What do you do with a book like this?

Carl Muller’s Mental Mayhem. Published by DM Publishers, Kandy.

Reviewed by Charles E. Hingert.

I have finally discovered the secret of Carl Muller. He writes anything and everything, as we all know, and he says he writes for the joy of writing. That may be all well and good and, as we see, he has produced some painstaking work like “Colombo - A Novel” and “Children of the Lion”. But can these be called his “natural style”? In his “Exodus 2300” we find an approach so different that one begins to wonder whether we have a writer who is not only schizophrenic, but is also possessed of some kind of “literary compatibility” that falls in line with every plot line and theme.

Now, I am more than certain that after a lot of time and deep thought spent on what are surely classics in their own right (and I think “Colombo – A Novel” and “Children of the Lion” are surely of a classic mould) he breathes a sigh of relief and becomes someone else. Or his own self. It’s hard to tell.

If I must point to contrast, take his Burgher trilogy and “Spit and Polish” and place them alongside “Colombo - A Novel”. Then take “A Funny Thing happened on the way to the Cemetery” and “Exodus 2300”. I never believed he could be in to religion in such an adroit fashion. Take “Birdsong and other Tales”, “All God’s Children” and put them with “Children of the Lion”. The contrast is tremendous. Take his “Firing at Random” and his collections of poems. And now, to cap it all we have “Carl Muller’s Mental Mayhem”.

So all I can say is that while he writes seriously, soberly and quite academically (and some of his reviews and articles in the newspapers are among the best I have read), he then happily goes back to doing something quite outrageous, to everybody’s discomfiture. He becomes vulgar, scatty, with all the old Navy and Army blood in him and there comes this “to-hell-with-it” style that makes our eyes pop.

This latest book is just that. Carl Muller in his own unique mode - a book of over one thousand thoughts, scribbles, and it is subtitled “Or how to give Aphorisms a bad name.” He slices like a barber’s naked razor and plays gudu with words. No one can truly review such a book. What we have are his impressions, be they funny or savage, and he treats the tricky business of sex with no constraint whatsoever. All I could tell you of are some of his pieces.

1. Zoo are places where animals watch people misbehave.
2. Recruitment posters used to say, ‘Join the Navy and see the world’. Today, you have to join the government.
3. Ravana would still be here if not for the monkeys.
4. The greatest number of lunatics are found in TV advertisements.
5. There’s no honeymoon after a political marriage of convenience.
6. Earthslips may be the earth’s most fashionable underwear… trouble is it’s showing.
7. Self-abusers have a lot of fellow feeling.
8. God kicked out Adam and Eve because he didn’t like close encounters of the first kind.
9. The English troop the colour – the Red Indians colour the troops.
10. Cleopatra liked to carpet-bomb her lovers.

I won’t give you any more. Some are as sleazy as Gilchrist’s squash ball. He even wants to know whether Mr. Hettigoda will take away the old cow at home when he gives us a new one! Only heaven (or Hell) knows what he will come up with next, but there is no doubt at all that he is an excellent literary entertainer and will continue to do just this in his own merry way.

This book slings arrows at everybody and anybody, everything and anything. Muller feels that Proctor and Gamble must be a legal bucketshop and that if all we ask God is for our daily bread, Heaven must be a giant bakery.

What can one do with a writer like this? He insults, scolds, makes words dance to his tune and as he says in his prefix: he is sure you will say he belongs in an asylum and expects you to swear at him, but this new book raises such stitches that you may vow never to laugh again. Muller has done it all before, but never at a pitch quite like this. Read this book and rue the day you did!