Caitlín R. Kiernan - Confessions of a Five-Chambered Heart

My review of Caitlín R. Kiernan's latest short story collection, Confessions of a Five-Chambered Heart, came out at Strange Horizons last Friday. The stories inside it live up to the incredibly high bar that everything I have read by Kiernan has set, including that from its predecessor collection, The Ammonite Violin & Others, even if my favorite of her stories likely remains "Onion" from Wrong Things.

Poppy Z. Brite & Caitlin R. Kiernan - Wrong Things

Released in 2001 in a limited edition by Subterranean Press, Wrong Things is a collaboration between Poppy Z. Brite and Caitlin R. Kiernan, two writers of Weird and disturbing horror known for their powerful prose. The slim volume contains a story solely by each author – The Crystal Empire and Onion – and then their combined piece. All of it operates at the level of the incredibly high level each has established in their solo work.

Things kick off with Brite's The Crystal Empire, a tale that is, like the stories in Swamp Foetus/Wormtongue (which I loved but did not, alas, get a chance to review), of the purest emotions perverted and of the darkest settings. Zee, Susan, Mathew, Jenifer, and a few other scarcely named and scarcely described low lifes occupy a rundown building. Zee, our narrator, is in love with Mathew. I don't mean ordinary love, like the kind between equals, though. Their relationship is more one of supplicant to messiah. But their world is about to shatter. "Remember the way I look now," Mathew says. "Something huge is going to happen – something huger than you can conceive of, Zee. It will change me." (p. 11)

That change comes in the form of music. The band is the Isle of Man, the singer Anthony LaGuerre, a man who sings with a sound so desperate, so lovely that every hair on my body prickled in sympathy and whose voice is a waterfall jumble of notes. (p. 16) He's something that they need and want, though Zee admits that she didn't know what kind of wanting it was; whether it was wanting to make love or to talk soul-deep with LauGuerre or to shut hum up in a little jeweled box and let his voice escape when Mathew turned the key, like a golden clockwork nightingale. (ibid) LaGuerre is, if you'll pardon the cliché, too good for this world. Too perfect and too beautiful. Mathew and Zee go to him, later, and, in the story's horrific climax, either soil or free his gift.

It's rather difficult to tell where the story is going when it's in motion, but the dark atmosphere, reeking of filth and desperation from start to finish, is still more than captivating. The characters, too, are powerful. Zee's twisted out of shape by her love and need for Mathew, but that doesn't make her unrecognizable. It's her vulnerability amidst the horror that makes all of it so affecting. At the end of the story, it's hard to tell just what, if anything, has indeed changed, and that's despite the tumult, violence, and death of the ending.

Kiernan's Onion, though, is the masterpiece of the collection. It is the aftermath of a Weird Tale. Think back to Lovecraft. In stories like The Call of Cthulhu and At the Mountains of Madness, he showed us ordinary men who saw behind the veil, saw their own insignificance and the incomprehensible and impossible nature of the universe, and that's where we closed, with that apocalyptic revelation. But Onion takes place years, even decades, afterwards, a story set in the shattered remnants of sanity. Frank and Willa are two such visionaries. It's clear from what we see that they truly do care for each other from what we see, but, nonetheless, Frank can't even remember the last time he saw "her smile, really smile, not just a smirk or a sneer." (pp. 70-1) The two work at soul crushing, dead end jobs. Though they decided to quit before the story's start, Willa is smoking again, now running low on cigarettes and money, on health and will.

Trying to cope, those who've seen and those who know hold meetings where they eat stale donuts, drink bitter coffee, and try in vain to make "sense" (p. 68) of what's happened to them. The meetings, needless to say, accomplish nothing. It's obvious throughout this slow slide from mania to something worse, something unimaginable that such experiences can destroy, but it's not obvious until the very end that they might also be defining, that, just maybe, a hint of something more – no matter how cataclysmic that hint or how awful that more – might be all that makes life worth living.

Of course, Kiernan is not Lovecraft but for the place she starts her story. First, there's the question of demographics. In Lovecraft's The Statement of Randolph Carter, it's two educated and erudite men that find the staircase waiting within the tomb, a scientist and an occultist that disappears down. The same stairs are found in one character's inexplicable experience here in Onion, but the two characters are young girls, not seeking knowledge but rather escaping the confines of home and looking for a smoke. The biggest difference, though, is certainly the prose. Kiernan's writing is rich and lush, dark and twisting, and, above all, alive, close to home, sweaty and virulent. It's excellent when describing the weird, but is no less so when making the ordinary alien, as when a subway ride is described as: Rumbling along through the honeycombed earth, the diesel and dust and garbage-scented darkness, and him swaddled inside steel and unsteady fluorescent light. (p. 77) Tied with that is Kiernan's constant tendency for oddities in phrasing and structure, little things that keep the reader perpetually off balance like a surfeit of fragrant or combined words like "raincool" or "angrysharp," (p. 68) a tactic that could surely be ruinously distracting in lesser hands but is just another part of Kiernan's spell here.

