Hour of the Wolf

by M Kitchell

"Hour of the Wolf" is a hypnagogic incantation from writer M Kitchell (Spiritual Instrument, Island, Apart From). Robed figures and furry men, ice caves and deserts, god and serpent, shapelessness and sacred geometry, mysterious artifacts and unfolding perceptions coalesce in a pentacle of overlaid story bodies, each sinking deeper into its own true consciousness, while at the same time constructing an indexical sequence of translation from raw sense to mediated artifice, a primer of the dissolution of life into text. "Hour of the Wolf" combine experience and meaning into a ritual object, a book that is not a place separate from this world, but an impossible place within it.

Genres: Fiction, Poetry

106 pages, Paperback

First published February 22, 2013

Reviews

[Karl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Words appear to fail me in my attempt to describe this book. Upon finishing M Kitchell’s “Hour of the Wolf” I'll give it a shot. I am totally unfamiliar with whom M Kitchell is and have never encountered this author previously. I came across the name M. Kitchell in an interview I read by Mr. Damion Murphy. Since Mr Murphy has risen to to the top of the list of my most esteemed authors, I gave it a shot.

It is obvious M Kitchell is/was a poet, and the breakdown of this book is presented in cycles:
21 – “First Cycle”
45 – “Second Cycle”
67 – “Third Cycle”
79 – “Fourth Cycle”
87 – “Final Cycle”

“First Cycle” consists of five nights awake/dreaming/sleeping and is as near normal/hallucinatory as to appear almost cognative. As the cycles continue we venture further into the realms of nightmare.

If one needs a point of reference, perhaps Thomas Ligotti on acid cruising the tenderloin in San Francisco in a runaway taxi or rickshaw perused by satanists may give one the false perception of what is taking place in the narrative. Or perhaps not.

An intriguing not to be missed journey. Fade to black to the soundtrack of a gasp.

[Janie · Rating 5 out of 5]

The caves fan out in delicate geometric patterns as i bury my feet in the dirt. the shape of the void is quite confusing at 3 a.m. psychopomps awaken, we're aflame without fear.

[Nate D · Rating 4 out of 5]

The february edition of this year of zines, completely blowing January's introductory falsified collage dream-journal (which was honestly a completely satisfying start) out of the apartment/cave/desert/ocean. Actually, a book this beautifully hand-made intricately developed can hardly be referred to as a zine at all. It's a thematically continuous progression of five stories, each encompassing five nights during which the protagonist is unable to sleep from three until four am. Beginning in defamiliarized horror-story territory, this quickly heads towards metaphysics, swallowing genre tropes in an eternal arc into comprehension. Perhaps runs to excess at points (a concentrated but uninhibited series of visions in the second cycle for instance), but really his willingness to completely run these ideas out to their conclusion is part of what makes M's storytelling so punchy here, and lends a raw viscerally to the ideas.

I should also mention, again, the beauty of this as an object: the perfect gold square set in the cover, the complexly hand-sewn binding, a section in the middle which excises all but a few phrases and scattered lost punctuation, oblong section dividers that fill with ghost images from the other side whenever you begin to turn the page and the light breaks faintly through the paper, the post-concrete poetics (or something, it's not like I really know poetry) of the last section.

Somehow this was composed in ten days in the middle of last month, which may account for a kind of breathlessness at times, but not for any sense that this was hurried, because it is not.

I'm not sure if subscriptions to these are still being accepted, but if they are know that these are already really pushing beyond the vague territory of the zine, and into art-object / story-cycle.

[nethescurial · Rating 4 out of 5]

A highly effective experimental volume detailing a dream cycle in five parts, starting as a fairly straightforward work of weird horror in the opening segment and increasingly morphing with each cycle into a chasm of oneiric subconscious writing, before reaching the final section, whose imagery and thematic substance is almost completely inscrutable. Loaded with the kind of typographical screwery I'm always a sucker for, words stretching away and rising and falling over the page in a sort of chaos that gets less and less controlled the longer this continues - much like a long dream. It helped a lot to just latch on to the imagery as this literary river increasingly swept me away, but on first read there's a lot of interesting stuff here that already stuck out to me - dreaming and its relationship to the divine, the continued inability of the human brain to grasp the concept of God, and the relation of God to poetry as a vehicle in which we could potentially begin to understand. Indeed, there's an apparent utilization of poetic techniques throughout, both in writing and composition. And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the book's existence as a work of impressive visual art in itself, lined on its margins with evocative abstract black-and-white images and like I said, an abundance of structural eccentricities that are easier to experience than to describe. I read it in PDF format so I perhaps didn't see its full scope in action, but I could tell from that alone that it's beautifully crafted. Definitely a recommend for those who have an interest in the esoteric and the occult, which is an itch this scratches in spades.

