influence of the bareword, which left the population of an entire town decimated.

Barry uses the time-difference between his characters’ stories to effectively tell two mysteries at once. The character in focus alternates each chapter, from Wil’s survival of the bareword that left thousands dead and his run from the now-fractured organization that is hell-bent on discovering how he did it, to Emily’s rise to power as well as her discovery of that all-powerful bareword. The slow reveal of each character’s role is made doubly sweet as the mystery surrounding what happened when the word was unleashed and how it is eventually resolved play out near-simultaneously in the novel’s closing moments.

Still, the format isn’t without its flaws. Wil’s chapters are typically more action-driven; the first chapter alone features brain-probing, gunfights, car chases, and several murderous encounters. However, a sharp contrast follows immediately, with the slow and calculated origin story of Emily.  For the first two-thirds of the novel, there is a jerking staccato rhythm between the breakneck pace of Wil’s story and the reserved, expositional role of Emily’s. I’d often finish a chapter of Wil’s late at night,ready for more, but would ultimately go to bed because I knew Emily’s chapter would likely lull me to sleep. I wouldn’t describe her sections as boring, just slower and predictably so. The contrast can be jarring.

While I generally applaud the decision to tell a tight, focused story over the recent trend to turn every novel into a drawn out trilogy, I couldn’t help feeling a little underwhelmed with what is revealed about the world around the characters of Emily and Wil. Sure, the mystery concerning the barewood and its events is engrossing, but what of the daily activities of the organization? They monitor people and pinpoint the segments they belong to, now made much easier through the willing surrender of information via sites like Facebook as well as data which is taken from cell phone and Internet use (somewhat prescient of Barry given the recent NSA scandal), but to what end? Newspaper articles and blog posts appear between chapters, hinting at conspiracy theories and cover-ups, but it isn’t ever really clear what they do. Bend governments to their own corrupted will? Stop people who would commit atrocious, large-scale crimes? Barry has created a vastly interesting premise but leaves so much hidden. This is a world I would have happily spent more time in.

What is present in Lexicon, though, is a secret love letter to English majors everywhere. The premise, of course, appeals to those who practice the written word–what writer doesn’t want to get into the heads of his readers?–but there are little nods to literature enthusiasts throughout. The agents of the organization, called Poets, each adopt a nickname based on the name of a famous author. Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, Margaret Atwood, W.B. Yeats; I made a fun little game of racking my brain to figure out who each nickname alluded to as I read. There is also plenty of discussion about the origin of words and languages, specifically focusing on the destruction that tends to follow each time a universal language is found, most notably tied to the story of the Tower of Babel. The copious references are there to be devoured by literary fetishists.

Lexicon is gripping, creatively illustrating the power of words, both supernaturally and otherwise. Barry has delivered a bombardment of science fiction action laced with just enough language history and real-world conspiracy theory to suspend disbelief. While a natural fit for fans of thrillers, students of classical literature and writers in general may be won over by the endearing nods to the history of words.

Thinking about Gone Home

It’s hard to really talk about Gone Home without spoiling its crux: the story. So, I’m not going to try. If you haven’t played it yet, I’ll leave you with this before I shew you out of here. Gone Home is remarkable in that it not only conjures up a physical space that feels absolutely real and unique in time, but it also tells a story that is so universally urgent and heart wrenching that it can be appreciated by most anyone, even if Street Fighter combos, stacks of VHS cassettes with taped-from-TV episodes of shows, and punk and riot grrrl music fail to resonate at all. If you’re old enough to remember living in 1995, you’ll feel an unavoidable swell of nostalgia, but the impact of the Greenbriar’s family story, a story that is a fallow of tragedy dashed with unexpected, blossoming hope, isn’t lessened without it.

OK, spoilers ahead. You’ve been warned.

Gone Home opens with you arriving at your family’s new and mysteriously empty home in the middle of a stormy night after a year spent in Europe. Discovering the fate of your younger sister, Sam, is the main narrative crux. As you search the house for clues as to the whereabouts of your family, Sam will narrate journal entries to you, revealing a heartbreaking tale of young love and that inexplicable loneliness we all feel wandering through our teenage years. Perhaps playing with expectation, Gone Home does a brilliant job of dropping red herrings that imply some more sinister fate for Sam, including crashing thunder, flickering house lights, and the ominous attic, locked and beckoning from the very beginning. I especially enjoyed happening upon a bathtub swathed in red; I felt a quick tightening in my chest as I thought “a-ha! Finally!” before observing a harmless bottle of red hair dye lying next to the tub. Sam then narrated an emotional journal entry about the night she dyed her friend Lonnie’s hair and how personal that felt.

