Occultation and Other Stories

Occultation and Other Stories by Laird Barron
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Barron is a writers' writer. Believe me. Writing is hard work, and one can clearly see the results of Barron's efforts. It's a mean trick to be able to write so beautifully, and yet so brutally. The universe of Occultation and Other Stories fits in a dark niche between Algernon Blackwood's "The Willows," Brian Evenson's Dark Property, and Hemingway. It's a rough and tumble corner on the interstitial edge between body horror and high literary tradition, with some elements of cosmic horror. Though his work has been called "Lovecraftian" (a term I am beginning to hate), Laird Barron's work is so much more than that. It is far from pastiche, and his writing chops are far better than old H.P.'s.

Take, for example, the first story in the collection. How do you take a novel's worth of sweeping cosmic horror on an epoch scale and a deep-reaching character relationship and cram it all into a 27 page story? I have no idea. But if you read "The Forest," you can see the results. Here, Barron out-Lovecraft's Lovecraft, but without the treacle. This is a horror short that is as fulfilling as any literary novel, if not more fulfilling (and with hardly any "filler"). Five not-everlasting, but very long-lasting stars. Enough time to see constellations reshape themselves.

The title story shows a deft, deceptive hand, using anecdotal side stories and strange shadows to distract the reader long enough and convincingly enough to sneak up and smack the reader in the back of the head with the ending. Four stars for "Occultation".

"The Lagerstatte" is Barron at his subtley-rotting, understated, insidious best. Danni, the protagonist, may or may not be coming out of, or at least working her way through a fugue-state brought on by the accidental deaths of her husband and son, compounded by a long history of family misfortune. It's an excruciating tale, but wrapped up in familial "softness". Five stars.

"Mysterium Tremendum" is one of the best stories of cosmic horror I have read in a long time. Take Blackwood's force of nature, Lovecraft's cosmic scale and alien-ness, Ligotti's pessimism, add a layer of sheer terror and outright creepiness and you will start to get the idea. But that's only the start. Add depth of character and plausibility of setting and you've hit the 2nd layer. But there is so much more. Five stars.

I wondered at the title "Catch Hell," at first. But I can't think of a more appropriate title for this occult-drenched folk-horror story of oedipa-electrall revenge(???). Somehow, Barron has made every character in this story broken; every character a perpetrator, and every character a victim. Five stars.

When avant garde performance art goes wrong and the observer becomes the subject, "Strappado" is the result. Horrific for its understatement, this tale will work into your brain and leave all sorts of uncomfortable holes. Five brutal stars that I'd like to forget, but can't.

What is "The Broadsword"? A story, the name of a hotel, a weapon cutting through the veil around this world. It is a ghost story, an alien invasion, a revelation of cosmic terror, and a deep dive into drunkenness and insanity. It is all of these things, all at once, so sudden that the lines between them is indistinct, but slowly unfolding, like a cancer of thought and soul. Five stars.

"--30--" is as visceral, brutal, as primal a story as I've ever read. I'm still not sure if the narrator was insane or not, whether it was not all some grand hallucination. And, whether it was hallucination or reality, was it all engineered by the government or not? And how to Toshi and Beasley, from the first story in this collection, figure into all of this? Are they only peripheral or is there something going on in the off-stage shadows with these two? With so many questions left unanswered, one must ask "but did you like it with all these questions"? Yes, I liked it because of the questions! Five stars

"Six, Six, Six" blindsides you. Who is the bad guy or gal? What is evil? Who, even, is the protagonist? Tough questions, none of which are answered by the last, stunning line of the story. This thing was crafted and crafted well. You can feel the work that was poured into this story, but you can't see the cut marks on the marble, so to speak. Brilliant story, brilliantly written. Five stars.

Yes, you can see the work that went into these stories, but they are so clean and smooth in their execution that you don't notice the chisel marks. That is the beauty of Barron's craft and what sets his work above that of most of his contemporaries, especially those writing in the horror and dark fiction genres. Few are his equal. Precious few.

