The Old Knowledge and Other Strange Tales

The Old Knowledge and Other Strange Tales by Rosalie Parker


Rosalie Parker who, with her partner, R. B. Russell, run one of my favorite small presses, Tartarus Press, presents here, in a beautiful Swan River Press edition (another of my favorites), eight short stories of strange fiction. it is a slight volume, but beautiful, as one expects from Swan River. The autumnal cover, designed around one of Russell's pieces, create the proper mood - rich and loamy, but with a cold edge - for reading.

First impressions are important. At first, I thought "The Rain" might be a well-written rehash of the 1970 TV drama Robin Redbreast. I was so wrong! There are elements of homage (whether intentional or not) to that (in)famous drama. This is far more horrifying, yet the frisson is brought on by careful omission and ominous indicators, by what is explicitly not said or shown, rather than with the literary equivalent of jump-scare scenes. This is something Rod Serling would nod to and smile. Oh, it's five stars worth of eloquent dread!

Nearly as enigmatic, but not nearly as convincing, "Spirit Solutions" evokes the feelings of siblinghood that anyone with a brother or sister will recognize, all in the context of a night spent by two brothers and two sisters in the haunted house of their recently-deceased father. Four stars.

I was not terribly surprised by what I found "In the Garden," but was I supposed to be shocked? I don't think so, honestly. I wasn't even creeped out . . . much. A little. But I ended the story feeling a little that Parker felt I should be more scared or surprised than I was. However, I know full well that auctorial intent is seldom what the reader thinks it is or was. Still, three rowan-berry stars to this domestic(ated) tale.

As far as straightforward strange stories, "Chactonbury Ring" is, well, just that. A good story, well-told. Perhaps if there were a little more folkloric background or context, I might have enjoyed it more. But, as I said, it's a good story worth three stars.

"The Supply Teacher" is a clever little story with a clever little twist. The beautiful prose and perfectly-timed dialogue are what make it a four star story. I could just as easily see this as a novel excerpt as a short story, though it is impactful even in its current form.

"The Old Knowledge" is unrevealed until the end, and what an end! A story of barrows and witch bottles and the trickster in the dirt, as it were. Folk horror without the horror, really, but a fine specimen of the form, if not the outright oeuvre, of folk horror. This is a grim, yet beautifully capricious story worthy of five bronze or flint stars. This story made me chuckle a wile- pun intended.

"The Cook's Story" is an excellent little ditty with multiple angles of obfuscation. Definitely one of those tales that leaves you guessing, but gives several possibilities as to what really did happen and what really is happening. I'm not big on stories about the chosen subject matter, to be honest, but this is well done and a wicked little read. This story has come back into my mind time and time again, like a dog to its vomit, as they say. Be careful what you eat . . . four stars.

I might like "The Picture" best of all. A piece of Symbolist art comes at a cost, again and again and again. The ending out O'Henrys O'Henry. A deliciously twisted story that takes the notion of The Monkey's Paw two steps forward and one step back, or maybe it's taking a side road through musty antique shops and back alleys, I don't know. I have a hard time putting into words what this story does, but it does it sneaky and sinister and leaves you begging at the end. For what? Can't tell. If you're lucky, you'll find out. Five stars!

In the end, you have to admire Parker for her endings. They often work, and are always clever. Maybe a trite too clever once in a while, but still, you can tell she's honed her storytelling craft. I'll often read, and sometimes state, that a collection is "worth it" for this story or that. This collection is worth it for all the stories. Some more than others. But altogether, this is a nice little meal - not too much, not too little - of strange tales to read by a warm fireplace with a cup of hot cocoa. You'll want just a hint of chill in the air. And if you can't crack open the door to let it in, The Old Knowledge will do it for you.

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The Collected Connoisseur

The Collected Connoisseur by Mark Valentine
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Two of my favorite contemporary authors, Mark Valentine and John Howard, combine their talents on what I thought might be a promising character, The Connoisseur - aesthetical detective extraordinaire. I had been waiting a while to savor this. With a few days off on holiday, I was able to bathe in this reading a bit more than is usual with my frantic life. I'm glad I took this one slow - I'm hoping I've given Valentine and Howard more time to write more Connoisseur, because I didn't want this to end. This might be as close to a perfect short story collection as I will ever read. This is definitely becoming one of my "chained books" (meaning I'm figuratively chaining it up so you'll have to remove it with a bolt cutter to get it out of my library or pry it from my cold, dead hands). It ranks up with Brian Evenson's The Wavering Knife and Thomas Ligotti's Teatro Grottesco as one of my favorite single-author collections of all time. Every story is excellent, and the sum of the parts is an order of magnitude more magnificent than the stories themselves. Yes, this collection is THAT good. Tartarus Press is offering this in an affordable paperback version. I cannot recommend it strongly enough.

You probably have some sort of notion about what an "aesthetical detective extrodinaire" should be and do. And, in places, you would be correct. But it's when the stories buck my preconceived ideas that they shine the brightest. That's not to say that I was displeased when a story met my expectations, but the surprises were the best.

