Unfair

Candy & Cigarettes
by CS DeWildt

2011 Vagabondage Press -- Available here



Set in a nowhere town in America, a major backdrop of this relentlessly grim novella is a funfair. Another scene takes place at an amusement arcade. And yet, no one has any fun, and they’re rarely amused. The general store seems to sell primarily alcohol and tobacco, consumed avidly (together with illegal drugs) in order to engender a numb forgetfulness wherever possible.

The central character, a young man named Lloyd, is a social outcast and pretty well resigned to a hopeless existence. He’s being persecuted by ex school bullies whose lives are no less desolate. However, Lloyd is distinguished from almost everyone else by having a streak of humanity – he cares for his terminally ill grandfather. True, there is also Al, the store keeper, who harbours a modicum of sympathy – except, as it is soon revealed, Al was unnaturally cruel as a child. Lloyd, therefore, is the only true innocent of the story and he’s about to be framed by the Police Chief on a scale that I don’t think has been equalled anywhere else in fiction. The school bullies turn out to have been the least of his problems.

Mr DeWildt focuses on society’s failures – those whose lives have disintegrated, who are filled either by rage or a void. It’s a truism, I think, that this milieu is as dreary and dismal in reality as it is boundlessly fascinating in fiction. It certainly gives the author scope to describe nastiness with panache.

This is literary fiction and so the style is not wholly subordinated to the demands of story telling, but has a life of its own. Sometimes, because he’s trying always to be original, the author wanders off into the simply mannered. There is also the occasional rumbling of Old Testament thunder. More often, though, he succeeds in recreating the familiar – making it is own. He favours describing and fixing the physical rather than the emotional. Though, considering the emptiness of the character’s lives, that may be the point.

For me, it is the telling of the tale which is the great achievement here. The back story is deftly woven into the current train of events, making a compact whole. The progress of the narrative is swift and implacable, as befitting a story about fate. Furthermore, there’s a twist at the end which can’t be predicted and yet which is wholly in keeping with the novella’s absolute pessimism. I was left feeling glad I’d read this book.

Recommended.

The Big Questions

The Religion of God
by His Holiness R A Gohar Shahi

Smashwords 2011

Many years ago a friend and I went to listen to David Icke give a talk in London. He was promoting his book – The Age of the Robots, I think. Of course, we had gone to scoff at the mad man, but what struck me first was the quality of the large crowd. They were young to middle aged, well dressed, well healed. I suppose I’d been expecting wild eyed, bedraggled loons. It was quite surreal to see this audience sit quietly and listen to the unbelievable torrent of crackpot bollocks that streamed down from the stage.

David Icke had been introduced to the audience by a what looked like a perfectly sane businesswoman. Although, her words were something like this. ‘Throughout history, certain thinkers emerge into the world to transform the lives of millions – Buddha, Jesus Christ, Mohamed . . . ladies and gentlemen, I present, David Icke!’

To be fair, he looked and sounded pretty normal, but it was soon clear that what he said was implacably in defiance of common sense, reason and the facts. I didn’t scoff at all. It was beyond a joke. In fact, it was depressing precisely because no one looked mad – they looked normal and I was left wondering whether perhaps below the semblance of comforting straight forward banality, millions were in fact enchanted by this dreary insanity.

And so, turning to the Religion of God, we learn of yet another messiah. We are presented with documents that exonerate him from a number of criminal charges he faced in the States, we are told he’s appeared on the Moon, that certain trees are man eaters and yes, there are souls on other planets – Swendenbourg’s influence, maybe.

Which brings us to some important points – how does one measure the nuttiness of a book? Is Gohar Shahi nuttier than Swendenbourg, or less? Can a mystic be so nutty no one in the world will believe him? Or will there always be someone, somewhere, who somehow finds the faith?

Miracles of Life

Miracles of Life
By JG Ballard
Harper 2008

For some reason I always admired Ballard’s work more than I liked it. The best (for me) are the absurdist short stores – i.e. those without the word cerise in them. Still, it’s amazing how sprightly and inventive his writing remained throughout his life.

The fiction aside, however, and assuming there is still a civilisation in a hundred years time, I would like to bet that his autobiography, Miracles of Life, will still be remembered as his greatest work and considered a classic piece of 21^st Century literature.

His surrealist tendencies, which can irk in his fiction, come into their own when describing the plain truth. Or rather, the plain truth of Ballard’s life was full of the surreal, which he describes with supreme skill. He grew up in pre war Shanghai, in a Chinese prisoner of war camp, and in a Britain where victory felt more like defeat. Not surprisingly, perhaps, he later strove to create a normal family life. His struggle to become ordinary lies beneath the surface of Ballard’s story. He was a successful writer and cultural agent provocateur, but it is his success as a single parent in the anonymous suburbs of Shepperton that registers as being more important to Ballard. His achievement was to give his children the warm and informal home life his emotionally distant middle class parents had neglected to provide.

Ballard comes across as having been a tough individualist from day one, and his writing has a laconic directness and a lack of sentimentality which reminds one of Orwell. Ballard, though, is more poetic (in the good sense of the word). This is how he sums his early (too early) attempt to digest modernism.

. . . I was . . . trying to find my way through a dark and very grim funfair where none of the lights would come on. (P 132)

He’s spot on like this from start to finish.

He wrote Miracles of Life while suffering terminal cancer and at the close he movingly thanks his doctor for making his final days comfortable. Any autobiography can only really amount to a sketch the actual life it outlines and when the autobiography is as vivid and fascinating as this, one is left haunted by the thought that so many astonishing memories have been lost to the world.

Doctor Doctor

Medical Sci-Fi Short Stories
by Charles Kaluza
Smashwords Edition 2011

One of the more frightening statements to be heard in light social chit chat is, "I’ve had an operation just recently."

Dr Kaluza goes one further. He can talk at great length about other people’s operations – the ones he has performed.

Significant portions of many of his stories have action scenes transpiring in the operating theatre. If invasive surgery is your thing, this book is for you. In methodical, calm and yet purposeful prose, the author gets under the skin of his characters in a way few writers have before. And unlike characters in other fiction, these characters don’t disappear offstage just because they’re anaesthetised and horizontal. Often, they are more interesting that way. And they’re in safe hands too – they always recover. However, I’m sorry to announce that the dialogue flat lines.

No doubt about it, Dr Kaluza has suffered the deleterious effects of following a highly skilled and worthwhile career. Making a complete screw up of life makes for more vivid prose. Apparently, screwing up their lives is what the very best creative artists often do. However, I’m glad Dr Kaluza didn’t, because he’s probably done more good on this earth as a physician than all the scribblers put together. Furthermore, his stories boast some very good twists.