A.J.

A.J. is an enigmatic agent and notorious Merchant of Sex whose public identity is built from extravagant practical jokes, political posturing, and abrupt reversals of decorum. He bankrolls Islam Incorporated, stages disruptions from a party in Interzone to New York’s Metropolitan opening night, and presents himself variously as a playboy, a Factualist, and a swaggering sea captain. The stories make his actions memorable while leaving his true employer and final allegiance unresolved: he is a character whose elaborate performances are easier to observe than to explain.

Identity and Background

The narrator describes A.J. as being of obscure Near Eastern extraction. A.J. once adopted the manner of an English gentleman; as the British Empire waned, his English accent did too, and after World War II he became an American by Act of Congress. The account treats nationality as one more changeable feature of his public presentation rather than a stable key to his identity.

A.J. is an agent, but the narrator says no one has discovered whom he represents or what he represents them for. Rumor makes him an emissary for a trust of giant insects from another galaxy. The narrator believes he may be on the Factualist side, as the narrator is, yet allows that A.J. could instead be a Liquefaction Agent, serving a program that would merge everyone into one man through protoplasmic absorption. His cover story is that he is an international playboy and harmless practical joker. None of these labels settles the question of allegiance; uncertainty is part of his defining characterization.

Sponsor, Associate, and Public Persona

A.J. finances Islam Incorporated, an organization whose exact objectives remain obscure and whose members, the narrator suggests, each pursue their own angle. Salvador Hassan O’Leary is also connected to it: one of his subsidiary companies has made unspecified contributions, while one of his subsidiary personalities serves in an advisory capacity without committing him to the organization’s policies, actions, or aims. The careful qualifications around this association echo the uncertainty surrounding A.J. himself.

A.J.’s public scandals make the organization’s mixture of politics and spectacle visible. At the Duc de Ventre’s ball he appeared as a walking penis beneath an enormous condom bearing his motto, “They Shall Not Pass.” When the Duke called the costume bad taste, A.J. answered, “Up yours with Interzone K.Y.” The narrator calls this a delayed squelch: A.J.’s retort refers to a scandal that was still in its early stages at the time. His jokes can thus seem to anticipate later events, turning the performance of a prank into a way of unsettling chronology as well as social propriety.

Pranks and Their Consequences

The narrator attributes a series of disruptive stunts to A.J. At a Fourth of July reception at the U.S. Embassy, he put piranha fish in Lady Sutton-Smith’s swimming pool and mixed Yage, hashish, and Yohimbine into the punch, precipitating an orgy. Ten prominent American citizens subsequently died of shame, an outcome the narrator presents as a peculiar national distinction. In another episode, A.J. tampered with water prepared for a toast by the Cincinnati Anti-Fluoride Society, inserting a South American vine said to turn gums to mush; when the group celebrated its victory in pure spring water, its members’ teeth dropped out. These incidents give his harmless-joker cover a deliberately unstable edge: the pranks are played in public, but their effects are not merely symbolic.

At the New York Metropolitan’s opening night, A.J. used bug repellent to protect himself while releasing a swarm of Xiucutils. The insects’ reputation as powerful aphrodisiacs made their presence sufficient to overturn the formal occasion into mass disorder. The episode repeats A.J.’s characteristic arrangement: he remains prepared and protected while the crowd bears the consequences of his intervention. His prank does not require a speech or an explanation; the contrast between the prestigious venue and the sudden loss of composure supplies its public meaning.

His provocations also target the codes of cultural prestige. A.J. reserved a table at Chez Robert a year ahead, then arrived with six Bolivian Indians chewing coca leaves between courses. When the restaurant’s imposing gourmet approached, A.J. demanded ketchup; an alternative account has him produce a bottle and pour it over the haute cuisine. In a later restaurant episode, clients are quietly dying of botulism when A.J. returns with Arab refugees from the Middle East, tastes the food, and orders the cook to be punished. The narrator says the legend of A.J. as a laughable, lovable eccentric grew from such episodes. The label is affectionate, but the surrounding scenes make clear how his humor is entangled with danger and disorder.

Performance, Conflict, and Recurring Images

At A.J.’s annual party, he introduces the Great Slashtubitch to the guests as an internationally known impresario of blue movies and short-wave television. The announcement and the theatrical reveal place A.J. in the role of master of ceremonies, arranging an extravagant spectacle rather than simply attending one. Elsewhere in the party sequence, Hassan accuses him of ruining the gathering, and A.J. answers with an insult that casts Hassan as a liquefactionist. A.J. then calls for his Sweitzers, declares that their absence leaves the group exposed, and takes up a cutlass against the intruding American women. When Hassan later condemns the room and tells him never to return, A.J. sits aboard a sea chest with a parrot on his shoulder, an eyepatch over one eye, and rum in hand. The pirate image makes his self-dramatization explicit: even amid the party’s collapse, he appears to inhabit a role of his own choosing.

A related version of that persona unfolds in Venice. A.J. rushes across San Marco slashing at pigeons, then boards a barge painted gilt, pink, and blue, with purple-velvet sails. His naval uniform is dirty and torn, its buttons fastened in the wrong holes. He twists the figure atop a reproduction Greek urn and drinks the champagne that spurts from it, then discovers that his attendants are absent. Rather than accept a gondola, he orders the barge’s sails lowered and its oars brought into use. His demands for perfume and fans produce a brief comic reversal when the scent overwhelms him and his secretary has to thin it with fans. Once the vessel is under way, A.J. drives it at speed through the canal, overturning and breaking gondolas before it crashes against a pier and begins taking on water. He orders the crew to abandon ship and is thrown into the canal. The grand captain’s performance ends not in command but in a sinking vessel and a sudden retreat.

The same theatricality accompanies A.J.’s public benevolence. At the inauguration of Escuela Amigo, a school for delinquent boys of Latin American origin endowed by A.J., he staggers onto a platform draped in American flags and invokes Father Flanagan’s claim that there is no such thing as a bad boy. Almost immediately, however, he asks where the statuary is. His civic appearance therefore joins charitable sponsorship to the self-conscious appetite for spectacle that marks his other appearances; the scene does not provide a simple separation between benefactor and prankster.

Political Posture and Narrative Role

A.J. agitates for the destruction of Israel, describing the political climate as an obstacle to obtaining young Arab amenities and calling Israel an inconvenience. The narrator identifies this as a typical cover story rather than a transparent statement of conviction. Clem and Jody, who are also involved in Islam Incorporated, give out that they want the destruction of Near Eastern oil fields to increase the value of their Venezuelan holdings. Their different stated interests reinforce the narrator’s account of the organization as a field of competing agendas, not a unified political project.

A.J.’s appearances are episodic and mutable: financier, agent, prankster, host, would-be pirate, and political agitator. At the novel’s wider intersection point, he is named among figures who may speak the same words at the same place in space-time, becoming part of a shared identity expressed through a common vocal apparatus. That possibility does not resolve who A.J. is; it places his persistent uncertainty inside the book’s larger challenge to separate, stable identities. His scenes repeatedly invert the authority of a venue or occasion, but their comedy does not make their consequences disappear. A.J. remains at once the director of the spectacle and one more unstable figure caught in the novel’s shifting arrangement of persons and roles.