Head Injuries and Forest Monsters: The Saga of Henderzones, Twitter's Weirdest Literary Epic

"The world is carnage."

Whether or not you agree with it, that phrase has become a familiar refrain—almost comforting, despite its gloomy message—to fans of @Henderzones, the best-kept secret of Twitter-based serial storytelling. Updated regularly between January and June 2012, Henderzones was framed as an elaborate work of fan-fiction; the unnamed narrator, said to suffer from a severe head injury, considered it his "life mission" to continue the story of the Bigfoot family film Harry and the Hendersons.

In an idiosyncratically broken English, the narrator related the tragicomic adventures of "Harlod"—a misspelling of Harold, a.k.a. Harry, an innocent and loving but often monstrously violent hominid beast. First as a member of the Henderson family (including "Bibby the kindness child," a counterpoint to the cruelty Harlod encountered in most other humans), and later on a picaresque journey into the depths of the forest, Harlod was the tragic hero of the internet's weirdest and funniest literary epic.

Helo and welcome to twitter. My life goal is continue the saga story of Harry the saquatch and his humane family the Hderndersons. t

— Harry Henderzone (@HENDERZONES) January 22, 2012

In one "chapter," Harlod hears movement in the basement of the Henderson home, and his protective instincts kick in. The intruder turns out to be an inspector from the gas company, but by the time the poor guy asserts his innocence, Harlod has already unleashed his unstoppable violence: "Harlod removal of the mans arms which he use to beat the man to quiet repose of eternal slumber," the narrator explains. Later, after Harlod leaves the Hendersons—or what's left of them, in the wake of his rampages—behind, he squares off against an antagonist (the mysterious "Grey Man," who captures the beast for nefarious purposes) and hooks up with a sprightly gang of benevolent forest creatures, at which point the tale's tone pivots from nightmare bleakness to guarded optimism. When the tweeted parts come together as a novelistic whole, the result is a complete—and surprisingly profound—work of gonzo comic fiction.

Tales of an Samsquash or Grape Ape are the buzz of the humans world. Harlod regular sees who crews of men brandish video chimeras- whoa wow!

— Harry Henderzone (@HENDERZONES) May 18, 2012

Using Twitter as a medium for serialized narratives isn't unique to Henderzones. Chicago journalism professor Dan Sinker found success with a profane Twitter tale about a fictitious Rahm Emanuel, and novelist Jennifer Egan recently made news by publishing a short story in tweet form, dicing it into 140-character installments. But no one has seized on the medium's literary potential quite like Cameron McBride, the 28-year-old Los Angeles web designer who created Henderzones and wrote all 1,046 tweets that compose the story.

"I do this sort of thing a lot," McBride says, referring to the offhand invention of odd little characters and stories. It was such a habit for him that he casually posted the first two chapters of the Henderzones story on a personal Twitter account that has since been deleted, rendering them "missing" from the finished product. (Actually, beginning with the third chapter is quite consistent with the deranged narrator's perpetual confusion—in his introductions to each chapter he routinely got the days of the week mixed up, and once used his narration to inquire about the whereabouts of his own house keys.)

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But when McBride noticed that friends seemed to be taking an interest in this latest doodle, he decided to make it official. "I saw that people responded favorably to the idea," he explains, "and then I created an account."

The narrator's unique voice is really what makes Henderzones groundbreaking in the field of Twit-lit. His aphasia lends the narration a rough, primitive slant that reflects the story's content—a meditation on both the brutality and the beauty of nature—remarkably well. McBride's prose is also marked with unexpected lyrical grace notes, perhaps enabled by the work of Cormac McCarthy, who McBride cites—with tongue partly in cheek, given the absurdity of the enterprise, but only partly—as an influence. The story has further affinities with the crazed narrators of Vladimir Nabokov's books, and with John Gardner's novel Grendel, another retelling focused on a monster's feelings—in this case, Beowulf instead of Harry and the Hendersons. But only the movie; the Henderzones narrator will tell you, with great consternation, that the TV series is "not canon."

