Jonathan Carroll's Blog, page 22

CarrollBlog 7.6

Here's the first review of my new short story collection THE WOMAN WHO MARRIED A CLOUD. It was published in the latest edition of LOCUS magazine.

Like Graham Joyce, Jonathan Carroll is a writer who, by common knowledge, ‘‘defies classification,’’ which by now has become a sort of classification all by itself; why else would we keep inventing terms for it? But it’s not as though readers didn’t make heroic earlier efforts to find easier labels for both Joyce and Carroll, mostly as horror writers.

Joyce’s earlier novels like Dreamside and The Tooth Fairy sometimes were reviewed as horror, and in Carroll’s case The Land of Laughs made it onto Stephen Jones and Kim Newman’s ‘‘best 100 horror books’’ list, while his story collection The Panic Hand won a Stoker. Both writers have won World Fantasy Awards, which with its broad remit seems a bit closer to the mark, but the main point is that neither writer seems to start out with any particular notion of genre in mind at all, but rather with a singular angle of vision. For the last few years, Carroll has been a regular contributor to Bradford Morrow’s journal Conjunctions, which seems a reasonable home – neither a genre venue nor one which turns its nose up at genre material. In ‘‘Nothing to Declare’’, one of the more recent tales in Carroll’s generous career-overview collection The Woman Who Married a Cloud, a waitress begins a tentative romance with a customer by noting, ‘‘It happens so rarely that you meet someone who perceives life from a unique perspective and in sharing it, expands your vision,’’ and that, ‘‘No matter what they talked about, he almost always came at it from a different angle.’’ She might as well be reading the book she’s in.

More than half the stories in The Woman Who Married a Cloud, the earliest from 1982, were included in Carroll’s now out-of-print 1995 collection The Panic Hand, which gives some sense of how relatively sparse Carroll’s short fiction output is – a little over 50 stories in

30 years, of which 37 are collected here. Most of us, I would imagine, know Carroll mostly through his novels, which often begin with likeable but flawed characters in believable domestic settings and unexpectedly spiral outward into broadly philosophical considerations of epistemology and ethics, while casually introducing fantasy elements such as ghosts, time travelers, aliens, or talking dogs – but which somehow never quite turn the novels into anything resembling genre fantasy, a label to which Carroll has frequently objected. Never very long, the novels are nevertheless boxes full of twisty surprises, and something of that effect is retained here in the two long novellas ‘‘Black Cocktail’’ and ‘‘The Heidelberg Cylinder’’, which together make up nearly a fifth of this large collection. Each would be a good introduction to the character-based narratives and unexpected reversals of his novels, while retaining the focus of his best short fiction. ‘‘Black Cocktail’’ is narrated by the host of a radio talk show ‘‘which welcomes full-blown kooks,’’ and whose lover has died in a catastrophic Los Angeles earthquake (referred to in a few other stories as well). He meets a successful haberdasher named Michael Billa and, while they don’t become lovers, she is fascinated by his stories of childhood, especially one involving a near-psycho kid named Clinton, who was Michael’s protector in high school. When Clinton reappears – still apparently 15 years old – the narrator’s life begins to take a series of classically Carrollesque turns. His house and motorcycle are vandalized, neither Clinton nor Michael are who they at first appear to be, and the whole tale begins to turn on such appealing pop-metaphysical notions as the ‘‘Essential Time’’ – ‘‘when you are more you than at any other time of your life’’ – and the ancient conceit that each human has only one part of a five-part soul and can only reach fulfillment by finding the other literal ‘‘soulmates.’’ Carroll’s theology always seems a bit woolly to me, but he presents it with such grace, and embeds it so naturally in his plots, that it becomes almost charming – in much the same way that Charles Williams’s peculative theology can be more appealing than C.S. Lewis’s more doctrinaire bludgeoning. In a sense, he does for adults what his namesake Lewis Carroll does for children.

