Baby Got Books

Martin Millar Part 2: Lux

If you missed Part 1 yesterday, I reviewed the Scottish author Martin Millar’s book Milk, Sulphate, and Alby Starvation. Today I’m set to tackle Millar’s Lux the Poet. The novel was Millar’s second and was originally published in 1989. I read the two books back-to-back in an extended reading jag. I noted yesterday that the two books are similar in many respects, but they are certainly different enough to stand on their own. So now…

Lux the Poet

“At seventeen, Lux the poet is a natural optimist, undeterred by life’s misfortunes.” Lux is a deadbeat living in squats and the couches of friends that he has yet to piss off. He would certainly get beat up more regularly if he were not so handsome, in a Lana Turner kind of way. He would also be the most successful poet in Britain if he could only find someone that would listen to his poems. He is also an inveterate liar and a thief.

The Brixton neighborhood around Lux is in flames due to a riot of the downtrodden against the police. Petrol bombs ignite cars and buildings. Rocks are shattering windows and heads. And Lux is largely oblivious.

Lux is back in the riot. He has no idea why it is going on.

“Why is there a riot going on?” he asks a stranger, an elderly man who is standing beside him watching some people across the street throwing stones.

“We are suffering more than usual,” says the man.

“Oh. Who is?”

“Us. Black people. No jobs, no money, policemen stopping the youth in the street all day.”

Lux is concerned to hear this…

Still, he doesn’t quite understand why anyone would riot if they couldn’t get a job. Lux would be more inclined to riot if he had to get one.

Amid the riot, Lux is struggling to find Pearl, a girl that he is currently in love with. Pearl has escaped from her burning house with her girlfriend Nicky. Nicky has escaped from her employer, Happy Science PLC, which was attempting to use her in some experiments involving sperm from genius donors. Nicky is also grieving for the PC that she has murdered. The Jane Austen Mercenaries, a thrash metal band and Lux’s downstairs neighbors, are after Lux for ingesting all of their cocaine and destroying their demo tapes. Oh, and a goddess evicted from heaven and doomed to walk the earth doing good works stumbles across the ensemble. In short, chaos reigns.

In Lux, Millar continues to cast stones at the establishment. The police are racists, corporate culture is an oxymoron, and even the literary world is a sham. All hide behind facades. The police are behind their riot shields. A hilarious side plot involves an accounting executive at Happy Science who calls headhunting firms to inquire about himself in the hopes of creating the illusion of a bidding war for himself among foreign multinational corporations. Britain’s biggest taste maker in the world of books confesses that he is able to write so many excellent reviews each week by not using up precious time reading books. Ouch.

Lux is an unforgettable literary character. As much as you might want to strangle him, you’d be sad to see him gone. And then he’d something from you and you’d want to strangle him again. If you’re up for it, I wholly recommend reading both Alby Starvation and Lux, preferably when you have time to crank through them together. They are fun, and they are smart. Read them at the beach while listening to The Clash’s Guns of Brixton.

The Clash – Guns of Brixton

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Supplement:

Lux and Alby appear to have been such popular characters that they eventually joined forces in a 1999 UK graphic novel titled Lux and Alby Sign On and Save the Universe (a new copy will set you back $325 on Amazon).

And as far as I can tell, Lux the poet is not in any way a swipe at the poet Thomas Lux, who currently holds the Bourne Chair in Poetry at Georgia Tech.