The last fingers of blood sunlight disappear between the gaps in branches and the air grows cool. Stars in their fury shine on from infinity

— Harry Henderzone (@HENDERZONES) March 2, 2012

McBride expresses a longtime interest in the comic possibilities of broken English and strange language play. In fact, the Henderzones voice grew out of a previous experiment. "The narrator was inspired by another character I did called Meat Man," the author says, "a mental defective who sold meat from a van, whose life was in a tragic tailspin. He died." This blunt commingling of absurd comedy and bleak despair is typical of McBride's sensibility. But he doesn't discount the basic comedic principle of undercutting expectations: "Expressing serious thoughts or feelings with broken English can be pretty consistently funny."

Harlod close him eyes. In his mind he sees the future patriarch Bibby, the kindnessChild. He sees matriarch Henderson cooking a beef.

— Harry Henderzone (@HENDERZONES) February 17, 2012

The ambitious layering of characters in Henderzones—seeing Harlod through the lens of the narrator—was a driving force for McBride. "You knew that the narrator was probably a good guy with good intentions and a pure heart who was creating another character in his image," McBride theorizes. "You knew it was his way of dealing with the circumstances of his own life." Along these lines, McBride embedded some subtle character growth: "The narrator’s English gradually got better over the course of the story. He was never cured, but his grasp on language did get better. It was sort of, and I'm embarrassed to say this about an absurd Twitter account I created, a comment on the power of storytelling: the more of the story the narrator told, the better his condition got." This is a remarkably moving notion, but after verbalizing it, McBride's modesty gets the better of him. "Jesus Christ," he adds, "I should be locked away for all of time."

Of course the Mighty CreatireHarry can understand words. Have you not Ben follow the story this far? Stay outOf my room

— Harry Henderzone (@HENDERZONES) March 2, 2012

That kind of self-effacing comment is typical of a guy accustomed to writing fiction to amuse himself rather than an audience. But it was his readership that drove him to maintain Henderzones and give it a lengthy run. "The people who loved the account became the reason I kept it up. It was very much a fan-driven thing." Henderzones has a Velvet Underground sort of fanbase: only a small number of people are aware of it—151 Twitter users currently follow the account—but it seems to have had a forceful impact on all of them.

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"I'd rather have a small group of rabidly loyal fans than tons of followers," McBride claims, but immediately questions the honesty of this statement: "Well, that's a lie. I'd rather have tons of rabid fans, but I don't, so fuck it, you know?" There is a common mindset that the internet is a meritocracy for creative people, and that talent will naturally get noticed and rewarded. But Henderzones' stunted cult following reveals this idea to be a myth. Still, for McBride, the fans mattered: "I think the point of the account and the story became the fact that people had given meaning to something inherently absurd." It's difficult to imagine Henderzones in any format other than Twitter, which provided the instant tweet-reply feedback that fueled McBride's efforts, and which the author says is "a great medium in which to tell little parts of a big story."

For all its tragic events, explicit violence, and Werner Herzog-ian odysseys into the perils of nature, the Henderzones worldview is not necessarily a bleak one. "The world is carnage" appears at the end of every chapter, but McBride sees this more as punctuation than as a thematic statement. (As a Henderzones catchphrase, "the world is carnage" eventually found competition in the narrator's repeated, frustrated assertion that "Harlod cannot form words." Of course, the narrator was also talking about himself.) Ultimately, the story's perspective is dialectical: it presents both "the cruel and chaotic nature of existence" and evidence of "order and destiny and predetermination." For McBride, the key is that "there is no answer to the nature of the world: it can seem at one moment random and cruel, and the next ordered and just."

Which beg an question: what am human?

— Harry Henderzone (@HENDERZONES) February 6, 2012

Heavy thoughts, for a goofy Twitter account about a brain-damaged Harry and the Hendersons superfan. But McBride keeps returning to the essential goodness of that warped narrator. "Some people create anonymous Twitter accounts to unleash the evil within, but I created one to allow myself to be good for a little while every week. I loved it."

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