The Billionth Monkey is the hilarious new weird fantasy novel from Richard Kaczynski.
In this blog, I will walk through the book and, post by post, explore its clues, Easter eggs, and references to popular and nerd culture. Some references are obvious, while others are what Mystery Science Theater 3000 might call "1% jokes."
SPOILERS AHEAD. If you haven't read the book yet, you may want to explore the other pages in the nav bar below.
Since there no kabbalistic terms for either Annie Oakley or Michael Keaton, I had to get creative with the Easter eggs in the post on page 182. We have:
131 (from 131 “likes”) = ⲡⲛⲁ (Coptic), spirit = θαομαι, “to wonder at” or “to gaze at a spectacle” = Παν, Pan (the Greek God, lit. “all”)
718 (from 5,718 followers) = μορφη, form, shape, or appearance.
The number 718 also makes appearances in popular sci-fi:
In Arthur C. Clarke’s novels 2001: A Space Odyssey and 2010: Odyssey Two, the monolith TMA-2 found orbiting Jupiter is 718 times larger than the one found on the moon (TMA-1).
With just a little bit of folk magic, you too can conjure a vengeful spirit right into your bathroom! All it takes is a mirror, darkness, and perhaps a few lit candles. Stare into the mirror—if you dare—and chant her name: Bloody Mary. Or Mary Worth, Mary Johnson, Mary Lou, etc. After you say the name the appropriate number of times (three, thirteen, etc.), she will spring forth from the mirror and attack you. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?
The details of this popular sleepover game vary, including the name of the spirit, what words must be chanted, the requisite number of repetitions, the paraphernalia necessary for the evocation, and what fate befalls the unfortunate person who deems to summon her. But generally speaking, if done right, not only is the spirit supposed to appear, but it will reach out and scratch you or otherwise draw blood.
Alan Dundes offers a Freudian take on this rite of passage for young teens. He asserts that it symbolizes the life-changing event of menarche: the game is usually played by girls, it involves blood, and is invariably set in a bathroom…you can see where this is going. The mirror represents a kind of self-identification with Bloody Mary.
The idea of chanting a name to cause a spirit to appear is hardly new. The phrase “speak of the devil” testifies to this, as does the corpus of the medieval grimoire tradition in Western ceremonial magic. There’s also the Bloody Mary spin-off game, “Baby Blue.” More recently, this trope has appeared in movies from Beetlejuice (1988) to Candyman (1992). And if things get too scary, you can always click your heels together and say three times, “There’s no place like home.”
FOR FURTHER READING
Anonymous. “Bloody Mary.” October 27, 2005. Snopes.com.
Jan Harold Brunvand. “I Believe in Mary Worth.” In Encyclopedia of Urban Legends (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2001), 205–6.
This popular urban legend among babysitters tells how one of their own, while on the job, began receiving threatening phone calls in which the caller claims to have murdered the children and would be coming for her next. Too terrified to check on the children, she instead phones the police, who advise her to keep the caller on the line next time so that they can trace the call. Once she does, she receives another urgent call from the police, telling her to leave immediately because the call is coming from inside the house. The story struck enough of a chord that it was turned into the 1979 movie, When A Stranger Calls.
Harkening to the pre-cell phone era, this urban legend would require that the home in question have two separate telephone numbers.[Or maybe not: evidently there are tricks to dialing your own number from a rotary phone.] But urban legends deal with fears, and in this case the fears being played upon involve stepping from adolescence into adult responsibility, failing as a future homemaker, and being dominated by a frightening, aggressive male figure.
Bonus entry: The incident on page 179 involving the lighter and a can of hairspray was literally a dream that I had one night shortly before writing this scene. When I woke up, I thought the dream was hilarious, turning a similar scene in Watchmen on its head. So I decided to use it in The Billionth Monkey. Sometimes my unconscious writes the best material.
FOR FURTHER READING
Jan Harold Brunvand. “The Baby-sitter and the Man Upstairs.” In Encyclopedia of Urban Legends (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2001), 28–9.
As Niels Belanger implies, various urban legends circulate about the most heartwarming yet psychologically disturbing of professions: clowns. Some are quite benign, and some are scary.
The benign legends often involve clowns who are part of a franchise—Bozo or Ronald MacDonald, for example. Because actors in cities around the world have portrayed these characters at local events and live television programs, such legends are difficult to prove or disprove. For example, some tales from the mid-1960s involve bloopers occurring during a Bozo the Clown broadcast either from a foul-mouthed child, or from one of the actors as a result of an open mic gaffe. While this is certainly plausible, Brunvand has identified similar faux pas in older non-clown urban legends, suggesting that the Bozo version is fictional. I’ve also heard stories circulated about actors portraying some famous clown being drunk on-air or at a public appearance. And the Internet is full of claims of Ronald McDonald being arrested.
As for the scary ones: Urban legends are supposed to reflect our fears—and clowns are creepy to a lot of people—so why not? Perhaps the best-known creepy clown urban legend involves a babysitter who is working for a new couple. At one point the couple check in and the babysitter has two requests: 1) Can she watch television? Sure. 2) Can she throw a blanket over the clown statue, it’s creeping her out. The couple instruct her and the children to get out of the house immediately: they don’t own a clown statue. The police soon arrive and arrest the disguised home invader.
