Fogdancing

Copy of Fogdancing

Fogdancing is a novel by Max Shea.

History

Literary Classic

After leaving the comic industry, Max Shea wrote Fogdancing. It became a literary classic and was even adapted twice for film.

HBO Timeline

Max Shea wrote Fogdancing in 1972 while working at a VA hospital in Cleveland, Ohio. While facilitating an art therapy program for soldiers suffering from PTSD, Shea was struck by their testimonials — their awe of serving under the godlike Doctor Manhattan; their guilt of committing atrocities with the Comedian; their rationalizations about going from liberators saving a people from communism to conquerors seizing a country for capitalism. Their poignant stories of shattered worldview and conscience inspired Shea to capture the confused state of the novel's main character, Howard "Howie" McNulty. Shea produced it in just five weeks under the influence of Ambrose Bierce and William S. Burroughs, and an addiction to Benzedrine to keep him awake and focused.

Katy Clark reading Fogdancing

Fogdancing ended up being a revolutionary work at the height of the Nixon Era, and it’s clearly still influential in the decades following its release. Fogdancing has been adapted twice for the cinema, an award-winning adaptation by David Cronenberg and the other by the Brothers Quay. There's also a third award-winning adaptation made for television by J.T. March III. Fogdancing's influence is so pervasive that it even made a fan of various superheroes across the political spectrum, including Ozymandias, who once called Fogdancing “the second-best book ever written,”, as well as Rorschach, Mothman, Comedian, and even Doctor Manhattan, who was known to randomly quote lines from the text, such as “Up is a relative concept.” Before leaving the Earth in 1985, the last thing Manhattan tells Veidt was that "Nothing ever ends", a quote he learned from the book. FBI Agent Dale Petey apparently discovered a copy of Fogdancing in Looking Glass' bunker while investigating his disappearance.

Adrian Veidt reading Fogdancing in prison

Fogdancing was very influential with all different types of artists because of its honest portrayal and insight into soldier psychology and war trauma. The story's themes, concepts, and plot elements are also frequent in other works including the 1990 film Jacob's Ladder and Dennis Lehane's 2003 novel, Shutter Island. Pyramid Press had a periodical journal devoted to Shea’s life and work called Nothing Ever Ends. The journal had an annual “recap” contest, in which to create a definitive summary of Fogdancing’s opaque plot; the winner received a bronze bust of the novel’s signature symbol, a gas mask.

Plot Summary

Fogdancing tells the story of a man named Howard McNulty, who becomes part of a breed of special government secret operatives/super-soldiers known as Fogdancers who apparently “do the ghastly wet-work that grease the wheels of the American machine and mop up proof of all the sick stuff you’re not supposed to do during combat.” They wore gas masks and “skin-tight silver suits” with SPF-666, made to withstand the intense heat of a form of napalm called Sunset Haze.

After being involved in a terrible accident, McNulty is discharged and given a hush-money pension check. McNulty returns from the war with a guilty conscience and falls under the influence of Shut-Eye, experimental anesthesia for trauma surgeries as a way to cope with the trauma. Meeting a nurse named Greta, who shares his taste for the drug, McNulty undertakes a radical plan to destroy “the terrible weapons that built and expanded the American empire.” As the book progresses, McNulty realizes he has been manipulated for years by a rich man pulling the strings.

Trivia

• Fogdancing actually was mentioned in the original Watchmen graphic novel - exactly twice, once in the "comic" section itself, and the other time in the addendum text at the end of the fifth issue, A Man on Fifteen Dead Men's Chests, which gives a history of Max Shea's earlier work on the Tales of the Black Freighter comic. At the end of the piece, it mentions that Max Shea quit working on comics due to frequent arguments with his editors about story content, after which he went on "to write such classic novels as the twice-filmed Fogdancing". This also establishes that by 1985 there were two film adaptations of the novel in the original graphic novel continuity.
• According to the HBO series, Fogdancing loosely follows the same plot as the original Watchmen. Much like Fogdancing's main character Howie McNulty, Max Shea ultimately ended up being a pawn to a wealthy individual's insidious agenda. Also, the writing style and context behind Shea's novel is similar to the works of writer William S. Burroughs. Similar to most of Burroughs' work, Fogdancing is a surreal, postmodern novel that is difficult to untangle, and it has invited multiple interpretations since its publication. Dale Petey’s own 2005 article, and effort to “solve” its message, is submitted to a journal dedicated to this. In his FBI memo on Peteypedia, Petey describes the book as “produced in five weeks under the influence of Bierce, Burroughs, and an addiction to Benzedrine…” Other parallels between Fogdancing and Burroughs’ work include a nonlinear sensibility, a focus on drug use, and a cult following aimed at “solving” its interpretation.
  • Doctor Manhattan's most iconic and final line "Nothing ever ends", which he tells Adrian Veidt before leaving Earth, originated from Fogdancing.
  • Since Adrian Veidt was said to have read Fogdancing and called it “the second-best book ever written,” he may have based his "world-saving plot" on the novel itself.
  • The Comedian was known for his violent and impulsive nature. He was also a former soldier who had fought in the Vietnam War, which may have given him a different perspective on the themes and ideas explored in Fogdancing. Since the novel is a dark and critical look at military operations and the toll, they take on soldiers, and it's possible that the Comedian was influenced by the novel's depiction of soldiers as traumatized and struggling with their own actions and experiences, as opposed to his own experience.