Brian Asman's Blog, page 3

Riding Shotgun with THE SPEED QUEEN

There are stories that are such clear distillations of a time and place and experience that one can’t picture them happening anywhere else or to anyone else. Not all works are of such a singular nature--one can pluck Juliet or Hamlet from Verona or Denmark and slap them down in south Florida or behind the handlebars of a Harley, and we’ve got a new, fresh take on the source material. The magic of Stewart O’Nan’s The Speed Queen is of an opposite but perhaps equal variety. Though elements of their story are absolutely universal, Marjorie, Natalie, and Lamont cannot exist anywhere but 1980s Oklahoma, and the specificity of their story is what is so appealing.

Before I begin to wax on about muscle cars and fast food drive-thrus[1], a few words must be said about the literary device O’Nan employs to tell Marjorie’s story. The book is written in the first person, but the conceit is that Marjorie is sitting on death row the day before her execution, recording tapes that will be used by none other than Stephen King to write a book about the Mach 6 killers from her perspective. This device is brilliant on several levels.

First, the device provides a clear motivation for Marjorie to tell the story of her life, from her childhood dog Jody-Jo to that last police chase. Never once do we question why Marjorie’s talking about some aspect of her upbringing, because we know she’s been given a set of questions from Mr. King himself that she’s supposed to be answering, and her answers become even more introspective, and revealing, due to this conceit. In fact listening to her wrestle with the questions, in her own words, does a gorgeously subtle job of painting her as an unreliable narrator (as when she calls her high school experience “pretty normal” and then proceeds to talk about her experiences with drink and drugs, or when she states emphatically she never got drunk while pregnant and then tells a story about being drunk while pregnant).

Second, Marjorie’s story is occasionally interrupted by a guard coming by, or someone yelling from another cell. Not only does this serve to put the reader right behind bars with her, it gives us all sorts of interesting background details on what life is like for four women on death row.

Third, the conceit provides further grounding in time and place because of the implication that Stephen King is trying his hand at a crime novel. Stephen King is still a genre giant today, but he was both absolutely massive in the ‘80s and still relatively new.. O’Nan could have made the author on the other end anonymous or pseudonymous, but simply the mention of Stephen King helps to call to mind the era. Plus, it’s fun.

Why does this story need to be set in the midwest in the 1980s? It’s ultimately a story about boredom that never manages to be boring, a cautionary tale about the dangers of under-stimulation to a restless populace. Boredom is a theme that comes up again and again while Marjorie relates her tale, from the highways of Oklahoma to death row, a place where the women’s efforts to occupy themselves until the end dovetail nicely with the youthful  ennui that landed at least Marjorie, and probably most of her compatriots, there. While boredom might be a universal impulse that manifests itself in diverse populations in every variation from 4H club membership to suicide bombings, the ‘80s in the midwest offers up a particularly peculiar cocktail of sources of boredom and antidotes.

There’s the landscape, of course. Vast, unending, and pretty damned flat. When the very earth beneath your feet is boring, it’s hard for anything particularly interesting to grow in that soil, thus you have a series of small towns without a lot going on, populated by people without a lot going on, either. And then there’s the decade itself. ‘80s nostalgia aside, the turbulence of the sixties and seventies led to a bit of a cultural hangover that lasted all the way up until 9/11. All those factors conspire to induce a special kind of boredom in everyone we meet, with deadly consequences.

Marjorie has little in the way of opportunity or stimulation available to her. No Internet, or course, and few activities other than driving around and doing drugs. While she clearly has an innate predilection towards addiction, it’s hard to imagine her running quite so headlong into the arms of drink and drugs, and at such an early age, if she were born into a more fascinating region or decade. Drugs and boredom are a powerful combination. Throw cars into the mix and things get quite combustible.

Being given a powerful machine and nothing to do is much like hitting puberty. All of a sudden you’ve got 400 horses under the hood and nowhere to turn it loose. The American muscle car represents a certain kind of freedom, sure, but also a certain kind of entertainment. Much of Marjorie and Lamont’s lives revolve around cars. Fixing cars, finding car parts, driving to car shows. Going out on the town and meeting up with a bunch of other gearheads at the malt shop. Again, O’Nan conjures up a special kind of geographical and temporal magic here, confirming once more why this story must take place in ‘80s Oklahoma. Unlike the sixties, these machines are now old enough to be mythologized. To be collector’s items. To empower and sustain a subculture. And since there aren’t gas shortages, there’s nothing stopping anyone from swallowing a few Black Beauties, popping in a Ramones 8-track, and driving all night.

