Post by weirdmonger on Nov 30, 2008 21:38:02 GMT
GLYPHOTECH AND OTHER MACABRE PROCESSES (PS Publishing 2008) by Mark Samuels
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The lead story 'GLYPHOTECH' itself is a very effective, disturbing Dickian treatment of the Credit Crunch insidiously starting with ostensible building works not a million miles from sub-primate mortgages. The toxicity of office life absorbed by collapsing floors of confidence. Belief the false bargain. Hedge fund faces and fingernails.
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SENTINELS: A run-of-the-track zombie story or something far deeper?
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Loved PATIENT 704 - combining a mix of Tarr & Fether, Big Brother Celebrity Reality
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SHALLAHBALLAH seems to be a sister story of PATIENT 704 (i.e. more Big Brother Reality surveillance in a clinical setting, TV sets, 'The Prisoner' or 'Lost' TV vibes (as well as Ligottian puppets)).
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GHORLA - a relatively long tale - with (again!) the theme of between TV-channels static (the man at the *reception* desk), yellow wallpaper, transvestism, third-eye theosophy, transmgration of souls, Aickman-like bus journey, old-fashioned story-telling devices -- wow! Just that. Wow!
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CESARE THODOL: SOME LINES WRITTEN ON A WALL: sibling symbiosis as with the Ghorla story written in a charming Lovecraftian Poesqueness - weaving a phantasmal cancer of an audit trail, reminding me inexplicably of Quatermass.
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THE CANNIBAL KINGS OF HORROR:
Seriously - this is a work of genius !
But did the author make the ending so silly that people wouldn't take the rest of it seriously?
And will Thomas Ligotti still be friends with the author after he mentions 'bungalow house' in connection with Ed Bertrand? ;-)
And why is it dangerous to sign your name? My copy of this book is signed. Perhaps it's not the author's.
Seriously, this is one of those GREAT stories!
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The next story - 'DESTINATION NIHIL by Edmund Bertrand'.
Supposedly written by a character in the previous story, this is an excellent Grabiñski-like dream-conundrum with REAL earth in which to delve one's half-formed reading-fingers. Reminds me of the train I had as a child in the Fifties. This book's as yet half-formed gestalt is slowly shaping up...
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THE VANISHING POINT
is a brilliant story. Very much in tune with my own themes of TV reality / non-reality (if you see my work over the years) and my comments on the recent 'Big Brother / Dead Set' zombie film (which the story uncannily prefigures) and my comments on the philosophy of the 'Big Brother' programme itself. A good coining: sham existence. The gestalt of this book is now surely almost fully formed? I won't prejudge but I think this book is an original classic so far assuming we have already reached its tipping-point?
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REGINA VS. ZOSKIA
Jarndyce & Jarndyce taken to Tarr-&-Fetherian (again), decadent, relicular, Kafkaesque heights or depths - mirror-images, indeed, Bertrand & Bertrand..
The killing of authors by insanity. Innocent sex via flirting.
Plus this book's perennial: transmission static (this time on the car radio) as the eighth type of ambiguity.
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A GENTLEMAN FROM MEXICO
Like 'Cannibals', this is a (meta-)story for readers in the 'horror genre' know. For me, its ethos resembles Brigid Brophy's theory that Bierce was replaced by Borges in South America. A well-written story I really enjoyed especially as it had the line: "What is certain is that the D.F. would rise again, as filthy, crazed and glorious as before." ;-)
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THE WHOLE BOOK
There is a thread of fungus/cancer, inspiraton, insanity, sleeplessness, creative transmission that weaves through nemonymous labyrinths (paradoxically) of many souls and one soul. Them and me. Static yet vibrant (again paradoxically). Both old-fashioned and revolutionary fiction (again paradoxically). Ligotti, Grabinski, Dickens, Lovecraft, Poe, Kafka, Borges, Machen, but essentially Samuels, the good old-fashioned Mark of Genius who knows not what lies within him...
It was a privilege to read this book.