Fool's Mercy

by Henry Allen

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0881840912
• ISBN13: 9780881840919
• Release Date: January 1984
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.

Customer Reviews

timeless and terrifying

Like the best works of writers like Terry Southern, William Burroughs, and Hunter S. Thompson, Fool's Mercy continues to simmer mutinously in the brain. If I'd never read it, no doubt I'd be a much happier human being, but what is happiness compared with the inside information offered by this skewed but brilliant author? For better or worse, Henry Allen's taut, lyrical and ultimately terrifying portrayal of what's really going on is destined to become a classic.

A life altering novel

"This is a novel that has taken the art of shaping the reader's worldview and raised it to the level of physical intervention. By that I mean that Mr. Allen has discovered techniques of using English syntax to alter synaptic relationships within the brain itself, possibly permanently. He may have gone deeper, as well, functioning as the analog of a computer hacker as he cracks the DNA code and blithely rearranges the human genome with untold consequences for generations to come. Were this novel some outre exercise in modernist befuddlement, the danger would be minimal, but Mr. Allen's darkest motives are masked by a brisk yet poignant thriller populated with haunting personalities. As such, it may pose the severest test the First Amendment has faced since the founding of our republic -- a book that is what the law calls 'an attractive nuisance,' but a nuisance on the level of Jacob-Kreutzfeld syndrome, the human equivalent of "mad cow" disease. It should not only be banned, but all of its known readers should be rounded up like cattle and incarcerated pending central-nervous-system biopsies. Meanwhile, it remains available to an unwary citizenry from Dryad Books, of 15 Sherman Ave., Takoma Park, Md. 20912."