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Vistas of Carrion contains forty-seven short stories and uncanny transmissions written by Matthew M. Bartlett, each part and parcel of the unique world of his fiction. The entries explore the profane streets and environs of Leeds, Massachusetts, or journey into arcane and unknown blasphemies beyond it. The omnibus contains both beloved entries from Bartlett’s oeuvre and previously uncollected treasures.


The contents span a gamut of lengths and styles, from the sinister brevity of flash fiction pieces like “The Land of Leeds” to the lingering dread of longer narratives like “Gaspar.” This omnibus, published by Chiroptera Press, showcases Bartlett's formidable imagination and distinctive voice. It is little wonder that horror writer Laird Barron names Bartlett “the legitimate heir to Ligotti, Aickman, and the other giants of weird fiction.”

Each of the pieces in this generously sized collection immerses the reader a world where the line between the macabre and the mundane is deliciously blurred. Bartlett’s fiction doesn’t just unsettle—it sticks the knife in and twists with a grin, with a chuckle in the dark. Vistas of Carrion cements Bartlett’s reputation as one of the most singular and important authors of contemporary horror fiction.

 

Funereal Plots
Horror Cinema reviews

by
Matthew M. Bartlett

Stopmotion

Director – Robert Morgan

Writers – Robin King and Robert Morgan

I should like Stopmotion. I should love it. It should be my favorite movie of the year. It contains some fantastically spooky imagery. There are puppets made of meat. The writers clearly have a lot to say about creativity, creative control, and the muse, using puppetry as its motif and its metaphor. It has things to say about the connection between madness and creation. There is mutilation, there is Cronenbergian body horror. There seems to be a thematic connection to Thomas Ligotti, one of my favorite writers.

I’ve scratched my head plenty trying to figure out where it falls down for me.

Ella (Aisling Franciosi) is essentially chained to her ailing mother, helping her eat, helping her create her stop motion animated film. When her mother suffers a stroke that hospitalizes and kills her, Ella moves, with the help of her boyfriend, into an abandoned apartment that will be her home and studio. She runs into a young girl (Caoilinn Springall) who seems to be a free-floating entity with no family, no friends, no connection, and therefore no connection to reality.

The girl suggests, and then insists on, taking over the direction of Ella’s project. She introduces a simple plot of a young woman being visited by a monster three times—fairytale territory. She insists also on the change of the medium from clay to decaying flesh.

Ella’s friends pretend encouragement, but they hire her on not as an animator but as a glorified temp. Worse, they plagiarize her story. Her boyfriend is no help, caring mainly about his own creative work as a musician. As the film progresses, things get weirder, especially when a supposedly drug-induced hallucination straight from Ella’s mind encounters her in her room.

And for such a cerebral story, it ends in a bloodbath.

Stopmotion, as I’ve said, has a lot to say—but it’s a little muddled and unclear. I think my main issue with the movie is its direction. The story calls for oneiric, Lynchian direction rather than the straightforward, pedestrian way in which it’s presented (apart from one jarring, almost beautiful sequence with curious projections and a leering, looming clown puppet, that is).

There’s a lot to recommend in Stopmotion—my objections shouldn’t turn anyone away. I’ve watched it three times trying to figure out how I feel about it, and the fact that I felt it worth multiple viewings speaks well of it.

 

Addiction and Horror: The Damage Done

An Examination of Drug Abuse 

and Its Depiction in Literature

By Anthony Servante

Foreword

So when I decided to do a column on Addiction and Horror, I expected to find horrors beyond my experiences. In some ways I did; in others I didn’t. So I read beyond the nonfictional accounts of addiction and turned to fiction for the horrors exaggerated by the tale tellers. In Eurphoria, the ancient Mexican culture of drugs and sacrifice becomes a metaphor for today’s drug scene. In F. Paul Wilson’s All the Rage, there is a drug that drives men mad; it resembles the effects commonly seen in Angel Dust users. In Iced by Ray Shell, the author depicts the fall of a rising academic star into the throes of addiction and gives us a look at one possible scenario into a realistic drug addict. Maya Angelou praised Iced for its gritty depictions of the streets. On the nonfictional side, we look at De Quincey and his depiction of opium addiction. The chief criticism of his work is that he glamourizes the opium lifestyle, almost painting himself as heroic, an anti-hero so to speak. He added an addendum to the second edition to address the darker side of its usage. The same criticism follows Braun in his work, Hammered. This is a 9 to 5 look at the heroin scene. The horror comes from its complacency, its cold and distant approach to addiction. Forgive me my jaded view on this subject, but it may help to understand how horror for one person is not so for another and vise versa.

*******

Addiction to drugs has been portrayed in literature for many, many years, both as fiction and as nonfiction, from Euphoria by Lorraine McLeod, All the Rage by F. Paul Wilson, and Iced by Ray Shell, to Confessions of an English Opium Eater by Thomas De Quincey, Naked Lunch by William Burroughs, and Hammered: Memoir of an Addict by G.N. Braun. There is that rare book, however, that traverses the line between fact and fiction, capturing the horrors of addiction while involving the reader with the repulsive side of the lifestyle without the glamour often inherent in such fictional accounts. Hammered is such a book and therefore the focus of this article. Although I use other books, both fiction and nonfiction, they are only to contrast drug uses for literary purposes. Your shadowy host will discuss the varying degrees of addiction in the literature of Horror compared with the social and mental horrors found in nonfiction accounts, and try to clarify the line that divides fiction from nonfiction in the lifestyles of addicts.

