Miles Watson's Blog: ANTAGONY: BECAUSE EVERYONE IS ENTITLED TO MY OPINION , page 3
January 13, 2025
EXILES IS A DIGITAL BOOK TODAY AWARD WINNER
If you follow me here on Antagony (yes -- I changed the name of the blog again, so as not to confuse it with Stone Cold Prose, my YouTube channel), you know that there are some books I've written which are more commercial in nature, and others which lay nearer and dearer to my heart, which are written not with the objective of popularity or profit but simply because I wanted and needed to write them. An example of a "commercial" book, or books, would be my CAGE LIFE series. I'm sentimentally attached to these novels, and I strive to write them at a very high level from a stylistic point of view, tapping into my own emotional history to provide authenticity to the characters and situations. No, I'm not a professional fighter with a mobbed-up background and a penchant for self-destruction,* but the series is an accurate analogy-cum-allegory for my life, or at least for my life when I originally wrote the books. So in one sense, they too are dear to me; but writing them, including the third one in the series which I'm drafting now, is largely a mechanical exercise. They are crafted from the point of view of an author who is trying to write something entertaining, fast-paced and immersive, with some insights into the nature of struggle and redemption, but in the end they are commercial art, with the emphasis firmly on "commercial." They don't pretend to be Tolstoy or St. Exupery or Dostoevsky. More like Silva or Parker or Sanders with liberal doses of Hemingway. They're meant to be read at the surface level of entertainment, and if people discover they have depth, terrific; if they don't, well, non è un grosso problema.
All of this is a roundabout way of saying that some of my books are much less commercial and much more "art," at least within my own mind. I hope they sell, I hope people read them, and the more the better, but even if nobody read them I'd still write them, because they mean something to me. They are, in essence, the distilate of a lifetime of reading and observation and thought-experiment. My CHRONICLES OF MAGNUS series falls firmly in this category, so permit me a little exposition here.
In 2021, I published DEUS EX, a novella about the downfall of a European dictator named Magnus Antonius Magnus. In this imagined world, Magnus had come to power by overthrowing The Order, a faceless bureaucracy which suffocated its subjects with red tape, restricted technology, waged pointless wars, and permitted every form of depravity that did not threaten its own power. At his height, he ruled a quarter of the Earth's surface and was worshiped as a god. The novella, however, introduces him to us at the moment of his undoing, when his empire is in the final stage of collapse and he decides to escape his fate while simultaneously testing the reality of his own godhood. I wrote DEUS EX as a standalone work, meant to study the psychology of absolute power and the corrosive effect it has not only on those who wield it, but the world around it. However, in creating a backstory for Magnus' ruin, I had to understand his rise; I had to create, if only in my own mind, the world that he had toppled in order to seize power. Eventually I came to realize this world was too fertile a soil to leave untilled, and that propelled me to write a sequel-cum-prequel, EXILES.
EXILES: A TALE FROM THE CHRONICLES OF MAGNUS is set decades before DEUS EX. Unlike DEUS, it is not told from Magnus' perspective, but from the vantages of Marguerite Bain, a ruthless smuggler for a "licensed" criminal organization known as The Brotherhood, and Enitan Champoleon, a luckless orphan who deserted the Army of the Order to pursue the life of a tramp. Through this unlikely pairing, we encounter Magnus as he begins his transition from a mysterious mercenary working out of North Africa, to a European revolutionary bent on absolute power. It is not meant as a "full reveal" of the shadowy and enigmatic Magnus, but rather as a partial exploration of his methods and motives, as well as a rather lavish depiction of life under The Order. We see a world in which red tape, backed up by a selective use of brute force and harsh restrictions on technology, rule over 300 million people. A world so thoroughly controlled by social engineers and social psychologists that even its political opposition -- foreign and domestic, works in its favor. A world which can offer neither a past nor a future but only an endless now spent working, gambling, drinking, whoring and seeking out other forms of mind-deadening entertainment.
EXILES is, for me, the result of a lifetime of reading George Orwell and Frank Herbert, as well as a fortunate exposure to I, CLAUDIUS and the works of Gerard K. O'Neill, and an even-more-fortunate obsession with the power of lies. I have never had an easier time writing a book, in large part because most of the story elements had been occupying space in my brain for decades. It seemed to pour out of my fingertips onto the page, and required very little correction in the drafting and editing processes. Moments like this are, for a writer, as rare as total eclipses of the sun, and are to be cherished, which is one of the reasons I am so fond of this story. Of course, EXILES does not come close to telling the whole story of Magnus, but it does expand the universe enormously and begin to map out his terrifying outlook upon himself, which can be summed up in one sentence: "History will not happen to me...I will happen to history."
On a more personal note, EXILES is also the study of outcasts from society, people who are "in but not of." Magnus, Bain and Champoleon are all people exiled from the common stream of humanity, albeit for very different reasons. They are also refugees, in a figurative sense, from the society in which they were born and live, people who cannot or will not "fit in." Each gropes toward a solution which will satify their desires, and each faces enormous, perhaps insurmountable obstacles to doing so.
This is the part where I now tell you that EXILES was a Reader's Favorite "5 Stars" pick in 2024, and now in 2025 I have been informed it took 3rd place/bronze in the Digital Book Today Awards "Literary" category. At this point in my writing career, writing awards no longer quicken my pulse -- this sounds shameless but it's true -- however, in this case I confess to some blushes here. Because EXILES is so intensely personal, because it is the sort of book that could never be written without a thousand different influences weaving together over decades to form its story, anything good that happens to it at all is cause for celebration. I hope you will join me in that celebration by giving it a read.
Exiles: A Tale from the Chronicles of Magnus
[* the penchant for self-destruction is probably accurate.]
All of this is a roundabout way of saying that some of my books are much less commercial and much more "art," at least within my own mind. I hope they sell, I hope people read them, and the more the better, but even if nobody read them I'd still write them, because they mean something to me. They are, in essence, the distilate of a lifetime of reading and observation and thought-experiment. My CHRONICLES OF MAGNUS series falls firmly in this category, so permit me a little exposition here.
In 2021, I published DEUS EX, a novella about the downfall of a European dictator named Magnus Antonius Magnus. In this imagined world, Magnus had come to power by overthrowing The Order, a faceless bureaucracy which suffocated its subjects with red tape, restricted technology, waged pointless wars, and permitted every form of depravity that did not threaten its own power. At his height, he ruled a quarter of the Earth's surface and was worshiped as a god. The novella, however, introduces him to us at the moment of his undoing, when his empire is in the final stage of collapse and he decides to escape his fate while simultaneously testing the reality of his own godhood. I wrote DEUS EX as a standalone work, meant to study the psychology of absolute power and the corrosive effect it has not only on those who wield it, but the world around it. However, in creating a backstory for Magnus' ruin, I had to understand his rise; I had to create, if only in my own mind, the world that he had toppled in order to seize power. Eventually I came to realize this world was too fertile a soil to leave untilled, and that propelled me to write a sequel-cum-prequel, EXILES.
EXILES: A TALE FROM THE CHRONICLES OF MAGNUS is set decades before DEUS EX. Unlike DEUS, it is not told from Magnus' perspective, but from the vantages of Marguerite Bain, a ruthless smuggler for a "licensed" criminal organization known as The Brotherhood, and Enitan Champoleon, a luckless orphan who deserted the Army of the Order to pursue the life of a tramp. Through this unlikely pairing, we encounter Magnus as he begins his transition from a mysterious mercenary working out of North Africa, to a European revolutionary bent on absolute power. It is not meant as a "full reveal" of the shadowy and enigmatic Magnus, but rather as a partial exploration of his methods and motives, as well as a rather lavish depiction of life under The Order. We see a world in which red tape, backed up by a selective use of brute force and harsh restrictions on technology, rule over 300 million people. A world so thoroughly controlled by social engineers and social psychologists that even its political opposition -- foreign and domestic, works in its favor. A world which can offer neither a past nor a future but only an endless now spent working, gambling, drinking, whoring and seeking out other forms of mind-deadening entertainment.
EXILES is, for me, the result of a lifetime of reading George Orwell and Frank Herbert, as well as a fortunate exposure to I, CLAUDIUS and the works of Gerard K. O'Neill, and an even-more-fortunate obsession with the power of lies. I have never had an easier time writing a book, in large part because most of the story elements had been occupying space in my brain for decades. It seemed to pour out of my fingertips onto the page, and required very little correction in the drafting and editing processes. Moments like this are, for a writer, as rare as total eclipses of the sun, and are to be cherished, which is one of the reasons I am so fond of this story. Of course, EXILES does not come close to telling the whole story of Magnus, but it does expand the universe enormously and begin to map out his terrifying outlook upon himself, which can be summed up in one sentence: "History will not happen to me...I will happen to history."
On a more personal note, EXILES is also the study of outcasts from society, people who are "in but not of." Magnus, Bain and Champoleon are all people exiled from the common stream of humanity, albeit for very different reasons. They are also refugees, in a figurative sense, from the society in which they were born and live, people who cannot or will not "fit in." Each gropes toward a solution which will satify their desires, and each faces enormous, perhaps insurmountable obstacles to doing so.
This is the part where I now tell you that EXILES was a Reader's Favorite "5 Stars" pick in 2024, and now in 2025 I have been informed it took 3rd place/bronze in the Digital Book Today Awards "Literary" category. At this point in my writing career, writing awards no longer quicken my pulse -- this sounds shameless but it's true -- however, in this case I confess to some blushes here. Because EXILES is so intensely personal, because it is the sort of book that could never be written without a thousand different influences weaving together over decades to form its story, anything good that happens to it at all is cause for celebration. I hope you will join me in that celebration by giving it a read.
Exiles: A Tale from the Chronicles of Magnus
[* the penchant for self-destruction is probably accurate.]
January 1, 2025
SINNER'S CROSS WINS AGAIN
I think we all need some good news today -- I know I did -- so it was a great personal relief to begin 2025 by getting notice that SINNER'S CROSS, my most decorated novel, now has a new decoration. Last year the book was given a "5 Star Award" by the Historical Fiction Company. Well, today, as I was driving back from my daily hike, I received notice that it had also taken the Silver Medal in the Hemingway War Fiction category for 2024. Maybe it's because I'm a fan of Hemingway, but I find this especially satisfying. Along with this, here is the list of awards this book has won since it was released in 2020:
Best Indie Book Award
Book Excellence Award
Literary Titan Gold Medal
Readers Favorite Gold Medal
Readers Favorite "5 Stars"
Historical Fiction Company "5 Star Award"
International Author Network Award Finalist
For those unfamiliar with SINNER'S CROSS, it's the inaugural novel in a WW2 series which also includes the award-winning VERY DEAD OF WINTER, and should see its third installment, SOUTH OF HELL, appear sometime late in 2025 or early 2026. In writing this series I created a simple architecture for storytelling which I have clung to religiously from the very first word:
1. All the novels are set during events which are less well-known to the public than, say, the Normandy Campaign or the Battle of Bastogne -- the Battle of the Huertgen Forest, the Battle of the Snow Eifel, the Alsace Campaign, and so on. This is in large part an effort to shed a bit of light on sadly and sometimes deliberately neglected corners of history. However, they are not history lessons. I never hesitate to compress, conflate, composite, or "synthesize" events for the sake of the narrative.
2. All the novels are told from multiple viewpoints, which include the Germans, and all the characters are protagonists and antagonists both. There are no "good guys" or "bad guys" per se. One common remark readers make about these novels is, "During the German chapters, I found myself rooting for the Germans." I am always pleased by this because that is not an easy task when dealing with American audiences (Europeans find it easier). But you should take note that the larger issues of the war are simply taken for granted.
3. The novels are about people, about human beings, not technology or place-names or strategy. They are a study of human beings under immense, unrelenting pressure. Though I have taken enormous pains to get all the little details right, I never hesitate to sacrifice historical accuracy in favor of emotional honesty.
4. The lives of the various characters, whether fighting for the Allies or Germany, must intersect in some way, directly or indirectly or both.
5. There is no "Greatest Generation" worship in these books. My characters, including the Americans, are portrayed with a wide array of human faults and failings.
In any event, SINNER'S CROSS, both as a novel and as a series, represent my lifelong obsession with the Second World War and in some ways are the culmination of a lifetime of study and hobby. Like Sauron and his Ring, I have poured so much of myself into them that in some ways they are more "me" than I am. I hope some of you reading this will give it a chance.
Sinner's Cross
The Very Dead of Winter: A Sinner's Cross Novel
Best Indie Book Award
Book Excellence Award
Literary Titan Gold Medal
Readers Favorite Gold Medal
Readers Favorite "5 Stars"
Historical Fiction Company "5 Star Award"
International Author Network Award Finalist
For those unfamiliar with SINNER'S CROSS, it's the inaugural novel in a WW2 series which also includes the award-winning VERY DEAD OF WINTER, and should see its third installment, SOUTH OF HELL, appear sometime late in 2025 or early 2026. In writing this series I created a simple architecture for storytelling which I have clung to religiously from the very first word:
1. All the novels are set during events which are less well-known to the public than, say, the Normandy Campaign or the Battle of Bastogne -- the Battle of the Huertgen Forest, the Battle of the Snow Eifel, the Alsace Campaign, and so on. This is in large part an effort to shed a bit of light on sadly and sometimes deliberately neglected corners of history. However, they are not history lessons. I never hesitate to compress, conflate, composite, or "synthesize" events for the sake of the narrative.
2. All the novels are told from multiple viewpoints, which include the Germans, and all the characters are protagonists and antagonists both. There are no "good guys" or "bad guys" per se. One common remark readers make about these novels is, "During the German chapters, I found myself rooting for the Germans." I am always pleased by this because that is not an easy task when dealing with American audiences (Europeans find it easier). But you should take note that the larger issues of the war are simply taken for granted.
3. The novels are about people, about human beings, not technology or place-names or strategy. They are a study of human beings under immense, unrelenting pressure. Though I have taken enormous pains to get all the little details right, I never hesitate to sacrifice historical accuracy in favor of emotional honesty.
4. The lives of the various characters, whether fighting for the Allies or Germany, must intersect in some way, directly or indirectly or both.
5. There is no "Greatest Generation" worship in these books. My characters, including the Americans, are portrayed with a wide array of human faults and failings.
In any event, SINNER'S CROSS, both as a novel and as a series, represent my lifelong obsession with the Second World War and in some ways are the culmination of a lifetime of study and hobby. Like Sauron and his Ring, I have poured so much of myself into them that in some ways they are more "me" than I am. I hope some of you reading this will give it a chance.
