A brief rats-in-the-wall horror tale that presumably gave birth to the now memorable cover of the ‘Dagon’ DFL Special (1989). A prose poem in the truest sense -- prose that contains a poem. Like many of DFL’s tales, it suffers from a shortness of creative stamina. It equally benefits from a dream-like brevity. Or a dozing waking-dream. And identities that soften at the edges.

“The townships were far and few, between great areas of forest that the cartographer had evidently taken great delight in splodging in green upon his map.” (4 June 09 - 2 hours later)

Waning (1993)

From a prose poem to a ‘pro’s poem’.

An intellectual whore from whose viewpoint we watch events (Cf: ‘The Hungerers’). From the viewpoint of my current near senile self, this younger piece of an earler self is very clever and subtle ... where if I told you its ending I would not merely be issuing a spoiler but an outright story-killer.

“I was what the underworld considered to be a rare bird: an intellectual on the game, if such a concept could even be visualised. I suppose the garters and the suspender belts had set me off: I felt as if I were a model upon a French impressionist's canvas or a well rouged hussy seen in the margins of Proust's endless novel. I played Ravel's piano trio as a backing track when I had a customer in the flat: sometimes a violin sonata by Saint-Saens: they made me feel good: the quiet conversational pieces of mannerist chamber music surprised the men who had been raised on Dire Straits or Pink Floyd or, even, in some aging cases, the Beatles; but they did express keen interest about this music...”

There is a meta-meta-meta-... aspect to many of this book’s stories that imperceptively form a short-circuit of ‘metas’, a short-circuit that in turn serves to earth the reader into the actual current of reality. The rollercoaster-paradox, again? (4 Jun 09 - another hour later)

Watch The Whiskers Sprout (1994)

One of DFL’s long stories that seems both quilted and organic. I’m pretty sure it was generated as an omnibus of several Blasphemy (‘Feemy’) Fitzworth story cells – fortuitously becoming better as a whole than its parts. Hopefully, despite the book's flaws, I hope that this effect is similar to the ‘Weirdmonger’ gestalt itself.

Feemy is a Victorian cat’s meat man with a steaming meat-cart, sometimes time-travelling to seek out (and stop?) the Great Old Ones. Archetypal, like ‘Todger’s Town’ stink-carts and ‘Padgett Weggs’ pub talk and other shades of emptiness. There is no greater satisfaction for a writer than finally to realise (as he does here today) that his work may have been subsumed by the unique and previously undiscovered archetypes that he once thought he had created himself. A humility that doubles as pride?

Feemy in this story has a changing relationship over the eons with Chelly Mildeyes (aka Lettuce Weggs). The ethos is dynastic and quite unlike anything else, I guess, in the realms of creative writing. I repeat something I said before: DFL is a flawed writer but sometimes his stories are more effective if one appreciates what it must have taken to write them. A complete self-sacrifice. And horrific in the sense of ‘otherness’ and intentional detachment – which factors I suppose, in hindsight, are related to the well-seasoned literary theory upon which this review itself is extemporising.

“Meanwhile, another version of the same cat’s meat man wheeled his cart through the Victorian slumways, humming and, basically, minding his own business. He kept the half-extruded lumps of offal on the boil by means of a coal fire in the bowels of his cart. His customary call rang out: “Gout cat! Spout cat! Watch their whiskers sprout, cat!”” (4 June 09 - another 90 minutes later)

The Weirdmonger (1988)

Another sizeable quilt of story-cells that then fail to become organic. An accretion that is counter-productive rather than expansive ... as if ‘Bobtail’ gate-crashes and gate-crashes again and grows within it or nuzzles it in the night without any authorial authorities realising.

Reading it today is very painful for me. I am not the Weirdmonger. On the contrary, he may be the author, and me the fiction. But who then is the Crazy Commentator writing these extrapolations upon the book that he simultaneously lives within? A book he never wanted to bear an overall title that is himself. Eponymity as a corruption of Nemonymity.

