"Gone Girl" Gillian Flynn - Book Review

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There is enough hype surrounding this novel that has already come and gone that the world hardly needs yet another voice volunteering comment. Many who skipped over the book have probably seen Fincher's film by this point (BECAUSE THEY JUST LOVED GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO BLAAEEHEHRRG), so Gone Girl might be, to some, very much 'last year's news,' or even, '2012's news.'

That said, I picked up a like-new copy at a thrift store for fifty cents in December—at which time I knew very little about the story other than that it was some sort of mystery and had appeared on zillions of “Best of” lists in 2012—and felt compelled to give it a shot. I stepped into the story blessedly spoiler-free, more by glad happenstance than intention.

Frankly, I can be a bit of an ass when it comes to popular media. Simply put: if something (a book, a movie, an album, a TV show, etc.) gets huge attention and almost universal praise, I tend to stay away from it because: see previous sentence. Something strange clicks on in my brain when I see something heralded over and over, and I (arrogantly) assume that people only love said thing because it must be so watered down that it appeals to the lowest common denominator.

This Gaines fellow is a regular pompous asshole! Why is he telling me this in the middle of a Gone Girl review?

Anyway, all of the useless banter above was to lead to this: I absolutely loved Gone Girl, as much as one can love a story that is horrific in nature. This may sound like an exaggeration, but it's one of the strongest, most tightly-crafted pieces of writing I have read in a long time; a true 10 out of 10, in my opinion (not that ratings mean very much these days, or ever).

Apart from the fact that it has a number of sharp, unexpected turns that leave the reader sitting up in bed and exclaiming, “What the hell?!?” Gone Girl has a balanced measure of literary and crime thriller elements. The first third of the book is an affecting story of a marriage unraveling. Despite revelations later in the book regarding that section (Amy's diary being a sham), the falling apart of Nick and Amy felt authentic and heartbreaking. In the second section, everything changes when we find out not only is Amy alive, but she is not who we thought she was (meaning, she's one sinister bitch). Section three should not work for as zany as the story turns, but it does, and man oh man, does it hit hard.

Coming down to the last ten or fifteen pages of the book, I was racing down the lines on the page because I just had no idea how it would finish, and was so anxious to see if Amy got what she deserved. Nick is no saint, but by the end I was rooting for him, which is what makes the ending such a stinger. I am curious how many other readers across time and space shared my experience of closing this book and saying aloud, “Man, that is f*cked up.”

Gillian Flynn is a fantastic talent and I am glad she has been recognized in such a big way. I've been told by a few reader friends that her earlier works, Dark Places and Sharp Objects, are even more demented than Gone Girl. Sounds right up my alley.

-D.G.

"Broken Monsters" Lauren Beukes - Book Review

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I picked this one up after seeing a number of authors who I respect rave about it on Twitter, citing that it was wildly original and disturbing. They weren't wrong. Plus, I mean, great title, and great cover art.

All right, negative thoughts first.

While the opening chapter is instantly compelling and promises dark and tasty things to come, the story almost immediately slows down after that, and moves forward at a painfully strolling pace for another 200 pages.

Essentially, the first half of the book feels like a whole lot of material (too much) and character development setting up for a couple of big numbers that play out in the second half. That seems reasonable enough and I understand it is the way, after all, that many books are structured, but in this case I just could not get interested in most of these characters (the book jumps between roughly five different storylines that eventually cross paths). I found myself ultimately only caring about/sympathizing with Gabi (the lead detective investigating the gruesome Detroit murders) and her daughter Layla.

Clayton Broom, a creator of unsettling tableaux art pieces made from clay and odd miscellany, is a curious presence from the start, and for that reason, also a quickly absorbing as a character.

Most of the events and characters in the first half of the book do more or less come into play later on, but at 440+ pages, there were certain chapters that absolutely felt like filler. There was a point when I almost put the book down because I just couldn't tell where it was going, and didn't care. If it had been shortened by 50 pages or so, it would have been stronger and tighter all around. Just saying.

Okay, now the good stuff.

The above criticisms aside, right around the halfway point, the book explodes into fascinating madness and intrigue, and moves more like a thriller with some pretty bizarre elements around the corners. The main characters really begin to come into their own, and I found myself invested (finally) in their fates as circumstances got more intense. Along with this, Beukes really starts to crank up—pardon me—the weird shit, and let me tell you, she's got one hell of an imagination. Breadcrumbs she had left for the reader in way earlier chapters begin to pay off as the plot comes together, and the scope and cleverness of the novel as a whole begins to shine through.

This book has been called “genre-bending,” which it is, and delightfully so. With elements of this sort, Beukes has the ability to be subtle until she is very not-subtle, and the result is supremely satisfying. Picture Michel Gandry and David Lynch dropping acid together, then deciding to make a horror film with an unlimited budget. To put it simply: things get pretty trippy.

Barring the weak first half, this was an enjoyable, mind-bending read. Beukes has a strong voice, and an ability to write realistic people into bizarre situations. I love an author with a hearty knack for THE STRANGE. Recommended for fans of The X-Files, The Twilight Zone, Twin Peaks, and any crime thriller that doesn't mind dabbling in the weird and gruesome.

-D.G.

2014: A Review in Books

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This was actually a 'slower' year for me with books, in the sense that in years prior I've knocked out a larger chunk of the unread items filling my bookshelves. Granted, my wife and I had a daughter in April, and while having a child is a tremendous joy, an infant also greatly reduces both one's time to read and their brain capacity to do so.

Something else that made this year different was that I have finally come to a place as a person where I can put down a book that I'm not enjoying. I used to be one of those I MUST FINISH IT EVEN IF I HATE IT sort of people, partly because it drove me internally crazy to leave something unfinished, and partly because some small piece of my mind was holding out that 'maybe the book will get better before the end' (most of them did not). However, at the age of twenty-six, I suppose I have come to the conclusion that life is simply too short to read crappy books, and there are too many other great, amazing, wonderful books out there to spend my time on instead. So, I've started giving a book about fifty pages (sometimes more), and if it just isn't catching me, I'll move on.

A few false starts from this year were Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice (what is this book? A crime novel? A comedy? Satire? It's all over the place! Apparently I'm too dense to 'get' it), Clive Barker's The Great and Secret Show (intriguing and had some catching moments, but ultimately got to where it was dragging on and on), and Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, which was excellent but it just wasn't the right time.

And now to the good stuff. Without further adieu, here are the books that hit me just right in 2014 (blue hyperlinks lead to my full reviews of each):

-Allie Brosh's hilarious web-comic-turned-book Hyperbole and a Half. I heard Allie interviewed on NPR, checked out her site, and it was all downhill from there. One of only a few books in my entire life to make me laugh out loud.

-Crimes in Southern Indiana by Frank Bill. I'm a sucker for gritty, backwoods fiction, and that's Frank Bill's specialty. Found out about him by way of Donald Ray Pollock's work. This collection of stories is the literature equivalent of getting the shit kicked out of you on a dusty sideroad by a toothless, Meth-addled maniac. Hoping to get to his follow up novel, Donnybrook, very soon.

-Travels with Charley: In Search of America, Steinbeck's cross-country trek in a custom camper-trailer with his French Poodle, Charley. This was the book I was reading in the period when my daughter was born, so for that reason it will always hold some sentimental value, but it was also a quietly beautiful and very funny book. Steinbeck's observation and wit are sharp, and his writing conveys such a love for the average man and working class America. A perfect warm weather road trip book. There is speculation that much of it is fabricated or exaggerated, but who cares? He's Steinbeck, and his words are gold.

-Jim Henson: A Biography, by Brian Jay Jones. I picked this one up at the library on a whim and it ended up being one of my favorite books this year. It is both an excellent history of Henson and all of the various endeavors he undertook during his short life, as well as a surprisingly inspiring profile of one of the most talented creative thinkers of his generation. His process was fascinating, and the man was truly brilliant; a real innovator. Henson's accomplishments go far past The Muppets.

-20th Century Ghosts, a collection of spooky short stories by Joe Hill. All of these are good, some of them are great, and a few of them are genius. Some of the finest short-form work around.

-One Shot, Lee Child. Not my usual sort of thing, but this was unabashedly fun. Everybody needs a good mindlessly entertaining “beach read” once in a while.

-The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman. Delightful and imaginative. This reads like a way creepier Narnia story.

-Mr. Mercedes, Stephen King. The man has still got it.

-The Son, Phillipp Meyer. A multi-generational American epic. Hard to articulate just what a massive scope this book undertakes. Masterful storytelling. If you enjoyed the film There Will Be Blood and don't flinch at 700+ pages, this is probably up your alley.

