I finally got my revenge on ABBA. For most of my life I have been bombarded with these four well turned-out glistening Swedes with their blandly superI finally got my revenge on ABBA. For most of my life I have been bombarded with these four well turned-out glistening Swedes with their blandly superior three minute wondersongs and their terrible terrible lyrics. Man, they were everywhere. At one point I think it was compulsory for every British household to have a copy of ABBA Gold, and if you didn’t have one, a burglar would break into your house and leave one on the top of your cd player.
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There was an unspoken agreement that ABBA were the greatest group, greatest songwriters and biggest sellers of all time. (In fact no, no and no. Not even close.) When they finally divorced each other and sang perfectly harmonized and calibrated songs about their divorces and went their separate ways, there was peace in the land, but only for a short spell. Then came the stage show Mamma Mia and it all started again; and when that died down then came the film which it is compulsory to see, and now the film Part Two which very properly is called Mamma Mia – Here We Go Again.
So here comes John Lindqvist with his vastly amusing juxtaposition of ABBA and mass murder – as the simpering sickly sentiments of Thank You For the Music waft around the venue spouts and gouts of blood erupt and howls of agony blend with the melody line. Yes! Finally! Stick that in your cd player and smoke it.
Another way of looking at Lucky Star is Swedish Idol meets Driller Killer, the video nasty from 1979. And a third way of looking at it is that Little Star is a 600 page long very silly shaggy dog story which has really wasted up my last three days but I really enjoyed it. But now I regret bothering with it. Because it’s very silly! 14 year old girls, one clearly some kind of alien, armed with power drills and hammers, wanting to turn into wolves, wanting to be dead, then wanting to be alive again, eating only baby food -YES - Baby Food
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(other brands are available)
I mean, the whole bonkers shenanigans is enough to make a cat laugh. At the end of the 632 pages I thought come on THAT CAN’T BE IT! WHAT?? But it was it.
A comment on John Lindqvist’s prose style seems relevant here. I will quote a very typical example :
It turned out that Anna L and Ronja had passed their driving test, and Anna actually had a car. None of the others had thought of themselves as the kind of group where someone had a driver’s licence, but when it turned out to be the case, a heady feeling of liberation quickly took hold. They had a place to be, they had a way of getting there. Together they had resources and opportunities which they lacked when they were alone.
Oh boy.
I think this strange story could have been something but the author had no idea what to do with it so he sprayed every room with emo-style teen angst and added a lot of sharp edged tools and in time honoured fashion blew the whole thing up at the end. And walked away shrugging and muttering heck, you figure it out, I just wrote it. Don’t blame me.
HP Lovecraft through the looking glass – instead of interminable sentences bloated with what 15 year old boys think of as really cool adjectives Mr LaHP Lovecraft through the looking glass – instead of interminable sentences bloated with what 15 year old boys think of as really cool adjectives Mr LaValle gives us a tale of Lovecraftian horror almost as if told by Dashiell Hammett, a rapidfire no frills laconic style, very welcome; and the racism of HPL is also upended by having a black guy open the Portal for the Sleeping Thing at the Bottom of the Ocean with the head as big as a mountain who might be dead but is still dreaming, we think, although you wouldn't want to try to find out.
One thing I do like with the world of Cthulhu spooky-ookums is the idea of Massive Indifference. In the Lovecraft universe God exists but is completely indifferent to mankind, he has other Fish to Fry and if there’s some pan-splatter which decimates planet Earth, he won’t even notice. This is an idea I have found to be even more offensive to religious people than the idea that God does not exist. For religious people, I think it’s safe to say, the idea of God is inseparable from the idea of God creating humans and therefore being totally interested in their every action. The idea that God couldn’t give a rat’s ass about people and wouldn’t even notice if they were all wiped out is true blasphemy. So, okay, HP Lovecraft, to that extent you did rock, a little bit....more
It’s probably a mug’s game trying to trace where story ideas come from but I might make three suggestions here.
1. The Monkey’s Paw by WW Jacobs from 1It’s probably a mug’s game trying to trace where story ideas come from but I might make three suggestions here.
