Guffey’s Chameleo, a paranoiac nonfiction techno-thriller and the story of a friendship, is by many miles the weirdest and funniest book of 2015. It tells the story of an oft-recovering heroin addict named Dion Fuller who is believed by the Department of Homeland Security to have stolen a pair of night vision goggles from a military base. From there it becomes a sui generis exploration of conspiracy as a form of art. — Jonathon Sturgeon

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If it’s so easy to imagine deploying dozens of people and spending thousands of dollars surveilling a single drug addict and small-time drug dealer, what are they capable of doing on the scale of a nation?

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In conjunction with an exclusive excerpt from Robert Guffey’s Chemeleo, literary editor Jonathon Sturgeon praises the book’s “manic energy”:

By turns exuberant, resourceful, hilarious, dubious, and emotionally affecting, Chameleo thrives on the contact high of the possible, much like the twin arts of paranoia and conspiracy, from which it takes its manic energy.

But the thing I love most about Chameleo is that it’s a story about a sustained American friendship. Also, it deals with invisible little people and shapeshifting rooms.

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All I can say is, “read the book.”

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JH: What influenced the structural choices you made in putting the book together?

RG: When I was 18, I discovered Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. And around that same time, I discovered a book called AIDS, Inc by Jon Rappoport, which is a very hard-hitting investigative journalism look into alternative theories regarding the origin of AIDS. Was AIDS from a government laboratory, etc. It examines all the theories. I remember thinking it would be fascinating if you could combine the serious investigative journalistic tone of AIDS, Inc with this kind of crazy Gonzo narrative thing, like in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and I think Chameleo is a culmination of that interest on my part.

JH: A lot of otherwise open-mined readers might be repelled by your background in conspiracy theories, and yet, in Chameleo that tenuous narrative trope seems to be supported by the raw events unfolding in a kind of hyper reality. How is Chameleo different from other conspiracy-centric narratives?

RG: When conspiracy theorists publish–or, more often than not, self-publish–books, they are frantically attempting to disseminate what they feel is important, life-or-death information. This is not my main concern. I’m coming from a literature background. I’ve been publishing short stories since I was 25. Writers like John Fante, Henry Miller, and Charles Bukowski wrote about the reality around them. I’m engaged in the same process. It just so happens that the reality we live in today is overbrimming with conspiracies. If Mark Twain were alive today, I’m certain he would be writing about conspiracies. He wouldn’t be able to avoid it. I see Chameleo, primarily, as a work of literature. If the book does succeed in disseminating valuable information, it’s simply a byproduct of my desire to write about reality as I see it.

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Robert Guffey’s long awaited book, Chameleo, is in print. I received my copy a few days ago and sat down and started reading it. I couldn’t stop. At times I wanted to stop, but I had to press on. The twists and turns and grotesque happenings and, yes, the laughs wouldn’t let me get away.

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Stuff happens, and there are spaces and places in the fissures of human consciousness where we don’t mean to go, but there we find ourselves: weird places; undine spaces of horror illuminated by mere hints of occult wisdom; what Freud called The Uncanny, where Thanatos and Eros mud-wrestle in the dark and our minds are the small stage on which they do their existential porn.

That’s how I felt reading Robert Guffey’s memoir Chameleo: A Strange But True Story of Invisible Spies, Heroin Addiction and Homeland Security.

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