-The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett. A definitive novel in the hard-boiled crime genre, and a pitch-perfect little story. I kind of couldn’t believe how fun and snappy this was for being nearly 100 years old.

-Vivian Versus the Apocalypse (published as Vivan Apple at the End of the World in the US) and Fear Itself (short story), Katie Coyle. WHERE DID THIS WOMAN COME FROM AND WHAT WILL SHE DO NEXT. So good you'll be mad you didn't write it.

-Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson. Because: Hunter S. Thompson.

-The Informers, Bret Easton Ellis. I'm a fan of Ellis' novels, but for some reason I was surprised by the strength of his shorter pieces. For some reason, I assumed that his style may not translate well to short form, but that wasn't the case. There is a vein of tragedy that runs through these stories. Satire so pointed it's painful. Didn't love all of them, but there are a few gems.

-The Dark Path, David Schickler. Again, not my normal sort of reading. Odd premise: a memoir of a devout Catholic who really wants to be a priest and realizes he can never be a priest. Clever prose and brutal honesty. A man who is deeply in love with God but has thoughts as dark as I do. I can dig that.

-Pet Sematary, Stephen King. Does this require comment? Gut-wrenching. Scarier (presumably) to read being a parent.

-McSweeney's 45: Hitchcock and Bradbury Fistfight in Heaven. A collection of zany, chilling stories republished from old pulp horror and sci-fi magazines, as well as a few new stories by contemporary authors. McSweeney's is hit or miss for me, but this one was spot-on.

Also:

-Wolverton Station (short), Joe Hill

-Wool, Hugh Howey

-Sharp Teeth, Toby Barlow

-The Dead Zone, Stephen King

-By the Silver Waters of Lake Champlain (short), Joe Hill

-Tincture, Book 2, Matthew D. Jordan

-Dystopolis, Christopher J. Fraser

-Just After Sunset: Stories, Stephen King

-Saga, Vol. 3, Brian K. Vaughn & Fiona Staples

-Wraith 1-7 (graphic novel, companion story to the novel NOS4A2), Joe Hill & Gabriel Rodriguez

-Still Foolin' Em, Billy Crystal

-Born Standing Up, Steve Martin (second time I’ve read this one)

-Bright Lights, Big City, Jay McInerney

-The Killing Joke, Alan Moore

Currently reading:

-The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand

-Mystery and Manners: Essays, Flannery O'Connor

-Beautiful You, Chuck Palahniuk

Up next:

-Revival, Stephen King

-Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn

-D.G.

Bright Lights, Big City - Jay McInerney

Jay McInerney has oft been clumped together with authors such as Bret Easton Ellis and Tama Janowitz for their success at a young age and “breaking onto the literary scene” in the mid-eighties. It was Ellis' work in particular that pointed me to Bright Lights, Big City, as that book is sometimes paired next to Less Than Zero for its similarities in style and tone.

Perhaps going into Bright Lights with that comparison in mind was unfair (however unavoidable; it was already planted in my little brain, after all), because while Less Than Zero is a very brash, druggy book with despicable characters, Bright Lights is, at its core, mostly a story of broken love.

The first chapter opens with the unnamed male narrator in a sleazy warehouse-like establishment where people are partying around him while he tries to hook up with less-than-ideal women (by his assessment) and find more drugs. This is a misleading way in which to begin the book because it sets a certain tone of debauchery that does not continue through the rest of the story. Yes, the main character does cocaine occasionally and seems to be an alcoholic and a bit of a bastard in his view of women, but he is not the hell-bent man on a downward spiral in the way that the opening chapter sets him up.

He is not a terribly interesting or relatable character in the first half of the book, and it is his surroundings and circumstances that are more worthy of attention. He does not so much loathe his job—a fact-checker at a prestigious New York magazine—as treat it with a sort of disconnected apathy. In fact, stoicism towards nearly everything in life is about the best way to sum up his personality. The only thing he expresses true passion about is the wife that left him a number of months before the novel begins.

The backstory of the narrator and Amanda, his wife, falls about halfway through the book, and I found this narrative to be the most “human” part of the story. It is here that the narrator does become a sympathetic figure and the reader realizes he has a tenderness to him after all. The story of the couples' romance and falling apart is simple and nothing unique from a literary perspective, but tragic and affecting just the same. From this point on, the narrator's apathy and general disinterest in life becomes somewhat more understandable.

While the novel as a whole felt slightly imbalanced to me, its strength lies in McInerney's ability to craft a lovely sentence, which may sound out of place in a book of this sort. There are many stand-alone pieces of delicate elegance scattered throughout the narrative that give one the sense that the author has a penchant for poetry. It makes for an interesting contrast: this mostly bland central character suddenly making very thoughtful observations.

I try not to go into books with any expectations (especially with authors whom I have never read before), but unfortunately in this case I did, which may have soured my perception of Bright Lights, Big City. I didn't hate it, but I also didn't love it. It was just one of those middle of the road sort of things that was at least worth a read.

Like books about discontent young men meandering about Manhattan with the occasional clever phrase peppered in? Read this. Prefer grittier stuff with lots of drugs, sex, bad behavior, and stark satire on the human condition? Bret Easton Ellis is probably more your style (and mine).

-D.G.

Pet Sematary - Stephen King

In high school, two friends and I rented Pet Sematary for a Friday night sleepover. We thought it would be a corny and ridiculous horror B-movie to make fun of, but instead it scared the hell out of us and might have stolen a little bit of our sleep that night (I talk about this and other defining horror films for me at length over here). While the film had a profound effect on me at the time, I now wish that I had not seen it before reading the book.

Roughly ten years later when I picked up Pet Sematary from where it sat untouched for years on my shelf, the general direction of the movie and vivid imagery from certain scenes were still very fresh in my mind. Had I entered the book knowing nothing of the story, I believe it would have hit me even harder than it did; it would have been a more chilling “surprise,” so to speak. That said, the book was still ultimately a powerful read, and its most notable difference from the movie is the ending, which is quite dark (and in my opinion, superior to that of the film).

As a long-time fan and Constant Reader of Stephen King, I confess that I was disappointed to find that this book took nearly 100 pages to really grab me. It was good and had enough intrigue to keep me interested, but something about it didn't feel up to King's usual level of greatness. I struggled to care about Louis Creed or his family, which is a rarity in King's work. Normally, I'm hooked on his lead characters and their defining quirks within just a few pages, but in this case I found that the digressions in dialogue and attempts at humor fell somewhat flat. Even though this is considered a “classic” among King fans, it is worth noting that this was written before the author had gotten sober, which may contribute to the lack of fervor in the first chunk of the book.

That said, by the time Louis was being led to the Micmac burial ground by Jud Crandall with the dead cat Church in his arms, I was drawn in for the long haul. There is a teeming discomfort throughout this book that carries a great heaviness; something just around the corner but never quite in full sight. This quality is exemplified, apart from the obvious, in the nondescript creatures who loom in the forest around the burial ground. King does an excellent job of never describing exactly what these beings look like (as they are never fully seen by any character), but their dreadful presence is undeniably felt.

Another aspect of the underlying heaviness is the Pet Sematary's supernatural, almost personified ability to “pull” at characters minds, drawing them to itself. There is even suggestion that the burial ground has a force of its own that can influence the physical realm, such as when Rachel is hindered from getting home at a critical moment when the battery terminal on her rental car mysteriously unhooks itself, or when Jud Crandall is waiting all night for Louis to get home to prevent him from doing something unspeakable, yet Jud is lulled asleep at just the wrong moment. There is a feeling that the Sematary is against all of these people; a demonic force bent on bringing destruction to the lives in its vicinity.

The strength of King's writing—whether he was sober at the time or not—is most felt in the middle of the book as he describes the Creed family experiencing the loss of their child. This is a taboo subject in any circumstance: you just don't mess with the death of a child. But King approaches the tragedy with the delicacy and sympathy of an actual father (he is one, after all) and the realism of how each of the characters mourns is striking. As the father of a seven-month-old, I found myself tearing up more than once through these passages, and I've been told by several others that Pet Sematary is far more terrifying to read as a parent. The realities of the situation are just too heartbreaking to dwell upon for long.

The ending—which I won't spoil here (but then can you really spoil something more than thirty years old?)—absolutely shocked me, which is why I was delighted to find it different from the movie. Let's just say that many of King's works end mostly well for his characters most of the time. This one doesn't, and it's one of those gut-dropping conclusions that makes you walk away saying, “Oh ma-a-an...”

Even with the rocky start (in my opinion), this was a strong read and a significantly unsettling book. Does it deserve the term “Classic” in the world of King's catalog? I'd say so.

-D.G.

