Urx Quonox

 

Urx Quonox by Adam S. Cantwell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I'm reading the Occult Press version, gifted to me and signed by Adam, 37/120 limited edition. Thanks, Adam!

I'm a big sword and sorcery fan, have been since the mid-70s, reading Savage Sword of Conan and the old Howard paperbacks. Here, with Grasm the Barbarian, Cantwell has taken S&S to a higher literary level, the inevitable evolution out of pulp and into thinking-man's writing, and I'm here for it.

If Robert E. Howard had cast aside all prudery and collaborated with William Burroughs, this might start to approximate the style of "The Monarch in Disarray," but this tale is much more transgressive, visceral, and psychedelic than that. It's a decadent sword & sorcery tale, pushed to carnal extremes with an emphasis on the sorcery and its deeper effects on the psyche. Grasm > Conan, maybe. The writing is head and shoulders above Howard's.

Another story of Grasm the Barbarian, "Scream of the Bluejay," is a barnacle-encrusted sea-salt soaked rope of a tale about revenental vengeance. While the center of attention in the story isn't the barbarian, it says much about him and twists in such a way as to wring out more of his past. It's a clever tale of sword and sorcery, of regret, betrayal, and murder; a hideously glorious, horrifically beautiful tale.

The final entry in the Grasm trilogy, "Cities Below the Strand," again puts an emphasis on sorcery over swords. No swords are drawn in this tale, but there is a deep cut of nihilism here, particularly as regards both the past and the future of Grasm himself. This is a small window into what could be a large, inglorious panorama both for the barbarian himself and for his world as a whole. Hearts die, nations collapse, the world keeps spinning.

Three tales about the same person, but exploring different aspects of his past, present, and future. Grasm learns about Grasm even as we do. I want to continue this journey!

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Le Livre des Fourmis: The Book of Ants

 

Le Livre des Fourmis: The Book of Ants by Robin D. Laws
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

One of my favorite games is the old Surrealist game Exquisite Cadaver. I'm not only a proponent, I'm a teacher of the game. I spread the gospel of Exquisite Cadaver far and wide, whenever I have the opportunity. My primary reason for loving the game is that it breaks my brain and causes me to look at live in a whole new way. It's the cognitive equivalent of cubism - seeing objects (in this case, either grammatical objects, if you are playing the "sentence" version, or illustrative objects, if you're playing the "three part drawing" version). Through what appears to be an aleotory excercise, but is really a channeling of the sublimated unconscious, one discovers new ways of looking at (or reading or writing or drawing) Things. I capitalize "Things" because I think of those creations as entities - self-sufficient, complete entities created by a group of people exercising the collective unconscious in a double-blind experiment. These Things emerge as we take our disjointed thoughts or pieces of thoughts (memes, perhaps?) and force them into a relational structure that causes disparate bits of our processed perceptions to be ordered in a template that we would normally use to create "meaning" - sentences and/or drawings. Through this, we form a new "reality". Or, at least, we form a new perception of reality. And if perception is reality, well, you get the picture.

In The Book of Ants (I will use the English title, because, to be honest, there is very, very little French in the book, even though most of the protagonists are French Surrealists), we are introduced to all the most famous of the surrealist cadre, and quite a few minor, even peripheral players of that artistic/poetic era. The book is told from the viewpoint of one Henri Salem, but don't go researching him, he's not real. At least not in this reality. In the reality of The Book of Ants, however, he is a young poet who develops relationships (and rivalries, and sometimes downright mutual loathing) with Breton, Dali, Bataille, Magrite, and many others you have likely never heard of, who keeps a diary set in two worlds: The world of the Great War and the interwar years of Paris, and the strange "place" underlying the conscious world, The Dreamlands.

As others have pointed out, this book serves as a sort of addendum to an RPG book, The Dreamhounds of Paris (which I shall review at some future point), written for the Trail of Cthulhu gaming system. It is referenced in the rulebook as a possible history from which players and game-masters might leverage for their own game play.

That said, there is nothing game-specific about the book at all. It reads quite well (outside of some annoying typos). The style is sparse, at times elegant, but not "purple," which is a bit surprising when the narrator and many of the characters are French poets and artists and even more surprising when once considers the overly-ornamented prose of H.P. Lovecraft, who brought The Dreamlands into the popular conscience. It helps to know the Cthulhu mythos and The Dreamlands, specifically, but those aren't absolutely necessary to understanding and enjoying the story, in fact, that knowledge isn't necessary at all. There's enough context and explication to allow the reader "in," though some references, such as the names of certain creatures that inhabit The Dreamland, might miss their full impact. In summary, no experience with the game or the subgenre is necessary, though knowing the subgenre is helpful.

I acknowledged the annoying typos. And I've edited and written enough books to know that eliminating all typos from a manuscript is a herculean task and, in many cases, nearly impossible. But the number of typos in the book can throw one out of the "dreamstate" of the book, which is a real shame. One might be luxuriating in the strangeness of it all, only to be suddenly jettisoned back to grammatical reality by obviously missing words (or obviously "extra" words). Can this be forgiven? Sure, but not without losing a star on my rating.

But when it's flowing, this story will capture you, slowly at first, intriguing you through the historical relationships of the surrealists one to another, then accelerating with the discovery that many of those sensitive enough (note: Breton was not) might enter the dreamlands, then, with the discovery that the surrealists could not only enter that place, they could manipulate it, create, and destroy, the pace becomes almost frantic. A new reality is discovered, then it is manipulated, subverted altogether, and disintegrated by those who have crossed over. There is a strong thread of the responsibility of those who colonize and the heinousness of the erasure of another's culture. Some serious ethical questions are asked and the answers to those questions affect not only The Dreamlands, or early-20th-Century Paris, but our own waking reality today. This isn't a book about strangeness and horrific caricatures of monstrosities - it really is about what it means to have influence, and about the consequences of one's actions, intended or not. This takes the work a step further than any other book I've read that was based on a roleplaying game. This isn't a "real play". It's much more than that. It will cause something that roleplaying games rarely do, and which the best gamemasters will engender in their players: introspection.

It's not just a book based on a game. It has, dare I say it? Meaning.


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Disruptions

 

Disruptions by Steven Millhauser
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I've been a champion of Millhauser's work for a long time now, ever since I was introduced to his work through one of Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling's fabulous Year's Best Fantasy and Horror anthologies. I was rather excited when I heard that Millhauser had released another collection of shorts that I had somehow missed - I blame post-covid . . . well, everything.

I've always admired Millhauser's clean aesthetic and straightforward storytelling, always with a hint of something more lurking behind the scenes. After reading many more authors since my earlier Millhauserian days, I now recognize, in this collection, echoes of some of my favorite authors: Calvino, Borges, and Kafka, for instance. But I sometimes wondered as I read if these echoes were too loud, that Millhauser was dipping into these classic literary heroes of mine and regurgitating what he found there. Oh, I don't think it's anything intentional, and it probably says more about my reading journey than about his writing journey, but I couldn't help but want to compare the stories in this collection to these three authors. I showed great restraint in not doing so for almost every single story. There were times where I just couldn't help myself. The resemblance was too strong. Sadly, this made me, well, sad. My love affair with Millhauser may be coming to an end.

"One Summer Night" reminded me of the elements I love in Millhauser's fiction: the crystal clear, yet evocative prose, a sense that people are much more or less than they seem, and a liminal state of mind where a certain sinister or magical something is just around the corner, in the shadows, out of reach and that, depending on which side of the razor's edge you fall off of, you might find heaven or hell.

