A Forest with its Mouth Open Wide & Other Stories

 

A Forest with its Mouth Open Wide & Other Stories by Adam S. Cantwell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Full disclosure: Adam Cantwell and I are what was historically-termed "pen pals". Or at least we've written a few letters to each other. If you can't handle the fact that this review is likely biased by our correspondence, then maybe you should just bugger off. I like Adam. And I like his writing. There, I said it.

In my miserable berth I grew deathly ill. The cold and torpor drew what was left of me to my low-lying parts; here my pain and ennui sloshed and settled and was distilled. The whispering proximity of the lethal sea called these dregs down ever further, and day after day my spirit seeped through tar and pitch and blackly down.

My liquid remains decanted through desert voids of seawater. It was an alien medium, primal, its essence was not the tang that clings to the red flesh of salmon or the morning chill borne on the fog but the dead-cold and salt of bones and freezing stars. My nothing-substance popped and dispersed, particles radiant from the dumb core, shreds of lost desire given over to huge black currents.

This quote, from the opening story "Orphans on Granite Tides" should give you a notion of the solace and comfort you'll find within the pages of A Forest with its Mouth Open Wide & Other Stories, i.e., none. I've earlier reviewed this story (I have the original publication from Les Editions de L'Oubli (aka Mount Abraxas Press), though this is the revised text as it originally appeared in Bastards of the Absolute , which I have not read. I don't know what the exact revisions are, but this version seems a hint darker than the Mount Abraxas version. Maybe I'll ask him in my next letter. I seem to owe him one, especially since his last mailing was a short stack of vinyl records from his musical projects Spaceboy and Villains.

The second story, "Black Chroma," is set in what seems to be a post-apocalypse, though it may be the structure of the narrator's mind that is collapsing (this may be the case with many of the narrators in this volume), rather than civilization. Paranoia and agoraphobia combine to expose (him?) to the bright pinpoint lights of the cosmos, a nakedness only occulted by self-burial.

Profoundly existential, yet hopelessly defiant (I am reminded of one of my favorite poems, William Ernest Henley's Invictus ), "The Chamber in the Universe" examines monuments, devotion, power, hope, and death. The temple representing as empty vessel exposing the hollowness of existence, while being the instrument by which the common-builder nudges the cosmos, even a particle's-width; one of the most human of desires: to matter, even when nothing matters. To make one's mark forever in the void.

"The European Monster Part Two" is dark and obtuse, much like the philosophy of Emil Cioran, the inferred inspiration for the story (first published in a volume of stories dedicated to the Romanian philosopher). Here the narrator finds himself in a labyrinthine situation, becoming a part of a (political? criminal?) machine at the heart of which is the titular monster, perhaps a modern Minotaur.

"Torso in Shadow" puts the baffled and baffling narrator in the subways beneath NYC, which may or may not be disintegrating above. Surely it is convulsing, socially or physically. Amidst these convulsions, in the underground, the narrator meets a woman. Perhaps this is Adam and Eve witnessing the birthing pains of a new world. Difficult to tell. But the attempt must be made. An ouroboros of a story, eating itself.

Originally written for a tribute anthology to Borges, "The Bow, the Arm, the Arrow" echoes the Argentine writer's sometimes-journalistic style, but with a tonal nod to Millhauser, as well. The story reminds me of a long-form vlog I recently watched about the composer Penderecki (a favorite of mine), but with the narrator experimenting with literature, rather than music. Sometimes experiments go wrong.

The titular story in the volume actually appeared alongside one of my own stories in the Mount Abraxas anthology Frostsigils , an homage to Paysage d'Hiver. As one would expect, it is dark, downright Gothic, and one can feel the cold sink into one's bones while reading. It's all about atmosphere, and it delivers that in shadowed robes with the deep moaning toll of an immense black iron bell.

