Double Feature Fanfic Heaven: Peter Grandbois's The Glob Who Girdled Granville and The Secret Lives of Actors

The Arctic deserves more consideration from us. We ask so much of it. We expect it to take on so many of our failed experiments, our alien discoveries – our monsters – without noticing the toll it takes on the polar region’s ice cover and permafrost.

Two of our most important abandoned Arctic legacies are, of course, the Blob and the Thing. The Thing was first immortalized in John W. Campbell’s (aka Don A. Stuart) 1938 novella Who Goes There?, then reincarnated on film as The Thing From Another World (1951) and The Thing (1982), whereas The Blob emerged fully formed as the B film of a double feature with I Married a Monster from Outer Space. While physically contained within the polar ice now, the Blob and the Thing re-emerge in new iterations and formats continually.

One such example is Peter Grandbois’s Double Monster Feature, The Glob Who Girdled Granville and The Secret Lives of Actors, two novellas in the Wordcraft Series of Fabulist Novellas. The A-side, The Glob Who Girdled Granville, imagines a world in which Mr. Gregory Glob, an anthropomorphized version of the monster in The Blob, begins anew after three years penance in the Arctic Circle as an office worker, with wife Jane, née Martin (Steve McQueen’s teen girlfriend in the film), and their children in small town Ohio. The B-side, The Secret Lives of Actors, places the Thing (here, as a seven foot tall, red haired, failed Hollywood actor Jim, whose most famous role was the monster in the 1951 film) in a suburban Denver community theatre troupe, still recovering from his failed love affair with Nikki (Nicholson – a character from the 1951 film).

Both novellas unspool from slightly misshapen balls of thread. Characters and actors co-exist, are sometimes conflated, and are repurposed for their new worlds. Both novellas are quick reads, at under 60 pages each. But The Secret Lives of Actors is the more successful of the two, both in narrative and style; in true double feature fashion, after reading both novellas, the B-side has taken over feature film status. While both books draw heavily from their filmic lore (with references to their legacies throughout), The Secret Lives of Actors does more work to establish itself as a standalone, through stronger characterization and a more fully developed narrative arc.

In the first pages of The Glob Who Girdled Granville, Mr. Glob splits himself in two, and thus so does the reader’s attention. Alternatively, The Secret Lives of Actors begins with vegetable-based Jim severing his own finger to grow a better version of himself, and here, the reader finds connection with the monster in his search for emotional evolution. While the clichés are gratuitous in The Glob, they’re held in check more in Actors, which develops an alternative twinning to the two Mr. Globs through exploration of both Things: Jim, from the 1951 version, all vegetable matter and orange shuffling, and newcomer John, from the 1982 version, possessed with a new range of abilities far darker in scope yet much more overtly appealing to Nikki.

Development of the female leads, Jane and Nikki, suffers from these overburdened dual male roles. Yet while Jane remains a mere phantom, Nikki gains a certain status in The Secret Lives of Actors from her mystery; even in its final pages, the reader is left to imagine what powers Nikki might possess of her own.

While either of these novellas can be read without prior knowledge of the Blob or the Thing, bringing at least a basic understanding of the monsters and their physical dimensions to the books will definitely help you as you read. Grandbois does a bit of front-end description, but his references to the films are largely devoid of backstory dump; a reader unseasoned in cult film legend may find themselves lost to some of the more nuanced allusions. I confess, I have seen both The Thing from Another World and John Carpenter’s The Thing but went into The Glob Who Girdled Granville with no points of reference, and as much as I tried to avoid it, this disparity in my own background knowledge affected my readings. These novellas act, in some ways at least, as tributes to the films (and the novella) that came before them.

So really, why try to avoid the full pleasure of the experience? Grendel is rewarded by an understanding of Beowulf, Wide Sargasso Sea by first reading Jane Eyre, and any responsible moviegoer wouldn’t dare show up to The Avengers without having seen at least some of the Marvel cinematic universe. Treat yourself to a night of B movie delights, then pick up the most literary of fanfic in Peter Grandbois’ Double Monster Feature: The Glob Who Girdled Granville and The Secret Lives of Actors.

So Much Depends Upon A Title: A Review of Kathy Flann's Get A Grip

So much depends upon a title. Titles can do a lot of different work for a book, but a truly useful one is invaluable. I found the title of Kathy Flann’s new short story collection Get a Grip particularly significant. It’s possible that I’m going off on my own a bit, but I think the math adds up regardless.

Playing devil’s advocate against myself briefly, “Get a Grip” is the title of one of the stories in the collection. Many collections take their title from one of the stories and there’s no more to it. It’s a tradition. However, all of the stories in Get a Grip seem to involve characters getting some kind of grip on some aspect of their lives.