And so we come to The Rest of the Wrong Things, the collaborative piece, set in Brite's setting The Missing Mile. The story's opening switches between two scenes, one of which shows our main characters – Terry, Vic, and a girl whose name we learn is Tyler – at the vandalized Sacred Yew. Amidst the scrawled swastikas, the characters speculate on what outsiders might have done this until Tyler says: "Well, that's what everyone always wants to believe, isn't it? […] The bad shit always comes from somewhere else. From outside us. outside our world. at least, that's what we'd like to think. That's why Dracula has always been so much more popular than Jekyll and Hyde. But werewolves are a lot scarier than vampires, even if no one wants to admit it. (p. 103) Sounds like a set up for a story that shows us that we're really the monsters, or that they're among us, or something like that, right? Not at all. If that – quite good – quotation's any thematic or plot-based connection to the rest of the story, I just don't see it.

But none of that matters once we get to the Mill, scarred by fire and now inhabited by something strange and foreign, something profoundly other. Their descent into it is an exercise in, as Kiernan puts it in the collection's afterword, "urban archaeology," a vividly described and pitch black maze of rusted machinery and decay. And, waiting at the bottom, is the entity itself, something maybe even risen from that so-damaging flame. As Tyler says: Sometimes things pass too close to us. […] Things from other places. Machineries of blood and starlight. Wrong things. (p. 107) Our three protagonists venture to very edge of that other reality, and then Terry and Vic fall back, disoriented and disturbed, while Tyler advances forward and is gone. At the end of the action, those that're left stumble out to the silent, brooding hulk of the Central Carolina Cotton Mill and the indifferent carpet of stars spread out overhead. (p. 114) In the course of the tale, Tyler, and then Terry, each say a quotation from Alice in Wonderland: "Down, down, down […] I wonder how many miles I've fallen by this time? I must be getting somewhere near the center of the earth…" (p. 112) It doesn't matter that, come the end, Terry and Vic have survived and will not be troubled again. They've been forever altered by what they've seen and experienced.

In the aforementioned afterword, Kiernan says that the role of The Rest of the Wrong Things in the collection is "more a starting point than a centerpiece." (p. 129) As such, I can't help but make connections. In that final tale, we're told that: One dry, onionskin layer of the night peeled back and this is what was buried underneath. (p. 100) Is that what this is, the story a close up and in-depth manifestation of the extra dimensional and life-altering experiences of Onion? It's certainly true, after all, that each of the stories manages to show us something other, something outside ourselves and absolutely awful, even if Brite manages to show us her Wrong Thing without ever needing to depart the confines of our reality and emotions. In any case, regardless of interpretations, this collection is fantastic. The second piece is my personal favorite, but there is not one of these that isn’t filled with mood, feeling, style, mastery, and, as Terry says at one point, "weird shit." (p. 98) Highly recommended.

The Weird Fiction of Daniel Defoe

It shouldn't come as a surprise to any readers of this blog that I'm rather interested in Weird Fiction, that so-fascinating niche of horror that was popularized and defined by H.P. Lovecraft in his seminal essay Supernatural Horror in Literature:

The true weird tale has something more than secret murder, bloody bones, or a sheeted form clanking chains according to rule. A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint, expressed with a seriousness and portentousness becoming its subject, of that most terrible conception of the human brain--a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space. (p. 1043, HP Lovecraft: The Fiction)

And so we have its foundations. The Weird Tale is a widening of perspective, a confrontation with the vastness of reality, a style of story that takes our limited and mortal perspective and enlarges it until we cannot help but scream at our own insignificance, cannot help but never again trust the fragile world of man about us. Lovecraft, of course, was not only a historian of the Weird but also its foremost practitioner. One of his most famous passages, one that brings forth and rams home almost every aspect of the Weird and of Lovecraft's own horrors, comes at the opening of The Call of Cthulhu:

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age. (p. 335, HP Lovecraft: The Fiction)

Of course, many authors have followed Lovecraft, not the least of them Thomas Ligotti. But the invocation of the Weird is certainly not something limited to those few that have heard of it. The question of man's place in the cosmos is, needless to say, one that's been pondered often, and sometimes in unexpected places.

