Make no mistake about it, one of my favorite Mount Abraxas authors is Jonathan Wood, whom I have never met, but whom I have made a mental picture of, without one shred of evidence.
When I lived in England, I knew a man whose name I don't recall. He was a US Marine Vietnam Vet who had retired in England, not far from RAF Chicksands, where I lived at the time. He's got to be dead now, or if he is alive, his liver should be studied for the furtherment of medical science once he finally does give up the ghost. Yes, he did a drink a bit. I know, because I joined him on a few benders. Note: Kids, don't drink. I gave up drinking 35 years ago and it's one of the best things I've ever done. Anyway, this un-named alcoholic vet was slightly portly, dressed in nothing but sweats, and lived in a very dark little cottage "in the country". He was a jovial man, but he definitely had his demons. I don't know anything about his education, but he was eloquent, with a wide-ranging vocabulary, and he told the most sordid and morbid stories (did I mention he was a Vietnam Vet?) about his days in the military with such poesis that I could sit enwraptured, listening to him for hours (being lubricated by Southern Comfort probably helped). As I said, he was a joker, but he had a grim side to him born out of the horrors he had seen.
This is how I picture Jonathan Wood. I'm certain that my assessment of the man falls well outside the realms of reality, just like the visions we make in our head of someone we've spoken to on the phone several times, but never met in person. But until I meet Mr. Wood, this is the image I will have.
That vision is a result of reading his writings. They are eloquently grim in the best of ways: poetic and hopeless, like being buried in diamonds that sparkle so beautifully, but they cut, oh, they cut.
Some of Wood's works err on the side of poetic brilliance, while others wallow in the mire. But there is a certain cognitively-dissonant hegelian synthesis that arises out of the seeming chaos.
Beloved Chaos That Comes by Night starts on the brilliant side, but devolves into, well, chaos, in the end. At the beginning one is buoyed up by the prospects of a young playwright who is honing his craft and, in the end, we see a hopelessly desparate man that has been bullied, used, and abused by others (and, one must add, as a result of his own desires) to the point of barely thinking of himself as human as all. This is a story of the potential for great gain diseased by the tragedy of great loss. It is about the warping of dreams into nightmare, a true horror story devoid of ghosts, but full of monsters of one's own (ignorant) making.
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