The Four Fingers of Death by Rick Moody

Title: The Four Fingers of Death

Author: Rick Moody

ISBN: 978 0 316 11891 0

Published: Little, Brown and Co.

Date: 2010


Book quote:

Morton no longer wished to be exposed to the battery of human intoxicants with which they seemed to fill their days. Now that he employed the English language in his own way, now that he was capable of the helix of desire and consciousness that enabled the one primate to feel that it can subdue the others, he had no interest whatsoever in dulling himself. He would, with a clear mind, with a will to power, wrest life to his purposes.

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The book is written in three chunks – two main, one introductory. The introductory portion is narrated in first person by Montese Crandal, the author of the second two sections. They are a novelisation of a remake of the 1964 film ‘The Crawling Hand’: the severed arm of a crashed astronaut wrecks havoc and disease on a 2026 populace.



Where to start? The novel’s 725 pages long, and about 600 of them should be cut. It’s quite the most self-indulgent piece of wittering I’ve had the misfortune to clap eyes on in a long while.


The writing itself, if you happen to be chained to a radiator and have nothing to do for the next two weeks, is not too objectionable, and there are plenty of entertaining passages. It is, however, so endlessly repetitive, so utterly disregarding of the reader’s need to have a reason to keep reading, one really is left wondering how it came into print in the first place. One gets a distinct feeling that not even Moody’s editor could really be bothered to check through it properly, leaving tell-tale signs like allowing the use of the same adjective in two sentences running.

The first large section deals with the trip to Mars made by nine (rapidly dwindling) astronauts. This section is relatively entertaining, perhaps because the limited subject matter (or rather limited number of characters) forces the narrative into some coherent flow. Even so, satellite communication to Earth manages to siphon in numerous extraneous characters, including a computer-generated image of a gryphon in an online sex simulation. (Yes, this goes on for quite a number of pages). The disintegration of the Martian community and collective insanity that results in the second part of the narrative is moderately absorbing, if slightly predictable. Claustrophobia, agoraphobia, panic attacks, conspiracy theories, cover-ups, deadly microbes, fisticuffs, sex and violence of all sorts are freely distributed. It’s not bad. Lots of repetition too but one still forgives it – just.


Then there’s the last portion. Back on Earth, Colonel Jed Richard’s severed arm is the only piece of astronaut that’s made it back to Earth, and is now crawling about propelled by the bacteria it’s picked up on Mars, busily strangling people and spreading disease. Well, essentially that’s the pot of ‘The Crawling Hand’.
The two main problems are firstly (again) endless repetition. How many times do we need to be told about what the desert looks like or what the homeless people do? Lots, apparently. More than you’d imagine.


The second problem is that back on Earth, Moody simply cannot stick to one subject or character. He’s like an ADD child, wandering from one room to the next, picking up random things, looking at them, shaking them up a bit, and tossing them aside. While it may be entertaining to read as a snippet, it does not make for good novel-building. You rather tend to lose any relationship with your reader like that.

One of the central themes, the relationship between ‘higher’ life forms, civilisation, and the ability to speak, is quite interestingly put together. On the one hand, the Martian bacterium (which ‘disintegrates’ higher life forms) has the effect of rendering those it infects unable to speak. On the other, Morton, the laboratory chimpanzee, has suddenly acquired the ability to speak through an injection of human brain cells. With his newfound ability he also gains a lot of confusion, and desire, and will to overpower: to subdue.

One cannot but reflect that the garrulousness that Moody both exhibits and discusses is indeed, in his case at least, an impediment to forward movement and evolution. It seems his own bacterium has infected the novel and has quite dismantled it to piecemeal incoherency.