The elderly mother in “Neuropathy” struggles to get a variety of different grips, both literal and metaphorical. She (phrased as a second person “You” in the story) struggles with metaphorical grips, coming to terms with the death of her husband and increasing independence of her son, as well as a literal grip relating to a crippling arm injury she received in a car accident. In fact, she desperately needs to get a grip on living life in general:

Ever since Wayne died, you crave a calling, a flourishing endeavor, like the ones church friends have—Monique gathers restaurant breath mints for women’s shelters, Pat takes old people to The Golden Corral on meatloaf night, and Ken fills out tax returns for the needy. You have tried some things that fizzled, like a used medical equipment bazaar and a clothing drive for big & tall homeless men.

But then God showed you. A junkie you’d given a dollar staggered off the harbor wall. Dropped. Disappeared under the brackish film. His matted hair drifted on the surface like seaweed. You watched, frozen. It seemed like a long time before that soldier in fatigues brushed past and sprang from the edge. He lugged the incoherent, babbling man, shoved him onto the retaining wall. The soldier, freckled baby-face all red, climbed out and hurried away, trailing water. Didn’t even give his name. This was it. Could anyone be more inspiring, more filled with the holy spirit, than a warrior, someone who tamed death?

Similarly, in “Show of Force” Franz tries to get a grip on his son and wife, hoping that they haven’t drifted so far away from him as to be unreachable:

“I’m the champion of the whole country. I’ve got an ATV and ten grand and, as of next year, a learner’s permit.” He leaned forward, making sharp, angry gestures with his hands. “What happens is I go to Korea for the World Cyber Games. Mom’s talking home schooling! She says we’re moving to Vegas!” He laughed and put his hand up for a high five. “I’m going to be the Tony Hawk of Firestorm3.”

The 1980’s Tony Hawk reference, he knew, had been for his benefit. And some distant part of him, in a windy backwater of his brain, knew the high five was a monumental gesture from Rory. But he was too stunned to return it. Korea? Vegas? Home schooling? Why hadn’t Babette mentioned any of this? He touched his forehead, cold from the air conditioner.

Alexander is trying to get a grasp on the fact that his driven career isn’t the personal connection he really needs in “Little Big Show.” Ned grips his life failures relating to his intense feelings for his ex-wife and love for his current wife in “Homecoming.” “Leaving Reno” involves Fiona trying to get a handle on various complex family relationships. All of the stories seem to involve getting a grip in one way or another, grips that the characters desperately need to have. Some get them to one level of success or another, but some do not. Or, perhaps the grips are more complicated than can be evaluated with a simple get/not get analysis.

Personally, I found this to be particularly compelling. Whatever people want to consider universal, trying to get a handle on the significant forces in our lives has to be on that list. Some of us do better jobs than others in looking like we know what we’re doing, but (unless you all are way better than me) we spend most of our lives just trying to keep up, keep our heads above water as the tremendous flow of life’s complexities blast at us. I must spend most of my time trying to get a grip. How could that sort of struggle fail to engage me? My empathy is flaring as I read, each and every time.

These are some intense stories. The different ‘grips’ that these wildly different characters are trying to get are unique, but share the same level of urgency. I can’t imagine reading Get a Grip and not getting pulled in by that, feeling it with the characters. I don’t know if Flann intended to indicate that commonality when selecting the title, but it works for me. The stories all certainly do.

Life Sucks, Let's Go Shopping!

Marisa Crawford’s Big Brown Bag, my copy of it, anyway, begins with a hand-written epigraph that reads “life sucks, let’s go shopping!”, emblazoned in the blue of the pen I’d just handed her.  The printed epigraph is equally telling: an excerpt from Plath’s The Bell Jar, something about discarded wardrobe items disappearing into the “dark heart of New York.”

Big Brown Bag is a little brown book that is simultaneously perfunctory and deeply profound; it paints a world in broad, plastic strokes, which yield to pure moments of bereavement, and which seem concurrently brooding and blithely consumerist: “I got the long black dress. The dress that leads to nowhere.”  Crawford’s mourning is deemed unavailing in this first line of the collection, but it provides the impetus for the poems to come, which are rife with strongly voiced juxtapositions in the vein of this first tidbit.

Goodie’s, the fictional department store where our protagonist has found employment, provides a backdrop where she can mask her devastation in the trappings of modish fashion and sticker-prices.  Ok, there aren’t sticker prices, but there is a tension between authentic feeling and the culture of buying cool shit: “I am floating toward the earrings and I am pulling toward the world.”

Crawford’s speaker is authentic in the sweetest way.  Not “sweet” like Little Bo Peep sweet, but “sweet” like things were sweet in the 90’s, when 8th graders wore Smashing Pumpkins shirts and watched The Breakfast Club as a rite of passage.  All of these things figure in the broader narrative of Big Brown Bag, as the collection is interested in the perennial MacGuffin of “growing up.”  The speaker has “grown up,” is as grown up as 30 is, and debauches in naiveté with the acumen of the poetic eye.