Sinner's Cross
The Very Dead of Winter: A Sinner's Cross Novel
December 31, 2024
2024: A RAMBLE
Tomorrow is the first blank page of a 365-page book. Write a good one. -- Brad Paisley
I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're Doing Something. -- Neil Gaiman
I have seldom lapsed in writing this blog as badly as I have this December -- it's been more than three weeks since my last post, and it's supposed to come out once a week. Shameful. On the other hand, this version of Stone Cold Prose is now one of two, and the other, YouTube version, isdropping precisely once a week. Now, when I spoke to you last, that channel had just gotten its 10,000th view and its 100th watch-hour, with 63 subscribers. It now has 362 subscribers, 34,432 views and 1,316 watch hours. One video on Generation X has 13,000 views by itself -- it's not viral, but it's whatever the hobby channel version of viral might be. So perhaps I can be forgiven for pushing where the results are so visible and satisfying. Goodreads got rid of weblog statistics many years ago, so I no longer have the faintest idea how many people read this. Perhaps that shouldn't matter, but it does.
The end of the year makes people naturally thoughtful. They look back on the 364 days previous and think about their triumphs and tragedies and how those things play in the larger drama of their lives. Working on the YouTube channel has reminded me that there are acts we perform out of necessity, things we do for pleasure, and services we do for others, which can, I suppose, be a blend of both. When I started this blog in 2016, I did so out of necessity: I thought I should do it, given I'd just published my debut novel, CAGE LIFE, and now had a Goodreads author page. Later, I continued it because I enjoyed it: it served both a psychological purpose (sweeping out my brain) and a minor public service, in the form of the way the occasional blog actually resonated with a random reader.
The YouTube channel now occupies a similar place in my life. I greatly enjoy it because it provides a creative outlet that writing cannot satisfy, a combination of the emptying of the psychological bucket with the gratification of my admittedly embarrassing desire to be seen, to perform, to be in front of a camera, to ride my hobbyhorses in public. Will this enthusiasm last? I have no idea. Notwithstanding my gross negligence of the last few weeks, I've been pounding away here on Goodreads for eight years, producing probably 350 blogs. So at a certain point -- and hey, I did a video about this! -- motivation ceases to be necessary. Discipline takes over. And that was one of the things I of which was forcibly reminded in 2024: the uselessness of motivation and the utility of discipline.
One of the notable quirks of the age of social media is the way people like to post "the life we lead in 2024" photo collages. I find it interesting because it's usually unreflective. It talks about events, not the lessons learned from them. This would seem to contradict what I wrote above, but actually it simply runs alongside it. We boast in public, showing our pictures of Bali and Bimini, our new cars, our kids' graduation photos, the "after" shots of our weight loss campaign, et cetera and so on; in private we put on mood music, light a fire, pour a stiff drink and brood as we stare into the flames. George Orwell once wrote that any life viewed from the inside was simply a series of defeats; Shelby Foote noted that he'd been in 30 fistfights in his life and the ones he remembered best were the ones he lost. My brain works much the same way. There was a lot about this year that went well, but my thoughts tend to drag in the direction of everything that went wrong -- the engine on my car burned out and had to be replaced; my cat Spike, my familiar for 17 years, died in my arms; a person I regarded as a close friend betrayed me in the most cowardly and cold-blooded manner possible; books I were certain would take top honors down in Miami did not; the plans I had to see three new cities this year came to nothing. All of that stings and gives me a bleak, windblown sort of feeling. On the other hand, when I exert conscious effort, I remember the successes: starting this channel, which had been an ambition of mine literally for years; its unexpected success; SINNERS CROSS being longlisted for the Hemingway Award and netting a Historical Fiction Company Five Stars; CAGE LIFE snagging a bronze at Reader's Favorite despite being eight years from its debut; seeing Patrick Page perform his brilliant one-man show "All The Devils Are Here" live on stage; traveling to the hinterlands of Pennsylvania with old pals to drink beer, build fires, swim and chop wood; and of course the book signings in Greensburg and York, both of which were big hits. And of course I finished DARK TRADE: A CAGE LIFE NOVEL, and although almost all of that feat was accomplished in 2023, it still broke the tape in 2024 and must be credited accordingly. I also made great progress on SOUTH OF HELL: A SINNER'S CROSS NOVEL, albeit not as much as I should have. I do wish, however, that my default state wasn't darkness and anomie and ennui. Then again, if it were composed only of light, I probably wouldn't be half the writer I am. Writers mine pain for a living, usually their own, and the more pain, the more gold. A curious condition. But I wouldn't trade it for anything if it meant losing contact with my Muse.
Speaking of Muses, it was a great pleasure to crush this year's Goodreads Challenge. Granted, I didn't set a particularly high bar for myself, but as I've noted in these blogs, I fell away from reading for pleasure for several years and to my surprise, and horror, when I tried to resume in earnest, I found all those hours watching television and film had blunted my ability to concentrate on books, especially novels. It was accordingly a bit of a process even to hit the modest goal I set for myself. The good news is I've now regained my ability to flop into a chair and relax for hours with a good book of any type, but I'm also aware that this sort of ability can be lost, or at least dulled, by disuse. In any event, I read some good ones this year:
Hell in a Very Small Place by Bernard Fall (history)
The Peace by Ernst Jünger (non-fiction)
Unconditional Surrender by Evelyn Waugh (novel)
Death on a Distant Frontier by Charles Whiting (history)
No Colours or Crest by Peter Kemp (memoir)
Duce! by Robert Collier (biography)
Alms For Oblivion by Peter Kemp (memoir)
Mister B. Gone by Clive Barker (novel)
Raging Bull by Jake La Motta (autobiography)
Execution by Colin McDougall (novel)
The Long March on Rome by Charles Whiting (history)
The Thief of Always by Clive Barker (novel)
Going After Cacciato by Tim O'Brien (novel)
The Dangerous Summer by Ernest Hemingway (memoir)
The Inimitable Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse (novel)
A Tanker's View of World War Two by C. Windsor Miller (memoir)
A Cat's Cradle by Carly Rheilan (novel)
Showdown by Errol Flynn (novel)
I also reread a number of my favorites. Re-reading books is a pastime many would mock or simply fail to understand entirely, but anyone who has a Goodreads account will understand the pleasure involved without further explanation. I used to reread books as a matter of course, but it was years after I moved back East that I was able to regain even part of my library through the mail -- a dirty, tedious and expensive process that ate up a lot of my vacation time in California, but worth it. In any event, there is nothing more comforting to a bibliophile than opening one of their dearest-loved stories or histories or memoirs, especially when things seem bleak and harsh and hopeless. It's like the glow of firelight, or a sudden and unexpected reunion with old friends -- a welcome antidote to the trevails of living.
This brings me, clumsily, to my main point: the older I get, the more I realize that life is not about learning lessons, but about relearning them. I cannot count the number of life-lessons I've learned in the most painful and humiliating ways, which I held close to my heart and used to navigate around, over or through problems in the future...only to forget them, and have to start the whole ugly process anew at some future time. I sometimes wonder if Sherlock Holmes wasn't correct when he told his Watson, "It is a mistake to think that [the mind] has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before." Perhaps every new fact, theory, book, life experience, etc. I acquire simply shoves an old one out the back door. Still, I'd rather continue the process of living the way I do, however clumsily and randomly and unsystematically, than decide that I've learned enough, done enough, experienced enough, and could now sit back and tend to the furniture in my head, neither adding nor taking away. Orwell, through his character of George "Fatty" Bowling, remarked that a man does not die when his heart stops beating: he dies when he loses the power (or perhaps just the willingness) to absorb new ideas. At that moment he becomes a ghost, resembling his living self in every way save for the fact he exists entirely in the past.
I'm not yet ready to become a ghost, literal or figurative. I like to think that so long as I do live, I will want to learn new skills, have new experiences, travel to new places, and find outlets both old and new for my creative drives. I like to think that he who dares, wins, and that I will never allow my rather active fear-glands (the price of an equally active imagination) to interfere with my desires to be more and do more, each and every year I'm permitted to occupy this body and this planet and this life.
That's the plan, anyway.
Happy New Year.
I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're Doing Something. -- Neil Gaiman
I have seldom lapsed in writing this blog as badly as I have this December -- it's been more than three weeks since my last post, and it's supposed to come out once a week. Shameful. On the other hand, this version of Stone Cold Prose is now one of two, and the other, YouTube version, isdropping precisely once a week. Now, when I spoke to you last, that channel had just gotten its 10,000th view and its 100th watch-hour, with 63 subscribers. It now has 362 subscribers, 34,432 views and 1,316 watch hours. One video on Generation X has 13,000 views by itself -- it's not viral, but it's whatever the hobby channel version of viral might be. So perhaps I can be forgiven for pushing where the results are so visible and satisfying. Goodreads got rid of weblog statistics many years ago, so I no longer have the faintest idea how many people read this. Perhaps that shouldn't matter, but it does.
The end of the year makes people naturally thoughtful. They look back on the 364 days previous and think about their triumphs and tragedies and how those things play in the larger drama of their lives. Working on the YouTube channel has reminded me that there are acts we perform out of necessity, things we do for pleasure, and services we do for others, which can, I suppose, be a blend of both. When I started this blog in 2016, I did so out of necessity: I thought I should do it, given I'd just published my debut novel, CAGE LIFE, and now had a Goodreads author page. Later, I continued it because I enjoyed it: it served both a psychological purpose (sweeping out my brain) and a minor public service, in the form of the way the occasional blog actually resonated with a random reader.
The YouTube channel now occupies a similar place in my life. I greatly enjoy it because it provides a creative outlet that writing cannot satisfy, a combination of the emptying of the psychological bucket with the gratification of my admittedly embarrassing desire to be seen, to perform, to be in front of a camera, to ride my hobbyhorses in public. Will this enthusiasm last? I have no idea. Notwithstanding my gross negligence of the last few weeks, I've been pounding away here on Goodreads for eight years, producing probably 350 blogs. So at a certain point -- and hey, I did a video about this! -- motivation ceases to be necessary. Discipline takes over. And that was one of the things I of which was forcibly reminded in 2024: the uselessness of motivation and the utility of discipline.
One of the notable quirks of the age of social media is the way people like to post "the life we lead in 2024" photo collages. I find it interesting because it's usually unreflective. It talks about events, not the lessons learned from them. This would seem to contradict what I wrote above, but actually it simply runs alongside it. We boast in public, showing our pictures of Bali and Bimini, our new cars, our kids' graduation photos, the "after" shots of our weight loss campaign, et cetera and so on; in private we put on mood music, light a fire, pour a stiff drink and brood as we stare into the flames. George Orwell once wrote that any life viewed from the inside was simply a series of defeats; Shelby Foote noted that he'd been in 30 fistfights in his life and the ones he remembered best were the ones he lost. My brain works much the same way. There was a lot about this year that went well, but my thoughts tend to drag in the direction of everything that went wrong -- the engine on my car burned out and had to be replaced; my cat Spike, my familiar for 17 years, died in my arms; a person I regarded as a close friend betrayed me in the most cowardly and cold-blooded manner possible; books I were certain would take top honors down in Miami did not; the plans I had to see three new cities this year came to nothing. All of that stings and gives me a bleak, windblown sort of feeling. On the other hand, when I exert conscious effort, I remember the successes: starting this channel, which had been an ambition of mine literally for years; its unexpected success; SINNERS CROSS being longlisted for the Hemingway Award and netting a Historical Fiction Company Five Stars; CAGE LIFE snagging a bronze at Reader's Favorite despite being eight years from its debut; seeing Patrick Page perform his brilliant one-man show "All The Devils Are Here" live on stage; traveling to the hinterlands of Pennsylvania with old pals to drink beer, build fires, swim and chop wood; and of course the book signings in Greensburg and York, both of which were big hits. And of course I finished DARK TRADE: A CAGE LIFE NOVEL, and although almost all of that feat was accomplished in 2023, it still broke the tape in 2024 and must be credited accordingly. I also made great progress on SOUTH OF HELL: A SINNER'S CROSS NOVEL, albeit not as much as I should have. I do wish, however, that my default state wasn't darkness and anomie and ennui. Then again, if it were composed only of light, I probably wouldn't be half the writer I am. Writers mine pain for a living, usually their own, and the more pain, the more gold. A curious condition. But I wouldn't trade it for anything if it meant losing contact with my Muse.
Speaking of Muses, it was a great pleasure to crush this year's Goodreads Challenge. Granted, I didn't set a particularly high bar for myself, but as I've noted in these blogs, I fell away from reading for pleasure for several years and to my surprise, and horror, when I tried to resume in earnest, I found all those hours watching television and film had blunted my ability to concentrate on books, especially novels. It was accordingly a bit of a process even to hit the modest goal I set for myself. The good news is I've now regained my ability to flop into a chair and relax for hours with a good book of any type, but I'm also aware that this sort of ability can be lost, or at least dulled, by disuse. In any event, I read some good ones this year:
Hell in a Very Small Place by Bernard Fall (history)
The Peace by Ernst Jünger (non-fiction)
Unconditional Surrender by Evelyn Waugh (novel)
Death on a Distant Frontier by Charles Whiting (history)
No Colours or Crest by Peter Kemp (memoir)
Duce! by Robert Collier (biography)
Alms For Oblivion by Peter Kemp (memoir)
Mister B. Gone by Clive Barker (novel)
Raging Bull by Jake La Motta (autobiography)
Execution by Colin McDougall (novel)
The Long March on Rome by Charles Whiting (history)
The Thief of Always by Clive Barker (novel)
Going After Cacciato by Tim O'Brien (novel)
The Dangerous Summer by Ernest Hemingway (memoir)
The Inimitable Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse (novel)
A Tanker's View of World War Two by C. Windsor Miller (memoir)
A Cat's Cradle by Carly Rheilan (novel)
Showdown by Errol Flynn (novel)
I also reread a number of my favorites. Re-reading books is a pastime many would mock or simply fail to understand entirely, but anyone who has a Goodreads account will understand the pleasure involved without further explanation. I used to reread books as a matter of course, but it was years after I moved back East that I was able to regain even part of my library through the mail -- a dirty, tedious and expensive process that ate up a lot of my vacation time in California, but worth it. In any event, there is nothing more comforting to a bibliophile than opening one of their dearest-loved stories or histories or memoirs, especially when things seem bleak and harsh and hopeless. It's like the glow of firelight, or a sudden and unexpected reunion with old friends -- a welcome antidote to the trevails of living.