1. The Monkey’s Paw by WW Jacobs from 1902 is a great horror story in which – maybe – a family member comes back from the dead. The Emissary, included in this collection, is a story by Ray Bradbury from 1947 in which a beloved PET comes back from the dead. Stephen King’s novel Pet Sematary came out in 1983 and includes pets AND human family members coming back from the dead.
2. In this oddball collection (published 1962) we find The Man who Liked Dickens by none other than Evelyn Waugh of Brideshead Revisited fame. It’s a great creepy story about (spoilers) a white guy called Mr Henty who gets lost in the Amazon rain forest and is rescued by another white guy named Mr McMasters who’s been living in a village with a local tribe for years. Mr Henty is very ill with fever and the kindly Mr McMasters nurses him back to health. When he’s all better he wants to repay Mr McMasters in some way – guy saved his life. Oh there is one thing you can do, says Mr M, you can read to me from y complete collection of Dickens. I love me some Dickens and sadly I myself cannot read. And there are no other white people living near this village. None at all. So Mr Henty begins to read (Bleak House!), and every day he is making strong hints that now he’s better he should be getting back to civilization, people will be looking for him. Of course, as he hasn’t a clue where he actually is, he’s completely at Mr McMasters’ mercy. But Mr McMasters keeps making feeble excuses. We can’t leave now, it’s the rainy season. I can’t leave now, one of my wives is having a baby. That kind of thing. Mr Henty is beginning to think he is a prisoner. By now he had got through Bleak House, A Christmas Carol, Nicholas Nickleby and Dombey and Son…that’s a lot of daily reading. Comes a point where Mr McMasters drags Mr Henty to a village celebration for the birth of his 18th son, and Mr Henty is constrained to participate in the drinking of a certain local brew which has the effect of conking him out. The story ends:
”I say, I’ve never slept so long.” “Not since you were a baby. Do you know how long? Two days.” “Nonsense. I can’t have.” “Yes indeed. It is a long time. It is a pity because you missed our guests.” “Guests?” “Why yes. I have been quite gay while you were asleep. Three men from outside. Englishmen. It is a pity you missed them. A pity for them, too, as they particularly wished to see you. But what could I do? You were so sound asleep. They had come all the way to find you, so – I thought you would not mind if I gave them a little souvenir, your watch. They wanted something to take home to your wife who is offering a great reward for news of you. They were very pleased with it. And they took some photos of the little cross I put up to commemorate your coming.”
And he blandly suggests that later Mr Henty might start Little Dorritt which is one of Mr McMasters’ favourites. “There are passages in that book which I can never hear without the temptation to weep.”
This all struck me as very reminiscent of another Stephen king book (I only saw the movie) – Misery. In which an author, not a reader, is kept prisoner and forced to write, not read. In each case the guy is rescued and cared for by the person who then, subtly, and later not so subtly, becomes his jailor. I’m not accusing Stephen king of ripping off these two stories, but it’s a curious coincidence.
3. The Mine by L T C Rolt. This obscure story could be the germ which was expanded into the great recent horror movie The Descent. Whaddya mean you never saw The Descent?! Stop what you’re doing and see it now!
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"Yes of course I'll come on a potholing holiday with you - it sounds delightful!"...more
I located my old Creepometer (in the attic) and put some new batteries in it and hey, all the little lights started flickering so we’re good to go. ThI located my old Creepometer (in the attic) and put some new batteries in it and hey, all the little lights started flickering so we’re good to go. The first Best Horror Stories was from the year mcmlvii but we are now in the year mcmlxv for volume 2. Let’s roll.
The Professor’s Teddybear by Theodore Sturgeon who is one of my fave old school sf writers and who can come up with some truly bonkers stuff, which this is a fat dollop of. A small boy has a teddybear which, er, isn’t really a teddybear, it’s a…. what, I dunno…. a something which in a reverse-vampire kind of way infuses him with blood whilst sucking from him his memories of events from his future life, when he’s a professor of philosophy who causes people to have accidents and like die horribly by making them fall over their hats or down staircases….is this making any sense at all? I think you hadda be there. Anyway, 43.5 on the Creepometer and not a bad start.
