Category: Book

I have often stared at the biographical dates of one historical figure or another and tried to work out exactly what that person was up to when he or she was my current age. Maybe you too. Other figures, often fictional ones, have no set dates, only clues, hints buried in backstory. For instance, what was Viktor Frankenstein like at age 16? Kenneth Oppel takes that question and builds a narrative world on a few references in Shelley’s novel. The first volume recounting this world is This Dark Endeavor: The Apprenticeship of Victor Frankenstein(Simon & Schuster, 2011) with a second volume, Such Wicked Intent, due out in August. The boyish looking Canadian auteur came through town last night on a book tour so Elsa L. and myself stopped by Nicola’s Books to hear what he had to say for himself.

I confess that my snobbish tastes don’t warm easily to Young Adult fiction — it feels too often like a “market” rather than an actual “literary type.” The peace I’ve made is that I ask of Young Adult literature the same that I require of horror culture or art in general, namely that it present meaningful reflections on the human condition, mortality, ambition, courage, knowledge, society, desire, etc. And that it do so in language that is suitable if not captivating. On these criteria, This Dark Endeavor passes.

To commend it, well, anything that can get those darned YOT (Youth of Today) to attend to the COY (Classics of Yore) is a good thing, IMHO. There are definitely easier stories to turn into acceptable fiction that youth can be allowed to read in the safety-obsessed culture of ours. Viktor Frankenstein is the original mad scientist / bad father. HE is more a monster than his creature, Shelley’s critique of Byron, I believe. In his talk, Oppel did a double-plus good job of suggesting the dark origins of Shelley’s Frankenstein without going into all the messy intricacies of, um, sex, drugs and romantic poetry. He summed it up aptly by noting something to the effect that “Byron was like a rock star.” Indeed.

In the passage of the novel that Oppel read, Viktor, his twin brother Konrad, and a distant cousin Elisabeth discover a hidden library of occult books — a library the pater familias warns them never to visit again. I couldn’t help but feel this discovery was a potent metaphor especially for Young Adult literature. A large corpus of more dangerous, more “adult” literature lurks gently concealed in Oppel’s tale — the suppressed alchemy of Cornelius Agrippa, the somewhat tragic life of Mary Shelley herself, the insane verse of Byron and Shelley (and I use “insane” lovingly and with affection – see Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament by Kay Redfield Jameson Simon & Schuster, 1990). Books, especially those like This Dark Endeavor, are gate way drugs to a wider world of literature, sometimes literature that is hardly parent-approved. But that transition from official bibliographies to personally directed reading lists is a key aspect of development as a reader – as a student – of any literature, whether this shift is expressly transgressive or not.

I was glad to be able to snatch up a copy of This Dark Endeavor and have it signed — sentimental fool that I am. I was lucky too. Kenneth Oppel had visited two middle schools during the day complete with a PowerPoint presentation and had so captivated his audiences that they sold through all the stock they brought with. Perhaps there is hope for those YOTs after all.

I joke about teaching a class one day called “Poetry for Guys” and if I ever get that opportunity, Gilgamesh would have to be on the reading list. I’ve meant to read this ancient poem (poem fragments, really) for years but I finally picked up a copy of the Stephan Mitchell translation from a guy who sells used books from a folding table he sets up on State Street. Ya gotta love a college town, eh? It’s short but I savored every page.

Gilgamesh is an epic tale about a king Gilgamesh who is oppressive and unbearable to his subjects until the gods create a perfect friend for him, Enkidu who is a wild man living in the wilderness. Enkidu is tamed by a temple prostitute, then he challenges Gilgamesh to a wrestling match after which they become best buddies. It’s a very touching story of a friendship between two guys that really can’t be summed up under the phrase “male bonding” let alone “buddy picture.” The pair go on epic adventures together, all slightly tinged with Gilgamesh’s concern that people will forget him when he’s dead. Then, Enkidu falls ill and dies. Gilgamesh is distraught with grief. He tries to seek out Utnapishtim, the only mortal who’s been given immortality. More adventures occur frequently with the refrain, and here I paraphrase “Gilgamesh, dude, you look like crap.” If nothing else, Gilgamesh depicts the grief process very palpably.

I’m mentioning the book here because there is much to commend the poem to a genre-interested reader. Gilgamesh is basically a super hero, depicted as 2/3’s divine and 1/3 mortal. There are monsters that haunt a cedar woods, scorpion people who guard the long tunnel that the sun traverses after sunset, stone-men who pilot a boat… It’s folklore from a radically different time, one not to concerned with ethics, where stories didn’t need morals. Gilgamesh also recounts a worldwide catastrophic flood that bears many similarities to the description in Genesis. The differences are also pretty interesting. The world of the Gilgamesh is polytheistic so there is disagreement and deception among the gods, gods who more or less maintain the same attitudes throughout the story, whereas with the more monotheistic world of Genesis, the God must change his mind, from anger to repentance. There’s a similar though not identical release of birds at the end of the flood. Both narratives mention a gift given as a sign that never again will the world be drowned, one is a necklace, the other a rainbow. Utnapishtim is granted eternal life whereas Noah seems to be plagued by survivor guilt and turns to drink. In an alcoholic stupor, Noah curses one of his sons thus perpetuating the kind of evil the flood was allegedly intended to wipe out. I’m sure folks have spilled much ink comparing and contrasting these two narratives. Frankly, if I had to write a dissertation on Gilgamesh, I’d focus on Shamhat, the temple sex priestess who acts as a sexual intermediary between Gilgamesh and Enkidu.

Plus, it’s short. The poem itself is roughly 120 generously margined pages accompanied by a gently pedantic introduction and an exhausting set of end notes. I’ll slog through end notes when I’m reading seriously but not for summer reading. And I have to say that Gilgamesh actually does make pretty good summer reading at least I read it this summer and it just felt right.

Daughter Of Hounds (2007) is a captivating horror novel by Caitlin Kiernan set in the darkly fantastic world of the Benefit Street ghouls, a familiar setting to readers of Kiernan’s Low Red Moon (2003). Kiernan has followed the same cast of characters, more or less through several books, including Threshold (2001). Daughter Of Hounds focuses on Emma Silvey, the child of Deacon Silvey and Chance Matthews who were major characters in previous books. Emma is precocious and dauntless and believably child-like as she wends her way through the twisting shocks of the story, through dreams within dreams that turn out to be no dreams at all. Her narrative double is Soldier, a tough and brutally practical young woman who is a “child of the Cuckoo,” one of those children stolen by the ghouls and raised in their dank underground warrens. The stories of Emma and Soldier strangely intertwine crossing again and again to the very end of the book. Another character familiar to readers of Kiernan’s fiction is The Bailiff and personally, I was glad to see this character shown from a few more perspectives. It’s too much to hope for, I suppose to expect a lengthy work entirely about him.

Daughter Of Hounds is a delicious mixture of supernatural horror with splashes of everyday gore. It is intelligent and literary while remaining eminently readable. Kiernan has been called the literary grand-daughter of H.P. Lovecraft, though I find her work actually more compelling than that master of eldritch horror. Her descriptions of magick seem more believable; her depictions of that ineffable, nameless wonder/horror are more effective. Kiernan is an established Mistress of short fiction, whose stories frequently are selected as the best horror of the year, and with Daughter Of Hounds a particularly well-conceived and well-executed work, she is clearly hitting her stride with the book-length format. Read them all if you can, but treat yourself to Daughter Of Hounds in the least.

— the grim gnome

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?