With "Vod the Wrecker," I again find myself as "TOC mates" with Adam in the Raphus Press anthology Ghost Trains. But where I treated the train in question as a haunting presence, here, Vod is the brooding master, a near-god, over the twisted metal entrails of what was once the most powerful force in America. Vod destroys, remakes, and rides the bones of the ur-train like a pyrrhic steed, into oblivion.


In the amber-filtered urine-gray aged-out green glass of insulators, crystallizing dumbly over centuries, he saw an enviable solitude and immobility. The enamel of insignia and livery, some burned to peacock craquelure; the bent-blue of sulking steel glazed over with a million dullnesses of black and charcoal.

Transformation of the individual and of the world are the subject of "The Oligomancer". Here a migrant child of an itinerant oil-platform worker watches the world turn inside out from a privileged (so to speak) observation point on the derelict platform. A slowly unfolding apocalypse gives indicators from the horizon about the collapse of the outside world, which can't help but affect his own inner world. Again, the line between psychic and physical reality is not only blurred, it is completely shattered.

And, finally, "The Hag, the Cutthroat, the Amputee" is the musing of a being who, like Charon of Greek myth, ferries the dead across to their final destination, particularly those whose demise is caused by war. He(?) is very adamant to note that he is not Charon, and his thoughts regarding the dead make it clear that he does not share the detached observations of his more famous counterpart.

Those are the stories and my skewed observations of them. You want objectivity? Good luck finding it in this universe. But I will end by deferring to one of the great nihilists of our age, Thomas Ligotti, who stated, quite correctly:

The stories of Adam Cantwell's . . . could be fairly equated with the works of Kafka or Borges if their prose were not so luxuriant and surprising at every turn.

I have nothing more to add.


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The Silver Surfer: Parable

 

The Silver Surfer #1 "Parable" Part 1 of 2 by Stan Lee and Moebius by Stan Lee
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

[This review is for both volumes of the mini-series combined]

I've been a Silver Surfer stan (pun intended) since the early '70s when I first encountered the character on the news-stan(d) - okay, I'll stop.

I had spotted "Parable" when it was first published, but I was out of high school and trying to be "cool" by ignoring comics at the time. What an idiot I was. A few years later, I realized the error of my ways and got back into comics but had lost track of this mini-series until a few years ago. I'm not quite sure how that happened. Moebius is one of my favorite artists and The Silver Surfer is one of my favorite Marvel characters.

In this treatment, the art, as one would expect, is absolutely amazing. Moebius' Galactus, sans-crackle, would still warm Jack Kirby's heart, I would think. I wonder if anyone interviewed him about this miniseries before he passed away? One is quite curious what his thoughts would be. And Moebius' style lends itself to the sleek action sequences one would expect in such a tale.

But the action only catches the eye. It's the philosophy and psychology underneath it all that holds the reader's attention. The writing is not perfect, by any means - at times it sounds like it's trying too hard to be "wise" and "insightful," which lends a sort of hokeyness to some of the dialogue, sometimes to the point where it is downright painful. But if one can look beyond the treacle, there are some solid pearls of wisdom and insights into human psychology that would explain the current socio-political mess we are in. This miniseries was so prescient it could have been written today, this very hour, without skipping a beat. And I fear that it will always be applicable, no matter what happens in the political landscape. It is a parable that sees beyond its years, a sort of cosmic-action scripture, if you will. It is so accurate that it's scary. I'm afraid that Norrin Radd's near-nihilism is very, very close to a bigger truth, and we can't handle that truth.

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Protection & Property: Apotropaic Markings on Rural Andorran Buildings

 

Protection & Property: Apotropaic Markings on Rural Andorran Buildings by Martin Locker
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Why, you might ask, would I read this book; a dry, academic monograph about carved markings on doors in rural Andorra? Well, because, reasons:

1. I love Martin Locker's fiction and I admire his brain, so I thought, why not?
2. My adopted ancestry (my father was adopted by a Basque immigrant married to a Swedish immigrant) is from the Pyrenees Mountains, straight west of Andorra.
3. I minored in historical archaeology as an undergrad, so I have some intellectual interest in the field. I *almost* went to graduate school for historical archaeology, but instead opted for African history.
4. I love supporting small presses.
5. Martin is a penpal of mine. So, forget about objectivity - alright, I'll try my best.