Addiction is control. The common misconception is that the abuse of drugs leads to a life of chaos for the individual and society. But the control of drugs is meticulous: from the cartels to the dealers to the buyers; and in turn the use of drugs is equally maintained. One acquires the money to purchase the ware, organizes the lifestyle to fit around its use, and enjoys the high knowing that after the comedown from the drug of choice, it is time to start acquiring the funds to resume the cycle. The acquisition usually comes in the form of a steady job, so the highs of the addict cannot exceed the risk to losing the work. That is the balance, the control. Only when the dope is uncut or of a higher quality than the drug user is accustomed to does the user break the cycle, commonly by overdose, which doesn’t always lead to death but to days missed at work or the loss of the job. But this break is not the rule but the exception, for the user does not want to detour from the routine that takes many years to refine and fine tune. In fiction, this cycle is nominalized and the elements of the routine are exaggerated by allusion and metaphor.

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Let’s begin with the fictional work Euphoria by Lorraine McLeod. Novel summary. “A club drug that makes ecstasy look like caffeine, Euphoria, is an instant hit, but it turns addicts into killers. Each victim brings ancient Mayan demon Grohah closer to physical life. To fulfill the prophecy of a new world in 2012, many must die in order for Grohah, an ancient demon, to walk the earth again. Ordinary people are faced with extraordinary choices. Which is worse, the evil we can see, or the evil we can’t?” Euphoria concentrates on creating a realistic drug to propel the supernatural events of the storyline; it portrays addiction as seen from the point of view of a hardboiled cop, an emergency room doctor, and a drug dealer/demon worshipper.

McLeod metaphorically sees the cartel as old Mexico “demons” as exemplified by Grohah, and the victims as children and their parents. I asked Ms. McLeod, “What drug are you mimicking or is it just a made up drug? Is it crack, heroin, ecstasy, or??” She answered, “I made the whole thing up, but I did base it on two hallucinogenics used by the Mayans and the Aztecs. One was derived from the flower, Morning Glory and the other, an hallucinagenic mushroom. Both of these were from Mexico. I then added coke in there for a bit of extra flavour!” In the books, the drug is described, “This batch was perfect. His secret ingredients included the seeds from a rare flower of the family Convolvulaceae, which was once used by the Aztec civilization to induce hallucinations. The more common example of this species of flower could be found in most garden shops, but he’d travelled to Mexico for just the exact one he needed. Little trace of the substance would be found in the human body once the effects had worn off.” McLeod further explains, “I took a few liberties. I made Grohah a demon from the Mayans, and included some stuff from the Aztecs. This is because the Aztecs did have some culture similar to the Mayans but I wanted to connect both civilzations in the book.” The drug is part of a ritual; the addicts lose complete control of themselves, succumbing to the old gods of ancient Mexico. The story works as a metaphor for the presence of the Latino Drug Cartels via their illegal substance presence throughout the world. The drug euphoria could be any medical substance that is manufactured illegally and distributed via the streets for a higher purpose, namely money. The big picture minimizes the buyer, the addict who supplies the money. These addicts, or victims, lose control of their lives literally, for a metaphoric god.

The book as fiction is excellent reading. I enjoyed the parallels to the Mayans and Aztecs, especially the 2012 predictions of the end of the world. A hardboiled detective story with a love story subplot, Euphoria mounts a tension filled story that is as exciting as it is horrific.  Lorraine McLeod wields a mighty pen and tells a tale not for the squeamish. But we are still far away from our depiction of the “real” addict who is in control.

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In All the Rage by F. Paul Wilson, Repairman Jack is always in control. All the Rage takes Jack into the underworld of drug abuse where control is a matter of perspective. As in Euphoria, the drug is not a conventional one but a supernaturally based one: I asked F. Paul Wilson about his drug in the novel and whether it was based on any real medical substance. Wilson explains, ‘”I conceived of Berzerk as one of those drugs that has a good application in the proper dose but dangerous in excess. It's a confidence builder in the proper dose and can overcome social phobia, banishing shyness, allowing one to be more assertive in life. At too high a dose, it has only negative effects. As the dose increases the person becomes overly aggressive, hostile, and prone to unprovoked violence and insensate rage without a thought as to the consequences.” If used correctly the drug controls the patient, but if abused, the patient loses control. In essence, Berserk could be any drug that can be misused. The addict to such a drug would destroy his own self-restraint. Just as alcohol in excess eliminates inhibitions, Berserk provokes a total shutdown of the addict’s control over his own actions, turning him into a lethal weapon. This is the common view of drug addicts—out of control monsters preying on victims for money to buy their next high. They are the outsiders to the world of restraint, of citizens who obey the red lights and walk between the white line cross-walks.

Jack represents the fringes of society, society being the conventional law and order system that balances man’s desire for recklessness and his need for restraint. He operates outside the law but with the purpose to balance those illegal or immoral actions that law enforcement cannot or will not deal with. Thus Jack is always teetering on the verge of loss of control, the control he has taught himself to maintain since he was a child, after the loss of his mother. F. Paul Wilson further explains: “Jack carries a ball of smoldering rage around with him. He controls it most of the time, only rarely letting it out of the cage. One of the reasons for writing All the Rage was to see what would happen if someone slipped him a dose of Berzerk.” So, again we see that loss of control is associated with the abuse of drugs; in proper dozes the drug does good and vice versa. The assumption then is that a drug addict is not in control, even violent and a threat to society; and again we see the loss of control being represented by the supernatural, here, for instance, by The Otherness, which basically represents the opposite of balance. But, although Jack could represent the addict’s id, our addict in control is still not seen.