The Last Chukka by Alec Waugh who was the elder brother of the more successful Evelyn. Alec “wrote many books, each worse than the last” according to Auberon Waugh, a nephew. His most famous was Island in the Sun which was filmed and has a great title song sung by Harry Belafonte, so that is the connection between Best Horror Stories 2 and my ipod. The Last Chukka is about a colonial British plantation manager guy in Siam going mad and thinking he has leprosy. Only 28 on the Creepometer but an excellent story anyway. I think you had to be mad to want to live in the Siamese jungle with all those creepy crawlies. No offence and all.
The Boarded Window by Ambrose Bierce. Old pioneer lives in a cabin with his wife who gets killed by a panther. I didn’t think panthers were native to Arkansas. This story was stupid. But it was only 6 pages. 0 on the creepometer.
The Flowers of the Forest by Brian Aldiss who is one of the all time great British sf writers but who was obviously on very bad drugs when he wrote this persiflage about meeting a witch in the Sumatran jungle and then the guy’s spirit tries to inhabit the spirit body of a jaguar because the jaguar’s spirit has already occupied his body but he can’t because the dead witch is now in the panther, you know it sounds like I am making this up but I’m not. Good news is that Brian Aldiss recovered from his ailment and began writing much better stories. Bet he looks back on this one with horror. Maybe that’s why it’s in a book of horror stories. Another zero on the creepometer.
The Thing on the Doorstep by HP Lovecraft – One big Lovecraft fan says : "Most critics agree that “The Thing on the Doorstep" ranks among the poorest of Lovecraft's later tales.” It has an "obvious and melodramatic plot, punctuated by patches of histrionic monologue". Also punctuated by the sound of the modern reader slumping into unconsciousness, having been rendered insensible by the slabs of turgidity that is the essence of HP Lovecraft. No, I never understood his appeal. Another zero on the creepometer, but wait – better must come.
How to Make a Foon by Spike Milligan. Just three pages of sf spoofery from the beloved comedian – “Now bolt Section A to B, L, D, and X: insert nozzle and pricked pinmark Spon : lift krudgeon lever on to Plinn bolt and thrust multi-purpose stick into multi-purpose hole”. Once the Foon is completed and switched on “The owner of the Foon is now in complete control and in mortal danger. The hammer should descend on the back of the owner’s skull with sickening rapidity.” Creepometer : 50. Hugely jolly descriptions of people being injured are always creepy. Note: the Beatles were big Milligan fans so this may have influenced Maxwell's Silver Hammer.
Brown God in the Beginning by Angus Stewart. This is what you hope for with any anthology – a story out of left field by a completely unknown (to me) writer which instantly scores 100 on the Creepometer. It’s all about this young kid growing up mostly alone on a Scottish island only this kid is totally demented and has an internal Voice (the brown god) telling him to do these increasingly ghastly things with slugs, caterpillars, sheep droppings, self-harm, the list goes on. He’s the ancestor of Frank Cauldhame in Iain Banks’ first deranged novel The Wasp Factory. Anyway, absolutely excellently horrifying.
Akin to Love by Christianna Brand. Hard to say why our editor likes both totally ridiculous terrible corny stories and cool brilliant stuff too. It’s like a playlist with Andy Williams’ fifteen Christmas Albums and the collected works of Einsturzende Neubauten all jumbled together. This unutterable tosh about the Hell Fire Club jammed my Creepometer, it was trying to display minus numbers.
The Glass Eye by John Keir Cross. Yes, the editor modestly includes one of his own stories (he says he was coerced into it). But I liked it. All about a ventriloquist and a poor spinster lady who falls in love with him but in fact he’s the dummy and the dummy is the ventriloquist. Ha ha!! She should have seen it coming but she didn’t. Vent acts are by definition extra creepy so this scored 61 without hardly trying.
The Treasure of Abbot Thomas by M R James. No no, this starts off with a long paragraph in Latin and goes on about ruined abbeys and stained glass and complicated cryptograms disclosing buried gold and I guess that is what people used to do before Angry Birds was invented. Score : yet another zero.