As one would expect with an archaeological monograph, this is not edge-of-the-seat reading. However, as a writer, it did spur some ideas that I've noted and will likely use or integrate into my fiction, as occasion arises. But outside of its utility, it's the principal of the thing that drives me.

I just recently celebrated a birthday. I am no longer young, though I don't really feel all that old, either. I suppose over five and a half decades treading on this planet qualifies one for "middle" age, maybe a shade over that. I am, however, "old skool". Yes, I can do technology - I use it all the time in my work, even including using AI to do some of the dirty work for me (crunching numbers, creating graphs, and collating results, for example - I'm a procurement manager for the North American division of a very large German company, if you must know). But in my personal life, on my own time, I have made a concerted effort to digitally minimize, simplify, and go analog whenever possible.

Part of that is nostalgia, I admit. I was a child of the '80s, so the internet and smart phones came about when I was an adult. Now, pardon me for sounding like an old man when I say I miss the simplicity of those days. "Things" were slower and less complex (whatever you think about the Large Hadron Collider shutdown. Less convenient, for sure, but us Gen-Xr's kind of pride ourselves on having done hard things and suffering some character-building cuts and bruises along the way.

What does this have to do with Locker's book? One thing: This book is a record of the last gasps of a dying life, that of rural peoples living in the mountains carving pentagrams and crosses, stars and flowers, into their doors and nailing Izard feet and eagle skulls to their entrances in order to avoid curses, witches, and otherwordly entities. Call it folk magic or superstition or what have you, there's something totally metal about having a pentagram carved in your door with an eagle skull nailed underneath it, I don't care how old you are!

So, after a long cataloging of some frankly boring stuff, the concluding chapter lays it all out: this is a record of a world that will quickly be lost as people replace old doors (some possibly dating back centuries) with new, modern doors. It's a snapshot of cultural time. And the older I get, the more valuable I find these things.

Indulge me and let me share an example. Back in the '80s, of course we had video game arcades. Yes, some of us had an Atari 2600 at home (who can forget Pitfall?), but for most, going to the arcade was the place to not only play a wide variety of games, but to meet friends and . . . deal drugs?

Yep. A lot of them. Dime bag for a roll of quarters, and everyone knew about it. You could tell who had something to sell because they were walking around with pockets absolutely full of rolls of quarters, I kid you not. There was an entire underground economy. Yeah, that dude doing edibles while playing on his Switch - his grandfather was doing that a loooong time ago. And when I tell people who didn't live in the 80s about that, they are, to a man (or woman), surprised. Those of us who hung out at the arcades and were a part of that economy? We know how it worked. And it worked. There was a brisk trade that kept both video arcades and dope dealers working. A closed-loop economy right under everyone's noses. I wish someone would do their PhD thesis in sociology and economics on the subject. Fascinating stuff and I saw it with my own two eyes. Heck, I was a participant. I do find it funny that the beginning of the War on Drugs (thanks, Nancy Reagan) and the end of the video arcade (deferring to home consoles) coincided so strongly. Correlation isn't causation, I get that, but what a strange tangling of timelines.

Fifty years from now, no one is going to know this fact, this thing that was such a part of many teenager's lives in the early- to mid-80s. Worth knowing? Maybe not. But that piece of cultural history will be lost in obscurity, overshadowed by the Cold War, Reaganomics, New Wave Music, Cabbage Patch Kids, and Princess Di.

At least Locker gives us something worthy of deeper study. This is the handbook for this historic-archaeological micro-niche. And that's something worth preserving.