I don't think there is such a thing as a "good guy" in Barron's stories. At least not in this collection. The vagaries are so well conceived, though, that the reader finds himself spinning in circles in the dark, waiting for a blow to the back that may or may not come. It's a chilling sensation, and worth experiencing again!

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Looming Low Volume I

Looming Low Volume I by Justin Steele
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Back in the early 2000s, there was a proliferation of speculative short fiction anthologies, a couple of which I edited. It was a kind of golden age where the internet was available as a tool, but it had not yet been saturated by so much dreck; a time when an author (or editor) still strove to have their work published in hardcopy, but when electronic communication (mostly in the form of message boards) allowed one to get one's name "out there" without having to spend a mint doing it.

When I saw the premise and cover of Looming Low, Volume 1, my heart skipped a beat. Or, rather, my heart hearkened back to those days of yore when Leviathan, Redsine, Polyphony, Flesh & Blood, Earwig Flesh Factory, Indigenous Fiction, and many, many others were within easy reach, if you knew where to look. I knew that Sam Cowan's Dim Shores press had been attracting a bevy of "name" horror authors, as well, so I thought I'd take a chance, albeit a fairly "safe" chance, since I knew that a few of these authors were going to have quality work included.

Story by story, here are my notes:

This is the first story I've ever read by Kurt Fawver. "The Convexity of Our Youth" uses a Millhauserian voice to tell a tale of transformation of children into orange balls. The syntax is satisfying and on the paragraph-level the writing is spectacular. But the story itself just wasn't to my liking. Too bland for such mechanically great writing. Three stars.

A.C. Wise "The Stories We Tell About Ghosts" was overly predictable, some of the kids in the story didn't speak like kids, and the plot was lackluster. The writing was technically sound, but had no real distinctive voice, nothing to set it apart. Two very disappointed stars.

Michael Wehunt's "In Canada" is a disturbing peek into the innocent mind of insanity, especially regarding questions of identity. It's a little predictable, but provides an excellent glimpse into the inner world of one gone mad vis-a-vis an outer world gone mad. Four stars.

As I've come to expect from Brian Evenson, his story "The Second Door" is exceptional. My favorite so far. Mix a vaguely post-apocalyptic setting with a narrator who may be slipping from reality, or, possibly reality is slipping away from him (or, perhaps, this strange reality is very real), then throw in the quandary of a language breakdown, and you've got a recipe for a beautiful disaster. Five stars.

Mill's "The Christiansen Deaths" was pretty standard fare, with an ending paragraph that showed a reaction that just seemed to accept the outre as very matter-of-fact. This lessened the impact of the story greatly. Still, it was well told. Three stars.

Betty Rocksteady's "Dusk Urchin" is a surreal (in the classic sense of the word) horror that relies on the unsteady mind of the main protagonist. The atmosphere is excellent and the fragility of the main character makes for an excellent unreliable narrator. At times the voice felt a little forced, but maybe that was the intent of the author. Four stars.

"The Gin House, 1935," by Livia Llewellyn, is the tale of Lillian, whose life, badly lived, becomes a transformation back into . . . Ah, ah, ah! No spoilers. Five stars for this tricky tale.

"This Unquiet Space" did absolutely nothing for me. Just nothing. Two stars.

Sunny Moraine's "We Grope Together, and Avoid Speech" is a plotless sketch, though sketch isn't the right word - perhaps "tableaux" about walls of mouths. It's as weird as it sounds, and creepy, both because of the delight the narrator takes in the description of these strange . . .entities, and because of the devious invitation at the end, where readers become implied characters in the not-story as the fourth wall itself melts away. Five stars!

"Heirloom," by Brooke Warra, is a morbidly poignant story about twins literally separated at birth. While separated, though, they are never fully apart. And that is the horror of it all. Weird folk horror. Four stars.

There's more than a little absurdism in Lucy A. Snyder's "That Which Doesn't Kill You". But it's not so ridiculous that it strays into pure silliness. Four stars.

