Cabaret Zoltaire

I woke during the night with a sudden revelation. I recorded it on my real-time review of SECRET EUROPE at the point I had reached, i.e. with 'Cabaret Zoltaire' by Mark Valentine.
Whether or not this is an intentional literary trick, it’s a literary trick that will go down in history!!!!!!
http://nullimmortalis.wordpress.com/2012/03/08/secret-europe-howard-valentine/

The Defeat of Grief

AN EXTRACT FROM MY REAL-TME REVIEW OF 'SECRET EUROPE' HERE

In 2008, I saw this painting by Christian Krohg (1852 -1925) inside the Oslo National Gallery. I wished her better.

A Minor Official - Mark Valentine

“There are some men, I know, who like the wasted beauty of sickly pale creatures: yet — even so. At least, it seems he did not put the portrait in his book. Perhaps it was to be a private pleasure. The point is that a minor official does not indulge his morbid fancies: he resolves to find out how the sickness was caused, how it might be prevented, or at least assuaged.”.

“A Minor Official” is a minor classic.

It had me in tears by the end. Someone so conscientious about his official duties as a water inspector in Herzegovina. A simple good man who has instinctive brainstorming thoughts about ‘emotional’ geography (cf the aural geomancy earlier — here more mood-mapping) as well as his humble-important position or task in optimising the water supply for other simple folk he meets … and the tears came to my eyes when he expressed unqualified confidence in the equal conscientiousness of the postal workers (other minor officials) in ensuring delivery of his letter enclosing a copy of the ’Hydrologer’s Manual’ he had earlier promised to honest people whom he had met during the course of his water duties: despite not knowing the correct address but drawing a map on the envelope instead. I then brainstormed myself. I’m a minor writer, of course. An official of real-time reviewing. I speculated on the mood-mapping of our current Euro debt and currency crises, knowing, as I do, the importance of emotions: the confidence (or lack of confidence) in somehow determining the direction of the markets etc. Not a horsocope of tidal currents, but a conscientious cartography of currencies. A major consideration from a minor pen regarding a Sad Europe? (6 Mar 12 - five hours later)
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The Way of the Sun – John Howard

“A balcony on the Mediterranean: it had become almost an obsession with him.”

[I had no idea this story was coming up when I chose 'The Last Balcony' page of my website to house this part of my review. Also, the author's own off-piste comment at the bottom of 'The Defeat of Grief' review page here takes on a new significance!] — And after my reference to ‘Sad Europe’ (as opposed to ‘Secret Europe’) at the and of my previous entry about ‘A Minor Official’, things seemed ripe for this story of a sunshine trip, in quest of the balcony, threaded with lucid dreaming. A Defeat of Grief indeed. ‘Mediterranean’ itself – literally – reminds me also of seeking the Earth’s Core of the Nemonymous Night as well as the ultimate balcony, adding a perfectly offsetting tone of oblique dark-lightness,,, yet, we have the Mike Leigh-type (?) married couple, all mouth and trousers, bugging our protagonist, ever turning up with ‘good intentions’ and pointless chatter….not the minor official’s ’emotional’ map as such but a downhill pest-piste. In many ways, I resented them as much as the protagonist did! A story that can swing in this way is surely a masterpiece. [A world without a Bill and Joan would be like a world without the gloom under the aegis of which I collect art gallery painting cards by Munch, Bosch et al.] Or am I swayed by the story’s own insistent bugging obessions as well as by my own? No, it is an exquisitely-styled story, with or without any such connections. Surely set to become an all-time favourite story from the viewpoint of the Lewis head. (7 Mar 12 – 9.20 am gmt
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Westenstrand

Extract from my review of SECRET EUROPE - here

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Westenstrand – John Howard

“…with effort routes work themselves out.”

