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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To Those Gods Beyond

 

To Those Gods Beyond by Giorgio Manganelli
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I have yet to read an Atlas Press title that hasn't surprised me and delighted me. Giorgio Manganelli's To Those Gods Beyond is no exception. Again, Atlas captures and presents the work of a heretofore-unknown-to-me master of literary expression with near perfection. I'll explain the "near" at the end. Even with that forthcoming caveat, this is an outstanding work that should be read more widely. I absolutely see why Italo Calvino praised Manganelli's work and why Atlas published this book. The first 50-ish pages alone are worth the price of entry. Far more, if you ask me. The book is divided into seven sections, which I've outlined below. Calvino remarked on the coherence of the work, which is seemingly all over the place. I agree, but I can't quite put my finger on exactly how it coheres. This bears more examination and thought.

Manganelli's essay "Literature as Deception" flatters the writer's vanity, crowning him buffoon, but in the sense of The Fool in the tarot. The foolishness is freedom and the buffoonery wisdom. The writer is, in essence, the trickster god of words and semantics. I wholeheartedly agree with his assessment. At least I flatter myself thusly. Call me a vain fool.

"A King" may be an existentialist shudder from the whispering of death or it may be a eulogy to solipsism itself. But why not both? In any case it is as bold and majestic as the title.

"Simulations" takes the narrator from kingship to poverty to being a renegade and, finally, to nothing but a "child's hallucination". Manganelli, like Beckett in his famous trilogy, breaks down the character to the point of less than nothing, a mere figment of imagination. The last paragraph is a masterful paradigm shift from the observer to the observed; an existentialist epiphany.

"A Few Hypotheses Concerning My Previous Reincarnations" is exactly what it purports to be, which is a baffling thing for any reader. Suffice it to say that the "S" word (-uicide) figures prominently in the narrative as the author tries to piece together his past life. It's a whimsical and tragic examination of identity and the twisted roads one can go down when reflecting on the self.

"Ignominy" sees the (yet another) dead protagonist slowly reason themself into the state defined by the title. The self-awareness of The Dead leads them to disappear in the ever-diminishing (or, rather, spreading thin to near-infinity) of the self. Ignoring, it seems, is both ubiquitous and inevitable for those without a body and, hence without a firm place in space and time. All dissolves into near-nothing.

In hindsight, it's plain to see that the title of the book: To Those Gods Beyond derives, in tone and principal, at least, from the story "An Impossible Love". Here, Hamlet (deceased) finds means to communicate with the Princess of The Princess of Cleve (also deceased) by means of a verbal catapult that launches missives across realities. But what is between and behind those realities? The answer is rather distressing.

The lengthy and exhaustive essay "Disquisition on the Difficulty of Communicating With the Dead" is precisely what the title promises. Where does one begin searching to find the dead, seeing that we have no way to measure those who have no body? Where are they hiding? And what language would we or should we use when communicating with them, once found? More importantly, do they even care? Or are they just stupid?

Now, on to my only complaint. I understand why Alastair Brotchie's afterword was, well, after the rest of the book. Here Brotchie tries to provide a framework for the volume as a whole, attributing all the references to death to an ongoing metaphor about writers and literary work. The evidence feels very thin, with Brotchie admitting as much, and I was absolutely unconvinced. Besides, the afterword saps the work of its mystery - the speculation, often with a darkly humorous twist, about what the state of the dead actually is. All I can say is that I'm glad it wasn't at the beginning, as the tenuous, yet overwrought analysis of Manganelli's work wouldn't have spoiled the joy of To Those Gods Beyond so much as polluted it utterly. I'd rather it just not have been a part of this volume.

So, excising the weak afterword, this is a strong collection of . . . well, it's not exactly easy to find an appropriate genre category for this work. It's its own thing. Unique. A bit of an enigma. And I love it for that.

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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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The Frost Crabs of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

 Mount Abraxas Press again astounds with a novella from the heretofore-unknown-to-me Michael Uhall, The Frost Crabs of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, subtitled "A Novella of the Wierd". I've expressed my admiration for the selection and beauty of Mount Abraxas books (some of them having been written by yours truly) many times. I have, in one of my earliest entries ever on this blog, lauded the novella form. I've read and loved my share of books with arctic themes or set in the arctic.  And though the depth of my studies in philosophy is extremely limited (though I have read more than what I've posted about here on this blog - notably Deleuze, Kant, and the Existentialists, including Sartre), I do enjoy hovering around the edges of philosophical works. 

