‘To live and die without knowing the psychedelic experience,’ says the narrator of Threshold, ‘is comparable to never having encountered literature or travelled to another continent.’ Magic mushrooms in Dublin, opioids in Thailand and San Francisco, hallucinogenic cactus in Bolivia and Peru, ketamine in India… he encounters terror, near-death and ecstasy by every means available, including MDMA — Ecstasy itself. This is no glimpse through the doors of perception; it’s free-fall down the rabbit hole to Wonderland. Or hell, depending on how the trip goes.
Rob Doyle’s first novel, Here are the Young Men, was a savage picture of a bunch of Dublin losers on their school-leaving summer: a bildungsroman with booze, drugs and murder on the agenda. Critical praise and award nominations followed. Now comes Threshold. Memoir? Travelogue? Auto-fiction? Doyle says it’s a novel.
In self-contained chapters the book follows the peregrinations of the narrator, ‘Rob’, who at 16 realised ‘work, as it was generally experienced by people of my working-class background… was to be avoided’. Better to cast off ‘cosmic serfdom’ for a life worth wasting. So is Rob on a Rake’s or Pilgrim’s Progress?
There’s a lot of alcohol, and sex — sometimes celebratory, occasionally rough: masturbating in squalid rooms; idyllic coupling on Asian beaches; a Berlin nightclub orgy described with darkly comic specificity. Thirty-something, Rob is haunted by foreshadowings of ageing, isolation and death; he honours friendship, is rewarded with loyalty.
Drifting the world, insouciantly sexist and self-critical, he heads for famous historic sites, only to ignore them when he gets there. He views his attitude as ‘a Nietzschean aristocracy of spirit. But it’s possible I was just an arsehole.’
He delights in harpooning contemporary art, particularly ‘art not for art’s sake but… the alleviation of world suffering, the bolstering of democratic–egalitarian ideals… art indistinguishable from social work’.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in