Codependence, conspiracy, and slippage between realities dominate Simon Strantzas' outstanding tale "Doused by Night". There is a lot of density to this packed short story, with a whole unseen plot-between-the-lines undergirding the surface plot(s). Five stars.

Kaaron Warren's "We Are All Bone Inside," while well-fleshed out (readers will note the irony of that phrase), didn't do a lot for me. Three stars.

Lisa L. Hannett's "Outside, a Drifter," is not my usual fare. I've never been a huge fan of "body horror," but this story can't be pigeon-holed that easily. It is a strange sort of dark fantasy story about love and sacrifice and business. The folksy cadence of the story is an acquired taste, but I found it satisfying in the end. Four stars.

Lristi DeMeester's "The Small Deaths of Skin and Plastic" was strange and creepy, but lacked substance. Three stars is all I can muster for this story.

Scott Nicolay's "When the Blue Sky Breaks," outside of some clever syntactical moves, was decidedly "meh" for me. A rather weak story with linguistic potential. Two stars.

I admit it: I'm a bit of a prude when it comes to my literature. So I'm not big on erotica or sex scenes. But Craig Laurance Gidney's "Mirror Bias" is so incredibly well-written, I'll give it a pass. A big pass. A five star pass. The writing is exquisitely beautiful. I will be seeking more of Gidney's work, for sure. He is a masterful wordsmith.

"Boisea Trivittata" by Anya Martin was good. But I've seen this trick before. Ann VanderMeer and Jonathan Carroll both did similar things many years ago, and they did it better. It wasn't a bad story, just a tiny, tiny bit hackneyed (although I suppose that using the word "hackneyed" means it's been done many, many times before). If you haven't read VanderMeer's or Carroll's stories, then you might like this better than I did. Three stars.

Michael Cisco's scintillating "Rock N' Roll Death Squad" is a study in ultraviolence that belies the supposed exhiliration of mass murder. It's a bit like seeing A Clockwork Orange from the inside out, but lacking pathos - a horrifying thought indeed! Unfortunately this also means it doesn't really connect enough with the reader on an emotional level, though it explodes in the brain, more jazz than blues. Four stars.

"Alligator Point," by S.P. Miskowski has a cinematic sensibility. I could easily see this turned into a short movie. It's the sort of psychological tension-builder that Hitchcock would have loved. Four stars.

Jeffrey Thomas's "Stranger in the House" delves into the abyss of self-identity and its loss. It's a good story, well-written, but not as impressive as most of Thomas's work. For that, turn to The Endless Fall and other Weird Fictions. I hate to do this, because I really do love most of Thomas's work, but in this case, I can only honestly give three stars.

Christopher Slatsky's "SPARAGMOS" explores the shadows of dementia, family, and corporate evil. It's a disturbing, yet mildly comforting view of a dystopia and the mercy of forgetfulness. Four stars.

Richard Gavin's "Banishments" is an excellent foray into social media deception and its supernatural consequences. A very creepy story, I found myself thumbing back every couple of pages seeking more clarity on what had happened earlier. It might have been the piece-meal way in which I had to read the story (because: life), but it felt a little muddled at the beginning. Still fully worthy of four stars, though!

One of my favorites in this anthology, "The Sound of Black Dissects the Sun," by Michael Griffin is focused on dark ambient music (which I listen to a lot) and the occult. It's a reality-bender with a narrator that I felt some sympathy for, which might say some disagreeable things about me. Flattery aside, the pacing, atmosphere, and voice were just about perfect. The story "fits itself" well. Five stars.

I admit that when I started Nadia Bulkin's "Live Through This," I was underwhelmed, at first. By the end, however, I found myself swept up by this story of communal guilt in the face of the void. This was a long, slow burn sort of story that lasts, with a very satisfying character arc and a sort of folk-horror creepiness throughout, but folk horror from the inside. Well worth the read and well worth five stars.

