The film is based on the works of William S. Lee is shown shedding a tear at this bittersweet accomplishment. The border guards cheerfully bid him welcome to Annexia, and his new life as a writer. He again misses, and thus re-enacts the earlier killing of his wife. When this proves insufficient for passage, Lee, now having realized that accidentally murdering his wife has driven him to become a writer, demonstrates his William Tell routine using a glass atop Joan Frost's head. Stopped by the Annexian border patrol and instructed to prove that he is a writer as he claims, Lee produces a pen. After being recruited as a double agent for the black meat operation, Lee completes his report and flees Interzone to Annexia with Joan Frost. Benway is actually secretly masterminding a narcotics operation for a drug called "black meat" which is supposedly derived from the guts of giant Brazilian centipedes, Lee encounters Tom's housekeeper Fadela, previously observed to be an agent of the narcotics operation. Lee also encounters a gay Swiss gentleman, Yves Cloquet, who appears to be disguised as a monstrous centipede.Īfter concluding that Dr. There is a row at gunpoint with Joan's husband Tom, after Lee steals his typewriter, which is then destroyed by the Clark Nova insect. Benway by seducing Joan Frost, a doppelgänger of his dead wife.
Whilst Lee is addicted to assorted mind-altering substances, his replacement typewriter, a Clark Nova, becomes a talking insect which tells him to find Dr. He spends his time writing reports concerning his mission these documents, at the insistence of his visiting literary colleagues, are eventually compiled into the titular book. Having inadvertently accomplished his mission, Lee flees to Interzone, located in a city somewhere in North Africa. Shortly afterwards, he accidentally kills her while attempting to shoot a drinking glass off her head to emulate William Tell. Lee returns home to find Joan having sex with Hank, one of his writer friends. Lee dismisses the beetle's instructions and kills it. Lee comes to believe that he is a secret agent, and his boss, a giant talking beetle, assigns him the mission of killing Joan, who is allegedly an agent of an organization called Interzone Incorporated. Lee is arrested by the police, and he begins hallucinating due to being exposed to the insecticide. In 1953, Exterminator William Lee finds that his wife Joan is stealing his supply of insecticide to use as a recreational drug.