My Whole Expanse I Cannot See…

I have to say, I couldn’t be more disappointed in the way Battlestar Galactica ended. I cannot believe that such an intelligent, well-written, often spectacularly dark series ended like an episode of Touched By An Angel. It’s as if the writers said, “Idea! Rather than tie off all of our loose ends with smart writing, rather than, you know, tell a good story, let’s just answer every question with, God did it. We’ll mean this literally, and call it a day.”

Battlestar Galactica, yet another thing ruined in His name.

Save for Anthem, I haven’t read much Ayn Rand, and apparently, I’m not missing anything. According to an excellent article by JF Quackenbush at EricRosenfield.com, Atlas Shrugged is one of the worst books ever written. This, of course, means that I absolutely have to read it, because that’s how I roll.

So, last night I saw The Last House on the Left, and it’s definitely a remake that crushes the original. Still, it’s not particularly smart, or suspenseful. Also, I really don’t like watching women getting raped and brutalized. I can see women getting eaten by zombies, or bled out by vampires, none of that is real. Rape, however, is very real, incredibly evil, and it happens to women every single day. It’s something no woman should ever experience, and I don’t like seeing it in movies. Yes, I knew what I was getting into, but I can complain about it just the same.

Yet, at the very end of the movie, something kind of hysterical happened. There’s a scene at the end involving a microwave, a scene so absolutely fucked up that it inspired a girl behind me to shout, and I quote, “Jesus Christ!” Who knew a microwave could affect someone so?

Like I said, there’s absolutely no questioning that Queen of the Damned is awful, I totally admit that, but certain scenes…

I’m completely addicted to the concert scene, I can’t help it. I love the goth imagery, the atmosphere. I love Lestat, his arrogance, his confidence. He knows what he is, he lives unflinchingly on his terms. I sometimes see myself like Lestat, but not often enough.

Queen of the Damned is definitely a terrible movie, definitely a terrible adaption of a decent book. It’s so wrong in so many ways, and yet, I watch it. I watch it because it does do a few things right, such as the film’s final sequence…

I think it’s such a gorgeous visual metaphor for immortality, it perfectly illustrates how time only flies for we who die.

Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente tells the story of four lost and lonely travelers as they journey to a strange and beautiful city, a city that exists beyond the veil of dreams. Imagine a place of surreal delights, of bizarre masquerade balls and holy churches in which odd creatures worship in utter silence. This is Palimpsest, a city that is neither dream nor reality for those who stumble into its borders. Of course, to visit isn’t enough, never enough. Visitors long for residency, they desire to make Palimpsest their reality. Such desires, however, come at a cost.

For reasons we don’t early know, people exist in our world who bear marks on their skin, black tattoos that appear to be pieces of an otherworldly map. These people are gateways to Palimpsest, to enter involves sex and the heavy sleep after orgasm. Those who sleep after climax in our world wake to wander the streets of Palimpsest, the part of the map on their partner’s body, except in the case of first time visitors. First timers are required to visit a certain fortune-teller, a woman with the head of a frog. She sees clients only in groups of four, these four are then bound together, a family of sorts. Whenever in Palimpsest, no matter how far apart, these four strangers intimately share each other’s experiences. They taste the same tastes, they feel each other’s pleasure and pain. When morning comes to Palimpsest, visitors then wake in our world. New-comers also wake with a mark of their own, a new gateway to this gorgeous and sometimes cruel city. Permanent residence is elusive, but not impossible. The novel follows four characters who have lost something in our world and desperately hope to find it in Palimpsest.

Valente has created something absolutely brilliant in Palimpsest. Her decadent use of language brings so much life into a world that few have the skill to even imagine, let alone write into existence. To me, Palimpsest is an intricate metaphor for the nature of sex and relationships. Unlike any liquor, any drug, sex can take a person completely outside of their reality. In one sense, sex can be a hollow, empty act, a temporary escape from one’s broken life. Yet, in another sense, sex with the right person can be a perfect sacrament. Two people inside one another creating a world of their own. Sex doesn’t have to be about running away from something awful, it can be about moving toward something amazing. Sex with the right person can feel like going home after being caught in a terrible storm. Palimpsest explores these ideas with lush prose and haunting imagery. Cat Valente is definitely a singular talent at the top of her game.

Have you read Palimpsest? What did you take from it?

First, I should say that I haven’t read much of the Watchmen graphic novel series, so I went into the movie pretty fresh. Anything I say here is strictly based on Watchmen as a movie.

My short description of Watchmen is this, it’s a long movie for such a simple story. The basic premise is that super heroes, particularly one god-like super hero, helped us win Vietnam and by 1985 America is a dystopian society in which Richard Nixon is our three term President. It’s decided that super heroes are too powerful, and congress passes a bill forcing them into retirement. Someone then begins murdering these retirees for heretofore unknown reasons. Meanwhile, America is on the brink of nuclear war with Russia.