Gemma Files' "Distant, Dark Places" is everything I expect a Gemma Files story to be: well-researched, with characters exhibiting a range of human emotions, and conspiracy-horror on a cosmic scale. You'll never look at the moon and stars the same way after reading this. Four stars.

On average, that's about three stars. And, though the book came with a beautiful bookmark and cardstock poster of the cover, I'm not inclined to bump it up. Bulkin, Griffin, Gidney, Strantzas, Moraine, Llewellyn, and Evenson have produced some outstanding work here. And many of the other stories might be five-star tales, in another reader's eyes. But the lows were, well, pretty low. And while I'm certain that other readers will look at my own edited anthologies and think that some of my selections were suspect, at best, I have to stick to my guns. Perhaps my taste has changed a little. Or maybe it hasn't changed at all, and it's just been that long since I've seen an outpouring of the sort of thing I love. In any case, I can't let nostalgia blind me.

That said, this anthology has encouraged me to take up editing again. Things are still in the nascent stages, but plans are afoot. Dark, nefarious plans . . .

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Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto

Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto by Anneli Rufus
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Most people who meet me in person have a hard time believing that I self-identify as a loner. They see me as pretty gregarious and comfortable in most social situations, even among total strangers. I'm not terminally shy, as they say.

But, in all honesty, I am very comfortable, MOST comfortable, being alone. Thankfully, my wife understands this about me and knows that there are stretches when I'd rather go down to my writing area and spend time there, writing pen in hand, trying to churn out books and games and books for games, more than anything else in the world. And those times come often. Being around people takes energy away from me. I have to give the energy. It is when I am alone that I recharge, where I find my spiritual/emotional reserve. Again, this doesn't mean I'm anti-social - far from it - but I am very careful about where and how and how often I expend my energy to be in the presence of others for long stretches. As a child, books were among my best friends. And I loved nothing more than to get on my bike, alone, and go exploring. That was the height of pleasure for me as a young one. And as a teenager living in England, I loved taking the train and bus down to London to go explore, again, alone. Of course, I did these things with other friends, as well, but I was often more than comfortable being my own best friend. And I still am.

So when I saw the title: Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto, I felt compelled to read the book. Even loners want to find "kindred souls", to be validated for their feelings, and to enjoy others' lone experiences (from a respectable distance). Note carefully where the apostrophe falls in the title. Loners want to know about other loners. Ironic? You be the judge.

Rufus covers a broad range of topics. One that struck me was the culture or anti-culture of being alone. I had not thought about how my life as a loner is facilitated by the idea of American individualism. I couldn't live as a Japanese person, for example, and be mentally healthy. At least I wouldn't be viewed that way. And I wouldn't have that American ideal to fall back on when my natural state was hedged by the notion of community-above-all. This makes me think about all the places I've lived and how this relates. I was raised in the military, having lived in Germany, the Philippines, Italy, and England, as well as in the south, midwest, east, and west before I had turned 21. And I mean lived in, not just visited. Every few years Dad would get orders and we would move. It's just what we did. People sometimes ask if it was hard, and I reply "I don't think so. It was just life. I didn't know any other way." Partially as a result of these frequent moves, I learned to live with and like myself. Perhaps this was a way of dealing with a life wherein my group of friends was constantly shifting, where I wasn't sure if I would ever see any of my childhood friends again in my lifetime (and I haven't seen most of them. In fact, it's extremely rare for me to see any childhood friends because we are scattered all over the planet and I am enough of a loner to have avoided High School reunions my whole life). Underlying all of this movement, though, was the idea, entrenched in my head, that I was American - my father was a member of the US military, and I was raised with this from day one, how could I not identify with the stars and stripes when it was all that I had known?

These first sections of the book were different than I expected, mostly in a good way. Rufus' insight into the layers of the loner/non-loner dichotomy, especially as they relate to popular culture, are compelling. I had not made the connection that most pop culture worships the loner (because pop culture is created by loners, for the most part), while at the same time being marketed to the non-loner crowd. I had to think about that for a while. But how else do you account for the burgeoning of "geek culture"? Not that all geeks are loners (far from it), but there is, I suspect, a much higher proportion of people who identify as "geeks" who are loners. I don't have any evidence for this, but it seems like a safe supposition.

