John Hawkes, The Cannibal, A Microcosm of war-torn Germany

"All Germany Revolved around Balamir. His feet were in the boots of an Emperor's son, he felt the silver sword of time and tide and strength against his hip. Growing weak and cold, he was the result of commands coming down out of the years. From the farm where he was born to the institution to the munition works, he felt that people bowed as they passed. How he sought to be that image, how the Kaiser's ghost needed him, how he would be honor in the land he had become. But how well he knew it was a reign of terror and felt like pulling his beard like his father would have done. Potentate of the north, he scowled on his subjects, the trees, the chips of broken glass, brass casings and beaten fuse ends, but alone he smiled on his castle walls. He was the true and unknown prince of Spitzen-on-the-Dein, followed by the castrated and the disillusioned, guided by an unknown hand around the signs of the skull and cross-bones planted above the mines. He had crept about the door of the Duke's apartment, watched the tall man come and go. He used to walk in the institutions garden, and now, in the last days of the decline of his kingdom, he was befriended in the home of twittering birds.
     The vapors of the canal grew stronger, the Duke gained a hundred feet and eased his pace, cracks and holes in the earth filled with night dew.
     I unstrapped my pistol and put it on the floor."

                                                                                -John Hawkes, The Cannibal


Another author hard to place and compare. His writing and his books could often be more easily compared to impressionistic paintings than the novels of more conventional and less experimental writers. He once said "I began to write fiction on the assumption that the true enemies of the novel were plot, character, setting and theme, and having once abandoned these familiar ways of thinking about fiction, totality of vision or structure was really all that remained." This is not to say that his novels are completely bereft of these things, but they kind of pop up second hand to what he is focusing on. The story is told in meticulously described scenes, a kind of verbal mise-en-scene that can show to us things transcendentally beautiful or nightmarish and bleak and everywhere in between. He can be tough to follow at first, but once your brain stops trying to fit his books within more traditional conventions, he'll eventually absorb and entrance you.

Cormac McCarthy, Master Of The Sublime; Blood Meridian, The Neo Western to End All Westerns

"In two days they began to come upon bones and cast off apparel. They saw half buried skeletons of mules with the bones so white and polished they seemed incandescent even in the blazing heat and they saw panniers and pack saddles and the bones of men and they saw a mule entire, the dried and blackened carcass hard as iron. They rode on. The white noon saw them through the waste like a ghost army, so pale they were with dust, like shades of figures erased upon a board. The wolves loped paler yet and grouped and skittered and lifted their lean snouts on the air. At night the horses were fed by hand from sacks of meal and watered from buckets. There was no more sickness. The survivors lay quietly in that cratered void and watched the white-hot stars go rifling down the dark. Or slept with their alien hearts beating in the sand like pilgrims exhausted upon the face of the planet Anareta, clutched to a nameless wheeling in the night. They moved on and the iron of the wagontires grew polished bright as chrome in the pumice. To the south the blue cordilleras stood footed in their paler image on the sand like reflections in a lake and there were no wolves now."


                                                                 -Excerpt from Blood Meridian By Cormac McCarthy




Cormac McCarthy is one of those writers unlike any other, singular and separate from anything else within the literary tradition. Hemingway, Kafka, and David Foster Wallace also come to mind in this category, and surely there are others. In other words this man is a genius, and like the other writers I've mentioned, his style may be imitated but it would only come off as parody, as no one else could possibly possess such a voice as his. His is the voice of a prophet. I'd say it is biblical if those who wrote the bible had any taste for style or prose. Page after page of Blood Meridian sustains this twisted, near perverse enlightenment of perception that tears down any notion of the grandeur and glory of the old west so that we see it for what it really was: quite the opposite, and yet we are left even more in awe of it. Not a chapter passes without multiple passages that give me the chills. It is one of those books that not only changes the way you think about literature but the way you see the entire world. A must read indeed, and hopefully you're not squeamish lest you miss out on one of the greatest novels of all time. More passages to come from this masterpiece.

Rimbaud, A Season in Hell

Back again from hiatus, and though it was not a season in hell that kept me away, it would be all the more effective if i said so. The experiment returns to life, however briefly...


     "Once, if I remember well, my life was a feast
where all hearts opened and all wines flowed.
     One evening I seated beauty on my knees. And I
found her bitter. And I cursed her.
     I armed myself against justice.
     I fled. O Witches, O Misery, O Hate, to you has
my treasure been entrusted.
     I contrived to purge my mind of all human hope.
On all joy, to strangle it, i pounced with the stealth
of a wild beast.
     I called to the executioners that i might gnaw
their rifle-butts while dying. I called to the plagues
to smother me in blood, in sand. Misfortune was
my God. I laid myself down in the mud. I dried my-
self in the air of crime. I played sly tricks on mad-
ness.
     And spring brought me the idiot's frightful laugh-
ter.
     Now, only recently, being on the point of giving
my last squawk, I thought of looking for the key to
the ancient feasts where i might find my appetite again.
     Charity is that key.--This inspiration proves that
I have dreamed!
     'You will always be a hyena...' etc., protests
the devil who crowned me with such pleasant poppies.
'Attain death with all your appetites, your selfishness
and all the capital sins!'
     Ah! I'm fed up:--But, dear Satan, a less fiery eye
I beg you! And while awaiting a few small infamies
in arrears, you who love the absence of the instructive
or descriptive faculty in a writer, for you let me tear
out these few, hideous pages from my notebook of
one of the damned."