The Dark Path - David Schickler

“Sometimes I want someone else to see what I see. Other times I want to be the only one.”

I enjoyed this book, although in setting out to write this review, I could not think of where to begin in summarizing it. The first thing that comes to mind is that it is one of the most brutally honest presentations of a “broken” male that I have ever read, an aspect I appreciated very much. David Schickler is fully aware of his own flaws, and shies away from not a single one of them in this memoir centered around his youthful intentions of becoming a priest.

In a world where we hardly need another memoir regarding the emotional issues of a middle-class white male (because what problems have we ever really had?), at least two things stand above the rest and warrant David’s story. First, his character, humor, and up-frontness from the get-go. Within five pages, I liked him and appreciated his childlike observation and imagination. His personality is the perfect blend of shyness and closeted naughty fascinations. Secondly, the quality of Schickler’s writing. This reads like a bright and well-crafted novel, with enough clever anecdotes and deeper-than-surface digressions to keep me saying, again and again, “Damn, this is good.” I flipped back through my copy of the book before writing this and found I had underlined something on nearly every other page, such as:

“I wonder why people my age have to put shit all over their walls that says This is who I am!”

or, in processing his own thoughts, “…your life is a competition between you and the strongest version of yourself, the version God wants you to become.”

In the opening chapter, David describes himself sitting in Sunday Mass as a ten year old, trying to pay attention to the service but getting distracted with daydreaming about the various pretty girls in the pews who might be his future wife. This is a fitting way to open the book, as faith and females are both recurring aspects throughout his story.

From a young age, David has a strong desire to know God, to follow God, to be alone with God and really hear Him, but there is a discord in the relationship that he can’t seem to put his finger on. While his desire for God is sincere, there is a lack of harmony in David’s heart as he wrestles to know what God really wants of him, and how to reconcile following God with his own earthly tendencies (sleeping with women, mostly, but also swearing, dark thoughts, writing fiction about questionable things, etc.).

The book primarily follows David’s journey through college and the years following. The main drama unfolds in his wrestling with whether he is really cut out to be a priest or not, as well as an extremely debilitating handicap that develops in his right leg, and his off-and-on relationship with Mara—a fictional name that represents a real woman in his life.

Underneath these physical elements is a constant “dialogue” between David and God that, at times, grows quite heated (at least on David’s end). His experience with faith and devotion ranges widely (and I can’t help but get the feeling that it probably still does to this day). David is sometimes a devout man of childlike faith who believes without question and seems quite in love with God. Other times, he is openly cursing God, demanding explanation for just what exactly God is doing to him and even goes through a period where he considers God not to be there at all.

It was these passages that made the book for me, as I can deeply resonate with a person so fervently wrestling to believe. If David didn’t care so passionately about knowing God truly, it would not be wrestling at all; it would be a simple decision disconnected from emotion to simply choose to believe or not. The Dark Path seems representative of this new era we have recently morphed into as a culture of people becoming more and more comfortable with being vulnerable, honest, and real, even if it means admitting to flaws in themselves that can be quite difficult to expose.

All of the above might make this sound like a “Christian-y” book; it is not in the least, although people of faith will probably find more to glean. In fact, I think all of the sex, swearing, and borderline-blasphemy contained within would make a majority of Christians squirm (they made me swoon with glee, but that’s another story). Still, whether you believe in God as a Being or not, David is asking good questions in this book—honest, meaningful, human questions to which he is actually trying to discern the answers.

The ending (no spoilers, but then this isn’t really that sort of book) only “kind of” resolves in the sense that David seems to have grown as a person and gotten more comfortable with his own mental and spiritual processes the older he gets. He is still essentially the same person, he’s just gotten slightly more used to himself, the good and “bad” parts alike.

By the end of this book, I very much wished I could just sit down and have coffee—or a few beers—with David and pick his brain, see where he’s at now. My perception is that his wrestle with God will continue and there will be high and low points, but then, that’s not so different from any of our experiences, is it?

-D.G.

The Unsettling Allure of On-Screen Horror

I wrote a new piece for Muzzleland Press regarding unsettling films, on-screen deaths, and the movies that defined for me what was true horror. Read it here!

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“The Informers” Book Review - Bret Easton Ellis - Short Story collection

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It is somewhat hard to pinpoint just what is so fascinating about Ellis' writing—fascinating to many, that is, but perhaps boring or confusing to others because 'nothing happens.' I've read four of his other works at this point (Less Than Zero, Imperial Bedrooms, American Psycho, and Glamorama, in that order), and in every case, his characters are absolutely despicable people, ranging from the spoiled, over-privileged brat to the psychotic serial-torturer. They are frequently ultra-rich, apathetic to everything, stoic, extremely entitled, disgustingly selfish, and the list goes on.

Perhaps one reason Ellis' work is so enticing is that we as humans are captivated by watching others behave more badly than ourselves; taking their wretchedness to the extreme, so to speak, and acting more perversely than we would ever dare or imagine. To some degree, we find depravity fun to read about. Few (if any) of Ellis' characters are sympathetic, and yet most of us probably feel some level of horrified sympathy for them anyway for the way they are destroying themselves and don't even recognize it. That said, his characters don't need to be sympathetic in order to be interesting, or to seem realistic.

The Informers is a collection of loosely-connected stories set in 1980's California, primarily Los Angeles. Each chapter is told from a different narrator's voice and it is sometimes unclear whether they are male or female until several pages into the story. While certain characters appear in multiple stories, there does not seem to be a great deal of importance in keeping track of who is who most of the time. This is not because the characters are flat, per se, but more because they are often so indiscernible from each other in their actions; everyone is constantly drinking, getting stoned, doing coke, going to high-class restaurants, sleeping with each other without consideration or consequence, etc. Generally, the current narrator of each story is the only one with any depth and thus the one to whom you ought give your attention.

The above paragraph might seem like a criticism, but I assure you it isn't. Ellis is able to make these lifeless, over-indulgent, self-destructive characters work for his style of narrative, as he always has (in my experience). Amidst the paragraphs of rampant drug use, easy sex, and designer clothing are moments—sometimes single sentences—of keen human observation; still, small, seemingly benign details that express the tragedy or beauty of a scene. Also, the people he creates do feel authentic, even if they’re terrible human beings.

The stories that stood out to me most were, “The Up Escalator,” “In the Islands,” (these both featuring, to my perception, the closest thing to sympathetic characters in the collection), “Water from the Sun,” “The Secrets of Summer,” and lastly, “On the Beach.” I particularly enjoyed “The Secrets of Summer” because it took such an interesting, unexpected turn which I will not spoil here.

Bret Easton Ellis is not for everyone, and for readers new to his work I would not recommend The Informers as a great place to start (Less Than Zero is a better introduction to what you’re in for; American Psycho is wonderful and mesmerizing, but not for the weak of heart). Still, I found this to be a very solid read. Each of these stories stands on its own, and yet together they present a sort of grotesque whole. Ellis has such a delicate way of presenting satire (not that the content is delicate), but in the way that the deeper commentary sneaks up on you in the midst of a presentation of vile circumstances. I can’t say I was expecting not to like this, but I can say I was surprised with just how much I appreciated it. One of the best books I’ve read in 2014.

-D.G.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson

It doesn't seem right to 'review' this in the regular sense, as its position as a cultural icon of literature has been firmly-seated for a number of years, but I will make some observations and comments.

First of all: I would have loved to have known Hunter Thompson when he was still with us, particularly in this era (although he seemed like a jarring person to be around for a number of reasons). After reading Fear and Loathing, I watched the fairly recent documentary Gonzo and my fascinated appreciation for Thompson only grew. This cautious affection seems to be held for Hunter by a lot of readers who never knew him. There's no question that he was a person who demanded—and often received—attention, whether in the form of (no pun) loathing or admiration.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is such a wild, terrifying ride; the sort of thing that is equally horrifying and unsettling, yet you can't take your eyes off it. I've always thought there is something fascinating about watching others behave more badly than we are 'allowed to.' This concept is rampant in media today, thus the popularity of such shows as Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Dexter, House of Cards, and countless others. We love these characters, but they're all doing different versions of wretched, horrible, immoral things that most of us would not dare to do for sake of safety or not going to jail. I'm not sure how much Thompson fictionalized himself in the character of Raul Duke (that has probably been addressed elsewhere), but I have a feeling more of it is truth than invention.

So, why is it so damn exciting to read about two men going on a crazy drug and alcohol binge in our modern day Sodom and Gomorrah? Because it would be scary as hell to be high in those situations? Because these characters are so eccentric and seem to only spiral further downward in their series of bad decisions? Because these are drugs most of us are unfamiliar with and their effects are so intriguing and alarming? Because, if we're honest, doing the same thing just sounds like a lot of fun? I'm not sure. Probably a bit of all those reasons.