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Which brings us to Iced by Ray Shell. In his fictional account of a crack addict, Cornelius Washington, a student begins a downward spiral in his loss of control over a promising future. He has lost control over his life and has no routine. However, as he still clings to some dignity, he manages to find work, but cannot maintain the routines as his control deteriorates. We begin to see a semblance of the addict in control, but for the sake of literary exposition, the hero must fall. He resembles that clichéd drug addict; here there are no supernatural events at work, even though such addicts are referred to as “vampire-zombies”. There is no big picture with drug dealers or cartels. The addict himself is the big and small picture. The drug is crack cocaine, a real drug. Here he simply succumbs to his temptations and degrades himself in sexual and immoral ways in order to obtain crack rocks to smoke from his pipe or whatever handmake device he can put together to puff his ware, his drug of choice. But without any semblance of the cycle of control for this poor addicted character, the fiction here is marginalized into its plunge toward the character’s total downfall, the total loss of control. Cornelius writes in his journal: “I had to face the cold. Cold that clamped itself to your skin and bit until you were blue. Until you couldn’t fell anything anymore. Until you wished that you were dead. Afraid to go to sleep at night because you knew you wouldn’t wake up. I saw a couple of Vampire-Zombies leave the earth that way during that hellish winter. The dealers who cleaned up the bathroom would haul their bodies out like sacks of sand and fling them onto the garbage dump behind the building.” Then our narrator recalls his last day as a Vamp-Zom. SPOILER! SKIP THIS PART AND GO TO THE NEXT PARAGRAPH IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO KNOW THE ENDING OF ICED. The main character in a drugged stupor lifts an infant over his head and throws it off the roof, defying those pleading with him not to. He has become a monster, albeit, a human one. This is as far as fiction can take us into the world of drugs. Demons as metaphors for drugs, drugs as the basis of the loss of self-control, and finally, one’s total loss of self, an addict without human identity, more monster than man. Those who haven’t read may want to read Iced for its poetic style of writing and the prose depiction of a college boy turned into a Vampire-Zombie, a crack addict who only survived because of his horrific final act as an addict. And here we take one step toward the addict in control that we find in nonfiction literature.


Which brings us to the nonfictional depiction of the addict.

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Let’s turn to Confessions of an English Opium Eater by Thomas De Quincey. De Quincey’s drug cycle, his routine, was so normal, so lacking in any sensational chaos or plunges into fits of self-destruction that critics accused him of glamorizing the lifestyle of the addict. To counter this criticism, the author added an Addendum to the second printing of his book to depict a more horrific side to the routine and its consequences, something akin to the deterioration of the addict in Iced. He writes of his initial encounter with the drug: “Opium! dread agent of unimaginable pleasure and pain! I had heard of it as I had of manna or of ambrosia, but no further. How unmeaning a sound was it at that time: what solemn chords does it now strike upon my heart! what heart-quaking vibrations of sad and happy remembrances!” He then goes on to describe the ecstasy of his first dose of the drug: “…this negative effect was swallowed up in the immensity of those positive effects which had opened before me—in the abyss of divine enjoyment thus suddenly revealed. Here was a panacea, a φαρμακον [potion] for all human woes; here was the secret of happiness, about which philosophers had disputed for so many ages, at once discovered: happiness might now be bought for a penny, and carried in the waistcoat pocket; portable ecstasies might be had corked up in a pint bottle, and peace of mind could be sent down in gallons by the mail-coach.” Thusly, he establishes his routine, informing his reader that the drug does not exaggerate activity but rather it is activity that normalizes the use of the drug: “Thus I have shown that opium does not of necessity produce inactivity or torpor, but that, on the contrary, it often led me into markets and theatres.” The routine has now been established, and his writings soon followed, but the criticism of his exuberance of lifestyle and his description of such met the success of his book. As we will see later with GN Braun, De Quincey too underscores his drug use with psychological trauma in youth.

The infamous Appendix to Confessions tries to assuage the reader from any impressions that the lifestyle of an opium addict was anything but glorious: “Those who have read the Confessions will have closed them with the impression that I had wholly renounced the use of opium. This impression I meant to convey, and that for two reasons: first, because the very act of deliberately recording such a state of suffering necessarily presumes in the recorder a power of surveying his own case as a cool spectator, and a degree of spirits for adequately describing it which it would be inconsistent to suppose in any person speaking from the station of an actual sufferer; secondly, because I, who had descended from so large a quantity as 8,000 drops to so small a one (comparatively speaking) as a quantity ranging between 300 and 160 drops, might well suppose that the victory was in effect achieved. In suffering my readers, therefore, to think of me as of a reformed opium-eater, I left no impression but what I shared myself; and, as may be seen, even this impression was left to be collected from the general tone of the conclusion, and not from any specific words, which are in no instance at variance with the literal truth.” So, even in sobriety, De Quincey was still on the defensive. The literary higher-ups were bearing down on him. But it is true that many writers of the day followed in his footsteps and took up the opium habit simply because they read his book. They followed his routine. If he could survive the drug and become a famous writer, so could they. They would become addicts in control and become part of the cycle. Only in this day and age, the dealers were legal pharmacists, making it so much easier to begin the vicious circle of addiction.

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In Naked Lunch, William Burroughs addresses the pyramid, the cycle of the addict from the lower depths of acquiring drugs to the leisurely life of the dealers living for the pleasures on the higher rungs of the cycle, living for providing highs to the addicts on the lower rungs. Tom Burgis writes: “The dependency pyramid: Naked Lunch satirises society organised through addiction. Addiction and the desperation it engenders in junkies become an allegory of consumption and of the savagery that ensues when people fall prey to what Burroughs calls ‘the algebra of need.’ The basic point, as Burroughs explained once he was straight enough to write an introduction, is that opiate addicts exist in a pyramid: ‘The pyramid of junk, one level eating the level below (it is no accident that junk higher-ups are always fat and the addict in the street is always thin) right up to the top or tops as there are many junk pyramids feeding on peoples of the world and all built on the basic principles of monopoly. In the novel's dystopian locale, Interzone, these principles of monopoly underpin the dominance of The Pushers, who keep ‘a million screaming junkies’ in thrall by ‘inventing needs.’ In Interzone, power is the only cherished thing. As an inhabitant explains, ‘control can never be a means to any practical end ... It can never be a means to anything but more control ... Like junk ..." In today’s terms, the lower addicts were the 90 percenters, while the higher level addicts comprised the 10 percenters or the elite. He describes the lower levels as skinny skeletal men who oftimes used longer hypodermic needle in order to find an artery because all the veins had receded into hiding from the probing needle, and sometimes, when using the longer needles, struck bone in search of an artery. The higher levels were fat men with nice suits who were often confused with non-addicts because they had the same routines as straight shooters or squares to use the parlance of the Beat Generation. They still had strong veins that protruded the skin. And in this combination of the junkie pyramid and the routine of the addict, as depicted by De Quincey, do we find the addict in control, the straight shooter, the top of the rung user.