No, "After the Beheading" is not some kind of literary click bait. It is one of Millhauser's most morbid tales to date. But the shock doesn't come from the act of the beheading itself. It comes in the slow cessation of outrage and spectacle. The true horror here - and it is truly horrific - arises quietly, long after the execution. It is the slow swelling and expansion of indifferent acceptance, another common theme in his work.

Having taken a couple of guided tours in Europe last month, Millhauser's "Guided Tour," about a highly accurate historical tour of the town of Hamelin hit close to home. To quote from this macabre tale, "Stories have teeth . . .", and this one will take a chunk out of you. Fabulous, frightening stuff. Here Millhauser leaps from the merely strange into the truly horrific.

"Late" is what you'd expect from a story that appeared in Harpers magzine: Highly neurotic entitled city dweller obsesses about the arrival of his date to the point of insanity. Not my favorite Millhauser piece. Clever, but more than a little tedious.

Millhauser's best stories are often about community and it's complications. In "The Little People," a series of vignettes and encyclopedic entries about Greenhaven, a city within "our city" whose inhabitants are an average two inches tall, he addresses the joys and challenges, the loves and the prejudicial hates that arise between "our" culture and those of Greenhaven's residents. Though the community trope feels a little stretched at times, it's a fascinating reflection on human nature within a society.

In "Theater of Shadows," we continue with the theme of community, but this time, a community that embraces darkness and find themselves, purely by their desires and choices, in a liminal state somewhere between shadow and light. We refer to this state (though Millhauser does not) as a "Twilight Zone," and for good reason. This story is reflective (pardon the pun) of the best of Rod Serling's masterpieces. There was a sliver of a hint of folk horror in this story, as well, and it stuck in my brain long after I finished reading; always the sign of a solid story.

"The Fight" reminds us that coming of age stories can be fraught with fear and testosterone, when the fight or flight response is being honed in at such a visceral level that we don't even realize what is happening and the line between fact and fantasy blurs both for our relationships with others and for our image of our selves. Moving into proto-adulthood is no easy transition.

"A Haunted House Story" channels Robert Aickman in all the right ways. haunters and the haunted are indistinguishable, and a view of utter happiness brings on a dark gloom of despair. This story will affect you, deeply, and you will not even understand quite why. But it burrows into you. And it stays. It's terrifying by not being terrifying at all . . . until it's over.

One thing Millhauser does well is magic realism. "The Summer of Ladders" is a great example of this. The population of a town become obsessed with climbing ladders, with results that affect all the inhabitants, directly or indirectly. And an apotheosis might have happened. Maybe, just maybe. Or a disappearing act? As with most magic realism, it's so hard to tell. And in that ambiguity lies the magic. But, as I outlined in the beginning, a magic of mimesis.

"The Circle of Punishment" begs comparison to the short fiction of Borges, Kafka, and Calvino. But Millhauser here turns "kafkaism" inside out while pushing "kafkaism" even deeper into the soul in such a way that the reader is unsure whether to be relieved or even more disturbed. I've coming away thinking far too much about the interiority of social prisons, punishment we impose on ourselves, deserved or not. Again, though, I felt like this story was not "his own". Ridiculous, I know, but it was a distraction from the fiction itself, like focusing on the girders of a roller coaster rather than enjoying the ride.

The communal theme continues (yet again) with "Green" where changing fashions in landscaping (or the destruction thereof) swing wildly, with neighbors making bizarre changes to "keep up with the Jones's" in a strange display of conspicuous consumption. If you love to look good to everyone around you by following the latest trends, regardless of their utility or even sanity, well, this story is for you. And if you're an HOA board member, you're going to absolutely love this one. I was not very impressed, as the subtlety was completely worn off by the fine this tale made it to the printer.

Phone-tree hell is portrayed quite vividly in "Thank You For Your Patience". The person listening to the annoying repeated messages while waiting to speak to a human being shows her patience, even gives a practical sermon on her experiences with patience, revealing secrets to an uncaring machine. It's a sick twist on the tale of the suburban housewife, sick because it reveals just how pathetic some peoples' lives are.

The residents of a small town all fall asleep for three days in "A Tired Town". The narrator struggles to stay awake and, in so doing, experiences a silent moment on the cusp of something indescribable, but then succumbs to slumber. He awakens to the "cleanup" afterword with a sense that he somehow missed a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but he's not sure what it was. Serves as a reflection on busy-ness and calm. This one was a little too "on the nose" in its criticism of modern American society.

"Kafka in High School, 1959" gives us snippets of Kafka (yes, that Kafka) as an awkward nerd going through the clumsy growing pains of a teenager. It's all too normal of an alternate history, bland, with sideways glimpses of how this teenager could turn into the author we know. One can see how the awkwardness could be magnified into the bleak work we already know. And in the end, things do go strangely.

Millhauser embraces outright surrealism in his story "A Common Predicament," which is anything but common. The narrator's strange relationship with a woman whom he loves (and who loves him), though never faces him. Ever. The speculations as to why she exhibits this behavior haunt him, but he accommodates this strange quirk for the sake of their love. Definitely a story worthy of the label "disruption".

A disruption of a far more disturbing kind takes place in "The Change," a modern re-telling of the myth of Daphne, the nymph who turns into a tree to avoid the unwanted sexual advances of Apollo. But this is no myth, it's a frankly horrifying story of what it means to be a young woman in a world of hyper-charged sexuality and the rule of testosterone that mirrors the rule of the jungle. This needs a trigger warning! It's no wonder that this, unlike most of the stories here, was original to this collection - no one in their right legal mind would want to publish it in their respected literary magazine. Too chancy!

Millhauser's experimental piece, "He Takes, She Takes" jockeys back and forth using the simple phrase: "He takes the (insert thing here, she takes the (insert other thing here)". It is tediously repetitive, but between this iterative bouncing back-and-forth, a story actually seems to emerge, though it is up to the reader whether this is a story of two individuals or the story of all couples.

And we end the collection with, guess what? Yes! Another story about a strange community, "The Column Dwellers in our Town". I rather liked this slightly-surreal take on a town where some inhabitants choose to live a solitary life atop a high rock or cement column (not to exceed 140', per code). It does cause one to think hard about asceticism and social pressure in new ways. Though the subject matter was bizarre, the reflections on people's reactions to the town's setup was more subtle and believable than the other community stories in this volume. I quite liked this strange "story".

But did I like the whole collection? Sure. I guess. But not nearly as much as Millhauser's earlier work. Maybe it's him, maybe it's me, but I was longing for something with the power to immerse me in one of his little worlds, something like Enchanted Night (which I strongly recommend). Sadly, my intense love affair with Millhauser's writing may have run its course. Am I tired of it? Not entirely. But, like the inhabitants of "A Tired Town," I feel a dolor coming on. Maybe it's time to rest on Millhauser for a while?

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Illuminations: Essays and Reflections

 

Illuminations: Essays and Reflections by Walter Benjamin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In a weird and unplanned synchronicity, I read Walter Benjamin's Illuminations at the same time I read Rebecca Solnit's Wanderlust: A History of Walking. I had no idea that these works had any connection with each other, but there is a very strong connection in their analysis of the work of Baudelaire. More on this later.

It took some time to get to Benjamin's excellent and very eclectic collection of essays. Hannah Arendt's introduction is extensive and interesting, laying a foundation for what is to come by examining Benjamin's light in both a historical and intellectual context. I came through it feeling well-equipped to tackle Benjamin's sometimes-abstruse work. Rather than a barrier to getting to the source material, Arendt provides a useful and understandable bridge to Benjamin's core ideas.

