Perversion For Hungry Eyes

 

David Lindsay wrote about the world "being rotten with illusion from top to bottom... the most sacred and holy things ought not to be taken for granted, for if examined attentively, they will be found as hollow and empty as the rest... Behind this sham world lies the real, tremendous and awful Muspelworld, which knows neither will, nor Unity, nor Individuals; that is to say, an inconceivable world." 

I have a lot of time for Colin Wilson, the author of a mind-boggling variety of books (fiction and non-fiction). When I stumbled upon his earnest digest examining the obscure works of David Lindsay, I was compelled to read. Clearly, so was Wilson. In fact, Wilson's read a great deal more Lindsay than I have, my association with him limited to the truly troubling A Voyage to Arcturus and The Haunted Woman. Read several years ago, both left an imprint on me like a long journey one can't forget, a journey insisting on a replay. 

Wilson's approach to Lindsay comes from a certainty that the man was compromised, stifled by a blight he calls the reader over one's shoulder (or: self-consciousness of imminent publication). Writes Wilson: "It's a pity he was not more like Lawrence, who was too sure of himself to suffer from self-consciousness, and is subsequently never afraid to write as he would talk." 

Wilson's slim but meaty volume is a midnight love letter to the writer in which he praises, cajoles, and attempts to school him. Wilson conveys a strong sense of disappointment in Linsday, and attacks the writer's use of cliches, but concedes Lindsay "was not really a solitary visionary... He was expressing the spirit of the age..."

He includes the book with a wonderful quote from Einstein:

"One of the strongest motives that leads men to art and science is to escape from everyday life, with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one's own ever-shifting desires."

This is such a wonderful book by about a strange, brilliant bookman. 

 

This is a Road Book in the Twain style. Road Movies are more common these days, but Road Books endure, nonetheless. I wanted this one to endure longer, so I read it slowly over a two week period, savoring its magical essence. 

It is magic. Magic like Jonathan Carroll's The Land of Laughs is magic. As you read, you smile a lot. You nod. You smile. You take the book away from your eyes and hold it at arm's length to appreciate it. I did a lot of arm extending while adventuring with King of Citizen Bands.

It's about freaks on an odyssey, freaks searching for a better place to be, a place where they're free to be themselves. It's a bible for non-violent Outsiders.

There is The Dwarf who isn't, the King (of Citizen Bands), and a blind girl who trusts them both. Nathan Tyree, who writes in a clear and colorful style, loves these people. I think he'd defend them with his life. His affection for them is, in fact, what makes the journey so involving and inviting. It's not like the drama itself is bloody and lives are threatened and lost at every turn. No, the drama emerges from the Outsider status of the characters, their struggle for acceptance, their letting go of old ways.

I'm struggling to think of another book I've loved this much recently (present company excluded). 

 

I read Mr. Overby is Falling before King of Citizen Bands. It's taken me this long to write about it. 

Still, six months later, I can't shake its surprises.  

It's head-scratchingly difficult to discuss without giving up its secret. There is a big secret and it's a well earned one. 

'Mr. Overby', our protagonist, is not unlike the lead character in Bobcat Goldthwaite's God Bless America, a film I can recommend with reservations; I'll discuss the reservations at some other time, but they involve keeping your expectations at a realistic level.  Overby, unlike that film's protagonist, doesn't feel like he can do much about what's wrong with the world. He doesn't have the balls or the organizational abilities. Until they're handed to him.

That's enough about the plot. Mr. Overby is Falling, true to its title,  is a decent into hell, a hell most people will not be comfortable with. Some reviews (there are a few) have attacked the book for its content while circling its actual value as literature. 

In other works of this nature, the solution to the problem becomes a bigger problem. This doesn't go in that direction. It goes in a much darker one.

Using just seventy-nine pages to do it, Nathan Tyree rightly fucks you up with this book. God bless the guy.

If I could liken the tone of this book to that of any other writer's work, I'd have to say Bentley Little. Little's ultra-paranoid thrillers such as The Association, The Store, The Policy, and The Ignored share atoms with Mr. Overby. 

I envy anybody their first read.  

    

 

By nature, we're hopeful. That hope gets stomped out of us by experience, but, like a ball attached to an elastic band, we bounce back with hope renewed. Then, more stomping. 

Jonathan Carroll's After Silence is a fuckin' amazing book about a man whose hope gets stomped on and shattered. And, with that hope lying in pieces, he finds another reservoir. Yes, fueled by dreams and love (the two entwined in a fragile dance), he inches forward, propelled towards another stomping.

