Andrew Vachss by ONLY CHILD [Knopf]
Well, i was going to get into a real detailed thing about the new Burke novel, but the issue's late (again) and you don't really care, do you? So let's make this short: Burke returns to New York to ferret out the killer of the illegitimate child of a Mafia boss, and while it's good to see him back home with his chosen family, the plot of this one -- involving the makers of brutality cinema and sinister "reality films" and the like -- often feels kind of forced. This one doesn't flow as well as some of the earlier ones, and while it's not bad by any means, there are moments where it feels like Vachss is going through the motions. The ride is every bit as cutthroat and leavened with draining minimalism in its prose as previous outings, however, so it's definitely essential. It's interesting to see that Burke, along with his comrades, is steadily aging -- just the advancement of his age alone, particularly in such a dangerous profession, leads me to believe any Burke book that follows could well be the last one. If you're not already familiar with the Burke series, though, this is not the place to start....
VIDEO WATCHDOG # 74
Whoa! Is Leonard Maltin attempting ot go rebellious through an alter-ego? Hell, this 'zine is even worse than that pompous ass -- to be honest, it actually makes Leonard appear enjoyable and easygoing! Talk about uptight! This 'zine is easily the most uptight I have ever read in My life. Although covering a variety of underground fare, mostly gore and classic horror (Hitchcock), it still comes off as a pompous "intellectual" magazine, which I supposed is what it's aiming for. This doesn't, however, mean that it's completely unenjoyable or not worth reading -- it's not. It gives you a fair amount of good information on the films and covers enough of a variety for you to be interested, but the information given is perhaps part of the problem. For example, a good portion of every review is spent describing the quality of the picture, sound and running length, as opposed to concentrating on any acting or what the script was about. In other words, these guys are technical fetishists. An example: "While the picture quality of the episode is attractive, the soundtrack suffers from digital noise reduction, which gets rid of snaps and crackles, but also has a way of rounding off the edges of spoken words and occasionally muffling lines delivered sotto voce. Once we became aware of it, it became a distraction." (So, in other words, before you where aware ov it, you had no problem with it, eh?)
Lines like that abound in VIDEO WATCHDOG, meaning that only a very specific audience -- one that cares deeply about the exact running length and detailed commentaries on the picture quality -- would care. I Myself found it interesting, as I Myself am deeply into underground film -- however, even I Myself prefer to be thinking more along the lines of what the film is about, what scenes are best, acting, etc., rather than overly technical things such as these.
I did, however, find the reviews of "Ninja Trash Films" to be excellent, and with its help managed to recognize a covered film (COUNTER DESTROYER) and watch it, thoroughly enjoying its horribleness. Recommended only to people concerned only to people concerned with the above-mentioned items. [FCW]
WEIRDMONGER by D. F. Lewis [Prime Books]
This collection is subtitled: THE NEMONICON, SYNCHRONIZED SHARDS OF RANDOM TRUTH AND FICTION, A RETROSPECTIVE SHOWCASE OF WORK BY D. F. LEWIS FIRST PUBLISHED FROM 1987 TO 1999. That's quite a mouthful. Pay attention to the "synchronized shards" part, I'll refer back to it shortly. So yeah, what we have here is a collection of 67 stories out of the more than fourteen hundred (!) that Mr. Lewis has published in various zines, magazines, anthologies, and chapbooks in the twelve-year period mentioned in the title.
In my review of the ALBUM ZUTIQUE # 1 anthology last issue, I stated that D. F. Lewis' stories were like nothing I've ever read before. Having spent some time with WEIRDMONGER, I can say that Mr. Lewis definitely has a unique vision. The stories seem to share a common reality, or series of linked realities -- characters and settings appear, fade out, and reappear. The Cthulhu Mythos appears prominently in many of the stories, although Lewis' approach is more subtle than most authors who appropriate the Mythos. One character has a tumor named Yog-Sothoth. Another makes his money collecting and selling the droppings of the Great Old Ones who prowl his town. The Deep Ones also make several appearances.
Several of the stories deal with age -- being too young, being too old, being both. Others deal with dislocation and the mutability of identity. Others deal with loss; the loss of love, loss of self, loss of independence, loss of control. These themes brought forth with Lewis' dense, controlled prose make the book difficult going at times. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the book immensely, but WEIRDMONGER is not light reading. Lewis makes you work. Reading the stories in the order presented is very much like attempting to navigate a maze with moving walls. Which brings me back to the "synchronized shards" of the subtitle. I have a suspicion that if a reader were to play with the order of the stories, a patchwork novel might emerge.
WEIRDMONGER isn't perfect; a few glitches pop up here and there. The most glaring is the story "Always in a Dim Shadow." I don't think it was his intention, but the piece comes off as crass and more than a little exploitative. Also, and this is a personal hang-up, several of the stories are written from the point of view of a female character. Whatever the reason, it seems that a lot of male authors have difficulty pulling off a female point of view, and Lewis is no exception.