Evening Primrose by John Collier. This was well loved and admired in its time but it’s just a bit odd rather than in any way horrific. A bunch of homeless people live in a huge department store in NYC called Bracey’s (nothing like Macy’s at all) and they do this by pretending during the day to be store mannequins. I have to say this is rather unlikely. I think they would be discovered quickly, or they must have had remarkable bladder control. Anyway these days most of the store mannequins have either no faces or no heads, which is actually much more horrifying to me. Stupid story, scores 7 just for the sheer ridiculousness of the idea.
The House of Desolation by Alan Griff. Another rubbishy one about lords and ladies being invited to a dinner in a stately home with no central heating. By morning one of them will be deaaaaaad, dead I say, ha ha yes. Zero points.
Making Sure of a Little One by Derek Ingrey. Again out of the blue comes this utterly chilling Holocaust story, which might be the only fiction I have read which takes place in a concentration camp and was not written by a survivor. In this brilliant story, a little kid gets separated from his family who have just disembarked from the cattle truck and the kid is befriended by a soldier who is really nice to him for a few minutes before the soldier snaps out of it and gets back to work. Fantastic – scores 100.
The Derelict by William Hope Hodgson from 1912. A tall tale of a ship’s doctor who tells of one voyage where in the mist ah the miiiiiiiissssst they ran upon an old derelict ship which when they boarded it, it turned out to be aliiiiive. They say things like “It’s gone squashy all through! There’s no scuttle there. There’s no bally woodwork inside that lot! Phoo! What a rum smell!” Score : 53 in a fun Tales-from-the-Crypt kinda way.
Thurnley Abbey by Perceval Landon. Much anthologized, apparently. So this guy’s pal buys an old abbey and it’s haunted. Ha ha, they all laugh. Then later the guy is invited to see it and stays the night. And the ghost duly arrives and scares the bejesus out of him in the middle of the night. Which all it does is look at him. Then he gets mad and smashes the ghost to bits (it’s a skellington wearing an off the shoulder negligee). Thinking the whole thing is a cruel hoax he thunders round to his pal’s bedroom and flings a chunk of the skull at him and denounces him. But the pal cowers in terror, as indeed so does our narrator, as the ghost comes back to retrieve the bit of skull. Seemed a bit daft to me. Essentially, “I didn’t believe in ghosts, then I saw one, now I do”. Alas, we end with another zero score.
Another Swedish gift to the world – after lutfisk, Ikea, Abba and the girl with the tattoo on her arse, now we get nice zombies. Well, these ones are Another Swedish gift to the world – after lutfisk, Ikea, Abba and the girl with the tattoo on her arse, now we get nice zombies. Well, these ones are not that nice, I guess. They don’t want to eat you, so that’s a plus, but they have limited conversation and really their concept of personal hygiene leaves something to be desired. But like Paul Simon said they’re all right in a sort of limited way for an off-night. In fact I was behind these zombies all the way until the last quarter of the story when like a cornered Christian Mr Lindqvist starts babbling mystical abstractions in an obvious attempt to cover up the blatant fact that he did not know how to end his story. Up to then it was compelling. For a very specific period of time in a very specific place (Stockholm) dead people come back to life. But in a realistic way, not in a cosy way like in those Jehovah’s Witnesses pamphlets
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No – imagine your wife dies in a car crash and a week later she wakes up in the morgue – most of her face and right side is still missing and she really doesn’t seem to be quite herself. What do you tell your son? All she does now is flap around vaguely. She’s lost all her ambition. The situation is distressing. So we get three such scenarios and an attempted overview of how the authorities react to 2000 or so re-livers, as they’re called.
All of this is good, very compelling reading. I like stories where the crazy stuff is treated seriously and realistically. Just like it was in Let the Right One In, Mr Lindqvist’s famous brilliant vampire novel. But as I say in this one for the last 50 pages the (living) characters start to spout mystical non-sequiturs which finally aggravated me to death and I died and came back to life and I wasn’t a nice zombie and I tracked Mr Lindqvist down and ate him. You may have read about it in the papers.
For me this was Goat’s Head Soup after Sticky Fingers, Walking Dead season 6 after Walking Dead season 5, Joey after Friends, Roger Moore after Sean Connery, Sentimental Education after Madame Bovary….