Here, Uhall presses all the right buttons. Like he's mashing the control board of the paragraph above. This has come as a veryvery pleasant surprise. Even the physical object is a notch above the extremely high quality of production I expect from Mount Abraxas. The cover is heavier than previous covers and with sort of a waxy finish that I absolutely love. 

But it's between the covers (or the layers of the Weltseele, as Nietzsche might say) that the magic happens. Maximillian Talcott, a Bostonian seafarer, of sorts, is ship-wrecked on tiny island and rescued by a strange submersible craft piloted by no less than the philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, who has replaced himself "back home" with a body double, an man plucked from the asylums, who has died, given the illusion of the famous philosopher's demise. At this point, I was more than a little worried that the novella would devolve into a pastiche of Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, with Nietzsche replacing Nemo. And for a few pages, this is exactly what seemed to be happening. 

Then the story . . . turned. And I wondered if Nietzsche had indeed died and the madman he spoke of was actually the man who stood before Maximillian. The book never explicitly rules this possibility out, and I thought it a brillian masterstroke, if only in my own mind. It might explain a lot, because this tale descends into madness bordering on horror, but with enough restraint that the Dionysian elements are tempered by an Apollonian restraint . . . but just barely. A "new" sun-god of a sort emerges, just as a molting crab emerges from itself. But this molting, this transormation, this growth is something much deeper than the mere physical shedding of an old form for a new one. There is an element of the numinous in all of this, which shocked and surprised me, which is something that is tough to do to this jaded reader. I am waiting to see what Uhall creates next. This is an auspicious start that shows some writerly "chops" that are to be admired. Highly recommended. But don't ever think about eating crab again. Ever. Forever.

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The Explosion of a Chandelier

 

The Explosion of a Chandelier by Damian Murphy
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Like any good sleight-of-hand, even the publisher name, "Occult Books," is a deception, at least in the popular conception of what "Occult" means. Here, I think it's wise to refer to the original meaning of the word: hidden from view. You won't find wild sabbats, goat sacrifice (virgin or otherwise), or sulfur and brimstone here. No, this occultation of of a more refined sort. Something far more interesting (and sinister in the trickiest of ways).

What we have here is an exploration of the imagination and the manifestation of the imagination into the "real" world. This world is filled with subterfuge and the already-mentioned slight-of-hand. It is labyrinth whose walls shift. A game where the rules change in unexpected, winsome ways. But it's a make-believe which breaches the wall to that-which-is-hidden. These games and labyrinths create thin cracks in the zones that contain realities.

You'll recall this from your childhood, the imaginative playfulness and discovery of places undiscovered by most of society, the unveiling of the "truth" behind individual identities, the understanding of the true mechanism of seemingly ordinary objects that are much more than they seem on the surface.

Some of us are lucky enough to have survived into adulthood with those same revelatory faculties intact. But we have to work at it. It's a gift, to be sure, but a gift that has to be wrested, nay, stolen from the universe.

The Explosion of a Chandelier is a carefully-encrypted guidebook on how one might access such gifts, if one is bold enough to sieze them! But, like Damian's other works of a similar ilk (The Exalted and the Abased, The Academy Outside of Ingolstadt, and Abyssinia all jump to mind), those who are not accustomed to seeking for hidden things, who have forgotten the very real power of imagination, or who lack the courage to sieze the scepter that cracks the barriers between realities . . . well, they simply do not, cannot, and will not Know. On the surface, they will read a story about young men living in Spain during the age of anarchic revolution, a story about hotels and keys and bombs and chandeliers.

But, trust me, there's much more in there, SO much more! Hidden between the words, behind the pages, and most importantly, inside. Look inside! Don't let your reading eyes deceive you. Or, actually, please do!

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Decasia: The State of Decay. A film by Bill Morrison.

 

My first forays into "experimental" film were courtesy of the International Cinema at BYU when I was an undergrad. Though not as highly-experimental as Morrison's Decasia, my early exposure to such films as Svankmajer's Faust and Wender's Wings of Desire whetted my appetite for more. When a friend of mine, who shared a shift as a security worker at night on campus, invited me and a few others over to watch Lynch's Eraserhead, I was hooked. 