This is a collection that finds something like joy in the art of masking mourning in the mundanity of trend-shopping facilitation; it is an aggregate of verse-moments that recall the zenith of childhood’s ambition and carouses in its weird disaffection.  Mainly, though, it’s good.

These poems are plainly stated, sharp, and strongly voiced.  They are well-wrought, without a word misplaced, but they paint a speaker who is less sure-tongued.  The speaker happens upon a kind of insight that conflates the agony of loss with the quiet satisfaction of having replaced the vital parts.

Life sucks, let’s go shopping.  Let’s wear different blacks and ride them into the dark heart of wanton anonymity.  Pick up Marisa Crawford’s Big Brown Bag, put Gazing Grain Press’ fourth chapbook inside, and settle down for a good read.  You’ll find your sense of self negotiable, but forward motion is untenable without a degree of caprice.  “Memory is a tire.  Change it.  Go from there.”

Gamut Kickstarter: An Interview with Richard Thomas

I met Richard Thomas when we selected him as a participant in the 2012 Flying House show – a writing and art collaboration project my husband and I host in Chicago each year. In his application, Thomas submitted two short stories he described as surreal – or was it magical realism? – or maybe neo-noir? He was still, I think, finding the space he would fill in the literary world. He was already a great writer, and a fantastic participant in our show, and also one of the hardest working writers I had ever met – but that was also seven award-winning books ago, 100+ published stories ago, before he became an editor of four anthologies, a columnist, an Editor-in-Chief at Dark House Press – you get the idea. He works hard. And, now, he knows exactly what his literary pursuits entail.

As of February 1, Thomas has launched a Kickstarter campaign for Gamut, an online magazine of neo-noir, speculative and literary fiction he hopes to unveil in January of 2017. He wishes to support voices that aren’t getting enough recognition, especially edgy fiction that straddles the fence between genre and literary fiction. If you’ve followed any of his columns, you know Thomas doesn’t write for free, and doesn’t think you should either, so he plans to pay a great rate to his authors – both solicited and not – and he also wants to include columns, non-fiction, art, flash fiction, poetry, and maybe even a serial memoir or novella. This excites me. But let’s hear a little more from Thomas himself…

*

Hey there, Richard. I know you’ve probably been talking up your new lit mag nonstop lately, so let’s start somewhere different. When I first read your work, like I said above, it was as part of an application, which meant I was reading blind and it wasn’t until later that I heard your take on your writing. At the time, I thought it was interesting how you described your work as speculative, when I would have called it literary. Maybe I don’t know enough about speculative fiction – so what is it? 

Hey, Megan! Thanks for the kind words. I know speculative fiction covers a number of genres (such as fantasy, science fiction, and horror) and that it typically isn’t grounded in reality, but based on characters, settings, and elements that are created out of human imagination and speculation. For me, that also includes magical realism, and possibly other genres, such as transgressive, and neo-noir. And then of course you have literary horror and classic horror, and everything in-between, the same with fantasy and science fiction. I mean, what exactly do you call Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian or The Road? This can’t be just straight literary fiction. You could call them westerns or post-apocalyptic, or even thrillers. What about Joyce Carol Oates and “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” There are some supernatural elements in there as well, hints of a demon or devil, ESP, cloven feet maybe? And really, that’s what I’m most excited about as an author, editor, teacher and publisher. I love authors that straddle the fence between genre and literary fiction, taking the best from both. I want compelling narratives, that keep me turning the pages, a sense of wonder, as well as the thoughtful, insightful, more philosophical elements. An author like Benjamin Percy, for example, can publish in both The Paris Review and Cemetery Dance. Or people like George Saunders, Haruki Murakami, even Toni Morrison. 

Fantastic. For me, your description elevates my idea of genre fiction into the literary, and I had probably been a bit biased against genre fiction in the past, thinking of them as “fast reads” or formulaic (even if I love me some genre every now and again). I think speculative writing is becoming more popular, just as fan fiction and vampire fiction and Pride and Prejudice with Zombies fiction is growing in popularity. Do you agree? Have you encountered any of this snobbery along the way while writing crime/horror?

Oh there are snobs for sure. And there are genre fans that hate literary fiction, too. I mean there is innovative work being done in all genres, and really back writing in every genre as well. I see a lot of nose wrinkling in academia, but then again, there are programs that embrace it, such as UC-Riverside, which I just visited as a guest author—a fantastic MFA program there. Seton Hill has a Popular and Genre Fiction program, as well. I mean, I think it’s important to study the classics, to read Cheever, Carter, JCO and Nabokov. But there’s a lot to learn from reading King, Grisham, and Rowling, too. I see more and more speculative fiction easing its way into the Best American Short Storiesanthologies, into The New Yorker, and other places. With certain genres, there are definitely expectations—with horror you want to be scared, with mystery you want to solve something—and that’s fine. I understand wanting an “easy read” for sure. But the novels and stories that move me the most, they find that sweet spot between dense and fast-paced, between emotional and gritty, between lyrical and entertaining. For MFA programs to ignore genre fiction is—I think it’s irresponsible. Look at The New York Times best seller lists—you know what’s on there? Mystery, romance, horror, fantasy, science fiction, YA, and literary. 

