Throat Sprockets by Tim Lucas

Throat Sprockets was written by Tim Lucas and published in 1994 by Delta Books.

I picked this book up on a whim, not knowing that it had been listed by Rue Morgue as one of their "50 essential alternative horror novels," among other accolades.

I can see why it garnered such attention. Lucas chronicles his protagonist's (unnamed, an affectation that works here) growing obsession with the film Throat Sprockets and how that fixation draws him, and eventually the world, into oblivion.

Throat Sprockets is absolutely dominated by the influences of Lynch and Burroughs, which is both good and bad for the novel. Lucas juxtaposes the film and the protagonist's life as they intertwine, until the whole world is drawn into "sprocketing," the vampiric throat fetish featured in the film, and characters in the film begin to make appearances in the protagonist's life.

This use of overlapping symbols works for most of the novel, until the last section. I just don't know what to think of the last chapter. It almost ruined the entire book for me, honestly. Did Lucas really need to push the film's influence all the way to destroying the world? In the chapter before, we see how pervasive the film has become, how society has contorted itself into a mimic of the film.

Really, I think this vision of declining society is more evocative than a ruined landscape. The last chapter comes across as muddy and confused, with the Christian anti-vampire group STOKER roaming the land like Burroughs' Wild Boys, killing off sprocketers. It just came across as too contrived, and left me in a funk all night after I finished reading.

The Novel, Minus the Last Chapter: A

The Last Chapter: I don't even know.