HEADFUCK

Talk about a full-on headfuck. Blood Electric is a hybrid of Burroughsian cut-up, ultra-modern stream-of-consciousness and – I swear – what looks like HTML coding . . . Let’s just say, it’s not the easiest book in the world. Jack Hunter (author of Eros in Hell) says that it is “a cyborg crash nightmare of the new flesh, a final despatch from the mutant Hell where the embryo hunts in secret.” Stephen Barber (author of Tokyo Vertigo) finds in Blood Electric “a virulently warped amalgam of Tetsuo and cut-up era William Burroughs . . .” We say: yeah fine okay but who is man, woman, machine enough to get through the damn thing from one side to the other . . . Figuring that the only way to get answers to these questions was to ask the man himself, Stoop confronted Blood Electric author Kenji Siratori . . .

Stoop: Let’s start the only way I know how. Can you talk me through Blood Electric - describe the book to me in your own words.

Kenji Siratori: My writing was born with the horizon of techno – I'm advocating nerve physics here – I process violence and sex as the reality of data – I take a view of my conceptual web with nerve experiences. The writing is linked to how I game this expanded hardweb for me – such a method that touches to my brain more cruelly. In my writing the language cell is able to be distorted by the infinite hyperlink of the synapse – 'a new language' is the conceptual pain – all the data act as the hardweb character as if I dissect subjective writing, I'm striking the nude brain to a screen. This is the practice that hardweb creatures were disclosed. Blood Electric is presenting the aspect of a genetic hardweb clearly – the nerve cells that run through our gene dub – is the strategic object that our body codes erodes the world - 'literature is networking to our gene dub'

S: You say "Writing born with the horizon of techno" - Are you saying that dance music and dance culture is an influence on your writing?

KS: Yes–my writing is an industrial human body emulator–virus for the Genomics strategy. Rave that was turned hypertext is body-encoded.

S: Furthermore, would you say your writing was narcotic (in the way that, say, Coleridge or de Quincey or Burroughs or countless others wrote while "under the influence")?

KS: Vital browser of nerve system is opened–language cell spins to genomewarable–nomads of the spiral form occur from my writing.

S: You talk about "new writing" - aren't you just dressing up what the modernists did at the start of the twentieth century, a method Burroughs did something to update but which is in essence "stream of consciousness", albeit stream of consciousness infiltrated by technology and html code etc?

KS: I advocate a hypermodern literature to pop culture–it means the invasion to the gene code–and to update our abolition world code–because the characteristic of 20th century style 'hardweb' is a struggle. However my language cell is streaming the genomewarable struggle as 21st century style 'hardweb'.

S: Who are you writing for? Who do you imagine your reader to be? Would you admit there was an element of impenetrability to "Blood Electric"?

KS: I upload the focus of the nerve system–everything is to contact our language cells that were exposed to gene terrorism–I manufacture the literary plug-in of a vital browser.

S: Like a lot of experimental fiction, you expect your readers to work pretty hard - should reading be this difficult?

KS: I expect my readers to scan the language cell–to cause the cracking of the gene corroded–to stream the change to the human body emulator.

At this point, with blood spewing from his eyes, Stoop collapsed in a heap. Nothing seemed to make sense anymore. He contemplated suicide. He contemplated the idea of grafting machine parts into his brain somehow, wondering if a fusion of man and machine was maybe the way forward. Stoop was beaten. Beaten, I tell you. We took him in, we shored him up, we got Oscar Goldman to rebuild him. It cost us six million dollars (there goes the marketing budget) but it was worth it. Stoop was a bigger man. I won’t let him beat me, Stoop said. I’m going back in. Watch out Kenji Siratori, here I come.

S: I think we need to define terms more clearly: what do you mean by "industrial human body emulator"? What do you mean by the term "genomewarable"? What do you mean by the phrase "the invasion to the gene code . . ."?

KS: "industrial human body emulator"–it functions as a literary hacker in our genetic network. . . "genomewarable"–the hyperlinking genetic information–the genetic engineering liquidity of hardweb. . . "the invasion to the gene code"–so language cells in gene dub are produced by the genetic 'struggle=hardweb'.

S: There is a sense, I think, that you hide behind coded responses – you don't clearly articulate answers - do you sublimate the intimacy of your SELF behind cyber doublespeak?

KS: So I cause to escape SELF of the spiral mechanism to positive–it is the language cell sequence that was approximated to nerve transmission.

S: What is the TRUTH - for you - of what you say - yes, you have to work to uncover the meaning of your book (and the answers to these questions) but, having worked, what is there? Is it worthwhile, this "streaming of the genomewarable struggle . . ."?

KS: TRUTH–data trash in the brain universe–nerve violence and nerve sex—we scan reality with the HIV form.

S: On the one hand, you've got STYLE - your style, this "new" style - but on the other you've got storytelling - the importance of telling a story in a way that can be understood (maybe not right away, but eventually) - are you telling a story in Blood Electric, or is telling a story outmoded?

KS: I go across the digital narrative in the human body–Blood Electric is such software that captures "the digital narrative in the human body" and is archive that connects my digital narrative to your digital narrative.

S: Who is Kenji Siratori - man or machine?!?!

KS: He is one hardweb that hyperlinked to our genetic information . . .

Figuring that the impenetrability of Blood Electric reflects the impenetrability (or lunacy - we can't decide) of the man, Stoop decided to call it a day at this point. Blood Electric is published by Creation Books. Read it if you dare.

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