The premise sounds like the stuff of particularly trippy fan fiction: Jack Kerouac squares off against Cthulu but Nick Mamatos pulls off an enjoyable first novel based around this theme. Move Under Ground (2006) is a breezy read, perfect for summer, without the labored prose of Lovecraft and with only a nod at the self-indulgent excesses of Beat literature. Mamatos’ work is a loving pastiche, including appearances by various authors such as Nelson Algren, Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs who appears in a blaze of gunfire. I confess that I’m more a fan of the Beats than Lovecraft and more a fan of Burroughs than Kerouac so I was particularly delighted when <slight spoiler> Burrough’s “cut-up” technique was used late in the novel to speed their progress across the country. The text is peppered with with quite delightful allusions to other works and to the later lives of the characters/authors.
I know I should say something critical just to appear intelligent but, heck, taken for what it is, this book is a charmer. The novel can’t really be faulted for not having a taut plot; neither Lovecraft nor Kerouac were particularly tight. Characterization is always tricky when dealing with real-life figures but Beat literature didn’t dwell on psychological characterization so much as a delicious stream of interiority and anyone who’s read On the Road is familiar with Kerouac’s stream. (Someone stop me now–I’m starting to sound like an English professor!) I suppose the only thing that could be said that it isn’t exactly a horror novel but even that isn’t a damning criticism. While not exactly terrifying, I found the long tour of the nightmare landscape quite captivating. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so interesting for some one unfamiliar with Beat literature or the Cthulu mythos but heck, do many American youths escape adolescence without delving into either of those schools of literature?