We start with "Unpacking My Library," which every book-lover should read, but, more especially, every book collector. I'm admittedly somewhere between the two poles of reader and collector Benjamin presents, but I lean more toward the former than the latter. Benjamin, an admitted book collector (there is an underlying hint of shame in the title as he presents it, as if it is a guilty pleasure), points out the collector's foibles with a great sense of self-deprecating humor.

"The Task of the Translator" presents several thoughts on translation, including the very interesting question of one's linguistic machismo when translating. Should the translator impose his language on the one being translated, or should he allow the language being translated to inform and even form his own? I have always respected "good" translators and their work, but now I question what, really, does "good" mean in this context? I don't have a firm conclusion, but I do have a lot of thinking to do as a result of reading this essay, which was probably Benjamin's intent.

In his essay "The Storyteller," Benjamin parses out the different characteristics, not of structure, but of the worldview of storytelling (as in: around a campfire), the short story, and the novel. He reflects on collective vs individual memory, the impatience of modernity (don't get me started), and how the absence of death and the view of eternity it provides has shaped fiction, in general. The irony of Benjamin's demise is not lost on me. It's a bittersweet read, precisely because of what followed.

As much as I love Kafka, it's apparent that I need to read more of him. I guess The Collected Stories (all of his short stories) and The Trial aren't quite enough. I feel like such a poser . . . Maybe I should read him in German to feed my ego a little. In any case, I found Benjamin's "Franz Kafka" inspiring. Absolutely one of the best summations of the spirit of Kafka's work that threads the needle between analysis of Kafka's psychological state of mind and the more metaphysical/surreal aspects of Kafka's work. I've been a fan of Kafka's work since I was young and this rekindles the fire to dive back in again.

Sadly, I know very little about Brecht's work, having only read (in German) "Der kaukasische Keidekreis". But while I should read more of Brecht's work, I know something about the man himself. I had a professor in college who was a Brecht expert. James K. Lyon, from whom I took my German literature classes as an undergrad, wrote the book
After doing some more research and interviews, Professor Lyon discovered that every Wednesday night, Brecht would have friends and acquaintances over so he could show them what was going on in Germany at the time. They watched (and discussed and mocked) German propaganda films - hence the anthems and salutes. But this poor lady thought Brecht was a communist and a nazi!

Now on to Proust and Baudelaire. The Freudian analysis of Proust and Baudelaire feel flimsy, at best. I get the analysis of memory regarding Proust, and the examination of time might have some basis in psychology, but the Freudian dream-connection just hangs by a weak thread. I found Benjamin's Marxist analysis of Baudelaire much more convincing than his Freudian analysis of the poet. After reading this, I definitely need to read Flowers of Evil yet again. In fact, I should make that a regular practice. I can't stand French as a language (everything is an exception, sorry, but give me German, Swahili, and Latin rules all day long), but if I were ever to attempt to learn it again, it would be for this sole purpose: Reading Baudelaire.

As I said earlier, I was reading Solnit's Wanderlust at the same time as this book. I'll probably save most of the correlations for my review of Solnit's work, but there was an amazing amount of connection, with Solnit quoting Benjamin critiquing Baudelaire, while herself analyzing Baudelaire's work, not only on the figure of the "Flaneur," but also on walking as a socio-political act. Fascinating stuff, especially since my wife and I had recently returned from a vacation in Europe where we figure we clocked in around 90 miles of walking in two weeks.

The book continues with Benjamin's analysis and critique of film in "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," which is not so interesting when addressing the work itself as it is fascinating when one looks at the audience and the change it engenders in them vis-à-vis their appreciation of static art. I might also add that the exploration of strangeness that an actor undergoes when acting in front of the camera and of that same actors dissociation with self led me to think about real and rumored instances of actors who fell too far into their characters and never quite shook the stain to their psyche. Granted, many of these stories are overblown and sensationalized, but I have spoken with some actors who have had to essentially detox from their role to return to normalcy.

The final essay "Theses on the Philosophy of History" is be far the most challenging piece in the collection. It is a somehow timely piece of class history and touches on resistance to fascism in ways that many people now are exploring and re-exploring. Benjamin's arguments might be difficult to understand and sometimes seem to cater to the "party line" a little too cleanly, but they are worth consideration and contemplation.

All-in-all, this is an intellectual/philosophical grab bag on a wide variety of topics. Each is addressed in a different way - you won't find Benjamin pounding the same drum repeatedly - and one will have a variety of emotional and intellectual responses to the whole. But one cannot argue that the work is insignificant. Far from it.



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The Creative Act: A Way of Being

 

The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I studiously avoided reading reviews of this book until I was done because I (correctly) predicted there would be those who praised it as a new book of holy scripture and those who would utterly trash the work as thin and inconsequential. Neither of those two camps is right. And while I do not condone tossing a book before you've given it a fair chance (though I have utterly given up on a book or two, opinions will differ on what a fair chance is. I can see the naysayers who feel that the book is a bunch of twitter quotes strung together, and I can even see why people who went into it not expecting a philosophically-oriented book would be turned off to it (though why you would think that a book about creativity would NOT have a philosophical orientation is beyond me). That said, I lean towards the cult of those who sing this books praises. I'm not all-in drinking the Kool-Aid, but I am at the edge of the clearing watching everyone line up, considering.

If one reads the book to the end, one finds the admission:

You are you.
The work is the work.
Each person in the audience is themselves. Uniquely so.
none of it can truly be understood, let alone distilled to simple equations or common language.

And herein lies the heart of the matter. Creativity is very difficult to pin down. There are exceptions and contradictions. What works one time doesn't work the next. That's the whole point of creativity. If you're looking for an end-all-be-all truth, study Accounting. Paint-by-numbers is not creativity, and it never was. It's good practice, and one can learn principles from it, but the true teachers in creative acts are experience, intuition, and failure.

Rubin does, however, share practical ways of thinking/being for those who might be struggling through the creative process. He also shares ways to ensure that you are creating good art when you think you've got a finished product. Any writer who's been writing for a while will tell you that the most difficult part of writing is editing. And if they don't, you can bet that their work shows it. I can categorically state that my early work, even those for which I was paid good money, could stand another edit. Or two. Or ten. Here Rubin doesn't spare the rod, but reminds us of our responsibility to create the best work we can, while giving us some tools to work with.

Now many of these tools come in the last third of the book, but if one doesn't buy into the foundational principles (remember that old concept of "willing suspension of disbelief"?), then the latter parts of the book are going to be far less impactful. No, you don't have to drink all the Kool-Aid, but you have to be willing to read and observe with an open mind. If you can't at least accept, theoretically, that "art is our portal to the unseen world," then this book is not for you. But if you'll give that thought a serious chance, the rest of the book will make sense to you. Again, if you want paint-by-numbers-so-you-can-monetize-everything-with-high-productivity, you need to look elsewhere.

If you're onboard with exercising a little faith, you'll be able to grok the book. The practicum really starts with the chapter on "Seeds," about a third of the way in. From here to the end, I've marked so many passages and taken so many notes that I won't take the time to put them all (if any) into this review. I've begun marking it up (in pencil - yes, I write in my books) with marginal notes, much like the ancient rabbinical scholars used to litter a verse of scripture with their annotations. As a result, this book has become highly personal to me and will continue to do so as I revisit it. It serves as a mirror to my own creative process, revealing all of its beauty and flaws. I will gaze into this book many times in the future both for inspiration and for practical solutions when I'm stuck (and there are many methods given for how to become un-stuck in the last third of the book).