I found I resonated with Sam on two levels. First, she reminded me of myself. My mom moved us to a new town halfway through my freshman year of high school; if you think starting all over at a new school is hard, try it halfway through the year, when relationships are either carried over from middle school or already established by that point. Much like Sam, I found myself drawn to the kids on the fringe; the punks and the outcasts. While the riot grrrl scene never called for me, I drowned myself in its punk cousin. Each day I walked to and from school and each night I walked around the dark town bombarding myself with songs full of angst and steeped in that teenage loneliness. Learning about Sam’s transformation reminded me of my own.

But Sam also reminded me of my younger brother. Though I may not have literally left the family, I can’t help feeling like my brother shared Sam’s bewilderment with how to follow in the footsteps of an older sibling. Sam wanted guidance from Kaitlin as she began high school; my brother became a freshman the year after I graduated, and while I still lived at home, I spent most nights out enjoying my new found freedom. My brother struggled in school, and I didn’t do anything to help him. Not that I couldn’t, but I just didn’t make myself available to. He eventually dropped out, and has meandered about since. Listening to Sam describe her nighttime flight from home at the end, I imagined my brother, making what he thought was the best choice available to him. I cried for him.

While Sam’s story is the focus, Gone Home does an immaculate job of building the backstory of the girls’ parents and even extended family. Details are slowly revealed through found letters, invoices, memos, and more. I can’t speak highly enough of how, much like Sam’s story, the family’s fate seems to be headed for tragedy before eventually showing signs of hope. You learn that your father is an author of a failed science fiction series and now writing reviews for home electronics (laserdisc players!). However, his editor is unhappy with the creative writing angle he is trying to inject into his otherwise banal reviews. Your grandfather, a noted academic, also wrote in a note that while the books seemed true to who your father is, they are otherwise forgettable genre pieces without much merit.

Juxtaposed to that, your mother is actually successful in her work as a national park ranger, being promoted and showered with accolades. While her husband flounders, she flourishes. There is another ranger she has feelings for, and an old friend from college encourages her to pursue those feelings. Eventually, you happen upon a note from the ranger asking her to an Earth, Wind, and Fire concert.

But, as Sam’s story is reaching its apex, things suddenly take a turn for the parents. Your father’s series has been picked up by a niche publisher that adores the campy, sci-fi setting. He is even beginning a new, final entry in the series. Meanwhile, slapped to the fridge is an invite to adulterous ranger’s wedding, and a pamphlet for a couple’s retreat is found tucked away in a drawer, set for the very weekend you arrive home. Much like Sam, the parents are not only surviving their hardships, they are thriving.

That’s what I adore about Gone Home. While the flickering lights, hastily pulled out empty drawers, and ever present storm imply something frightening, I was filled with a bittersweet hope when the credits rolled, thinking about the struggles of my own family and the way we all overcome. That’s Gone Home’s greatest strength and what makes it such a hallmark game; it is able to tell a story about the human condition that reminds us of our own stories.

Remembering Dad

1

It’s winter. Or, at least, it’s wintery. I’m wearing my pajamas, just out of bed. I’m also wearing jeans and a sweater with a green Christmas tree on it. It’s Saturday morning. It’s Christmas morning. It’s any day of any week and I am 5 years old. The constant is the house. Well, not so much a house. In reality, it’s one of three apartments that make up the small building on May Street. The building is constructed of graying brick, and a collective stoop stretches across the front of it giving way to three equally spaced doors. The door on the farthest right is ours.

I’m lying on my stomach across the hardwood floor of the kitchen. He is sitting on a chair pulled out and away from the table. Between is a slot car track, each of its wired controllers in our possession. It isn’t one of the expensive tracks with jumps and falling boulders and hazardous pits and sound effects. This track is a simple figure-8, and the mild humming of the electrical current is the only sound as the cars make their way around it.

He has a human form, but no face. A flat blank pallet sits atop his shoulders, which continue to grow outward and broad before shrinking inward and twisted. As I stare at the empty canvas, a wild assortment of hair shoots out of the top of it, rapidly shifting colors and styles. Kind eyes appear, then tired, then concerned, then distracted. A nose begins to protrude, growing long and short in rhythm, like the playing of an accordion. The mouth finally manifests, and it never fluctuates. A straight line cut across his warping face, displaying no discernible amount of pleasure or dismay.