This brings me, clumsily, to my main point: the older I get, the more I realize that life is not about learning lessons, but about relearning them. I cannot count the number of life-lessons I've learned in the most painful and humiliating ways, which I held close to my heart and used to navigate around, over or through problems in the future...only to forget them, and have to start the whole ugly process anew at some future time. I sometimes wonder if Sherlock Holmes wasn't correct when he told his Watson, "It is a mistake to think that [the mind] has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before." Perhaps every new fact, theory, book, life experience, etc. I acquire simply shoves an old one out the back door. Still, I'd rather continue the process of living the way I do, however clumsily and randomly and unsystematically, than decide that I've learned enough, done enough, experienced enough, and could now sit back and tend to the furniture in my head, neither adding nor taking away. Orwell, through his character of George "Fatty" Bowling, remarked that a man does not die when his heart stops beating: he dies when he loses the power (or perhaps just the willingness) to absorb new ideas. At that moment he becomes a ghost, resembling his living self in every way save for the fact he exists entirely in the past.
I'm not yet ready to become a ghost, literal or figurative. I like to think that so long as I do live, I will want to learn new skills, have new experiences, travel to new places, and find outlets both old and new for my creative drives. I like to think that he who dares, wins, and that I will never allow my rather active fear-glands (the price of an equally active imagination) to interfere with my desires to be more and do more, each and every year I'm permitted to occupy this body and this planet and this life.
That's the plan, anyway.
Happy New Year.
December 4, 2024
AS I PLEASE XXVIII
Half a week before the winter
The chill bites before it comes
We've another three weeks before the onset of winter, but you wouldn't know it to look at the thermometer here in South-Central Pennsylvania. It's 7:09 PM, pitch black, and the temperature is 24 degrees. I'm about to knock off the keyboard and head to the bar for a pint, because what else can you do in this dismal town on a dismal Wednesday night like this --? -- but first, a few thoughts.
* As you know I began a YouTube channel called Stone Cold Prose one month ago exactly, and this morning it got its 10,000th view and its 100th watch-hour. By the standards of the medium that's a very modest figure, but I seem to be getting a few more subscriptions every day and am enjoying the whole process immensely. I mention this because starting a YT channel has been a dream of mine for years, and I finally made it a reality. Mind you, I did not do this alone. I hired an English bloke named Olly Dobson to guide me through the process and help me with building a personal brand; otherwise I would have counted it among those things I was "going to do someday," and I have quite enough of those in my life. I think we all have, and I would encourage any of you reading this who harbor dreams but are too intimidated or confused to try and make them come true to seek out a mentor. This sort of thing may cost a few bucks, but the more skin you put in the game, the more likely you are to see it through to the end and get what you've always wanted. In my case the money spent was well worth the unfolding reward.
* I went on Amazon the other day to put up my review of Carly Rheilan's superb novel A Cat's Cradle, but they rejected it because some of the words I used went against their "community standards." It used to be this meant you were using obscene language, making threats, etc. Now it means you used words like "obese" or "Holocaust." I would find this funny if it weren't so pathetic. In this case, they flagged the review because I used the word "rape" in a book about a sex predator who preys on children. What the hell was I supposed to call the act itself, I wonder? Is there a benefit to trying to soften the word "rape?" Sure there is -- if you're a rapist, or want to defend one in court. But as an advocate for victims of crime, I rather like the fact that words like "rape" and "murder" and "molestation" are so aesthetically ugly and jarring. The description fits the crimes. So many words are banned, shadowbanned, flagged or otherwise given a Mark of Cain nowadays that it's becoming impossible to say anything online at all. And people wonder why conspiracy theories find such fertile soil in this century.
* Speaking of Amazon...I wrote my first Amazon review in 2000. Today I went on and discovered my entire review history, spanning 24 years and hundreds of films, books, TV shows, products and suchlike, has been erased without my consent or even my knowledge. I'm not particularly upset, nor am I particularly surprised, but I think it sad that this immense body of reviews was wiped out, if only because there was some really good stuff in there, some of which proved grist both for this blog and for my TY channel. I mention this because it is one more argument in favor of owning physical media, something I've propounded on these pages more than once. Nothing you cannot access yourself, without an internet connection, is truly yours - it can be taken away at any moment by hackers, server crashes, or the simple caprices of corporate policy, and there is nothing whatsoever you can do about it. I have some slight hope of regaining this massive trove of reviews a quarter of a century in the making, but if I don't, well, I never really liked Jeff Bezos anyway.
* This is the first Thanksgiving in several years I didn't cook a turkey, and frankly, I'm relieved. Cooking a turkey is a job of work and nerve-wracking in the bargain, because the recipes constantly remind you improper cooking of a turkey can pretty much kill you, and there was that time William Shatner tried to fry a turkey and nearly incinerated himself. I must say I have a 100% success rate with cooking turkeys, but I can't take any credit because the recipes came from the internet. So thank you, internet, for actually providing a service rather than simply deluging me with bad news or reminding me of the huge numbers of weirdos and trolls and psychos out there.
* Speaking of food: on Monday night I began my first-ever voluntary fast. It lasted 36 hours and was not as hard as I expected it to be, but neither was it a lot of fun. I've never been diagnosed hypoglemic but I'm pretty sure I am, so not eating for long period sof time can put me in a right state. Still, I was curious to see if I could do it and what the effects would be. Coffee got me through the morning and early afternoon without difficulty. After that I felt increasingly lightheaded and somewhat stupid, and certainly physically weak, especially as the evening wore on, but the main effect was an inability to concentrate, or perhaps more precisely, a feeling of apathy that made even an episode of "Murder, She Wrote" seem too demanding for my brain. The day seemed dull and tiresome. I slept deeply when I slept, but had to get out of bed at least four times to use the bathroom, such was the quantity of coffee, tea and water I'd consumed all day to keep my mind off the fact I wasn't using my mouth for food. I woke up feeling somewhat better, but my head throbbed a little and I didn't have much strength. I was not however actually hungry, just weak. I ate a very light breakfast of oats, honey, blueberries and Greek yogurt, and then had a proper lunch and a hike, so I am fully restored: the one noticeable aftereffect is that my stomach looks decidedly flatter. (This is probably due to a reduction of inflammation or due to changes in water composition. I really have no idea.) This was an interesting experiment, but on the whole I prefer actually eating food to thinking about it all day.
* If memory serves, I have not actually published anything in 2024, but that does not mean I haven't been writing away. I actually finished the first draft of the third CAGE LIFE novel, wrote a screenplay/graphic novel, and have been toiling away on the third volume of SINNER'S CROSS. I also carved my epic horror novel SOMETHING EVIL into a three volume series, Books 1 & 2 of which will drop on Halloween, 2025, with subsequent releases on Halloween 2026 and 2027, respectively (the books will be available on pre-order). I also had two very successful book signings, one in Greensburg, PA in July, and one in York, PA in September, with soft plans for a third in Wellsboro, PA early next year. There are several other writing projects in the works, too, which I will announce shortly, but in the mean time, please check out my latest YouTube video, WRITING VIOLENCE, at
@stonecoldprose
on YouTube.
The chill bites before it comes
We've another three weeks before the onset of winter, but you wouldn't know it to look at the thermometer here in South-Central Pennsylvania. It's 7:09 PM, pitch black, and the temperature is 24 degrees. I'm about to knock off the keyboard and head to the bar for a pint, because what else can you do in this dismal town on a dismal Wednesday night like this --? -- but first, a few thoughts.
* As you know I began a YouTube channel called Stone Cold Prose one month ago exactly, and this morning it got its 10,000th view and its 100th watch-hour. By the standards of the medium that's a very modest figure, but I seem to be getting a few more subscriptions every day and am enjoying the whole process immensely. I mention this because starting a YT channel has been a dream of mine for years, and I finally made it a reality. Mind you, I did not do this alone. I hired an English bloke named Olly Dobson to guide me through the process and help me with building a personal brand; otherwise I would have counted it among those things I was "going to do someday," and I have quite enough of those in my life. I think we all have, and I would encourage any of you reading this who harbor dreams but are too intimidated or confused to try and make them come true to seek out a mentor. This sort of thing may cost a few bucks, but the more skin you put in the game, the more likely you are to see it through to the end and get what you've always wanted. In my case the money spent was well worth the unfolding reward.
* I went on Amazon the other day to put up my review of Carly Rheilan's superb novel A Cat's Cradle, but they rejected it because some of the words I used went against their "community standards." It used to be this meant you were using obscene language, making threats, etc. Now it means you used words like "obese" or "Holocaust." I would find this funny if it weren't so pathetic. In this case, they flagged the review because I used the word "rape" in a book about a sex predator who preys on children. What the hell was I supposed to call the act itself, I wonder? Is there a benefit to trying to soften the word "rape?" Sure there is -- if you're a rapist, or want to defend one in court. But as an advocate for victims of crime, I rather like the fact that words like "rape" and "murder" and "molestation" are so aesthetically ugly and jarring. The description fits the crimes. So many words are banned, shadowbanned, flagged or otherwise given a Mark of Cain nowadays that it's becoming impossible to say anything online at all. And people wonder why conspiracy theories find such fertile soil in this century.
* Speaking of Amazon...I wrote my first Amazon review in 2000. Today I went on and discovered my entire review history, spanning 24 years and hundreds of films, books, TV shows, products and suchlike, has been erased without my consent or even my knowledge. I'm not particularly upset, nor am I particularly surprised, but I think it sad that this immense body of reviews was wiped out, if only because there was some really good stuff in there, some of which proved grist both for this blog and for my TY channel. I mention this because it is one more argument in favor of owning physical media, something I've propounded on these pages more than once. Nothing you cannot access yourself, without an internet connection, is truly yours - it can be taken away at any moment by hackers, server crashes, or the simple caprices of corporate policy, and there is nothing whatsoever you can do about it. I have some slight hope of regaining this massive trove of reviews a quarter of a century in the making, but if I don't, well, I never really liked Jeff Bezos anyway.
* This is the first Thanksgiving in several years I didn't cook a turkey, and frankly, I'm relieved. Cooking a turkey is a job of work and nerve-wracking in the bargain, because the recipes constantly remind you improper cooking of a turkey can pretty much kill you, and there was that time William Shatner tried to fry a turkey and nearly incinerated himself. I must say I have a 100% success rate with cooking turkeys, but I can't take any credit because the recipes came from the internet. So thank you, internet, for actually providing a service rather than simply deluging me with bad news or reminding me of the huge numbers of weirdos and trolls and psychos out there.
* Speaking of food: on Monday night I began my first-ever voluntary fast. It lasted 36 hours and was not as hard as I expected it to be, but neither was it a lot of fun. I've never been diagnosed hypoglemic but I'm pretty sure I am, so not eating for long period sof time can put me in a right state. Still, I was curious to see if I could do it and what the effects would be. Coffee got me through the morning and early afternoon without difficulty. After that I felt increasingly lightheaded and somewhat stupid, and certainly physically weak, especially as the evening wore on, but the main effect was an inability to concentrate, or perhaps more precisely, a feeling of apathy that made even an episode of "Murder, She Wrote" seem too demanding for my brain. The day seemed dull and tiresome. I slept deeply when I slept, but had to get out of bed at least four times to use the bathroom, such was the quantity of coffee, tea and water I'd consumed all day to keep my mind off the fact I wasn't using my mouth for food. I woke up feeling somewhat better, but my head throbbed a little and I didn't have much strength. I was not however actually hungry, just weak. I ate a very light breakfast of oats, honey, blueberries and Greek yogurt, and then had a proper lunch and a hike, so I am fully restored: the one noticeable aftereffect is that my stomach looks decidedly flatter. (This is probably due to a reduction of inflammation or due to changes in water composition. I really have no idea.) This was an interesting experiment, but on the whole I prefer actually eating food to thinking about it all day.
* If memory serves, I have not actually published anything in 2024, but that does not mean I haven't been writing away. I actually finished the first draft of the third CAGE LIFE novel, wrote a screenplay/graphic novel, and have been toiling away on the third volume of SINNER'S CROSS. I also carved my epic horror novel SOMETHING EVIL into a three volume series, Books 1 & 2 of which will drop on Halloween, 2025, with subsequent releases on Halloween 2026 and 2027, respectively (the books will be available on pre-order). I also had two very successful book signings, one in Greensburg, PA in July, and one in York, PA in September, with soft plans for a third in Wellsboro, PA early next year. There are several other writing projects in the works, too, which I will announce shortly, but in the mean time, please check out my latest YouTube video, WRITING VIOLENCE, at
@stonecoldprose
on YouTube.
November 26, 2024
BOOK REVIEW: EVELYN WAUGH'S "OFFICERS AND GENTLEMEN" (SWORD OF HONOR #2)
It's going to be a long war. The great thing is to spend it among friends.
The English power of sarcasm is known and feared throughout the world, but it has infinite nuances. Evelyn Waugh's "Officers and Gentleman" is Book Two in his "Sword of Honour" trilogy, and the very names themselves are deeply and richly sarcastic. "Sword of Honour" chronicles the misadventures of Guy Crouchback, the sole surviving scion of a decaying English- Catholic family which is rich in history and education and rather impoverished of anything else. Drawing on his own life and experiences in the Second World War, Waugh sets a table full of farce, disaster, snobbery, and bureacratic misunderstandings with terrible or ironic outcomes, painting the war as a series of accidents, blunders, misunderstandings, and drunken interludes, with major events turning on flukes and happenstances rather than planning or strategy. Many of his authority figures -- generals, senior officers, MPs, and so forth -- are fools or only dubiously sane. Others, such as the Scottish laird (lord), who hosts Guy's commando unit on the Isle of Mug, are purely comic figures with no interest in the war, or who, like the laird's daughter, are ardent supporters of Hitler. Waugh's view, like Orwell's, is that historical events do not feel very historical when you're a part of them, they are merely boring and uncomfortable; and "great men" don't appear very great at close range, merely silly and venal.
I spoke of satire: this is layered satire, of both British society generally and the military and war, specifically, though one is tempted to wonder how much Waugh is actually exaggerating, or if he's exaggerating at all. He clearly shares the view of a number of other British writers who fought in the war and did their best to demythologize it in the minds of the public, to smash the icons and poke rude fun at the slogans we now regard with such quiet awe.
It's important to note as well that Waugh was an almost incredibly complex and paradoxical man himself, a snob of the very highest order whose view of the class system was positively feudal, and whose Catholicism colored everything he wrote, though his ability to avoid obvious spiritual themes was startling.