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Which finally brings us to Hammered: Memoirs of an Addict by G.N. Braun. Braun is all about routine. His work suffers the same criticism De Quincey endured, but he dared to show that the cycle he established was itself the horror he lived. Its normalcy resembling Burrough’s higher addicts on the rungs of the pyramid was itself the routine of self-destruction imitating a productive lifestyle. The drugs for Braun were the reward for a life of maintenance. What I found so honest in the book’s portrayal of addiction was the hope that today was the end of the cycle, just as the last pack of cigarettes by the smoker was always his last pack, and the one after that, and the one after that, but this one for sure is the last one. It is a vicious cycle but a cycle nonetheless. That belief that this is truly the last one, the last fix, the end of the routine, perpetuates the routine. Hope is the horror and to face the horror, one must admit that one cannot break the cycle and that this is not the last pack, not the last fix, just the next one before the next, and thereby recognizing something new in the cycle, that there is no hope of quitting. But therein lies the break in the routine. No longer is this the last pack; it is the next pack and I will never quit because I am an addict. Admission is made. The man in the mirror is you, not the quitter, but the drug abuser. And with this break in the routine, this realization, this effusive epiphany, the cycle is broken. I am an addict.

Braun reaches this moment of self-realization and finally breaks his cycle, but this is not a happy ending, for the cycle pulls him back in. He quits, then says, I can quit so I can do one more and then quit because I proved I can quit. And the new cycle begins. I am not in control of tomorrow without carrying the regrets of yesterday or the false hope for quitting. I can only control right now. What I do right now is all that matters, otherwise the cycle begins again. But let’s begin with the creation of Braun’s cycle of addiction and recognize the development and maintenance of his routine.

As a young boy, Braun was molested by a trusted instructor. He lost his self-worth. He coped, but as the years went by, he needed help to deal with the feeling of being victimized, of losing control over his own self-esteem. With his first high, he found that help. He could function as a part of the law and order world of society. He studied to become a nurse, found a source of income, and developed a habit to feed. From this routine, he was normal again, the kid who had a second chance, for if he could forget the abuse ever happened, it never happened and his life could resume under these new circumstances, with drugs and highs to balance the forgetting and the moving forward.



In fiction, we saw nature (and often the supernatural) controlling us; Euphoria destroyed addicts and the metaphoric dealers (demons) controlled their lives. Repairman Jack was in control, but the drug Berserk unleashed him, thanks to the Otherness. Cornelius succumbed to crack cocaine and became a Vampire-Zombie, a killer without remorse. In nonfiction, however, drugs control by routine and give one the sensation of control; chaos is nature vs control of chaos by surrendering to it, come what may. Be in control of the horror or the horror will be in control of you. The addict in control vs. the addict out of control. De Quincey maintained his opium addiction and became famous for it via his journal of his routines. Burroughs discusses the existence here that is organized with a means and ends. In the nether world, on the lowest rung of the pyramid are the zombie-vampires, in a uni-existence based solely on keeping a level of “highness” rather than keeping a life afloat for which to get high. The fat get fatter, the thin thinner. The goals are different. One for money, the other for the high. The Vampire-Zombies are the means for the money; crime is the means to get high because that is how they get the money. It starts with borrowing, stealing, robbing, and then murder. Braun’s routine was enabled by an enabler, his friend and lover Carolyn, just as her routine was enabled by Braun: I asked him about this relationship, “Hey, G, Got a few questions for you. 

Anthony: 1. Do you think you were enabling Carolyn? She seems addicted to you.

Braun: 1) Yes, as she was also enabling me. I think we were both co-dependent.

Anthony: 2. Do you think you and Carolyn together made a poison mix (or as King Crimson says, Three of a Perfect Pair)?

Braun: 2) Absolutely. We were both bad for each other.

Anthony: 3. The central conceit I have found in your book is "control" and lack of it. Since you lost control as a kid, you seem to be struggling to regain it, usually over the people around you. You even mock those in control, the courts and the cops. When you control the flow of smack between yourself and others, you seem almost elated with power. Could you expand on this, whether you agree or disagree?

Braun: 3) I can see what you are saying in regard to control, for sure. In that subculture, respect and a semblance of control were everything. I always felt better when I had both.

The loss of control I went through when I was a child echoed down the ages, and I swore that I would always have control of my circumstances from that point, and then turned to drugs, which are almost a dictionary definition of no control. Ironic? I think so. When I was dealing, and I was the one holding the reigns, I felt better than I had for a long time. I was in control of when I had the stuff myself, and to some point, in control of Carolyn's usage, too. When I was busted and I went back to not being in any control, I felt worse than I ever had. At that point, I began to see that the only way to take back some form of control was to get off the stuff.”

Anthony: Thank you.  