                                           -A Season In Hell, Rimbaud

Batman, The Dark Knight Returns; James Olsen, Fictional Reporter

There’s this little saloon you’ll find up and running and packed with patrons before most of us are ready for our morning coffee.

The joint’s two subway levels beneath the streets of Metropolis.

Step out at the Schuster stop on the south-bound side, take two lefts, walk maybe fifteen feet and you’re right on top of it.

But you could just as easily walk right past it and never know it was there.

There’s no sign up. Not even a door. Just a dark hallway that looks like a good place for a murder.

Take a breath. Follow the cigarette stink and the bluesy jukebox sounds inside.

It’s a tolerable little gin mill. Get there before the morning rush, and you’re likely to find a stool.

Your first clue that there’s something wrong about the place is the bartender. You’ll never forget his face. He’s a hulk of a guy who’s seen way too much. A broken man with laser-red eyes. His forehead’s a fractured cantilever, an avalanche waiting to happen. His skin’s gone a little gray from its natural chartreuse.

He’s got a voice like Coke bottles getting ground up under a door.

His name is Jones.

He says he’s from Mars.

And nobody tells him he’s nuts, not one of these sad old barflies. It’s not that they’re scared of him, either.

They’ve seen and done things that are supposed to be impossible.

They’re not the kind to out-and-out brag about being able to bench-press cars or run faster than a speeding bullet or jump up into the air and stay there. Nah. Not these guys. These guys, they’ve got nothing to prove. Been there. Done that.

Except for old “Snapper” always at the same stool at the end, living up to his nickname, snapping his fingers in time to the music and rattling on and on and on about mighty powers, globe-spanning adventures, nefarious world conquerors, you name it.

He never stops snapping his damn fingers. And he never stops sucking back the sauce and jabbering about the old days. The glory days.

The “Golden Age” he calls it.

The age of heroes.

And all the other old farts, they grunt and nod and grumble at each other, swapping old jokes they’ve swapped a thousand times. Even fat, beet-red old “Penguin” chirps out a curse or two before bursting into tears.

Then they get talking. And if you’ve got half a brain, you listen.

They talk about amazing adventures, sounding like a bunch of retired car mechanics the whole time.

They talk about a Man of Steel. An Amazon Princess.

But they never talk about the mean one. The cruel one. The one who couldn’t fly or bend steel in his bare hands. The one who scared the crap out of everybody and laughed at all the rest of us for being the envious cowards we were.

No, they never talk about him. Say his name and watch Dibny’s face sag so bad his jaw hits the bar.

Not a man among them wants to hear about Batman.

Was he quietly assassinated? Or did he just decide we weren’t worth the grief?

The question hangs in the air for a moment or two, then Jones springs for a round for everybody and himself.

They get talking again. About the old days. The glory days.

They remember.

They were right there. In the thick of it.

Back then.

It wasn’t so long ago.

We had heroes.

                               - From The Dark Knight Returns; James Olsen, "Truth To Power"

W.H. Auden, Old Tales Retold

She looked over his shoulder
       For vines and olive trees,
     Marble well-governed cities
       And ships upon untamed seas,
     But there on the shining metal
       His hands had put instead
     An artificial wilderness
       And a sky like lead.

A plain without a feature, bare and brown,
   No blade of grass, no sign of neighborhood,
Nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down, 
   Yet, congregated on its blankness, stood
   An unintelligible multitude,
A million eyes, a million boots in line, 
Without expression, waiting for a sign.

Out of the air a voice without a face
   Proved by statistics that some cause was just
In tones as dry and level as the place:
   No one was cheered and nothing was discussed;
   Column by column in a cloud of dust
They marched away enduring a belief
Whose logic brought them, somewhere else, to grief.

     She looked over his shoulder
       For ritual pieties,
     White flower-garlanded heifers,
       Libation and sacrifice,
     But there on the shining metal
       Where the altar should have been,
     She saw by his flickering forge-light
       Quite another scene.

Barbed wire enclosed an arbitrary spot
   Where bored officials lounged (one cracked a joke)
And sentries sweated for the day was hot:
   A crowd of ordinary decent folk
   Watched from without and neither moved nor spoke
As three pale figures were led forth and bound
To three posts driven upright in the ground.

The mass and majesty of this world, all
   That carries weight and always weighs the same
Lay in the hands of others; they were small
   And could not hope for help and no help came:
   What their foes like to do was done, their shame
Was all the worst could wish; they lost their pride
And died as men before their bodies died.