I stumbled on Morrison's work while searching for clips from my favorite directors, The Brothers Quay (if you don't know how much of a Quay fanboy I am, you obviously have not been reading my blog for long). Morrison's Light is Calling came up in my search, and my interest was piqued. I watched it and was entirely blown away. 

Now, while Light is Calling is done in a warm sepia-tone, Decasia is purely black-and-white, which suits my (very mild) hue blindness just fine. Like any experimental cinematic work, this one takes patience and, in places, pure endurance. I admit to nearly shutting the whole thing off during a sequence in which an anonymous diver is climbing a ladder up to a high diving board (at least that's what I think was happening). Everything is in fairly slow-motion. Not super slowmo, but slow nonetheless. Morrison is willing to make you work for your insights. 

What we're given is a series of black-and-white films damaged by time either by smeared development fluid or outright disintegration of the cellulose acetate medium. The images are often difficult to discern, sometimes inscrutable. At other times, there are moments of relative clarity - the many cuts of whirling dervishes that seem to thread the sparse motifs together are decidedly old and far from perfect, but they offer the eyes a bit of a rest from the more challenging segments. 

I find it interesting that so much of Decasia is set in, well, Asia, whether Asia Minor or the Far East. Though Morrison has said nothing of colonialism that I can find in his interviews, a fair amount of footage is taken from documentary film of the middle east and Japan, among other locales. One of the more haunting segments is that of a pair of Catholic nuns standing as sentinels as a group of young uniformed schoolgirls, likely Vietnamese, if I am correct in my surmisings, marching past into what I presume must be a Catholic mission-school, probably in French Indochina. In one particularly attention-grabbing moment, one of the girls looks back at the camera and we see her full face for the first time. There is a strong look of suspicion in her eyes. It's probably just childhood curiosity for seeing a film camera for the first time, but I like to think of her as telepathically saying "I will be freed from this. If not me, then my children, or my children's children. We won't tolerate this forever."

Other segments are mostly banal documentary pieces, with a few bits from dramatized silent movies scattered throughout. I didn't recognize any of them, but my silent movie mental catalog is quite minimal. When such dramatized performances were presented, there was, for me, a mixed tale of the wonder of acting with th tragedy that, while these images survive, the actors clearly did not. It didn't help that there were, in close proximity to these sections, film of underground miners' bodies being dragged out from mines. A strange contrast. 

The music for the film was originally the film for the music. The initial performance of Michael Gordon's composition was the occasion for which the film was initially created. The music came first, then the film came as a reaction to that music. It's obvious that Gordon and Morrison played off of each other, though, to produce the "final" version that appears in Decasia. Gordon's atonal, intentionally de-tuned avant-classical orchestral piece and Morrison's abstract, surreal imagery play well of of each other.

A PRI interview on the DVD provides some insight into both Morrison's motivations for creating the movie and Gordon's thought process behind the music. Though the interview claims that you can't have one without the other, I'm willing to accept that as a challenge and watch Decasia muted with, let's say SunnO))) playing as musical accompanyment. Actually, I can think of a number of bands whose work would compliment the visuals. The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble jumps right out front. Much of Wagner Ӧdegard's work would work, as well.

Morrison claims that the work is both existential and life-affirming. There is no doubt about the former. The film throughout evokes an existential dread through a two-fold process of obscuring and revealing, forming a sort of pulsating rhythm between the eerie and the weird. The viewer often feels trapped between several worlds at once: The world from which they are viewing the movie, the world in which the film was initially captured, and the world that some of the captured film is trying to portray (this is particularly true of pieces that show actors from the 1920s or '30s portraying scenes in historical costume).  Decasia is not only a film, it is a place, its own strange world of mixed up timelines bubbling in and out of perception. Needless to say, it is a very strange place to inhabit, even if only momentarily, a discomfiting space that reminds one of one's mortality in the strongest of ways. 

On the flipside, there is a strange element of hope throughout, as well, that maybe something of us can survive that change called death and still affect the world. It's not an overtly spiritual plea by Morrison, but a little whisper of what might possibly be. Just maybe. Time will truly tell, right?