As "Officers" begins, our trouble-plagued but decent hero has been kicked out of the Royal Corps of Halberdiers and falls arse-backwards into the Commandos, who turn out not to be an elite outfit at all but a collection of misfits exiled to the frigid moors of Scotland for "training." This is in keeping with the theme of the series: Crouchback and his various fellow characters blunder amid military politics, complex social conventions, and failed romantic relationships, all while vainly trying to get into action against the Germans. When at last they do, on Crete in 1941, it proves to be a complete and utter disaster, and Waugh describes the British defeat and disintegration in great detail. On the other hand, one of his cohorts, "Trimmer" McTavish, becomes a press hero following a failed commando raid carried out under the influence of whiskey and bad planning, while another, Claire, leaves his men to their fate only to be saved from punishment by influential relations. At the risk of repeating myself, Waugh's thesis seems to be that war is rather like an extended natural disaster, that nothing ever goes right, that nobody really knows what the hell is happening and credit and blame are often apportioned entirely in the wrong direction: a metaphor for life itself. The characters, meanwhile, are slaves to conventions and class, traditions and snobbery, as well as a bureacracy that grinds slowly, finely, and unjustly. Guy Crouchback himself, via a series of harmless incidents, becomes suspected by British intelligence of being a German spy, and a ridiculous officer named Colonel Grace-Groundling-Marchpole seems to serve as Waugh's epitome of stupidity, witness this passage:
"Somewhere in the ultimate curlicues of his mind, there was a Plan. Given time, given enough confidential material, he would succeed in knitting the entire quarrelsome world into a single net of conspiracy in which there were no antagonists, merely millions of men working, unknown to one another, for the same end; and there would be no more war."
As you can see, Waugh is a fine writer who alternates between prose of a very spare, almost Spartan nature, and beautifully descriptive passages which rise to the level of the poetic. In this book he both rises above and falls below the standard he set in the previous installment, "Men at Arms." There is way too much meandering and wheel-spinning in the story, but there is also much more in the way of emotional release: his description of the Crete campaign is a vivid account of a catastrophe compleat, a total disintegration of order and discipline, which contrasts marvelously with the complex, rigid, out of touch existence he leads in barracks, where minor social faux pas among officers, or trifling mistakes by enlisted men, are punished without mercy and often have extended and terrible consequences. George Orwell once noted that Britain was "a family with the wrong members in control." Waugh's depiction of the British army is very much in that vein: the leaders exist, mentally, in the Edwardian or Victorian eras. They don't lack courage, merely an awareness of what century they're living in. Meanwhile, British "society," represented partially by his ex-wife Virginia, is depicted as bored, shallow, exploitative, remorseless and utterly selfish, aware of the war only as a grand inconvenience. Virginia is loathsome, but her attitude is not entirely unsympathetic: she sees the war as a kind of costume party thrown by men for their own sake. They get to dress up, do daring things in distant lands, get medals and knighthoods, and in short, have all the fun, while the women and the children live boring, uncomfortable lives in bombed cities, eating tinned food. She doesn't care about the war because the war, in her mind, doesn't care about her.
It's worth noting that I recently watched the half-forgotten and difficult to obtain, but thoroughly excellent A FAMILY AT WAR, a BBC series which ran from 1970 - 1973, which depicts an ordinary British family, the Ashtons, coping with WW2. One fascinating thing about the series was how utterly unsentimental and demythologizing it is: instead of just "stiff upper lip" patriotism and "keep calm and carry on" and all the rest of it, we see much more human reactions to the catastrophe, which include fear, selfishness, boredom, cynicism, anger, disillusionment, and moral uncertainty. The characters of SWORD OF HONOUR often operate in a roughly similar vein. They're in this bloody mess, and they're going to do their duty, but they're damned if they always understand why, or even how. Nothing sums up the series like this one passage:
‘I don’t like this at all,’ said Trimmer. ‘What the hell are we going to do?’
‘You’re in command, old boy. In your place I’d just push on.’
‘Would you?’
‘Certainly.’
‘But you’re drunk.’
‘Exactly. If I was in your place I’d be drunk too.’
The English power of sarcasm is known and feared throughout the world, but it has infinite nuances. Evelyn Waugh's "Officers and Gentleman" is Book Two in his "Sword of Honour" trilogy, and the very names themselves are deeply and richly sarcastic. "Sword of Honour" chronicles the misadventures of Guy Crouchback, the sole surviving scion of a decaying English- Catholic family which is rich in history and education and rather impoverished of anything else. Drawing on his own life and experiences in the Second World War, Waugh sets a table full of farce, disaster, snobbery, and bureacratic misunderstandings with terrible or ironic outcomes, painting the war as a series of accidents, blunders, misunderstandings, and drunken interludes, with major events turning on flukes and happenstances rather than planning or strategy. Many of his authority figures -- generals, senior officers, MPs, and so forth -- are fools or only dubiously sane. Others, such as the Scottish laird (lord), who hosts Guy's commando unit on the Isle of Mug, are purely comic figures with no interest in the war, or who, like the laird's daughter, are ardent supporters of Hitler. Waugh's view, like Orwell's, is that historical events do not feel very historical when you're a part of them, they are merely boring and uncomfortable; and "great men" don't appear very great at close range, merely silly and venal.
I spoke of satire: this is layered satire, of both British society generally and the military and war, specifically, though one is tempted to wonder how much Waugh is actually exaggerating, or if he's exaggerating at all. He clearly shares the view of a number of other British writers who fought in the war and did their best to demythologize it in the minds of the public, to smash the icons and poke rude fun at the slogans we now regard with such quiet awe.
It's important to note as well that Waugh was an almost incredibly complex and paradoxical man himself, a snob of the very highest order whose view of the class system was positively feudal, and whose Catholicism colored everything he wrote, though his ability to avoid obvious spiritual themes was startling.
As "Officers" begins, our trouble-plagued but decent hero has been kicked out of the Royal Corps of Halberdiers and falls arse-backwards into the Commandos, who turn out not to be an elite outfit at all but a collection of misfits exiled to the frigid moors of Scotland for "training." This is in keeping with the theme of the series: Crouchback and his various fellow characters blunder amid military politics, complex social conventions, and failed romantic relationships, all while vainly trying to get into action against the Germans. When at last they do, on Crete in 1941, it proves to be a complete and utter disaster, and Waugh describes the British defeat and disintegration in great detail. On the other hand, one of his cohorts, "Trimmer" McTavish, becomes a press hero following a failed commando raid carried out under the influence of whiskey and bad planning, while another, Claire, leaves his men to their fate only to be saved from punishment by influential relations. At the risk of repeating myself, Waugh's thesis seems to be that war is rather like an extended natural disaster, that nothing ever goes right, that nobody really knows what the hell is happening and credit and blame are often apportioned entirely in the wrong direction: a metaphor for life itself. The characters, meanwhile, are slaves to conventions and class, traditions and snobbery, as well as a bureacracy that grinds slowly, finely, and unjustly. Guy Crouchback himself, via a series of harmless incidents, becomes suspected by British intelligence of being a German spy, and a ridiculous officer named Colonel Grace-Groundling-Marchpole seems to serve as Waugh's epitome of stupidity, witness this passage:
"Somewhere in the ultimate curlicues of his mind, there was a Plan. Given time, given enough confidential material, he would succeed in knitting the entire quarrelsome world into a single net of conspiracy in which there were no antagonists, merely millions of men working, unknown to one another, for the same end; and there would be no more war."
As you can see, Waugh is a fine writer who alternates between prose of a very spare, almost Spartan nature, and beautifully descriptive passages which rise to the level of the poetic. In this book he both rises above and falls below the standard he set in the previous installment, "Men at Arms." There is way too much meandering and wheel-spinning in the story, but there is also much more in the way of emotional release: his description of the Crete campaign is a vivid account of a catastrophe compleat, a total disintegration of order and discipline, which contrasts marvelously with the complex, rigid, out of touch existence he leads in barracks, where minor social faux pas among officers, or trifling mistakes by enlisted men, are punished without mercy and often have extended and terrible consequences. George Orwell once noted that Britain was "a family with the wrong members in control." Waugh's depiction of the British army is very much in that vein: the leaders exist, mentally, in the Edwardian or Victorian eras. They don't lack courage, merely an awareness of what century they're living in. Meanwhile, British "society," represented partially by his ex-wife Virginia, is depicted as bored, shallow, exploitative, remorseless and utterly selfish, aware of the war only as a grand inconvenience. Virginia is loathsome, but her attitude is not entirely unsympathetic: she sees the war as a kind of costume party thrown by men for their own sake. They get to dress up, do daring things in distant lands, get medals and knighthoods, and in short, have all the fun, while the women and the children live boring, uncomfortable lives in bombed cities, eating tinned food. She doesn't care about the war because the war, in her mind, doesn't care about her.
It's worth noting that I recently watched the half-forgotten and difficult to obtain, but thoroughly excellent A FAMILY AT WAR, a BBC series which ran from 1970 - 1973, which depicts an ordinary British family, the Ashtons, coping with WW2. One fascinating thing about the series was how utterly unsentimental and demythologizing it is: instead of just "stiff upper lip" patriotism and "keep calm and carry on" and all the rest of it, we see much more human reactions to the catastrophe, which include fear, selfishness, boredom, cynicism, anger, disillusionment, and moral uncertainty. The characters of SWORD OF HONOUR often operate in a roughly similar vein. They're in this bloody mess, and they're going to do their duty, but they're damned if they always understand why, or even how. Nothing sums up the series like this one passage:
‘I don’t like this at all,’ said Trimmer. ‘What the hell are we going to do?’
‘You’re in command, old boy. In your place I’d just push on.’
‘Would you?’
‘Certainly.’
‘But you’re drunk.’
‘Exactly. If I was in your place I’d be drunk too.’
November 18, 2024
BOOK REVIEW: ERROL FLYNN'S "SHOWDOWN"
Hopelessly he gave himself up to the terrible ecstasy of living in suspended time.
Errol Flynn was the most notorious actor in Hollywood, legendary for his degeneracy and cynical, amoral attitude toward life, and this notoriety existed both during his lifetime and for generations after it. Indeed, the saying "In like Flynn" is still in currency today, or at least it was when I was a kid, though I didn't understand the sexual component of it until I was a little older. Flynn, however, was more than an actor of enormous charisma and fairly respectable talent whose main interests in life were sex and money. He was also a widely-traveled man of great physical courage, with a strong need for adventure and a surprisingly incisive and perhaps even sensitive mind. His lengthy autobiography, MY WICKED, WICKED WAYS is proof of this: more than a mere confession of perverse appetites, sexual conquests, failed marriages and profligate spending, it evolves into a scourging self-analysis in which Flynn demonstrated a sort of remorse-free ability to examine his own life, condemn its numerous mistakes, and express regret that he had not chosen a different path. SHOWDOWN is his foray into fiction, and I found it well worth my time in both the sense of entertainment, for its reconstruction of the colonial era South Pacfific life Flynn knew so well, and for its occasional, penetrating insights into human nature.
SHOWDOWN is a semi-autobiographical tale set in the South Seas circa the mid-1930s. It's the story of Shamus O'Thames, a sexually naive, rigidly principled, highly resourceful English sea captain who washes ashore on a South Seas island following a disastrous encounter with "natives" after a failed charter. Rescued by a colorful German missionary named Kirschner who effectively adopts him as a son, O'Thames falls in love with a beautiful young nun named Ganice, and largely to escape the impossibility of the situation, agrees to take a camera crew and some Hollywood actors up the Sepik, the most dangerous river in the most dangerous place in the world, New Guinea -- a place replete with disease, storms, earthquakes, man-eating crocodiles, and headhunting tribesmen. The voyage is naturally fraught with trouble, not the least of which comes in the form of Cleo, an alluring and morally enigmatic actress who tempts the stern young skipper away from his chaste love for the nun with the possibility of more fleshly pleasures...and perhaps more realistic love. At the same time, stormy seas, a hostile local tribe, and the secret agenda of those chartering the voyage come to a head on shore. Shamus is tested not merely in terms of his ability to save his people, but to evolve from the brittle and naive man he was into something stronger and more flexible. If he can survive.
SHOWDOWN is admittedly a strange novel and obviously the work of an amateur, albeit one with great life experience and talent. Flynn knew the South Seas very well indeed, having been born in Tasmania and spent much time in New Guinea running plantations and panning for gold. He was also an expert sailor and his love -- and respect -- for the sea, and his knowledge of seacraft are remarkable. Like George Orwell, who reconstructed Burma so vividly in BURMESE DAYS the reader feels as if he is physically present, Flynn brings the landscape and the water to life. The sequences where Shamus is fighting the storm from the wheel of the "Maski" are beautifully crafted. Likewise, he can explain the incredibly complex racial, ethnic, and tribal dynamics of the colonial era in a way no modern writer would dare, i.e. describing without moralizing. Human life, Flynn notes, was incredibly cheap (he describes the treatment of some native laborers as "the closest thing I have ever seen to legalized murder"), and much of the world and its population were considered simply resources to be exploited, with missionary work, however sincere, being a mere sop to the conscience of the exploiters.
The book also reflects the wry, somewhat cynical wit for which Flynn was well known in his personal life: "Father Kirschner's life was consecrated to the idea of peace on earth and goodwill to mankind, but the principle did not include letting the oil dry out on his gun barrel." This is gold. So too is Flynn's construction of the character of Shamus, a man of stern morals and unyielding principles founded on a sexually scarring experience that occurred in his youth. Shamus seems to reflect the man Flynn might have become, and that Flynn wished he had become, rather than a sexually degenerate, alcoholic actor whose personal life was so notorious it completely overshadowed not only his acting career but the rest of his quite diverse and interesting life. But Shamus is not idealized, not Sir Galahad on a boat: He feels real because Flynn contained elements of the man within him even into the last phases of his life, when he discovered what might have been his true calling -- sailing, shooting documentaries, writing...in other words, real rather than cinematic adventure. (Kind of Ernest Hemingway, but somewhat less inclined to lie.) I find it amusing that Hemingway seems to have disliked Flynn (notwithstanding Flynn's performance in "The Sun Also Rises," which everyone liked), perhaps sensing that Flynn had within him the elements of real greatness that he displayed here.
The main issue come with the book's pacing. We are 156 pages into a 250 page novel before Flynn stops his stage-setting and character introductions and finally gets the plot going. And despite its terse length, the book feels heavily overwritten: it could have come in at 200 pages without any loss, and with considerable gain in terms of narrative flow. Flynn writes often beautiful prose, but he has a love of lanuage that a better editor would have restrained more vigorously, he takes any excuse to plunge into an internal monologue, and he introduces important characters very late in the game and shifts points of view with little regard for structure.
That having been said, I enjoyed SHOWDOWN. Hemingway once declared that "A man shouldn't write what he doesn't know," and in this novel Flynn stands firmly on ground, and water, he knew extremely well. I just wish Errol had stuck around to come to literary maturity. I think he was capable of producing a minor classic.
