The Kind of Face You Slash - Day 23: Their Meaning Is Lost

Every year when I get the new edition of editor Stephen Jones's The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror (now in its twenty-third year), I first browse Jones's novella-length year-in-horror introductions, to find out if I missed anything interesting, and then I depress myself by skimming the "Necrology" appendix that Jones puts together in collaboration with Kim Newman. This is a sort of in memoriam for everybody who had even a glancing relationship to genre, any genre, who'd passed away in the previous year. This one always contains a surprise or two. This time around, it was Martin H. Greenberg, a genre anthology editor who was, in his day, as ubiquitous as Jones is now. I hadn't seen Greenberg's name on a book in a while, but he'd put together many of the collections I hauled around with me in my younger days, and I didn't know he had died. RIP, Mr. Greenberg.

Anyhow. These best-of anthologies are always good for at least a quick post, so I was happy to see it in my local Barnes & Noble earlier today (a few days early? The publication date on Amazon is the 23rd...). I quickly scanned the contents, and very soon settled on two stories: "The Tower" by Mark Samuels, and "An Indelible Stain Upon the Sky" by Simon Strantzas. I was unfamiliar with Strantzas, but I'd been looking for even a thin excuse to return to Samuels all year (there were several thin excuses that offered themselves to me, but I landed on this one).

"The Tower" is not exactly your standard-issue horror story. It's barely a story at all. In the introductory notes, Samuels says of it:

Actually, this is more of an autobiographical piece than a work of fiction. In psychological and spiritual terms, every word of it is the truth.

Obviously, this doesn't mean that in terms of what happens in the story, which as I've indicated isn't much, is based on a particular event in Samuels' life. But evidently, Samuels has recently had cause to take some issue with the way the Western world conducts itself, and he has his narrator, a jobless, broke, isolated man, express these opinions:

...I encountered only those with television eyes whose own imaginative vision had dimmed, those whose values were formed by the irresistible tsunami of gossip and infotainment. Those whose gazes were fixed on bright plasma and LED screens, those addicted to shows where the value of a person was determined by his ability to entertain, to financially enrich or to sexually arouse, an agenda driven in turn by those who were drained of their own thought-processes by the media's mental vampires.

The people in question, those who he is encountering, are being sought out so that the narrator may slyly try to detect if anyone else is seeing, in the midst of these new modern buildings that obliterate the city's ancient spirit (London, I'm guessing) -- and this is the thing that initially sets him off -- the giant tower that suddenly appears whenever a mist creeps in. From the tower, he can hear bells toll, and later chanting, but whenever he tries to approach it he finds that the tower is stuck in a "fixed distance," so that he can walk forever and never get any closer.

"The Tower" is really a work of philosophy, but its a philosophy that's at war with itself. There's a lot of nonsense about the narrator seeking the purest form of asceticism -- my words, not his, and I imagine it's a pretty gross simplification of what Samuels is saying -- that would shed not only what one normally sheds at times like this, but the other, earlier, phonier types of asceticism that hadn't really managed to get to the heart of the matter. And I say "nonsense," but I'm by no means certain that Samuels doesn't realize it's nonsense. I'm also not altogether sure I disagree with the nonsense, at least not all of it. I mean, if I have a problem with the passage quoted above, it's not that I think it's bullshit, but rather that it comes awfully close to being a lecture. It is, in fact, not entirely unlike Fight Club in its root beliefs, though if Samuels is preaching anything, he's preaching, and then having second thoughts about, something quite different than what is being preached, and then thought twice about, in that film, even before they blow up buildings.

This is a hard story to summarize; it's more of a story you argue with. Or, as I'm sure Samuels would see it, it's a story he had to spit out (it does seem more than a little angry), and he probably couldn't care less, or wish to argue, or even especially disagree, with any protests. It's the argument with itself that makes "The Tower" interesting -- and the quiet horror imagery that hangs over the debate -- and Samuels insistent plea that he knows this is hopelessly self-absorbed, he's trying to deal with that as well, just please let him finish. But honestly, though, the most fascinating part of the story is the narrator's opinions about pessimism as a philosophy, one he initially found comfort in before finally deciding it was a hoax, because a true pessimist would commit suicide without hesitation, but those who embrace pessimism as an actual philosophy, he says, never do that, and they excuse themselves for that "authentic act" because they don't wish to cause pain to those they would leave behind. To the narrator, this completely contradicts the entire point of pessimism, but to me what's so interesting here is that is exactly -- the "I would commit suicide in a second if not for" bit -- what Thomas Ligotti has said when asked about the seemingly logical next step from his antinatal worldview. I hesitate to say Samuels is challenging Ligotti specifically, but I do feel like these are two writers whose work bear certain similarities, who perhaps even have similar temperaments, but are fundamentally opposed in a great many irreconcilable ways.