The collection starts with "The Effigies," which is just what I had hoped it would be: witty, erudite, fantastically well-written in such a way that the eloquence is un-noticed, just absorbed. The Connoisseur explains his vase, which holds water, but never flowers, and for good reason. Imagine if the physical objects of Huysman's Against Nature each had a tale to tell. This should give a bit of a hint as to what an "aesthetical detective" is all about. Five stars.

"After the Darkness" has it all: a pre-Great War poet, a masquerade, an apparition, and a mystery involving a sundial - or is it a moondial? In any case, what's not to like? Five stars.

I was reminded of Doyle's "The Hound of the Baskervilles" when reading "The Paravine Cries," for reasons that become obvious when one reads the story's conclusion. I won't spoil that ending, however. Suffice it to say that, while it does reflect some of those old tropes, it does so in a fresh way. Fresh enough for four stars like glowing eyes in the night.

"Pale Roses" is as English a winter's tale as there could possibly be. It brought back those always rainy, sometimes snowy days of my youth when I lived in England. If you're not familiar with English history, you may want to brush up. If you are familiar, you are in for a treat, a mystery surrounding the Connoisseur's ailing cousin leads to decay and a discovery about a possible lost scion of the Stuart house. How does the protagonist know what he knows? I don't care. I want to believe. Five stars.

"In Violet Veils" is an exquisite piece that owes its existence to both the Decadents and the Symbolists, but that takes it's own place in the hierarchy of each. Five stars

How apropos that, so close to the end of the year, I read what may be the best story I've read all year. "The Lost Moon" is a hypnotizing piece of esoterica. Truly an "occult detective" story so deeply immersive and compelling that it will not leave me for a long, long time. An enigmatic orrery, a secret society, and Saturn. What more do you need? Five stars circling the wrong direction, summoning chaos itself!

From darkness to light . . . "Cafe Lucifer" is not merely a switch in emphasis from "The Lost Moon", it is a deeply poignant story. Any who have loved and lost quickly will feel a pang of deep emotion resounding in the heart. I recall a "tryst" I had in the Netherlands with a girl who I met there. Vicki was her name, but I can't recall her last name. It's probably changed now anyway. She was beautiful. Probably the most beautiful girl I ever loved. We were together for two weeks, while we were both representing our High Schools at the Model United Nations in the Hague. Alas, her father was stationed at a different Air Force base in England that was a ways away from the base I lived at. Given our meager means and the fact that I didn't have a car (no one really *needed* a car in England), I didn't ever see her again, though there were two occasions where I might have run into her: once, when I visited the base she lived at and another when I went to London to see U2 and a bunch of her friends were going to the concert, as well. It was a grueling few months, and I don't know that I ever got over it. I am quite happily married to the most wonderful woman in the world, but I'm still curious what ever happened to her. So, if you know anyone named Vicki whose father was stationed at RAF Upper Heyford in 1987, let her know I'd love to hear from her and find out how she's doing. But it wasn't just the deepness of my own emotions that caused this story to stand out. I still have the images of Cafe Lucifer and its mysterious prism-embedded-in-a-glass-sphere burning deep in my brain. The visual cues were enough to make this story unforgettable, let alone the emotional connection I made with the characters. Needless to say, this story gets five stars.

Oh, I would spend a healthy sum of money on the creations of "The Craft of Arioch". Or an unhealthy sum of money. A wonderfully whimsical tale of rocking horses . . . and others. The phrase "flights of the imagination" perfectly encapsulates this magical story, but doesn't do it enough justice. It is an exquisite piece of fancy with a central conceit that is simple, yet enervating. This five star tale was one of the more playful of the collection, but play of the most serious sort!

"The Secret Stars" feels, at first, like Valentine and Howard are veering far away from The Connoisseur's oeuvre, like the narrative is spinning in a different direction than the authors intended. But, at the end, the narrative clearly "belongs" to The Connoisseur. Four secret stars.

"The Hesperian Dragon" should be turned into a BBC one-shot staring, of course, Benedict Cumberbatch as The Connoisseur. This is the longest and most "film ready" of the stories in this collection so far. Unfortunately, it is way too "smart" and steeped in aesthetic theory for it ever to be translated to the screen. A shame. Brush up on your Milton/Confucius, cretins! Five multicolored stars. You'll know why . . .

"The Lighting of the Vial" may be a perfect story, without blemish or fault. It is the most beautiful thing I have read in many years, possibly the most beautiful and poignant story I've ever read. Here, the Connoisseur relates his journey to the museum of an artist, Hugh Kerwyn, a friend of his, from the hints that are given. Kerwyn's friends and admirers gather there for a wake for the recently deceased artist. There hope is to recreate the moment captured in his most-perfectly-realized still life painting. But, for some reason, the anticipated moment does not "take" as they feel it ought to have done. Afterwards, The Connoisseur is approached by a young woman who admits to replacing one of the objects in the still life with a substitute, which is enough to break the spell, as it were, of the original.