We race our cars for as long as I choose to remember.

2

I’m fifteen. My mom has asked me and my younger brother out of our separate bedrooms and into the kitchen. As a rule, the three of us generally talk in passing and in short bursts. This may be our first town hall assembly. A State of the Thompson Family address. We join her at the round, wooden table tucked neatly into the small dining room of our house on 44^th Street. The two dogs, one small, rotund and white and the other, large, black, and timid, circle the table, assuming we are using it for its intended purpose.

We sit cautiously, and wait for her to begin.

“I just wanted to let you guys know,” she starts slowly, our uncertainty clearly hereditary, “that I’ve been talking to your dad. He said he’d like to come visit you sometime, if you wanted him to. Would you want him to do that?”

I search inward to all the empty places in my mind that that word – dad – is supposed to fill. I find nothing substantial: ambivalence, a small bubbling pond of disdain, a mild electrical hum, a fragmented family portrait. No reservoir of yearning can be found, no thimble’s worth of wonder. Not even a droplet of desire stains the white carpet.

As I await some kind of response from the deepest recesses of my mind, my brother speaks up.

“I want to meet him.” My brother is twelve years old. Ten years later, he would say the same thing again. I would feel nothing once more.

I again look inward. That’s one vote for yes. As I pull and look behind bits of gray, I find something, a small red ember, clinging to life. As I observe it, it begins to swell. The flames burn ferociously, and their heat impresses upon me. Then they speak to me. “Think of all the birthdays, all the Christmases, all the good report cards he’s missed. Think of what he owes you.” The s sound takes shape, serpentine and hissing.

“I guess I’d be fine with it.”

3

I’m younger now, sitting in the back seat of the two door Toyota Tercel. My brother is next to me, both of our mouths numb with Novocaine. As is custom during this time, I’ve escaped the dentist’s excavation with no scheduling of a second appointment necessary. The same can’t be said for my brother, whose teeth are never free from the oppressive might of the cavity.

“Eric, you have to start brushing your teeth more. I can’t afford to keep paying for all these fillings. It’s too much.”

“But doesn’t dad pay for that kind of stuff for us?” I ask.

“He’s supposed to pay for your medical and dental bills,” she replies, curtly.

“He doesn’t do it?”

“No.”

“Can’t he get arrested for that or something?” my brother inquires, both of us still young enough to believe in the absolute moral right and the punishable moral wrong.

“I’ve taken him to court twice to get him to pay for your bills, but he never does it. It’s too expensive to keep taking him to court just for him to not do it again.”

After leaving the dentist’s office, Mom stops at McDonald’s without us even asking. Once home, we devour our meals and race into our shared bedroom to watch wrestling. Mom sits alone in the living room watching TV until her eyes grow weary. She retires to her bedroom.

4

It’s the first week of June and the last week of third grade. Teachers, smart as they are, recognize the class’ collective longing gaze out towards the playground and lessen the workload during the waning moments of the school year. On this day, the craft supplies have been pulled out and spilled across the five tables in the classroom. Old, crusty bottles of Elmer’s glue stand statuesque in the centers of tables while weathered crayons, most missing their paper encasing entirely, and worn colored pencils take residence in small baskets.

Piles of pristine construction paper are found at each table, a cavalcade of blues, oranges, reds, and yellows. Glitter is available, but not without the teacher’s guidance, as it always ends up littered across the floor when trusted to our little hands. A request from the janitorial staff, no doubt.

“Today, kids,” starts Mrs. Jennings, “we are going to be making Father’s Day cards. It’s not for a few weeks though, so you’ll have to ask your mothers to hide it until the right time. Feel free to use all the items in front of you to make the best card you can. I’ll be walking around and observing, so raise your hands if you have any questions.”

As my classmates eagerly begin work on their cards, I stare blankly at the red construction paper in front of me. I don’t know what to do. I sit there, hoping to go unnoticed. I hear a faint, mechanical hum and turn to look as a boy uses the electric pencil sharpner on the teacher’s desk. It isn’t long before Mrs. Jennings notices me and waddles over.

“Why haven’t you started, Scott?”

“I don’t have a dad.”

“Everyone has a dad,” she so forthrightly announces before taking a moment and suggesting “Why don’t you make one for your grandpa?”