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Malpertuis

 

Malpertuis by Jean Ray
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Malpertuis is a brooding work of dark genius. It is a puzzlebox, a mystery . . . of sorts. A slow, grey carnival, solemn, but unholy, slowly unfolds. The setting, the house Malpertuis, is like a decaying body, with the inhabitants its organs, fitfully straining to beat, to move, to live. But the dolor that hangs over the place and its . . . people(?) is loden with malaise and despair that eventually stifles all attempts to escape the somber veil of thwarted history that is wrapped in the tangled skeins of fate to the point where the Sisters themselves are strangled by their own threads.

The pace is deliciously plodding. There is a strong sense of something that once was, but is no longer. A vitality that has been sapped and bled into a dry husk blown about by the slightest breeze.

It is beautiful and ugly at the same time. But there is little to hope for in Malpertuis. The cursed place was condemned to crumble by the ambitions of the sorcerer Cassave, whose misdeeds and perversities I will not recount here. Even the author (who may or may not have identified with the un-named thief/narrator) is loathe to approach Cassave's sins directly. If the reader is looking for direct explanations and so-called "plot," they will be hard pressed to find anything of the sort.

Ray's perambulations serve a higher (lower?) purpose: to bring the reader into the gothic labyrinthine walls of Malpertuis. Reading the book is, like walking a labyrinth, a meditation, a strange shelter from the outside world, an escape into an inner world both fascinating and excruciating.

At first, I thought I might be entering a Gormenghast-like space combined with Knives Out. It didn't take long before I realized that this was not the conceit that Ray was working with. In Malpertuis, we are not bound by contemporary notions of plotting and novel structure. This is a kaleidoscopic work, a shattered mirror of perspectives and prose. It is deeply fascinating, in this regard, with the "story" being revealed from different points of view, along with different attitudes toward the subject matter. I used the word "vortical" in my notes while reading, and I stand by that description. This is a whirlwind into which the reader is not merely drawn, but yanked with great force, to be buffeted about non-stop by strangeness and unwelcome revelations.

Now, I know I use this argument all the time, but one of my methodologies for evaluating a work is "would the Brothers Quay make a movie of this? Could they?" The answer here is a resounding "yes". The book has had a cinematic treatment, which is its own piece of art, but not nearly as sublime as this amazing opus.

Strongly, strongly recommended! I can see myself revisiting Malpertuis many, many times. But then, isn't that just the nature of the place itself? I am happily caught in its labyrinth!

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Waystations of the Deep Night

 

Waystations of the Deep Night by Marcel Brion
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I recall a night. It was probably 1982, if I've triangulated correctly. In Bellevue, Nebraska, a suburb of Omaha. My friend Ray and I were staying at our friend Shawn's house. Shawn's dad was kind of a celebrity to us. He had a killer conversion van (though, unfortunately, no barbarians painted on the side), a copy of Rush's 2112 in the tape deck, and he knew the guitar player from REO Speedwagon. Pretty cool to us 13 year olds!

Back then, young teenagers were pretty "free range". I recall Saturdays and summer days where I would ride my bike for hours, covering many miles, just sort of going from place to place, running into friends, creating adventures. There were no helicopter parents back then. At least I didn't know any. Needless to say, Shawn's dad was not a helicopter parent. We stayed out in the conversion van, listening to Rush while playing Tunnels & Trolls, with no adult influence whatsoever. It was bliss.

When it comes to exact details of that night, I can only recall a couple. After finishing our T&T session, we went out for a nighttime stroll. It was one of those strangely surreal nights where the three of us seemed like the only people out on the streets. We went to Top Dog Hot Dog for the arcade games as much as for the hot dogs. I recall playing Moon Patrol, Zaxxon (I still suck at that game), and then playing the Centaur pinball game (still my favorite board) until they closed at about 11 PM.

Then, we wandered. I can't tell you where all we went and what all we did, though I am certain involved a lot of trespassing and maybe some breaking and entering.

What I can tell you about is the feeling I had. Did I mention that we had stayed awake the entire night before that night? No? It's true, we had been awake for close to 36 hours straight before the night began. For those of you who have done this, first of all, don't continue. I have first-hand experience of a loved one becoming temporarily psychotic and having to be hospitalized in the psych-clinic due to lack of sleep. It's terrifying to see from the outside. I wonder if I hadn't experienced something similar that night. How could I know? When you're in the middle of psychosis, your thoughts seem pretty logical (even hyper-logical, to coin a term) to you.