Carolyn’s story is interesting as it mirrors Braun’s. She risks her kids and her education and her future not on GN but on the lifestyle. GN enables her. Hers is the story of addiction hidden within the allusion of progressing in life: a student, a parent, a lover. Together these two are poison, and we can only imagine what the kids had seen and what they know and live with. The kids are worth the risk of getting high, as he rationalizes that he will quit for the kids. The high is for himself; the girl is angry with him for shooting up alone, without her, “jealous” of his high. Even as she tries to turn him into the police, she promptly takes him back when he eludes the law. She acts oblivious of his presence as she goes through the motions of a normal life, all the while living at the lowest level of the addict, at the precipice with her kids at her side. His disrespect and description of the law enforcement authorities is a form of denial. To depict the cops as slow and incompetent shows him as street smart and savvy. He hides drugs in his cell, he holds stolen books after he is caught shoplifting, and his getting high right after being released or selling the books for a quick high right after being released may come across as a savvy guy who put one over on Joe Law, but in fact it shows him as a unrepenting addict who has no intentions to quit. This is the last high, remember? Even when the courts show him mercy and suspend his sentence, his first thoughts are that the courts are incompetent and he is free to get high again. It is scary to think such addicts with such thoughts are on the streets looking at us sober folk as ghosts and shadows to their goals. Seems more annoyed by heroin than addicted to it: The Bureaucractic approach to addiction, as Burroughs describes it.

When Braun “quits” and feels back in control of a sober existence, he rationalizes his new routine: “I felt great after day eight, although I hadn’t really suffered at all during my stay. Between the Valium and the sleeping tablets, as well as the Clonidine to ease the symptoms, I always felt more normal in there than I did outside. I really thought this would make the difference, but I scored within ten minutes of my check-out. It’s like a switch flicks over to ‘stupid’ as soon as I’m loose in Melbourne with money. I don’t think of anything but the rush of the taste. Once I’m stoned, I regret it, but up until then, I just concentrate on getting high.” Braun has the same misgivings attributed to De Quincey—not enough horror and too much of the mundane. But what many critics do not realize is that the routine of addiction is itself the horror inherent in its usage. That a new control has taken hold. This is no glamourous world of noir fixtures; that voiceover is the conscience of survival: what must we do today to meet supply and demand?

The luxuries are described when supply and demand is exceeded as when GN buys in bulk from his new source and takes on the new role of dealer; but it’s a façade. He is still a junkie, but with a bigger supply. The demand is the same. He has no hardboiled detective out to get him. As a matter of fact, the police, as Braun describes them are inept to the evasive tactics of the dealers and addicts. Even when GN is apprehended, he still manages to sneak in his supply into the station. This is closer to the real world where drugs are common in the prisons and jails and often used as currency, often referred to as “sucking tit.” For Burroughs, this world has its structure just as any organization does, with administration, middle management and assembly level workers. Gn makes the transition to the middle management but finds he is out of his league. Friends turn on him, his enabling girlfriend further enables him, and he comes to rely even more on his adopted mom for support of his lifestyle. There was one friend/addict who fit this bureaucrat junkie: “Tran was one of the better-looking street-addicts. He at least maintained a facade of civility, making a cursory attempt to maintain a level of personal hygiene and dress that didn’t make him stand out to the cops too much.” Braun strived for this level of appearance but the lifestyle had its interruptions, and then it was back to the old routine: “Addicts can justify anything to get another hit. Soon enough we were back to scoring every few days, then every second, which quickly became every day. Finally, we [Braun and Carolyn] got to a day with no cash and started to get sick by lunch. I called Mum and begged for money. Within two weeks, we were both back on methadone. The whole thing just seemed too much, too big a hurdle to be able to overcome without stronger self-control.” Finally, Braun realizes his cycle is his life as an addict, not as a potential ex-addict on the verge of his last injection. He tells the reader: “I still remembered a place of scrawled graffiti and scattered rubbish, of piss-soaked legs sticking out of a cubicle and water balloons blatant in a puddle of vomit. I remember lying in the park afterwards and wondering just what the fuck I was doing. It’s something that will always be with me. I will remain an addict for the rest of my life. I’ve spent so many years feeling nothing that the pain is a way of knowing that I’m truly alive... for the first time.”

But there were more relapses. The effusive epiphany only breaks the cycle; it doesn’t end it. Stopping ends it. Quitting perpetuates it. It’s the old Mark Twain sardonic comment on addiction: Quitting is easy. I’ve done it a thousand times. But to stop. That’s new. Stop today. And stop again tomorrow. Relapse then stop again. This was the new routine for Braun. The vicious cycle was broken. The horrors behind him: the severed finger, the betrayal of a friend/addict pointing a gun at him to steal drugs, the rejection by Carolyn who found someone new to enable (although this last horror was a blessing as that too broke the vicious cycle). Now the next step in this new routine was simply stopping for longer and longer periods of time. Not quitting forever, but stopping a day at a time.

GN Braun

For this article I attended an AA meeting and talked with ex heroin addicts. Their experiences echoed GN’s story. They had jobs. They had routines. For years. They sometimes upgraded the routine by partnering with another addict who was also employed. No one ever downgraded their position by partnering with a unemployed addict because that would threaten the routine by introducing an unpredictable element. Where there is risk, there is possible loss of control. There was no big picture. The dealer usually was a friend they trusted, not some shady character with a thin moustache standing on the corner. They had families and responsibilities. Addiction was but one of the duties of their routine. Make the kids’ lunch, pay the bills, get high, go to work. Pick up the kids. Make dinner. Kids watch TV. Get high. Like clockwork. I asked them if they’d ever reached a higher level in their routines, like becoming a dealer to gain more access to drugs at a cheaper price. One woman answered: “I couldn’t risk going to jail as a dealer. That’s too much time away from the kids. They’d take them away. When you get busted for being an addict, then you get programs, you get leniency, you get methadone. If you stay low, you’re safe. If you try to reach the sky, you fall bad.” The others in the group nodded their heads in agreement.