I agree with you. That sweet spot between “dense and fast-paced, between emotional and gritty, between lyrical and entertaining” is what I call being immersed in a good story. And the easier a writer can make their world seem to the reader, the better writer he or she is. What is it about this kind of writing that made you want to write in this genre?

Well, I grew up reading Stephen King, and he’ll tell you he’s a great storyteller, but not exactly a lyrical author. I think I sought out a range of voices, such as early Ray Bradbury leading me to William Burroughs and on to Chuck Palahniuk. I like to be surprised, I like to be moved, and I want to be hypnotized by the characters, the story, and the voice. When I first discovered Palahniuk, he got me to some neo-noir authors—Will Christopher Baer, Craig Clevenger, and Stephen Graham Jones. I loved how dense they were, how lyrical, but they weren’t boring or expected. They weren’t formulaic. When I write, I want to pull you into the story, to be the protagonist, experiencing what he (or she) is going through. I want to scare you, make you laugh, turn you on, enlighten you, and leave you spent. I want you to go hug your kids, lock the doors, and then stare out into the darkness wondering what might be possible, both the tragic and hopeful, the vengeful and mystical. I used to read a lot of mysteries, but over time, in a series, it’s all the same thing. If you pick up Perdido Street Station by China Mieville, I guarantee you’ve never read anything like it. The perfect blend of the horrific and the fantastic, the mix of light and dark, lyrical and visceral—it’s just amazing. 

I haven’t read Perdido Street Station, and now I will. What you say about pulling your reader into the story is right-on though. In your book, Disintegration, especially, I felt your protagonist pull – demand, force, coerce – me into his world in such a great and powerful way. A visceral way. A visual way.

Thanks. When I finished that book I broke down and started crying. I thought I might throw up. I’d BEEN him for so long, this unnamed protagonist. I guess you’d call it “method writing,” having sat in that place for so long, taking the advice of Jack Ketchum, and writing what scared me the most—seeing my wife and kids killed in a car accident. It was pretty intense. It also helped that it was set in Wicker Park, where I lived for ten years, in my old apartment, and old haunts. I could picture the rooms, the aqua stove, the people on the street—I could hear the Blue Line “L” train go by.

That takes some guts. Also – I’m pretty sure we were neighbors once upon a time. Small world.

I’ve noticed when your books are in the final stages of editing – or your anthologies – there’s quite a bit of hype around the artwork that will be included. More so, I think, than I’ve seen outside of the horror/crime/mystery category. Do you agree? Do you think that this is because this particular genre is so closely tied to the physical, visual world?

I do think the fantastic, the horrific, the magical, begs to be seen, and to be drawn. Whether it’s Neil Gaiman or Lovecraft. I think my personal attraction to art in the anthologies I’ve edited and published comes from two places—my desire to give my readers something more, the illustrations adding to the experience, and my background in advertising for twenty years as an art director and graphic designer. I want the books to look nice, to be fun, to be well designed—you should pick them up and hold them, turn them over, enjoy the imagery, all of the elements. I’m a very tactile person. I’ve also seen so many horrible covers, especially in horror, that I knew I wanted to use original photography and illustrations on all of my books. It’s important to me.

Does this have anything to do with your interest in including artwork in Gamut?

Definitely. It’s the same way at Gamut—there will be original drawings with every story. Luke Spooner will be doing that—he’s done most of the interior work I’ve published at Dark House Press. I can say, “Draw me a crib,” and it’ll be the coolest, creepiest crib you’ve ever see. And we have other perspectives, too, from George C. Cotronis, Daniele Serra, Bob Crum, and Jennifer Moore. They’ve all done cover art or other projects for me at Dark House Press. 

So…we’ve uttered the word, Gamut. Tell us what you are most excited about – the first thing you want to tackle – once your Kickstarter is funded (because I hope it will be!).

The stories! I have a list of reprints that I’m dying to get to, work I couldn’t publish in other places. These are my favorite authors, so I want to go get those dark tales and share them with the world. And the new work, man, I really have no idea what they’ll turn in, which is really exciting! I know a story from Livia Llewellyn or Laird Barron or Damien Angelica Walters will be something special. It’ll be new, just for our readers, and I can’t wait to share these with them. I’m being a bit of a patron (or maybe I should say fanboy) here, too, supporting the voices that matter to me, that inspire me, that push me to be a better author. 

Nothing wrong with that! It’s so important to support and encourage the writers we love.  

For sure. If people didn’t support me, encourage me when I was just getting started, I’d never have written anything. Craig Clevenger really pushed me to send out a story I wrote in a class of his, entitled, “Stillness.” I didn’t have any faith in it, but I sent it out. Of course, I sent it to all the wrong places at first, but eventually it landed in Shivers VIalongside Stephen King and Peter Straub. But I needed that initial push, that support. 