'I looked at her. she settled herself on the bench, straightening her pale dress. I resumed my place, and she continued: "I sometimes wonder if poeoples' thoughts might stay in a place. You know, if they thought about something in a certain way so they were almost a part of it, whether that might stay behind when they are gone. We would sort of know their thoughts were there but not quite. So we would feel strange about the place, or feel it was special somehow, but we couldn't be sure why."

'I nodded thoughtfully and prodded the dust with the toe of my shoe. The drifting fragrance returned dimly to my senses. It was as if there was a palpitant ache in the air. We gazed at the tumbledown garden silently.

'Suddenly I thought that I did not want these moments to end: the decaying garden, the earnestness of the young woman from the quiet town below, the frail flow of the late noon, the cracked stone flags, the slow flowing of the countryside beyond, the cool lustre of the little flagon in my hand, the merest possibility of some lingering presence of the thoughts, the whimsical meditations of Hugh Kerwyn: all these things seemed so finely, so perfectly poised before me; I did not want to emerge from them. I would gladly have stayed all the while that the long day dwindled into dusk, trying to stem its ebbing, to seize some moments of it, some few fragments, to try fiercely to prevent it all from disappearing into the darkness.

'But: "I must go," she said. The words descended like a first chill shiver across that strange onrush of bliss. I shook her hand somewhat awkwardly, told her I was sure she had acted rightly in saving the little jug from that foolish ritual, and said I hoped our paths might cross again whenever I revisited the museum. Then, settling back on the bench and watching her go through the blue wicket gate at the garden's end, savouring the active, poignant vacancy caused by her leaving, I thought again of what she had said, comparing her impressions with what I remembered of Hugh Kerwyn's art and thought.'

This touched me deeply. This is something I believe. Something that rings a familiar, melancholy chord, especially since the death of my parents last spring. I will never forget this story. It may be the most wonderful, sad, and meaningful story I've ever read. 5 stars.

"The Nephoseum" is as fragile and ethereal as its subject-matter and its protagonist. Unfortunately, despite its utter stunning beauty of form, the story's frailty is one touch too ephemeral. Of course, anything would be a disappointment after reading the perfect story just before. Four stars.

"Sea Citadels" is a song to the British isles, a sort of keening for the ancient days that taps into a certain resonance between the sea and human longing. It is the tonal inverse of Lovecraft's "The Shadow Over Innsmouth". And where HP's loquacious purple-prose falters on the shoals of the ears, Valentine's simple eloquence is like a gentle wave-born lullaby, like a Dunsany for the sea. Four stars.

"The Prince of Barlocco" is a gentle, yet powerful tale of dignity in the midst of degeneration. It's almost a sort of parable (though not exactly such) about the power of family in one's later years. Or maybe I'm just reading it this way because my daughter just told us our 2nd grandchild is on the way (!). 4 stars.

"The Black Eros" holds a compelling idea. It is far more sinister than mere satanism or the occult. Yet the "reveal" seemed a bit contrived. Still, a beautiful idea, mostly well-executed. Four stars, but it could have easily been five had the underlying tensions and reveal been left to boil a little longer. A textbook example of what happens when the author is over-eager to get to the end or when artificial word-limits hold a story back from its full potential. I'm not sure which way to interpret that here, but it is a bit of a shame, either way.

"The Mad Lutanist" starts off slowly and hits a crescendo of supernatural strangeness, but it is in the denouement that Valentine pulls his most deft auctorial maneuver: just when one thinks that it is an unnecessary info dump via Deus-Ex-Machina, the other shoe drops and one is smitten by the perfect brilliance of it all. I love this sort of sleight-of-hand. Five stars.

"The Mist on the Mere" feels like the Classic English Ghost Story, with deep roots in James and Dunsany. It is the first of these that is structured like a standard Occult Detective story. This is, simultaneously a strength and a weakness. Four stars glowing like Celtic goddesses in the mist.

"The White Solander" is exactly the sort of story I imagined for The Connoisseur before I had ever read any of these stories. I'm glad it came later in my reading, however, so that I could explore his many other facets first. Here, though, is a true occult detective story, replete with incantations, swordplay (of a sort), Symbolist poets, and a beautiful conspiracy from early modern times. Five stars to this gem.

"The Last Archipelago" is what Algernon Blackwood would have written had he he wished to reprise "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym" or "At the Mountains of Madness". It's more subtle than either of those, more spiritual, if you will, but clearly a story of nature's winsome personality. This is my least favorite story of this collection, thus far, and still it clocks in at a very solid Four stars.

Empires folded within empires in a timeless, but time-stricken state. "The Rite of Trebizond" is a mystery and a history of the trickle of power between the interstices of civilization. The Holy of Holies is hid right in our midst, and we do not see it. World-builders walk in our midst and we are unaware of the intrigue. This is a beautiful story in which nothing happens, but everything happens. Five stars.

"The Serpent, Unfallen" would make an excellent Call of Cthulhu scenario. I am not joking. And I am seriously thinking about writing such a thing. Anyway, the Oil of Mercy figures prominently in this occult tale of satanic ritual and its despoilers. One of the more straightforward tales of the Connoisseur, and yet a very satisfying one. Five stars on the crown of a black serpent . . . with or without wings.