GN Braun reached for the top of Burroughs’ pyramid and fell into sobriety. The courts were lenient. They were also ineffective. They mistook him for someone at the top of the hierarchy of junkies. He was merely a wannabe. This saved him. But just as he fell into the chinks in the armor of law and order when he was abused as a kid, so too did he fall out by the same chinks that tried to prevent further drug deals in the neighborhood by arrested a wannabe. Braun thus got that second chance, to stop. He’ll never quit. His horror is a new one: the relapse leading to the cycle and reestablishing the routine again. In Hammered: Memoir of an Addict, GN Braun follows in the footsteps of the AA addicts I met with, taking it one day at a time, and also De Quincey who changed his routine just long enough to weather the relapses with his writing. Burroughs resigned himself to living the life of a junkie but lived till the old age of 83 leading a productive routine as a writer as well. Braun teeters between the two choices on a daily basis: go the way of De Quincey or Burroughs. In fictional terms he is Repairman Jack, taking life one day at a time, full of rage, striving for control in the mundane enjoyments of friendships with an assortment of characters and of course in the extraordinary missions he undertakes to release his rage to help others. But here Braun is his own man. What he decides today is all that matters. We will continue to be his friends. We will continue to read his writings. We will take him one day at a time as well.




Thank you, dear readers, for joining the Servante of Darkness again for another venture into the shady side of literature. We will have a peek into the literature of Horror and the Historical Novel when next we meet. Until then, burn the darkness at both ends.

 

The Flowering Roots of Horror: Criticism and Creativity

By Anthony Servante

From the Archives of the Servante of Darkness Blog. 

Ann Radcliffe was the first to argue that “horror” was not the object of the gothic novel (she wrote six of them and is considered the Mother of the Gothic form), that “terror” was the dutiful aim of such literature. When the gothic stories became gruesome and sensational (circa early 1800s), Radcliffe dropped out of the writing scene and her work, “On the Supernatural in Poetry” was her last published critique of the romanticization of her beloved story form. To find any other literary criticism of “horror”, we’d have to look back as far as the Ancient Greeks, who argued that “horror vacui” was “a fear of empty spaces”; thus artwork of the grotesque crowds every single space of the canvas with images, such as the work of Dadd to Bosch to Crumb (and even Mad Magazine movie parodies where each caption is filled to capacity with absurd and sometimes horrific pictures and characters that backdrop the main characters of the movie being make fun of).

Today, however, there is no longer any criticism of horror as art or literature. What I have been trying to do for the past few years under the pseudonym Anthony Servante (especially under the Servante of Darkness moniker) is to revive this critical spotlight on works of horror that meet the criterion established by critics of old and guide readers to new critiques of art, whether in horror, science fiction, fantasy, noir, or gothic forms.

While most writers veer toward fiction and fame, very few choose nonfiction in a field rich with the genres of the supernatural, mystery, suspense, thrillers and, of course, gothics. As an academician, I specialize in works of the “grotesque” in art and literature, concentrating on German and English Romanticism, but extending to the Victorian Age because it spawned many a great monster (Dracula, Invisible Man, War of the Worlds, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Dorian Gray). As a reader, I peruse the monsters of today from new and old talents in film, art, and books. One day I decided to bring my academic writing to bear on my current readings. I decided to review today’s books the same way I critique the old literature. The only difference is that I don my “servante of darkness” garb to write my reviews, but the result is still the same. And I’ve had a hoot since I’ve been writing about the new wave in the “grotesque”.

I have followed the current “trend” in the Zombie Apocalypse and have interviewed authors on their views on the longevity of the genre.

I have followed “cybernocturalism”, the self-publishing avalanche of horror ebooks. Some books are instant classics, while others are just plain bad, and the chasm between the two is ever growing with no end in sight.

The literature of Noir is being kept alive in the creative mind of Trent Zelazny.

The Southern Gothic is alive and well with Ray Garton.

Historic Horror maestro Mark Rainey adds a dash of education to his works.

Literature of the Absurd is modernized in the works of Gina Ranalli.

The Weird Western, a new but important form of “horror”, has sustained new life with authors such as Ed Erdelac and Ian Rogers.

GN Braun has taken Horror in a new direction with his work “Hammered” and my review of his book remains in the top five read articles on my blog. And since the top three pieces in the Servante of Darkness are interviews with rock legends, Roger Hodgson, the voice of Supertramp, Dave Lambert, guitarist and vocalist of Strawbs, and Tom Toomey, guitarist for The Zombies, that’s saying a lot about the staying power of Braun’s nonfictional biographic work.

Which brings us back to our need for nonfiction writers in the field of “horror” and its neighboring genres. You don’t need to be a “professor” of literature to write a review or to point out a new trend. You simply need an opinion and a voice. There are plenty of avenues to take to get your opinion read: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Goodreads, and so on.

Radcliffe would be proud that her view of “terror” is still being written about and critiqued, and that the “gothic” form lives on in literature and even music and movies today. Even the “horror vacui” continues in the work of Park Cooper and Barbara-Lien Cooper. It’s a brave new world for Horror. And it’s a braver new world for those who write about its branches and growth. I am proud to be amongst them.

 

The Rock and Roll Years of my Childhood

Santa Monica Civic Auditorium 1972-79

By Anthony Servante

RTD Bus circa 1970 (the bus I took to get there)

Greyhound Bus Station circa 1970 (where I transferred to the Santa Monica Bus)

My view of Downtown Broadway by bus as I head to the Civic

The famous marquee, first thing I see when I arrive 

Perspective from my usual seat. 

Fantastic line-ups

I was nine years old when I attended my first Rock Concert. It was at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, about a mile from the famous Pier with the carousel and carnival atmosphere right by the Pacific Ocean. To prepare for the journey from East LA to the beach front venue, I called the Rapid Transit District (RTD) bus line information; the operator told me (yes, people answered the phones in those days) that it would take three buses to get there, for a total traveling time of 2 and a half hours. The concerts always started at 8:00 p.m. so I had to leave home at around 4:00 p.m. I could hang around the Pier if I got there too early. But getting there wasn’t the problem. It was getting home.

