Dan vs. Nature by Don Calame

Dan vs. Nature by Don Calame had me on page 2 with “uriniferous homunculi.” The young adult novel solidified its hold on page 190 with its description of a certain bodily function sounding like “a didgeridoo played into a pot of loose mashed potatoes.” And my affection for this hilarious tale was cemented on page 261 with a reference to Blood Meridian. Cormac McCarthy references AND virtuoso uses of figurative language to describe the sight, smell, and sound of human excretion? This is the book for me.

If you laughed at any or all of those examples, Dan vs. Nature is the book for you as well, a tour de force mash-up of juvenile humor and SAT vocabulary in the season of Survivor that will never air. The novel starts tamely enough: Teenage nebbishes Dan and Charlie are accosted by what Charlie describes as the aforementioned “homunculi.” Dan’s life only gets worse when his mother reveals that she is engaged to manly man Hank, who Dan can only see as the latest in a series of bad choices his mother has made since his birth father ran off years ago. And Dan’s life seems to bottom out when his well-meaning mother reveals that Dan’s birthday present is a male-bonding survival wilderness trip with Hank.

Charlie, however, has the brilliant/deranged idea to use the trip to torment Hank and convince him to abandon the relationship with Dan’s mother. I do not want to spoil the particulars, but the plans involve hacking a “practice baby” from Dan’s high school and turning it into a liquid-spewing demon, a copious amount of doe urine, and doctoring various substances so Dan spends a lot of time with his “sluices” opened at both ends.

Zany and gloriously debauched, the deterioration of the wilderness trip in Dan vs. Nature more than compensates for the general predictability of the overall plot resolution. It’s not so much the fluidity of the plot as the fluids in the plot that will keep you reading. The introduction of less-than manic pixie dream girl Penelope as a potential love/lust interest for both Charlie and Dan also makes for a satisfying subplot. And how can you deny a book that begins with the main character being punched in the ass, continues with him punching himself in the junk, and ends with him getting punched in the face not once but twice? Dan vs. Nature pulls no punches in its gleeful depiction of man and nature at their most elemental.