(Reviewed by JD Jung)
“The next thing Herb knew he was standing naked in the Johns Hopkins University powerhouse with a combination of Kennedy’s brains and his study date’s menstrual blood smeared all over his body…”
This hallucination was among many as Herb Horn was near death after an explosion in Viet Nam. He had an obsession with finding out the truth behind the JFK assassination. Before serving in the war, he was expelled from John Hopkins for accusing Lyndon Johnson for the murder. Herb’s other possible scenarios would later include a mafia hit or that Joe Kennedy sold his soul to the devil.
For most of the 1970s he was recovering from combat injuries while suffering from permanent PTSD. During this time, he was plagued with an overactive imagination that quietly drove him nuts. The cartoon characters that he grew up with from an amusement park franchise kept creeping back into his mind and he believed that they were controlling society as a whole.
He joined up with some fellow vets and they go through many bizarre adventures for various purposes. Most of all they try to make sense of what was happening to America with the purpose of saving the country from corporate brainwashing and control . However, paranoia, lust and drugs try to to divert them along the way.
Amerikan Krazy takes us on a hilarious, surrealistic trip through American political and cultural history. Part fact, part conjecture with a lot of fiction, this story provides a cautionary tale for American society.
Chunks of current day culture creep into the story such as AnonyMouse (the cartoon mouse) and cell phones. I’m sure that I didn’t even catch all of them. I thought that the bit with Teyvon Rudolph, the fictional son of Olympic track star Wilma Rudolph and JFK was in bad taste though. The murder of the young Floridian a few years ago is still painful for most of us.
That said, Author Henry James Korn’s bold and irreverent style is what I liked most about the story. If you’re interested in a bizarre fictional take on American history, this is for you . Just remember, American Krazy is not for those who are easily offended.
