BOOK REVIEW: The House of Rumor

In The House of Rumor Jake Arnott attempts to link together a handful of obscure cultural mysteries from the last seventy years into a loose theory of existence, centering it on the fictional persona of Sci-Fi writer Larry Zigorski. Zigorski comes of age in the early 1940’s and as a precocious writer at the dawn of the golden age of speculative fiction is drawn into the orbit of Robert Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard and Jack Parsons. Meanwhile, in a parallel story, the persons of Ian Fleming, Rudolph Hess and Aleister Crowley toil at information, disinformation, and survival at the height of World War II in England and Europe.

Arnott’s narrative plays fairly loose with time, moving ahead and establishing a bookend in the 1980’s with a circle of post-punk transvestites and musicians who are linked to the WWII and Science Fiction narratives trough unhappy coincidence and the transfer of information, disinformation, and rumor. The uncertain nature of events, the inherent instability of knowledge, and its similarity to speculation and prediction are the all-pervasive themes of The House of Rumor. Through the lives and musings of British spies, renowned novelists, occult sages, and all of the points where their lives intersect, we get the impression of existence as a garbled message, an obscure transmission, equally visible and equally clouded from all relative points.

Arnott’s book contains much that is remarkable, scenes like a conversation between Ian Fleming and Aleister Crowley, convincing evocations of the crackle of energy as L. Ron Hubbard fences with rocketry expert and charismatic occultist Jack Parsons, the vision of the beach in Cuba the day Castro lifted the exit restrictions and there was a mass exodus upon makeshift rafts for Florida, and a harrowing blow by blow envisioning of the events of Jonestown through the eyes of a twelve year old boy. These items are tremendous and remain in the memory. Yet the book in all its meanderings leaves many story threads frustratingly half spun, like what of the young reporter with the same last name as one of the main characters, last seen preparing to make love to an emotionally vulnerable trans-sexual? Or what of the old spy master whose mishandled memoirs cost lives and scandal but whose fate and reaction we hear nothing of? There are so many instances of the unresolved in this book, ideas left hanging.

The story ends with Larry Zigorski addressing us with the full weight of our shared knowledge about his life and obsessions. He’s looking back and summing it all up. To my sensibility, for a book that began by moving so swiftly between fascinating set ups, its conclusion comes upon a distractingly ponderous note. It is for the most part a book of winks and playful hints, and for the end to be an over-serious meditation on the literal “meaning” of it all feels a tiny bit flat.

That said; The House of Rumor is full of interesting speculation and fascinating glimpses onto cultural crossroads we’ve all likely wondered about. Beyond that it reveals a richness of subculture it’s fun to be faced with after so long thinking one’s self too sophisticated for surprises anymore. In fact most of the strangest things and oddest people in the book are the real ones, and it leaves one to wonder about the details. How much of it credibly reflect reality and how much of it is amusing dissimulation? Jake Arnott has taken as his subject the un-knowability of truth and left it admirably muddled.