Even a less-clever Connoisseur story like "The Temple of Time" deserves four stars. The plot is unsurprising, the main protagonist (not The Connoisseur, this time) is forgettable, the language is, as always, excellent. But what gives this story strength is it's poignancy of speculation: a "what if" that sinks deep into the heart and mind.

Folk horror, Phaeton, and fire-worship are all on brilliant display in "The Descent of the Fire". This is an excellent conclusion to the collection, gathering all of The Connoisseur's cohorts in an effort to stop the burgeoning of luciferean cabals. Five bright stars!

Your reading experience may be different than mine, of course. As I have shown, this collection hit some emotional resonances with me that are the result of my experiences and my time in life. I'm glad I read it when I did. The perfect book at the perfect time. Perhaps it's your time?

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The Quay Brothers: The Black Drawings

The Quay Brothers: The Black Drawings by Edwin Carels
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It's no secret that I am a huge fan of The Brothers Quay and their films. I've been ever-so-slowly and carefully working on roleplaying game materials for some sort of Quay-influenced campaign (here, here, and here, if you'd like some free content and ideas), I've seen most of their films now, and I'm starting to collect more books on them and their work. Truth be told, I'm not usually obsessive about movies, directors, or actors. When friends talk about actors, for instance, and call out a name, I am 95% likely to not have a clue who they are talking about. I'm just not that good at pop culture, at least not TV and movie pop culture. I'm pretty picky . . . VERY picky about what I watch. I just don't spend much time absorbing mainstream TV and movies. Yes, some (make mine Marvel, for instance), but really not that much.

But the Brothers Quay are different. If you doubt that and haven't seen any of their films, just go to youtube and have a gander. You will likely either love them or hate them or, like me, both at the same time. I am simultaneously completely drawn in by their work and inwardly repulsed by it. It's a strange place, for me, but I am willingly caught in their labyrinth. Rather than speedily trying to escape from the labyrinth, however, I am taking my time to observe the labyrinth's construction, to feel my way along the dark walls, to smell the moldy eruptions kicked up by my boots, to know this place.

This is where The Quay Brothers: The Black Drawings comes in. It's a sort of blueprint (blackprint?) of what came before the twins started making their movies. This is the initiation of the visual shouts that later echo throughout their cinema. Before they made movies, the Brothers Quay were graphic designers working for a few different publishers before establishing themselves as directors. The Black Drawings are pencil drawings that the brothers created from about 1974 to 1977. Obviously, they are dark, but what is not obvious is the unexpected subject matter, which usually involved soccer players and trolleys. The trolleys are obviously artifacts from their years spent in Poland after leaving their home town of Philadelphia. The pre-eminence of soccer players in many of the drawings cannot be so easily explained. The twins were not permitted to play contact sports as children because they had braces, which their parents did not want to endanger. They ran cross country, but did not play soccer. So, maybe this is some strange sort of wish fulfillment. Or, perhaps these figures are symbolic of the European spirit (soccer was most definitely not a popular sport in the US in the '50s, when they would have been children). But, for some reason, this is part of the symbolic (?) language that they developed in their drawings. There also seems to be a fascination with electrical pylons, vaunting buildings, factories, and tall streetlights casting shadows over sports fields. Maybe not what you would expect from the young Quays.

But look a bit more closely at their films, and you will see many of these symbols pop up in various guises. I won't spoil any surprises, but after reading this book, I know I will rewatch their works with even more wide-eyed wonder than I do now, like going on an Easter egg hunt for black, gothic eggs.

One idea that struck me came from the phrase used to describe The Black Drawings as "film without film". These drawings were, essentially, movie posters for movies that had never been made. I've used a similar notion in some of my short fiction, writing "stories without stories" - plotless spirals into character, or merely descriptive lists, that allow the ambitious reader to read between the lines and form their own story, with my work providing the prompts, while their brains actually create the plot or at least shadows thereof. I like writing these kinds of "stories without stories" and I enjoy reading them. I suppose much of long-form poetry fulfills the same function.

The book begins with a rather lengthy preamble to the "exhibition" that contextualizes the drawings by giving an extensive history of the time period in question. Suffice it to say that the Quay Brothers' films didn't arise ex nihilo , but that several influences converged (not least of which their travels overseas) to form a proto-oeuvre that later coalesced into the films through the medium of their "films without films" posters.

Next, the drawings are presented, with a thorough examination of each and a bevy of corollary evidence that mostly backs up the author's contentions. The one exception is the analysis of the psychopathia sexualis vis-a-vis the drawing "Chateau de Labonnecuyere," which I found to be an awful stretch, not to mention pretentious in the sort of way that distances the avant-garde from the rest of the world. The rest of the analysis is sound, but this condescending sort of work is exactly why we see anti-academic strains in society.

While I found something of interest or something to enjoy about each of the Black Drawings, two of them stood out. "The Lover Practicing Hate" is one of the more intriguing Black Drawings: more dynamic than the others, graphically intriguing, even emotive (something lacking in many of the others), though the specific emotion being evoked is really up to the viewer.