In the midst of the firecracker narrative, Thompson also has more than a few moments of clarity and stark, cynical observation. 'Fear and loathing' seems to be the term he used frequently across his works to sum up his feelings about the U.S., and perhaps even his feelings towards being alive. He seemed fearful and disgusted of where the country was headed (or already had arrived), and loathed much of what he saw from day to day. It is in these quieter moments that one recognizes just how talented a writer Hunter really was. He had the ability to be wild and hilarious and over-the-top, but also to zero in and be frank about very real issues.

The more I read and watch about Thompson, what I come to appreciate is that he was a guy who saw shit for what it was and wasn't afraid to point it out. He was sharp, observant, and unafraid. His lifestyle was dangerous, pushed-to-the-limit, and perhaps less than admirable a lot of the time, but you have to give him credit for being true to his nature.

I loved this book, and blasted through it in only a few sittings. I underlined a number of profound or hilarious passages. I will absolutely be reading more Hunter Thompson (this was my first encounter with his work). This was one of the funnest books I've read all year. Also: looking forward to revisiting Terry Gilliam's film. Haven't seen it since high school, and at the time I knew nothing about Thompson, and I remember not understanding the movie at all.

While I do believe Hunter S. Thompson changed journalism in his time and defined a whole new way of reporting for a number of years, it seems that at present we have slipped back into a very flat, fake, maximum-reaction method of reporting. I daresay we could use another brutally honest voice like Thompson's today to blast through the facade.

-D.G.

Let's Talk About "The Shining"!! - Part 2: The Film

(Re-posted from October 2013)

I had the privilege of seeing Kubrick’s The Shining for the first time within about three days of finishing King’s book. A local historic movie theatre called The Esquire apparently screens it as a midnight showing every October around Halloween. Not only was this DE-LIGHTFUL timing, but what a treat it was to see this iconic and very visual film in high def on a full screen, much less with the book so fresh in my mind. To add a dash of seasoning salt to this whole business, the kooky documentary Room 237 had just been added to Netflix, so I also watched that after reading the book but before seeing Kubrick’s film.

I know, it was a real week full of Shining for me there, but what more perfect time than Halloween month?

I specifically refer to the film adaptation as Kubrick’s, meaning it ‘belongs’ to him, whereas the book (obviously) belongs to King. I say this in the sense that, as many have observed before me, Kubrick took King’s story and made it very much his own. There are many major changes from the film to the book, all the more clear when going from one to the other in such a short amount of time. I probably don’t need to list some them here, but guess what?

I draw attention to the following not in a critical sense, but merely in a factual sense, and for the benefit of those who have not read the book.

First of all, there is no hedge maze in Stephen King’s book. Nada. Nothing even close. Oh, yeah, in the book there are demonic hedge animals that attack both Danny and Jack, but who could have pulled off that special effect in 1980? Plus, it would have been hard to get right… Some things are better left to the imagination. Other changes to the film that do not occur in the book: Jack doesn’t get seduced by the nasty bathtub lady, nor does she ever manifest herself as young or beautiful. Jack raises hell on Wendy and Danny with a roque mallet (I know, me neither. It’s like what is used in croquet); no axe is ever mentioned in his destructive last thirty pages. The bullet-ridden mafia men Danny sees in the Presidential Suite are absent from the film, whereas the famous scene of the twin girls chopped up and bloody in the hallway appears nowhere in the book (although it is mentioned that the previous caretaker of The Overlook murdered his family with an axe). Jack never says, “Here’s Johnny!” in the book. There is no blood wave from the elevator. Danny does talk out of his finger, but rather has an invisible friend named Tony who appears in full body form and suggests Danny do things which are usually foreboding and sinister. The line ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,’ is never used. Hallorann does not die (in fact he saves Wendy and Danny on a snowmobile). The Overlook Hotel does not freeze over, rather the boiler in the basement explodes and it burns to the ground. Ullman is way more of a pretentious prick (which is hardly important, but notable). Jack finds numerous scrapbooks in the cellar full of newspaper clippings relaying horrible incidents at the hotel over the years; this is left completely out of the film.

Those are the main ones that come to mind. Some of them seem like pretty reasonable changes for sake of keeping the pace of the film up and not lingering on less-than-crucial information, or leaving out elements that would be honestly hard to reproduce on film. Yet other changes are very strange indeed, and seem to reflect the state of mind Kubrick was in while making this movie. The man was clearly a creative genius, though an extremely particular artist and sometimes rather obsessive and mad, though not one tic or titter appeared in his films by accident. It is these reasons that make the film as a unit all the more fascinating. The more you know about Kubrick, the more interesting and mysterious his choices on The Shining become.

It has been noted many times over that he often incorporates elements that either explore or distort sexuality (notice the rather phallic-shaped carpet patterns in the hallways and Room 237? A bit of a stretch, but once you notice it, you can’t not see it). The connection has also been made that Jack is a centaur of sorts, guarding (and terrorizing) his labyrinth, with Wendy and Danny being his captives. This is one of the most curious changes to the story, for while it does not occur in the book, it still encompasses, in a way, the theme that Wendy and Danny are trapped in this remote place with Jack, and in the end he does hunt them for blood. Plus, the folklore of a centaur and his labyrinth is a mysterious concept all its own.

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I mentioned in the book review that I felt the novel is primarily Danny-centric, while the film is very Jack-centric. While Jack Nicholson played the part fantastically and is a fascinating enigma to watch in most any role, he really only captures the crazy side of Jack Torrance. This, I believe, is simply due to how Nicholson interpreted the character personally (or perhaps together with what Kubrick wanted Jack Torrance to be). They were making a scary movie after all, so Jack was going to act kinda crazy in the start and go downright ape-shit crazy by the end. This is only a bit of a shame because in the novel Jack is a very sympathetic character whom we are sad to see unravel. However entertaining (and often darkly humorous) his performance was in the film, he’s really just ‘the crazy guy.’

That said, I feel that this is one of the rare occasions where a great book and a great film can be accepted and appreciated as separate entities, with very little ‘loss’ from one being translated to the other. For all its differences from the novel, The Shining as a film stands on its own because of great dialogue, heavy foreboding for the duration of the film, gorgeous cinematography, and deep, suggestive undertones that can be interpreted endlessly.

Before I finish, three curiosities. First, The Shining was, in fact, not filmed at The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado. This is a popular misconception, especially among Colorado natives, and is probably rooted in the fact that the crappy, made-for-TV 1997 remake of The Shining was filmed at The Stanley. Kubrick’s film was shot primarily on a sound stage in Hertfordshire, England, and the exterior shots of the hotel are of Timberline Lodge in Mount Hood, Oregon. It is true that King stayed at The Stanley once in 1973, and it has been claimed that the hotel was his inspiration for The Overlook, though I’m not sure that has ever been confirmed by King himself.

Secondly, the window. Specifically, the window in Ullman’s office at the very start of the film, the first time we see Jack walk in to meet with Ullman about taking the job of hotel caretaker. If you watch the film, notice: in the layout of the hotel lobby, there is clearly a hallway geographically behind Ullman’s office. We even see this hallway in later shots, both when Danny is riding his Big-Wheel through the lobby, and again when Wendy is looking for Jack, running chicken-like and with knife in hand. In other words, Ullman’s office ought to be completely walled in, and yet when Jack enters, there is a large, bright, very prominent window directly behind the desk. Consider this: that scene was a pre-built sound stage, not a real hotel, so this inclusion of the ‘impossible’ window was particular and intentional. Most folks (I presume) would never even notice, even watching the film multiple times. What was Kubrick saying with this hidden clue? Perhaps he was hinting that things in this hotel are more than a little off-kilter…

Lastly, the final shot of Jack in the ballroom picture from 1921. Again, not in the book, but a beautiful close, suggesting (to me) that the hotel ‘absorbed’ Jack Torrance into itself, as it has probably done to many others before him. Kubrick ends this film with a puzzle, giving viewers something to discuss while walking out of the theatre, and an odd little itch to watch the thing again to maybe figure it out.

-D.G.

Inherent Vice - Thomas Pynchon

I had trouble staying with this one, and I can understand why the other reviews here are rather polarizing. I went into it not knowing much of anything other than that P.T. Anderson has adapted it into a film, and I wanted to read it before I saw the movie. I have also never read Pynchon before, and this may have been an odd book to start with as it is apparently outside of his usual style.

