Sunday Review: Books That Disturb and Frighten:Tales Of Lovecraft by H.P. Lovecraft and The Island Of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far."

-H.P. Lovecraft, Call Of Cthulhu

Oh yes. I am certainly not beyond "camp."

Today I have a pair of my favorite writer's of "strange tales." Gene Wolfe, a modern master of speculative fiction and Howard Phillips Lovecraft, the undisputed innovator of modern horror.

I feeling pretty low about giving Gene Wolfe the short shrift in this piece. So I will try and make up for it here. And I can do this quickly.

The Island of Dr. Death and Other Stories and Other Stories
by Gene Wolfe

The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories, as you can see from the title is a work of postmodern literature. In self-aware style, Wolfe crafts intricate stories of science fiction, horror and fantasy that forces mainstream readers to access their conception of these often maligned genres.

The comparison that these stories are best made with is the fiction of Tommaso Landolfi, which I discussed during my inaugural (and mostly futile) Lost Books Month.

Wolfe is known mostly to pure fantasy readers, those that B-Line for the codified and corralled genre of big top bookstores. While there is no doubt that Gene Wolfe is a writer of fantasy, he is also a very complex literary stylist who writes on very sophisticated levels. There is no collection of his work where this is more evident than The Island Of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories.

Fans of Italo Calvino, Jorge Luis Borges or even more conventional readers of the above Lovecraft will find a deep, heavily laden gold mine in the writing of Gene Wolfe. I promise. Devil's Accountant Certified.

Man. I should get a "Certified" logo of some sort.

Expatiation achieved. Short shrift made whole.

Here's the link to the full article, mainly about Lovecraft.

Sunday Review: Two That Disturb For The Season - The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson and The Golem by Gustave Meyrink

A more disturbing book cover, or book, you will not find.

It was only a matter of time (and other cliches) before I'd throw my hat into the ring of books for the Halloween season. The horror genre is perhaps the most inconsistent genre of fiction, containing writers as brilliant and visionary as Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft in far fewer numbers than the Dean Koontz(s) of the world.

No offense Dean. Just sayin'.

For the Phoenix this week I began a two part, four-book look at some of my favorite tales of the macabre.

The Killer Inside Me (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)
by Jim Thompson

In the first installment I recommend Jim Thompson's very disturbing The Killer Inside Me. Written in the "killers" first person, this book is probably the most disturbing piece of "thriller" writing every set to type. Thompson was essentially a founding father of "hard boiled" writing and though he came to rely mostly on crime genre stories to make a living, this bloody gem of a novel is perhaps his most literary.

The naive but for the time cutting-edge psychological research Thompson deploys is what clinches this book as a favorite for me. Thompson, though at times an inconsistent stylist, always manages to elevate the theory behind his practice to include psychic insight. In this case it is insight into the murderous ways of a serial killer.

Also worth noting is the fact that The Killer Inside Me is soon to be made into a movie. A rare offering from me, but I will say that this should have happened a while ago. It's a perfect book for idea-less Hollywood to borrow.

One thing I can say is that I have no idea what this cast means for the movie.

The Golem (Dedalus European Classics)
by Gustav Meyrink

The second book is Gustave Meyrink's The Golem. Translated from the German, Meyrink's novel is by far my favorite Halloween read (that isn't Lovecraft or Poe). There is something nearly insane, or perhaps magical, in his exposition of the Prague ghetto and its most dread denizen, the supernatural golem.

Meyrink only borrows from the Jewish lore and legend of the mystical clay golem, and taking what he does he applies it to a social comment on the dire lives of poor Jews in the ghetto. The crime and desperate claustrophobia of the ghetto becomes animate in Meyrink's golem.

Here's the link to the article in the Phoenix. Next week I'll offer up two more books that go bump in the night. Or other such cliches.

Sunday Review: A Night In The Cemetery and Other Stories of Crime and Suspense by Anton Chekhov

This is one of the more humorous books I've read all year. A Night In The Cemetery collects all of Chekhov's earliest published writings, which shockingly had never been available in the English language. So everyone needs to take a moment and thank Peter Sekirin for translating this lost collection of gems.

Thanks, Peter.

With a wonderfully oblique, sardonic approach to horror, much of what Chekhov would eventually become is revealed in these uncharacteristically sensationalized stories. My favorite piece in the collection is a meta-fiction titled "What You Usually Find In Novels." With great sarcasm Chekhov outlines in a series of hypothetical statements all of the cliches plaguing his contemporary fiction scene. The "story" is one of the few without a horror or crime element.

Here's the link to the review.

Here's a link to purchase the book.

A Night in the Cemetery: And Other Stories of Crime and Suspense
by Anton Chekhov

Sunday Review: R. Crumb... The perfect visual artist for the Bible.

At least for Genesis.

In this week's Phoenix I review R. Crumb's illustrated edition of the Book of Genesis. No, you read that right. R. Crumb. The Bible. Sincere and without sarcasm.

Drawing upon the King James and the recent Robert Alter edition, Crumb provides "straight" text and literal representation of what the text says. No matter how morally unsettling. Probably because of its unsettling aspects.

He sure takes his time rendering the scene where Lot's daughters seduce him with wine and propagate his seed. I essentially argue that Crumb's oversexed misogyny fits perfect with the oversexed misogyny of the Bible's first book.

R. Crumb... The perfect illustrator for Genesis.

Here's the link to the article.