My favorite is "Guegamp-Sans-Gavotten," which definitely takes its cues from the expressionists. It's a charged drawing, full of energy, with a story unfolding before the viewer's eyes. Again, though, the plot of that story is up to the beholder. This poster would make an excellent "Rorshach test".

One of the hidden treasures in this labyrinth of a book are the numerous references to the obscure, often avant music, cinema, and books scattered about in the footnotes and sometimes hinted at in the text. These provide a path to the story behind the story behind the story. I look forward to opening the trapdoors in the floor and exploring the underground to the labyrinth as much as I've enjoyed my stay up above. Who knows what lies beneath? I may never come back.

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The Hearts of Kings

The Hearts of Kings by Hanns Heinz Ewers
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This short, cutting work is a decadent delight. Written in the mythopoetic style so familiar to readers of decadent literature, this story holds dearly to the human elements of tragedy, madness, and artistic genius. There is a strong latency from the Symbolist movement throughout, one must understand that, as a work of decadence, the title is to be taken literally and viscerally. The story cuts to the heart of power and its exercise over society, as manifested in Stefan Eggeler's darkly-beautiful etchings. The drawings and prose, housed in a gold-embossed cloth cover with bronze- and gold-faux-foil endpapers, are a treasure within a treasure. This is a book that is not, however, for the faint of heart. If you are looking for fairy tales of royalty, you will soon find yourself looking askance at this grueling tale, which leans more toward Poe than Huysmans.

This (absolutely gorgeous) edition is one of 493 copies, available from Ajna. You may ask yourself: "Self, do you really want to spend that much money on a 52 page book?"

Yes. Yes, you most definitely do. Trust me on this one: it's worth way more than you'll pay, until they go out of stock and the price just starts getting higher and higher as this peculiar gem of a work is sought after more and more.

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Demiurge: The Complete Cthulhu Mythos Tales of Michael Shea

Demiurge: The Complete Cthulhu Mythos Tales of Michael Shea by Michael Shea
My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I remember the exact moment when I first encountered H.P. Lovecraft’s work. It was eighth grade, and I had just walked out of the lunch room onto the Mission Junior High School courtyard when I heard someone behind me yell my name. I turned, bracing for a fight (which happened frequently at that school – think bully jocks and all that rot), but found one of my good friends, John Hayes (who has since passed away from a heart attack, just a few years ago) running up to me with a book in his hand. “Do you want this?” he asked. The cover was that of a skull with brains exploding out of holes in the top of its head entitled Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos. I was intrigued. If I recall correctly, John said something like “My mom says I can’t keep this book. Do you want it?”. My response was something like “hellz, yeah”! Thanks, Mrs. Hayes!

And so, my journey into Lovecraft and those who shared his mythos began. I can honestly say that this book changed my life and sent me in directions I otherwise would never have explored. It was a rich stepping off point for many of my interests in life (existentialism, philosophy in general, avant classical music, surreal cinema, etc). It has made my life richer. Since then, I have read much and written a few pieces that would be considered “Lovecraftian,” along with a piece or two (read and written) that riff directly off of Lovecraft’s creations.

I still hold a great deal of fondness of weird fiction. Not “Weird” with a capital “W”, necessarily. This has become a marketing category that I’m becoming unenchanted with. Well, not “becoming,” now that I’ve finished this book. I am, I think, fully ready to leave “Weird” fiction for “weird” fiction. I still love the strange, the metaphysical, love cosmic horror and the “Lovecraftian,” but more as a concept than as a marketing category/genre.

I have heard a great deal about Michael Shea’s work and how amazing it is. Forgive my bluntness, but, while Shea’s writing style is excellent, his ideas, characters, and plots are mostly hackneyed. Yes, I know, that’s no way to talk about a dead man who can’t defend himself, but really: as a thirteen-year old, I would probably have loved this work. But I’ve grown up a little and my reading tastes have matured, as a result. I see the potential for greatness here – Shea’s writing, as I have said, is quite good, borderline exquisite, at times. But the matrix in which the beautiful syntax is set happens to be broken or, at best, boring. It’s like setting a single diamond in the middle of a bracelet that is composed of glass baubles. The diamond is cheapened by its setting, and the baubles look even worse in comparison.

With that, here are my story notes:

Groveling at the altar of Lovecraft, no matter how eloquently, is still groveling at the altar of Lovecraft. Clever turns of phrase cannot save a weak, thin, and most of all, unsubtle story. My disenchantment with the "mythos" grows. This is fanfic. Well-written fanfic, but fanfic nonetheless. Two stars to "Fat Face," and I think that's being overly generous. I hope this collection improves or . . . lem!

"Nemo Me Impune Lacessit" sings prettily, but the lyrics are shallow and hackneyed. Three stars and I am quickly losing all patience with this collection. (note that I did read to the end, surprisingly).