Errol Flynn was the most notorious actor in Hollywood, legendary for his degeneracy and cynical, amoral attitude toward life, and this notoriety existed both during his lifetime and for generations after it. Indeed, the saying "In like Flynn" is still in currency today, or at least it was when I was a kid, though I didn't understand the sexual component of it until I was a little older. Flynn, however, was more than an actor of enormous charisma and fairly respectable talent whose main interests in life were sex and money. He was also a widely-traveled man of great physical courage, with a strong need for adventure and a surprisingly incisive and perhaps even sensitive mind. His lengthy autobiography, MY WICKED, WICKED WAYS is proof of this: more than a mere confession of perverse appetites, sexual conquests, failed marriages and profligate spending, it evolves into a scourging self-analysis in which Flynn demonstrated a sort of remorse-free ability to examine his own life, condemn its numerous mistakes, and express regret that he had not chosen a different path. SHOWDOWN is his foray into fiction, and I found it well worth my time in both the sense of entertainment, for its reconstruction of the colonial era South Pacfific life Flynn knew so well, and for its occasional, penetrating insights into human nature.
SHOWDOWN is a semi-autobiographical tale set in the South Seas circa the mid-1930s. It's the story of Shamus O'Thames, a sexually naive, rigidly principled, highly resourceful English sea captain who washes ashore on a South Seas island following a disastrous encounter with "natives" after a failed charter. Rescued by a colorful German missionary named Kirschner who effectively adopts him as a son, O'Thames falls in love with a beautiful young nun named Ganice, and largely to escape the impossibility of the situation, agrees to take a camera crew and some Hollywood actors up the Sepik, the most dangerous river in the most dangerous place in the world, New Guinea -- a place replete with disease, storms, earthquakes, man-eating crocodiles, and headhunting tribesmen. The voyage is naturally fraught with trouble, not the least of which comes in the form of Cleo, an alluring and morally enigmatic actress who tempts the stern young skipper away from his chaste love for the nun with the possibility of more fleshly pleasures...and perhaps more realistic love. At the same time, stormy seas, a hostile local tribe, and the secret agenda of those chartering the voyage come to a head on shore. Shamus is tested not merely in terms of his ability to save his people, but to evolve from the brittle and naive man he was into something stronger and more flexible. If he can survive.
SHOWDOWN is admittedly a strange novel and obviously the work of an amateur, albeit one with great life experience and talent. Flynn knew the South Seas very well indeed, having been born in Tasmania and spent much time in New Guinea running plantations and panning for gold. He was also an expert sailor and his love -- and respect -- for the sea, and his knowledge of seacraft are remarkable. Like George Orwell, who reconstructed Burma so vividly in BURMESE DAYS the reader feels as if he is physically present, Flynn brings the landscape and the water to life. The sequences where Shamus is fighting the storm from the wheel of the "Maski" are beautifully crafted. Likewise, he can explain the incredibly complex racial, ethnic, and tribal dynamics of the colonial era in a way no modern writer would dare, i.e. describing without moralizing. Human life, Flynn notes, was incredibly cheap (he describes the treatment of some native laborers as "the closest thing I have ever seen to legalized murder"), and much of the world and its population were considered simply resources to be exploited, with missionary work, however sincere, being a mere sop to the conscience of the exploiters.
The book also reflects the wry, somewhat cynical wit for which Flynn was well known in his personal life: "Father Kirschner's life was consecrated to the idea of peace on earth and goodwill to mankind, but the principle did not include letting the oil dry out on his gun barrel." This is gold. So too is Flynn's construction of the character of Shamus, a man of stern morals and unyielding principles founded on a sexually scarring experience that occurred in his youth. Shamus seems to reflect the man Flynn might have become, and that Flynn wished he had become, rather than a sexually degenerate, alcoholic actor whose personal life was so notorious it completely overshadowed not only his acting career but the rest of his quite diverse and interesting life. But Shamus is not idealized, not Sir Galahad on a boat: He feels real because Flynn contained elements of the man within him even into the last phases of his life, when he discovered what might have been his true calling -- sailing, shooting documentaries, writing...in other words, real rather than cinematic adventure. (Kind of Ernest Hemingway, but somewhat less inclined to lie.) I find it amusing that Hemingway seems to have disliked Flynn (notwithstanding Flynn's performance in "The Sun Also Rises," which everyone liked), perhaps sensing that Flynn had within him the elements of real greatness that he displayed here.
The main issue come with the book's pacing. We are 156 pages into a 250 page novel before Flynn stops his stage-setting and character introductions and finally gets the plot going. And despite its terse length, the book feels heavily overwritten: it could have come in at 200 pages without any loss, and with considerable gain in terms of narrative flow. Flynn writes often beautiful prose, but he has a love of lanuage that a better editor would have restrained more vigorously, he takes any excuse to plunge into an internal monologue, and he introduces important characters very late in the game and shifts points of view with little regard for structure.
That having been said, I enjoyed SHOWDOWN. Hemingway once declared that "A man shouldn't write what he doesn't know," and in this novel Flynn stands firmly on ground, and water, he knew extremely well. I just wish Errol had stuck around to come to literary maturity. I think he was capable of producing a minor classic.
November 6, 2024
I SEE YOU(TUBE) NOW
Many a month ago I promised -- or threatened -- to start a YouTube channel on this very blog. This was a long-standing ambition of mine, and recent circumstances have allowed me to take the step at long last. (drum roll).
@stonecoldprose
Yes, the ramblings and rantings of this blog are now to be online and in person, twice a week. I shall empty my brain, such as it is, on subjects like popular culture, cinema, television, history, politics, my creative projects, and any other damn thing that comes to mind. It is my intention to release two videos a week of about 10 minute length, Sundays and Wednesdays. My first broadcast "Woke Broke Storytelling," exceeded my admittedly very low expectations for it and has already garnered almost 100 views. Mind you, I have no illusions, or even any particularly impressive ambitions, about becoming the next Critical Drinker or anything like that. I should be extremely happy to one day reach, say, 1,000 subscribers, and maintain that number. The idea here is simply to provide myself a outlet for the energy I was never able to release in Los Angeles, where, ironically, I worked in seemingly every facet of the entertainment industry except the one I wanted to. In time I will add longform videos as well as interviews with the more colorful personalities I know: actors, cops, gangsters, stuntmen...it's quite a list. For now, however, the shortform scripted videos have arrived. My next broadcast, "Mary Sue Killed The Strong Female Character" drops tonight at 6PM.
I hope to see you at
https://www.youtube.com/@stonecoldprose
@stonecoldprose
Yes, the ramblings and rantings of this blog are now to be online and in person, twice a week. I shall empty my brain, such as it is, on subjects like popular culture, cinema, television, history, politics, my creative projects, and any other damn thing that comes to mind. It is my intention to release two videos a week of about 10 minute length, Sundays and Wednesdays. My first broadcast "Woke Broke Storytelling," exceeded my admittedly very low expectations for it and has already garnered almost 100 views. Mind you, I have no illusions, or even any particularly impressive ambitions, about becoming the next Critical Drinker or anything like that. I should be extremely happy to one day reach, say, 1,000 subscribers, and maintain that number. The idea here is simply to provide myself a outlet for the energy I was never able to release in Los Angeles, where, ironically, I worked in seemingly every facet of the entertainment industry except the one I wanted to. In time I will add longform videos as well as interviews with the more colorful personalities I know: actors, cops, gangsters, stuntmen...it's quite a list. For now, however, the shortform scripted videos have arrived. My next broadcast, "Mary Sue Killed The Strong Female Character" drops tonight at 6PM.
I hope to see you at
https://www.youtube.com/@stonecoldprose
October 31, 2024
HALLOWEEN HORROR (2024)
Well here we are again, folks: Halloween night. As you must know by now, it's my tradition to go absolutely batshit come the month of October, doing things like carving jack o'lanterns, roasting pumpkin seeds, attending costume parties and watching 31 horror movies, one for each day of the month. This year of our lord 2024 I have slightly departed from the formula, in that A) I wasn't invited to a costume party this year (was it something I said?) and, B) I "only" watched 20 films. Given everything going on my life for the last two months, I consider this quite an achievement despite failing to hit the mark, but I'm still going to grind out the remaining eleven over the next month. It's Halloween, so a certain amount of trickery is not only allowed, it's expected.
I must say that this year, as opposed to others, I found a lot more gold, or at least semi-precious stones, than outright shit among the wide variety cinema I chose to sample. Call it entitlement, but I think I was overdue some really entertaining flicks after all the garbage I waded through on Octobers past. (One of the drawbacks of doing what I do every year is that my insistence that these movies must never before crossed paths with me provides no sure things.) So it's with more pleasure than pain that I invite you to my house of horrors and show you what's inside, which includes movies from America, Britain, Australia, Canada, Germany, and Poland. Here we go.
Alone in the Dark (1982) - This is an obscure but talent-packed movie directed by Jack Sholder (THE HIDDEN) featuring Dwight Schulz, Jack Palance, Donald Pleasance, and Martin Landau, about four dangerous lunatics who escape from an asylum and do bad things. It's much slower, talkier, weirder and more cerebral than it sounds, and it's really not very good, but it tries pretty hard, and the last ten minutes are darkly hilarious.
Lair of the White Worm (1988) - Hugh Grant's first leading man role is a wild ride, a tongue-in-cheek horror movie adapted from one of Bram Stoker's lesser-known works, about the d'Amptom Worm, an ancient English legend. It's about an ageless sort-of vampire who seduces virgins into serving as sacrifices for a dragon-like monster: Grant plays the modern descendant of a dragonslayer who bested the beast in Medieval times and must now cease his drollery and live up to his family name. Like "Waxwork," this is one of those movies you just enjoy for the exuberantly weird, half-sensical ride it offers, and don't ask any questions.
Deep Rising (1998) - Starring Treat Williams and Famke Jansen, this play on the popular "haunted ship" trope has a lively cult following. Basically it's about a crew of hijackers who board a liner to do bad stuff, but encounter much worse stuff waiting for them. I found it extremely dumb and silly, lacking in both thrills and scares, and full of CGI effects which dated very poorly indeed...although I confess it's frenetic as hell and Jansen, who I have met and was one of the true beauties of modern Hollywood, is mesmerizing to look at every time she's in frame.
Horror Express (1972) - One of the many, and by far the most obscure, cinematic takes on the short story "Who Is There?" by John W. Campbell (which spawned "The Thing"), this flick manages to get Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing AND Telly Savalas into the same frame, as men aboard a Siberian train which includes one (presumably) deceased passenger recently disinterred from the Artic ice. This "thing" naturally escapes and causes mayhem, which is augmented by its ability to switch bodies, and our reluctant (very reluctant) heroes must find a way to destroy it before the train reaches civilization. A weird but modestly engaging old-school horror flick.
The Creeping Terror (1964) - Arguably the worst piece of shit I have ever seen, this no-budget drive-in howler was such a "troubled production" the writer-director-star Vic Savage, ended up a literal fugitive from justice when the smoke cleared. It has almost no dialog (narration only), and the monster from outer space which terrorizes the community was (literally) made from rug remnants someone hastily sewed together the night before the cameras started rolling -- since Savage never paid his effects guy, he simply withheld whatever it was he'd made, hence the slow-moving pile of rugs that devours even slower-moving victims who could have escaped by...walking away at the pace of a crawling infant. A fascinating study in how not to make a no-budget movie.
Fear Street: 1994 (2021) - Derived from the popular YA series by R. L. Stine, this movie, despite what I think was a sincere effort, is a bore and a waste of time, offering nothing but an unlikeable heroine, worn-out horror and high-school cliches, including the tedious one about class warfare, and a lot of not-so-subtle pandering to "modern audiences" and their presumed sensibilities. I think it was about a witch that periodically comes back to a California town to possess people and commit murder, but I don't remember or care. By the time anything cool happens, like the cheerleader who gets her head rammed into a meat slicer, I had checked all the way out. And there were two sequels. Why is it the worst movies are always so full of passionate intensity?
The Babadook (2014) - Low budget movies don't have to be bad, and this one is the proof. Featuring what amounts to a cast of two, "The Babadook" is about recently widowed Australian nurse who is trying to cope with her grief while also raising her troubled son. Things get even worse (much worse), when the son begins reporting that the storybook monster he read about in a mysterious book she can't remember buying him, is now taking up residence in their home. A troubling, dark, very intense story that is partly about grief, cope, denial, and the monsters within, I found the child and animal abuse scenes tough to take, but done in a very non-exploitative way that met the demands of the subject matter.
Nobody Sleeps in the Woods Tonight (2020) - An inventive Polish take on slasher films, which combines horror and comedy and then takes a radical turn into sci-fi, is about a group of teens whose internet addictions have banished them to a rural camp where there is no wi-fi. While hiking in the woods they encounter some deformed locals with bad attitudes, and well, shit goes down. I found this movie witty, engaging and innovative, with strong performances and well-drawn characters it takes the time to properly establish, and it has the good sense to shoot the horror as horror and the humor as humor, and not mix the two as so manyhorror movies do.
Thanksgiving (2023) - I can't believe I'm going to say something positive about Eli Roth, but here goes: THANKSGIVING is a fun, well made, and surprisingly well-plotted slasher which manages to pay homage to the genre and all of its tropes while actually managing to come off as fresh and, even more surprisingly, unpredictable. A year after an extremely grisly "Black Friday" stampede kills a number of people at a shopping mall, a masked madman -- or is he just really pissed off? -- starts to exact revenge on those he holds responsible. The film, which has some sarcastic things to say about consumerism, throws so many red herrings at you as to the possible identity of the killer that half the fun is watching your theories get shot down, or rather carved up. Roth wouldn't be Roth without putting one absolutely over-the-top kill sequence in this movie, and I could have done without seeing a woman roasted alive and then served for dinner, but you can't have everything.
In A Violent Nature (2024) - Ever wondered what a slasher would be like told almost entirely from the point of view of the killer? Chris Nash did, and IN A VIOLENT NATURE was the result. Essentially a "Friday the 13th" movie from Jason's perspective, it follows Johnny, an undead murderer whose grave deep in the woods of Ontario was foolishly disturbed by some campers, as he plods through the woods on a mission of revenge. Without a plot worthy of the name, without any character development, without a soundtrack of any kind, with very little dialogue (most of it Johnny overhears as he stalks his victims), and lacking even much of a backstory, it takes some patience (there's a lot of walking through the woods), and it's not what I would call scary, but it is distinctly unsettling and the images (and the kills) stay with you. A very innovative take on a genre most people would have said is deader than Johnny himself.