Sounds dark? It is.

Easily one of the most inventive living writers, Carroll never disappoints me. In a weird way, he's someone whose work I love dearly, so, even when I don't "like" him, I love him nevertheless.

In the indefatigable The Land of Laughs, he presented a snoozing dog talking in his sleep. With that introduction, I never left.   

 

Delany's wonderful sci-fi works are not as relevant to the "enjoyment" of The Tides of Lust (originally: Equinox) as is Hogg, his most disturbing novel. Still, if you appreciate his love of language and his stubborn adherence to theme, you'll take much from this controversial, pornographic, and banned-in-some-countries work.

It describes the adventures (sexual and otherwise) of a diverse group of people, its leading protagonist being a black sea captain and his dog Niger (one 'n'). Its banning and subsequent revisions (mostly to address the age of some characters) resulted in its initial publisher (Savoy) being jailed. The '73 edition (pictured) contains the original text and copyright notice.

Delany, who writes vigorously and has no truck with gender distinctions, lets loose with a volley of uncompromising sexual excess that is never less than metaphorically relevant to its themes of corrupt authority and sadomasochistic powerplay. 

Truly an extraordinary work.

Also well worth reading is Delany's book on writing itself:

 

Another Savoy beaut in which Charles Platt invokes sexual anarchy via a sci-fi/horror premise. A gas loosed on Southern England has unexpected consequences for those affected. They become rapid fuckers of everything and everyone imaginable, and no body part or bodily fluid is excluded in a spirited free-for-all that feels wonderfully fresh.

Today's wild and unpredictable world of internet pornography seems closest to what Platt predicted. Back in 1970, when the book first appeared, it probably felt like a natural extension of both the free love movement and the growing permissiveness of popular culture.

Ironically, today, despite the existence of a Wild West underground internet culture, the book would surely shock common sensibilities a great deal more. Fanned by witchfinder generals of both underaged and unconventional sex, our sexual culture, though shoved at us in PG-rated bubbles via commercial trojan horses, is, at the same time, being demonized by anybody with a microphone and and a dubious political agenda.

The book is a riotous good time, an example of unfettered literary freedom, a freedom so well exercised, in fact, that author Platt later revised some passages, dismissing his original scribblings as symptoms of reckless youth.

As horror, social statement, and porn at gut level, this is a goddamned masterpiece, a Fuck You, Charlie! to hypocrisy .      

Depravity Served Wet by Bryan Smith

The dictionary.com definition of "depraved" is "corrupt, wicked, or perverted".

Like other words -- immoral, disgusting, deviant, for example -- that attempt to describe a certain type of behavior, "depraved" is a totally subjective term, and an often used and abused adjective.

The set-up for Bryan Smith's version of Depraved has more in common with the opening of Goodfellas than a standard horror novel. Jessica, the heroine, is driving down the highway with a live body in her trunk. The body belongs to Hoke, a Nashville music man who got a little rape-happy earlier in the evening. Jessica, who's not the forgiving type, plans to shoot and dump old Hoke. Of course, things don't work out that way.

Mr. Smith is a horror writer who clearly started life as a horror reader and viewer. Like all good work, his is a synthesis of disparate influences. Stuff goes in. Stuff comes out. But between the ins and outs, the stuff gets filtered, re-shaped, deep fried, and re-arranged. Smith adds his own genetic code, tosses in a salad of anger and frustration, and reduces the sauce with a Grand Guignol serving of humor.

In synopsis, much of Depraved is not blindingly original, but few things are in synopsis. One of my favorite film critics, Roger Ebert, once wrote: "...it's not what it's about...it's how it's about..." At the time, he was writing about Freeway, Mathew Bright's trash masterpiece; he was referring to Bright's kinky, warped, bizarre sensibility. Later on, that sensibility created the utterly wonderful Bundy, surely one of the sleaziest, sexiest, and most lurid serial killer pics in existence.
Well, Ebert could have been writing about Depraved because "how" Smith treats his subject matter is what makes the book a winner.

Mr. Smith's "influences" would not be strangers amongst my own. The opening feels like Scorsese's Goodfellas crossed with Laymon's The Woods Are Dark, a novel that, upon original publication, was mutilated by its publisher Warner Books. In Laymon's A Writer's Tale, my favorite book on writing, the author details what the publisher did to virtually rewrite the novel. In The Woods Are Dark, terrible things happen to not-so-terrible people. Behind the terrible things are a race of monsters called 'The Krulls'. In the original paperback, most of the background on 'The Krulls' was excised. It would have been awfully helpful to know more, but the publisher didn't think so. They opted for pace over every other aspect of the storytelling. The result for still a great novel, but it could have been so much better.

