Occultation

Occultation
by Laird Barron
read: 2015

This is a creepy collection of stories to read, having moved into an old house and having a three-year that has nightmares every night. The final tale, "Six Six Six," about a couple that moves into a house that is literally and figuratively haunted, was especially a bad choice for me right now.

All of these stories are creepy, but "Strappado" and "Lagerstätte" are unusual for Barron in that they may not even be metaphysical.

Almost all of these stories have love as a backdrop. In "The Broadsword" and "Six Six Six," the lack of trust between romantic partners becomes an issue. Lack of trust is even more dramatic in "--30--," where two ex-lovers find themselves at each other's throats while in isolation on cursed land. "The Forest" is about terrible forces that doom all of humanity, but it's also about rediscovering lost love. In "Catch Hell," the occult elements are just a backdrop for a marriage torn asunder by the death of a child.

The past returning also shows up again and again. The protagonists of "Mysterium Tremendum" and "The Broadsword" are each haunted by a death witnessed years ago. The heroines of "Lagerstätte" and "Catch Hell" deal with grief over dead relatives. In "Six Six Six" the husband inherits his Satanic family homestead and returns to a life he believed left behind.

The Imago Sequence

The Imago Sequence
by Laird Barron
read: 2015

I don't think the high points in the The Imago Sequence were as insidiously creepy as some of the high points in The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All, but it had some standout moments. The sad, paranoid ending of "Probiscis" sent a chill down my spine. I liked the threads that tied some of the stories together: the Mina Mounds, the idea of portals between parallel worlds in Parallax and the title story. Like H.P. Lovecraft, Barron keeps you in the dark as to what the horror is, but by tying the stories together into the same mythology, you get to feel multiple parts of the elephant .

The Satanic Verses

The Satanic Verses
by Salman Rushdie
read: 2015
Guardian 1000 Novels

I described Midnight's Children as "rich," and the same applies to Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, but I'd argue the latter text veers into incoherent at times. There are many plots and many characters, and the two main characters change from good to bad and back during the story, making it hard to follow or have a rooting interest. I don't think I really have the background to appreciate some of the religious elements or some of the experiences of an immigrant in the Western world, but at times things did resonate with me, such as Chamcha trying to reconcile with his father.

Big Sur

Big Sur
by Jack Kerouac
read: 2015

I once had a music blog and a few years ago I reviewed One Fast Move Or I'm Gone, an album by Son Volt's Jay Farrar and Death Cab for Cutie's Ben Gibbard, built around the words of Jack Kerouac's Big Sur. I panned the album at the time, but came to love the poetry of the lyrics and the moroseness of the music. Since that review, I moved to the Bay Area (and back), visited the City Lights bookstore and the Beat Museum, and traveled to Big Sur. It was strange reading the novel and having lines like "I'm just a sick clown and so is everybody else" or "I am going to die in full despair - Wake up where? On second breath in life the atmosphere is dearer maybe closer to Heaven" and have a melody spring into my head reflexively. It enhancement my enjoyment of the novel and forced me to pay closer attention to the prose than I do normally.

Kerouac's accounts of his drinking binges are tough to read in light of his alcohol-related death prior to the age of 50. He does not glorify his alcoholism, describing how the physical ills of a hangover are intertwined with a spiritual despair. In this light, his life's end was truly sad.

The Wings of the Dove

The Wings of the Dove
by Henry James
read: 2015
Modern Library #26, Guardian 1000 Novels

I often enjoy quiet novels about interpersonal relationships, events, and attitudes, but I essentially slept through much of my reading of The Wings of the Dove. James kept expounding for page after page on a minute shift in one character's perception of another and the novel might have been more readable if some of that was omitted.

James changes perspectives in the narration. The reader sees the first few chapters from the perspective of Kate, establishing her motivations to soften James setting her up, ultimately, as the story's villain. Much of the rest of the first volume focuses on Milly, but the second volume zeroes in on Densher and his moral dilemma. Despite struggling with the prose, I did find the story compelling, with James keeping me in suspense until the very end.

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.