In "The Presentation," street art meets comix meets the 1% meets . . . something . . . beyond. While I didn't enjoy the metaphysical aspect of it, this was a pretty good story. The writing, the syntax, the vocabulary were all impressive, but the metafictional aspect of it was quite jarring. Not great, but worth the read. Three stars floating in space around a cosmic blob in the void.

“The Pool”: Again with the metafiction and the outright references to Lovecraft and the extreme strain to my willing suspension of disbelief? Is there no subtlety? Bleh. One step closer to lemming this. (note again that I showed great restraint in not tossing this book). Two stars. If there's another two star, I'm quitting. (I didn’t – shame on me). Life's too short, even with well-written sentences. A waste of talent. But hey, I'm not Shea. Still, bleh.

"The Recruiter" is the kind of story I was hoping for from this collection. A modern dirge of timeless dread. An existential survey of the landscape of death and being. And not one mention of Cthulhu or any of his cronies, at least not directly. Four stars. Pushing on . . .

"The Battery" is a pulp fiction story in the vein of Lovecraft. Maybe too much in the vein of Lovecraft. Frankly, I couldn't get excited about the characters, the premise, or all the Lovecraftian doo-dads. Two stars.

"Copping Squid" is a great story. Far and away better than all the other stories in this collection. Sacrifice and complicity create a tangled web, with some deep characterization, as a result. The horror is just as much in the inner contemplation of decisions as it is in the outward cosmic forces that feed on the universe. This story is a darkly wonderful exploration of agency and respectful awe vis-a-vis stark terror. Five stars. Does this long story make it worth it to buy the whole collection? No. Not by a long shot. But it’s a great story that deserves your attention. Unfortunately, I don’t know where else you might find it. Remember my earlier analogy about a diamond among baubles? Yeah . . .

Dear "Dagoniad", I'm sorry, but we just can't go on like this. Your blunt granting of "mythos" knowledge (and your characters even call it "mythos" knowledge) to common hookers is, well, just obscene. Not because of the hookers, mind you, but because of the unashamed way in which you spit in the face of willing suspension of disbelief. It’s not a wink and a nudge, it’s like you’re opening your trench coat and exposing yourself to strangers on the street. You're the kind of story that would take it for granted that everyone reads Lovecraft and knows everything about the mythos because they read it. Yuck! Uh-uh. No more. We can't go on. One star. Next story up, please.

I'm torn. Some of the writing in "Tsathoggua" is exquisite, Especially the segments about Maureen's transformation. But, again, "deus ex machina" comes in the form of someone, introduced halfway through the story with no preamble, who just happens to have all this mythos knowledge. Honestly, it's getting really, really tiresome. Three stars.

Nothing really happened "Beneath the Beardmore". The protagonists didn't do much protagonizing, and there was a lot of explaining about Shoggoths and tentacles and stuff. But the characters were flat and unimpressive. Meh. All the trimmings and none of the substance of cosmic horror. The poetic voice of the "guide" was at least intriguing. But only intriguing enough to earn three stars.

When I read the words Great Old Ones Ale near the beginning of the story, I thought that "Momma Durtt" might end up a puerile, trivial, mimetic, unoriginal,, silly, bleached-out shell of worn-out Lovecraftian elements that tried in vain to be funny and horrific and the more it tried the worse it became, until it nose-dived into a downward spiral of inane dreck.

And I was right. One star.

Why, yes, of course every Antarctic submarine researcher carries a Tommy gun with them, just in case. And riding a submarine down an icy slope like a bobsled is perfectly believable. Isn't it? "Under the Shelf" comes in under three stars. Two, to be exact.

"Demiurge" is an interesting take on what it's like to be an alien intelligence possessing others' bodies that ends as the most ridiculous thing in the entire collection. It was pretty good until the last page, then, UGH! Three stars.

In essence, my problem is with the bare-faced mansplaining that goes on in the guise of some expert on “the mythos” suddenly showing up out of nowhere and exposing all the mysteries of said “mythos” to protagonists who either just accept what is given them or become so awestruck that you expect them to suddenly yell out “dude, that’s totally rad!” whenever a Shoggoth appears (and Shea had an unhealthy obsession with Shoggoths). It got old. It’s still old. Maybe I’m just getting old. But I can’t do this anymore. Going forward, I am very likely to avoid anything that directly takes Lovecraft’s creatures as inspiration, at least those, like this, that are borderline fanfic (if not outright fanfic). I’m all about the cosmic horror, all about strange stories, but I think I’ve done with tentacles in my fiction. I’ve got plenty of boardgames and roleplaying games if I want tentacles. I am banishing them from my plane of existence. Ia, Ia!

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Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice

Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice: A Treatise, Critique, and Call to Action by J.F. Martel
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I sometimes hear critics decry artists as being “indulgent” when they do something they love that isn’t popular with said critics. I recall the one season of American Idol that I watched (the one where Adam Lambert should have won) wherein one of the early contestants was called “Indulgent” for singing what I thought was a not terrible rendition of Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy”. I’ve been similarly accused and, in fact, used said accusation in my writer’s bio from time to time. You see, I don’t care if I’m viewed as indulgent. I write because I like to write. Some publishers happen to have liked what I’ve written and have published some of my work. Pardon my flippancy (or don’t), but . . . get over it.