The plot was tricky to follow in the sense that it begins as a fairly straight-forward mystery, but things get complicated when character upon character are introduced and it's not immediately apparent if they are important to the story or merely colorful distractions. While things eventually tie together and you come to learn who is really connected to the plot and what details are important, there are also plenty of stories from various characters that are ultimately pointless other than that they represent the culture and attitude of the 1970's and are often funny in their absurdity. The book is funny, without a doubt, and has enough pop culture references to keep things interesting most of the time, but following the mystery can get muddled when Doc Sportello is frequently stopping to get high and there are long passages of drug-addled existential gibberish.

I can see the pure talent of the author in this book, and I do believe that technically it is a good piece of work, it just felt a little high-brow for me (somehow absurd humor and satire can also be too literary for its own good). While it started as a fun and very funny book, it ultimately became tedious and tangled. High-profile critics who raved about the book would probably just say I was too daft to understand it, and perhaps they're right.

That said, I'm fascinated to see the film for a couple of reasons: 1) I think it would be extremely difficult to adapt because of its meandering narrative, but apparently P.T. Anderson's script has Pynchon's personal approval, and 2) I have yet to see P.T. Anderson go awry. I believe he is an incredible talent who can tackle every genre he takes on, and is on his way to be the Kubrick of this generation. Also, the cast is exceptional. Really looking forward to this one in December.

-D.G.

On Writing Dark Fiction & Believing in Christ: A Flannery O'Connor-Inspired Rant

I’ve only just started reading Flannery O’Connor’s posthumous book of collected prose, Mystery and Manners, but I have to write this post because she said something that blew me away. In one paragraph (published more than 60 years ago), O’Connor has managed to sum up one of the strongest reasons I feel compelled to write fiction, and she articulated those feelings in a way I had never considered before.

The essay from which I’m drawing is called The Fiction Writer and His Country, and was originally published in 1957 as part of a collection of articles by authors talking about their craft. The quote is this:

“The novelist with Christian concerns will find in modern life distortions which are repugnant to him, and his problem will be to make these appear as distortions to an audience which is used to seeing them as natural; and he may well be forced to take ever more violent means to get his vision across to this hostile audience. When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax a little and use more normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock—to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures.”

I read that, said, “Holy shit,” aloud, then read it again, then read it a third time out loud to my wife. It was an epiphanic moment for me last night, sitting in my little mid-century green fake-leather chair and drinking a nice beer. I blocked out the entire paragraph with a bright red felt pen.

It may be mysterious to you just what I found so inspiring and helpful about this passage. In essence, it is this: the idea that one whose life has been redeemed by Christ has a more stark view of brokenness, sin, unhealth, and the state of the world as it actually is than does a non-Believer. Additionally, the idea that all of that brokenness and the hard, ugly, grotesque sides of life that a Believer sees are just ordinary things to an unsaved person. While this may not be universally accurate, I think that for the most part it is true, and is a fascinating concept to me.

O’Connor’s essay as a whole keeps coming back to the idea that fiction written by a Believer in Jesus ought to be more stark, more honest, and sometimes more shocking than it currently is (or was at her time) in order to get the author’s vision across to an audience that is jaded to the content. A Christian’s redemption unlocks a second-sight, so to speak, to recognize and understand just how fallen the world is, and that understanding can help them to reveal the true nature of things in an artistic presentation. These presentations—whether a novel, a painting, a song, a poem—are not always pretty or comfortable to look at, and just because they come from the mind of one redeemed doesn’t mean they need to force a barely-concealed Gospel message into the story. In the case of Flannery, I’d say that her examples were never pretty, not in the traditional sense. She presented her readers with extremely unpleasant people and situations, but always with purpose.

This concept could be taken to the opposite extreme (although this is not what O’Connor is saying in her essay) which is to suggest that all art created by Christians needs to be shocking enough to jolt a secular audience into attention, but I don’t hold to that, nor do I think it’s beneficial (or genuine) in most cases. Rather, how can we glorify the Creator by pointing out the very things that are most opposite of Him? How can we better understand grace by looking in the places where grace seems nowhere to be found? How can the darkest of the dark show us that His light shines more gloriously in comparison?

Art often tends to surface from out of our experiences—frequently painful ones—as well as from what we are surrounded by. Almost always, what we (humans, not only Believers) are surrounded by is brokenness of varying degrees, and stark imperfections in the world around us. We are often consumed by dissatisfaction and a nagging feeling of being incomplete, and sometimes creating something eases that discomfort ever so slightly. Being a Believer does not necessarily relieve the discord of being alive and being human; in fact, I believe that being ‘saved’ amplifies the great dissonance of life and reveals just how very much we need to be saved out of.

So let’s not take those thoughts and ideas and have a naval-gazing party where we sit and stew over what a mess the world is and do absolutely nothing about it. Let’s—and I’m preaching to myself, here—write really damn good books and good songs and good poems and paint incredible pictures and make great films. The world is damaged and dying, so let’s dig into that stuff and not shy away from it and show it for what it is, though not for the purpose of doom and gloom. Let’s make some flawed characters who go through real shit (the same as we do, by the way) and just maybe things don’t always work out so well for them, but one fact is almost universally true: they (and we) are longing for something.

I tend to think that it is in the darkest pits of despair and depravity where grace can show up unexpectedly, and violently. If the world was not incredibly wrought with disaster, then why would we ever have the need to be redeemed?

-D.G.

The Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammett

This may be a shallow thought of me to have had, but it's honest: when I picked up this book at a library sale (because the front cover was awesome and I love the artwork on old paperbacks), I figured I'd never read it because it was probably boring. I know, don't judge me too harshly yet. I have this strange (and incorrect) assumption sometimes that 'older' pieces of media or art are going to be less interesting to my 2014 brain; silent films, books written previous to 1940 or so, Shakespearean theatre, etc. This mindset probably comes from our hyped-up culture where things are constantly getting bigger, more intense, more immediate.

Well, I was wrong. Totally wrong.

Last week I picked this book up off my shelf and decided to give it a whirl, and within a chapter I knew I was hooked for several reasons. First of all, it's practically the story that all other hard-boiled American-crime detective novels and movies stem from, or at least one of the founding stories to that genre. Elements of The Maltese Falcon only seem familiar because we've seen them mimicked and copied in many forms and iterations. The opening scene is classic and just right: a woman in trouble walks into a ruddy detective's office for help. Secondly, aforementioned detective Sam Spade is a badass; a real man's-man, but not a male chauvinist. He's smarter than he looks on the outside, even-tempered, witty, and just reserved enough to keep people guessing.

Brigid O'Shaughnessy, the woman who comes to Spade's office in distress, is complex and frustrating in that she is constantly weaving new versions of her story to her own advantage, and you're often not sure how much of what leaves her lips is truth (although Sam calls her out on more than a few deceptions). She was fun and infuriating at the same time, using her snappy personality and good looks to sway the hearts of men (even Sam's, for a time).

For a book published in 1929, Falcon has an incredible amount of realism and tiny, specific details that add so much texture to the story and could only have come from an author with a constantly observant mind. I could never have a guessed a mystery novel from this era could be so literary, and so fun to read. While the plot gets complicated toward the last third, the writing is easy to follow and the story isn't so twisty that it leaves the reader in a tangled mess of uncertainty.

Dashiell Hammett is considered by some to be the pioneer of the detective story, and his work inspired a flood of such stories throughout the 1920's to 1940's. We'll just overlook that part about when he quit writing fiction to join the Communist Party, was blacklisted by the government, thrown in jail, etcetera.

Anyway, this read was sharp as a whip-crack, and so much fun. I am thankful that I have never seen the film with Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade, and am now anxious to see how it translates. Mystery fan or not, if you've got good taste in books, you'll find a lot here to appreciate; there's a reason it has remained in print for 85 years.

-D.G.

WOOL - Hugh Howey

Hugh Howey has an incredible ability to continue bringing surprises throughout his stories. This is one sign of a gifted writer, to be able to build up the action and keep you distracted, then whack you upside the head with something unexpected at the close of the act. I found this to be true of Wool over and over, which was delightful. It is a different sort of story than I have discovered in some time, full of clever new ideas while still giving obvious nods back to classic sci-fi themes.

Wool began it’s life as a what was intended to be no more than a stand-alone short story in 2011 (that story now serves as the first section of the novel). The premise is essentially this: the remaining survivors of the human race live in a massive, sealed-off silo that goes 144 stories deep into the ground. Some untold event wiped out the Earth’s ability to sustain life, thus all greenery is dead, the outside air is toxic, and the landscape is nothing but windswept dust and rock. The quality of life inside the silo is pleasant enough, considering, but to speak of the outside or express any desire to leave the silo is forbidden. Those who are overheard voicing such desires are sentenced to death by way of ‘cleaning;’ being put in a body-suit and sent outside the doors to be rapidly eaten alive by the poisonous environment.