I want to say there was a dulling of the senses, but "dulling" doesn't describe what I felt. It was more a compartmentalizing of the senses. The "I" in "me" was one step removed. I heard things, but it was as if it was from a distance. Vision came as if from a television or movie screen. Even my own voice felt like it emanated from somewhere outside or "behind" me. It was summer, but my skin felt numbed. A high-pitched whining continually sounded from the back of my skull.

And I felt like anything was possible. Everything, though one step removed from my senses, was alive and full of potential. I wouldn't have been surprised by a miracle, and wouldn't have been taken aback by the end of the world.

Since then, I've had a few other experiences late, late at night that I won't detail here. There is some kind of physiological and psychological reaction to the deep night that makes each of those experiences to feel "of a piece," as they say. And the same is true of the stories in Marcel Brion's excellent Waystations of the Deep Night.

The title story is exactly what you would expect from such a title: an oneiric tale straight out of a de Chirico painting. I'm honestly shocked that the Brothers Quay haven't done a short film based on this story. It would be a perfect fit, as Brion's painterly prose is beautifully imagistic. Or is that magicistic? Borderline majestic. It's everything I hoped for, judging by the title. Dark and refulgent, at once.

"The Field Marshal of Fear" is a quiet, somber piece, but steady as marching feet. The short, simple sentences, however, do not fail to evoke a stupendous sadness, an eternal drudgery experienced by the dead veterans of wars long since won or lost. A graveside sleepwalk, full of night's heaviness.

In "The Fire Sonata," Brion's voice reminds me of Calvino, but with a sinister edge much sharper and darker than anything the Italian master wrote. I had to split this story into two readings, and I had high expectations for the concluding read. My expectations were met and then some! This could have been an episode of the Twilight Zone that Rod Serling would have been proud of. That's the highest praise, coming from me, as TZ is my favorite shoe of all time.

I would swear David Lynch had written "Incident on a Journey," had I not read it in this collection. The ending came as no surprise, but the inevitability of the tale made it all the more uncomfortable and awkward, like you know you're walking into a trap, but there is no way to avoid it, so you take in every excruciating detail and just watch in desperate silence as the void closes in on you, closer and closer.

Though it could be read merely as a fabulously well-written eerie tale (in the Fisherian sense), "Dead Waters" is, pardon the pun, much deeper than that. It's a story primarily about agency, manipulation, creation, and causality, with many of the characters being potentially marionettes or God Himself, or neither. There are no clear answers, but plenty of compelling questions about what transpires on dark streets. This was the most blatantly "dreamlike" story in the collection, and a deeply-intriguing read.

"La Capitana" is a child's long, slow fading into a dream-world of potential adventure beyond the seas. It is simultaneously happy and sad, bittersweet, full of hope and, yet, utterly hopeless. Imagine your eight-year-old self on a boring, sunny afternoon, given the power to disappear into mysterious dreams of exotic lands on a ship named "La Capitana," a name that you gave the ship, because it is yours, in dream.

"The Glass Organ" was every bit as ephemeral and strange as the object in the title implies. It is a multi-faceted story, but tenuous, images slipping onto one another, transforming into a world that may or may not exist.

"The Lost Street" is a more traditional ghost story. I use the word "more" intentionally, as it is not a fully-traditional ghost story. There are enough more surreal elements that take this beyond the realm of, say M.R. James and approach Bruno Schulz by way of Dali.

Overall, Brion's stories evoked a visceral familiarity within me, feelings I've felt mostly when I've had too little sleep (day or night) and some of the oddities of life in the deep night. Here's sampling of what I mean - Brion describes it much better than I do, from the story "The Glass Organ":

That nocturnal stroll through a park that merged imperceptibly with the forest - certain domestic trees having recovered their wild freedom - already contained within it the qualities of a labyrinth. I didn't choose paths. When several opened before me, I accepted now the darkest, with the childlike hope of encountering a marvelous creature, now the brightest, for the pleasing reward of a downpour of moonlight like a narrow stream between the serried darkness of the trees. Concerns about time or direction would have diminished the sense of the unreal that I received from the night. To let myself be carried along by it, to consent to the paths it offered me, ah! the sheer bliss of no longer choosing. What did it matter if dawn overtook me in the middle of the forest or at the first houses of a distant village? The joy of abandoning myself to the indefinite character that moonlight bestows on deeds and things ruled out any directed action on my part. There was nothing I sought, nothing I fled. For several hours I was at peace with myself, relinquishing both desire and regret, indifferent to wherever, in the end, I must inevitably arrive, not caring whether that place was one of fulfillment or one of oblivion.

