Richard's "Memorial Day"

This is the last of the stories in Charity, a collection which I thoroughly enjoyed. It is a shame that he has not published more. His writing is very much of a Southern Gothic cast, but it's neat to see how he plays with both elements (Southern, Gothic) of that tradition using his own particular style. Sometimes, one is reminded of other authors, from Melville to Lovecraft, but always told in Richard's great style. If he ever chose to write horror stories, I would be eager to read them.

Though Death himself makes an appearance in "Memorial Day," it is not a horror story. It is, like a lot of Richard's stories, a story of people making do in marginal circumstances. For several days, a little boy shoos Death away from the little house where his brother lies sick, delirious. The local medicine woman requests a special ingredient to cure the brother, so the boy weaves a basket and goes out to fetch it. The end, surprising, ironic, bittersweet is like something out of O Henry, or at least a twisted version of said author.

Richard's "Tunga Tuggo, Lingua Dingua"

This is the story of two brothers out looking for the remains of their father, who has disappeared and is believed dead. One thing I really like about Richard's style is his skill at creating a feeling of place, one he has in common with my some of my favorite horror authors. Just as Lovecraft has his haunted New England and Ligotti's stories often seem to take place in a rust belt where decay has infested everything, Richard's vision of southern oceanside towns captures a sense of decadance that is both realistic and mythic. Ironically enough, though not a horror story, the brothers' adventure does end on a somewhat Lovecraftian note.

Richard's "Plymouth Rock"

"Plymouth Rock" is the story of a two brothers at their parent's house for Thanksgiving Dinner. The narrator is something of a loser, but his brother, who appears to have been something of a bully, is with the secret service. Nothing much happens, but it makes for an entertaining blend of politics and family discord.

Richard's "Charity"

The story is superficially similar to "The Birds for Christmas" since both deal with abandoned children in pediatric wards. However, "Charity" really ramps up the surrealism with its stranger assortment of fellow inmates and rather nightmarish, if oddly funny, conclusion. Though it's well-written, I think I prefered "Birds" with it's more bittersweet conclusion.

Richard's "Charming 1 br" and "Never in this World"

As I tend to do way too often, I've fallen behind on blogging these stories and am now working on getting caught up. After these two, I hope to have all the posts up by next Friday.

The first story's full title is "Charming 1br., fr. dr. wndws, quiet, safe. Fee." which is probably meant ironically since it is a story of an insomniac living in a seedy neighborhood who watches some gangsters as they leave a nearby restaurant. Richard has a way of making the smallest things seem major. Though brief, there's a nice sense of a greater story going on.

"Never in this World" is about a boy and a girl out on a date. The boy is trying to tell ghost stories to get the girl in an amorous mood, without much success. Finally, he tells her two rather unique ghost stories, and though it is unclear whether they have the desired effect, the stories seem to reach out to a greater reality, towards the importance of memory and compassion.

Richards "Fun at the Beach"

This story's opening seems particularly quote-worthy:

Got a letter from a girl said we ought to get together before her
husband gets parole. Said maybe we could rent another bungalow down at Big
Bill's Beach Cabanas like last time, maybe steam up some shrimp and suck out the
heads, maybe break a box of old 45s against the walls, the tequila-drinking
things, things like me doing it to her from behind with her leaning out the
bungalow window whistling at sailors on the boardwalk, what did I think?
I wrote back and said, Do I know you?

After a few more of these exchanges, the girl shows up, husband in tow. Though this story--as with most of the stories in the collection--is low on plot, I loved the way Richard sketches out this strange little corner of the Florida coast, giving a good sense of a town that manages to be simultaneously backwater and touristy. (It reminds me of Melville's line that "true places" are not to be found on any map.)

Richard's "Where Blue is Blue" & "The Birds for Christmas"

Both of these were pretty short so I figured I'd just read/review both of them.

"Where Blue is Blue" has a pretty gruesome beginning that sneaks up on you like a sick joke. And it has an equally surprising ending that somehow manages to be both gruesome and transcendent. Along the way, it tells an interesting story about the feeding of beasts, the male gaze, and the similarities between art and detective work. I like to be surprised, even a little shocked, by a good short story and this one achieves it well.

"The Birds for Christmas" is about two boys in a hospital/orphanage at Christmastime. It's a pretty bleak and depressing setting with overtones of horror. Yet it's also funny and has a rather sweet turn at the end, and I thought Richard's ability to give voice to the young protagonist is dead-on.

Richard's "Gentleman's Agreement"

"Gentleman's Agreement" is the story of a boy who breaks the family car's windshield and is threatened with a dire punishment by his father. His father then goes off to fight a forest fire, and the boy is left alone to fend for himself and try to keep from getting in trouble. Place is never specified, though the way it's described I imagine it as some decrepit town in the Florida panhandle. It's all sort of distorted, seen as it is through the eyes of a little kid, yet completely believable. The ending is unexpected, and manages to be both sweet and creepy at the same time.

Does the Dagon Church need a masturbation saint?

If you'll pardon the stream-of-consciousness intro, I'm dredging up a tongue-in-cheek theory I dreamed up a couple of years ago with regards to a character from Chuck Palahniuk's Haunted.

Yesterday, I picked up Mark Richard's Charity from the library. I first encountered Richard when a friend gave me Fishboy as a birthday gift in high school. I actually didn't really care for Fishboy the first time I read it, but I pulled it out last year and re-read it. Much to my (pleasant) surprise, it turned out to be a great read. (In fact, it sort of inspired me to give Moby Dick a try, but that's a different story.)

Richard seems to get grouped together with Palahniuk, probably because they have similar literary influences. (Amy Hempel, Gordon Lish, Raymond Carver) And Fishboy shares some superficial similarities with Haunted. Both aim for dark, gruesome humor and both feature stories within the main narrative. The books are otherwise very different, much to Richard's benefit.

Charity is a collection of Richard's short stories, and I've decided that I'm going to be reading it and giving it the "story a day" treatment I gave Lugones' Strange Forces. I thought the approach worked really well with Lugones, allowing me to organize and get a better feel for the authors style and themes.

That prompted me to think it might be worth treating Haunted like a short-story collection and giving it the story a day treatment. Some people might say this is unfair, since Haunted is a novel, not a short story collection. To which I call bullshit, since it was conceived as a short-story collection and Frankensteined up into a novel. (The zippers still show.) That's something down the road as I debate whether to re-read the accursed thing or just review the stories from memory, but in the meantime I thought I'd dredge up my Deep One explanation for St. Gut-Free's curious biological properties. Previously I had tried to lay it out in a somewhat convoluted, rambling style, but since I've already been pretty rambling about getting to the theory itself, I'm just going to bullet-point it for ease of read. Anyway, without further ado...

Evidence that St. Gut-Free is actually a Deep One

• Despite having no body fat, no surplus muscle mass, and a poor ability to absorb nutrients through his digestive system he manages to survive a period of starvation that incapacitates normal people.
• His sperm is able to survive for prolonged periods in chlorinated water. Once it detects an ovulating female, it instinctively swims up her cervix to fertilize available eggs.
• He masturbates underwater. Obviously the water-womb association has a particular significance for him, what with his who mother who hides herself away. (What could be more humiliating than the Innsmouth look?)
• He hooks up with Mother Nature. (The dude's quite the Oedipal mess, see above.) Out of all the women, he picks the one who represents a primal, pre-human state of existence.
• His intestines taste like squid tentacles.