Howey’s description of the silo and it’s inhabitants is bustling with life; he brings the reader into the realities of this world easily. The transition from the silo being a new concept to a familiar one is short. There are no elevators, so walking the spiral stairs from the top to the bottom takes days. Mechanical is down in the lowest levels, keeping water, power, and oxygen running throughout the facility. There is a hospital wing, several levels of gardens and greenery, a supply manufacturing area, a cafeteria, and classrooms. While there is a Mayor and Sheriff keeping order in the silo, it is clear from early on that the reclusive and heavily-guarded IT department is really who runs the show.

The main character is Jules, a rough-on-the-outside but extremely clever mid-thirties woman who works in Mechanical. Through a set of unlikely circumstances, she is promoted to Sheriff. This does not go over well with IT, and crap hits the fan pretty fast after that.

The story begins rather small in scope but expands continuously as mysteries are revealed and the various levels of the silo are fleshed out. There is a constant uneasiness throughout the book; an unsettling consensus among the silo-dwellers that something is not quite right about the way they are made to live. Questions are asked as to whether the people are being kept in fear of the outside for reasons more extreme than are true.

I mentioned the story being surprising, and I think the above reasons are what make it so. The author familiarizes the reader with one set of rules and circumstances for a while, then breaks through those with the realization that all is not as it seems. The premise is supremely interesting and reminds me of older, simpler sci-fi tales from another time. His characters are unique and sympathetic, and the situations they find themselves in make for some complex emotional decisions.

To mention but one negative quality: I believe the book could have used some further editing cuts. There were moments that definitely seemed to drag and were drawn out a little longer than they needed to be. While the story as a whole is captivating, certain passages slowed it down. I think it could have been a stellar, perfectly-paced novel if about forty pages of dross were removed.

That said, I did keep reading, after all, so this was only a minor complaint.

In all, with Wool Howey has been able to craft a unique and almost instantly likeable story that somehow can be heard distinguishably over the loud waves of post-apocalyptic fiction flooding the current market with clichés. With two more books to go in the Silo Trilogy, it will be interesting to see where he takes the story from here.

-D.G.

Spooklights: An Anthology of Literary Horror and Supernatural Fiction (featuring a new story by yours truly)

If you're an avid reader, you've probably come across some fiction anthologies before. Some of these are pretty good, though many of them are downright awful. 19 Spooky Tales OF TERROR, compiled by Bob Schwinkendorf, Editor of... THE DEAD, or Zombies! Somehow We Found EVEN MORE Stories About Them! or some such thing. The cover artwork frequently looks like a high school student's first Photoshop project, and things get even worse when you crack the book open. Copy errors left and right, poor formatting, and writing so bad it induces nausea.

That's not the case here.

Oh sure, I'm biased because I have the privilege of my story Hitching Post leading the collection—a curious little oddity of which I'm quite proud—but I really believe in the rest of these stories too. I had the honor of being a part of the selection and editing process for Spooklights. Jonathan Raab, Colin Scharf, and myself pored over a heaping pile of submissions, separated the wheat from the chaff, then worked with the authors to polish up the stories. What we ended up with is, I think, a very solid collection of some genuinely creepy stuff from a handful of talented writers.

It's $1.99 for the Kindle eBook on Amazon, and for that reasonable price you'll get nine tales of quality horror with a literary bent. Please consider supporting these authors and enjoying some great new fiction! Soon to be available on iBooks and the Nook store, as well as in print later this month.

To persuade thee further, here is an excerpt from my brand new story, Hitching Post, that appears in the collection:

Angus Root strolled through the ranch at an easy, lumbering pace, and Mitchell and Stacy followed a few steps behind. Though it was quite warm, Stacy hugged her arms and wore a constant smile that wanted to insist that this destination she had chosen for them was just right, even if she was no longer sure.

            “I notice your horse corral is a little on the empty side there, Angus,” Mitchell remarked as they passed it.

            Angus whirled and blinked at Mitchell, confused. Mitchell nodded to the fenced-in area overgrown with weeds.

            “Oh, that’s not a horse corral,” Angus said, “it’s something else made up to look like a bunch of weeds. I wouldn’t recommend you cross over that fence either, no-o-o sir.”

            “Oh, right right, of course. How silly of me,” Mitchell joked, and winked at Stacy.

            Angus kept walking, then suddenly threw his head back and guffawed. “Hoo, horses! What a thought. No, we couldn’t keep horses here. Cats maybe, but good heavens, not horses. At least, if we did, they sure wouldn’t stay horses for long, I can tell you that.”

            Mitchell looked over his shoulder and gave Stacy a big, crazy grin. He was enjoying the old man’s quirkiness more and more. Stacy wore a look of pity, or concern.

            “Maybe he’s just a little senile,” Stacy whispered to Mitchell.

            “Maybe he’s just a little hilarious!” Mitchell whispered back.

            “Horses… imagine that,” Angus chuckled.

To find out what happens next—things get a whole lot stranger from there, believe me—go grab Spooklights for just $1.99. Thanks guys!

-D.G.

The Son - Philipp Meyer

It is difficult to summarize this book, for its scope and breadth are massive. It has been described a 'sweeping American epic,' and that it is. The Son covers more than a hundred years of Texan and American West history, as well as four generations of the tragic McCullough family.

The narrative cycles between three primary characters: Eli McCullough (later known as The Colonel, though it is only a nickname; he holds no military rank), whose story begins in the 1850's when his family is killed by Comanche Indians and he is taken captive, Peter McCullough, Eli's somewhat pathetic and endlessly cynical son who is struggling for his father's approval and to manage the family business in 1917, and Jeannie McCullough, the great-granddaughter of Eli and owner of the now multimillion dollar McCullough oil business from the 1950's to present day.

The bulk of the book is taken up by Eli's story, and primarily his time with the Comanches from ages thirteen to sixteen. This section is fascinating, tragic, horrifying, and ultimately beautiful in a way that I believe most readers will find unfamiliar because of the time period in which it is set. The passages describing the lives of the Indians are vibrant; lengthy paragraphs explain in great detail their ways of life, such as hunting, tracking, skinning and preparing animals for food and supply—they wasted no part of the carcass, everything could be used for something—making tools or weapons, grooming for battle, and the inner-workings and respect system of their tribe. Meyer clearly went to great lengths to research these practices and describe them accurately, and the narrative is all the more rich for it. The descriptions of food throughout the book are incredibly succulent and mouth-watering, which is weird to say when the meals being described (the brains and marrow of a buffalo, squirrel meat, deer stomach, etc.) are not exactly delicacies of our day.

There is a strange and sad parallel between the boy Eli the reader comes to know (and love, and sympathize with) and The Colonel, a disgruntled old man, spoken about by his family in later chapters. The Colonel is considered to be stoic and hard and unreasonable, concerned only with money, oil, and expanding his empire. However, knowing his back story explains his behavior as an older man, and the reader cannot help but feel sorry for the things he has lost and the changes he has seen his country undergo.

Peter is, as mentioned, constantly striving for his father's respect and always seems to come up short. He considers himself untalented and the least favorite of his father's three sons; a disappointment, not business-minded, and a 'soft' man, unfamiliar with the rough ways of life on the frontier. I found him to be a complex character, as there are times when I was irritated with him and thought his sections were nothing but complaint and whiny talk, yet I grew to feel sympathy for him and realized that he, too, was just another sad character.

Jeannie's sections are full of conflict and uncertainty. Her story spans from her self-conscious teenage years—during which she furiously second-guesses her every thought and desperately wants to be perceived as pretty—to her elderly decline as an extremely wealthy, powerful woman with estranged children who is just as unsure of herself as she was as a child. Jeannie's story is perhaps the most heartbreaking of the three characters, mostly because her every thought is agonizing and uncertain, and she feels like such a real character; an authentic person. Also, Meyer's ability to write in a woman's voice is—to my eyes—quite good.

There are glad moments, as well as humor, but this book is defined by a dark, heavy cloud that hangs over every circumstance. Each characters' wants, needs, and desires are clearly laid out, yet they often go unsatisfied; The Son is a work of great dissonance. But it also contains careful observation and appreciation, both for the human heart and the rich landscape of the West. To call it ambitious is an understatement. It is at once lovely and sad.

The ending left me feeling not devastated, nor overjoyed, but in a way: just right. It ends how it ought to end; it ends like real life. Philipp Meyer has done something incredible with this novel, and there are so many still, small moments within it to appreciate. If you decide to take the journey with the McCullough family, I believe you will feel, like me, better for having done so.

-D.G.