You’re a writer. You’ve edited a bunch of books. You’re more than qualified to start a lit mag, and you’ve told me you’ve been working toward this for years – so what’s standing in the way? I’m thinking you’re going to say money. Is it money?

Money, yes. That’s the big one. But really, I wanted to start this project WITH people. I didn’t want to do it alone. This isn’t about me, it’s about being a part of the landscape of excellent publishing that’s already going on—at Tor, Nightmare, Cemetery Dance, Apex, F&SF, Clarkesworld, Shimmer, etc. I’ve been inspired by editors like Ellen Datlow, Ann VanderMeer, Paula Guran, John Joseph Adams, Michael Kelly, and many others. Not only did I want to surround myself with talented authors, but I wanted the original patrons and supporters to be a part of this as well. I want them to suggest people to me, to have an open discussion, and I want them to send in their work. With a vehicle like Kickstarter people are invested—literally. And whether it’s $30 or $130 or $1,030 this is where we all come together to create something new, and exciting, and interesting. A few places have closed, recently, and others are no longer taking submissions, so it seemed like the right time to step up and take this chance. We’re going to pay ten cents a word, which is more than most, and we’re going to embrace dark, weird, literary stories, which sometimes have a hard time finding a home.

Irvine Welsh, Chuck Palahnuik, Marcus Sakey – they’ve all backed you. A mile-long list of authors have given verbal agreements to write for your magazine. A host of editors and artists have signed on to help once the magazine is up and running. It has to feel great knowing this dream of yours is about to come to fruition – or are you too worried to enjoy the love?!  

You know, Megan, if I wasn’t bipolar when I started, I probably am now. As we speak it’s day two, and we’ve raised almost $8,000. I’m both thrilled with that and also disappointed. I go back and forth. One minute I think we can’t do this, the next I think this is definitely going to work out. So, yes, I am pretty worried, but if everyone who says they want to change the industry, everyone who says there aren’t enough paying markets, actually steps up and contributes, we should be able to make this happen. I don’t want people to do this for me, I want them to do it for the authors who are going to write the stories, for the artists who will draw new work, for the writers who will now have a new place to submit and get paid—and for themselves, to create a new magazine for entertainment, enlightenment, and fulfillment.

I can’t wait to see how your Kickstarter project works out – and even more so how the launch of Gamut goes. Thank you for the interview, Richard, and best of luck!

Thanks, Megan, I really appreciate the continued interest and support. Means a lot.

The Erasure and Self-erasure of Women's Voices: A Review of Kristina Marie Darling's Women and Ghosts

The multiple modes of the erasure and self-erasure of women’s voices sit heavy with me this morning. I’ve read a beautiful and daring text entitled Women and Ghosts, by Kristina Marie Darling, which is part essay and part prose-poem, all experimental, where line-throughs, footnotes, multiple narrative lines, and alternating gradients of text are used to tell stories of female negations with silences and near silences—those that speak to the horror one can feel to realize that the acceptance of internalized conditioning to be less, to take up less space, is actually the most dangerous act a woman can commit or condone on a path to empowerment—and these have a long history. Kristina Marie Darling’s Women and Ghosts is a terrifying read, one well worth the time. For me, it felt like a beautiful funeral shroud, a gossamer wrap of a book I was reminded to cut myself free from in order to survive.

In this book, death, denial, self-sacrifice, and romance are inexorably linked. Gender and gender privilege are examined. The author is subversive in her inclusions and omissions, and the lines are meant to be catalysts toward appropriate rage. “In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Ophelia drowns under the weight of her own dress,” Women and Ghosts begins. “I had never imagined before that plain white silk could kill.”

But plain white silk didn’t kill, the reader may argue, jarred already by muted color of the words and the obvious falsehood they champion. Since when was a dress capable of killing? Enter now Darling’s world of realigning the reader’s reality by engaging in disruptive discourse. As the author expects the reader to remember, Ophelia, after losing her lover to palace intrigues, drowns herself in Hamlet. Surely her dress is not to blame, and neither is the water in which Ophelia, off-stage, drowns. At a deeper level, all readers familiar with Shakespeare’s play are aware that the lead character Hamlet’s rejection causes Ophelia’s complete self-immolation. And yet, in line one, Darling adjusts the narrative to hide the crime, makes excuses for it, blames a party blameless as a starry night or a sparkling lake, as written history often does, blurring the lines of blame in order to appropriately question them, where the dress in a virginal hue, ode to female innocence or purity, a highly gendered garment, takes betrayal’s place as villain.