The Conference (2023) - A deeply satirical slasher with a lot to say about capitalism and corporate culture and the damage it causes, this clever Swedish slasher is about one of those awful "corporate retreats" gone horribly wrong when a killer with a big grudge and no mercy shows up and wreaks havoc with everything he can find, including a boat motor. Another movie that does a pretty effective job of separating its biting wit from its grisly kills, I really liked the performances all the way around, especially by Claes Hartelius as a scrappy old man who gives the slasher all that he can handle, and Adam Lundgren as a sociopathic corporate drone who is perhaps scarier than the killer.
Talk To Me (2022) - This clever and inventive movie from Australia really wowed me. A group of bored teens gets ahold of a Hand of Glory, a variation on the Ouija board, which allows them to talk to spirits, or rather to have spirits briefly inhabit them. It's all fun and games until one of them gets a very disagreeable inhabitant who decides he/she/it don't particularly wanna leave, whereupon things go downhill for everyone in a big way. A not so subtle riff on the perils of drug use and addiction, it's a bit of a slow burn, but manages to avoid being obvious, preachy, or to fall into any predictable story holes. I know I use the word "innovative" a lot but that's because I must reward it whenever I encounter it, as it's incredibly rare horror, a genre which is so heaped with worn-out tropes they can be assembled into a ready-made movie, especially when possession is involved: this is fresh. Sophie Wilde delivers a terrific performance as the heroine, Mia, and the ending is a doozy.
You're Next (2013) - What's more uncomfortable than a dysfunctional family reunion? A dysfunctional family reunion crashed by masked killers with sharp objects and a taste for cruelty. While I would characterize this movie as more of a suspense or even survival-horror story than a "regular" horror film or slasher, I found the protagonist, played by Sharni Vinson, to be likeable and just believable enough in her badassery to be satisfying rather than tedious and silly. The twists are for the most part easy to see coming, but the movie moves quickly, keeps the mayhem to a maximum, and keeps up the pace until the very last second -- literally. It's similar to HUSH, which I watched last Halloween, but executed (no pun intended) on a larger scale and with some layered mystery elements as to the identities and motives of the baddies. Better than I expected by a fair country distance.
American Psycho (2000). Probably no movie has ever made more sport out of American corporate culture generally, and the rampant greed, shallowness and materialism of the 80s specifically, than this horror-satire adapted from the B.E. Ellis novel of the same name. Christian Bale rises to dizzying heights as Patrick Bateman, a shallow, venal, status-worshipping Manhattanite yuppie whose hobbies are pop music and serial murder. Bateman is at once terriying in his capacity for cruelty and his equally creepy obsession with cleanliness and order, and hilarious in the agonies he suffers over things like the font on his business cards, or his inability to get reservations at Dorsia (a restaurant that seems to symbolise the elusive nature of the happiness that's supposed to come from material success). Bateman's inner torment is driven by his awareness that he has no soul, and in a sense does not even exist: his murders are his only outlet, but even they cease to satisfying him over time, necessitating ever more wanton acts of violence that cause his neatly packaged life to slowly unravel before us. The entire story is a masterpiece of unreliable narration, existential angst and savage social commetary. A truly great film.
As Above, So Below (2014) - Ever seen a movie that felt like it drew from so many pre-existing sources it had no identity of its own? This spirited "found footage" film set in the Paris catacombs was like that for me. Taking elements from everything from THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT and BORDERLANDS to DESCENT and even EVENT HORIZON, the acting is solid, the pace is very respectable, but I was left underwhelmed. A tale about a treasure hunter with more metaphorical balls than good sense, who tries to find the Philosopher's Stone beneath the City of Lights, it's just too "been there done that" to be effective, despite some very credible performances from Perdita Weeks and Francois Civil.
Backcountry (2014) - I was rather impressed with this man-vs.-nature story about a quarrel-prone Canadian couple who get lost in the woods of Ontario, and first menaced by a creepy woodsman, and then stalked by a bear who doesn't take "dear God no!" for an answer. The acting is good, my favorite thespian, Nicholas Campbell, has a small role, and Eric Balfour does wonders as that creepy Irish woodsman, who may or may not be a red herring. It's always intriguing when we get reminded how dangerous nature is, especially for cityfolk with too much pride and not enough directional sense. Throw in a bear-mauling scene that is truly horrific to hear (they only show what's necessary), and you won't want to go camping any time soon.
Nobody Sleeps in the Woods Tonight 2 (2021). As good as the first movie was, is how bad this weird, overexpository, overly comedic, overly "meta," underly scary mess of a sequel is. The first one exercised admirable balance between horror and comedy, and even managed to chuck in some social commentary with paying homage to the slasher genre. "2" is just a slop of ideas, and my guess is that the folks in charge slapped it together all too hastily following the success of the first one, in the spirit of "cash in while it's hot." I'm not even sure there is an actual plot. While there are a few good jokes, the story feels almost improvised, and well, it's just kinda shit. I'm sad to say it, but this has neither trick nor treat.
The First Omen (2024). Remember how ROGUE ONE was the answer to a question nobody asked, a movie whose entire premise sprang from a single sentence in the opening crawl of STAR WARS? THE FIRST OMEN is like that. There's a lot of craft, the acting is good, and it's largely very respectful of the original, 1976 OMEN which started the franchise, but it's just slow enough, just overplotted enough, just enough of a departure from the canon of the original movie, and topped off by just enough plot armor and needless girlbossery, that my ultimate feeling was disappointment. The tale of a young American nun-aspirant who arrives at an Italian nunnery to do God's work, only to discover nothing holy is going on within its walls, but rather a complex effort to summon the antichrist into fleshly existence, THE FIRST OMEN does hit some high notes, most particularly the grave performance of Ralph Ineson as Father Brennan, but in the end it just feels unnecessary. Sure, I was curious about the shadowy cult that facilitates the rise to power of Damien Thorn, but sometimes unanswered mysteries are the most satisfying.
The Privilege (2022) - Strong performances and what I think was a great deal of zeal can't save this German horror movie about a boy who survives his sister's seemingly supernatural murder, only to suspect he's still a target of those same mysterious malevolent years later as a high school student. Kind of a riff on many films you've already seen (THE STEPFORD WIVES comes to mind, among many others including THE BELIEVERS, and to some small extent, even HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH), it tries to play on paranoia, teen and familial alienation, and mystery, and create a sense of "who can I really trust here?" but it's just too predictable, and by the way, not even remotely frightening.
Ghost Ship (2002) - My final entry was a pleasant surprise. Another "haunted ship" story, but this time done right, or at least right-er, it follows a salvage ship which includes Gabriel Byrne, Julianna Marguiles, Karl Urban, and Isiah Washington among its crew, as they try to salvage a derelict cruise ship in the Bearing Strait which was last seen forty years ago, before it vanished off the face of the sea. On board the ghost ship they discover a hoard of gold; unfortunately they also discover malevolent ghosts who have no intention of letting them leave. A combination of haunted house and heist stories, with a large mystery at the center, it opens with one of the most inventive kill sequences I've ever seen -- a mass kill sequence, no less -- and also features one of the most interesting flashbacks I can recall, a grisly bit about a massacre-robbery that consumes its own perpetrators in a series of escalating betrayals. The drawbacks are a limp script which wastes some fine actors, and an uneven performance from Marguiles, who just didn't have the oompf to play the scrappy heroine. But I enjoyed the flick.
And with that, fifty-four minutes before midnight on Halloween, we come to the end of HH24. This has become a bit of an institution around here at Stone Cold Prose, and after this fairly enjoyable haul of spooky films, I must say I'm already looking forward to HH25. But I still owe myself, and you, almost a dozen more of these damned things, and in the spirit of completion, and continuing curiosity, I will report back when I've checked 'em off.
Happy Halloween, y'all.
I must say that this year, as opposed to others, I found a lot more gold, or at least semi-precious stones, than outright shit among the wide variety cinema I chose to sample. Call it entitlement, but I think I was overdue some really entertaining flicks after all the garbage I waded through on Octobers past. (One of the drawbacks of doing what I do every year is that my insistence that these movies must never before crossed paths with me provides no sure things.) So it's with more pleasure than pain that I invite you to my house of horrors and show you what's inside, which includes movies from America, Britain, Australia, Canada, Germany, and Poland. Here we go.
Alone in the Dark (1982) - This is an obscure but talent-packed movie directed by Jack Sholder (THE HIDDEN) featuring Dwight Schulz, Jack Palance, Donald Pleasance, and Martin Landau, about four dangerous lunatics who escape from an asylum and do bad things. It's much slower, talkier, weirder and more cerebral than it sounds, and it's really not very good, but it tries pretty hard, and the last ten minutes are darkly hilarious.
Lair of the White Worm (1988) - Hugh Grant's first leading man role is a wild ride, a tongue-in-cheek horror movie adapted from one of Bram Stoker's lesser-known works, about the d'Amptom Worm, an ancient English legend. It's about an ageless sort-of vampire who seduces virgins into serving as sacrifices for a dragon-like monster: Grant plays the modern descendant of a dragonslayer who bested the beast in Medieval times and must now cease his drollery and live up to his family name. Like "Waxwork," this is one of those movies you just enjoy for the exuberantly weird, half-sensical ride it offers, and don't ask any questions.
Deep Rising (1998) - Starring Treat Williams and Famke Jansen, this play on the popular "haunted ship" trope has a lively cult following. Basically it's about a crew of hijackers who board a liner to do bad stuff, but encounter much worse stuff waiting for them. I found it extremely dumb and silly, lacking in both thrills and scares, and full of CGI effects which dated very poorly indeed...although I confess it's frenetic as hell and Jansen, who I have met and was one of the true beauties of modern Hollywood, is mesmerizing to look at every time she's in frame.
Horror Express (1972) - One of the many, and by far the most obscure, cinematic takes on the short story "Who Is There?" by John W. Campbell (which spawned "The Thing"), this flick manages to get Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing AND Telly Savalas into the same frame, as men aboard a Siberian train which includes one (presumably) deceased passenger recently disinterred from the Artic ice. This "thing" naturally escapes and causes mayhem, which is augmented by its ability to switch bodies, and our reluctant (very reluctant) heroes must find a way to destroy it before the train reaches civilization. A weird but modestly engaging old-school horror flick.
The Creeping Terror (1964) - Arguably the worst piece of shit I have ever seen, this no-budget drive-in howler was such a "troubled production" the writer-director-star Vic Savage, ended up a literal fugitive from justice when the smoke cleared. It has almost no dialog (narration only), and the monster from outer space which terrorizes the community was (literally) made from rug remnants someone hastily sewed together the night before the cameras started rolling -- since Savage never paid his effects guy, he simply withheld whatever it was he'd made, hence the slow-moving pile of rugs that devours even slower-moving victims who could have escaped by...walking away at the pace of a crawling infant. A fascinating study in how not to make a no-budget movie.
Fear Street: 1994 (2021) - Derived from the popular YA series by R. L. Stine, this movie, despite what I think was a sincere effort, is a bore and a waste of time, offering nothing but an unlikeable heroine, worn-out horror and high-school cliches, including the tedious one about class warfare, and a lot of not-so-subtle pandering to "modern audiences" and their presumed sensibilities. I think it was about a witch that periodically comes back to a California town to possess people and commit murder, but I don't remember or care. By the time anything cool happens, like the cheerleader who gets her head rammed into a meat slicer, I had checked all the way out. And there were two sequels. Why is it the worst movies are always so full of passionate intensity?
The Babadook (2014) - Low budget movies don't have to be bad, and this one is the proof. Featuring what amounts to a cast of two, "The Babadook" is about recently widowed Australian nurse who is trying to cope with her grief while also raising her troubled son. Things get even worse (much worse), when the son begins reporting that the storybook monster he read about in a mysterious book she can't remember buying him, is now taking up residence in their home. A troubling, dark, very intense story that is partly about grief, cope, denial, and the monsters within, I found the child and animal abuse scenes tough to take, but done in a very non-exploitative way that met the demands of the subject matter.
Nobody Sleeps in the Woods Tonight (2020) - An inventive Polish take on slasher films, which combines horror and comedy and then takes a radical turn into sci-fi, is about a group of teens whose internet addictions have banished them to a rural camp where there is no wi-fi. While hiking in the woods they encounter some deformed locals with bad attitudes, and well, shit goes down. I found this movie witty, engaging and innovative, with strong performances and well-drawn characters it takes the time to properly establish, and it has the good sense to shoot the horror as horror and the humor as humor, and not mix the two as so manyhorror movies do.
Thanksgiving (2023) - I can't believe I'm going to say something positive about Eli Roth, but here goes: THANKSGIVING is a fun, well made, and surprisingly well-plotted slasher which manages to pay homage to the genre and all of its tropes while actually managing to come off as fresh and, even more surprisingly, unpredictable. A year after an extremely grisly "Black Friday" stampede kills a number of people at a shopping mall, a masked madman -- or is he just really pissed off? -- starts to exact revenge on those he holds responsible. The film, which has some sarcastic things to say about consumerism, throws so many red herrings at you as to the possible identity of the killer that half the fun is watching your theories get shot down, or rather carved up. Roth wouldn't be Roth without putting one absolutely over-the-top kill sequence in this movie, and I could have done without seeing a woman roasted alive and then served for dinner, but you can't have everything.
In A Violent Nature (2024) - Ever wondered what a slasher would be like told almost entirely from the point of view of the killer? Chris Nash did, and IN A VIOLENT NATURE was the result. Essentially a "Friday the 13th" movie from Jason's perspective, it follows Johnny, an undead murderer whose grave deep in the woods of Ontario was foolishly disturbed by some campers, as he plods through the woods on a mission of revenge. Without a plot worthy of the name, without any character development, without a soundtrack of any kind, with very little dialogue (most of it Johnny overhears as he stalks his victims), and lacking even much of a backstory, it takes some patience (there's a lot of walking through the woods), and it's not what I would call scary, but it is distinctly unsettling and the images (and the kills) stay with you. A very innovative take on a genre most people would have said is deader than Johnny himself.
The Conference (2023) - A deeply satirical slasher with a lot to say about capitalism and corporate culture and the damage it causes, this clever Swedish slasher is about one of those awful "corporate retreats" gone horribly wrong when a killer with a big grudge and no mercy shows up and wreaks havoc with everything he can find, including a boat motor. Another movie that does a pretty effective job of separating its biting wit from its grisly kills, I really liked the performances all the way around, especially by Claes Hartelius as a scrappy old man who gives the slasher all that he can handle, and Adam Lundgren as a sociopathic corporate drone who is perhaps scarier than the killer.