Meanwhile, "An Indelible Stain Upon the Sky" by Simon Strantzas is garbage. I chose it because in his introductory notes, Strantzas says he was inspired to write it by a "horrendous" vacation experience he shared with his wife. While vacation-turned-nightmare is probably one of the most overused plots in all of horror, there are many versions of it that are genuinely great; the Colin Eggleston film Long Weekend, for instance, is marvelous, and even lowering the bar a little there have been dozens of thoroughly entertaining takes on it as well. So I'm a fan of this kind of thing. However, "entertaining" was clearly not on Strantzas agenda, nor, even more clearly, was "marvelous." The story is about a man returning to Port McCarthy, a vacation spot he and his girlfriend Suzanne had enjoyed ten years previously. In the time since, just weeks after they'd returned, in fact, Port McCarthy had suffered a horrifying disaster when an oil tanker had run ashore, spilling its contents and essentially ruining the community. The man, our narrator, is returning to Port McCarthy, and staying at the same inn he and Suzanne had enjoyed a decade past, so that he can be sad about it.

This is one of the most self-involved stories I've read in some time. If Samuels drifted into that realm in "The Tower," he knew it and he said so. Strantzas' whole story basically comes down to this: "Ten years ago an oil tanker crashed and destroyed the natural beauty of Port McCarthy and killed lots of animals. Economically the community was finished and will probably never recover. Also it made me break up with my girlfriend. Here's a ghost."

But let me quote Strantzas directly:

The town of Port McCarthy died slowly, choked in the darkness that rolled towards it without warning on waves as black as night. While the rest of the world saw this from a distance, Suzanne and I suffered the full brunt of the accident there, we suffered the crashing waves of darkness that would not stop, would not end, until it spread through our lives as surely as it had through Port McCarthy. Even now I feel it, and even now I wish I had known some way to halt its progress before it was too late. But that's the way with accidents; they come when we are not prepared, and in their wake they leave devastation and death. As soon as that black oil was spilled in Port McCarthy, there was no hope for me, for Suzanne, for us.

"That's really too bad," said the fisherman who lost his business. "I'm sure you'll find someone else. Also, fuck you." By the way, that "for me, for Suzanne, for us" business is exactly the kind of thing bad writers think counts as "literary" prose. Say two things, then a third thing that combines the two things. Give me my award, please.

Oh, and yeah, there's a ghost. When the guy goes back to the inn, it's once vibrant seaside atmosphere has paled into moldy desolation ("Your shattered lives reminds me of my ex-girlfriend. Sarah? Susan? I'm trying to think..."), and in his room there's a giant crack running up one wall. From that crack, at night, seeps a little kid oil ghost. A little ghost kid made out of oil. I don't know. I'm trying to figure out what it means, because there's nothing in the story about human lives actually being lost in the oil spill disaster. The only thing I can figure is maybe oil ghost kid is the ghost of the kid Sondra (Stephanie?) and this prick never got to whip up together. Personally, if there's an upside to all this, I'd say you're looking at it.

The Kind of Face You SLASH!!! - Day 7: Big Red Demon Gods

Yesterday I began staging a duel between two rival (probably not really) horror anthology series: Ellen Datlow’s The Best Horror of the Year and Stephen Jones’s The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. There can and will be no kind of control over this experiment (or duel, whatever), unless I was willing to read all of the stories in the two volumes Datlow has put out so far, as well as all of the stories from the last two Jones books. And I’m both unable and unwilling to do that! But this duel’s (or experiment’s) utter pointlessness aside, volume one of Datlow’s series made a very strong showing, with, out of three selections, one solid story from Trent Hergenrader called “The Hodag”, and a truly excellent one by Adam Golaski called “The Man from the Peak”. Now it’s Jones’s turn, and one can’t help but wonder -- can one? -- how today’s selections will measure up?

To make this whole thing even more pointlesser, the Datlow book I chose for yesterday is from 2008, while the Jones book – volume 15 of Best New Horror – is from 2004. So why bother. Well, because, is why. As a quick bit of ancillary business, I want to point out that book series feature a fair amount of valuable and interesting “extras”. Both Datlow and Jones include a “Year in Horror” kind of introduction, in which they lay out what was published in the genre, from the mainstream to the furthest, dankest corners of the fringe. Jones also talks about film and other media, and he tends to be a bit looser in what he considers relevant to horror, spending a lot of time, when there’s any reason to, discussing the Harry Potter phenomenon, and so forth. Even if you wonder what that stuff is doing in a review of a year in horror, Jones’s introductions can be upwards of 80 pages long, so he’s not leaving anything out in favor of that wizard guy. Jones also, in collaboration with Kim Newman, puts together a rather depressing “necrology” for each volume’s given year, which amounts to dozens upon dozens of mini-obituaries for artists of various media (and, again, various genres) who passed away. Depressing, but informative.

But enough of that. I read two stories today, the first by Jay Lake, called “The Goat Cutter”. This one is legitimately bizarre, in a way that removes it from the pool of "weird" or "strange" stories that count as their own horror subgenre. I don't know if anyone has really defined or categorized the kind of story "The Goat Cutter" actually is -- and I should add that I don't know why anyone would feel the need to do so, but clearly people do -- but it feels to me be kind of the literary equivalent of psychobilly (that's a kind of music, right?). There's a lot of this stuff in contemporary horror, and its best-known practitioner would have to be Joe R. Lansdale. Though I like a lot of Lansdale's short fiction, this kind of white trash freak show story is not something I'm likely to seek out, unless he wrote it.

