Mermaids for Attila

A bathotopia for the living

Mermaids for Attila is a fun, hands-on, toy-like book on the subject of well-orchestrated national behaviors. In it Servin considers horrors and the weirdest political truths. Characters discover themselves in communities where citizens engage in intricate dances that appear great, ugly, exploitative, silly, or even beautifully unremarkable. How do they know the steps? As if they had cribsheets, they are unshakably confident in their footwork. They want so badly to be in a play that they are anyway. Jacques Servin is an adept at imagining how things-once freed from their ordinary moorings in an administered reality—might recohere in a world where life actually lives. Mermaids for Attila is a bathotopia for the living, a naked lunch on Baker Street where the strangest ideas become well-seasoned truths.