Gomer Parry Absent Again: "The House of Susan Lulham" by Phil Rickman

Published December 15th 2014.

(my Phil Rickman collection so far)

A long time ago, I slowly read through the Merrily Watkins's series.  I started reading because not because of the exorcist side of things, but because I wanted to read Rickman’s wonderful portrayal of life in an British rural setting, i.e., the way the rural border region is beautifully evoked, the way the village of Ledwardine as an unsentimental yet picturesque wonderful setting is shown, and the way the pagan folklore and Christianity get thrown into the mix. They all contribute for a nice and sometimes not so cozy reading.  They’re not exactly churchy. The supernatural element and sharpness of some of the characters and the writing prevents it from being two sweet. All of this wins me over and works against my literary prejudices.

This novella is not our typical Merrily Watkins.  It leans on a more traditional horror story, with a strange house thrown into the mix.

This time there was something that just seemed lacking.  Perhaps it was just the absence of the other characters and their weird storylines that usually run parallel to Merrily’s main storyline. The characterization is also very snappy, even taking into account that this a novella.

On top of that Gomer, the plant hire, is nowhere to be seen once again. The picture of him in my mind is an as old Herefordshire country man very rough and ready and spraying swear words in his conversation… He always spices up things! For me Gomer is Bart Simpson grown into an old man. I hope the next novel will feature Gomer as the main character. Otherwise, I think I’m going to move on in terms of the Merrily Watkins series.

The third-leg of Speculative Fiction: "Borealis" by Ronald Malfi

6:32 pm 26 December 2014

Published October 1st 2011

Talking with some friends of mine about books, I came to understand that “Horror” is pretty much a pejorative word. On the other hand, “Terror” is always seen as a respectable word for “horror” (I still remember Boris Karloff preferring his work to be described as such…).

“Horror” as a genre is where SF and Fantasy are nowadays, ie, enclosed in tired bathos appealing to a conservative readership which wants more of the same and are hostile to any attempts to try something different ('that's not real Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror).

Are really the so-called "literary" and "genre" fiction been at odds with each other? Literary writers increasingly try do deploy imagery from genre, while genre writers have upped their game considerably in terms of complexity, with moral resonance and style.

But “Horror” – the third leg of "speculative fiction" – has had markedly less success. There’s a bunch of “new” writers out there worth reading. Some of them not so new, but I say they’re new, because they bring a “new” approach to Horror): Stephen Jones, Thomas Ligotti, Ronald Malfi, just to name the ones I think are making the difference nowadays.

With “Borealis”, we just have a glimpse of what Malfi can do. He’s a truly gifted storyteller, who can spin sentences and pace action like a true master of the form. As pieces get picked up it’s when Malfi goes into high gear; sometimes the endings of the storylines are left open, with possible destinies the reader can only begin to imagine.

I’ve read elsewhere that literary fiction is “driven by the ideas, themes, and concerns of the novelist, often producing a narrative that is at times controversial.” It’s a good thing that never happens in SF (smile).

Go and read Malfi, Ligotti, Stephen Jones. You won’t regret it, even you’re not particularly favourably disposed towards Horror (notice the use of the term “Horror” instead of “Terror”; they’re two different takes on this theme).

The Borealis might have stopped cruising, but the characters go on in your mind (I'd love to see this turned into a full-length novel).

SF = Speculative Fiction

"December Park" by Ronald Malfi

7:13 am 28 June 2014

My second Malfi.

The more I read Malfi, the more I want to read him. He's about to become my discovery of the year. He's able to surpass genre limitations/expectations, he never takes an easy way out and his dark fiction is exceptionally well written.

The transaction between reader and text that creates what I like to call the "horrific effect" is complex and to a certain extent subjective. Although the horrifying event may be quite overt, a death, a ghost, a monster, a killer, it is not the event itself but the style and atmosphere sourrounding it that creates horror. It's the atmosphere that suggests a greater awe and fear, wider and deeper than the event itself. This is what makes a Dark Fiction novel stand out from the crowd as far as I'm concerned.

In a superior novel, there is a sentence, a word, a thing described, which is the high point. For me the "click" happened here:

"I didn't necessarily believe in ghosts, but I did believe in the power a place could hold, could retain, and how the land resonated with echoes of its past. Charles had once told me that sometimes the places where bad things happened would suck up that badness like a sponge sucks up water. The badness gets stuck and rots and becomes like a stain, even if you couldn't see anything. An invisible stain, like on cop shows on TV, and how even after blood is cleaned up you can still find it with a black light."

Dark Fiction isn’t only about tales with zombies and werewolves. There is also room for stories about the horrors of everyday life.

Read it, in fear and wonder.

"Cold In July" by Joe R. Lansdale

8:31 am 24 May 2014

My second Lansdale, right after reading “Hot In December” (reviewed here).

The hard-boiled crime fiction's main characteristics are cynicism, toughness in difficult situations, and a wise-cracking sense of humor, as well as the desire to see justice fulfilled. I got plenty of that with this novel…

The vast majority of Hard-Boiled Crime Fiction being published today is utter crap.