Hell, for example, plays a key role in ‘‘The Heidelberg Cylinder’’, but it sounds like a pretty pleasant place whose main problem is overpopulation, which leads to various denizens of Hell being relocated randomly into people’s houses, and who are allowed to reconfigure the houses after their favorite movies. The narrator’s first clue is when he notices that several of his neighbors’ belongings have been unceremoniously dumped into the streets, and he’s soon visited by two rather comical figures who claim to represent a brotherhood called the Heidelberg Cylinder, named after a mysterious device which has been behind every important modern invention from the cotton gin to the computer. By the time we get to a sentence like ‘‘I don’t like being told what to do; especially not by dead people who live on movie sets with burning dogs,’’ we know we’re in a Carroll story, and one that’s as delightfully insane as it is indescribable.

Part of Carroll’s signature effect derives from the mundane, almost old-fashioned way in which he frames his tales; the understated ironic voice (often first-person, sometimes with a female narrator or a gay narrator as in ‘‘Black Cocktail’’) sounds more like John Collier or the early John Cheever than a contemporary slipstream fantasist. There’s almost never a clue in the traditionally ingratiating openings that the story is going to fly off the rails of realism, and sometimes it doesn’t – it just gets really odd. ‘‘Mr. Fiddlehead’’ begins with ‘‘On my fortieth birthday, Lenna Rhodes invited me over for lunch,’’ but turns out to concern an imaginary childhood friend who becomes a real part of an adult’s life. The wonderfully titled ‘‘Elizabeth Thug’’, on the other hand, begins with a similarly mundane image of a woman entering a tattoo parlor to get a tattoo that she hopes will make her distinctive, but never turns into fantasy at all. Sometimes these quiet, domestic tales pivot on an episode of sadness or grief – a dead wife (‘‘Vedran’’), a pair of beloved dogs (‘‘Second Snow’’), a dead child (‘‘Florian’’), a dead father (‘‘Crimes of the Face’’), or going blind (‘‘A Wheel in the Desert, the Moon On Some Swings’’). The choreography of sadness is something Carroll does as well as anyone.

At times, the stories which do introduce fantasy verge on a kind of slick sophistication that suggests a Twilight Zone episode, as when a character wakes up to find himself back in prep school (‘‘Postgraduate’’), or former residents of a house show up asking to see it for old times’ sake and end up somehow transforming it back into the world of their memories; sometimes they seem too conveniently moralistic, as when the protagonist of ‘‘Alone Alarm’’ is kidnapped by figures who turn out to be versions of himself at different stages of life. But more often than not, Carroll’s stories achieve a strangeness and power all their own, and of a sort that beggars any sort of précis.

Let me instead suggest that, in addition to the stories I’ve already mentioned, you read, and read carefully, tales like ‘‘Friend’s Best Man’’, ‘‘The Sadness of Detail’’, ‘‘The Panic Hand’’, ‘‘The Stolen Church’’, or ‘‘The Woman Who Married a Cloud’’ (one of two stories might as well be original here, since they appear also in 2012 periodicals – though for most of us, nearly all the stories here will be accessible for the first time). There are dogs and children and lost lovers populating these tales, to be sure, and there are fair doses of grief and sentiment in some of them, but mostly there are the lineaments of a vision so distinctive, and so morally grounded, that it hardly bears comparison with anything else in modern fiction at all.

--Gary K. Wolfe

CarrollBlog 6.9

Commencement address to the AIS class of 2012

A few years ago I had a good idea for a book and called my literary agent to tell it to her. The idea was to go to famous people in all walks of life and ask them one question—WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED? Only that—four words, and then just let them talk. She asked who I had in mind and I said all sorts-- politicians, actors, sports stars… people from all walks of life and of all ages who have achieved great success and as a result, might have made interesting discoveries about how life functions that would help us all. Perhaps they’d be willing to reveal some of these discoveries. I could hear a distinct lack of enthusiasm in my agent’s response and the fact I wasn’t interested in actually writing the book but thought maybe one of her other clients would, added to her indifference. Interestingly enough, a few years later Esquire Magazine in the US started a monthly feature in which they ask famous people WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED that still runs in the magazine on a regular basis.