The story itself tells of a wandering soothsayer whose words when uttered become intrinsic truths. The relationship of self as Man and Boy. There are some startling images of a bodily nature. Whatever its faults, the ambiance of the story’s ‘Wagger Market’ is memorably accomplished. A fantasy story that is self-evidently proud of itself while its author shamefacedly disowns it. And by disowning it, he has finally begun to own himself once again. A catharsis for which this review was perhaps pre-destined to ignite. If so, the rest of this review must be a cathartic’s coda. A mistuning of truths so that we can all queue (along with all the other crazy people) for a better film inside another cinema.

“The boy, now grown into an ancient man, is the only one left alive who can even attempt to describe the Weirdmonger.” (4 June 09 - another 90 minutes later)

Welsh Pepper (1992)

Other friends have claimed this as their favourite DFL story. It was another one chosen by Karl Edward Wagner for ‘Year’s Best Horror Stories’. It represents variations on a Sergeant Pepper / Lucy In the Sky with Diamonds theme, (and rather in a Sarban vein). Too salacious for my tastes these days.

The protagonist (another on a walking trip) meets a strange clan of people and falls in love with a girl – and there are ‘goads’ needed to clear the clan’s camp of a tree-like creature. Pitifully, that creature was only trying to help the protagonist. The end is poignantly amusing. I can find no tracking for this story along the audit-trail of this review. Perhaps you can?

"I looked back at the rucksack where I had left it, beginning to steam in the growing heat of the morning sun. The umbrella, leaning against it, was opening gradually of its own accord, like a fast-motion flower.” (4 June 09 - another hour later)

Wild Honey (1993)

It is strange that many of the stories that I now do not see eye to eye with are in the tail end of the alphabet. This is another version of an old man’s unrequited love feelings described in ‘Valedictory’, as control of his own dimmer-switch is lost. Now too salacious for my current tastes. Yet delightfully Proustian.

It is akin to ‘The Chaise Longue’ about a woman with a sting and a honey-sac beneath her clothes; I hadn’t noticed that parallel before. I wonder how many other parallels and leit-motifs-in-the-wall I previously missed en route and still miss. I wonder what other bric-a-brac or treasures Digory Smalls failed to find in the attic system of his mind. I’m going to disable this review in a moment and allow it to default... (4 June 09 - another hour later)

Wiles (1989)

In 1978 I was lucky enough to go to the World SF Convention in Brighton where I met many luminaries. Lucky because I didn’t have a ticket but someone I knew in the Croydon SF Group at the time (Richard Wiles by name) was at the last moment unable to go. So he gave me his ticket and name badge. The whole weekend I was Richard Wiles. During the event, I suddenly looked down at the name badge and it dawned on me that Wiles was an anagram of Lewis! Simply that. A personal anecdote, for once, that has no relevance to the story whereunder I tell it. In fact, none of the personal anecdotes or comments or pretentious appraisals heretofore have any relevance to this book.

Meanwhile, this brief story entitled ‘Wiles’ has a front door to a house that has the bolts to lock it on its outside. And these are the story’s (and thus the book’s) last words: “He found his way, eventually, to the top front window. The hair crack revealed what was over the high wall opposite. Nothing but night. The edge of human experience. The shards of embedded glass were splinters of living human reflections. / Wiles collapsed into the unmade bed, hoping for dreams, but finding only a sleep reflecting that endless night.” Sorry if that’s a book-killer. (4 June 09 - another hour later)

==================================================

The publication history of all the book's stories are shown HERE.

END

comments (2)

1. Weirdmonger left...

Friday, 5 June 2009 8:53 pm

Final thought: You can take those batteries out now.

2. Weirdmonger left...

Tuesday, 9 June 2009 8:50 am

"As I turned the pages I had the feeling that, step by step, I was following the map of a sick and broken mind. Line after line, the author of those pages had, without being aware of it, documented his own descent into a chasm of madness. The last third of the book seemed to suggest an attempt at retracing his steps, a desperate cry from the prison of his insanity so that he might escape the labyrinth of tunnels that had formed his mind."

from 'The Angel's Game' by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

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