I had to leave the window to my bedroom slightly ajar, unnoticeably so, else my dad would lock the window and I wouldn’t be able to enter my room when I got home. In other words, I would be locked out of the house. In those situations I went to the Greyhound Bus Depot Downtown LA and slept on one of the TV chairs—chairs with a pay TV attached, for as long as the TV was playing, the Security people left you alone. It took about two dollars of quarters to get a good night’s sleep. But usually the window remained the way I left it. When I arrived home about three to four in the morning, I’d climb into my bedroom (my bed was right under the window by design) and drop unto the mattress, kick off my shoes and fall asleep with my clothes on. This was my routine.

Although there were probably leering eyes on my young frame or even concerned looks from parents on the bus that saw a young boy alone, I don’t remember them. I remember handing my Ticketron ticket that I bought at Sears and Roebuck to the attendant and being waved through by the security in yellow T-shirts (later I found it was cheaper to buy the tickets at face value at the venue). The lobby was always packed with people one to two feet taller than I. I waded through the crowd and entered the doors down a hallway leading to the seats. The air was always thick with smoke, cigarette and pot. I didn’t know it at the time, but I must have gotten many a contact high. In my big pants pockets I carried a baloney sandwich and a bag of Fritos. I was shown to my seat by an usher with a flashlight (even at that young age, I remember the usherettes were very pretty girls in mini-skirts; I remember how they would always come and check on me to see if I was okay: Why wouldn’t I be okay? I didn’t understand the dangers in those days). Ten minutes before the show got started, the lights would blink three times and people would start filling the seats. The security in yellow T-shirts would position themselves in front of the stage; the ones with black jackets with Security written in yellow on the back would walk up and down the aisles. The Civic security did not allow anyone to leave their seat once the show started. Only when the lights were on could people move to and fro.

When the house lights went out, the audience would rise to their feet and roar. The usherettes positioned themselves at the hallway doors and kept late-comers from entering once the concert started. These late fans would have to wait till the opening act finished their set before they were allowed to enter the seating area. Lucky for them the lounge area in the lobby served alcohol. Then the opening band would appear and the stage lights would go on, the spotlights would hit the vocalist, the guitarist and sometimes the bass player; the drummer had a stage light on him on and off during the songs. After the opening bands, the main attraction would take the stage. The fans always tried to rush the stage, but were driven back by security. Once in a while, the crowd would overtake security, who would take to the stage sidelines and the audience would stand within touching distance of their idols onstage.

Encores were earned. Today encores are part of the show. But back then when the lights went on, signaling the end of the show, the fans would not leave; they’d cheer and clap and stomp their feet, shouting, “MORE!” and their cries would often be rewarded with an extra song or two. Many times, the roadies would be taking the equipment down when the band would appear, sometimes they’d just do an acoustic set so all the equipment wouldn’t have to be reconnected, but other times, the lights would go off and the roadies would use flashlights to reconnect the equipment and the band would play their encores. If the concert went past midnight, the ushers went home. Security stayed, but the rest of the workers called it a night. Then, after the concert, one of the road crew would be selling band T-shirts promoting the latest LP of the group and outside the Civic there would be the bootleggers selling makeshift, often lower grade (but more creative) T-shirts of the band. I usually bought one of each.

Then it was time to catch the bus(es) home. I always sat at the rear and never slept. I always looked out the window. Next stop, Downtown LA. From there, I’d take the all night RTD bus number 26 which would drop me off two blocks from my window. I’d check the streets to make sure no one would see me entering the window. Then I’d drift off to sleep and the next day I’d wear one of my concert T-shirt. No one in my neighborhood ever heard of the rock bands I’d seen at the Civic. That was okay. It was my world, my night world. It was the beginning of a lifetime of Rock and Roll concerts. But these early ones at the Civic were my golden years. I wish to share these years with you, my readers. These are some of my vintage memories of some of the greatest rock bands around. And I was there.

Santa Monica Civic Auditorium shows 1972-79:

1. Procol Harum 1972 Grand Hotel had not been released but they played songs from this upcoming lp. Mick Grabham replaced Robin Trower, who brought power to the group with songs like Whiskey Train. Without the muscle, Gary Brooker, founder of the band, emphasized the orchestral arrangements of Grand Hotel and the following year the band would play the Hollywood Bowl with the LA Philharmonic Orchestra, riding the success of their live LP: Live in Concert with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. The Eagles opened for Procol Harum that night. They had one new LP to promote and played most of it for the short 30 minute set they were allowed. I was captivated by Take it Easy and saw a future for this band in Rock, although I was shocked to read the next day in the LA Times concert review that the band was dismissed as a Jackson Browne imitation with “limited” writing skills.

Procol Harum Setlist:

Shine on Brightly 
Bringing Home the Bacon
Toujours l'Amour
Monsieur R Monde
Grand Hotel
Conquistador
Robert's Box
Power Failure
A Salty Dog
In the Autumn of My Madness
Look To Your Soul
Grand Finale
A Whiter Shade of Pale

Encore

Repent Walpurgis

2. Traffic 1972. In Monterey Park there was a record store called American Records; they had an “export” album section of new vinyl releases. I asked the clerk, some hippie who was always reading underground comics, what an export was. He guffawed and told me that they were records from other countries. I was intrigued. I selected the album Traffic Mr. Fantasy and compared it to the US version. Very different. I bought both. Months later, I saw the ad in the LA Times Sunday paper for Traffic at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. I made some phone calls, found out how much and where to buy tickets, how to get to the venue, and listened to the lps over and again till concert day. The only disappointment was that Dave Mason wasn’t in the line-up. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyMiUmrouZU;

3. David Bowie Ziggy Stardust and the Spider From Mars 1972: My older brother bought the David Bowie LP Ziggy Stardust. I used to sneak “listens” to it when he wasn’t home because he hated for anyone to touch his records. I fell in love with the sound, especially Moonage Daydream, Five Years and the title track. I was lucky to get tickets way in the back of the Civic. The sound system was not the best and the light show was mediocre, but the music and the stage presence of David Bowie and Mick Ronson on guitar had the audience chasing the security from the front of the stage. It was the first time I rushed the stage. A hippie girl in her late teens held me in front of her so the shoulder to shoulder crowd couldn’t carry me off. It was a magical moment for me just to touch the stage with Bowie a few feet away from me. But too young to appreciate the pretty girl with her arms wrapped around me. A few months later I purchased a double vinyl set of the concert I attended. My first bootleg. Yep, good ol’ American Records again.