When I hear people talking about “hard-boiled,” what they usually mean is books with urban settings, characters who are professionally involved in solving crime, a fair amount of violence, and a generally cynical outlook. I could give several examples, but I won’t. Suffice to say that the hard-boiled crappy variety is easily recognizable. We’ll know that the world we are about to embark on is dark and corrupt and nothing the main character can do will change that, but he will be nevertheless compelled to try, even though he knows that he is ultimately doomed to fail… It’s alright to play to the genre tropes, but it’s also refreshing to read something different once in a while.

Another pet peeve of mine is the fact that in bad Hard-Boiled Crime Fiction the main character’s knowledge makes him cranky and leads him to drink too much; it also makes him no fun at parties, so he doesn’t usually have many friends (be it male of female). For family maybe he’ll get something approaching warmth with a woman of easy virtue, but she will either get killed or betray him.

Joe R. Lansdale is able to avoid all these traps. On top of that he also wrote a top-notch Hard-Boiled Crime Fiction novel.

The experience I had with this novel was much akin to the one with “Hot in December”: tension-packed, a lot of talk and little action (rest assured that all the talk is necessary, and when the action comes it hits hard). Violence for violence’s sake is not my thing, but by using three-dimensional characters Lansdale was able to consistently create “real” people who usually get caught up in violence against their will. I don’t think that because his books are populated with lots of violence, it doesn't mean that they are macho. Far from it. In fact it could be interpreted as being a fantastic “drama”, packed with human tenderness and high emotions. It reminds me of an Italian Opera by Verdi, where everything is blown out of proportion, but still being able to remain true to the story.

The private investigator (Russell) was one of the more colorful characters I’ve ever read and has some of the best lines. As for Dane’s wife, she served the purpose of counterbalancing the hard-boiledness of the novel, sort of lending a different kind of protective spirit to the story.

The only thing not ringing true in the story are some of Russell’s actions. For me it was hard to accept he’d make the decision he does and even harder that Dane would go along with it.

As stated above, this is my second Lansdale and it won’t my last. His grit-and-wits’ pedigree is evident throughout.

Peering at the Self: "Complete Tales & Poems" by Edgar Allan Poe

(Original Review, 1992-12-16)

Can a reader in this and age fully appreciate Poe? Maybe the age of the reader is significant - I first encountered Poe over forty decades ago [2018 EDIT: ThemisAthena, an attentive reader pointed out to me: "40 years"? In 1992 it couldn't be forty years! I'm not that old...should be "ten years"; because I don't do corrections on the stuff I wrote many eons ago, I'll leave it as it is] - in the sense that time on the planet, life lived, experiences felt and understood, are part of the maturing process essential to entering Poe's visions and dream-states. Some of the comments I’ve read elsewhere suggest a fidgety class of pre-adolescents who have lost - if ever they had - what might be called attention spans. Then again, maybe Poe is uniquely American and the Europeans cannot fully grasp him.

And still again, here's another giveaway (from a comment):

"I might also see if I can watch a film adaptation of a story" which implies the commenter in question has never seen any of the Poe adaptations or any of the many, many movies inspired, through the years, by his stories; in fact my jaw dropped when I read that deathless line with its implicit admission - "I might also see if I can watch a film adaptation of a story". Wow. Expecting "scares" and "thrills"... my god, does Poe ever deserve better readers than that? OK dear commenter, I suggest forgetting Poe and taking yourself off to see “The Conjuring”, which boasts some excellent jumps, jolts and scares, plus a lovely performance by Lili Taylor. I think you'll find what you're expecting.

And by the way, Poe was also a sly satirist.

I think writing about the social is important, but a good deal easier than writing about the self. Society is sick and twisted indeed, and always has been, likely always will be. Why? It is because we, as selves, are what make society, and we as selves are rather like blind moles, or more on point, the creature from Kafka's Burrow. Poe peers relentlessly at the self, his "I" is almost always the "eye" (most vividly perhaps in the “Tell-Tale Heart”), and it is looking right inside ourselves. Poe ferociously anticipates the world to come, the psychoanalytic, the alienated, and the murderous. His tales foreground the serial killers, drug addicts, pedophiles, neurotics and psychotics, and the like which have become the commonplaces of our modern artistic and social environment. It is people, selves that create, and maintain, society. We can all point out what is wrong with society, but it's much harder to find the wrongs in our beloved selves.

Raskolnikov seems to me as much a petty, arrogant person with the utmost contempt for all things not himself, as a victim of society. Of course, it's a vicious circle, what we are specifically is engendered and perpetuated by specific societies. But in the end it is always the same. All that redemption in Dostoevsky seems rather naive. Going after Poe, is like going after Freud. Of course, individual human pathology is disagreeable, but it is there, and it is what we are. There is nothing we can do perhaps, but we are all responsible for what we all are.

If Poe had had the idea tools of psychoanalysis, complexes, repression, displacement, and so on, all of which would become literary commonplaces in the 20th century, he might not have been taken to task for his style. T. S. Eliot was outraged that Poe said "my most IMMEMORIAL year" (in “Ulalume”), but Poe in that poem, and in stories like “Ligeia”, “Black Cat”, and “Tell-Tale Heart” was inventing memory repression and he didn't have the Freudian term 'repression' to call on.

He is certainly not schlock compared to ANYONE.