I mention The Woods Are Dark and 'The Krulls' because, in a strange way, Depraved feels (in spirit, at least) like what The Woods Are Dark would have been if the publisher hadn't hacked the living fuck out of it. Smith explains away the terrible things that happen to terrible and not-so-terrible people in his novel, and his explanation is solid. He takes the time and space to sketch a fascinating culture of depravity that has echoes of The Wicker Man (the original, not the shit-encrusted remake), but the acrid odor of extreme perversion.

Speaking of extreme perversion. Is the character 'Hoke' a distant relative of Hogg, Samuel R. Delany's vile creation from the long-banned book of the same name? The thought did occur to me right off the bat. Depraved also made me think of Last House on the Left, Two Thousand Maniacs, I Drink Your Blood, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Trapped, Captured for Sex 2 and Straw Dogs because it's spawned by that genre. But Mr. Smith takes these colorful canvases, stirs them lovingly and, viola!, pulls a snot-dripping rabbit out of his hat (with a killer Epilogue) that is pure B. (for "B-Movie" in this case?) Smith.

Depraved?

Well, maybe. Not that there's anything wrong with that!

***

The Killing Kind is Bryan Smith's next novel from Leisure.

Beyond The Edge

We like to be pushed towards the edge.

Last night, I re-watched the amazing Riding Giants ('04). In the film's most stunning sequence, surfing legend Laird Hamilton somehow rides this mind-boggling wave in Tahiti.

This ride has not been equaled, and he's clearly a guy who pushes himself not just towards the edge, but beyond it.

Aside from some freaky diving incidents and a fondness for an unofficial "sport" that involves pressing myself flat against a rock moments before a wave pounds that rock, my extreme edge pushing is mostly confined to books and films.

Since I was six or seven, I have been the go-to guy for shocking images, shocking books, and shocking films, at least in my own neighborhood. When I was growing up, I pursued my love for and curiosity about the EXTREME with vigor and studious discipline.

I even attracted a handful of apostles, some of whom are still good friends today, but, back before the internet, it was rare for someone to come to me with something that I hadn't seen or would be shocked by.

Being the go-to guy for SHOCK is not a role without pressures. You are expected to perform. Your life becomes a non-stop version of "Show-and-Tell", a game I loved at primary school almost as much as Truth and Dare. It was an opportunity to show my fellow students and teachers exhibits from my growing collections of monster mags, horror paperbacks, deformed dolls, movie ad mats, and medical photographs of babies with hydrocephalus (Water on the Brain, which is, more accurately, excess spinal fluid).

The bottom line for this go-to guy was this: it was pre-internet, I had pocket money for income, and my sources of SHOCK were drying up.

It wasn't until I took a part time job as a Mcdonald's "chef" that I was finally able to enrich my collections somewhat.

Something changed in me when I started reading a lot of horror. Books like Denis Giford's Horror Movies provided images, and those images stimulated my imagination, allowing me to develop ridiculous expectations of how good these movies would be.

Horror books (literature), however, were about ideas, and while reading them and reading hundreds of books that weren't horror, I learned about "context".

dictionary.com, a trusted source of mine, defines context as a "set of circumstances or facts that surround a particular event, situation, etc."

My awareness of context changed the way I looked at horror.

For me, next came "contrast" , which my source defines deftly as:

"opposition or juxtaposition of different forms, lines, or colors in a work of art to intensify each element's properties and produce a more dynamic expressiveness."

I discovered these elements of good art because I was becoming bored with non-stop bloodiness and frustrated by would-be apostles who expected me to have an orgasm every time they showed me a gory picture I'd seen a hundred million times.

I guess I was maturing, but I wasn't articulate enough to explain why gore and blood on its own was no longer doing it for me.

Instead, I opened myself up to something new...

When I was sixteen, I met a fellow fan through a letter I had published in Starlog magazine.

He was a Gerry Anderson fanatic. Already married at eighteen, his little home in the Melbourne suburb of Chadstone was filled with amazing GA toys such as Lady Penelope's FAB1, chauffeured by Parker...
... fantastic Captain Scarlet merchandise...

and a Joe 90 doll.


After months of GA-themed get-togethers, my new friend and his wife hit me with something I wasn't expecting one sunny Sunday arvo:

...and...

Keep in mind that XXX-rated films were only legally available in most states in Australia for a couple of years in the mid-80's.

Even now (yes, in 2009!), they are officially banned from sale in all states.