Welcome to the nightmare gender labyrinth of refutation and disavowal. Not to read too much into this single line, but I already felt a chill travel my spine to see the exchange of correctly placed blame for self-defeating symbology and experienced a simultaneous awareness that this chill was intentionally created by the skillful author to highlight the contrast text the reader proceeds with as a paralleled modern “I” woman examines Ophelia’s plight and concurrently exists in a terrifying room where lovers spar and the ambient temperature grows colder and colder, as a modern man serves her joint bouts of gaslighting and liquor, tantamount to emotional abuse. Between doses of his cruelty and lack of returned care, in a sort of willful thought departure, the narrator muses on the aspects of Hamlet’s Ophelia plot most difficult and “unsayable,” at one point asking, “But what does it mean to give one’s consent? We are led and misled by those we love…” where a similar facility of displacement puts the reader right into the ghosted narrative of being two places at once, both interred in a historical play with a dead female victim of self-slaughter and standing in the midst of a new tragic history played out, where the “I” protagonist, already muted by pale ink, lives through a similar sort of identity reduction.

It is telling enough that this modern narrator says, “When he smiled, I felt my whole body grow colder,” where it seems as if a man’s cold judgment, masked by the false mirth of a smile, is on deliberate parallel with a lake in which to drown. Darling’s use of white space here, of incomplete interactions, of dissonance in the said/unsaid, is masterful.

Enter Shakespeare’s own words, often, as foil. Boldly on the pages that follow this opening line, interlacing at strategic intervals, the font periodically darkens, and the reader finds lined-through quotes from the bard, carefully excerpted to highlight the age old dilemma of inadequate self-valuation, of lost agency, of roles, one of such line-through excerpts reading, for example, “And I, of ladies most deject and wretched…”

Here we see the duality of the work’s intent. On the one hand, this text receiving line-through, seems an empowering strategy where Ophelia’s self-negation is defeated by being struck from the record by a female author. However, it is also a female author’s inclusion of a man’s depiction of a woman’s defeat in darker text than the narrative of the modern fictive woman beside it. As in a painting, a color is best read in context, beside another color—so, surrounded by the pale gray text of the I narrator, the stronger hue of a man’s words, lined out or not, seem to extend the struck sentiment well beyond the century in which it was crafted.

The status quo to be combatted, Darling’s line-through subtext seems to read, is hundreds of years of powerlessness in love. The status quo is women, in literature and life, silenced by men, whether they be those written by male authors as foils to kill for moments of tragic beauty in plays or simply real life lovers in the average living room scene of standard living—it is, after all, Shakespeare who killed Ophelia as a plot device, he who chose her undoing and drew a pretty bow on the tragedy of the tragedy of Hamlet. But you’ll note, in the tradition of entitling tragedies (Antigone, MacBeth, King Lear), that the title character is usually the protagonist. And Ophelia, memorable as she is, Darling wishes to remind us, has never had a play as her namesake. The tragedy was larger than the woman who died for it, her loss relegated to being just a pittance in another man’s more important drama.

It is a whirlwind ride to enter and learn the ways of reading this book, requiring more than just the absorption of words. One must stare at the pages and internalize the import in the way space and color is used. What is bold or shown in a darker font creates relevance in multiple sections where it seems a philosophical question has been asked of the reader, one with multiple hard answers. For my part, I found I was trained by the text to read with excitement when dark lines came, always hoping for more from a female voice rather than a male voice—yet, nearly each time Darling’s women spoke in dark font, what I came away with was a deepening sorrow where Darling had not given these women much voice but actually instead turned the screws of depicting a torturous silencing game, “my lord…my lord,” to reveal yet more dissection about how women’s institutionalized devaluation can be a learned, continuous, and self-regulating structure. It does so via reaching through much of Shakespeare’s canon—be forewarned, this book takes on more plays than solely Hamlet, pausing to meditate in women’s roles in others like Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Titus Andronicus, and more.

It then introduces the I character as a playwright and again establishes parallels between the doomed female characters in Shakespeare’s theatrical work and the hard work of women trying to write the matter that becomes publicly influential. A particularly difficult segment to read for this reader was the section called “Essays on Production,” where the “I” narrator discusses her work as an author of plays and the staging and reviews of her plays. For the entire segment, many pages long, the “I” character not only has a mute gray voice, a ghosted presence, but all her words are lined-through as well. Devastating. One excerpt that held my attention a good long while is found below, where a critic subjects our protagonist to the standard double-standard faced by women in the arts: Judgement made personal where slut-shaming is so ubiquitous it flows uncensored and there is no appropriate response for the artist to make since the artist, not the art, is on trial:

One critic did deliver a verdict, suggesting there must be some underlying reason that I cared so much about Ophelia, an unconscious obsession with the torn dress, a fixation on ruined clothing. I was the whore, the wronged beloved, the bride abandoned at the altar. I stood accused, but when I tried to plead my case, I found I could no longer speak.

So, if I am female, should I make myself more mute, are there more ways to do so, the narrative seems to ask the reader in multiple sections, with many strategies—and would you like to watch for how many centuries the same story of this abjuration repeats itself?