The Speed Queen idles quite comfortably at the intersection of universality and specificity. We can identify with Marjorie, surely. But her life is only one we can sympathize with, not quite live for ourselves, the same way she drives with a finger and an atlas while waiting for the executioner. And the care taken to create this paradigm is something authors of crime fiction, and indeed any writer looking to solidly ground their novel in time and place, to the extent the story cannot happen anywhere else, should note.

[1] Only footnote, I promise--how brilliant an analogue for Sonic-style restaurants is O’Nan’s Mach 6? As someone who sends his hungry characters to their local Fasmart for a Pizza Pouch on occasion, I’m jealous.

Spark Me Up

You have to Spark me up/I’ll never Spark never Spark…

Sorry, that shit got in my head and the only way to get it out was starting my blog post with it. I make up dumb parody songs constantly—I’ve repurposed dozens of tunes to be about my girlfriend’s dog Zag (sample lyric: “All I do is Zag Zag Zag no matter what/got nothin’ on my mind ‘cause I’m a silly mutt/And every time I try to do anything my ears go UP/And they derp there/and they derp there”). You’re probably wondering how I got this particular Rolling Stones song in my head, or why the fuck I’m even writing this post in the first place, but trust me, there’s at least some semblance of a reason—I started using IngrahamSpark.

Now, no disrespect to self-published writers out there, but I’m more of a small press guy. There are aspects of publishing that I have no interest in participating in, and frankly I like being part of an imprint like Eraserhead—kind of feels like being in a gang, frankly. But Lucas Mangum (author of Gods of the Dark Web and many more) gave me this cool idea, he started printing short stories in book format, and I have a few old shorts I’ve published where the rights have reverted to me, so I figured I’d give it a go. I’m also doing a new horror convention this weekend, Horrorgasm, so I thought it would be cool to print up some chapbooks through IngrahamSpark.

I don’t want this to sound like a sales pitch, but the process was pretty damn easy. Surprisingly so. Laying out my book required a lot of trial and error, and there were some tricks I had to figure out to get IS to accept my files, like embedding fonts. When laying out my book, I thought I’d save page count by making the margins really tiny, but when I got the print copy of the book I had the epiphany that tiny margins force the reader to break the book’s spine to read it. Not a pleasurable experience. Because I’d already approved the files, I had to spend an extra $50 re-uploading files in order to reprint the book, but that’s on me for being a dummy.

So now I’ve got something nifty to do with my old stories other than look for anthologies that accept reprints, and I think offering an exclusive item could be a fun convention strategy. We’ll see how it goes.

Oh, and if you want the limited edition of NOW I DON THE MASK with exclusive bonus content that will never be available anywhere else, you’ve got to come to Horrorgasm this Saturday, October 24th, at Queen Bee’s in North Park.

Halloween Memories

I recently wrote a piece for the Horror Writers Association newsletter on Halloween memories. If you’re not an HWA member (it’s not just for writers—artists, editors, publishers, and fans can all join), check them out at hwa.org.

In retrospect, I should have titled this I REMEMBER HALLOWEEN. Never pass up an opportunity for a Misfits reference!

HALLOWEEN MEMORIES

Asking me to settle on a single, measly memory of Halloween is like asking me to name my favorite taco shop (I can probably get it down to a top ten but that’s pushing it), but here goes nothing. My favorite memory of Halloween is the specials!

Anyone who’s heard me pontificate on my influences for any length of time knows that I’m a huge fan of GARFIELD’S HALLOWEEN ADVENTURE. That, along with KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE and the Scary Stories books are my earliest horror memories. I remember ripping open the Sunday paper the week of Halloween, scanning the network listings to see what cartoon specials were spookily displacing their regularly-scheduled programming, and then circling them all with a magic marker so my dad would know what he needed to tape on our BetaMax unit (the last time he was ever an early adopter of anything—fool me once and all that). Garfield and his pirate ghosts were always a particular favorite—there are some legitimately great scares in there, from the opening scene with the unhinged and terrifying Binky the Clown to the King in Yellow-inspired fakeouts during the jazzy Lou Rawls number “Scaredy Cat.” And for my money, I’ve never felt quite the same flavor of dread as when Garfield and Odie are desperately searching for a place to hide in the old man’s house, knowing the pirate ghosts will be there any minute and there is nothing they can do to stop their return.

