Forrest > Recent Status Updates

It's time I got some more Dick.

Remember when Goodreads Giveaways were full of great fiction and you might actually stand a chance of winning one and discovering a new, up and coming writer that you loved?

Yeah, it's been a while.

How long?

This would make an incredibly boring movie, but it is an incredibly un-boring book. Clearly there is a literary media barricade around this thing. If you don't read, you are missing out.

Now we get into the actionable stuff! I love the conceit of all the fictional phone numbers and websites (yes, I called and visited, but they're all defunct, which is what I expected, given the publication date).

ZOUNDS!‐--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Z---ds! cried Phutatorious

This is going to bear re-reading.

Trusmegistus ---> Tristram via the phone game, as it were.

About time I picked this up again. Okay, back to the slave pits. No, literally - the chapter I left off on was really focused on the family slaves.

The final entry in the Grasm trilogy, "Cities Below the Strand," again puts an emphasis on sorcery over swords. No swords are drawn in this tale, but there is a deep cut of nihilism here, particularly as regards both the past and the future of Grasm himself. This is a small window into what could be a large, inglorious panorama both for the barbarian himself and for his world s a whole. Hearts die, nations collapse.

Another story of Grasm the Barbarian, "Scream of the Bluejay," is a barnacle-encrusted sea-salt soaked rope of a tale about revenental vengeance. While the center of attention in the story isn't the barbarian, it says much about him and twists in such a way as to wring out more of his past. It's a clever tale of sword and sorcery, of regret, betrayal, and murder; a hideously glorious, horrifically beautiful tale.

I had forgotten how outrageously funny this book is (if you've got a British sense of humor, which I do, having lived there in the heyday of The Young Ones). I am intrigued all over again (because I've forgotten since last time I read this) about how the titular character's name was originally supposed to be "Trismegistus," but was changed to "Tristram," two VERY different names, if you know the roots of each.

(This is the Occult Press version). If Howard had cast aside all prudery and collaborated with William Burroughs, this might start to approximate the style of "The Monarch in Disarray," but this tale is much more transgressive, visceral, and psychedelic than that. It's a decadent sword & sorcery tale, pushed to carnal extremes with an emphasis on the sorcery and its deeper effects on the psyche. Grasm > Conan, maybe.

Tomorrow, I travel to Sturgeon Bay, WI to visit the bookstore/recordstore/ephemera store "Within Things". Very excited. We'll see if I'm capable of paying the mortgage any more after I'm done. I really want to do my review of Rucker's "Now It's Dark" (it's excellent), but I need to sleep. That's a long drive up and back tomorrow.

Tomorrow, I travel to Sturgeon Bay, WI to visit the bookstore/recordstore/ephemera store "Within Things". Very excited. We'll see if I'm capable of paying the mortgage any more after I'm done.

I'm reading the Occult Press version, gifted to me and signed by Adam.