Duckie Ought to Win: Preston Fassel’s The Despicable Fantasies of Quentin Sergenov

Quentin Sergenov has had a rough life. He’s a child abuse survivor. He managed to pull himself up by the bootstraps, left his UK birthplace behind and became a successful wrestler with the Americans, fighting with the infamous Backbreaker Championship Wrestling Federation (BCWF). However, after being outed as gay in a sport that caters to fans terrified of gays, he’s blacklisted. On the skids, he winds up in the hands of some terrible people who scoop out his brain and dump it into the body of a manufactured Deinonychus (a relative of the much better known Velociraptor). He escapes his tormentors, builds himself a stronghold where he can cater to his love for the underdog of Pretty in Pink (1986) and make aesthetically pleasing, emotionally challenging video montages while living off his wrestling savings. It’s a somewhat secluded life to say the least, but one he lives out of necessity, with occasional forays to science fiction conventions, where he can walk around without fear of people freaking out—instead, they geek out at his seamless, realistic animatronics.

However, the past has a way of catching up with us, often when we least expect it to. The BCWF is coming to town, and in its roster is the one that got away: handsome, surfer-dude Wave. Quentin and Wave have history together, but unfortunately Wave ended things when he got too scared about his career. So, is this a chance for a reunion? Is this a chance for the loser to actually win for a change? On his journey toward love, Quentin also might also get a little bit of revenge for his treatment by the industry he sweated, bled, and cried for. And who knows, maybe fantasies (no matter how much society deems them despicable) can become reality …

Until he came to the Houston Alamo Drafthouse to host a showing of Miike Takashi’s Audition (1999), I was unfamiliar with author Preston Fassel. He’s a charming fellow, very giddy when it comes to talking about some of his influences—our brief conversation included the J-horror surge of the 00s as well as the works of Herman Rauch. He’s a passionate, personable gent. These personality elements show up in spades in the utterly bananas short novel, The Despicable Fantasies of Quentin Sergenov.

The book carries a lot of gonzo ideas. Human brains transplanted into dinosaur bodies? Nazi researchers (and their grad students) operating just out of sight? The wrestling world turned upside down by a guy choking his chicken to a Charlie Chaplin poster? A dinosaur’s drool-heavy make out session with the actor who portrayed an unnamed red shirt extra in the original run of Star Trek? Several accidental bloody dismemberments? Several more intentional bloody dismemberments? A lengthy diatribe about why John Cryer’s Duckie character really should have gotten the girl in Pretty in Pink? A menagerie of manmade freaks, including an engine that runs on unexpected fuel source and a creature shaped like Tim Curry’s demonic Satan—err, I mean Darkness—from Legend (1985)? This is bizarro stuff to say the least. That there is an enviable black humor running throughout the material is also a plus. However, Fassel’s novel also has a beating heart and a flood of emotional material to leaven out the crazier side. Quentin Sergenov is someone we can care about, even when he’s slashing people to ribbons, mashing people into paste, or gobbling up the evidence …

This is a solid character study, an intriguing flipside to James Purdy’s grotesque southern gothic In A Shallow Grave, which we reviewed a few weeks back. Fassel’s book has a much more visceral quality to its proceedings, but the qualities of isolation, of yearning, of subtle paranoia, sexual awakening, and broken psychology mirror one another nicely. Fassel’s book may be bloodier than Purdy’s, but both books examine characters who are forced into an outsider role by exposure to horrific events outside their control.

In addition to being a fairly good flipside to James Purdy’s work, the book echoes the sorts of things Nathaniel West wrote at the beginning of his career. The Despicable Fantasies of Quentin Sergenov is a kind of gruesome echo of the surreal, nasty, and satiric The Dream Life of Lionel Snell.

Fassel has a decidedly cinematic style to his prose. We can almost describe this book as what might happen if someone slammed the broken relationship elements of Miike’s masterpiece with the gore edition of Tammy and the T-Rex (1994/2019), added sprinklings of Molly Ringwald’s various turns as the queen of 1980s teen dramedy, and then served over a bed of John Waters quirkiness …

The author serves up a crazy stew of elements to be sure, and the result sits well on a shelf alongside works by Andersen Prunty or Carlton Mellick III. This might be a bit more out there than casual readers of the macabre and bizarre tend to go, but it’s a surprisingly enjoyable enterprise that doesn’t overstay its welcome. Better, it serves as a terrific gateway to the harder surrealism of other bizarro entries. Then again, it’d make a fine double feature for the mind’s eye alongside Stephen Graham Jones’ gonzo zombie novel, Zombie Bake Off.

From a structural perspective, the book is told along two concurrent storylines, Quentin’s hopeful, contemporary adventures (circa 2002) as a Deinonychus-man and his sadder, stranger history in 1990s. The latter sees his transformation, and the former sees his armor of isolation slipping as he yearns for contact. The writing is clever, the meshing together of these sequences is well done, and there’s a dueling banjos quality that drives toward empowerment on two different fronts: one through embracing the physical person one actually is, and the other by embracing the emotional person we are. Neither of these storylines arises from necessarily healthy decisions, but we don’t read this kind of fiction in search of characters making the best decisions.

Let’s consider an early sequence dramatizing the aftermath of Quentin and Wave’s relationship:

Wave collected his things, got dressed, and left. Quentin spent the rest of the night sitting on the edge of his bed, staring out the window onto the sparking city night, like a jeweled heaven beneath him. When the sun rose, stared at it, too, his eyes red and raw, until the sky began to cloud over and a gentle mist coated the window. Then he stood and strode into the bathroom, found a complimentary shaving razor, cracked it open, and drove the blade sideways across his forehead. At first there was no mark; then a second passed and the lip of the wound frowned wide, a curtain of blood flowing down his face to mask it with a crimson veil.

The Despicable Fantasies of Quentin Sergenov, 24-25

The moment is well-staged, using minimal detail to paint an intriguing picture. We get clear sense of despair, and yet there are few inner monologue intrusions in this culminating moment. The wounded heart and broken spirits are broadcasted effectively through strong visuals.

This same attentiveness to detail serves the more gruesome parts, as well. Fassel has a knack for delivering some emotionally honest and pleasantly gory material. He’s got a solid sense of storytelling skills for this stuff.

As well, the sense of humor is pervasive. It’s not the kinds of jokes a writer like Jeff Strand uses in his prose. Instead, these are more situational comedy moments, or satiric jabs at the know it all fans of a given entertainment medium. There’s a takedown of such infotainment reportage that’s wonderfully effective, particularly when it relays the events surrounding Quentin’s expulsion in as distorted a lens as possible.

The Despicable Fantasies of Quentin Sergenov is an enjoyable if bloody romp. Tightly written stuff. A surreal and heartfelt book that ventures way, way out into left field.

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The Despicable Fantasies of Quentin Sergenov is available in eBook and paperback editions.

Next week, we return to Nnedi Okorafor’s novella series for the most recent entry, Binti: The Night Masquerade. It is available as a standalone eBook, hardcover, paperback, and audiobook edition from Tordotcom. The novella is also included in an omnibus with the other novellas. Binti: The Complete Trilogy is available in eBook, hardcover, and paperback editions from DAW.

WORKS CITED

Fassel, Preston. The Despicable Fantasies of Quentin Sergenov. Encyclopocalypse Publications. 2021.

“Duckie Ought to Win: Preston Fassel’s The Despicable Fantasies of Quentin Sergenov” is copyright 2022 by Daniel R. Robichaud. Quotes and cover image taken from the Encyclopocalypse Publications paperback edition, released 2021.

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