Book Review: Eskor David Johnson’s “Pay As You Go”
Literature's greatest of gifts, perhaps, is the ability to transport the reader to an entirely unique world. Polis is such a world, and it is the playfully Kafkaesque setting of Eskor David Johnson's debut novel Pay As You Go.
On the surface, this is a simple story about one man's quest for an apartment, and when the novel opens, Slide, the book's affable narrator, is living with two roommates, Calumet and Eustice. However, a dinner party goes awry, and Slide must head out on his own, with few leads, to find a place for himself.
Finding somewhere to live in Polis plunges Slide into a complicated and confounding adventure. As the novel progresses, the reader is taken on a journey through different boroughs of Polis, meeting characters that range from sexy and charming, like Monica Iñes who is the early love interest of Slide's roommate Eustice; to strange and complicated like Rosa De Sanville, a former champion boxer whom Slide cared for in a house of shady apothecaries. Slide eventually finds himself living his dream, though he is beholden to powers impossible to harmonize with.
Much like the novel's setting, the busyness of Johnson's prose is beautifully absurd, yet delightful to navigate. There is even a topographical map, which I caught myself revisiting, to orient the reader with the sprawling landscape as Slide's misadventures take him from gang territory to the most affluent parts of the city.
Long, busy, descriptive paragraphs and stray fragments of conversations fill the periphery around the main story. Pay As You Go is both picaresque and mock epic. The novel pulses with life, and readers who enjoy a more verbose style will delight in lucid storytelling, quirky characters and even quirkier surroundings.
Ignatius J. Reilly from The Confederacy of Dunces comes to mind when I think of similar protagonists to Slide, or even Holden Caufield from The Catcher in the Rye. Indeed, in the novel's Afterward, Johnson says he owes a "spiritual debt" to J.D. Salinger (among others).
Although I experienced mild disappointment that Slide never seeks to learn about his own origins, I can’t give this book anything but the highest praise. Pay As You Go is a wonderful read that I wish I could rediscover again and again.