Be that as it may, the question is a good one and especially relevant now, on the night you graduate from high school. Let’s take a moment to break this down: Four classes a day, 180 days a year for the past four years. That makes roughly 3000 classes you’ve sat through. Of course that’s not including the glorious days of middle and lower school. What have you learned? And here’s another question— how much of it do you think you’ll remember five or ten years from now? Chances are, not much. You’ll remember things from the classes you liked—The Napoleonic Wars, String theory, Watson and Crick, or Meursault from THE STRANGER may stay in your head and heart because for various reasons they remain relevant as you grow older. But gerunds, Thomas Malthus, the Fibonacci sequence, that frisky chemical element rhodium, or The Elements of Style? Forget it—you left those guys behind a long time ago and truth be told, good riddance.

But life is not just school, despite the feeling that sometimes our days consist of a never ending series of B blocks. So answer this-- what have you learned outside school? Think for a minute--If you have younger brothers or sisters, what could you tell them right now that you’ve learned either in school or out that might help them move more easily or happily through their 12 year old lives?

Because this is a graduation speech, of course there must be some significant quotations peppered throughout from smart people, but I promise there will only be a few and they’re pretty cool. The psychologist Carl Jung said “I am not what happened to me, I am what I chose to become.” Meaning of course that unless a piano falls on your head as you’re walking down the street one day, much of what happens in life is in your own hands. But what’s sobering is as we grow older, many of us begin to doubt just how much we really do control our own lives, and how much of it rests in the hands and decisions of others—bosses, professors, co-workers, fate.

Whether we have learned that we are the masters of our own fate, or some of it, or only a bit here and there, one thing is certain—things change and what you were sure of yesterday is constantly being upended by the events of today or tomorrow. That’s not such a bad thing though because it makes life interesting and challenging all the time. If what you learned today was applicable to all of your tomorrows, life would be dull.

Some years ago I was on a highfaultin' panel in Finland discussing 'what is great art'? To the amusement and dismay of some of my fellow august panel members, I said it’s easy to tell the difference between great art and junk: If I walk into an art gallery, see a picture and my first reaction is to say an astonished, delighted “WOW!” then it is great art—at least for me. On the other hand if my only reaction is to say “So what?” then it is not—whether the picture is painted by Rembrandt or Raymond Brandt. I think the same holds true for all art and even life itself. Why do I bring this up now? Because one of the things I have learned is it is best to try and live a life pursuing the Wow! rather than the “So what?” Whether that life is in high finance or deep sea exploration, I think people should try and pursue what fascinates them rather than just what pays the bills, gives them security, or keeps them materially comfortable. If making a fortune is what captivates you, then by all means go for it. But if you’re pursuing it because you think the stuff riches bring will make you happy some time in a distant future way off there on the horizon, then you’re likely to be disappointed. What I have learned is to try and move life toward “Wow!” now, rather than one that says ‘in five years I hope that what I’m doing now will result in lots of Wow.’ The Swiss writer Robert Walser said it nicely “I don’t want a future, I want a wonderful present. To me this appears of greater value.”

I’ll tell you one other thing I have learned over the years: No matter what your interests are, find your heroes. Learn from them, then take everything you need from them and move on. Soon it will be your turn—with what you’ve gathered and learned try to make something entirely new; something so different and great that it could only have come from you and your vision. Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen. In the end, try to become the kind of hero you were once looking for.

Recently a young woman named Marina Keegan graduated from Yale University in the United States. From all signs, she had a very bright future ahead of her, having already published work in The New York Times and had a job lined up at The New Yorker magazine. Several days after graduating, she was killed in an automobile accident. In one of the last editorials she published in the Yale Daily News, she discussed her feelings about graduation. Here’s an excerpt from it:

“What we have to remember is that we can still do anything. We can change our minds. We can start over. Get a post-baccalaureate degree or try writing for the first time. The notion that it's too late to do anything is comical. It's hilarious. We're graduating college. We're so young. We can't, we MUST not lose this sense of possibility because in the end, it's all we have.”

Let me close here with words from the novelist Michael Ondaatje:

You step delicately

into the wide world now

And your real prize will be

The frantic search.

Want everything. If you break,

Break going out not in.

Congratulations class of 2012. Tonight you are our heroes.