Album Review: "Deleo Creo" by Stemson

Last week, a dear friend released his first solo album: Deleo Creo by the artist Stemson. Th0ere are a couple of things that make this release particularly special. The album was the maiden project for a larger experiment called 'Thirty Day Guy;' in which the creator, Stefan Tomlinson, will attempt to do something completely new to him every month, either doing the same thing for thirty days straight or focusing on completing one thing from start to finish within that time. Thus, Deleo Creo was born. Stefan wrote the lyrics and compositions, recorded the music, mixed, mastered, and released the album in the span of thirty days, and I must say: the results are impressive.

Deleo Creo is a diverse collection of songs, spanning from upbeat and sarcastic to honest and downtrodden, reaching even into heartfelt and passionately angry. Stemson's wide background of influences are on display, as the album covers a lot of ground in terms of genre. To name a few (and these are not necessarily his influences, but merely who the songs reminded me of), I found there to be hints of Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, The Postal Service, Listener, mewithoutYou, A$AP Rocky, Relient K, and Sufjan Stevens, among others. There is also a slew of talented guest appearances; the who's-who of Albuquerque's local music scene.

What makes the piece so impressive is that it does not feel rushed, though it was almost surely a down-to-the-wire sort of project. The cover art is great, the production is quite good, the lyrics are strong, and several of the melodies are genuinely catchy in a won't-get-out-of-your-head sort of way (the first three tracks in particular). While the songs stand stronger as individual pieces than lending to a consistent whole, this does not discount the album's worth overall. My favorites were Kindle, The Doctor, The Cherry Pit, Hammer-Fetter-Hearts, and Frames and Plaster. 

The best part? Stemson has put up the album for free (or Pay-What-You-Want, and may I highly recommend generosity?). So go grab the album, then follow @30DayGuy on Twitter and on YouTube to keep up with the experiment. He's already delivered on month number one, so I'm excited to see what he can accomplish from here on (and hopefully there will be more albums coming down the line).

-D.G.

The Trouble with Seeing Clearly: Concerning the Novel I wrote that may end up in a drawer.

Two years ago, I started writing a novel for an idea that I had come up with more than five years earlier. The original idea was simple, just an image that had popped into my head in early college (circa 2007-08): a talking-dog character who wore glasses and would ride around on trains talking with people. These conversations would be, per my younger-self's idea, about God, life, art, culture, etc., and the book would be a kind of montage piece full of curiosities and thought-provoking themes along the lines of Richard Linklater's film Waking Life (because that's the sort of thing I was into at the time).

The idea laid dormant in my brain for quite some time, because 1. I wasn't exclusively interested in writing at the time. I was in a crappy film school program and wanted to be a director or a musician someday, and 2. All I really had was an image and a loose, loose idea for something. There was no background, no real premise, and thus, no story. Still, the thought stuck with me and was something I wanted to flesh out in some form or another.

A couple of years passed (meanwhile my tastes changed and I started being inspired by things other than films that made me weep with their MIGHTY ARTISTIC DEPTH AND GREATNESS), and I recognized that the 'montage of conversations' wasn't a very good idea; it was too high-brow, too snooty, and honestly kind of a lazy way to tell a story. Yet still, I liked the idea of this dog-character and wanted to do something with him eventually.

In early 2012, the idea came back around and I felt I had figured out a good path for it to take. At the time that I decided to start writing instead of doing music or film (it took me a long time to realize that writing fiction was what I had always wanted to do) I was very determined about the manner in which I would go about it. My plan was to first write two long-ish short stories 'for practice' (which sounds so silly to me now, but it's what I really thought), then I would write the novel about this dog with the glasses. Those two shorts became Michigan, Ten Cents and Clara's Quilt which I self-published, and shy of a few issues I am still quite proud of how they came out.

In October 2012, I began writing the novel under the (horrific) working-title of Ralph, Who Rides Trains; I didn't share that title with many people, because I was constantly trying to come up with something that didn't sound like a sketch on Sesame Street.

The story had evolved considerably over the years. It is told in the first-person by Ralph, a White Labrador mix, who can talk but is terrified of doing so for fear of being exploited by humans. The only person who knows his secret is a three year old girl named Nancy, the youngest of three children in the family that cares for Ralph. Ralph loves reading books, watching movies, and is generally fascinated with human art and culture. However, he has bad eyes that are growing increasingly worse, yet he cannot communicate this to his family (and he isn’t sure that eye appointments for dogs are a real thing anyway). His eyes get so bad that he ventures out from home alone into the city to search for glasses (digging through dumpsters behind eyeglass stores and optometrists' offices is all he can think to do at first) and winds up meeting Clarence, a homeless ex-priest of the Catholic church with a warm heart and a rough history. They become friends and end up searching the city together and having many life-and-God-pondering conversations.

I had intended the book to be a mixture of 'coming-of-age' (though I loathe that term), literary, humorous, thoughtful, appreciative of some very specific nooks of literature and media, and ultimately redemptive and glad; a straight-forward story with ups and downs and characters who undergo change. I wanted to make something modern, artsy, and heartfelt like the books that had inspired me, such as Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, Then We Came to the End, The Art of Racing in the Rain, The Grapes of Wrath, the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, etc. Ralph is a very thoughtful dog, but also insecure and unsure of himself. He’s curious as to why he can talk when no other dogs can. He has questions about whether he has a soul. Also, I went into it knowing there have already been a billion books written about talking dogs, and I tried desperately to make mine unique and different and good.

I finished the first draft in October 2013; it had taken me exactly a year to get about 85,000 words. I took a break where I didn't look at it for two months and worked on other things, then started fresh into draft two in January 2014. I had settled on the title The Trouble with Seeing Clearly, which I liked for its literary-sounding quality and how it worked on several levels. I had thought re-edits would be swift, but my daughter was born in the middle of them and I didn't get through the second draft until June 2014—I wasn't just slashing sentences here, either; this was a significant re-write.

After finishing the second draft, I let it sit again for a couple of weeks, then revisited the opening chapters… and was devastated. The book seemed childish to me, and like it was trying too hard; too gushy and corny and cloying. I had felt a certain confidence with my previous two stories that was utterly vacant with this one. Ralph’s character at the beginning didn’t seem to be the same dog as the one at the end. I had grown as a writer—I hope—even over the course of a couple of months, and my earlier structural errors mocked me from the pages. The story as a whole seemed stupid and tired and overdone, and to present it to any intelligent reading adult would be an invitation to be laughed at in the face.

In essence, I realized I had just spent two years writing a shitty book.

Okay sure, but that’s only two drafts; why not just do a third? Even great authors have taken ten years or more to perfect a novel, and even then they probably feel like piddling with it. I would do a third pass, but at this point the thought of looking at the manuscript again nauseates me. What if I got through a third draft and changed my mind about the book’s direction in that span of time? The process of re-writes could become an endless loop. I am weary of this book, I don’t care about the story like I once did, it seems outdated and amateur and not worthy of the current audience of our world. And yet, for some reason I spent all this time on it! Something in there must matter to me.

This post is not a plea for a pity-party; truly, it isn’t. I don’t mean to sound whiny or be self-serving in drawing attention to myself. It’s kind of a: ‘well, damn it,’ sort of post. I feel like I have wasted my time (which is a discouraging, sick-to-my-stomach feeling), and I’m so tired of looking at this novel that I’m not sure if I have a clear, objective view of it anymore.

Here’s the way my brain works: What if I tuck this book in a drawer and clean my hands of it, and start fresh on a new idea that I’m really excited about right now. Say that new book takes two years to write, and by the time I’m done with it, I’m so embarrassed of it that I can’t bear to show it to anyone, and then it just becomes a drawer-novel too. Is this just how writing works?

I’m still trying to figure out the answer to that question. I know that I will continue to write, and hopefully I will continue to get better at the craft. I know that I will write other novels and short stories and be proud of them. But as a first-time novelist, I’m just struggling with this particular one. I do believe there are reasons that this story is so important to me, they just may be the reasons of an earlier version of me that the current-me finds somewhat… juvenile.

Yesterday, I realized that I needed to get over myself and over my fear, so I sent out the second draft to a handful of family and friends to get their reactions (which felt incredibly vulnerable). Maybe they’ll come back and tell me that, yes, I’m right, this book is crap and I should probably move on to something else. Or maybe they’ll have some helpful words that will reveal the book's weaknesses and I’ll get re-inspired to mold it into better shape. Or maybe writing this book—and failing at it, or so it feels—will have been good practice for future books to come.

-D.G.

Mr. Mercedes - Stephen King

This plays out like a well-crafted episode of Columbo, where the viewer (or reader, in this case) knows who the badguy is from the beginning, and the fun of the story is in getting to see the detective sniff him out.