As Darling’s work in Women and Ghosts alternates between representations of Shakespearean women and scenes with or about her “I” narrator, the resultant despair that ensues for this reader is heightened when I am carried along as witness to the crimes, to the travesties, when the act of self-silencing as visible on the page actually serves as a cautionary tale to inspire agency for doing the opposite.

Perhaps an awakening for the reader was the goal of this book, the wake-up call, the warning. I am now awake. Thank you, Ms. Darling. One wants to test one’s voice after reading Women and Ghosts, to make sure it still works. Rarely does one read a book that holds such a narrative of disturbing dualities. Via stunning use of erasure and white space, Darling creates the kind of poetic narrative that twists the puzzles of representation in so many directions that the reader comes to live in both the darkness and the lightness of the font, in its presence and its absence.

Women and Ghosts is a trompe l’oeil of a book.   Inspired is the word I’d use to describe it, difficult, revelatory. Darling has written a text that speaks deeply to the violence of silence, of choosing silence, of being silenced. Anyone who has experienced this sort of relationship or actuality in reality may have a difficult time with this read. It brings it all back.

Women and Ghosts is a truly important book, the kind of book I would lovingly give to a female friend, but about which I would say: “This will hurt to read, but read it. Then read it again… Let us then talk and see what we can do to change upcoming history. And let’s make a different history, starting now.”

David Bowie Changes: A Review of Simon Jacobs's Saturn

I have always been very affected by pop culture. My eighth grade English teacher predicted I would become the editor of a women’s magazine. Despite not living up to her wishes (yet), when asked to name influences for my own creative practices, music and film are as likely to show up on the list as other writers and their associated presses. Unsurprisingly, some of my own published work has focused around celebrity, an example being Bound: An Ode to Falling in Love, a chapbook my partner Jackson Nieuwland and I wrote in homage to Kimye, imagining them as an interstellar, blended reptilian alien family.

One important precursor to the Kimye phenomenon was Bowie and Iman, two of my idols and touchstones in the creative world, both equally fabulous and worthy of praise for being the bright stars they are. In Saturn, Simon Jacobs imagines David Bowie in a variety of poses through a series of prose flashbulbs. Flash, and we see “David Bowie Bids on a Piece of Modern British Art”; flash, and we see “David Bowie Takes a Commercial Space Flight”; flash, and we see “David Bowie Attends a Charity Event Hosted by His Wife”.

While the focus of Saturn is ostensibly on Bowie, ‘his wife, supermodel Iman (for whom he has written songs)’ has a role to play in nearly every narrative thread, on close to every page of the chapbook. She lies beside him in bed, she is the mother of their child Lexi, she whispers to him in Arabic. She was his love at first sight, a constant reminder of his aging body. ‘Though she is well over fifty, David Bowie is struck with the realization that she looks exactly the same as the day they met nearly twenty-five years ago, that while he sits and grows old hourly, she, Iman, has simply, abruptly, and entirely stopped.’ Flash, and we see “David Bowie Watches Himself Age 200 Years”. When she leaves, he enters a death spiral.

The David Bowie of Saturn is an aging artist, confronting himself at what he perceives to be the tail end of his nearly fifty-year career. This Bowie, not so dissimilarly, perhaps, from the ‘real’ Bowie, is constantly reflecting inward upon himself. The art he paints, the art he purchases, the roles he plays, the characters he creates, are all versions of him. He speaks in quotes from his own lyrics, surrounds himself in self-portraits, finds joy in the discovery that Tilda Swinton is yet another version of him. Occasionally, this discovery is loathsome; Bowie describes ‘the terror of one who looks so much like his past’ while attending a film premier with ‘his son, BAFTA-winning filmmaker Duncan Jones’ (flash, and we see “David Bowie Attends the Premier of His Son’s Latest Film”) and in these moments, he begins to fade away.

Most notable is Jacobs’ recurring depiction of Bowie as Saturn, of Saturn Devouring His Son (flash, and we see “David Bowie Examines Francisco Goya’s Black Paintings Shortly after a Massive Heart Attack”). In a final flash that feels spontaneous, yet in retrospect was fully premeditated, Bowie cannibalizes the body of Duncan Jones. Bowie’s ultimate act is quite physical, but we have seen his thought process as it played out across Saturn: the jealousy harbored for previous selves, the terror and stagnation felt in moments of physical collapse, the astonishment he felt for others, which time had left unflawed.

Spork Press’ design principles work in total harmony with the aesthetic of Saturn. Their books are chunky and almost square, with thick board covers and rough hewn edges. (Think about trimming a book with a very precise chainsaw and you’ve got Sander Monson Jr. What he actually looks like is a mystery to me.) Illustrations throughout reinforce and replicate scenes from Bowie’s life, as Simon Jacobs as imagines it. One of these scenes, Bowie ‘gripping the bloody husk of a body before him’, gnawing on the flesh of his son, is embossed onto the thick cardboard cover of the book, with Bowie inked in copper; the blood, an alien green. Spork has made some of the most beautiful books I own (see also: Feng Sun Chen’s Blud) and some others I desperately want. (Full disclaimer: I went over the list of Spork titles I wished I owned in my head, then in a bout of mania went to their website and ordered six books. Don’t go to the Spork site – actually, don’t even think about their books – unless you feel ready to spend all of your available cash.)