First 300 pages : 4 stars Next 60 pages : 1.5 stars Rounded up to 3 stars because I like where this author is coming from even though I didn’t like where he went to in this one....more
One hit wonders – I usually think of such oddities as Nena (99 Red Balloons, UK No 1, 1984) or Aneka (Japanese Boy, UK No 1, 1981), or even Sir Mix-a-One hit wonders – I usually think of such oddities as Nena (99 Red Balloons, UK No 1, 1984) or Aneka (Japanese Boy, UK No 1, 1981), or even Sir Mix-a-Lot (Baby Got Back, US No 1, 1992) – a No 1 hit and then nothing, nothing, nothing. But of course you do get one hit wonder authors – the toppermost one in that list will be Harper Lee. OMG can you imagine the advance she would have got for her second novel? And it could happen, she’s still here, 87 years old. We remember it took Henry Roth 60 years to follow up Call it Sleep. Also, Ralph Ellison never published a second novel. (He wrote one but his house burned down - damn!) And we’re still waiting for a second novel from Arthur (Geisha) Golden (16 years). But actually, a one hit wonder isn’t someone who never did anything else but who only ever had one hit – so Margaret Mitchell, Bram Stoker, Herman Melville, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, etc etc.
Anyhow, I read this story, it was In the Hills, the Cities by Clive Barker and it was one of the all time greatest stories I ever read, hair-raisingly original, perfectly expressed, awesome. Everyone should read this story. I therefore eventually got Books of Blood, thinking that there would be more where that came from. But there wasn’t. The other stuff was just like Aneka’s follow-up to Japanese Boy if she was singing about creatures from hell biting some random guy’s nether parts off.
Boy George : 'Allo, 'allo, eez me again, your compere sans compare, your quizzing quizzitor, your marmalade of merde, your nancy with the laughing eyeBoy George : 'Allo, 'allo, eez me again, your compere sans compare, your quizzing quizzitor, your marmalade of merde, your nancy with the laughing eyes, thang yew, thang yew, and welcome ladeeeez and gennlemen to a special Celebrity Death Match here in the plush surroundings of the Munitions, Defibrillators and Chicken de-Beakers Union Social Club here in Pontefract in the heart of the Socialist Republic of Yorkshire, thang yew...
(scattered applause)
So, this will be a short brutal contest tonight to decide who is to be the God of the Israelites. Let me introduce you to the contestants. In the Rrrrred cornerrrrr, we have the one, the only, all the way from Los Angeles, give it up for
YAHWEH!
(Fans begin a chant.... Yah-weh! Yah-weh!)
And in the bloooooo cornerrr, he's a local boy, you know him well, he's your verrry own, it's
BAAL!
(scattered applause)
Tonight there will be one knockout or one Fall to decide the winner. Resurrection in mid-bout is NOT allowed. Contestants are to be clothed in human flesh at ALL times. And now eet ees my verry grrreat pleasure to present tonight's referee the ever popular Miss Jane Austen...!
(general indifference)
Jane : Look, when I say "break", I want a clean break. In the event of a knock-down, you will be directed to go to a neutral corner. You are both professionals so I expect a good, clean fight!
Bell : Ting!
The two gods advance into the centre of the ring.
YAHWEH : You know this is pointless don't you.
BAAL : (sighs) Yes, I know. But what do I do? I have a family to feed. Actually, more than one if the truth be told.
YAHWEH: Well, maybe we can work something out.
JANE : Fight! Come on, fight!
BAAL : What do you mean?
YAHWEH: Well, how about this. I get the Israelites and you get the surrounding areas, except the Golan heights.
BAAL: Well that sounds okay, but you'll smite me. i know it.
YAHWEH: I won't smite you. Scout's honour. As I am my own witness.
BAAL : Throw in five percent of the Israelites burnt offerings for a five year period starting on 1st january and it's a deal.
YAHWEH : I can live with that.
They unstrap their boxing gloves and shake hands.
Crowd boos.
JANE : Fight, kill, maim!
BAAL : Cool down, lady - who is she anyway?
YAHWEH : She writes novels.