The head sleuth in this instance is retired Detective Kermit William Hodges (or just Bill), who, when we meet him, is bored, slightly depressed, and spends his days watching crummy TV and contemplating suicide. He is jerked out of the dullness of retirement when a taunting letter from a previous un-captured perpetrator arrives in the mail.

Brady Hartsfield (Mr. Mercedes himself [that's not a spoiler, we know it's him very early on]) is one of the most sinister, WTF-is-wrong-with-this-guy villains King has conjured up yet. Brady is only mildly pitiable, and yet, watching his character unfold is fascinating. Also, his relationship with his mother makes ones' skin crawl. King has taken what might have been an overused horror trope—a creepy, murderous psychopath who is also an ice cream man—and makes it work. Brady is clever, but insane; able to keep a happy, upbeat outer appearance, but underneath is boiling and furious at the world.

This is a satisfyingly complex story, largely because of Bill Hodges' choice to go around the law and operate on his own (illegally, as he is no longer officially able to do police work). There is another element of an aging man trying to figure out a young man's world; Hodges is used to the old way of doing things, and criminals have become more technologically advanced than he can keep up with. For this, he recruits the unofficial help of Jerome, a sharp-witted African-American high-schooler in the neighborhood. Their working partnership is an unique one, frequently humorous, and gels together all the better for its unlikely quality.

Mr. Mercedes has no supernatural elements whatsoever, but it is no less chilling in certain parts—these regarding Brady and his psychotic musings. In recent years, King has somewhat moved away from supernatural or horror elements (as least those as the central focus) and started simply telling stories about people, even if the story does involve some bit or piece of the fantastic. Under the Dome, 11/22/63, and Full Dark, No Stars, for example, were all more-so stories about people and characters than they were about the scary things at the edges. The best part about King's writing (and probably the reason he has such an enormous audience of readers) almost always seems to be the real, relatable characters he creates and their interactions with one another that feel so frequently genuine.

This is a smart, snappy little read, and one that I think might be even more accessible than usual for a first-time King reader. Chances are, most folks who pick this one up have read King before, but if you haven't, it's not a bad place to start. His craft is as sharp as ever.

-D.G.

Claymation, Stop-Motion, & The Master of Claysploitation: Lee Hardcastle

I have been a fan of stop-motion animation for as long as I can remember. The magical quality of inanimate objects coming to life—sometimes smoothly, sometimes with an endearing imperfection—continues to fascinate me. I have always been amazed at just how much time, work, and dedication goes into stop-motion animation; it has to be one of the slowest animation mediums, but also has the potential for huge, satisfying payoffs.

I believe my earliest encounter with it was the intermittent Claymation bits on Sesame Street (most of these created by Claymation pioneer/legend Will Vinton), such as the catchy tune “Lucille” which featured a shape-changing orange ball with bright red lips.

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Lucille

Not long after, I discovered the thirty-minute television special The California Raisins: Meet the Raisins!, as well as Will Vinton’s Claymation Christmas, both of which I recorded from TV onto a VHS tape the soonest chance I got (these were both on frequent rotation on The Disney Channel, as I recall). I didn’t see the second California Raisins special (or even realize it existed) until two years ago when I purchased both on a combo DVD (which also included the 13-episode season of the California Raisins traditionally-animated show, which is decent, but only if you’ve had a lot to drink). Unfortunately, The Raisins Sell Out! is nowhere near as clever as the first special; the jokes are juvenile and the animation feels slapped together. Will Vinton’s work since then has been hit or miss as far as stories go (The Adventures of Mark Twain has its moments but is largely hard to sit through), but his style and the quality of his animation are second to none.

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My love for Claymation continued with the discovery of Wallace and Gromit (the first three shorts, primarily), The Nightmare Before Christmas (a film my mother was strongly opposed to), James and the Giant Peach (which is stop-motion blended with CGI), the horribly-creepy-how-can-they-call-this-a-children’s-movie Return to OZ (the Nome King sequence is damn impressive), and the obligatory Rankin Bass productions (Rudolph, Santa Clause is Comin’ to Town, and the delightfully trippy Rudolph’s Shiny New Year).

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The Nome King from Return to OZ

As a ten- or eleven-year-old with conservative parents, I would secretly tape episodes of Celebrity Deathmatch from TV and watch them at night in my room; I found these equally fascinating and gross.

Several years ago, I Google-hunted for every stop-motion feature or short film that I could find, many of which were from foreign directors and obscure, and I gobbled up every one of them that I could get ahold of. Some of the more notable ones were Blood Tea & Red String (a bizarre feature-length with creepy rats and no dialogue. It took the director, Christiane Cegavske, thirteen years to complete, and she did all the animation herself), The Book of the Dead (which is impressive but not altogether interesting), Mary & Max (a sweet and humorous comedy from New Zealand), $9.99, and Jan Švankmajer’s Alice (a mixed live-action/animated surrealist take on Alice in Wonderland). More recently, I very much enjoyed Wes Anderson’s The Fantastic Mr. Fox, a film I watch at least once a year.

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Blood Tea & Red String

Earlier this year, I was going down some YouTube rabbit-hole or another (probably the ten best villain deaths, the best one-liners from Schwarzenegger, or something equally as absurd) when I happened upon a video called Claycat’s Evil Dead II; a two-minute Claymation film with crudely-modeled cats acting out Sam Raimi’s film in rapid time. I was mesmerized, and immediately went to the creator’s page—Mr. Lee Hardcastle, a twenty-nine year old writer, director, and animator from the UK—subscribed to his videos, then watched another handful of his films (by this point I’ve watched them all, most more than once).

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Claycat's Evil Dead II

Lee Hardcastle began doing Claymation full time in 2010 after online success with his video The Evil Dead in 60 Seconds with Clay. In 2011, he sold all his belongings to support an unpaid career in creating short films, some of which screened at Cannes Film Festival. His short T is for Toilet won a spot in the feature film The ABC’s of Death, and the sequel, Ghost Burger, is Lee’s longest film to date at 22 minutes (currently available for HD download at Vimeo OnDemand. I highly recommend). He has gone on to work with Momentum Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Adult Swim, E4, as well as the bands Kill the Noise (for which he won MTV’s Video of the Year), Portugal. The Man, and Sufjan Stevens. His fan-film Claycat’s The Raid was included on the DVD release of the actual film.

Lee has managed to blend the gore, humor, and over-the-top element of 1980’s horror and exploitation films with the vibrant medium of clay animation. It’s a strange sensation, seeing a figure have his eyes forced out and his face crumpled inward, or a man vomiting his innards onto a birthday cake—the most violent, bloody things imaginable, basically—and not feeling too sick to your stomach about it because, after all, it’s just clay. Lee’s early videos are good, but he has clearly continued to hone his craft over time, and his most recent films are masterful. The handmade quality is still apparent, but there is nothing lo-fi about his work. In addition to his skillful hands—Lee animates all of the films himself—he is also a talented storyteller (again, Ghost Burger).

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Ghost Burger

In early 2014, Lee created a mock-trailer and launched a Kickstarter campaign to help fund his full-length, 3D feature film, Spook Train. The trailer itself is gorgeous, and makes one giddy with excitement to see the full film; it is a colorful and terrifying teaser in all the right ways. But alas, the campaign was unsuccessful. Lee explained that a film as ambitious as Spook Train would take him at least two years to complete, and he would need enough funds to live off of during that time, not to mention the many production and distribution costs. Lee’s YouTube page has 136,414 subscribers (as of July 3, 2014), and some of his videos have gone into the millions of views, so one would think that he could easily reach the £40,000 needed to fund the film (he ended up reaching a little over £12,000). I guess his subscribers aren’t so loyal after all.

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It’s up in the air as to whether Spook Train will ever get made, but in the meantime you can subscribe to the Spook Train Newsletter for updates.

So why all the info about Lee? Because he’s a damn genius (I would say he’s a f*cking genius but someone might get upset), and you need to absorb his entire YouTube channel into your eyeballs. Lee Hardcastle has created a genre all his own, and his work deserves to be seen and appreciated by even more people. This isn’t some gimmicky YouTube user who posts funny but pointless talking-head features of themselves complaining about celebrities or showing girls how to utilize their make-up and somehow gaining thousands of subscribers; this is one hard-working dude with some serious talent and dedication. His claymations are darkly humorous, unbelievably violent, and completely brilliant.

Oh yes, and they’re not for children.

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My personal favorites are:

-Spook Train Trailer

-An Alien Claymation

-Claycat’s Evil Dead II

-Claycat’s The Thing

-T is for Toilet

-Ghost Burger

-Quentin Tarantino’s Ghostbusters 3

Now go watch some stop-motion.

-D.G.