[More often than can be warranted by chance, I feel, when I am carrying out two or three real-time reviews simultaneously, as I am now, one story enlightens or synergises, across-books, with another story. Here, remarkably, the tone and plot of 'The Night of His Sister's Engagement' that I reviewed here this afternoon, just before reading 'Westenstrand', has now become even more highly wrought regarding a watery foolhardy challenge to oneself - and, dare I say, vice versa!] – ’Westenrand’ itself is a wonderful account of an island off Denmark – subject to Hitler’s contemporary shenanigans, I sense, that also have bearing on the protagonist’s romance with a woman who frowns on his connections, albeit indirect, with that Dictator - an island (a bit like Mersea Island near where I live in Essex, if the latter is in a much smaller way and with shorter  intervals) that is one minute an island, the next not an island, as subject to the sea’s effects on a causeway. A bit like history. And economics. In both of which disciplines, routes work themselves out, while human bail-outs often falter. (They often milled coins with ‘reeding’ to prevent shaving off their edges.) (4 Mar 12 – another 3 hours later)

You Walk The Pages - Mark Valentine.

One of horror's favourite archetypes is the highly intelligent, articulate and cultured homicidal psychopath, yet most real acts of evil are committed for petty reasons, by people who are a little insecure and not very bright. Real characters with these properties are not popular because they are less engaging and more annoying, yet Mr. Valentine has created one we can absolutely enjoy spending time with. It's a first person narration from someone with little literary skill, but the character voice is consistent and engaging, and the slow drip feed of growing terrors is nastily effective.

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It's called "You Walk the Pages", and was written by Mark Valentine, a writer I only know by name. Also quite short, this story is narrated by a clearly insane man who wishes to relate how he used the services of a gift website called youwalkthepages.com to get back at his enemies. The site -- which, if some version doesn't actually exist now, certainly will soon -- takes classic literature and replaces the names of the heroes with the names of whoever you want to give the gift to. So if someone wanted to get me a copy of Ulysses wherein I can read things like "Mr. Bill R. ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls", that's how you'd go about it. But our narrator has the idea to place his enemies in the position of victims in horror stories. The resulting private volume is Valentine's horror anthology. And I know what you're probably thinking about where this one's heading, but I'll go ahead and spoil it, sort of, by pointing out that no, these enemies do not suddenly drop dead. This is because our narrator is insane. He's delusional. He's never not those things, and the story doesn't try to fool us into thinking that what he believes might be true but might not be true -- it pretty obviously isn't, and the horror of "You Walk the Pages" is the horror of the narrator's madness. On this level, it is entirely successful. When describing one of his "enemies", an old man who takes up too much space at the library table, our narrator says: "I want to sit there and make notes, I only have a standard size notebook, I do not need much space, but it is all I can do to get a little patch of the desk because of all the space he has got with his papers. He does not even look up, he does not give any sign that he sees you, or that you might want some space as well, you might as well not be there. If he saw what books I was looking at and what i was writing in my book he might take a different attitude I believe." I also like the approach to the anthology idea here. While O'Driscoll's approach is as delightfull literal as you might expect when hearing the idea for The Horror Anthology of Horror Anthologies, and Hughes's approach is to sort of not approach it at all, Valentine imagines something entirely new and unique and on point. Well done.

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The title of this excellent story refers to an internet service which allows you to replace the name of a principal character from a famous book with your own, or that of a friend or family member- or perhaps, of someone you might consider to be your enemy. This captures the imagination of Mark Valentine’s colorful, obsessive and fastidious writer-narrator. ‘One day I sat in my room wondering what to think about, what should engage a man who is a thinker and a dreamer, who is able to have visions like I am.’ I won’t say more but that the narrator incorporates ideas concerning the magical properties of the Seven Wonders of the World into his narrative to great and chilling effect.

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“You Walk the Pages” by Mark Valentine deals with a similarly autistic-seeming individual who uses horror stories as a way of getting back at people who offend him, like the lady in the chip shop, by substituting their names for the characters in the stories and making them suffer the same fate, or worse. It is the hilariously deadpan first person narrator that made the story work so well.

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Any further reviews after 20 Jan 12 will appear in the comments below.

My own views: http://horroranthology.wordpress.com/editors-story-by-story-commentary/