But Lake's story is pretty good, I must say. For one thing, Lake is a good writer, the best evidence of this being that he writes in a deep Southern vernacular, but he does so without resorting to unreadable dialect. In other words, in "The Goat Cutter" you won't find anything like this: "Maw, I kin he'p yew wit' dat dang mule in jes' uh sekint! But fust I hafta plow me up s'm corn!" You all know what I'm talking about. It's sickening.

No, this is what you'll find with Lake:

Me and my best friend Pootie, we liked to run through the woods, climbing bob wire and following pipelines. Trees is smaller there, easier to slip between. You gotta watch out in deer season, though. Idiots come out from Austin or San Antone to their leases, get blind drunk and shoot every blessed thing that moves. Rest of the time, there's nothing but you and them turkey vultures. Course, you can't steal beer coolers from turkey vultures.

Our narrator and Pootie are young men, just about to become sophomores in high school, and they like to spend their summers in the environment described above. Also found in that environment is one Doug Bob Aaronson, who, we're told, spends his time "roasting goats, drinking tequila, and shooting people's dogs." That "roasting goats" bit is the important part. His goat butchery is not just something he does -- it's a ritual. In Doug Bob's little patch of stolen land, there is also an old school bus, on which Doug Bob has written, or smeared, many things in goat blood, including Bible verses. The boys are not allowed inside the bus.


This is a short story, only about twelve or thirteen pages, but with that set up you can maybe imagine the gist of what's in store. The Devil is in that bus, is what's in store, and what works about "The Goat Cutter" is that Lake is not coy about it -- the Devil actually shows himself, and engages with the characters. And the scene where the boys and the reader first lay eyes on the Devil is something of a tour de force, a bit of mad brilliance that made me wonder why horror films are so bereft of this sort of thing. You take this story, and you take Golaski's "The Man from the Peak", and both are full of quite filmmable imagery, horror imagery that is lush and full and deeply bizarre. Where is this imagination on film?

So Lake has that going for him, and it's nothing to sneeze at. Where the story ends up is something I'm less sure about. It would be inaccurate to say that Lake ties things up in a neat little bow, but it wouldn't be off to say that all Lake's madness boils down a little bit small for my taste. Even so, there's much left unsaid, and the hints that what we're dealing with in "The Goat Cutter" is a full blown Biblical Apocalypse in the making is very intriguing.

The other story I read is called "Story Time With the Bluefield Strangler". It was written by John Farris, who is one of those writers who's pretty big time among horror fans -- at least during the 70s and 80s -- but is completely unknown to everyone else. Farris's best known work is probably The Fury, which was adapted to the screen by Brian De Palma (for the record, I've never read the novel, but have always really enjoyed that film). I know Farris best as the other of two novels I actually did read: All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By, which I liked a fair amount, and is considered something of a modern classic; and The Axman Cometh, which I sort of hated. Whatever my amiguous take on Farris, and despite the fact that he's been around a long time (he started with crime fiction in the 1950s), one thing that seems clear to me is that he's sort of the quintessential 80s horror writer. Prolific, full of sex and violence, full of kids who can see shit other people can't, voodoo, possession; but also serious about what he's up to, not writing horror (or at least not writing genre fiction) because that's where the cash is.

So the story, "Story Time With the Bluefield Strangler" is...not bad. The second half that title should let you know where the horror is coming from (it's coming from a guy who strangles people), and the first half should indicate that a child is somehow involved. The child is named Alison, who, at least since she was six, has been able to see young man who she refers to as "Big Boy", but who we come to know as Walter Banks, aka the strangler of the title. Alison alternately regards Big Boy as a boogeyman and an ally, the latter coming out when the little girl finds herself in a children's mental hospital, due to past trauma and her stories about Big Boy.

All the background, about Banks and Alison's trauma, are related to the reader by two other characters, a police detective named Ed Lewinsky, and Alison's therapist, a woman named Lorraine. Farris alternates the Ed/Lorraine scenes with Alison's childish point of view, where the sentences become short and simple, as though we were being taught to read. This gimmick is not as cloying as it might sound because, for one thing, it lets up a bit as the story progresses and Alison gets a little older, and because the youthful simplicity of the language highlights a certain chilling effect.

The thing about "Story Time With the Bluefield Strangler" is that it's a very professional piece of work, written in the first place, I suspect, because Farris wanted to play around with story structure. The story itself isn't much, and I doubt Farris would claim otherwise, but it's interesting the way he shifts in and out of perspective, and even ages (specifically regarding Banks/Big Boy/The Bluefield Strangler). All of which combines for a strong and effective ending. It's all very well-polished, which sounds like a backhanded compliment these days, and I frankly find that to be a bit depressing. So no backhand intended. Polish and professionalism are gratefully noted.

And there you have it! The great Jones/Datlow War That Never Even Really Happened is at an end! Man, what a bloodbath. I can't even tell who won, there's so much blood. That sure was crazy. Etc.