So we come to this post's sharp departure from what is traditionally thought of as horror fiction, or Weird Fiction, or anything of that sort. We're venturing all the way afield until we reach a certain, seemingly-deserted island, one where Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe's been forced to make his home. I will admit, I am not a fan of Robinson Crusoe, not of the man and not of the book. Nonetheless, the following quote did rather strike me:

This furnish'd my Thoughts with many very profitable Reflections, and particularly this one, How infinitely Good that Providence is, which has provided in its Government of Mankind, such narrow bounds to his Sight and Knowledge of things, and though he walks in the midst of so many thousand Dangers, the Sight of which, if discover'd to him, would distract his Mind, and sink his Spirits; he is kept serene, and calm, by having the Events of Things hid from his Eyes, and knowing nothing of the Dangers which surround him. (p.165-6, Robinson Crusoe)

Admittedly, the diction's more archaic than even Lovecraft chose to go, but the same ideas are there. The nigh-infinite nature of our existence, the unknowable and uncountable dangers about us, and our utter ignorance of our true position, even if here that ignorance is due to the mercy of a supreme being that is most certainly absent in the cold materialism of Lovecraft's mythos. Though the presence of that supreme being does make the whole thing a bit questionable, at least to me. It's all well and good that God has shielded us from these, as Lovecraft would have it, black seas of infinity, but it does rather raise the question of why that God, supreme creator of all and all that, chose to make those terrifying vistas of reality and those thousand dangers in the first place...

H.P. Lovecraft - The Case of Charles Dexter Ward

In his life, H.P. Lovecraft wrote only three novel length works, the second of which was The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. Lovecraft thought the tale poor, calling it, in a letter to Barlow, a cumbering, creaking bit of self-conscious antiquarianism (p. 389), and he never made any attempts to publish it. In the time since, however, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward has come to be considered a more than worthy addition to Lovecraft's body of works. This is a human story, one where characters and their aims dominate the stage, and, perhaps stemming from that, this may be Lovecraft's most plot focused work. [Two brief notes before we begin: First, SPOILERs will follow. Second, all page numbers come from the Penguin Classics edition of The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories unless otherwise noted.]

Though things generally do progress in a chronological manner, the power of the plot does not come from a traditional escalation of events and tensions but rather through successive revelations. Frequently, the importance of events cannot be discerned until well after their passage, and, in the novel's first half, our protagonist, dear Charles Ward, is himself attempting to unravel the dark past surrounding his ancestor, Joseph Curwen. In addition to that, not only is the reader trying to piece together facts, and not only is the character, but the narrator, too, is writing with an outsider's eye, combining numerous sources to try and comprehend the true happenings of the tale with varying degrees of success.

The downsides of such a style can be felt strongly in the opening. After the intriguing first section, we switch to a view of Ward's youth that is filled in endless historical details, near no tension, and that does, alas, serve to justify a bit of Lovecraft's dismissal of the work. But, soon after, disquiet seeps into the narrative, something that only serves to grow, often exponentially, as Ward's probing turns from the innocuous past and to its darkest aspects. When, in the story's final chapters, we do finally understand the tale's core and events surge forward, the scholarly detail and multiplicity of sources from which it's been compiled, lend the text an air of powerful authenticity, leaving the reader not feeling like they've been told of great and dark happenings but that, through their own insight and research, they've discovered those happenings themselves.

One result of this is Lovecraft's prose throughout the story. Lovecraft's style can be, perhaps, said to consist of two interlocking parts. First, there's the scholarly side, something superficially aided by his intentionally archaic spellings and diction but really coming forth in his approach to detail, in how many of his stories start with what could serve as the openings to essays, and in the erudition he always displays. Then there's his penchant for climax and even hysteria, the moments of startling eloquence where his words seem as grand and immortal as the farthest reaches of whatever he's describing, as well as, alas, his oft parodied excesses.

While both of those are, to some extent, present in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, it's by far the former that predominates. With only a few exceptions, the majority of the text's first, say, two thirds, are devoid of stylistic flourishes, and those that are there, interestingly, are often of a more positive or beautiful nature, brief reprieves from the darkness that, depending on the mindset of the soul seeing them, may or may not be perceived: That he said nothing of antiquarian rambles in the glamorous old city with its luring skyline of ancient domes and steeples and its tangles of roads and alleys whose mystic convolutions and sudden vistas alternately beckon and surprise, was taken by his parents as a good index of the degree to which his new interests had engrossed his mind. (p. 141) It's only far later that Lovecraft's writing takes on any of its sometimes-donned oppressive weight, layering and filling the sections spent in the bowels of Curwen's home with, at once, a sense of dark majesty and of nigh irresistible claustrophobia.

The Case of Charles Dexter Ward has, I think, some of Lovecraft's strongest work with character. Now, mind you, I don't mean that in a third person limited point of view, follow them around and know their lives sense. What I do mean, though, is that, as we accumulate and acquire facts that allow us to understand the characters' actions, we begin to see the characters themselves. In large part precisely because of how little of his inner workings are ever shown, Charles Ward becomes a tragic figure, his passions and light wholly subsumed into the darkness brought on by Curwen's influence. The other figures, too, receive depth through the narrator's assembly of their story's, but the most interesting aspect is the contrast between Curwen and Ward.