Talk To Me (2022) - This clever and inventive movie from Australia really wowed me. A group of bored teens gets ahold of a Hand of Glory, a variation on the Ouija board, which allows them to talk to spirits, or rather to have spirits briefly inhabit them. It's all fun and games until one of them gets a very disagreeable inhabitant who decides he/she/it don't particularly wanna leave, whereupon things go downhill for everyone in a big way. A not so subtle riff on the perils of drug use and addiction, it's a bit of a slow burn, but manages to avoid being obvious, preachy, or to fall into any predictable story holes. I know I use the word "innovative" a lot but that's because I must reward it whenever I encounter it, as it's incredibly rare horror, a genre which is so heaped with worn-out tropes they can be assembled into a ready-made movie, especially when possession is involved: this is fresh. Sophie Wilde delivers a terrific performance as the heroine, Mia, and the ending is a doozy.
You're Next (2013) - What's more uncomfortable than a dysfunctional family reunion? A dysfunctional family reunion crashed by masked killers with sharp objects and a taste for cruelty. While I would characterize this movie as more of a suspense or even survival-horror story than a "regular" horror film or slasher, I found the protagonist, played by Sharni Vinson, to be likeable and just believable enough in her badassery to be satisfying rather than tedious and silly. The twists are for the most part easy to see coming, but the movie moves quickly, keeps the mayhem to a maximum, and keeps up the pace until the very last second -- literally. It's similar to HUSH, which I watched last Halloween, but executed (no pun intended) on a larger scale and with some layered mystery elements as to the identities and motives of the baddies. Better than I expected by a fair country distance.
American Psycho (2000). Probably no movie has ever made more sport out of American corporate culture generally, and the rampant greed, shallowness and materialism of the 80s specifically, than this horror-satire adapted from the B.E. Ellis novel of the same name. Christian Bale rises to dizzying heights as Patrick Bateman, a shallow, venal, status-worshipping Manhattanite yuppie whose hobbies are pop music and serial murder. Bateman is at once terriying in his capacity for cruelty and his equally creepy obsession with cleanliness and order, and hilarious in the agonies he suffers over things like the font on his business cards, or his inability to get reservations at Dorsia (a restaurant that seems to symbolise the elusive nature of the happiness that's supposed to come from material success). Bateman's inner torment is driven by his awareness that he has no soul, and in a sense does not even exist: his murders are his only outlet, but even they cease to satisfying him over time, necessitating ever more wanton acts of violence that cause his neatly packaged life to slowly unravel before us. The entire story is a masterpiece of unreliable narration, existential angst and savage social commetary. A truly great film.
As Above, So Below (2014) - Ever seen a movie that felt like it drew from so many pre-existing sources it had no identity of its own? This spirited "found footage" film set in the Paris catacombs was like that for me. Taking elements from everything from THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT and BORDERLANDS to DESCENT and even EVENT HORIZON, the acting is solid, the pace is very respectable, but I was left underwhelmed. A tale about a treasure hunter with more metaphorical balls than good sense, who tries to find the Philosopher's Stone beneath the City of Lights, it's just too "been there done that" to be effective, despite some very credible performances from Perdita Weeks and Francois Civil.
Backcountry (2014) - I was rather impressed with this man-vs.-nature story about a quarrel-prone Canadian couple who get lost in the woods of Ontario, and first menaced by a creepy woodsman, and then stalked by a bear who doesn't take "dear God no!" for an answer. The acting is good, my favorite thespian, Nicholas Campbell, has a small role, and Eric Balfour does wonders as that creepy Irish woodsman, who may or may not be a red herring. It's always intriguing when we get reminded how dangerous nature is, especially for cityfolk with too much pride and not enough directional sense. Throw in a bear-mauling scene that is truly horrific to hear (they only show what's necessary), and you won't want to go camping any time soon.
Nobody Sleeps in the Woods Tonight 2 (2021). As good as the first movie was, is how bad this weird, overexpository, overly comedic, overly "meta," underly scary mess of a sequel is. The first one exercised admirable balance between horror and comedy, and even managed to chuck in some social commentary with paying homage to the slasher genre. "2" is just a slop of ideas, and my guess is that the folks in charge slapped it together all too hastily following the success of the first one, in the spirit of "cash in while it's hot." I'm not even sure there is an actual plot. While there are a few good jokes, the story feels almost improvised, and well, it's just kinda shit. I'm sad to say it, but this has neither trick nor treat.
The First Omen (2024). Remember how ROGUE ONE was the answer to a question nobody asked, a movie whose entire premise sprang from a single sentence in the opening crawl of STAR WARS? THE FIRST OMEN is like that. There's a lot of craft, the acting is good, and it's largely very respectful of the original, 1976 OMEN which started the franchise, but it's just slow enough, just overplotted enough, just enough of a departure from the canon of the original movie, and topped off by just enough plot armor and needless girlbossery, that my ultimate feeling was disappointment. The tale of a young American nun-aspirant who arrives at an Italian nunnery to do God's work, only to discover nothing holy is going on within its walls, but rather a complex effort to summon the antichrist into fleshly existence, THE FIRST OMEN does hit some high notes, most particularly the grave performance of Ralph Ineson as Father Brennan, but in the end it just feels unnecessary. Sure, I was curious about the shadowy cult that facilitates the rise to power of Damien Thorn, but sometimes unanswered mysteries are the most satisfying.
The Privilege (2022) - Strong performances and what I think was a great deal of zeal can't save this German horror movie about a boy who survives his sister's seemingly supernatural murder, only to suspect he's still a target of those same mysterious malevolent years later as a high school student. Kind of a riff on many films you've already seen (THE STEPFORD WIVES comes to mind, among many others including THE BELIEVERS, and to some small extent, even HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH), it tries to play on paranoia, teen and familial alienation, and mystery, and create a sense of "who can I really trust here?" but it's just too predictable, and by the way, not even remotely frightening.
Ghost Ship (2002) - My final entry was a pleasant surprise. Another "haunted ship" story, but this time done right, or at least right-er, it follows a salvage ship which includes Gabriel Byrne, Julianna Marguiles, Karl Urban, and Isiah Washington among its crew, as they try to salvage a derelict cruise ship in the Bearing Strait which was last seen forty years ago, before it vanished off the face of the sea. On board the ghost ship they discover a hoard of gold; unfortunately they also discover malevolent ghosts who have no intention of letting them leave. A combination of haunted house and heist stories, with a large mystery at the center, it opens with one of the most inventive kill sequences I've ever seen -- a mass kill sequence, no less -- and also features one of the most interesting flashbacks I can recall, a grisly bit about a massacre-robbery that consumes its own perpetrators in a series of escalating betrayals. The drawbacks are a limp script which wastes some fine actors, and an uneven performance from Marguiles, who just didn't have the oompf to play the scrappy heroine. But I enjoyed the flick.
And with that, fifty-four minutes before midnight on Halloween, we come to the end of HH24. This has become a bit of an institution around here at Stone Cold Prose, and after this fairly enjoyable haul of spooky films, I must say I'm already looking forward to HH25. But I still owe myself, and you, almost a dozen more of these damned things, and in the spirit of completion, and continuing curiosity, I will report back when I've checked 'em off.
Happy Halloween, y'all.
October 28, 2024
BOOK REVIEW: CARLY RHEILAN'S "A CAT'S CRADLE"
Such is the currency of secrets, and the alliances they forge.
This is the most discomfiting novel I have ever read. It was disturbing, unsettling, haunting. It went to the very darkest places of human experience, and nudged me along with it. I use the word specifically. It did not push, did not demand: it invited me along, quietly dared me to join it, the experience being all the more rattling because once I started along, I felt I could not stop even though at times, I wished to.
Is A CAT'S CRADLE a great novel? You're damned right it is. But the greatness is multidimensional. It's great in the technical sense, being extremely well-written, but it's also great in the sense of its profundity, what it has to say about life, about childhood, about class, about sexual predation and the almost unending ripple-effect it has upon its victims and all of those around them. And beyond this, it is great because it is fearless. This is a subject which most sexual assault survivors could not bear to discuss even from their own perspective; but to fracture the narrative in the way Carly did, to provide the points of view not merely of the victim, but the offender, would be a bridge too far for almost anyone else.
Let's be blunt. A CAT'S CRADLE is about the "relationship" which forms between a convicted child murderer and pedophile named Ralph Sneddon, and his latest victim, nine year-old Mary Crouch. It does not go into disgusting detail, except to the extent that the subject matter is in itself morally disgusting, but in the same vein, it pulls no punches about the way sexual predators think and operate...or the way a little girl, herself so pre-pubescent she does not understand what is happening to her (or rather creatively misunderstands it), would react to her own exploitation and violation. As an advocate for victims of crime myself, I found our heroine's reaction uncomfortably honest, as indeed, the entire novel is uncomfortably honest: it explains that these relationships, twisted and evil as they are, are just that: relationships. They trade on the naivete of the victim, and on a child's natural love of secret-keeping, of living a life within a life which is known only to them. Mary is sometimes disgusted and horrified by Ralph, but she develops a love for him, too; almost a need, because of the lavishness of his nonsexual attentions, his ability to construct a "safe place" for her which is, of course, about as safe as hell on a bad day, and his predatory ability to foster emotional dependence. And here's where we hit my own personal discomfort zone dead center: in my professional experience, most abusive relationships of any kind are co-dependent and partially enabled by the victim, which is one of those topics nobody outside the field ever wants to discuss: but when it comes to a child, who cannot consent by definition, the waters, though murky and scummed-over by the perpetrator's vile intent, are still clear enough to understand. Mary is being maniuplated, but as with most manipulation there evolves (mutates?) a degree of willingness to be manipulated. Nobody I've ever read, and I love to read, has ever had the pitiless honesty to discuss this phenomenon with such scouring honesty. And indeed, since this "work of fiction" is in fact fictionalized autobiography, and Mary Crouch merely Carly Rheilan by another name, it's a doubly impressive achievement. But damn is it disturbing. Having read Rheilan's previous novel, ASYLUM, I had high expectations of the intellectual and moral depth of the story, but this work quite exceeded them, especially in its depiction of Ralph. Rheilan again exhibits "the touch" here, the ability to lay bare the innermost workings of a villain's mind, and even make him understandable by his own hellish lights. In ASLYUM the brief glimpses we get of the villain, a human trafficker called Christmas, are masterful: he's a Monster Compleat, but fascinating. Her examination of Ralph goes much deeper. We are forced into intimacy with this man and shown the naked horror of his own inner landscape -- what drives him, how he tries to resist those drives, and how he justifies his actions (including murder and animal murder) when the drives prove too strong. We see his techniques for grooming, the lies he tells himself as to his own motives, and the way he, as a convicted but paroled child-murderer with no friends or family beyond an invalid embittered mother who hates his guts, flits through the area in which he grew up like a ghost...or more specifically a poltergeist. We never pity Ralph -- his crimes are beyond pity -- but he is presented so realistically, and with such richness and complexity, that we are forced to realize the "monster" label we always use in these situations is unwarranted, because cowardly. By calling Ralph -- or Hitler, or Stalin, or Pol Pot -- a "monster," we let humanity off the hook for producing them in the first place. If A CAT'S CRADLE has an object lesson, it is that there are no monsters. There are only human beings who make monstrous choices, take monstrous actions, do monstrous damage. And somehow that makes everything worse. Ralph is not a monster, he is merely evil. And evil is always "merely." It is always prosaic, empty, even a little boring. Evil is the concentration camp guard who is kind to his dog and waters his begonias and kisses his wife before he goes to work. Evil is next door. Evil is us.
I should close by noting CRADLE is a period piece, being set in 1962, and profoundly English, in that social class and the nature of country village life take prominent places in the narrative, almost to the point of being characters themselves, though they are never extrude into the story. It is also a fascinating examination of childhood, not only in terms of how children think and behave, but how they see the world, which is curiously earthy and intimate and realistic on the one hand (because they are literally closer to the ground, and see things from unusual angles), but on the other, through a lens of pure ignorance and imagination. Children drift a blurry line between the world as it is, which is full of rules they don't understand and truths their parents and society work sweatily to prevent them from understanding "too soon"...and the imaginary world full of misunderstandings and dreams and fancies which they use to fill in those gaps, which can lead to outcomes both comedic and tragic. (Stephen King examined this brilliantly in IT, but from a very different perspective.)
So there it is. One of the best novels I've read in the last decade, and the most disturbing novel I've ever read. A profound work, but not for the faint of heart.
This is the most discomfiting novel I have ever read. It was disturbing, unsettling, haunting. It went to the very darkest places of human experience, and nudged me along with it. I use the word specifically. It did not push, did not demand: it invited me along, quietly dared me to join it, the experience being all the more rattling because once I started along, I felt I could not stop even though at times, I wished to.
Is A CAT'S CRADLE a great novel? You're damned right it is. But the greatness is multidimensional. It's great in the technical sense, being extremely well-written, but it's also great in the sense of its profundity, what it has to say about life, about childhood, about class, about sexual predation and the almost unending ripple-effect it has upon its victims and all of those around them. And beyond this, it is great because it is fearless. This is a subject which most sexual assault survivors could not bear to discuss even from their own perspective; but to fracture the narrative in the way Carly did, to provide the points of view not merely of the victim, but the offender, would be a bridge too far for almost anyone else.
