Apocalypse tale amuses

Jay Pawlowski, Special To The News

Friday, March 28, 2003

The way Roscoe Baragon sees it, the world as we know it is about to end. And that end will come about in true monster-movie fashion: earthquakes, spaceships crashing into the ocean, and, of course, a giant, angry lizard emerging from the sea.

In Jim Knipfel's hilarious, if occasionally over-the-top, debut novel The Buzzing, Baragon is a bitter, balding, burnt-out journalist working for the low-brow daily New York Sentinel.

He covers the "kook beat," writing features of questionable human interest on every cracked-out wacko in the city with a conspiracy theory or a grudge against civilization. As his frustrated editor points out, Baragon's "sources" aren't exactly reliable - especially the ones with names like Chief Tokesalot.

But Baragon is happy where he is, sort of. After an early career as a respectable reporter who almost made the big time (during which he was addicted to speed), Baragon has since gotten lazy, put on several pounds and settled into a dismal routine:

"He didn't care for all the headaches that came with a private office or a big-wig editorial position - the added responsibilities and all that extra money. . . . Here he could come and go pretty much as he pleased, cover the stories he wanted to cover. He could dress the way he liked and be as cranky as he cared to be. . . . The most important thing about the job, Baragon felt, was the fact that he was working in what he assumed was the last office space in New York City in which he would be allowed to smoke at his desk. To him, that meant more than money, prestige, respect, any of it."

But now, at age 42, Baragon has stumbled upon what may be the story of a lifetime - the one that could put his career back on track. By piecing together strange phone calls, a radioactive corpse that appears in the city morgue, the crash of a malfunctioning NASA space station rife with alien bacteria, and the paranoid ramblings of his not-quite-sane sources, Baragon concocts a conspiracy theory of his own. He uncovers a secret war between the government and the toga-wearing employees of a Brooklyn realty firm who, he believes, are not what they seem.

Everyone, of course, thinks Baragon is crazy. Maybe he's watched too many horror movies. But the odd parallels between what he discovers and the film Godzilla vs. Megalon show him that the truth can be stranger than fiction.

That is, if it's true at all.

Like most of the characters in The Buzzing, Baragon is a caricature. This in itself could be dangerous to the book, but Knipfel's sharp wit and hilarious twists on crime novel stereotypes breathe fresh life into the novel time and time again.

For example, Baragon makes sure he has three packs of cigarettes on him at all times, has a perpetual hangover, and insists on wearing a trench coat - even on the beach at Coney Island. Later, we learn he wears the trench coat only because it makes him feel "like less of a joke."

Knipfel is best known for his columns in the New York Press and his two memoirs: Slackjaw, about his experience slowly going blind, and Quitting the Nairobi Trio, about his six-month stay in a psychiatric ward after a failed suicide attempt.

What he brings to this novel isn't the sort of poignancy or emotion that his earlier works suggest, but rather a nonfiction writer's ear for perfect-pitch dialogue and a columnist's knack for noting life's ironies through keen observation of just the right details.

Perhaps it's fitting, then, that The Buzzing has been released in paperback - not for a lack of quality, but because of its sheer entertainment value and the homage it pays to the old-school dime novels.

It is a fast-paced, funny read, and while some readers may find its conclusion hasty and lacking resolution, it still makes you wonder: Maybe those "kooks" on the street screaming about the apocalypse aren't so crazy after all.

Jay Pawlowski is a free-lance writer living in Denver.