This is how it feels to flee into the deep night.

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Heqet

 

Heqet by Brendan Connell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I've discovered over the last few years that my favorite forms to read and to write are the novella and the prose poem. Here, Brendan Connell hits some crisp notes on these two scales. Or, rather, he hits some dirges tinged with sparkling beauty, like the silver edges of a black, malicious storm. I couldn't be more pleased. Now, I should note that I co-authored a story with Brendan many years ago, so I am not without bias. But I didn't write a story with him because I wasn't already a fan of his writing. On the contrary . . . I've had a glimpse of his creativity in media res, as it were, and I was, and remain impressed. In the intervening years, I've seen Brendan's fiction published in the same boutique small presses I love to read (and am sometimes lucky enough to be published in). I'm never far from his fiction, and there are strong reasons for that.

The title novella, Heqet, is a plunge into decadence - not the wealthy, indulgent decadence of Huysmans, et al., but a journey beneath the scabs of degeneracy and self-loathing. There is really nothing to love about the main character, who speaks like a more eloquent and even more socially-depraved shadow of Beckett's low-lifes. It's a relentless eternal round of depravity and disgust with oneself, a portrait in hopeless and well-deserved self-loathing. And it's beautiful.

Imagine Huysmans and von Grimmelshausen running full speed at each other, arms thrown behind them, jaws thrust forward, then smashing their faces into a bloody, co-mingled pulp and you'll begin to find a tenuous grasp on the voice of Hequet; painful, bloody, messy, erudite, and exquisite. But in this story, the antihero finds no redemption whatsoever.

There are several shorter pieces (and by shorter I mean poetry, prose poetry, and microfiction). Of the shorts, I liked "The Abbey of the Heart" and "The Organist" the best. "Abbey" is a nasty little macabre piece, a piece of the heart, so to speak. To say much more would give it away.

"The Organist" is like a fine medieval woodcut in tone and in subject. Dürer couldn't have done it better. This sinister little tale has just enough experimental "bite" to keep the reader on their toes, but isn't over-indulgent. If I could read nothing but stories like this the rest of my life, I would be quite content.

There are several others, all of them good, most of them great. But these two, in particular, are the cream of the crop, as they say. There are moments (very few) when Brendan's experimental side gets just a touch too surreal (I mean this in the original sense, not the more recent sense - these aren't just weird, they are a very particular brand of abruptly weird). I think he's at his best when he toys at the edge of classical surrealism, but only teases, usually by means of synesthesia, expanding our view of the possible, while not overwhelming our sense of what we perceive. That liminal space is the perfect space for my reading tastes, and for the most part, Heqet not only treads that space, it patrols it, dominates it, looming.

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Oculus Praedecessoris Out Now!

Edit: I have sold out of all my personal copies of Oculus (save one, and I'm keeping that one). Thanks to those who jumped in so quickly! I do have a few other titles of mine for sale, but they are going fast!

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My newest fiction collection is out! Oculus Praededecessoris features stories three stories and one novella of weird "ancestral" origin (define that as you will - one of them has hauntological elements, if that gives any indicator) in a beautiful artifact as only Mount Abraxas Press can deliver. Stories included are:

"Gemini"

'Liminal Slip"

"Obverse Reverse"

"The Simulacra"

It's a cloth-bound hardcover, with silk ribbon, and several pieces of art by legendary dark surreal artist Roj Friborg. It is a part of the new Mount Abraxas series "Seance in the Grey Garden," of which I am absolutely thrilled to be a part! Only 103 copies are printed, of which I have a few. If you're interested in buying one (or if you're interested in buying some of my other Mount Abraxas releases, including my collection The Varvaros Ascensions), please contact me directly at F_o_r_r_e_s_t_J_A_g_u_i_r_r_e_@_G_m_a_i_l_._c_o_m (remove the underscores) and I will get you pricing information. They are not cheap! But you'll get your moneys' worth, guaranteed. These books are collector's items that appreciate in value rather quickly and you won't see them re-released in a later edition from Mount Abraxas. 