On the subject of friends, Rufus points out that, yes, loners have friends, some very good friends. But they tend to choose depth over breadth, and their friends need to understand when the loner needs to be alone. My experience, exactly. I never quite understood those who held what I thought were multiple shallow friendships. I always looked for something deeper with the few friends that I had, sometimes at the cost of great heartbreak.

While Rufus did strike some familiar chords in me, the book, by and large, missed the mark. I have to register strong disagreement with p. 107, 1st full para, last sentence. Here, the author speaks of internet usage (which she calls "an absolute and total miracle" for loners). In examining the thoughts of those who criticize the use of the Internet because it keeps children from enjoying the outdoors, Rufus states:

they claim [the Internet] keeps kids from playing healthy games outdoors. They say it is a procurer for perverts, a weapon in hate crimes. Underlying all this, of course, is the real reason for their dismay: The Internet legitimizes solitude. The real problem is not that kids don't play outdoors, but that they do not play with other kids.

I understand the sentiment that led to this, but it's hyperbolic in the extreme. And this hyperbole, along with the assignation of ill-intent to those who don't understand loners, gets really tedious throughout. The book is passionate, but heavily flawed. And the reason for the flaws is that it is over-passionate. There's a lot of catastrophizing on the part of the author, a sensationalist approach that is intended to put non-loners in a bad light for thinking such evil thoughts against loners.

In later chapters, Rufus points out that many criminals, particularly violent criminals, are automatically labeled "loner" when, in fact, their need for social attention drives them to their acts. It is terribly ironic that many who kill do so because they lack meaningful relationships with others. Still, the militant stance against media and police who make the false assumption that every serial killer is a loner is a bit off-putting. The writing here, at times, reminds me of why I hate The Catcher in the Rye so bloody much.

The chapter on artists is fantastic. There is an eloquent series of anecdotes about how artists tend to be loners (though not always). And this, on artists, is compelling:

Artists hear what no one else hears. They see what no one else sees. They say what no one else says. They must. And to do this, they traffic in the slippery yield of their own souls. They bring to earth the wrack and lode of depths that only they can reach and still come back alive.

This is the kind of passion I can get behind!

Unfortunately, Rufus falls, yet again, into the trap of making assumptions about how masses of other people feel. The chapter on religion is a train-wreck, full of a whole litany of falsehoods and bad assumptions about loners and religion. At least she had the sense to quote Thomas Merton, but it isn't enough to save that chapter. It's a morass.

In her defense, Rufus does hit on some emotionally tough subjects that hit close to the heart. The whole idea of loners being viewed as crazy is an uncomfortable one to face, especially when one prides himself on being a loner and maybe a touch different, though not altogether insane. This is a deep emotional kernel of self-identity that I had to view through the microscope and am still thinking about, especially with the recent death of my parents, one of whom, my Mother, was clinically depressed and had borderline personality disorder her whole life. Being viewed as a touch crazy doesn't much bother me. In fact, I wear that badge proudly! But being viewed as outright nuts because I prefer to spend time with myself and lock myself away for hours on end (particularly when engaged in creative endeavors), that has the potential to hurt.

Sane or not, is book worth your reading time? Perhaps. For those who self-identify as loners, take this with a big grain of salt. Rufus' militancy might not reflect your own feelings. I know it didn't reflect mine. Maybe if I was still a teenager, I could get behind her rancor a bit more, but I'm over that phase. And for non-loners who read the book: please don't assume that every loner you know feels the same way as Rufus about how you view them. It's simply not true. What is true is that all of us are complex, subtly-shaded individuals, some of whom would rather be in a dark corner for awhile, alone, re-energizing.

So don't be offended when I ask you, maybe quite bluntly, to leave me alone! We'll all be better for it. Ugly caterpillars become beautiful butterflies when they come out of the cocoon. But they have to undergo their marvelous transformation all alone.



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