Those who have spent any time with me in person know that I’m not so bold in person. I’m a pretty nice guy, sometimes a bit too deferential. But when it comes to my writing and my reading tastes, I am my own man. Writing is my drug. MY drug. Your drug may be different, and your experience with writing may be (and should be) different. It should be your own. All art should be your own because it is your interface with art that matters, not the art itself. The object that elicits the feelings within you, the emotional and intellectual connection, the reaction, will never be the same for another person. Nor should it be.

Here we have one of the central points of J.F. Martel’s “treatise, critique, and call to action”: Art is different for every person, while artifice is intended to engender the same reaction from each person who encounters it. Art is about expression, with the viewer taking an active role in interpreting the meaning of the object/picture/performance, while artifice is about communication, with the viewer taking the passive role of receiving the message which the deliverer wishes to inject into his or her heart or mind. One is a complex symbol open to many different interpretations, while the other is a sign pointing to an ideology to which the creator wants to assign one true meaning:

The moment we reduce a work of art to its references to other things, as with statements such as “Kafka’s Trial is a story ‘about’ modern bureaucracy” or “Fargo" is a film ‘about’ the corrupting influence of money,” we risk losing sight of what art alone can do, because we are effectively turning it into something that can be deciphered . . . a work of art is not ‘about’ any one definitive thing. Captain Ahab isn’t “just” a man obsessed with a whale any more than Moby Dick is “just” a story about whaling and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Ahab and his obsession are inseparable from one another. He is formed by his drive to kill the white whale – and cannot exist apart from it. Nor is Ahab’s preoccupation with hunting down Moby Dick a generic characteristic that, in his particular case, happens to be directed at a large sea mammal. Rather, his obsession is itself inseparable from Moby Dick; it is an aspect of the whale as well as an aspect of Ahab. The madness at the heart of Melville’s story becomes an abstract “character trait” only once we have extracted it from its specific context, stripping it of its singularity and generalizing it into a psychological opinion . . . the hunter, the hunt, and the hunted constitute an indissoluble system, each part of which exists by virtue of the force exerted by the others.”

The need to dissect and dissemble art into its constituent parts, while laudable in academic circles, does, to some degree, rob one of the mystery of discovery that one feels when encountering a moving piece of art for the first time. As an undergraduate, I studied Humanities with a history emphasis. I learned how to examine art, music, dance, theater, drama, architecture, and cinema in historical context, but always with a bias toward one school of philosophy or another. The intent was that we students would become exposed to and possibly even facile in criticism of various forms. I spent several good years of my life doing this and, while I am grateful for the intellectual exercise (and actually enjoyed it, to some extent), I felt an overwhelming sense of relief when, one summer, I read The Complete Sherlock Holmes and Tolkien’s The Silmarillion (followed by The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings series) after a particularly grueling semester of Marxist and Objectivist analysis of several works of art and literature. It took a week or so to deprogram from the academic rigor of that semester, but when I did, and when I read the books without any preconceived analysis, I felt . . . free! And, strangely, when I did have the analytical devil whisper over my shoulder, my thoughts “uncoiled” quite naturally. Maybe I had just been indoctrinated, I don’t know. But I was able to enjoy the fruits of my studies when I let myself relax and enjoy the art itself, first and foremost. My sense of mystery returned to me as I let these works unfold on their own terms, without the need for analysis.

As Martel notes:

Astonishment has an intellectual as well as an emotional component - in it, the brain and the heart come together. Far from distracting us from the strange and the uncanny in life, the astonishment evoked by great artistic works puts them square in our sights . . . the world is not what we thought it was: something hidden, impossible to communicate . . . [is] clearly expressed in the work.

That aesthetic astonishment (which, I will note, is also often felt by the artist while in the act of creation) is the “drug” I seek in either bringing art to life or engaging with the art of another. While I appreciate the careful analysis and dissection of a work (watch me at a museum – I’m the guy the guards keep an eye on because I want to get nose-close to the painting to see the individual strokes), I also realize that the appreciation of art is not a scientific endeavor. Scientific thinking can never explain the magic I felt, for example, when I first heard Kronos Quartet play live, or when I saw my first Redon painting in-person or when I first read A Clockwork Orange. It cannot tell me why I loved these things and why they moved me inside, why they created such a strong emotional and intellectual response.

”Why?” is a problem science can’t lick; in fact, the very nature of science prevents it from even framing the problem. What science does – and does beautifully – is to enrich the mystery by revealing ever deeper layers of the physical universe, which becomes more puzzling with each new discovery. Any adequate response to the mystery of existence must be poetic, for only the poetic can take on the “why.” If poetic answers are always figurative, never literal, it is because no sooner has the question of being been raised than we leave the world of determinate things to travel in a far stranger country.

This strange country is where the artist lives and thrives. It is of little use to ask me why I love the aforementioned pieces. And, in fact, it’s more than a little distracting from my enjoyment of the piece. What matters is that startling moment of revelation, that twist of the brain and heart that sends a thrill of excitement or dread or any other unanticipated feeling response that the art invokes in me.

