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Tristram Burden’s My Hero is an improbably successful and captivating debut novel. 

Telling the story of Joshua My Hero, the novel partakes in the generic tropes of science fiction and pornography, is structured as both a gay coming-of-age tale and a spiritual quest narrative; it reads like a mystery and a mythological epic in turn.  The world it conjures is populated with wizards, cyborgs, giants, aliens and shape-shifters.  Its post-apocalyptic setting allows for critique of contemporary religious, political, cultural, economic and environmental norms.  In the hands of a lesser author, this jumble would spell disaster, but Burden keeps a firm hand on the narrative rudder and sketches fully rendered, believable, intriguing, sympathetic characters.  While the jacket invokes Burroughs and Lovecraft, I heard Georges Bataille and Pierre Klossowski in the wings.  (Although Burden’s work is certainly a watered down version of their scandalous tales.)

Joshua My Hero, the improbably surnamed protagonist, is a teenage parricide fleeing a Christian fundamentalist trailer park.  At the novel’s beginning, he contemplates becoming a prostitute to survive, but eventually realizes that he has a grand destiny—a destiny involving ancient divinities (who speak through his cock), bound up with his visionary power (that comes to fore during his orgasms) that may result in Earth’s post-nuclear-holocaust renewal.

Burden is a masterful storyteller.  The multivocality of the novel’s first few pages demands that the reader sort past from present, narration from internal monologue.  The mystery continues for the remainder of the tale:  it unfolds and expands at just the right pace.  Burden uses third-person objective narration deftly:  there is no rapid oscillation between characters, but just enough shifts away from Joshua that the reader questions the motives of other characters.  (Burden offers a single instance of direct address to the reader.  Because it happens only once, and late, I found it jarring, rather than formally interesting.)  His sex scenes are raw, hot and creative.  And even though Joshua insists that he doesn’t like girls, the novel’s eroticism is not confined to male homoerotic encounters.  But as importantly, Burden effectively evokes desire between characters who never engage in sex.  He is so adept at maintaining erotic tension, in fact, I expected certain characters to consummate their relation by story’s end.  I was pleasantly surprised when they didn’t, and enjoyed the expectational frisson.   

The post-apocalyptic cultural critique is a strong presence in the book.  It is most successful when it is implicit in events.  When Burden relies on dialogue to express this critique more directly, it gets clumsy, heavy-handed and trite pretty quickly.  (This is surprising given Burden’s gift for dialogue—and the stammering of speech—more generally.)  The connection between Joshua’s sexuality and his spiritual destiny provides the novel’s most powerful critique of contemporary cultural politics.  Again, when the marriage of the erotic and the Divine is presented in Joshua’s sexual adventures or his orgasmic visions, it works incredibly well.  When Joshua compares his rebellious spirit to that of Eve, or his mentor explains how “the Fall” was not about sin but knowledge, things feel a little shopworn.  Burden’s use of the Tao Te Ching is also odd.  Joshua has a tattered copy of the text and flips through it to gain insight:  this is, of course, exactly how Christian fundamentalists treat the Bible.  It also veers close to an exoticizing Orientalism.  Joshua also has a vivid erotic fantasy involving Jesus’ crucified body, and the penetrability of its wounds:  a more interesting religious critique might have been possible if Burden had moved around in the Christian imaginary rather than casting it solely as villainous presence.

My Hero has a lot to offer and will undoubtedly please a wide range of readers.  Like any good hero tale, Burden draws his story to a close in a fashion that leaves open the possibility of Joshua’s adventures.  I would certainly follow where Burden and Joshua lead.

Reviewed by Kent Brintnall