They are available by mail order from Canberra, the nation's political capital (why isn't that surprising?), and the Northern Territory (which is 99.9% desert, .1% people).

Back when my Gerry Anderson-loving buddy hit with with an impromptu showing of the film that made Linda Lovelace a household name (in some houses) and Bambi Woods a legend, VHS had just been born and hardcore was unseen in Australia. There were hardcore magazines available from companies like Color Climax, Seventeen, and Private, but there was nothing that moved. Moving AND having sex was illegal Down Under.

For almost three hours, I watched a lot of moving and shaking and grinding and oral intercourse.

I was excited, shocked, and changed by the experience.

That the films, in hindsight, were not diamond examples of X-rated filmmaking was of no import.

Finally, SOMEONE had shown ME something that pushed me beyond my edge, and for that I was eternally grateful.

Which brings me almost full circle to Samuel R. Delany's Hogg. And context. And contrast.

Nobody thrust Hogg at me, but I started to hear about it.

Whenever I stumbled upon or cyber-hunted lists of Most Shocking Novels or Books That Ought To Be Banned, this Hogg book would always show up. Throw an on-line Perversion Party and Hogg would always RSVP. Was this a sign? Were I required to take action?

Tracking down a mint copy of Hogg was a challenge a couple of years ago; it seems to be less so now.

The on-line reviews were very mixed. Was it extreme? There was a chorus of agreement there. Was it art? Divided. Was it well written? No consensus on that. Should it exist? Some thought not.

I read Hogg. Not in one sitting. It took me several days. That was because I had not stop along the way to confront nausea. I had never confronted that while reading before, so it was a strange but wonderful experience. It's not like I hadn't read some potentially stomach churning stuff. I'd gotten through most of Peter Sotos's work, Jim Goad's three volume Answer Me collection, and some of Dennis Cooper's raw, literary ejaculations. I read the Marquis De Sade's most popular works before I turned eighteen, and I've seen underground films I wish to God I could unsee.

Still, Hogg got to me. It's supposed to.

Set in the early 60's, it is about a revolting rapist/pedophile named Franklin Hargus ("Hogg") who takes an eleven year old boy, the narrator, under his wing, and subjects him to a deviant lifestyle that both brutalizes and excites the boy.

Hogg himself personifies the far extremes of perversion, if that is possible to imagine. His pig-like behavior includes urinating and defecating in his pants, which he never changes. He engages in rape, necrophilia, sexual torture, and gross humiliation of his victims.

The book is a tour de force of human darkness -- an unforgettable experience for the reader/accomplice, and heaven and hell for its characters.

What it does lacks is contrast. It is all black and no white. The non-stop incidents of gross sexual perversion form a nauseous chain that does become repetitive after a while. I know that's part of the point, but it does retard the reading experience.

Is this perversion without context?

Absolutely not. What happens is fully contextualized by the novel's milieu. Zelany drags us through a world of extreme human desire that doesn't feel like it is outside of possibility.

Most of the sexual activity is male to male, although there is an occasional incident of abuse with a female.

Originally written in '69, then personally revised a few years later, it was not published until '95 because no publisher wanted to touch it.

It is quite an extraordinary novel, and one you should read at least once, if only to test your repulsion parameters.

If you take some of the book's many sexual excesses out of context, you will find that contemporary fetish pornography has finally caught up with Hogg.

These titles, from a leading European fetish distributor, capture some of Hogg's anarchic, almost psychotic sexuality.

Of course, they do it less artfully, but no less honestly (which explains the high repulsion factor).

Samuel Ray Delaney is best known as a leading science fiction writer. His 20-plus novels, which include Einstein Intersection, Empire Star, and Triton have been highly acclaimed.

Hogg is certainly his most confronting work.

Some (those who find it objectionable) have called it "pornography" in an effort to reduce its status as literature.

Of course, that label assumes that pornography is a bad thing; the label is also predictably condescending.

So is it pornography? Does it turn the reader on?

It didn't turn me on sexually, but it fried my brain like few books have.

Its power has remained with me long after I turned the final page.

After Hogg, where to now?

SHOCK LITERATURE is going in one direction...

...and becoming more mainstream, while SHOCK PORNOGRAPHY continues to push the international envelope...

In the first category, you can pray for context and contrast, and sometimes you'll get it. JF Gonzalez's Survivor (2004) is Leisure Books' most extreme title so far, and very highly recommended.

In the second category, I'm sure you'll get your dose of SHOCK and some gentle edge pushing right here... Bring your own bone, though.

Note the MGM-inspired company log. Classic!