In his acknowledgements, Simon Jacobs thanks David Bowie for his influence on the writer’s own personality. He calls Saturn ‘the result of years of devotion’ and more-than-casual research. My own first encounter with the icon was similarly formative, at age thirteen by way of a looping reel of his music videos at the Journeys shoe store in the Towson Town Mall. I was shopping for my first high school dance with my conservative mom when Ziggy Stardust appeared on the monitor and, thinking I was being shocking, I pointed him out. My mother and the sales associate immediately started raving about David Bowie, trading stories, glued to the screen, while I tried on some pair of wooden heels in the corner. That’s the day I realized David Bowie was the ultimate babe and the only sensible creative mentor for me, for all of us, going forward.

Berit Ellingsen's Not Dark Yet Is The Story of How Global Crisis Becomes Personal

Somewhere in a northern land, a man decides to leave his life and love in the city and sequester himself in a mountain cabin. The time is probably the not-so-distant future; but, as with so many aspects of Berit Ellingsen’s sci-fi novel Not Dark Yet, we’re asked to make up our own minds about that. The story is both a personal as well as a global one. In fact, Not Dark Yet is the story of how global crisis becomes personal.

The central character in this meticulously detailed narrative is Brandon Minamoto, a man in crisis—of identity, belonging, and loyalty. Although we know so much about him—his sexual orientation (gay), his job (photographer), and his ethnic heritage (Japanese if his name is an accurate indication of this); we also know he’s an athlete, an altruist and a dreamer—Ellingsen goes to great lengths to make this story about none of these things specifically.

There is one aspect of the character’s life that is central and telling: he has epilepsy. And while he has only a couple of seizures in the novel, they do give the reader an indication of what’s really going on in this character’s head. Not Dark Yet is about humanity’s quest for enlightenment. Of course it’s also about one man’s quest for enlightenment, but Ellingsen’s narrative technique of defamiliarizing the concepts of gender, language and place has the effect of universalizing this quest. But before I get to that, let’s talk about epilepsy and self-mummification.

There’s a brilliantly direct relationship between the Buddhist tradition of self-mummification and the central character’s decision to leave society for the mountain cabin. His epileptic seizures are described as euphoric glimpses of enlightenment—a brightness—more so than a malady. The Buddhist monk appears in a flashback, a scene with the central character’s brother. It’s one brief chapter, but it’s also a sort of key to the book. The description of the monk’s last stages of self-mummification are remarkably similar to the description of the main character’s seizures:

The monk:

“Yet, in the spring he dis­covered a brightness, a glow inside himself, that was beautiful and terrible at the same time. He had no words for it and did not try to explain it, but remained inside it when he could, and simply watched it when he couldn’t.”

Brandon Minamoto:

“During the previous spring the brightness became impossible to ignore, but he had gradually grown used to it. After the initial blast it usually faded to a glow behind his thoughts, but now, in the solitude of the cabin with nothing to distract him, the brightness over­took him.”

One can hardly ignore this consonance. And of course these are not the only similarities: the monk and the main character also share a strict diet, strenuous physical exercise, and the compulsion to leave this earth. This is, we shouldn’t forget, science fiction.

Being a hermit in the mountains isn’t enough for the central character. He’s also applied to the space program for a chance to fulfill his boyhood dream of going to Mars. And this is sadly all I can say about this part of the novel without giving away the end.

One important choice in Ellingsen’s narrative is how she defamiliarizes gender, language, and place. Other than somewhere in a northern country, we are not offered any place names. The city—as is often the case in Ellingsen’s shorter fiction—is described simply as, well, the city. The author has also reduced the continents to the points on a compass. She does something similar with the languages in the story. Instead of, say, Japanese, she uses the term “the language of their birthplace”. Though the story is transcribed in English, the reader occasionally has the feeling that the characters could be speaking any language. When the central character goes to a coastal town to get his medical exam for the space program, he has the following exchange in a shop:

‘He nodded at the man behind the counter, who addressed him in an eastern language he didn’t understand.

“Sorry,” he said in the language of the coastal country they were in. “Are you still serving lunch?”

“Lunch, dinner, whatever you need,” the man said, in their common language.’

In removing the names of the languages—and the names of the continents and cities—Ellingsen universalizes the themes in the story. This book is about enlightenment: global enlightenment during a time when humanity is just starting to feel the devastating effects of global warming, when global warming is starting to ruin personal dreams and impede individual quests for enlightenment. The title of the book may be a warning, or it may be a message of hope. It’s not dark yet.