I have to confess that as the pages of Madness Is Better Than Defeat furled on toward 400, I wasn’t always entirely sure what was happening (I was never sure why it was happening), but it’s all so weirdly delightful that I kept racing along after him ... This is a novel that never takes a breath, that works for our attention like a stand-up comic in front of a firing squad ... I spent far too long flipping back and forth trying to figure out who was who and where we were before I just gave up and let the river of Beauman’s genius sweep me along.
In telling this complex story, has Beauman found an equally deft way of bringing pulp tropes to the present day without stumbling, or are we dealing with a complex structure around a potentially retrograde plot? The short answer: yes, mostly ... the sense of excess here can occasionally feel overwhelming, and several of the characters’ arcs come to an abrupt or mysterious end ... For all that it doesn’t always click, this novel’s blend of narrative deftness and classical riffs makes for a remarkably spry read ... And while the complexity of the plot ends up becoming part of the plot, it at times feels like this version of Madness Is Better Than Defeat is a truncated version of another version of it that’s closer to 600 pages in length.
Some novels...are a kind of intellectual indulgence for the author and those in the know. Ned Beauman’s new novel is one such inside joke—likely to be amusing to those who get it, exasperating to those who don’t ... Beauman’s command of the language is first-rate, and the breadth of his ideas vindicates his philosophy degree from Cambridge. But...Beauman’s cavalier attitude toward death makes him unserious. His characters are but shadows of Beauman’s thoughts.
It’s a good thing the ornate Madness Is Better Than Defeat is studded with sly winks to the reader ... because a road map helps us navigate its daunting journey ... The novel is clever as all get-out, but, as it begins to resemble an attempt to smush four Kurt Vonnegut novels into one, it’s also exhausting.
Beauman’s latest, as brilliant as it is offbeat ... is just so damn clever and crazy funny. Don’t even think about giving up partway in, because, as [the novel's narrator] Zonulet explains, 'until it is too late to turn back, you have not really set out.'
introspection and displacement aren’t big themes here; [the novel's character] Jervis proffers a theory about effective, simple storytelling, but Beauman seems almost comically determined to flout it, lacquering scenes in ornate, often wearying detail. The overall effect is of a Paul Theroux novel on a bender: quirky, exotic, but stubbornly tangled.
Exquisitely comic and absurd, Beauman’s imaginative novel brims with the snappy dialogue, vivid scenery, and converging story lines of an old Hollywood classic; it also says something essential about the nature of film and memory.