The opening credits are a gorgeous alternate history montage that shows the rise and fall of super heroes, but after the first hour things start getting flat. Yes, the film depicts a morally bereft dystopian society. Yes, the “heroes” are broken, emotionally scarred. Unfortunately, a post Cold War dystopia is no longer a new idea, nor is it particularly scary these days. Unfortunately, we’ve seen fallen heroes and anti-heroes, but we’ve seen them done better. Watchmen’s heroes are very predictable in their disfunction. Visually, the film is definitely excellent, but again, it’s absolutely nothing new. If I’m going to sit in a theater for almost three hours, I don’t want a bunch of old ideas packaged in CGI I’ve seen a thousand times.

I recently finished one of the most brilliant books I’ve ever read, Shriek: An Afterword by Jeff VanderMeer. Shriek is the follow up novel to City of Saints and Madmen, but it’s definitely not a sequel. I wrote about City of Saints…

“The book is a collection of stories and historical guides that center around the city of Ambergris, a city of religious fervor and political corruption. It’s home to eccentric artists and strange creatures. It’s a city that brims with life, and so much death. None of the stories are tied together in a linear fashion, the first story doesn’t flow into the second. I think each piece of writing easily stands alone, but as a whole they create a fully realized world.”

City of Saints and Madmen is a brilliant piece of world-building, it introduces us to Ambergris and its inhabitants. Shriek: An Afterword is an intimate look into the lives of two such inhabitants, Duncan and Janice Shriek, brother and sister. Duncan is an historian and the writer of The Early History of Ambergris, his last published work. Janice, a once prominent art gallery owner, turned journalist, turned tour guide, is writing the Afterword to Duncan’s Early History. She’s writing the Afterword because Duncan has vanished and is presumed dead, lost to his obsession with the Gray Caps. The Gray Caps are a race of child-sized mushroom people, forced to live underground after the founding of Ambergris. Duncan’s entire troubled career is based on studying the Gray Caps and their mysterious, often dangerous influence on the city. He knows they’re dangerous, yet his theories are constantly dismissed as eccentric at best. Reading Janice’s writing we learn that Duncan is not wrong, that bad things are happening in Ambergris. We also quickly learn that Duncan is not dead, and that Janice, in fact, disappeared after writing her Afterword. We know this through notes written by Duncan on her finished manuscript. Duncan returns to find Janice gone.

Now, the thing that makes Shriek: An Afterword so amazing is that the characters are just so real. Their world is very surreal, but Duncan and Janice, their core experiences are common to so many. Love, love lost, obsession, addiction, success, failure, loneliness, pain, we’ve all been touched by some of these things. Some of us have been touched by all of them. Shriek is the story of two lives, seemingly promising lives, that just don’t work out as one would want. It’s a sad idea, but it’s honest and there’s beauty in that kind of honesty. Nothing in life is guaranteed, but even if things go horribly wrong, we keep going, until we can’t. The fact is, life isn’t one straight and happy line. Life is a crooked, terrifying, spectacular, beautiful, fucked up mess. We write our stories for as long as we can, while others scribble little notes on our pages. Maybe it all adds up to the ending we want, maybe it doesn’t, we never really know until the last page. That’s the essence of Shriek: An Afterword.

I haven’t been so moved by a book in quite some time, it really resonated with me.

Last Days by Brian Evenson tells the story of Kline, a detective of some sort. From the beginning, we never really know much about Kline. He’s a detective, on his last assignment he infiltrated some kind of cult and in the process, voluntarily had his right hand hacked off. He then cauterized the wound on a nearby hot-plate, drew his gun and shot his wannabe-surgeon through the eye. An eye for a hand. Aside from saving his life, the act of self-cauterization drew the attention of a rather odd group of people.

After reading his story in the paper, Kline is heavily researched and then contacted by the Brotherhood of Mutilation, a bizarre religious cult who believes in salvation through amputation. The bible says, “And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast if from thee. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut if off, and cast it from thee,” an idea that the Brotherhood takes quite literally. A crime has taken place on their compound, and they insist that Kline, an amputee and self-cauterizer, be the one to investigate. Kline agrees to visit the compound with the understanding that the cult’s leader will explain the case. Kline, however, isn’t made aware that he won’t be allowed to leave the compound alive unless he solves the case, a case of murder. The situation is more complex than Kline could possibly imagine, he might lose more than his hand.

Last Days, to me, is a very well-written satirical horror novel. It’s action, suspense, chilling atmosphere and violence. I read it in one day, simply because I couldn’t put it down. It’s not a book to be read for rich character development, Last Days is really a fast-paced and unflinching waking nightmare. It appeals on a visceral level. Its intellectual appeal is in its dark satire of blind faith and the dangers of obsession. Last Days is a solid and disturbing read.

I fairly recently came across Priscilla Ahn, and now I’m totally addicted. She’s a good writer who sounds amazing.