BAAL : That explains it.
**
Note to all relevant parties : This book made me laugh and cry. I absolutely fell in love with the characters!...more
Note to all relevant parties : This book made me laugh and cry. I absolutely fell in love with the characters!
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PROBABLY HOW NOT TO READNote to all relevant parties : This book made me laugh and cry. I absolutely fell in love with the characters!
****************
PROBABLY HOW NOT TO READ MARCEL PROUST
In series three of The Sopranos, Tony tells his therapist about his latest fainting spell which happened when he was cooking meat. Then he remembers his very first fainting spell, which happened a short time after he witnessed his father chop a guy's finger off with a meat cleaver. She says his very first attack happened when he short circuited after witnessing his parents’ sexuality, the violence and blood associated with the food he was about to eat, and the thought that some day he would have to, in the words of his father, bring home the bacon like his father. Classic dialogue then follows :
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Tony: “All this from a slice of gabagool?”
Dr. Melfi: “Kind of like Proust’s madeleines.”
Tony: “What? Who?”
Dr. Melfi (getting excited) : “Marcel Proust. Wrote a seven-volume classic, Remembrance of Things Past. He took a bite of madeleine — a kind of tea cookie he used to have when he was a child — and that one bite unleashed a tide of memories of his childhood and, ultimately, his entire life.”
Tony : (building up to another dyspeptic outburst): "This sounds very gay."
Dr Melfi wisely drops the subject of Proust....more
This was a one-stop attempt by me to see how recent horror writing compares with the fantastic Pan Book of Horror Stories series I was a fan of when IThis was a one-stop attempt by me to see how recent horror writing compares with the fantastic Pan Book of Horror Stories series I was a fan of when I was a vile teenager. The Pan Books were total gonzo. I would like to review all of them but I fear everyone would defriend me.
Okay, the experience was not good. Two examples :
No Sharks in the Med. by Brian Lumley
This first story did indeed fill me with a deep sense of dread and unease, along the lines of What Have I Volunteered Myself For? - since this story is an unbelievably stupid string of cliches - check it out - the honeymooners find themselves trapped on an isolated Greek beach by a local guy called Spiro :
"Geoff, we're in trouble," Gwen said as soon as Spiros had left. "We're in serious trouble." "I know it," he said. "I think I've known it ever since we got here. That bloke's as sinister as they come."
The Man who Drew Cats. by Michael Marshall Smith
No no nooo. This kind of dingle-dangly ookums was corny in the 1930s. I'll spoil it for you - a (tall mysterious) stranger comes to (a perfect quaint rural American) town. He can draw and paint real well. A woman in the town and her young son are getting regularly battered by her drunk of a husband. The tall stranger draws a tiger which gets the bad guy. How supernatural is that? Plenty, I'd say.
Turns out this version of modern horror is mostly supernatural. Which is why I'm outta here. I mean, what are we, twelve? The beauty (I should say ugliness) of the Pan Books of Horror Stories was that they were SECULAR. (Mostly). They didn't believe in anything except cruelty.
Okay, modern horror, this is goodbye from P Bryant.
The time traveller stepped cautiously out of his machine and looked around the wide field. The day was bright, the country fecund. He permitted himselThe time traveller stepped cautiously out of his machine and looked around the wide field. The day was bright, the country fecund. He permitted himself a smile. An elderly man was walking purposefully ahead of him. “Good day to you!” called the time traveller. “Not now, not now,” came the reply, “I have just this moment taken the life of my wife, her sister and three of her cousins, who were visiting. I am in a hurry now to take my own. I intend to swing shortly from yonder elm.” The time traveller reeled back in alarm. What was this? He cast his eyes about and noticed for the first time various dark forms dangling from the larger branches of the nearby trees. But then his eyes were taken up by an altogether gayer sight – it was a cheerful bonfire in the mid-distance. As he approached he noticed various persons frantically throwing water from buckets onto the flames and he realised it was a domestic house ablaze. “Come help us please!” said one, approaching. “Ralph Chase and his intire family are still within – a local boy known as an incendiary has done this for sure –“ and he handed the time traveller a bucket but suddenly sagged to the ground and began convulsing. A woman ran up and dragged the time traveller away from the moribund : “Keep clear, keep clear – he has the typhoid for sure!” The time traveller turned to her and in terrified tones demanded of her
“What God Forsaken place is this?”
