Buddy Read for Dec 2019: The New Flesh (Cronenberg tribute)

[Bill]

Please join me and Marie-Therese for a December buddy read: The New Flesh: A Literary Tribute to David Cronenberg! This includes an intro by Kathe Koja, and stories by Brian Evenson, Gwendolyn Kiste, and Cody Goodfellow, among others.

The Amazon purchase link is still broken, but the e-book is available here:
https://www.amazon.com/New-Flesh-Lite...

[Bill]

I'm done with the first four stories so far. This kind of tribute piece can be tricky to pull off.

With the "New Flesh" title, there's probably more than a nudge toward body horror. I think body horror works best in visual media; the literary examples I've seen are often gimmicky failures (Livia Llewellyn's "The Last Clean Bright Summer" being a notable exception, though there's so much else going on there). In "A Bad Patch" (a typically sly title), Brian Evenson combines body horror with his familiar themes of paranoia and disorientation. I think the "creature" is really secondary; I love how Evenson handles the main character's confused and futile (and darkly funny) attempts to deal with his condition.

The next two stories have arguably stronger connections with Cronenberg's themes, but I found them rather gimmicky. I have mixed feelings about Robertson's "Lackers". Unfortunately I recently saw "X", also about a secret sex/fetish party, which I thought was an ambitious failure. "Lackers" worked somewhat better, but I thought the ending was taking an easy way out.

[Bill]

Max Stanton's "Hekati Yoga" was light but clever and fun (yoga-induced body horror, ha).

Other than the Evenson story, my favorite so far is Cody Goodfellow's "Seminar", a kind of monstrous high-tech corporate apocalypse that Max Barry also does well (see for example Lexicon).

[Bill]

A couple pieces that didn't do anything for me. Then Jack Lothian's "Elk", very nice. The "talking heads" interview format works here; I think Lothian controls the tone very well. (I wasn't surprised to read of his extensive portfolio in film and TV.) It's a piece about some of my obsessions, filmmaking/lost films, with a mysterious director figure who's obviously Cronenberg, and (yup!) a body horror sequence that I found to be genuinely unsettling and inventive.

There's a clear reference to Dead Ringers, and the novel it's based on: Twins: Dead Ringers

The novel is very low-tech, but more disturbing and queer than the movie; blew my mind when I was a teen, probably doesn't age well!

The author talks about it more:
https://jacklothian.wordpress.com/201...

[Marie-Therese]

Just started this and it's clear that "body horror" is the theme. (Kathe Koja is the perfect writer to introduce the book as this is very much her focus.)

I enjoyed the Evenson tale, "A Bad Patch" for its humour (those house dresses!) and somewhat deadpan delivery, but it's a bit slight. Sara Century's near-futuristic story "Red Lips in a Blue Light" had a fresh voice and some interesting ideas (about identity, fame, and capitalism) but I didn't feel it really engaged very deeply with them.

Onward...

[Bill]

Marie-Therese wrote: "I enjoyed the Evenson tale, "A Bad Patch" for its humour (those house dresses!) and somewhat deadpan delivery, but it's a bit slight."

I appreciated the house dresses as well! Agree it's slight.

The other stories mostly support my opinion that it's hard to get body horror to work in prose. I need some kind of context to relate to the horrific events. Just describing some transformation, purple prose or not, doesn't work for me. For example, the scene from John Carpenter's "The Thing", where the Norris creature's head detaches from the body, is one of my favorites. But if I read a description of the scene, I would probably think it's gimmicky and forgettable.

Evenson's story works for me partly because he promptly establishes an engaging (?) context for the body transformation. Livia Llewellyn's The One That Comes Before was also effective at that. And also Mona Awad's Bunny, which you recommended.

[Bill]

Charles Austin Muir's "A Future of Violence" (haha) immediately makes it clear that he doesn't take this project too seriously. It's another biotech body transformation story, told mostly through dialog. I thought it was competent, pretty funny and entertaining. Ryan Harding's "Orificially Compromised" winks at the corporate conflict behind "ExistenZ" (one of the corporations in the story is "InterphaZ"). Pretty light, but also entertaining enough.

[Bill]

I'm a fan of Gwendolyn Kiste's And Her Smile Will Untether the Universe. "A New Mother's Guide to Raising an Abomination" is somewhat similar to the collection (as opposed to her short novels, which I'm less enthusiastic about). The language and the narrative voice are real pleasures, and the play with fly wings is queasy and cute.

[Marie-Therese]

Bill wrote: "Max Stanton's "Hekati Yoga" was light but clever and fun (yoga-induced body horror, ha)."

Just read this and thought it was a hoot! Well-paced and genuinely amusing as well as kind of gross (which isn't a bad thing in this context). Still early on this anthology, but for me this was a highlight. Particularly so when contrasted with the preceding story but one, "Descrambler", which has to be one of the worst stories I've ever read in a major anthology. Just completely unsuccessful and unconvincing in every way. I've read other work by C.M. Muller, all of it better than this. I just don't know what went so wrong here.