Still, those are minor quibbles. Lewis' work should be required reading for all fans of dark, atmospheric fiction. [N / A]
WHITE NOISE by Don DeLillo [Penguin Books]
WHITE NOISE is a decent example of current "postmodern" literature. The term "postmodern" is thrown around so much these days it can mean a variety of things. The original "meaning" of postmodern related to a newly critical modernism, an awareness of the underlying structures of modernity and a usually ironic critique of those structures. With that definition in mind, De Lillo's White Noise gets my vote for good postmodern literature. It gets my vote for a good read, for an amusing criticism of some of the middle class.
"Jack Gladney teaches Hitler studies at a liberal arts college in Middle America where his colleagues include New York expatiates who want to immerse themselves in 'American magic and dread.'" So begins the blurb on the back cover. Hitler studies is Jack's niche in the academic world, his big claim to fame. The irony isn't very subtle, but it is an interesting criticism of academia today. One can make it big studying the most hated figure in all of word history. His wife is neurotic and terrified of death. She and Jack constantly debate who is going to die first and who will be more distraught when that inevitable fate happens. Like Pynchon, DeLillo creates conspiracy plots -- Nyodene D and Dylar, the "airborne toxic event" and the wonder drug that eliminates the fear of death in the brain -- that unfold to include the government, sexual intrigues, and multinational "big money" corporations. Everybody has their slice of the pie.
The world here is more concerned with small details than with larger structures. Jack is obsessed with the fact that he speaks no German but is the founder of Hitler studies in America. His (fourth) wife, Babette, can focus only on the fear of death. A friend of their older son thinks he can gain fame by sitting in a tank of poisonous snakes for 47 days, thereby place himself in the Guinness Book of World Records.
The irony isn't all that subtle, but the humor and the critique both reside in this almost heavy handed irony. An entertaining read, but not a book I can see lasting and becoming a big piece of important literature. Seems DeLillo has jumped on the irony bandwagon, but he deserves his place there. He pokes good fun at the characters he creates. [bc]
THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE by Haruki Murakami [Vintage]
I stumbled across this by accident while looking for a Christmas present for my future sister-in-law... and now i'm wondering how i possibly missed out on this literary wildman. He comes across as a mildly more restrained Japanese answer to Pynchon, which is worth a fez or two in my book. The story... well, it's one of those deals where it starts out with bland ordinariness and gets progressively more demented as it goes, as the lead character descends rung by rung into an underworld he's never even known existed. In the beginning, Toru Okada and his wife Kumiko are happily married (or so it seems), looking for their missing cat, but otherwise just fine. Then Toru begins getting strange phone calls from various women -- a mystery woman who wants to talk dirty, an exotic woman named Malta, her sister Creta (an exotic "prostitute of the mind" who can have sex with men without being present) -- and shortly thereafter his wife disappears. Soon afterwards her loathsome brother, a brilliant but remote politician of sorts, inserts himself into the narrative, and Toru's life gradually changes by increments (as he is introduced to, and becomes involved with, a wide variety of unusual people), until by the end of the book he has been transformed into a new man entirely. As with a Pynchon book, the details are so plentiful and their scope so enormous that it's difficult to convey them without basically spilling out the contents of the entire book. At times it comes across like a highly philosophical mystery, but with beautifully chosen prose. The theme of transfiguration runs throughout the book, and while all of the book's mysteries are not completely answered by the end, enough are to make it rewarding experience (and an exhausting one -- the book is 607 pages long, i yi yi). This is supposedly only the latest in a long series of brilliant books, and since i now intend to read them all, i suppose i'll find out how true that is.
A bunch of stories by lots of different people. The best one is "Over the Hill with Jesus," about Jesus Christ on earth putting up with bullshit from people who don't believe he's Jesus, a failing business, a broken halo, mysterious people throwing guns through his store window... it's pretty wild. "The Great Disease" explains why the world is so fucked up through the use of grotesque art that falls somewhere between Basil Wolverton and Mike Diana, and looks cool even though the story itself is nothing new. Speaking of Diana, he's in here too, with a totally repulsive story ("Mark's Friend Woody") that doesn't add anything new to his canon; since the Florida trial he's become totally fixated on stories about aliens rescuing molested children just to molest the kids themselves, and it stopped having any real point a long time ago. But i've never been a big Diana fan, at least not since he started devoting his time exclusively to the molestation theme....
More stories. I thought Spain was dead, but apparently i was wrong, because he's back in this one with a Trashman story full of well-executed lines and lots of violence. In "Stop the Hair Nude," a Japanese man whose makes his living by brushing out all the pubic hair in skin magazines (a real job, btw) decides to take his job one step further and begins kidnapping women off the street and... uh... shaving their pubes for them. One of the most surreal and disturbing things you'll ever see.... In "Down the River with Jesus," the story continues from the last issue, this time with Jesus being hassled in a bar and eventually set up and jailed for murder (!), and in "The Case of the Car Killers" (starring Car Boy!), a young car and a truck stop an insidious gang of killers who are hanging up car skeletons in a warehouse; it's kind of stupid but looks really cool. Plus there's other stuff, but none of that moved me, so i'll let you discover it for yourself.