“Why sir,” she said, “this is Black Ferry, Wisconsin, 1896.”
*********
This book is :
an affront to good taste a stone thrown into a pond a diatribe an indictment of human beings in general a patchwork quilt of blood and death an exercise in a particularly unpleasant form of voyeurism an original and extraordinary history essay a ripe example of the hipster’s fascination for the outre for its own sake a vision of Hell
*******
What you get is :
a) snippets from a couple of local newspapers from this small area of Wisconsin between 1885 and 1900. All the snippets are about suicide, murder, insanity and disease. Check the name of this book – that’s right. It’s not called “A Pleasant day Out in Wisconsin”.
b) interpolated quotations from a couple of novels
c) snippets from case studies of inmates at the Mendoza Asylum for the Insane.
d) some bizarre photos by a local Wisconsin photographer, all posed, many featuring mannish women and men with frankly absurd tastes in facial hair – e.g. you shave all your face EXCEPT under your chin and your throat, so where your chin ends there’s a big hair explosion – hmm, attractive! Note to self – must try this. Oh yes, several photos of babies in coffins.
e) pompous essays by the author/compiler and his professor pal Warren Susman (if my old professor had written a piece this patronising for my first book I’d have photoshopped his face onto some S&M porn and posted it on the university bulletin board). The final essay by Michael Lesy might actually be pretty good but you know what? By the time I got to it I’d had enough.
******
Random example 1:
“A wild man is terrorising the people north of Grantsburg. He appears to be 35 years of age, has long black whiskers, is barefooted, has scarcely any clothes on him, and he carries a hatchet. He appeared at several farm houses and asked for something to eat. He eats ravenously, and when asked where he came from, points to the east. he secretes himself in the woods during the day and has the most bloodcurdling yells that have ever been heard in the neighbourhood.”
Random example 2:
“Henry Ehlers, a Milwaukee butcher, died from nosebleed. His nose had been bleeding for 9 days… He was 37 years of age and had been a great meat eater.”
Random example 3:
“The family of Henry Miller of Cedarburg is sorely afflicted. A 6 month old child died of diphtheria a week ago and now a 7 year old boy is dead. A few weeks previous, 2 children had died, all of the same disease. One child survives out of a family of 5 children and that too is down with the disease.”
*********
There's a great American traditional song called Railroad Boy which in retrospect encapsulates the casual brutality of many of these jarring anecdotes of damage - I would have given the link for the great performance by Dylan and Joan Baez taken from Renaldo & Clara, but Youtube deleted that, so here's just the words :
She went upstairs to make her bed And not one word to her mother said. Her mother she went upstairs too Saying, "Daughter, oh daughter, what's troublin' you?":
"Oh mother, oh mother, I cannot tell That railroad boy that I love so well. He courted me my life away And now at home will no longer stay."
"There is a place in yonder town Where my love goes and he sits him down. And he takes that strange girl on his knee And he tells to her what he won't tell me."
Her father he came home from work Sayin', "Where is my daughter, she seems so hurt" He went upstairs to give her hope An' he found her hangin' by a rope.
He took his knife and he cut her down And on her bosom these words he found:
"Go dig my grave both wide and deep, Put a marble stone at my head and feet, And on my breast, put a snow white dove To warn the world that I died of love
*****
Although in Wisconsin in the 1890s they were dying of a whole lot more things than mere love.
I finally got my revenge on Sweden. For most of my life I’ve been bombarded with newspapers and radio telling me how Sweden is so much much very much I finally got my revenge on Sweden. For most of my life I’ve been bombarded with newspapers and radio telling me how Sweden is so much much very much absolutely completely better than Britain at practically everything. Here’s some random quotes from the BBC news archive :
“Sweden has probably the strongest freedom of information law anywhere in the world.”
“Sweden has one of the best staffed health services in the world. But as a parent, Sweden seems the perfect place to have children.”
