Book Review : David James Keaton - Head Cleaner (2023)
I'm old enough to remember a world without any form of digital life. No computers. No internet. Nothing. We used ancient, cumbersome technology that allowed us access to much less entertainment then, but the ritual of interacting with it brought us joy: going to the video store, selecting a movie, mentally processing it while rewinding the VHS tape and whatnot. David James Keaton's new novel Head Cleaner is about that process and whether it was really all that great or not. Well, sort of.
Head Cleaner tells the story of Eva, Jerry and Randy, the three remaining employees of the so-called Last Blockbuster video store. Two slackers and one tyrannical manager who medicates his own social and emotional shortcomings by exerting power over this employees. They live small and comforting lives buried into the past until the day Eva decides to raid the house of the biggest truant client in the history of the store and find old films with a completely different endings than the originals.
Our problem with the past
David James Keaton loves old movies. If you've followed him on social media for more than a couple weeks, you'll notice how he loves old movies and the old, analog technologies that powered them. He explores this obsession in Head Cleaner through his characters' relationship with the past. Eva, Jerry and Randy lives in the twenty-first century physically, but mentally they are still immersed in the eighties and nineties. This is really important because in Head Cleaner, the past changes the future.
Of course, the past always changes the future. Any self-respecting human being that goes through some difficult shit will deliberately reorganize their lives in order not to experience the aforementioned difficult shit again. What makes Head Cleaner interesting and different is that Eva, Jerry and Randy are witnesses to these changes. They see it happening on the magic VCR that rewrites reality and have to adjust their lives according in order to avoid an endless loop of sad and tragic endings.
The plot of Head Cleaner reminded me of Mark Fisher's theory of the slow cancellation of the future. The idea that the more of the past we have easy access to, the harder it is to break free from it and create an actual future that isn't a soulless replica of what already happened. Eva, Jerry and Randy are slaves to a past technology that rewrites their future and their only way to avoid the fate it has in store for them is to break their relationship with it in the present. Because we do have a problem with the past.
While the premise of Head Cleaner is absolutely wacky and sometimes hard to follow, the key to enjoying the novel and accessing the depth of its reflexion lies in the smaller character moments, which there isn't a shortage of. Head Cleaner wouldn't work (at least it wouldn't work as we as it does) without the true passion Eva, Jerry and Randy show for old movies. Nostalgia is the bond David James Keaton uses to make his slacker characters sympathetic to us, which leads me to my following point.
Questioning the validity of nostalgia
The main reason why I liked Head Cleaner is because it is a novel mostly about nostalgia that is neither pro or anti-nostalgia. It simply asks the question: 'were old times as cool as we remember them to be?' without every really answering it. All three protagonists of Head Cleaner question the validity of their own memories, first by seeing their favourite movies' ending change and then by seeing their own lives being altered by the soul-sucking, reality writing VCR. It traps them in the present.
There's a scene I particularly like between the manager Randy and a cartoonish Kevin Smith enthusiast that embodies perfectly this tension between the past that was and the past we choose to remember. The enthusiast in question Nate is discussing with Randy about hating customers although he is an insufferable customer himself and quotes approximately from Clerks like he was talking about his own memories, which Randy quickly corrects him about. Nate lives his life by procuration.
It might seem like an inconsequential scene to you, but it's not. David James Keaton's writing is excruciating at times because lengthy and seemingly self-indulgent scenes like this tie up to what is actually going on in the novel. It takes time and effort to dig up. but the payoff is inevitably there. Keaton can be alienating at times (and he definitely is in Head Cleaner), but he's never unfair. You just need to come in with a bro-I have-all-the-time-in-the-world-so-fucking-hit-me-with-all-you-got mindset.
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I liked Head Cleaner. I would even say that I really liked it a lot despite having my patience tested in the second half of the novel. It's really difficult for me to begrudge or even dislike a novel that is so boundless, original and energetic even if it kind of trips in its own complexity at times. As it is often the case with David James Keaton's writing, I believe half of the people reading it will hate the living fuck out of it and the other will rejoice. Head Cleaner is the evil twin of Nick Hornby novels.