Even more persistent are scares that claim a group of clowns in a van are abducting and murdering children. Originating in the New England and Midwestern states in 1981 (according to Brunvand), subsequent flaps were observed in 1985 (Phoenix, AZ) and 1991 (“ranging from New Jersey to Chicago,” Brunvand, p. 314) before crossing the Atlantic to the UK. Whenever these reports are investigated by authorities or the press, they never produce any evidence.
And so we come to The Billionth Monkey, where these legends were simply too good and opportunity to pass up. The names of the clowns we meet on page 177 et seq. are references to other famous clowns:
Poundfoolish: The logical counterpart to Pennywise from Stephen King’s novel It (1986).
Pennywise as portrayed by Tim Curry in the 1990 tv miniseries of Stephen King’s It
[originally broadcast on ABC, distributed by Warner Bros.]
Roland MacPoland: Sorta-spoonerism of Ronald MacDonald.
In this uniquely American urban legend (even when told in other countries, it usually involves Americans), two or three middle-aged women find themselves riding a resort hotel elevator with an imposing-looking black man and his dog. When the man orders the dog to sit, the ladies drop to the floor thinking they are about to be mugged. Some versions have the ladies drop when asked to “Hit the floor” i.e., press the button on the elevator. Only later do they realize they were riding with a celebrity such as Reggie Jackson or Eddie Murphy, who takes it all with good humor. In some telling someone, the celebrity sends them roses and pays their hotel bill as a thank-you for the best laugh they’ve ever had.
Despite the racist subtext of this legend, Campion-Vincent points out that themes of tolerance and modernity run through this and similar urban legends. Mikkelson argues that urban legends tend to portray popular fears, and it is only fairly recently that the racist elements of the Elevator Incident have become secondary for many modern listeners, who instead interpret it as an amusing brush with celebrity and largesse (i.e., having the room paid for and roses sent).
Some have debated whether this 1980s-vintage urban legend was the result of a sitcom joke (its structure certainly resembles one), or whether the legend itself inspired the sitcom. Both Brunvand and Mikkelson point to versions of this legend from previous decades, suggesting that the legend came before the well-known Bob Newhart episode. Indeed, according to Brunvand, one early version of this legend contains none of the racial elements and simply involves an elevator rider dropping to the floor when an authority figure on the elevator calls to his friend, Neil. This is the variant that figures into The Billionth Monkey, and is one of two reasons for our protagonist’s name (the second occurring here).
For Further Reading
Jan Harold Brunvand. “The Elevator Incident.” In Encyclopedia of Urban Legends (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2001), 131–2.
The dialogue on pages 166–172 of The Billionth Monkey references a host of popular/cult movies. Did you catch them all? As I wrote in a previous post, everyone I know quotes books, tv shows, movies, and song lyrics in normal conversation, and I wanted to make that part of how my characters interacted. Here are the film references in these seven pages:
I copy, Gold Leader: From the climactic assault on the Death Star in Star Wars (i.e. Episode IV: A New Hope , 1977).
Ich luge bullets: Spoken by J.D. (Christian Slater) in Heathers (1988):
There must always be two: Another Star Wars reference, to the Rule of Two.
You have to know these things when: A slightly modified version of the classic line from Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), uttered by Graham Chapman's King Arthur:
I recall vividly the day that UFO culture changed in my eyes. It wasn’t a gradual shift in the zeitgeist, but a seismic event. One day aliens were benign scientists gathering data about our curious blue marble and the even more curious humans that inhabited it. Television characters like My Favorite Martian and The Great Gazoo from The Flintstones, the optimism of Star Trek, films like Close Encounters and ET, popular songs like Klaatu’s Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft (famously covered by the Carpenters) and Yes’s Arriving UFO, and all the ancient astronaut books claiming that aliens had visited and helped manking through the ages: these popularized a benevolent image of UFOs throughout the 1960s and 1970s. When there was a UFO flap in my town, for days I watched the skies expectantly hoping to glimpse an alien visitor.
Then one day I opened my eyes to find we had rekindled the paranoia of earlier generations: the horrors of 1950s moviegoers, the hostile invaders of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds (1897 for the book, 1929 for the radio play, 1953 for the movie, and 1978 for Jeff Wayne’s musical). For me, that day arrived with the April 1978 issue of Official UFO magazine, which purported to show photos of alien spacecraft destroying—and then reconstructing—the town of Chester, IL. For a young person, it was scary, exhilarating, and AWESOME. This paranoia paved the way for everything from scary-alien movies like ID4 to the whole grays-vs-black-slime-vs-bee-clone alien confusion that was The X-Files. And let us not forget Lord Kinbote.
The April 1978 issue of Official UFO was a game-changer for tween me.
The conversation on page 170 of The Billionth Monkey reflects my off-the-cuff perceptions about this time. Could this supposed change just be a reflection of a dewey-eyed tween’s loss
of innocence, recognizing the scary alien trope that has always been there?
Perhaps, but it seems that the tenor of conversations about UFOs
definitely changed in those days from the scores of mass-market UFO paperbacks that had littered my bookshelves. While other people may have observed this shift at different times or places, Official UFO is when I first noticed it. I saved that magazine to this very day (the image above is a scan of my copy).