4. Emerson Lake and Palmer 1972; playing new songs from their “trilogy” lp, the band had not acquired full Arena Rock Star status, but you wouldn’t know it from the fans of King Crimson (Greg Lake), Atomic Rooster (Carl Palmer) and The Nice (Keith Emerson), who were there to see this unique hybrid band of rockers. Emerson stabbed his keyboards with a knife and carried a portable keyboard that blasted machine-gun sounds as he ran around the stage. And the Mahavishnu Orchestra opened the concert with a jazz-rock fusion sound that confused the rock audience, but I was enthralled by the music and followed John Mclaughlin’s career since. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEZK_B72-rM

5. Hawkwind 1973. The lights went out. The crowd went nuts. The strobe lights flashed into the audience’s face. The band appeared in costumes ranging from a giant frog to an astronaut. Then the music started with the song Master of the Universe, the psychedelic lights hit the white backdrop, and a nude woman whom I later found out was named Stacia, appeared onstage dancing. Yep, Lemmy was there, but I don’t remember him. 

Lemmy (not the Civic, but it's LEMMY).

Stacia

5. Genesis 1974 (11) Selling England by the Pound Tour. Stage theatrics, costumes, pastoral mellotron with wicked guitar work by Hackett. This wasn’t just a light show; it was something more. In those days, CREEM Magazine published the latest trends in rock. Peter Gabriel in old man mask was the mag’s centerfold that month. When I saw the photo spread and that the band was going to be at the Civic, I got a ticket and went that same week. As a kid, I never liked Disneyland; I liked carnival sideshows. This was the rock and roll equivalent of a sideshow. As everyone else on the block played Thee Midnighters music, I blasted Selling England by the Pound. It wasn’t the first or last lp my dad would call devil’s music. 

7. Golden Earring, Robin Trower, Spooky Tooth 1974. I went to see Spooky Tooth and Golden Earring. I thought everyone else did too; but after Golden Earring and Trower played, the sold-out house nearly emptied out; only a few hundred fans remained for Spooky Tooth. Even then, the ushers wouldn’t allow those of us in the cheap seats to occupy the better sections. To this day, I still prefer ST, but also attend Trower shows when he’s in town. 

8. Roxy Music 1975. Space Cholos. That’s what I called them. Cholos are finely dressed gang members, cousins of the Zoot Suiters; each Roxy band member had his own outfit, his own personality; and together they rocked out for the crowd. In Every Dream Home a Heartache was a song whose lyrics were not lost on me. In concert a single red light shone on Ferry until that classic line, “But you blew my mind”, and then all the lights flashed out, the guitar and drums fought a duel, while the bass tried to keep the peace. I stood on my seat for the whole song.

9. Strawbs Halloween 1975. I remember the headline to the review in the LA Times the next day: “Music with Majesty”. Two mellotrons added a symphonic punch to the sound as music from the LPs Hero and Heroine and Ghost dominated the evening; the crowd was small, which accounts for the 25 year lapse before the band would return to LA. Even David Cousins jested after a recent show performing their Acoustic Tour at McCabes Guitar Shop in Santa Monica, “See you again in 25 more years.” I snatched the setlist from the stage floor, written in Cousins’ handwriting. Forgive me, guys.

10. Spirit 1976. This was the famous reunion tour of Spirit with the original line-up. Neil Young came out to sing along on Got a Line on You. He was drunk. After the song, Randy California tried to escort him off the stage, but he refused to leave. Neil and Randy got into a fight. Ed Cassidy, the drummer, broke up the fight and Neil left the stage. If you google this concert, you’ll find many people remember this night differently. This is my version. 

11. Nektar 1977. Sherman Hemsley introduced the band. The audience cheered his appearance as the TV show The Jeffersons was very popular then. A few weeks later, the song by Nektar, Show Me the Way, was played on the show while George Jefferson danced to the beat. Hemsley was a hardcore Nektar fan.

12. The Cars 1978. On the radio, they announced that tonight one night only, The Cars would be performing their entire debut lp. Tickets were four bucks each. General admission. First come, first served. I skipped school and caught the bus to the Civic, got six tickets, the maximum allowed, called my brother, who got four more people together and we saw the band that night. They did play the entire lp. Afterwards, the lights went on. The band left. The crowd remained, chanting, Morrrrreee! Ric Ocasek returned and told the crowd, “That’s all the fucken songs we know” and left again. The crowd booed, then left too.

There are so many more concerts I attended during this period, but the list began to get crazy long. I narrowed it down to twenty, fifteen, and settled on these twelve concerts. I googled each concert to death but found very little to build on, so what you have is the memory of a old concert geek. I remember Peter Gabriel floating down on wires wearing a black cape with glowing paint around his eyes during Watcher of the Skies. I found in my research that he used that theatric during Supper’s Ready. I omitted the Narareth concert because I remember singer Dan McCafferty being in a body cast onstage; other accounts have him in a wheelchair or just a leg cast. So forgive the diluted memory of this old rocker. What I could confirm I did, but the rest, you’ll just have to come along for the ride.