I have a handful of reference books that I keep "hot at hand" in my writing area. An old Roget's Thesaurus, Tim D. White's Human Osteology, Francis D.K. Ching's A Visual Dictionary of Architecture, and now: Rick Rubin's The Creative Act: A Way of Being.

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The Jade Cabinet

The Jade Cabinet by Rikki Ducornet
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In the interest of full disclosure, I know Rikki. I've helped publish her work a couple of times and have an irregular correspondence with her. Just sent her a letter (handwritten, of course) a few weeks ago, in fact.

Knowing Rikki and reading The Jade Cabinet again after having been away from it for so many years, I am struck, most of all, by the sheer restraint she shows in presenting this devastating, yet beautiful novel. It's a clear case of the power of editing and craftsmanship at work. Her pen is under strict control here, concentrating the power of whimsey and, indeed, some degree of madness into a self-restrained, almost ethereal (pardon the pun - one of the main characters is named "Etheria") critical examination of male dominance, the Victorian social paradigm, and the favoritism of technic over magic.

This is a character-driven novel, first and foremost. What I love about Rikki's work here is that none of the characters are presented as "either/or". Radulph Tubbs, a notably brutal man with few redeeming qualities, almost none, in fact, becomes, in his older years, a bit sympathetic. But not too sympathetic. More just plain pathetic. But the narrator (who, in a surprising twist, ultimately . . . well, I don't want to give away the surprise) feels a pity that borders on admiration for Tubbs' inner world, even though his actions in the physical world are violently misogynistic and crassly materialistic. Baconfield, the architect, who is hired by Tubbs, is a staunch industrialist, bent on bringing sterile order to everything, but later, through a series of misfortunes, becomes a mad mystic. Angus Sphery, father to both Memory (the narrator) and her sister Etheria, is a loving, whimsical father and a friend of Charles Dodgson (yes, that Charles Dodgson) who also abandoned his first daughter and ultimately ended up in Bedlam asylum. Sphery's wife, Margaret, likewise, lost her sanity, but for altogether different reasons.

Yes, it's that sort of novel. Full of frivolity, madness, and (mostly) tragedy.

And at the center of it all is Etheria, the mute daughter of Angus Sphery, who is essentially sold off to Radulph Tubbs for the price of The Jade Cabinet, a Wunderkammer, of sorts, filled exclusively with figurines carved from jade. One of these figures, which I will not reveal here, becomes the pivotal tool (I use that word reluctantly, but it works on several levels), the wrench in the works, as they say, that leads to the vanishment of the lovely, innocent Etheria and the subsequent emergence of the one true monster of the novel, the Hungerkünstler. No, not that Hungerkünstler, but one of the same mien.

Unlike many character-driven novels, however, The Jade Cabinet is fully-engaging throughout, with something for everyone (or "something for everyone to hate" as my friend Stepan Chapman used to say). The magic realism borders, at times, on that ill-defined subgenre known as "The Weird". The writing itself has a strong focus on not only the language itself, but the role of language as it affects the inner worlds of each character. Ultimately, I suppose, the work is about language and memory, though it never beats the reader over the head with a philosophical stick. It is subtle. And this is really the greatest compliment I can give to it: it breathes softly, with occasional rushes of wind, but it's underpinnings are mere whispers that overwhelm, if one is paying attention. It demands such attention, but not in a bombastic way; rather, it engages like a soft mountain breeze through the trees, simultaneously caressing the ears and overwhelming them. It is an elemental force: the force of the air.

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Prisms of the Oneiroi

 

Prisms of the Oneiroi by Martin Locker
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

While I've read bits and bobs of Martin Locker's work before, this is my first full-length foray into his work and I feel like I've struck gold in the Pyrenees. I paid for it (including shipping from Andorra), but this is worth ten times what I spent! There's a wonderful variety to the stories in this collection, all girded by Locker's own voice, or, more properly, voices, as his characters are distinctly-identifiable from one another. Each tale is a different facet of the same gem.

Ligotti has nothing on Locker when it comes to existential dread on a cosmic scale. This was the sort of suffocating fear of the universe that Lovecraft strove for, but Locker has found. "The Dreaming Plateau" is horror of a different order of magnitude, made all the more impactful by the elision of the most purple prose. The poetic heart is intact, but without un-necessary frills, with terrifying clarity. And for some reason, my mind kept flashing images from the Tibetan scenes in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus throughout, which is not a bad thing. I was waiting for Tom Waits to burst through a door at any moment.

"Corfdrager" examines one of my favorite enigmatic pieces of art, Bruegel's "The Beekeepers and the Birdnester" (and the art used on one of my favorite albums from one of my favorite bands, Sunn's White 2) as a catalyst for the narrator's encounter with his family's past and his own inheritance via a seemingly academic investigation. One wonders, by the end, if the academics aren't the most horrific aspect of the story. If you went to graduate school, you know what I'm talking about here. The dive into apiary lore is more sinister and more irresistible than one might imagine.

While reading Prisms of the Oneiroi, I am using a Winterthur Poison Book Project bookmark (you can get one, like I did, for free here). The irony of reading "The Temple Consumes the Rose," which features a green book by Sar Peladan, is not lost on me. I might also be tempted to consume such a book, if I was to be rewarded the visions of Latoure, even if it cost me my life. Such is the price of true art. A moving occult tale.

"The Secrets of Saxon Stone" was a delight to read, and I am not being facetious. Daimons abound, the psychogeography of the region portrayed is reflective of the spirits that not only dwell there, but are interwoven into its very fabric. This is like Dunsany, but without the pedantics that sometimes overween his work. This is mythical and approachable, lending familiarity to the representation of the divine.

Locker displays his acumen for ethnography and mythic studies in "Sea Salt and Asphodel," a story of dreams, prophecy, and the cycle of life and death. The depth of immersion here just has to be experienced - I can't describe it. Suffice it to say that this tale is told in such a way that one feels at one with the others presented in the story. You don't read this story, you live in it. The reader feels a part of the tale, such is the attention to detail.

"In Search of the Wild Staircase" is an epistolary story in the vein of Harper's magazine travelogues from the late-19th- and early-20th-centuries, albeit with a folk horror twist. That twist is set on its head, though, as it is implied, at least, that The Church itself is the source of the frisson. The story ended a bit too hurried for me, but it's still a very solid work. I'll never look at the little country of Liechtenstein the same again.

Locker, you clever, clever man. "The Jasmine Tear" is a story worthy of a Twilight Zone episode, which is one of the highest compliments I can give to a short story. The koummya, the djinn, the deal with a demon, and the treasures of the Maghreb - this is worthy of Musiqa al-Ala; a masterstroke of storytelling that will stick in my mind until the Last Day (or fifty years, whichever comes first)!

I found "A Dialogue of Innocence with the Hidden Parish" deeply moving. First, it created a deep psychogeography of a particular house seeping with sadness, longing for company. I thought of my parent's home and the sorrow I associate with it, but more of that at a later time. I also thought of my own childhood and the deep impressions of place I felt as a young world traveller. Moving every two or three years (Dad was in the military) forces one to latch on to the feeling of a place rather quickly, so I might be a little hypersensitive that way. Combine that with the death of my parents a few years back, and maybe I was destined to fall in love with this story.

