Rhino History, Other Lies and All That Jazz [Format Kindle]

Like `The Iliad', Gonzo Fubar Van Rasputin's `Rhino History' begins in the middle of a nasty, chaotic, and menacingly surreal war. Stephen Harper murders a judge and dumps the body in the Lachine Canal. Peter Mansbridge shoots his wife in the neck with a tranquilizer dart. Gretzky crashes a Don Cherry tantrum. Harper lies about soiling his pants in a limousine. Somebody named `Zilla' rollerblades through Parliament on coke, smashing windows and singing AC/DC...

And that's just the first few pages.

After blasting out a tsunami of glorious, high-octane Canuck absurdity, the author finally turns to his traumatized readership and winks: "But wait. You don't really understand what's going, do you gentle reader? No, you cannot understand."

Like Homer, Rasputin then circles back to tell the story of how the war began, clearing the field of carnage so he can turn the fire hose on us again.

The torrent that ensues is the story of the Canadian Rhinoceros Party, an anarchist, absurdist movement of-sorts that (almost) died when the Mulroney government introduced provisions making it much more difficult for wise-guys to run for office. Rasputin packages the history of the Rhinos in four acts, breezing through the first thirty or-so years in order to focus on lesser-known events following the party's west coast resurrection in the early nineties.

The story speeds along in a frenetic, rock'n'roll style that reminds me of Hunter S. Thompson's `Better Than Sex' (and not only because the author's first name is Gonzo). Like Thompson, Rasputin chews through mundane reality so he can stick his tongue on truth's electric core. This is what Canadian history looks like to a lunatic in shock therapy--and it is a profound thing to behold.