"His body has become one with the sphere and the man is no longer worried about losing his breath because he has shed his body and thus needs no longer to breathe. An effervescent sense of fulfillment of all bodily pleasures sensation overtaking the world and removing all sight sound touch smell taste in lieu of something total a totality of perfection something that cannot be accurately depicted with anything short of the new death a new idea of surpassing the body into the impossible.”

[John Trefry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Robed figures and furry men, ice caves and deserts, god and serpent, shapelessness and sacred geometry, mysterious artifacts and unfolding perceptions coalesce in a pentacle of overlaid story bodies, each sinking deeper into its own true consciousness, while at the same time constructing an indexical sequence of translation from raw sense to mediated artifice, a primer of the dissolution of life into text. Hour of the Wolf combine experience and meaning into a ritual object, a book that is not a place separate from this world, but an impossible place within it.

[M. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A new, expanded edition of HOUR OF THE WOLF, originally published in private in 2013, is available from Inside The Castle.

Buy it here
Reviewed by Richard Marshall at 3:AM
Reviewed by Ben Arzate at Cultured Vultures
Interview w/ Hyemin Kim regarding the book at Full-Stop
Reviewed by Duncan Barlow at Vol. 1 Brooklyn
Reviewed by Judson Hamilton at Queen Mob's Teahouse

[Samuel Moss · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writing is hit or miss. Felt a bit like four short pieces.

The book itself is gorgeous. My favorite visual element was the little black box hidden in the gutter.

[Curtis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Insomnia in book form. You wake every 3 am with the sense of important happenings afoot. Dreams leak into the waking tedium and next thing you know, you’re a weird amnesiac wandering the halls of his glacier caverns in search of reality. I’d bring a bong on the descent.

[Ben Arzate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full Review

Hour of the Wolf is a haunting experimental work. Kitchell creates an otherworldly atmosphere through his excellent prose and through his skillful playing with literary conventions. This is a difficult work, but one that rewards its readers well.

[Ben Spivey · Rating 5 out of 5]

First: this is a beautiful object. Second: this is a beautiful story of love and horror. I can imagine this story being reprinted 10 years from now in our greatest collections. This is a rare book.

[Bill Hsu · Rating 4 out of 5]

This lovely redesign, with M's enigmatic images supporting the text throughout, is a pretty different experience from the original edition.

[Patch · Rating 4 out of 5]

might be 5 stars, still thinking it over. I really liked The graphic elements, I'm not sure they added much to the narrative, but just having that extra dimension felt thematically relevent. I'm rereading a thousand plateaus, and this made me think of the section about faces. and how theres sort of a natural end point to all deterritorialization. you can make a face human as much as you want, take it even further and make it white make it male. but theres still an animal underneath, there's still trees older than the united states and the infinite cycle of birth and death. I think thats where ouroborus comes from, and all the ways we conceptualize these natural end points to lines of flight. we represent it with animals because its part of something bigger than us. hypnogogia is sometimes seen as breaking through the veil. maybe its a little stumble into the languages and symbols of bigger things. I read a short story recently where someone had a tiny pet ouroborus, ouroborus keeps showing up for me. I hope this spring brings lots of garter snakes, they might be my favorite spring creatures.

[Sofia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Overmuch after Robbe-Grillet, without Brooke-Rose's inspiration. Beautifully designed, but came across like his equivalent of Jeff Jackson's Novi Sad, against his work, but with telling in stead of as opposed to alongside showing.

[Zak · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favourite reads this month. Perhaps this year.

Sensationally written, designed and executed. Cosmic, chilling, unsettling, warm, cold, experimentally fun/dense, profound, enlightening, a novel one could easily assign to Peter Greenaway, if he was a novelist.

Hypnotic. Transcendental. A book I feel one should taste in the digital format during these tough times, for FREE no less, and then be luredly lulled to purchase the novel, so the material product can be better appreciated, ingested, where it will whisper and excrete its incantations and influence whilst you sleep in papyrus scratch scratch scratching's.

[Mark Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oneiric; odd; satisfying.

[Matthew Kinlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

N is never seen again.

[Jim Ivy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The concept of this book is completely original and unique. The execution of it, almost there. I want to read more books by M. Kitchell. I think he is definitely onto something new.