Ever contemplated choosing homelessness? I have (when it's warm out). In fact, I was very strongly tempted at my last job to just give a try at homelessness, but fate, thankfully, intervened. In "What the Vagabond Sees or The Parish Coda," an entire society and cosmology is outlined for English Vagabonds, whose motto is "No Parish But Albion". If you know, you know. I immediately connected with this tale, due in part to a trip I took in 2019 that allowed a fair bit of rambling around the Cotswolds. I recalled the many carefree hikes that friends and I took in the English countryside, from Brighton and Eastbourne to the Midlands to the Cotswolds, when I lived in the UK as a teenager. As I understand it, after The Great War, many veterans, disillusioned from the horrors they saw during the war, became homeless wanderers in the 1920s. I think that the song "The Tin Man" by Grasscut is inspired by that phenomenon or, if it's not, I'm going to interpret it that way anyway. I've often dreamt of what it would be, in my dotage, to hike around England until I just drop dead. I know I'm going to sound borderline insane, but it's a very tempting prospect, in all seriousness. This story just unlocks that morbid longing in my heart all over again. Maybe. Someday. Maybe. But only if I'm alone. And it's warm. But I can't imagine a better way to go.


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Appendix N: The Eldritch Roots of Dungeons and Dragons

 

Appendix N: The Eldritch Roots of Dungeons and Dragons by Peter Bebergal
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

First off, thanks to Peter Bebergal, editor, who graciously sent me a review copy of this book. I've long admired Peter's work and he is definitely one of the better human beings on the planet. That said, I've been careful to keep a critical eye on the ball here.

The question to be answered is: Did the book hit its mark? Of course, the answer depends, in part, on the audience. For me, a reader, a writer, an editor, and a long-time gamer, the answer is yes, with some slight caveats. They will be registered in the reviews of the stories themselves, below.

Those who have been playing D&D for some time (I've been playing since 1979) and those who have read extensively in the fantasy genre will, likely, approach with caution. All of us old-skool gamers have read Gary Gygax's "Appendix N" from the first edition of the Dungeon Master's Guide (still, as far as I am concerned, one of the best helter-skelter amalgamations of gaming tools and even some gaming wisdom - though the absolute best guide on how to run a game is found in the Call of Cthulhu 7th edition Keeper Rulebook: Chapter 10). We all know about it, but how many of us have read those works in their entirety? Not me! That might have something to do with a lazy streak, because digging up all those titles is a lot like real work, especially with some of the older, more obscure works.

So, here, Bebergal has done the work for you, and then some. Okay, not every work is collected here (that would take entire volumes), but he has picked out some of the best short work mentioned in Appendix N, and mingled in some pieces not specifically mentioned, but that may have influenced the game, and definitely have influenced players and dungeon masters for decades. But you won't find many direct corollaries with D&D spells, monsters, classes, magic items, or dungeons. No, outside of a few notable exceptions (all noted in the Introduction or Afterword), you'll have to extrapolate from the material provided - you'll have to use your imagination! After all, TSR, the founding company for D&D and many other tabletop roleplaying gems, told you right up front that these are "Products of your Imagination" all the way back in 1983. So, get with it! Get reading and get imagining!

Here's what you have to look forward to:

Right as I started reading this book, my next turn on the Play By Mail game Hyborian War arrived. I read the report on how my Darfarian armies and heroes were doing (not well, honestly - and since then, things have gotten worse). Then I read Lin Carter's "How Sargoth Lay Siege to Zaremm" and I couldn't differentiate between the two. I count that as a very good thing. I can use a lot more epic sword and sorcery on that scale (and yet, in such a short story) in my life.

"The Tale of Hauk," by Poul Anderson: Viking undead undead undead undead. Three stars. The epic "poetic" language came across stilted to me. Even ten-year-old-OMG-I'm-new-to-D&D-and-everything-is-so-awesome Forrest would have balked at the choppy only halfway-historically-accurate prose. What can I say? I was a jaded snob at a very young age. I blame Lewis Carroll. So, not bad, not great. But do not let this stop you from reading more of Anderson's work. He really is an excellent writer!

I've read my share of Leiber's Fafhrd and Gray Mouser tales, but not "The Jewels in the Forest," until now. These are not mere Murder Hobos, but people with real emotion. I could have used these role models in my early TTRPG days (I started when I was 9): Adventurers, but not sociopaths. It's the humanity of the two that I love. There is some genuine pathos here, and Bebergal has slipped other stories into this volume with more emotional impact than you might expect ("Tower of Darkness" and "Black Gods Kiss" most especially). But the pulp-action adventure and mystery here is also up front and real.

Clark Ashton Smith's "Empire of the Necromancers" may be the absolute highpoint of grimdark sword and sorcery (with an emphasis on the sorcery, though swords are utilized). It's difficult to find a darker story, where the level of vengeance would make Poe pale and Evenson blush. The voice is Dunsanian, but a Dunsany gone horribly wrong, which makes this tale horribly right. Machen might have loved this.

I've read "Turjin of Miir" before, but this reread did not tarnish the experience at all. On the contrary, now, more than ever, I can see the subtle genius of Jack Vance's work. There's a cleverness that never becomes self-seeing, a burbling sense of unaware-of-itself humor and a phantasmagoric atmosphere that's weird enough, but not crazy

I have to admit that I haven't read much Tanith Lee. But after the outstanding "A Hero at the Gates," I want more. Cyrion, the protagonist, uses his keen power of observation and quick decision making with even more skill than he shows as a swordsman. Steel may finish the deal, but the critical analysis is made in the hero's head long before a blade is unsheathed. A fantastic character study. In my mind, I couldn't help but picture Erol Otus' D&D character Valerius as I read.

I've read and enjoyed Howard's "Tower of the Elephant" thrice before, and I know why it was contained in the current volume. Still, it's not without it's faults, and I would like to have seen some other Conan story, maybe "Rogues in the House," which, to me, is more of a D&D adventurer's tale. Still, the volume would be incomplete without "Tower," I think, at least for someone new to Sword and Sorcery. So, it's really a must-have. Shame that another Conan piece couldn't have been squeezed in.

Poetry? In Sword & Sorcery? Well, of course. What do you think the old epics were? Here, in Saberhagen's "The Song of Swords," poesis and evocative epic storytelling meld perfectly. This would make any bard proud.

I've had the chance to talk with Michael Moorcock a few times on the phone, while co-editing the Leviathan 3 anthology with Jeff Vandermeer. Mike is a scholar and a gentleman, and I enjoyed some long conversations with him about the writer's craft and his time working with Blue Oyster Cult and Hawkwind. One wonders how he could create such an anti-hero as Elric, but when you read carefully, you realize that Elric might have been a "good man" once. But his world, as shown in "The Dreaming City" is broken. The dream has shattered, and so, the man, who is a shell of his former self, driven by his evil sword.

"The Doom That Came to Sarnath" is one of those tales in which a deep lore is established. Here Lovecraft paints the picture of a lost city saturated by a long-duree history of corruption and fear. Just the sort of place adventurers might go to seek treasure, and just the sort of place where they might meet their own doom!

David Madison's "Tower of Darkness" is amazing. The protagonists, Diana and Marcus, are thoroughly-realized characters that might have been every bit as well-written as Fafhrd and Gray Mouser, had Madison not died an untimely death at age 27. I want to read more of his work. Much more. Absolutely fantastic fantastical work, and such a loss to the world of Sword and Sorcery.