I agree and begin work on the card for my grandpa. For no particular reason, I make a turkey on it by drawing the outline of my hand.

5

It’s a Saturday night in August, and I am eleven years old. My mom is baby sitting my two younger cousins while my uncle and aunt have something called “date night.” It is late, and my cousins, along with my brother, are already asleep. I’m playing my Game Boy while mom watches TV. I’m not paying much mind to it, but it sounds like something important has happened. In brief moments of reprieve, I’ll glance up towards the screen, my mom entranced by it, to see reporters and news anchors talking about someone dying. Something about a princess and paparazzi.

Mom continues to watch as I continue to play, both of us whittling deep into the nighttime hours. It’s after midnight when, finally, there is a knock at the front door. My uncle Gerald has returned to pick up his slumbering children. They awake begrudgingly and stumble out into the cool air, ready to resume their sleeping as soon as they buckle in to the backseat.

As Gerald walks in, he says hi to me, his breath sour, and stares at the TV.

“Have they announced if she’s dead yet?”

“No, not for sure. But everyone seems to think she is.”

“Well, that’s what she gets. She should have never gotten divorced.”

Noticeable even to me, that sentence hangs heavily in the air, acrid and spiteful. It is gaseous, filling our living room in place of oxygen. Silence seems to hold as my mom looks at her brother, completely exposed. I pause my game and look in their direction, stifled.

“Well, you know what I mean,” he offers. “Thanks again for watching them. I’ll see you later.”

My mom shuts the door and pauses there for a moment. The briefest of moments, a rare moment in which she appears vulnerable to me. Uncertain. It passes in an instant, and she reaches for the remote and turns off the TV.

“Time for bed, Scott.”

6

My cell phone buzzes. I’m 25 and living in the house that I own. The buzz signals a text message, and I look down to see that it is from my brother. It reads:

I found dad on Facebook. It doesn’t look like he’s updated his page in a while, but he has us listed under his family category. I guess he lives in Maryland now. I sent him a message and he sent one back to me. I could copy it and email it to you if you want. Do you want me to?

Again, that empty feeling returns. Just as was the case ten years ago, thinking about him returns no identifiable emotion, no extreme one way or the other. This man is a stranger to me. You may as well pull a name from the phone book and ask me if I’d like to call it and invite it to dinner.

Still, curiosity can’t be denied, so I text him back “sure.” I load Gmail and wait for the email to manifest. Within minutes, it appears. I watch it sitting innocuously for a while, the subject and sender bold and highlighted signifying that it is unread. But should it stay unread? Once read, the words can never be unread again.

I open the email and read the following:

Hey Eric, this is Wayne. How you doing? Not really sure what to say, for obvious reasons, lol. Sorry you got my nose and not ur mom’s, her’s was always cuter. From the pic’s I saw of you on ur page I can see you have grown into a handsome young man. So tell me, what are ur plans for the future?… career, starting a family of ur own, etc. I would really do want to get to know you and scott as well, but was scared to, thank you ! I always had you guys n my heart an on my mind. I live in Stoney Beach,MD,with my wife Kristie and her son chase, chase is 8yrs old. My number is [REDACTED] if you ever just want to talk, DO MISS MY SONS !! AND HAS ALWAYS WISHED THE BEST FOR YOU BOTH!

7

My cell phone buzzes. I’m still 25. This time it’s a call from my mom.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Scott. Whatcha doin’?” She asks flippantly.

“Not much, just about to cut the grass. What’s up?”

“Well, do you remember how your dad messaged Eric a few weeks ago?”

No, mom, I forgot about the first time Dad had talked to us since he left 20 years ago. “Yeah, did he message him again or something?”

“No, his new wife messaged him.”

“Wait, what? Why?”

“She told Eric that he should never come visit his dad. That he is a liar and that he hits her. She said that I was smart to get out when I did.”

“Are you serious? Holy shit. Is that stuff true? Was dad like that?”

“He never hit me, but he did lie. All the time. He told me he grew up in a completely different town than he really did. He would tell me about cars that he never owned. He never wanted me to meet his family or friends, I think because he knew that the truth would come out. I never understood it. He would lie about the dumbest things, anything. He was such a weirdo.”

After she hangs up, I sit and think about the “weirdo” for some time. I think about him sitting in that kitchen chair, faceless and shape-shifting, holding down the trigger on the controller for his slot car. The humming returns and I lay across the hardwood floor, racing him. This fractured and incomplete memory is all I have.