“BBC's Joe Wilson on how Sweden became a top athletics nation. What can Sweden teach GB?”
“Sweden says it aims to completely wean itself off oil within 15 years, without building new nuclear plants..”
“In a survey of the 26 most industrialised countries, only Sweden came out better.” (Better at what? Oh… life…love…happiness…)
“Sweden and Denmark show most clearly what spelling reform can do. Sweden has gradually given itself a fairly sound spelling system.” (Yes, spelling reform is important too! Admittedly this didn’t make me as furiously jealous as the other stuff. But still – Sweden. Again.)
“If you want my answer, I think we should look at how they do it in Sweden. They have high taxation and a better standard of living which means everyone feels they should contribute”
Blah blah blah. And Abba too! Is there no end to their tall blond pretty perfection and their warm fuzzy wraparound social democracy? But now, one grungy vampire tale Let the Right One In let’s me know in no uncertain terms that Swedes suffer too. Behind the perky teeth and healthy children and universal dentistry and free housing for all and trams and no nuclear waste and Mamma Mia there’s urban decay, neglected glue-sniffing kids, violence, drunkenness, wasted lives and compellingly unpleasant vampires. This is chicken soup for my soul, with swedes! And not only that, but as many persons have pointed out, this is a kind of anti-Twilight, given that the only sexually attractive vampire around is a 200 year old 12 year old girl and the only attracting going on is with an adult paedophile and a miserable lonely 12 year old boy. So stick that up your sacro-iliac, Bella and Edward! I fart in your general direction! This book gets major points for being so accurate about childhood terrors of the non-imaginary kind (bullying). In fact it's really about childhood neglect and the vampire stuff can be read as an extended poetic symbol. But the vampire stuff is also gory and it rocks, so you can have your sensitive cake and you can greedily gobble it up it too.
Anyway, altogether, a maxillo-facial gothtastic read - 3.5 stars.
*****
Update : the film rocks too. It pulls a few punches and cuts out a major zombie theme but otherwise a does a great job. Rent it!
Up-update - I was referring here to the movie Let the Right One In by Thomas Alfredson, made in Sweden in 2009 and not the Hollywood remake by Matt Reeves just released, which I haven't seen.
Upupupupdate : I saw the American remake and that's great too - I wouldn't lie to you, I was very surprised. So - rent that one too!
Upupupupupupdate : they're still at it! Now I'm being told that although Sweden gets a million tons of snow every day because of their extreme yet kindly efficiency no one ever falls down and no bus is ever late and no road is ever closed yet a couple of days of Swedish snow in Britain and all roads are impassable and all lorries immediately jack-knife and all schools immediately close.
Bite them, Eli, bite them all! Don't leave a single Swede unbitten!...more
I'm only on p 75 of this thing and I'm about to hurl it at the wall. What is it supposed to be? Does this guy really think these lame parodies are funI'm only on p 75 of this thing and I'm about to hurl it at the wall. What is it supposed to be? Does this guy really think these lame parodies are funny? This is from the section called "Slumming", which is about rich people, a couple of whom are pretending to be poor :
"Inky always said being absent is the new being present." (p 69) "Poverty, Inky says, is the new wealth." (p71) "Social divers, Inky says, are the new social climbers." (p71) "Nobodies are the new celebrity." (p72) "Public is the new private" (p 72)
You get the picture - how could you not - it's the same joke repeated over and over again, a joke which Tom Wolfe was cracking in 1975 (black is the new black, with variations). So : is this supposed to be amusing? Because if so, it really isn't. Is it supposed to be stupid? Because if so, it really is.
Prior to this chapter you get a spoof all about television and advertising. I find myself bleeding profusely from the extreme cutting edge qualities of this book every time I pick it up. Not! Ha-ha! ROTFLMAO!! Only in the world of Chuck, this would be ROTFLMPO - that's right, Roll On The Floor Laughing My Penis Off! Ha ha! Why? Because it's gross, and it isn't that funny!
**
Update : the hurl has now been performed, and Chuck Palahnik's Haunted sailed in a graceful arc then smashed against the wall, its guts spilled out and several rodents started gnawing them...oh shut up. ...more
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