The Steve Machine
To herald the arrival of his debut novel, The Steve Machine, acclaimed filmmaker Mike Hoolboom presents “The Last Book: A Magical Journey To The End of Print”. Set in a not-so-distant future, when everyone is named ‘Steve’, Hoolboom’s five-part multi-media extravaganza is an elegy for the last book ever published. “The Last Book” will feature performances by violinist Reena Katz and magician Jack Fuller. – A This Is Not A Reading Series event presented by Pages Books & Magazines, Coach House Books and EYE WEEKLY.
Auden, bewildered and HIV positive, flees the small town of Capreol for Toronto, and attempts to create a life his new illness won’t stick to. He tries to become a stranger so that his illness won’t recognize him. He makes friends with people he doesn’t like, visits bars he has no interest in, wears clothes he wouldn’t wear even if that was his full-time job. In the midst of his personality makeover, he meets the mysterious television artist Steve Reinke, who creates videotapes that cure insomnia and uncover secret patterns in the stock exchange. But can Steve’s art save his dying friends? Together, Steve and Auden set out on an adventure of love, loss and laughter, complete with guest appearances by Yoko Ono, the Lizard Man, Wrik the orgy master, Orlan and the cashier at Pizzabilities.
Mike Hoolboom’s comic novel about AIDS is also a machine, like one of Steve’s tapes. And there’s no need to ask the bookseller for an extra switch, pulley or button. You can operate this machine by simply reading its pages. Exactly what does this machine produce? That is the real mystery that lies between the covers of The Steve Machine.
Mike Hoolboom is the author of Plague Years, Inside the Pleasure Dome: Fringe Film in Canada and Practical Dreamers. The Steve Machine is his debut novel. He is a founding member of the Pleasure Dome screening collective and has worked as the artistic director of the Images Festival and as the experimental film coordinator for the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre. Hoolboom is the winner of over thirty international prizes and has enjoyed nine international retrospectives of his work.