As the novel progresses, and as Ward loses more and more of his humanity, we see several letters, written in a dense and anachronistic style, between Curwen and his confederates, not a one of them any longer mortal in the traditional sense. And the fascinating thing is that, in marked contrast to Ward's obsession, these letters are, in places, positively warm, showing evidence of a genuine friendship amidst the deepest darkness: I rejoice you are again at Salem, Curwen writes, and hope I may see you not longe hence. I have a goode Stallion, and am think'g of get'g a Coach, there be'g one (Mr. Merritt's) in Providence already, tho' ye Roades are bad. If you are dispos'd to Travel, doe not pass me bye. (p. 130)

On the surface, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward seems to fit snugly within the mythos and their thematic implications that Lovecraft is so (justly) famous for. To sum things up in the briefest manner possible, the mainstay of Lovecraft's fiction focuses on man's place in the universe, and how that place is wholly insignificant, irrelevant, ephemeral, and so on and so forth. The Call of Cthulhu, to pick what's likely his best known work, or The Colour out of Space, to pick what's likely my favorite of the lot, both focus on man coming to terms with the wider world and being brushed aside, trampled, and ignored, surviving only because forces greater than he don't care enough to extinguish him any more than we'd wage a global war against ants.

Here, the surface details do seem to match up. Not only does this happen to be the first place where the recurring Mythos entity Yog Sothoth is mentioned, the tale's horror comes from a man venturing beyond the spheres of mortal and sane life and even past time (p. 203). In fact, in its focus on the dark sides of science and progress, the story serves to illustrate the so-famous opening paragraph to Call of the Cthulhu: The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age. (p. 355, H.P. Lovecraft: The Fiction)

But The Case of Charles Dexter Ward is a human story in a way that the majority of the Mythos' centerpiece tales are not. Of course, this is not the only instance where the great beyond has its human familiars, or even its dark sorcerers, but Jospeh Curwen and his associates are different from the crazed cultists of the Call of the Cthulhu, the degenerate Whatley of the Dunwich Horror, or whoever else you care to name. Curwen, see, is in control. He ventures "beyond the spheres," yes, and does things no mortal ever could, but he himself is the architect, and his aims are, in their twisted way, human ones. It's not interdimensional monstrosities that he creates from his essential saltes (p. 90) but rather the titan thinkers of all ages (p. 186), and, though his aims may alter all civilization, all natural law, perhaps even the fate of the solar system and the universe (p. 186), their acts in doing so are driven by humans with their ends also being comprehensible in nature, even if their means are not. This is not a tale of man discovering the entity greater than itself that will destroy us, but rather of man discovering powers beyond what can be conceived and destroying itself.

Of course, this interpretation can be contested, especially with regards to the recurring warning throughout the text to never call up Any that you cannot put downe. (p. 190) And Curwen, after all, is, it's implied, killed the first time by a creature that he lost control of. But I think the fact that any control at all was possible, no matter that he lost it in the end, show this to be an exceptional case in Lovecraft's Mythos. After all, can you imagine a man, no matter his ultimate fate, slapping a saddle on the back of Cthulhu or, for any time at all, directing a shoggoth?

All that, though, is not to say that there is not a free and supernatural agent in the text, for there is, but – and here's the amazing thing – it's actually a force for good, and one called, one must not forget, more by a well-meaning character's bumbling than by dark designs. The rising of the entity, that which was therein inhum'd (p. 190), that Willet accidentally calls to life forms a damn excellent climactic moment, but its implications are far greater than just that. It's this man, whose identity can never be confirmed (though that does nothing to diminish the fun of speculating i), that strikes the greatest blows against the unnatural practices of Curwen and his cohorts, a man capable of wielding stronger weapons (p. 195) than the simply mortal. That benevolent and supernatural force, and the happy(ish) ending it brings, are certainly anomalies in Lovecraft's so-strictly amoral Mythos.

The Case of Charles Dexter Ward is a fascinating and, once it gets going, gripping novel that's far greater than Lovecraft himself thought. I don't think I'd recommend it as an entry point for the man's work – there are far more immediately enthralling tales, and it'd likely be best to understand the core of Lovecraft's Mythos before venturing to their outskirts – but this is nonetheless a necessary read for anyone looking for a complete understanding of Lovecraft's writings, Mythos, and thoughts.It's damn difficult to find meaning in a world where life can be created and dissolved by the mad, where the laws of society and nature are just playthings for the powerful. And yet, with the text's close, the men perpetrating the evil, if not the ability for the evil itself, have been destroyed, and the evidence of their actions undone. True, Ward has fallen victim to his tragic need to know and understand, and those around him will never be the same, but the world does go on. Maybe, if we stay huddled in our corners and never stray too far, it'll stay that way.