The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Cobralingus by Jeff Noon
David Ian Paddy

Jeff Noon. Cobralingus. Codex, 2001. 120 pp. Paper: $14.95.

Jeff Noon first came to the public’s attention as Britain’s first cyberpunk with the surrealist science fiction novel Vurt, in which desperate urban dwellers enter a virtual world by sucking on feathers. Noon has since shown himself to be a writer of wild imaginative range, one who hopes to shed the science-fiction label so that he may be viewed as an experimental writer. Noon has taken advantage of his interest in music, especially the punk and techno music of Manchester, his birthplace, to showcase one possible route to new literary forms. Cobralingus, Noon’s eighth work, pushes music as a source of inspiration for literary creation. Noon adapts the techniques of electronic dance music to generate texts, which he calls “metamorphiction” and “dub fiction.” In dub, musicians remix recorded material to create new pieces, adding new layers of sound, removing tracks, and changing arrangements. The process is extended in the way a DJ mixes samples. Applying these ideas to language, Noon “samples” literary texts (Dickinson, Shakespeare, Zane Grey) and nonliterary texts (street names, race cards, a shipping forecast), then modifies them through various imaginative “filter gates” (such as “decay,” “overload,” “randomise,” “search & replace,” and “find story”). The result is a group of ten experimental pieces with names like “Bridal Suite Production” and “Dubchester Kissing Machine.” There are echoes of Burroughs/Gysin’s cut-up method, surrealist automatic writing, and, most prominently, the Oulipo’s literature of constraint. Many of the pieces take on a visual form reminiscent of concrete poetry, which is enhanced by the inclusion of illustrations by Daniel Allington, adding image to the mix of text and music. Noon has long identified himself as an “avant pulp” writer who aims to fuse avant-garde and popular forms. In Cobralingus he’s definitely created an experimental work you can dance to. [David Ian Paddy]


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The Review of Contemporary Fiction Cobralingus by Jeff Noon David Ian Paddy Jeff Noon. Cobralingus. Codex, 2001. 120 pp. Paper: $14.95. Jeff Noon first came to the public’s attention as Britain’s first cyberpunk with the surrealist science fiction novel Vurt, in which desperate urban dwellers enter a virtual world by sucking on feathers. Noon has since shown himself to be a writer of wild imaginative range, one who hopes to shed the science-fiction label so that he may be viewed as an experimental writer. Noon has taken advantage of his interest in music, especially the punk and techno music of Manchester, his birthplace, to showcase one possible route to new literary forms. Cobralingus, Noon’s eighth work, pushes music as a source of inspiration for literary creation. Noon adapts the techniques of electronic dance music to generate texts, which he calls “metamorphiction” and “dub fiction.” In dub, musicians remix recorded material to create new pieces, adding new layers of sound, removing tracks, and changing arrangements. The process is extended in the way a DJ mixes samples. Applying these ideas to language, Noon “samples” literary texts (Dickinson, Shakespeare, Zane Grey) and nonliterary texts (street names, race cards, a shipping forecast), then modifies them through various imaginative “filter gates” (such as “decay,” “overload,” “randomise,” “search & replace,” and “find story”). The result is a group of ten experimental pieces with names like “Bridal Suite Production” and “Dubchester Kissing Machine.” There are echoes of Burroughs/Gysin’s cut-up method, surrealist automatic writing, and, most prominently, the Oulipo’s literature of constraint. Many of the pieces take on a visual form reminiscent of concrete poetry, which is enhanced by the inclusion of illustrations by Daniel Allington, adding image to the mix of text and music. Noon has long identified himself as an “avant pulp” writer who aims to fuse avant-garde and popular forms. In Cobralingus he’s definitely created an experimental work you can dance to. [David Ian Paddy]

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