I am using all money raised this way toward buying myself a (rather expensive) typewriter. I've only got a few copies, so first come, first-served! Here are some photos showing the book, cover, and artwork:

Cover

End Papers

Pre-title page

Title Page

Internal Page 

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Splendid in Ash

Splendid in Ash by Charles Wilkinson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Charle Wilkinson's sophomore outing with the elegant and accomplished Egaeus Press is less of a novelty to me than his first Egaeus book, A Twist in the Eye. My earlier "discovery" of Wilkinson was startling and swept me off my feet. Now that I've become more familiar with his work, it feels more . . . well, familiar. And that's not a bad thing. The ebbs and flows of a reader with "his" author can become a sort of cat-and-mouse game, where some maneuvers lose their surprise and others add a whole new dimension to the readerly relationship that would otherwise not emerge. We grow, taste changes, the author's voice ages, and yet, there is, inevitably an element of wonder amidst the familiarity. Here is my "dance" with the text of Splendid In Ash:

The title of the first story in Wilkinson's second collection. "In the Frame," is a triple entendre: one for art, one for being set up, and one for ten pin bowling. The one that is most horrific is not the one you're thinking of! Deftly written, as usual, this story will send your expectations into a tailspin in a fit of readerly vertigo.

"The Ground of the Circuit" is a strange admixture of folk horror and technological terror. The ending reminds me of Aickman - one is left wondering what has already happened, while seeing clearly what is coming, and it's not going to turn out well for the man who was a husband. The disjointedness of rurality and modernity, combined with the short circuited thoughts of both pro- and antagonist, frame it all well.

Did I predict the ending of "Slimikins" well before it came? Sort of. The overall event on which it ended, I saw coming. But I did not see the exquisite detail forthcoming. Wilkinson has an eye for details and, in this case, that meant absolutely plunging the reader into the final moments of a story. Yes, it was inevitable. But by "shoving your face in it," so to speak, the story is raised to an unexpected pitch!

One part David Lynch, one part Robert Aickman, one part Brian Evenson
Limn rim with Charles Wilkinson bitter and salt
Stir quickly
Stir the other direction, quickly!
Shake vigorously
Voila! "Boxing the Breakable"

And though the influences are apparent, this drink is undiluted Wilkinson. Bitter, salty, with a lingering aftertaste, intriguing, and altogether unpleasant.

A marvelous weird cocktail. Bottoms up!

The elements of "The White Kisses" were just a touch too ephemeral for me. I like open-ended stories that don't have to explain themselves, but I prefer a story that is thematically tighter. Don't explain everything, but explain something, please. Anything. Or at least "hang" all the elements together. Sorry, but this one just dissipates into wisps for me. There's potential, but I felt this one too easily forgotten. One needs a few touchpoints, and "The White Kisses" didn't press hard enough for me.

"The Lengthsman" is a tale that bubbles with meaning underneath. You can sense the horror rising from below, surfacing as a bubble whose surface tension expands the dread. Wilkinson does well to let that tension grow, but leaves it to the reader's imagination to pop! The cultural underpinnings are also redolent with alienation and hints of barbarism. An outstanding tale that shimmers with an earthy darkness.

"Absolute Possession" does nothing to slake my thirst to revisit Wales. Quite the contrary. Again, Wilkinson subverts expectations by thrusting the reader even deeper into the weird than expected. Here, nature itself, the land itself, is the realm of the weird. The issues of ownership, free agency, and self are questioned here in the most fundamental of ways. Is it a marvelous escape, or a trap? Or both?

I might note there that a few other stories in the volume are set in Wales (unsurprisingly, given that this is where Wilkinson lives). When I visited the booktown of Hay-On-Wye in summer of 2019, I was a bit saddened that I didn't see Wilkinson's work in any of the bookstores there. Someone has to rectify this! Come to think of it, I had a hard time finding a Machen book there, which is downright criminal and unpatriotic, though I did eventually find a copy of The Hill of Dreams. Anyway, I digress. I'd like to digress permanently to Wales, but my wife won't have it. Oh well.

