Muck was asked by Faber and Faber in 1993 to write a novel. This is hardly surprising given that at the time he was widely considered to be the poet of his generation, a writer of rare insight and understanding comparable to Rimbaud and Rilke. It soon became apparent however that Muck was perhaps too drugged out of his brain to deliver a coherent book on any subject and the novel missed deadline after deadline before being released to critical disdain in February 1995.Arachnid is notoriously impenetrable, many sentences make no sense on a literal or metaphorical level and there is no discernable plot to speak of. Griel Marcus has described the book as the "Finnegans Wake of rock n' roll." Robert Christgau was more blunt however when he described the album as "utter shite, unreadable, unreal, unread."
It is rather difficult to comprehend a novel that begins:
"Moonflake sunset on the glib highway clavicle, buckets of brawn and a narcoleptic raven, hills of mythological indifference penetrate the eyeline like the quasi-satiric ramblings of an emaciated hedge. Johann shouts 'adieu' and porn floods the wardrobe, speckled boots of chunky chatter, syphilitic windmills blight my dawn, animal my thumb, bid fairwell to the sex robot and burn your schoolbooks in the Japanese consulate bathroom..."
The book continues in this vein for 722 pages, each more absurd than the last. It finishes:
"...ho ho ho sang the glovebox moonshine hotelier, brink my brick and cogitate on a kestrel's kiss whilst painting in the pitch-black of daylight. No said Zeus, grasping a kettle with his logic, cheat clamboured colour amid dinosaur windows, Nixon frowning like a ditch in lingerie, my name is Brendan Squirm I swear on my tits, who dies for freedom(pee-dome) if treasure does not exist? Pope Chomsky? Remember the Argonauts and try to forget tomorrow, ho ho ho."
It's no classic.