Let's be blunt. A CAT'S CRADLE is about the "relationship" which forms between a convicted child murderer and pedophile named Ralph Sneddon, and his latest victim, nine year-old Mary Crouch. It does not go into disgusting detail, except to the extent that the subject matter is in itself morally disgusting, but in the same vein, it pulls no punches about the way sexual predators think and operate...or the way a little girl, herself so pre-pubescent she does not understand what is happening to her (or rather creatively misunderstands it), would react to her own exploitation and violation. As an advocate for victims of crime myself, I found our heroine's reaction uncomfortably honest, as indeed, the entire novel is uncomfortably honest: it explains that these relationships, twisted and evil as they are, are just that: relationships. They trade on the naivete of the victim, and on a child's natural love of secret-keeping, of living a life within a life which is known only to them. Mary is sometimes disgusted and horrified by Ralph, but she develops a love for him, too; almost a need, because of the lavishness of his nonsexual attentions, his ability to construct a "safe place" for her which is, of course, about as safe as hell on a bad day, and his predatory ability to foster emotional dependence. And here's where we hit my own personal discomfort zone dead center: in my professional experience, most abusive relationships of any kind are co-dependent and partially enabled by the victim, which is one of those topics nobody outside the field ever wants to discuss: but when it comes to a child, who cannot consent by definition, the waters, though murky and scummed-over by the perpetrator's vile intent, are still clear enough to understand. Mary is being maniuplated, but as with most manipulation there evolves (mutates?) a degree of willingness to be manipulated. Nobody I've ever read, and I love to read, has ever had the pitiless honesty to discuss this phenomenon with such scouring honesty. And indeed, since this "work of fiction" is in fact fictionalized autobiography, and Mary Crouch merely Carly Rheilan by another name, it's a doubly impressive achievement. But damn is it disturbing. Having read Rheilan's previous novel, ASYLUM, I had high expectations of the intellectual and moral depth of the story, but this work quite exceeded them, especially in its depiction of Ralph. Rheilan again exhibits "the touch" here, the ability to lay bare the innermost workings of a villain's mind, and even make him understandable by his own hellish lights. In ASLYUM the brief glimpses we get of the villain, a human trafficker called Christmas, are masterful: he's a Monster Compleat, but fascinating. Her examination of Ralph goes much deeper. We are forced into intimacy with this man and shown the naked horror of his own inner landscape -- what drives him, how he tries to resist those drives, and how he justifies his actions (including murder and animal murder) when the drives prove too strong. We see his techniques for grooming, the lies he tells himself as to his own motives, and the way he, as a convicted but paroled child-murderer with no friends or family beyond an invalid embittered mother who hates his guts, flits through the area in which he grew up like a ghost...or more specifically a poltergeist. We never pity Ralph -- his crimes are beyond pity -- but he is presented so realistically, and with such richness and complexity, that we are forced to realize the "monster" label we always use in these situations is unwarranted, because cowardly. By calling Ralph -- or Hitler, or Stalin, or Pol Pot -- a "monster," we let humanity off the hook for producing them in the first place. If A CAT'S CRADLE has an object lesson, it is that there are no monsters. There are only human beings who make monstrous choices, take monstrous actions, do monstrous damage. And somehow that makes everything worse. Ralph is not a monster, he is merely evil. And evil is always "merely." It is always prosaic, empty, even a little boring. Evil is the concentration camp guard who is kind to his dog and waters his begonias and kisses his wife before he goes to work. Evil is next door. Evil is us.
I should close by noting CRADLE is a period piece, being set in 1962, and profoundly English, in that social class and the nature of country village life take prominent places in the narrative, almost to the point of being characters themselves, though they are never extrude into the story. It is also a fascinating examination of childhood, not only in terms of how children think and behave, but how they see the world, which is curiously earthy and intimate and realistic on the one hand (because they are literally closer to the ground, and see things from unusual angles), but on the other, through a lens of pure ignorance and imagination. Children drift a blurry line between the world as it is, which is full of rules they don't understand and truths their parents and society work sweatily to prevent them from understanding "too soon"...and the imaginary world full of misunderstandings and dreams and fancies which they use to fill in those gaps, which can lead to outcomes both comedic and tragic. (Stephen King examined this brilliantly in IT, but from a very different perspective.)
So there it is. One of the best novels I've read in the last decade, and the most disturbing novel I've ever read. A profound work, but not for the faint of heart.
October 17, 2024
BOOK REVIEW: MICHAEL RUPPERT'S "CONFRONTING COLLAPSE"
The love of money is the root of all evil. That is the fundamental truth that I have verified through 3 decades of empirical, investigative, legal, academic research trying to answer some fundamental questions about human existence and why we behave the way we do, why we think the way we do, why we act the way we do...It is the love of money that has the potential to exterminate- to render extinct- the entire human race.
As a writer, Michael Ruppert was a helluva speaker. I don't say that to denigrate this troubled, frustrated, charismatic, controversial, and ultimately tragic figure, merely to explain the modest three-star rating I gave to his book, CONFRONTING COLLAPSE (previously released under the more prosaic title A PRESEIDENTIAL ENERGY POLICY), which I believe ought to be read, or at least skimmed, by everybody in the Western world.
Like many people, I came to an awareness of Ruppert through the excellent (and terrifying) biopic-documentary "The Collapse" (2009), which was about the idea of Peak Oil and what will happen to world civilization as oil production inevitably collapses -- inevitably because oil is a finite, non-renewable resource which is rapidly running out. This narrative weaves around Ruppert's personal narrative, the things he went through and says he went through as a result of decades of muckraking gonzo journalism. The documentary shook me so badly (and I don't consider myself all that easy to shake) that I sought out the book upon which it was based to hear his theories, opinions and warnings in more detail. Yesterday, after about two years of reading the book in tiny installments, I finally finished.
Ruppert's thesis is actually very simple. All of modern civilization is founded on oil. Everything from gasoline to plastic to resin to pesticide to paint to synthetic rubber to toothpaste, and very much else, is manufactured from petroleum by-products. Petroleum also powers our jetliners, our cars, our buses, our motorcycles, our tractors, our trains, our Navy destroyers and our tractors. It heats our homes, allows us to farm and to transport food, to extract raw material and to ship it, and to create and sustain all of our infrastructure (think: garbage collection, police cars, etc.). Everything we do in daily life is founded directly or indirectly on oil, from brushing our teeth to throwing a light-switch to driving a car to shopping at the grocery store to making love (even condoms are made from petroleum by products, i.e. plastic). The total supply of oil on the planet, however, is now "past peak," meaning that more has been burned than remains in the ground, and the supply is dwindling faster and faster because commercial use of oil is going up everywhere in the world, especially developing nations like China and India, but most especially in energy-ravenous America. At the same time, the remaining oil is by necessity harder and more expensive and environmentally destructive to remove from the earth, since the "low hanging fruit" has for the most part already been plucked out of existence. Ruppert believes, and there is considerable evidence to support, that all of human civilization is in a death spiral which will accelerate as oil usage surges even while the oil supply shrinks toward the zero point (zero point is not, incidentally, zero oil: it is the point where obtaining oil becomes so expensive and energy-intensive that there is no return for mining it...think of it in these terms: if you're starving, and somebody tells you there's a strawberry on top of a mountain, you'll burn 3,000 calories obtaining the strawberry but only 10 from eating it, rendering the journey pointless). This will produce a collapse -- power, food and other basic necessities of modern life will no longer be available in sufficient quantity for our population, and will lead to a huge die-off which will encompass wars, riots, and global anarchy.
The driving force behind the collapse is obviously our gluttonous appetite for the energy and products oil provides us, but Rupert argues, also the blind greed and sociopathic disregard for human life which is characteristic of modern governmental systems, be they socialistic, communistic or capitalistic. Our desire for profit and comfort are pushing us faster and faster toward the cliff which Peak Oil represents, and rather than address the problem, he points out that all nations seem to be doubling down on aggressive acquisition of oil (through drilling and if necessary, war) while making meaningless, lip-service commitments to the environment and alternative sources of energy. One of the key arguments of the book is the jinxed relationship between money (fiat currency) and energy, which accelerates the collapse by building an infinite-growth paradigm: very crudely put, our economy must have infinite growth or it will stagnate and collapse, but the resources we base our currency and our growth around, are not infinite. Thus at the heart of the paradigm is a paradox which can lead to only one catastrophic outcome.
All of these arguments are well-presented and difficult to refute on any level without resorting to sophistry or name-calling ("You're just a prophet of doom/conspiracy theorist!"), or the use of wobbly statistics and ideas that rely more on optimism and hope than fact. Nobody, after all, wants to believe our civilization is on its last kick and that our children or grandchildren will grow up in a dystopian future. On the other hand, some of the conclusions Ruppert reaches, and some of his predictions, are less impressive; the main difficulty with the book is that Ruppert, while highly intelligent and very knowledgeable, is really more of a blogger than an author. His writing style varies from arresting to amateurish, gripping to boring, and like many people with martyr complexes (he committed suicide in 2014), he has a tendency toward egotism and would-be omniscience. This makes a 220-page book feel like it's 1,000 pages, which is why it took me aeons to read it when I usually burn through books of this nature in less than a week. It is also why I prefer Ruppert as a public speaker (watch his videos or the documentary), or even as an article-writer and blogger, to a book-length author.
Having said that, I really do feel that CONFRONTING COLLAPSE is a book which ought to be read or at least skimmed by anyone who is still whistling past the petroleum graveyard. Our species (and all species on this planet we dominate) are in an existential struggle against our own excesses and the paradigms we have developed to live safe and comfortable lives. It is well past time that someone in power accepted the unsustainability of our way of life and enacted radical changes to meet the future, instead of telling us a few electric cars and some recycling will save the day, or just sticking their heads in the sand while choking out the words, "All is well!" All is manifestly not well and it is easy to understand why Ruppert's own life mirrored the spiral into destruction that he anticipates for our race. He was just sincere enough to agonize over the needless dilemma in which we now find ourselves, and just sharp enough to see that human nature is sufficiently selfish and illogical that nothing would be done to solve the dilemma until it was far past too late. I leave you with some of his more haunting words, which certainly go a fair country distance toward explaining why he chose to end his own life:
"Bridges are burning all around us; bridges to responses that might have mitigated the already brutal (and just beginning) ravages of Peak Oil; bridges to reduce the likelihood of war and famine; bridges to avoid our selectively chosen suicide; bridges to change at least a part of energy infrastructure and consumption; bridges to becoming something better than we are or have been; bridges to non-violence. Those bridges are effectively gone."
As a writer, Michael Ruppert was a helluva speaker. I don't say that to denigrate this troubled, frustrated, charismatic, controversial, and ultimately tragic figure, merely to explain the modest three-star rating I gave to his book, CONFRONTING COLLAPSE (previously released under the more prosaic title A PRESEIDENTIAL ENERGY POLICY), which I believe ought to be read, or at least skimmed, by everybody in the Western world.
Like many people, I came to an awareness of Ruppert through the excellent (and terrifying) biopic-documentary "The Collapse" (2009), which was about the idea of Peak Oil and what will happen to world civilization as oil production inevitably collapses -- inevitably because oil is a finite, non-renewable resource which is rapidly running out. This narrative weaves around Ruppert's personal narrative, the things he went through and says he went through as a result of decades of muckraking gonzo journalism. The documentary shook me so badly (and I don't consider myself all that easy to shake) that I sought out the book upon which it was based to hear his theories, opinions and warnings in more detail. Yesterday, after about two years of reading the book in tiny installments, I finally finished.
Ruppert's thesis is actually very simple. All of modern civilization is founded on oil. Everything from gasoline to plastic to resin to pesticide to paint to synthetic rubber to toothpaste, and very much else, is manufactured from petroleum by-products. Petroleum also powers our jetliners, our cars, our buses, our motorcycles, our tractors, our trains, our Navy destroyers and our tractors. It heats our homes, allows us to farm and to transport food, to extract raw material and to ship it, and to create and sustain all of our infrastructure (think: garbage collection, police cars, etc.). Everything we do in daily life is founded directly or indirectly on oil, from brushing our teeth to throwing a light-switch to driving a car to shopping at the grocery store to making love (even condoms are made from petroleum by products, i.e. plastic). The total supply of oil on the planet, however, is now "past peak," meaning that more has been burned than remains in the ground, and the supply is dwindling faster and faster because commercial use of oil is going up everywhere in the world, especially developing nations like China and India, but most especially in energy-ravenous America. At the same time, the remaining oil is by necessity harder and more expensive and environmentally destructive to remove from the earth, since the "low hanging fruit" has for the most part already been plucked out of existence. Ruppert believes, and there is considerable evidence to support, that all of human civilization is in a death spiral which will accelerate as oil usage surges even while the oil supply shrinks toward the zero point (zero point is not, incidentally, zero oil: it is the point where obtaining oil becomes so expensive and energy-intensive that there is no return for mining it...think of it in these terms: if you're starving, and somebody tells you there's a strawberry on top of a mountain, you'll burn 3,000 calories obtaining the strawberry but only 10 from eating it, rendering the journey pointless). This will produce a collapse -- power, food and other basic necessities of modern life will no longer be available in sufficient quantity for our population, and will lead to a huge die-off which will encompass wars, riots, and global anarchy.
The driving force behind the collapse is obviously our gluttonous appetite for the energy and products oil provides us, but Rupert argues, also the blind greed and sociopathic disregard for human life which is characteristic of modern governmental systems, be they socialistic, communistic or capitalistic. Our desire for profit and comfort are pushing us faster and faster toward the cliff which Peak Oil represents, and rather than address the problem, he points out that all nations seem to be doubling down on aggressive acquisition of oil (through drilling and if necessary, war) while making meaningless, lip-service commitments to the environment and alternative sources of energy. One of the key arguments of the book is the jinxed relationship between money (fiat currency) and energy, which accelerates the collapse by building an infinite-growth paradigm: very crudely put, our economy must have infinite growth or it will stagnate and collapse, but the resources we base our currency and our growth around, are not infinite. Thus at the heart of the paradigm is a paradox which can lead to only one catastrophic outcome.
All of these arguments are well-presented and difficult to refute on any level without resorting to sophistry or name-calling ("You're just a prophet of doom/conspiracy theorist!"), or the use of wobbly statistics and ideas that rely more on optimism and hope than fact. Nobody, after all, wants to believe our civilization is on its last kick and that our children or grandchildren will grow up in a dystopian future. On the other hand, some of the conclusions Ruppert reaches, and some of his predictions, are less impressive; the main difficulty with the book is that Ruppert, while highly intelligent and very knowledgeable, is really more of a blogger than an author. His writing style varies from arresting to amateurish, gripping to boring, and like many people with martyr complexes (he committed suicide in 2014), he has a tendency toward egotism and would-be omniscience. This makes a 220-page book feel like it's 1,000 pages, which is why it took me aeons to read it when I usually burn through books of this nature in less than a week. It is also why I prefer Ruppert as a public speaker (watch his videos or the documentary), or even as an article-writer and blogger, to a book-length author.
Having said that, I really do feel that CONFRONTING COLLAPSE is a book which ought to be read or at least skimmed by anyone who is still whistling past the petroleum graveyard. Our species (and all species on this planet we dominate) are in an existential struggle against our own excesses and the paradigms we have developed to live safe and comfortable lives. It is well past time that someone in power accepted the unsustainability of our way of life and enacted radical changes to meet the future, instead of telling us a few electric cars and some recycling will save the day, or just sticking their heads in the sand while choking out the words, "All is well!" All is manifestly not well and it is easy to understand why Ruppert's own life mirrored the spiral into destruction that he anticipates for our race. He was just sincere enough to agonize over the needless dilemma in which we now find ourselves, and just sharp enough to see that human nature is sufficiently selfish and illogical that nothing would be done to solve the dilemma until it was far past too late. I leave you with some of his more haunting words, which certainly go a fair country distance toward explaining why he chose to end his own life:
"Bridges are burning all around us; bridges to responses that might have mitigated the already brutal (and just beginning) ravages of Peak Oil; bridges to reduce the likelihood of war and famine; bridges to avoid our selectively chosen suicide; bridges to change at least a part of energy infrastructure and consumption; bridges to becoming something better than we are or have been; bridges to non-violence. Those bridges are effectively gone."
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