|
Re: LAIRD BARRON
I didn't enjoy Occultation
at first.
Then I read The Croning, which I adored. Which got me to thinking did I give the chap a fair shake? So I went back to Occultation and read it twice through (it gets richer and richer). I now love this collection! "Mysterium Tremendum" & "--30--" being my favorite stories in it, though all of them stay with you and are affecting, discomfiting and disconcerting in variable measure. Some will creep you out so so that your bowels will decide to take their revenge on their distant relative: your throat...you will then resemble an accordion or at least feel like one.
[As a side note: There was only one other time I read a fictional work twice through and that book was Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men. Another very powerful, hopeless book of horror.]
So, I am almost finished with The Light is the Darkness, the title of which must surely refer to the "hero", Conrad, not being able to comprehend what the meaning of the "final revelation" proves to be in the end (not that I'm there yet). This book is in pulp-mode, I wouldn't say "pure pulp mode" but it is noticeably different from the prose employed, as a rule, in both "The Croning" and "Occultation" though Laird is such a tough guy---Mickey Spillane, he ain't...and I mean that in the best way possible.
Just ordered The Imago Sequence which, for those interested, is mentioned by name in The Light... It would seem that most of Mr. Barron's work resides in the same or a similar (parallel?) universe or very much could. This aspect certainly strings you along and is quite compelling.
I received The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All today and can't wait to delve in. But wait, I will, as I must find out what fails to happen at the end of this novel and then, surely, I must wait to read his earliest collection before reading the latest..surely? I miiiight be persuaded to make an exceptional case of this however...
PS. Did --30-- remind anyone else of Tarkovsky?
|