There were a bunch of other ones I loved too, from IT’S THE GREAT PUMPKIN, CHARLIE BROWN to THE HALLOWEEN TREE to some of the stuff the Disney Channel reliably showed year-after-year: their eponymous HALLOWEEN TREAT AND MR. BOOGEDY (weirdly, the sequel, BRIDGE OF BOOGEDY, has a similar build to JASON GOES TO HELL, if I remember correctly). The best was going out trick-or-treating, coming back with a sackful of fun-size candy bars, and binging on both sweets and BetaMax-taped Halloween content until I passed out on the couch. Good times!

THE FANATIC is the Best Movie You Won't Watch This Year

Yep, THE FANATIC.

The horror movie directed by Fred Durst, and from the trailers looks like it’s about John Travolta going full Simple Jack for an hour and a half.

Continuing the 2019 trend of movies being way better than they had any right to be (THE BANANA SPLITS, CHILD’S PLAY, MA), THE FANATIC is freaking great. I know, I can’t believe it either. After all, it’s directed by the lead singer of Limp Bizkit, a band whose oeuvre is the sonic equivalent of your older brother slapping you across the face with your own hand and repeatedly asking “WHY YOU HITTING YOURSELF?!?!?!” One might imagine said movie to be an extended, incoherent music video set to a tedious rap rock soundtrack and rife with vaping because it’s 2019.

Yeah, opposite.

John Travolta plays loner autograph-obsessive Moose, and it’s the second best role of his career (the first being FACE/OFF, and for those keeping score at home his masterful portrayal of terrorist-for-hire Castor Troy inside of FBI agent Sean Archer’s body is still only the third-best performance in that singular film; Nicholas Cage as Sean Archer in Castor Troy’s body easily takes first, followed by Nicholas Cage’s fake mustache in the opening scene). Moose is painfully awkward, probably on the spectrum, and doesn’t seem to be aware of the concept of boundaries. And yet he’s also endearing, in a goofy overgrown-kid way, and serves as a philosophical counterpoint to cynical, scummy street-performer Todd, who’s really there to rob his audience blind. Moose might live a life of loneliness and rejection, but he’s still a wide-eyed ingenue who truly believes in the magic of Hollywood. He makes his living by pretending to be a British police officer for some reason, and his awful attempts at an English accent are one of many areas where Travolta truly shines. This weird, gritty innocence allows us to continue rooting for this bizarre man-child, even when his obsession with douchebro horror actor Hunter Dunbar takes him to some seriously dark places.

The whole cast is great here, including Devon Sawa as the aforementioned Dunbar, Anna Golja as Leah, a young paparazzo who hangs out with weirdo middle-aged men like Moose for no apparent reason, and Jacob Grodnik as the vile Todd. And that’s what really sets THE FANATIC apart. Sure, the plot is fairly predictable, but the amount of care and effort that went into creating something so ridiculous is impressive. It’s not at the level of STREET TRASH, an exploitation classic that went so far as to have a minor character record a Sinatra-esque ballad about himself to play over the end credits, but regardless of what you think of the decisions Durst makes, you can tell he’s really thought it through. One telling detail is the OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN poster in Moose’s apartment—he’s not the sort of obsessive fan we’ve seen before, one who can rattle off arcane trivia about obscure ‘70s and ‘80s horror movies at will (like I just did two sentences ago), he’s the sort of fan who likes terrible, big-budget popcorn movies and obsesses over them the way neckbeards do over Fulci or whatever. It’s different, it’s fresh, and it’s quite well-executed.

This will always be the movie the guy from Limp Bizkit directed, but I can see a world somewhere down the line where some DJ spins “Nookie” at a ‘90s throwback night and one sentient vape cloud turns to another and says, “You know the guy rapping right now did that movie THE FANATIC?”

I hope Durst keeps making movies, because he’s done something cool, and you should totally check it out.