Not to wax overly meta-, I present the following quote from Martel’s own work as an example of something that struck me on a deep level. Now, keep in mind that Poe’s poem, “The Raven” is an old favorite. It is also the first poem that my daughter memorized (the entire thing – as a nine year old, no less!) and that she recites, even as an adult, around Halloween. Now, with that in mind, read this seemingly innocuous quote:

At the literal level, Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” (1845) features a bleak November night, a black bird, and a dead woman – only this and nothing more.

SWOON! Do you see what he did there? If not, go back and read the poem. Then read that quote again. It’s an esoteric twist that I had not at all expected. I almost shed a tear at this. Why? That’s my secret, my experience, involving my relationship to reading, writing, and my daughter. I can’t explain it. Either you feel it or you don’t.

And if you don’t feel it, that’s fine. But I do. So, indulge me and call me indulgent. This sentence was written for me. At least I choose to take it that way. Martel encourages the profound idea that one should engage a work of art as if it was created and meant specifically for you. Or, in the case of those who create art:

. . . this means taking the job seriously enough to pursue the visions that come from within rather than those that are foisted upon us by social pressures, popular taste, and the whims of the market. It means making it our principal task to let the symbol speak through the work rather than trying to speak through the symbol. We need to revive the ancient idea of art as a holy madness in which one is guided by external forces. Only thus can we bring forth what we have never seen, yet desperately need to see.

This is what I seek when I write. Call it indulgent. I call it art. No apologies.

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For those interested in more of J.F. Martel’s musings, I cannot recommend his podcast (along with Phil Ford) Weird Studies strongly enough. It has quickly climbed to the top of my list of favorite podcasts and never fails to satisfy, no matter what the specific subject matter. Please give it a listen!


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

The Haunted Sleep

The Haunted Sleep by Jonathan Wood
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I cannot tell you whether or not the choice of cover art for this slim volume was intentional. I can tell you that it is meaningful: The Queen of Clubs, faceless, hollow, her head a gateway to void, one hand upraised (as Mary's is frequently represented in medieval and renaissance art) to heaven, the other holding a dagger, ready to strike. There is no deception here, things are what they seem. The Haunted Sleep awaits us all.

Wood presents with a series of prose poetry and verse. I admit that it took a moment for me to key in to the syntax, as it is often "experimental" in nature. Narrative flow is often implied, but never explicit. And yet, there is a skeleton, if you will, to which the words always return, a base of existentialism that sometimes dips into pure nihilism, but sometimes embraces the need to accept and embrace inevitable fate in a way that is bounded by paralytic complacency, on one hand, and futile, but optimistic action, on the other.

At times, the nihilism can be overwhelming. But as the reader pushes forward, they will find that the void and the stark recognition of its final, utter blackness, is a baseline for experience. There are moments of . . . not hope . . . rather, acceptance of the mystery of what does or does not lie beyond. "In Lonely Distant Temples We Dream of Freedom from the State," for example, points to the "little death" of the French as one moment, lasting merely seconds, when we are truly free of everything, even the self. It is a minor escape, but an escape, nonetheless, from fear and oppression, available to all.

My parents both passed away this year. Mom in February, Dad in April. They were hospitalized within one week of each other for different reasons. But neither of them came home. And, in fact, we had to make the decision in both of their cases to take them off life support. I spent every day of my Dad's last two weeks with him, knowing he was dying of a cancer that was riddling his brain. He had a very difficult time communicating, since he had a tracheostomy and since he was losing his facility for speech and coherent thought quickly. But in the snippets of conversation we were able to have, I knew that he knew that Mom had passed (this was not a foregone conclusion - it's too long of a story to share here, but he knew that she had passed, forgot, remembered, several times). Maybe two days before he died, I asked him if he was ready to go, to which he nodded, feebly, "yes". I asked him if he wanted to see Mom again, to which he also responded positively. Now, say what you will about people's belief or unbelief in life after death, but my father found comfort in the knowledge that he would see his wife again and also, I learned through further conversation, in the possibility of seeing his parents, aunts, uncles, etc.

Because of this, "Folk Memory," which is a prayer, a ritual, to one's ancestors, struck deeply. It is the most hopeful of pleadings to the ancestors in the dead of winter. It is a matter-of-fact acceptance of the inevitable, with a touch of hope that while we sleep in winter, winter will, ultimately end.

Threaded throughout the volume (it is, incidentally, a beautiful artifact, in and of itself) is this acknowledgement of death. It is open eyed, morbidly candid, and seems to open a Hegelian dialectic between utter hopelessness and overly-naive optimism. This dynamic doesn't take place by comparing the two, but by walking toward the void, noting the banal along the way, and seeing the abyss as a way ahead, as the only way ahead, never slackening one's pace, even as the vast awesomeness (I use the term in it's sense of "full of awe") opens its unstoppable maw to engulf the individual, who is then free, finally free, from the pains, stresses, and complications of mortality. Carpe Diem , even when the day is the Day of the Dead.

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