"Mr. Kitchell Says Thank You" is . . . scattered. Like it's trying to be too many things at once. There are intriguing elements - an occult master, motive for revenge, academic intrigues. And while there is a thematic continuity of . . . elephants . . . the theme isn't strong enough to tie it all together. It's a decent enough story, but I'm not nearly as compelled to love it as I was with other tales herein.

I found "Drawing Above the Breath" a fine story, but also uncompelling. There's a very slight twist on the vampire and fountain of youth myth, a fine point, if you will, on the canon. While the subtlety of the idea is interesting and the writing gorgeous, at times, I can't view the story as anything other than minor, given the context of a volume with so many excellent stories. And, truth be told, I'm just not a fan of vampire stories. Bauhaus did me in on that front. The Count is dead, long (un)live The Count.

"Aficionado of the Cold Places" is a thematically-solid tale whose banal title belies a deeply-fantastical weird, even borderline-surreal story of yearning and the haunting past. The understated use of the word "Aficionado" for such a life-preserving need gives this very serious tale a bitter (I use the word intentionally) twist. Stark beauty pervades the setting, the characters, and the mood. Wonderfully chilling.

Sometimes you pick the perfect soundtrack for reading. This was the case as I listened to Paysage d'Hiver while reading "Catapedamania," thus far, and by far, the most outright disturbing tale in this volume. Bizarre and forlorn with a touch of schizophrenia, just like the musical accompaniment.

In lesser, more rudimentary hands, I would call "The Solitary Truth" a clever story. But Wilkinson's facile handling of language and character make this story not just clever, but intelligent, even cunning. There is a certain dark manipulation happening here that sneaks up and taps you on the shoulder when you least expect it. It could be a sad story, or not, depending on whom you believe. The story is a kind of Rorschach Test with no pass or fail.

"His Theory of Fridays" is an ethereal, yet altogether satisfying story of four siblings, one of whom has a theory . . . of Fridays. The theory isn't mentioned and, in fact, cannot be, according to the narrator, as there are no words to form it. Yet it is a reality, unwritten, unspoken, possibly even unformed. A ghostly-wisp of a story, this is, in a way that "The White Kisses" was not, vanishing, yet fulsome.

"An Absent Member" is the most classically-surreal of the stories in this volume. Ribald, if a bit silly, I found the story enjoyable in its farce, especially in the way it never took itself seriously, even if the narrator did. A nice little change-of-pace story that would normally upset the "flow" of a collection, but seems to appear at just the right point here. I don't know if that was Wilkinson's choice or that of the editor, but it was well-played.

With a heavy does of Brian Evanson-esque matter-of-fact irreality, "Might be Mordiford" shows a glimpse of a bureaucratic hell that would torment even Franz Kafka. Stultifying consequence is not so easy to shake when even memory loss is no excuse for paying the price of one's misdeeds.

"Legs & Chair" (the ampersand is important!) is a science fiction story (so far as I can tell) in the mold of the New Wave (now old) of Science Fiction, tinged with an extra dose of Philip K. Dick. A good story, strange and heartfelt, and a different voice for Wilkinson. Not a fully dystopian vision of the future, but definitely a view of a dysfunctional future society.

The collection ends powerfully with "The Floaters," a post-apocalyptic tale of the erosion of the land and relationships and the crumbling of language itself. The tight narrative speaks volumes more than its word-count. And, in the end, it really is about words and how they are tied to our reality. When one disintegrates, so does the other. As above, so below, but only in a hopeless sense. Grim, grey, awe-inspiring. Reading this could be a way to ease in to Beckett's Molloy trilo- no, who am I kidding? Nothing can prepare you for that.

You will note that I drop the names of several authors throughout this review. While I disagree with at least one review that stops just short of calling Wilkinson's work a wholly derivative mishmash of weird fiction, the influences are apparent, at times. This happens with all writers. I've done my share of channeling other writers myself, even to the point where I have a 100K page manuscript of a science fiction novel that I will have to rewrite, oh, say 90K pages of to make it mine (I was channeling Alastair Reynolds, if you must know). So, maybe I'm remiss in looking past that to some extent. Wilkinson is his own man. And this is his own collection. But, if you like Aickman and Evenson as much as I do, you're going to want to get a copy of this and see what he brings to the table!



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