The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All

The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All
by Laird Barron
read: 2015

The United States covers a wide, often sparsely populated area, and modern civilization sprung up relatively recently. What dwells in the spaces that haven't been paved over by mankind? What undiscovered ruins lay there? Who lived (or lives) there, and what strange gods did they worship? Barron answers these questions with a healthy dose of Lovecraftian horror. The empty spaces are full of dark, evil creatures and forces that want to destroy mankind and only spare humans so they can spread the tales of the terrors they have seen. Most of Barron's characters have figurative demons even before encountering the literal ones that people his stories. It makes for pretty dark stuff.

At Swim-Two-Birds

At Swim-Two-Birds
by Flann O'Brien
read: 2015
Time 100 Novels, Guardian 1000 Novels

Other than a couple of the stories in Lost in the Funhouse, I have not read anything with as many meta-fictional layers as At Swim-Two-Birds. The narrator is an author writing a story that features an writer who falls asleep, allowing his fictional creations to play at creating stories of their own. Characters interrupt tales with other tales, one-upping one another. The fictional author gives birth to a figurative offspring made literal flesh, and that character in turn writes a story wherein his dozing father gets his comeuppance. These stories-within-stories are intercut by the narrator's tales of drinking with friends and maintaining his relationship with his guardian uncle. Often I find this sort of metafictional exercise showy and pointless, but there's enough humor to make it work here; O'Brien knows he's being a bit silly.