I've often mused on where Gygax found his monsters. I think that Manly Wade Wellman's "Straggler from Atlantis" might be a source for what later became the gelatinous cube (I'm certain his ochre jelly came from Hiero's Journey). Regardless, Wellman crafts a good tale of sword sorcery, and even a crashed flying saucer here. Expedition to the Barrier Peaks , anyone?

Margaret St. Clair's "The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles" holds no surprises, nor does it need to. This is one of those rare stories where you can sense what's coming, what is almost inevitable, but it is so cleverly written that you gladly come along for the ride. This was a joy to read, alas for Mortensen, and the ending was a delightful (for us, not for the salespoerson) cherry on top. I loved this little story.

I've ,read my fair share of Ramsey Campbell's work, especially his Cthulhu mythos fiction. I didn't quite know what to think when I saw that his story "The Pit of Wings" appeared in this collection. Now I see that it's a brilliant mix of Sword & Sorcery and outright horror; exactly the type of game I like to run! If you've ever worried about stirges, don't read this story. Oh, and stirges are one of my favorite things to throw at a party of adventurers!

I will run out of words before I can explain how absolutely marvelous C.L. Moore's "Black God's Kiss" is. Jirel of Joiry is so well-realized in this one story that I immediately ran off to find more of Moore's work. She is a complex character who encounters turns of emotion and morality that reflect an inner reality absent in most Sword and Sorcery. And Moore's Hell is truly a Hell; terrible, yet beautiful. The image of a herd of fleet-footed blind white horses stampeding through hell will probably never leave me:

As the last one of all swept by her, sweat-crusted and staggering, she saw him toss his head high, spattering foam, and whinny shrilly to the stars. And it seemed to her that the sound was strangely articulate. Almost she heard the echoes of a name - "Julienne! Julienne!" - in that high, despairing sound. And the incongruity of it, the bitter despair, clutched at her heart so sharply that for the third time that night she knew the sting of tears.

"The Fortress Unconquerable, Save for Sacnoth" is everything you'd expect from Lord Dunsany. I have to admit that his penchant for hyperbole in all of his stories is simultaneously endearing and annoying. But he wrote in a epic mythological register, so it's to be expected. Still a great story, especially if you haven't read Dunsany before. Plenty of inspiration here for dungeoneers old and young, though! Note that Stormbringer isn't the only great sword of fantasy fiction. I'm going to venture a guess that Gygax took his idea (or was it Arneson's?) for intelligent swords both from Moorcock and from Dunsany.

I have heard A. Merritt's "The People of the Pit" as a great exemplar of pulp weird fiction. That may be true, but the telling of the tale felt off to me. The mimicry of Lovecraft's prose wore thin, and the high vocabulary of a character that clearly wouldn't use it was also a hindrance, throwing me out of my willing suspension of disbelief. So, it might be iconic, but it isn't particularly good. Didn't hate it, didn't love it.

As much a morality tale as an adventure tale, "Legacy from Sorn Fen," by Andre Norton is told in a register one step down from Dunsany's high flights. This suits the story more, with a grit that will appeal to most gaming tables. The biggest takeaway is to be careful what you wish for. Anyone who has been playing D&D long enough realizes the potential pitfalls of fulfilled desires. "Is that what you really want?"

Following these prose pieces are two comics. The first one is "Crom the Barbarian," a comic from 1950 that reads and looks like, well, a comic from 1950, with all that implies. The plotline definitely informed that of a certain '80s movie staring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The final piece is "Sword of Dragonus," from 1971, three years before the appearance of the epic black-and-white adult comic series The Savage Sword of Conan. I have a special place in my own Appendix N for Savage Sword. This is where I cut my teeth on sword and sorcery fantasy. While living at San Vito AFB, Italy, my parents dropped me off one night at the base day care so they could go watch Superman. I was 7 or 8 years old. Someone, probably some half-drunk airman, had left a copy of Savage Sword in among the kids books and comics that people had donated to the child care. It was there I read my first Savage Sword story, The Slithering Shadow. I had no idea why the women hardly wore any clothes, but I didn't really care. I was all about the swords and monsters! Thankfully, the guy running the Stars and Stripes Bookstore on base thought I was just buying comics when I bought my own issues of Savage Sword. This was what set me on the path that prepared me for my encounter with D&D about a year later. But that's a different story.

In summation: I'm impressed by the breadth of the collection. The varied tones and excellent writing make this not just a book about stories for gamers, it is a collection of good to outstanding writing in and of itself. What ties it all together is the imagination and the potential for collaborative imagining, riffing off the themes, characters, settings, plots, monsters, and, of course swords (lest we forget them). The book itself is an experience that rewards both the non-gaming reader and the long-time gamers.

I can't end without noting that though this copy is a paperback, there is fold-out endpapers that are - you nerds guessed it - an old blue dungeon map! Would you expect anything less from Strange Attractor Press? If not, you obviously haven't read enough of their books. So, intrepid adventurer, start here!

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Note: I would be remiss if I didn't mention my own, personal Appendix N. There's some overlap here. The Venn Diagram does cross in a few places, but it's obvious that old E. Gary and I might take an oblique view of each other. No worries, there's room under the TTRPG umbrella for just about anyone!




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Greener Pastures

 

Greener Pastures by Michael Wehunt
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The blurbs that introduce this collection are a who's-who of writers whose work I greatly appreciate: Gemma Files, Steve Rasnic Tem, Brian Evenson, Nathan Ballingrud, and S.P. Miskowski, among others. So, I had high expectations going into this lauded collection.

Unfortunately, things started slowly.

"Beside Me Singing in the Wilderness" takes the old tropes of vampirism and twists it up a bit. It's good, smoothly written, but not extraordinary to me. Your mileage may vary.

"Onanon" was more the sort of thing I expected from all the blurbs and praise I've read. Cosmic horror of the natural world told in a sparse, unforgiving voice.

And from here on out, the stories were incredibly strong, outside of one dip, which I'll mention below.

The title story is strong. Very strong. Like "could have been an episode of Rod Serling's original Twilight Zone" strong. It's the power of the unspoken and the unseen between the words that is so unsettling. The words only mark the boundaries. It's the gaps in-between where the horror dwells. I have a few friends who are truckers that I'm going to recommend this story to. Or maybe I shouldn't . . .

"A Discreet Music" is subtle and strange, but mostly not horrific. And this is good. I actually like the calm weirdness of this transformation, of the shedding of an old life for the new. It's not without its painful moments. On the contrary, there is deep pain in Hiram, the protagonist. And there are jarring revelations about the self, as well. But the metamorphosis is profound and moving.

"The Devil Under the Maison Blue" is such a gently-delivered story that one embraces the horror as, well, just fine. A horror story needn't be stark or harsh or jarring in any way to elicit a powerful response. This is a clear case in point. Sometimes it's the devil you don't know that makes the biggest impression.

I, too, am a sucker for lost footage stories. "October Film Haunt: Under the House" is a melange of the weird and the eerie, full of things that ought not to be, but are, and empty of things that should be, but are not. The lines between fact and fiction and between observer and observed are smeared beyond recognition, resulting in a kaleidoscope of horror that will haunt the reader for a very, long time. And if you're wondering what the cover art is all about: this is it!

"Deducted From Your Share in Paradise" defies expectations in every way. It's a story of maintaining innocence while in a maelstrom of selfish choices, about endings and new beginnings, and possibly about heaven and hell. But it's not so cut and dried as these pairings. One must worm their way between these things and question the very meaning of their outmost bounds. Or maybe, boundaries need to be ignored.