CarrollBlog 6.7

When Death Comes

By Mary Oliver

When death comes

like the hungry bear in autumn;

when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps his purse shut;

when death comes

like the measle pox;

when death comes

like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:

what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything

as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,

and I look upon time as no more than an idea,

and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common

as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth

tending as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something

precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder

if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened

or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

CarrollBlog 5.30

Whenever someone says "I deserve this-" I'm convinced the devil wakes from his nap....

CarrollBlog 5.24

At its best, love shows us a photo of ourselves we’ve never seen before but find very flattering. At its worse it takes the few photos we like of ourselves, tears them into little pieces, and tosses them indifferently into the air like confetti.

CarrollBlog 5.20

One of those small forlorn stores in a distant part of town where you never see anyone on foot and there’s space to park everywhere. The store reminds you of one of those spider webs in a forgotten corner of your house—near the ceiling of a hall closet or the floor of an unused bathroom. You know the chances of a spider catching a meal in one of those corners is next to zero. When driving past, you always think of the place as ‘the spider web store’ and wonder if anyone ever even goes in there, much less buys anything.

CarrollBlog 5.19

A Few Words on The Soul

by Wislawa Szymborska

We have a soul at times.

No one’s got it non-stop,

for keeps.

Day after day,

year after year

may pass without it.

Sometimes

it will settle for awhile

only in childhood’s fears and raptures.

Sometimes only in astonishment

that we are old.

It rarely lends a hand

in uphill tasks,

like moving furniture,

or lifting luggage,

or going miles in shoes that pinch.

It usually steps out

whenever meat needs chopping

or forms have to be filled.

For every thousand conversations

it participates in one,

if even that,

since it prefers silence.

Just when our body goes from ache to pain,

it slips off-duty.

It’s picky:

it doesn’t like seeing us in crowds,

our hustling for a dubious advantage

and creaky machinations make it sick.

Joy and sorrow

aren’t two different feelings for it.

It attends us

only when the two are joined.

We can count on it

when we’re sure of nothing

and curious about everything.

Among the material objects

it favors clocks with pendulums

and mirrors, which keep on working

even when no one is looking.

It won’t say where it comes from

or when it’s taking off again,

though it’s clearly expecting such questions.

We need it

but apparently

it needs us

for some reason too.

CarrollBlog 5.16

I'm just back from a book tour in Poland to promote my new collection of short stories there, THE WOMAN WHO MARRIED A CLOUD. Here's a link to one of the interviews I did while there:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMGzF1...

CarrollBlog 4.27

Polish readers-- I just heard from the publisher that the official release date of my new book is May 8. It will first appear in all Empik stores there. I'll be in Lodz/Warsaw/Krakow May 9- 12 to say hello and sign whatever you want.

The American, expanded edition of the story collection will be available in June. You can pre-order it now from The Subterranean Press.

CarrollBlog 4.25

Hey you, dragging the halo-

how about a holiday in the islands of grief?

Tongue is the word I wish to have with you.

Your eyes are so blue they leak.

Your legs are longer than a prisoner’s

last night on death row.

I’m filthier than the coal miner’s bathtub

and nastier than the breath of Charles Bukowski.

You’re a dirty little windshield.

I’m standing behind you on the subway,

hard as calculus. My breath

be sticking to your neck like graffiti.

I’m sitting opposite you in the bar,

waiting for you to uncross your boundaries.

I want to rip off your logic

and make passionate sense to you.

I want to ride in the swing of your hips.

My fingers will dig in you like quotation marks,

blazing your limbs into parts of speech.

But with me for a lover, you won’t need

catastrophes. What attracted me in the first place

will ultimately make me resent you.

I’ll start telling you lies,

and my lies will sparkle,

become the bad stars you chart your life by.

I’ll stare at other women so blatantly

you’ll hear my eyes peeling,

because sex with you is like Great Britain:

cold, groggy, and a little uptight.

Your bed is a big, soft calculator

where my problems multiply.

Your brain is a garage

I park my bullshit in, for free.

You’re not really my new girlfriend,

just another flop sequel of the first one,

who was based on the true story of my mother.

You’re so ugly I forgot how to spell.

I’ll cheat on you like a ninth grade math test,

break your heart just for the sound it makes.

You’re the ‘this’ we need to put an end to.

The more you apologize, the less I forgive you.

So how about it?

Jeffrey McDaniel