A for Anything

by Damon Knight

So go ahead and blame me for only buying books at yard sales, library sales, and huge, humongous, semi-professional Friends of the Library sales. That, if you must know, is why I'm writing a review of a book written in 1959 that is, apparently, Damon Knight's second book. (At least according to the inside list of publications, which we all know is not an exhaustive list by any means.)

The Devil's Day was the first book I read by Knight, and it was intriguing not only for its topic (Armageddon happens and the Earth is given to the Devil) or its theme (We punish ourselves and each other far better than any demon could) but because it mixes genres. The last part of the book is in play form with the Devil speaking in verse as though his words were a lost fragment of Paradise Lost. It was completely unexpected and managed to work quite well, somehow the change of form to an obviously created script making the story more real and affecting than it would have been otherwise.

That book was written at least twenty years after A for Anything but they share some basic similarities. First there is the obvious: the overt writing style and wordcraft; the dark tone; and the powerful need to let us know what could happen if nothing changes in the world. Far more interesting to me are the subtle links, such as the way the story is constructed.

There is no play inserted into A for Anything and there is no genre-breaking. What Knight begins with is confusion. The first four chapters introduce and follow characters, then drop them. By the time I reached the fourth chapter I had decided this was the pattern and prepared myself for 192 pages of character after character. I was not excited.

I can see that this is not seeming like a stellar review. (Then again, I haven't even told you what the book is about (see: title). How can this be a review without a summary?)

What I came to respect about this book was how it tied itself together. In small ways (Like a song you only hear on one radio station - you hear it again and you know what you're listening to and why), I read a sentence and then connected it, several pages later, to other parts of the book, early groundwork. The things I noticed weren't even necessary for the plot, but they made the book real. The first three chapters set up a bulk of the resonances that pop up throughout the novel, telling, for what seem like simple background reasons, the history of the world the main story occupies. The frustratingly beautiful aspect is how Knight made me care about each character in the three chapters, made me want to follow each for the rest of the book, and then didn't.
I tell you it's worth it. It's sad and angry and depressing, but it's worth it. So read it.

If you have trouble finding it, the former title (according to the legend on the bottom of the cover) was The People Maker. If that doesn't tell you what the book's about, I don't know what will. (Except a synopsis. Damn.)

-Andrew Kozma