     She looked over his shoulder
       For athletes at their games,
     Men and women in a dance
       Moving their sweet limbs
     Quick, quick, to music,
       But there on the shining shield
     His hands had set no dancing-floor
       But a weed-choked field.

A ragged urchin, aimless and alone, 
   Loitered about that vacancy; a bird
Flew up to safety from his well-aimed stone:
   That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third,
   Were axioms to him, who'd never heard
Of any world where promises were kept,
Or one could weep because another wept.

     The thin-lipped armorer,
       Hephaestos, hobbled away,
     Thetis of the shining breasts
       Cried out in dismay
     At what the god had wrought
       To please her son, the strong
     Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles
       Who would not live long.

                                       - W.H. Auden, The Shield of Achilles

H.P. Lovecraft, The World of Dreams

"When age fell upon the world, and wonder went out of the minds of men; when grey cities reared to smoky skies tall towers grim and ugly, in whose shadow none might dream of the sun or of spring’s flowering meads; when learning stripped earth of her mantle of beauty, and poets sang no more save of twisted phantoms seen with bleared and inward-looking eyes; when these things had come to pass, and childish hopes had gone away forever, there was a man who travelled out of life on a quest into the spaces whither the world’s dreams had fled.

     "Of the name and abode of this man but little is written, for they were of the waking world only; yet it is said that both were obscure. It is enough to know that he dwelt in a city of high walls where sterile twilight reigned, and that he toiled all day among shadow and turmoil, coming home at evening to a room whose one window opened not on the fields and groves but on a dim court where other windows stared in dull despair. From that casement one might see only walls and windows, except sometimes when one leaned far out and peered aloft at the small stars that passed. And because mere walls and windows must soon drive to madness a man who dreams and reads much, the dweller in that room used night after night to lean out and peer aloft to glimpse some fragment of things beyond the waking world and the greyness of tall cities. After years he began to call the slow-sailing stars by name, and to follow them in fancy when they glided regretfully out of sight; till at length his vision opened to many secret vistas whose existence no common eye suspects. And one night a mighty gulf was bridged, and the dream-haunted skies swelled down to the lonely watcher’s window to merge with the close air of his room and make him a part of their fabulous wonder.

     "There came to that room wild streams of violet midnight glittering with dust of gold; vortices of dust and fire, swirling out of the ultimate spaces and heavy with perfumes from beyond the worlds. Opiate oceans poured there, litten by suns that the eye may never behold and having in their whirlpools strange dolphins and sea-nymphs of unrememberable deeps. Noiseless infinity eddied around the dreamer and wafted him away without even touching the body that leaned stiffly from the lonely window; and for days not counted in men’s calendars the tides of far spheres bare him gently to join the dreams for which he longed; the dreams that men have lost. And in the course of many cycles they tenderly left him sleeping on a green sunrise shore; a green shore fragrant with lotus-blossoms and starred by red camalotes..."

                                                                                - Azathoth, by H.P. Lovecraft

Perhaps you steer clear of Lovecraft because those goths in high school made him seem so pretentious. Perhaps the fact that he was only published in pulp genre magazines and journals, or that his writing often approaches the realm of fantasy - a genre forbidden by those super serious literary aficionados - has caused you to preemptively scoff at this author and his stories and prose. Whatever may be the reason that you, a student of the arts and literature, have avoided him, it is most certainly a stupid reason. Because few writers captivate and entrance me to the extent that he does. If I pick up one of his story collections, it will be hours before I put it down. His style is somewhat of an amalgam of other, earlier writers of weird fiction: Lord Dunsany and his tales of the ancient gods of Pagana influencing Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos; Robert W. Chamber's use of dreams, hallucinations, and ancient texts; Poe's psychology. He creates a sense of mystery, foreboding, terror, a gravity, an atmosphere far greater than simply the sum of his words and their meaning. He is like many of the characters in his pieces, mysteriously connected to a realm within and beyond every day realities, deeper in portent and meaning than that which the average person experiences. He possesses that magic of storytelling few other writers can be said to have, casting an irresistible spell on those who read him.

Steven Soderbergh, Schizopolis, Eventualism

One of Steven Soderbergh's lesser known and smaller budget films, Schizopolis is a hilarious indictment of American ideals and expectations. Soderbergh himself stars in his own film in his first acting role as Fletcher Munson, speech writer for an L. Ron Hubbard style religious cult, navigating the banalities of life and marriage in a town filled with white picket fences, general discontent, and everything else you'd expect in a stereotypical American suburb. The film itself is anything but stereotypical, and any description or summation I might attempt to write would inevitably fall short of the film itself. It will suffice to say that Soderbergh was coming out the tail end of a rather difficult divorce, and if this film might be admitted as evidence, he was in the midst of quite the existential crisis. So he bucked up, wrote a script, paid for the production out of his own pocket, and made one of the most unexpected pieces of art I have ever watched. You should watch it too.