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Edifice: A Graphic Novel

 

Edifice: A Graphic Novel by Andrzej Klimowski
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was drawn in by a blurb written by the Quay Brothers. While they are my favorite movie directors of all time, they . . . might not be the greatest of graphic novel aficionados. Yes, I'm well aware of their background in graphic design, and I am rather fond of their Black Drawings. But with this blurb on Klimowski's book, I think they might have jumped on the hyperbole train.

I liked Edifice but did not love it. I appreciate the attempts to impart meaning or to deconstruct meaning through a series of darkly surreal, if fairly plain, charcoal sketches interspersed with some limited dialogue. Perhaps if I took phenobarbitol and listened to Penderecki and Ligeti while I read, I might have been in a more receptive mindset. But without sensory enhancement (or suppression), I see mostly a neat little graphic novel with rather ordinary (I'm talking execution here, not subject matter) charcoal drawings and the occasional clever twist of perspective and/or chronology. In other words, it's no Cinema Panopticon, Quay praise aside.

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The Rigor of Angels: Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality

 

The Rigor of Angels: Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality by William Egginton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Anti-nomy: 1. a contradiction between two beliefs or conclusions that are in themselves reasonable; a paradox. 2. William Egginton's favorite word.

A work on logical brilliance requires a text that is logically brilliant. While most would agree that Jorge Luis Borges, Werner Heisenberg, and Immanuel Kant were among the most beautiful minds the human race has expressed, putting their works to the general public in a clear manner is a fool's quest. Or, at least I'm too foolish to try such a feat.

Egginton does. And while he excels in examining the biography of each of these thinkers, the explication of their insights becomes long-winded to the point of confusion. There is a reason the words "clear and concise" often appear together. Meandering about in such already-troubled waters as quantum physics, late-stage philosophy, and high-concept literature only causes paths to cross so many times that the reader can become lost. They recognize the path's they've already crossed, but approaching them from so many different angles in rapid succession is dizzying (for us dumb people).

Perhaps this is why I appreciate works such as Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid or Hierarchy Theory: A Vision, Vocabulary, and Epistemology so much. They are as long as they need to be. No longer. And while I admittedly do not fully grasp those works, I could always sense the thrust of their arguments - their beginning, progression, and goals - even if I didn't fully grasp the final product. There is a certain . . . pardon the pun . . rigor in these works that I found, not absent, but muddied in this book.

This is not to say that I didn't enjoy reading the work. On the contrary, I greatly enjoyed the biographical sections on each of these men, in particular. I've always loved Borges' fiction, for example, but knowing what I know now (from reading this book) about his biography, I think I've found a kindred soul in many ways. I won't go into details because I don't want to impugn anyone I might inadvertently "expose" (past or present). Let's just say that when you're in a foxhole "together," you become friends fast, and Borges feels like a friend now.

The sections on Heisenberg and the Nazi question are also insightful about the human desire to live and survive under a regime that is so far out of the norm of human decency; the ways that one "makes do" and subverts such regimes by subversion and careful deflection. While never excusing facism or its adherents, Egginton provides a nuanced analysis of Heisenberg's choices as a scientist and a human vis-a-vis the Nazi regime.

And Kant is presented as a man on borrowed time performing a philosophical race against the clock before death inevitably takes him. While somewhat speculative, the author does an admirable job of getting inside the philosopher's head and heart, turning one man's quest for the ultimate answers to being into a bit of a thriller.

In essence, though, the thesis of the book can be boiled down to Heisenber's quote: "We have to remember that what we observe is not nature in itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning". This is repeated in many ways throughout the book, but the essence remains the same. We are only as smart and observant as our observational tools. We do not see reality, we see our sight of reality. I am reminded of the argument that in order to prove there is or is not a God, one must see everything, but one must do it all at once, in all times and all places, in order to prove, once and for all, that there is or is not a God. In other words, one must become God to prove or disprove God.

And that, my friends, is an antinomy.