"The Inconsolable" presses deep on the depression button, then asks "what is faith?" and "what is comfort?" It's a poignant tale about breakups and new beginnings, along with the caveats inherent in leaving a piece of one's old life, and a piece of one's own soul, behind.

"Dancers," while weird, was just too soft-spoken for my tastes. It might even be an (gasp) "ineffective" story, trying too hard to be too many things at once. This was the one gap in this collection. I guess every collection has to have one.

"A Thousand Hundred Years" pushes even further through the boundaries of Mark Fisher's "Eerie" and "Weird", namely "that which should be there, but is missing" and "that which is there, but should not be," to great emotional effect. The story is a strange admixture of tears and fears, of melancholy and hope, a tale of being pulled in multiple directions, some good, some bad, all at once. It is life and loss in all its complexity, and reveals the true, confusing horrors of the world. Like many of the stories in this collection, this injects a great deal of emotion, without becoming sickly sweet or cynical, into a tale that squeezes the breath out of you.

Oof (again). "Bookends" is a poetic, sublime, beautiful gut punch. Grief is at the heart of it all, grief and loss, both of which I've experienced in bucketloads over the course of the last few years. Do not read this if you are dealing with an open emotional wound, specifically the death of a close loved one. This story will absolutely wreck you. Then again, it might just open some doors. Approach with caution.

The blurbs are deserved. Minus one miss, this collection hits on all cylinders. I will be reading more of Wehunt's work, for sure. But that's for the future, after I've recovered from this one and the deep emotional grooves it cut in me start to smooth out. For now, I am left scarred, but better for it. Kind of like . . . life.

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The Hanging

 Raphus Press have created another beautifully dark, darkly beautiful limited-edition book in Fabio Waki's The Hanging. This is a story of the unsaid, that which is only implied, but the implications loom like thunderheads rolling in unseen at night, the rumble faintly indicating an approaching maelstrom. The descriptive prose reminds one of Cormac McCarthy at his slightest - pure description with no over-riding commentary. The reader is left to pain(t) the picture, allowing for a sparse, but brooding tapestry. The dialogue is obtuse, with dark understanding passing between the characters between the words in a way best characterized by the works of Brian Evenson, particularly his darkest works. The volume of silence is immense, the words only borders or corners of a vast void, with comprehension seeping in through the liminal zones. 

The package is evocative of the prose and the situations within - a dark horse with larger-than-life teeth (or, possibly, teeth bared in terror) and eyes wide with alarum, warns readers from the very cover of the book that they had best beware. A pale equine ghost peers out from behind the front endpaper, haunting the entryway, as if trying to tell you that this is the last warning before you plunge in. 

There really is no "coming out the other side" in this instance. The story, partially because of it's paucity of prose, sticks in the brain, needling thoughts long after one has "finished" the tale. But there is no clean finish. The ragged ends of hints and veiled references flap in the wind like a ghostly vestment. Reading it is a holistic experience, or hole-istic, meaning it leaves holes within the reader. And it's what might fill those holes that agitates the most frisson.

The horses tried to warn you. 

If you're insistent, you can buy a copy at the Raphus Press website or at one of my favorite places to buy books, Ziesings.com. But don't wait too long. These are limited, and they will slip away into the darkness, leaving only questions for the uninitiated. 

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Cathode Love

 

Cathode Love by Matthew Brendan Clark
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Matthew Brendan Clark is an alchemist of decadence, mixing a strong literary and analytical brew to create something more powerful than the sum of its parts. Lead to gold? No. More like silver to gold, but the mix and presentation add significant value to each piece, giving a cumulative effect from beginning to end. One is reminded of the boundaried eclecticism of Strange Attractor and the wonderful Sacrum Regnum I and Sacrum Regnum II.

After an excellent introduction, the post-introduction introduction, "Now Departing . . . Reality," is a careful examination of the impossibility of communicating, something I've addressed myself at length. But Clark does so in a more careful way, I think, exploring to the very dusty corners the limitations we have as humans.

But in doing so, he opens doors, much like a Oulipo philosopher, showing that acknowledging the severe limitations of human ability to share perception actually cracks open the wall to one's own imagination. In our vain attempts to communicate, we give each other seeds that take root in our minds and our imaginations are opened to new vistas that are ours alone.

The first piece of writing not penned by Clark is Michel Leiris' "The Heiroglyphic Monad". It's is a brief philosophical treatise, told by a surrealist, outlining some of the ideas found in the writings of John Dee. A heady mixture in and of itself, which gives hints to the overall thematic content of Cathode Love.

I'm not sure if Marina Warner's essay "The Writing of Stones" constitutes an apologia for metaphor or science, both or neither. In the end, Warner finds a Hegelian dialectic moment in the stones collected by Roger Caillois, erstwhile surrealist. Here "material mysticism" and "convulsive beauty" are brought into contentious focus with one another over the subject of of, of all things, Mexican jumping beans. There is a lot to digest here, and it's a topic I've thought about extensively, so much so that I twirl around, infinitely, like an astronaut orbiting a black hole. The divergent threads might never merge in my mind, at least not as smoothly as Warner presents, so I have to be content to be on the edge, forever circling, until something breaks in my mind one way or the other. Perhaps this is why I like writing so much - the Apollonian side of me is gratified by the order of grammar and syntax, while the Dionysian side of me enjoys wrestling that same syntax into disorder (sometimes slight, sometimes more radical) in order to wedge open cracks in the armor of logic.

I was very glad to see Remy de Gourmont's "Introduction to the First Book of Masks," the symbolism manifesto, in many ways, contained in Cathode Love. This piece actually inspired me to compile and edit Text:Ur, The New Book of Masks many years ago, so, for me, it's seminal. I'm sure it was for many others, as well. The symbolism movement, while still a little obscured by time, spawned much of the early modernist movement. And I have to admit here that the Symbolist art movement (which featured two of my favorite artists: Gustave Moreau and Odilon Redon) is, by far, my favorite artistic era. So between the visual art and the written word, I enjoy a sort of artistic-synesthesia, if you will.

In his essay "Prison Food," Clark muses on poetry's ability to blossom from the depths of suffering. Or, in his words, we can benefit our lives by "assuming that poetry operates as an escape from hell". Though I don't think that poetry, whether we are writing it or reading it, can fully alleviate our internal suffering, it can provide some reprieve from the pangs of sorrow.

Antonin Artaud pushes for a mystification of what was becoming, in his day, utilitarian theater, in his essay "Metaphysics and the Mise En Scene". He creates a sort of artistic synesthesia (do you sense a theme here?) in his rolling commentary on visual art (featuring Van Leyden's painting The Daughters of Lot), poetry, and, most of all, theater, pointing out the metaphysical nature of Leyden's piece and Balinese shadow puppetry.

Artaud's "The Theater of Cruelty" is a Dionysian manifesto for the stage, criteria for a ritual more than a play, or the reuniting of the play with ritual. I see now exactly where Hermann Nitsch drew his inspiration for "The Fall of Jerusalem". Here, Artaud is as concerned with occult matters as dramatic matters. His focus on hieroglyphs and holy places betrays a neo-platonic reach to connect with the beyond.

I am not fond of werewolf stories or their ilk, as I find them hackneyed and largely predictable. But Count Stenbock's "The Other Side," of which I've heard rumors for years, has such a beautiful poetic resonance, that it's impossible for me not to love it, just like it was impossible for Gabriel not to love the woman with piercing blue eyes and golden hair, even though he condemned her (and himself) in the process.