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Death In Spring

 

Death in Spring by Mercè Rodoreda
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Two threads tied me up in this book. 1) the cover: Yes, I am a sucker for good covers. And for some reason this one had echoes for me of Brian Evenson's The Wavering Knife (possibly my favorite short story collection of all time) and A Collapse of Horses , as well as my own Heraclix & Pomp, and 2) the recommendation by the always spot-on Sam Pulham of Sherdstube, the single best book-tuber out there.

Upon cracking the cover and peeling it open (I use this phrase quite intentionally - those who have read the book will understand the grim reference), I found that the surface impression of an affinity with Brian Evenson's work was something that ran much deeper. Surreal, bleak, and inexplicably violent, with a tone of Magic Realism gone horribly wrong, this book precedes Evenson's presentation of the same by a good many decades and makes me wonder if Brian hadn't read Rodoreda's text early in his career. If not, they both came to the same place, stylistically speaking, or at least in that signature tone. The book crosses the line between fable and memoir, but the memoir of a young (later older) man living in a village that is full of violent rites like the sewing up of the dying in the Dead Wood . . . after filling their throats with concrete so their souls cannot escape (like many of the bizarre traditions carried out here, it's never explained why the soul's escape is a bad thing).

The cycle of violence goes through many manifestations and rituals, all of them unexplained, just cultural "givens" that one lives with. I suppose this has something to do with the genesis of the work in Franco's Spain. Populations under dictatorships tend to merely accept the violence imposed upon them with that familiar phrase (which I hate) "it is what it is". The inhabitants of Rodoreda's Death in Spring are no different. Imagine an entire society of Kafka's antagonists, all in on the game, but no one knowing why the rules are what they are.

This vortex of ritual violence also takes what, in other hands, would have been a simple "coming of age" story and twists it back in on itself in such a way that the antagonist "grows up" to become his father (whom we witnessed sewing himself up in a tree in an act of self-annihilation before being "rescued" by the villagers, if only long enough to pour cement down his throat and inter him in the tree again). Even the "boy's" step-mother becomes his wife (so far as I can tell) who abandons him when their child is killed by other children in the village - by this time, the boy has become a man resembling his father in most every way, most notably by the disfigurement of his face from being forced to swim the river that runs beneath the village (to ensure it will remain stable) and having his forehead torn off on the sharp rocks in the dark tunnels under the village.

This one is not for the faint of heart. Nor for the overly empathetic. If you are currently struggling with depression, this is NOT the book for you.

If you are ready to dive in, though (pun intended), to a book that will move you in strange ways and that contains some beautiful poesis. Perhaps it's time. And time. Again. And again. And again.

I'll leave you with a beautiful bright spot (there are a few, despite the overall angst of the work), something wistful and sweet (n.b., "Mourners" are a kind of bird, named for reasons that you can gather from your reading):

I jumped back into the river. The water that enveloped my legs still seemed to hold her. We had been in this water together. Mourners were flying above the blue and purple river, beneath the branches, searching for mosquitoes and soft grass. Night arrived, and suddenly I scarcely knew my way back to the village: from Pedres Baixes to the slaughterhouse and from the slaughterhouse to the Pont de Fusta, where the river beneath the bridge transported stars and pieces of moon.





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Stones Beneath a White Star

 

Stones Beneath a White Star by Martin Locker
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I was speaking with someone recently about teaching young children complex concepts. This friend is a teacher of very young children (three- to five-year olds) and is tasked with teaching them some advanced concepts. She was concerned that these kids were never going to remember these principles, though they might integrate them subconsciously, the same way that back in our secondary-school grade introduction to trigonometry and pre-calculus, we all said "we're never going to use this stuff". That turned out to be true for most of us, though our brains were permanently rewired, ever so slightly, to form thoughts in a new and different way than we had done before. All of this aside, we agreed that while these young kids probably won't remember a thing about what was said to them, they absolutely will remember the way they felt when they were being taught. I can attest to this. I remember my third-grade teacher, Mrs. Wells, not because of the things I learned, but because of her kindness and patience and her great sense of humor. I remember her reading us the Winnie the Pooh stories and her spot-on voices (with the Disney movies as her template). And I remember her encouraging my reading, even recommending me to what they called the "talented and gifted" readers program for reading and writing. I didn't even fully comprehend what that meant, but I remember the way she made me feel: special, recognized, an individual. I'll never forget her. I can't even name my second or fourth grade teachers, but Mrs. Wells; she was an icon.

I share this because of the way Martin's book Stones Beneath a White Star made me feel. If someone asked me what the book was "about," I would stumble and mumble my way through an answer. Something about friends and loss and mysticism and mountains and reconnecting with the past . . . mumble mumble mumble . . .

It's tough to pin it down. But I know how the book made me feel.

Excuse me while I get a little personal. I'm hardly on social media these days (intentionally), so I don't spill my guts like some people do regularly. So, humor me. I'll try not to be boring. And maybe this indulgence will say a bit about the book. One caveat: I am a pen pal with the author. We write each other, pen and paper, yes, the old-fashioned way, irregularly. As a result I've gotten to know Martin a little. I apologize if you think this shades the review in any way, but hey, it can't be helped now, can it?

What I didn't say about my experience with Mrs. Wells above is that I was living in Italy at the time. My dad was military - I was what is colloquially called a "Military Brat" (hey, if the shoe fits . . .) - so I lived in a lot of different places through my life. I sometimes wonder if Air's song "Universal Traveller" wasn't written for me (did I mention the word "brat"?). I've been around . . .

One problem with having been around is that some of the places I lived, I can never visit again. The Air Force base I was born at in Germany is now a US Army base, the base where we lived in Italy, San Vito, is abandoned and off-limits, the base in England where I spent most of high school is now a British spy base (though I can, and did go on a tour of some of the base a few years back, "my" house is strictly off-limits), and the house I lived in when we were in The Philippines was buried under volcanic ash and the base abandoned by the US military. In essence, a lot of my childhood stomping grounds are either inaccessible to me or just plain don't exist anymore, though I have written a bit about my dream-life in one of those places.

This makes me a little melancholy. While many people can just drive (or even walk) to their childhood home, I just can't. I can get bits and pieces and visit places near some of those places, but time and circumstance have effectively banished me from my own childhood. It's a little more than mere nostalgia. I am haunted by the ghosts of the places of my past.

And here we have a segue into why I feel the way I feel about this book. Stones Beneath a White Star is the most profound work of Psychogeography I have ever read. It is about the spirit of a place, in this case, the Pyrenees Mountains (where, incidentally, my ancestors on my father's side hail from, generally - though they lived in the Basque regions, while this work takes place largely in and around Andorra). The religio-mystical history of the region is dealt with in encyclopedic depth. The book as historical treatise on the area is exhaustive, thick with referents and nuances that I admittedly know little or nothing about. But this didn't affect my reading, outside of wanting to know more about the people, events, and places portrayed.

The real rub of the book is the intimate connection of a few close friends and fellow-believers to the land itself. Their connections to each other (and some of those who have passed on before them) provide the engine for the story (such as it is). These relationships, between people, the land, and the history of the land, is absolutely immersive. I cannot say what the book is "about," nor do I care. This is the kind of book you just live in, for the moment, a meditation on friendship, loss, and retrieval, of the fluctuating bonds of love despite the catastrophes and disappointments of living life on this planet. It is a novel about the resilience of friends finding peace in a broken world.

You can probably see where this is heading . . . I live in a world of broken memories, unretrievable. I'd like to think this isn't just a function of mawkish nostalgia. I literally can't go back. But the memories still haunt me. Needless to say, this book affected me . . . deeply.

Thank goodness that while much of my past is bricked off (or behind barbed wire), one thing persists, despite location, and that is meaningful friendships. I've made and lost many friends throughout the years (as I get older, I lose more and more), but as I retain some ties over the decades and form new friendships with people I've not known before, whether intentionally or through pure happenstance, there is connection. And this connection is something to be nurtured, something sacred.

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