Here's a bit of healing for your soul I discovered while perusing the next section of the book: Reading Baudelaire on the back porch on a cool summer evening with Dave Brubeck playing in the background. A sip from the balm of Gilead. A little moment of bliss. You're welcome. Now back to the book . . .

David Tibet's essay "Why I Looked to the Southside of the Door" is, as one would expect with his writing, elliptical, peeking around the corner, just out of sight, and absolutely enveloping in its charisma. From Coptic grammar to more nicknames than I can keep track of to, of course, Current 93 (don't all roads lead to Current 93 after all?), we journey with Tibet through vast halls of intellect, getting a glimpse of how the man sees the world.

In "A Dream Through Death," Matthew Brendan Clark gives a short, if thorough, retrospective on the films of French director Jean Rollin outlining his works, biography, and distinctive ouvre. Am I a huge fan of Rollin's films? No. Will I examine them in a different light and with a more careful eye, especially those films I have not yet seen? Absolutely, and directly as a result of this essay.

After a short eulogy to Roger Gilbert-Lecomte, eight of the drug-addled poet's works are presented in the original French and in translation. I've not read much of the former-surrealist's works, but after this introduction I will be reading much, much more. "Wind out of a space steeper than the edge of eternity" indeed!

"Clarimonde" is not my first encounter with Theophile Gautier, but it might be my most profound. This is the epitome of the gothic romance story, vampirism, and all. It's a crushingly beautiful work, giving full feeling to the experience shared by all humans of being violently-pulled between two natures, two entire beings, Manichean dualism of the heart (and in this case, the body and soul, as well). A profound work.

"An Interview with Catherine Ribeiro" is my introduction to the music of Catherine Ribeiro + Alpes, a genre-melding psychedelic band redolent of early Pink Floyd, but unique. Since I make it a habit to listen to the Floyd's "Live at Pompeii" from time to time, this is a welcome introduction.

Jess Franco's "Lorna . . . The Exorcist" sounds like the sort of movie that would disgust even the 19th-century decadents. Not my cup of tea. I enjoyed the essay, which was informative and insightful, but I won't be watching the movie.

The inclusion of Remy de Gourmont's "Hell" seems appropriate in a book that flies to the heights and descends to the depths. But these are the heights of tortured bodies and the lows of forlorn hopes. Gourmont embraces them all!

"The Lock of Faith" is, by the author's own admission, a fragmentation recounting of a sexually-charged, yet terrifying dream. Unedited, it shows a raw, shattered reality that many will recognize from their own dreamtime forays. Edited, this could be a compelling tale, dark, sensual, and surprising. The germ is there, waiting to grow. Perhaps it's a bit indulgent for Clark to have included this in his own anthology, but it doesn't lessen the impact of the whole.

The short prose-poem "Chlorotic Ballad" by Joris-Karl Huysmans is an exquisite sliver of his larger works, concentrated beauty and grim dreadfulness all wrapped up in velvet and rubies. Each sentence seemed like a little explosion through which one could see the author's longer works, like the heretofore-unseen backdrop to a sky torn asunder, revealing the stunning reality beyond.

Saint-Pol-Roux takes the reader (and the "Yokels" of the story) from banal lust to an apotheosis of the sublime in "The Perceptible Soul". This vibrant account of an esoteric transformation, not only of the stage performer's persona, but of the very hearts and minds of the Yokels, is a wonder to read, a high point of aesthetic beauty and profound reverence, which ends on a suitably surreal note.

A mystical strain of Catholicism (or a catholic strain of mysticism) permeates Saint-Pol-Roux' next piece, "The Immemorial Calvary". At what point does the quest for hope destroy the vessel of hope, only to integrate into one's very soul? Saint-Pol-Roux explores that very question, and finds a bittersweet, if positive answer.

Clark's final essay, "For the Saints of Failure . . ." is a work of beauty and genius, a manifesto, if not for artists, then for those who appreciate art, especially in its strangest, most outre forms. It is a beautiful benediction to the works that appear before it in this volume, and to the volume itself. Finis opus coronat!

All-in-all, I strongly recommend buying a copy direct from the editor/author. It's an absolutely beautiful artifact, inside and out. It's obvious that Clark poured a lot of love and creative juices into this volume. I honestly wish there were more books like this in the world, where someone has taken great care to curate and present a cohesive group of fiction and non-fiction to form a sort of "world view" artifact. The anthologies I mentioned at the beginning of this review are exactly the sort of anthologies I mean. Anthologies, especially those that combine fiction and non-fiction, are becoming a rare sight these days. Clark, I think, recognizes this and has presented Cathode Love as a rare treasure, indeed.




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Pithy Entries and Social Media

 I am again contemplating, as I have in the past, the abandonment of most social media. I've been asking myself, this time, what is it that draws me back to it, what causes the addiction? I've asked many other people who I know and respect the same question: Why do we have to keep coming back?

I'm not going to answer that question at this time. I need to meditate on it longer, possibly much longer, before I can come to a natural conclusion and do what I need to do. 

I swore in the past that I would NOT let this blog devolve into a long-form twitter/instagram/facebook/blusky/mammoth/fill-in-social-media-platform here. I am developing a strong dislike for the pithy. And yet, there are times when I feel the need to post something that is rather short and unprofound. Here I am doing just that right now. I suppose it's part of a transition.

My writing area is in the top floor of my house. My record player (well, my better record player, as opposed to the record player of my childhood) is in the basement. So, I've been slowly migrating records downstairs. Tonight, I brought down Hawthonn's wonderful Red Goddess (of this men shall know nothing) and played it before putting it away on the shelf.  Of course, I gave it a spin. It's one of the first pieces of vinyl I purchased, actually, I think it was the first I purchased since 1987. It really rekindled my love for vinyl. For those who have heard it and held it, you're probably saying "of course it did. How could it not?"

While listening (I am one of those people who can listen and read at the same time), I read David Tibet's essay"Why I Looked to the Southside of the Door," which is, as one would expect with his writing, elliptical, peeking around the corner, just out of sight, and absolutely enveloping in its charisma. From Coptic grammar to more nicknames than I can keep track of to, of course, Current 93 (don't all roads lead to Current 93 after all?), we journey with Tibet through vast halls of implication, intellect, and imagination. 

On top of this, after a clear, calm day, an incredible lightning storm rolled in. At first, being in the basement, I thought someone was moving furniture on the main floor, then I felt that telltale rumble that indicates that the gods are angry. I went upstairs (to the main floor) and turned out the lights, watching the lightning storm. A block away, on one of the city's main arterial roads, I watched car lights occasionally zip by while the sky became (quite literally) electric. Just beneath my living room windows, where we have a storied thorn bush growing (storied because we've had two families of children raised in it: three robins last year and a cardinal this year), fireflies glowed, as they do this time of year. I penned the following trite missive which I am including here because it was all part of a moment:

The lacerating chaotic violence of lightning shattering the Gates of Heaven

. . . between . . .

Car lights filing down a busy street,

Humans with

Thoughts,

Passions,

Aspirations

at the wheel

. . . between . . .

A stately procession of fireflies;

lift, light, drop

lift, light, drop

Mating awaits.

"It's the amps that kill"

- They say - 

There you are. A social media post outside of social media. Me, shouting at the social media storm, pissing in the virtual wind. Somehow, I'll find my way.

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If you like my writing and want to help my creative endeavors, ko-fi me at https://ko-fi.com/forrestaguirre. Every little bit is seen and appreciated! Thank you!