Titles

The following are a list of titles for novels that I have encountered in my own imagination that set the scene beautifully for content of an astounding quality.

God May Be Gone - Assumedy this would be some kind of semi-fictional debunking of religious fanaticism using the continued and increasing horror, disillusionment and technological miracle of modern society. Of course the story would also examine the genuine loss of traditional Christian, Muslim and Jewish values that are of great importance and compassion, as not to make it too nasty or one sided.

Nobody Sleeps In Lonely City - This title covers all manner of sins, don't you think? I'm imagining a quiet, slow exploration of future society, experienced through a character who has only very recently been reawakened from cryogenic sleep. This guy will have been frozen sometime around the Vietnam war, I think, as so modern happenings (Internet, 9/11 and such) can be explained to him as long gone history. Think he should have a dead wife that he yearns for, and to whom he adresses his story. There's very evident noir in that title though, have to work that in somehow. Future noir is nothing new, anyway.

Melvin Mahogany Will Rule The World - Surely some comical adventure. I have been recently tickled by the prospect of a supervillain named The Convincer, who aspires to world domination via very rational and sane plans. He should have an office, where he invites people and disarms them with his charm, ie "Look, some people in my profession go in for blunt force, Brain Wave guns and things like that... uhhhhh, it's not my thing. I mean, I can barely work my phone, anyway, I'd be hopeless with a Brain Gun or what have you. But really I'd rather not insult your intelligence. I believe in informed decisions, not quick fixes. Here's an outline of my and my enterprise's first steps, please take a copy home with you, phone the office if you've any questions, some one will put you through to me. I really want you on board with me for this, Dave."

Also I think Mother Music Loves You is an excellent name for a lively big band.
And the title of this blog (I Fear the Worst on a Day Like Tomorrow) would be a splendid album name (preferably by a low-key indie outfit).

"It's Never Over": More on the magic of Jeff Buckley

About three hours ago I finished reading David Browne's dual biography of Tim and Jeff Buckley, a compelling read for any Buckley fan as avid as I which tells two equally interesting and tragic tales, spun thirty years apart. Though the book has, to an extent, inspired me to look further into the music of Buckley Sr., I don't plan on giving cash prizes to anyone who can guess which of the two I was more smitten with. The experience has lead me to reiterate in text my love for Buckley's masterpiece:

Having unspecified relationship troubles with Rebecca Moore, an un-discovered Jeff Buckley began fiddling with a song idea in 1992, detailing his pretty standard feelings of inadequacy, regret and all round heart-ache. The song was called "Lover, You Should've Come Over". And, from the corner of Sin-e amongst the clatter of forks and the bustle of the street outside, the greatest Love-Lost song of all time was born. From the mere title, in itself a lingual treat that feels good in your mouth, to the melodic moaning, crooning and howling which end the song, communicating what words couldn't quite reach, it remains to me one of the most perfect musical pieces ever written... and I get such a strange rush out of realizing I was alive and well when this happened. It reminds me that music, I mean really great, life-changing music, is not dead.

But the untouchable, untouched musical passion that resided in Jeff Buckley isn't the driver in this case: it only necessitates what makes "Lover" great; it gives the song its force and sharpness with which to penetrate us, all the way to that deep part of the human experience where Jeff lived, all the time. Once he's there, we hear what he's saying, and if the moment has caught us just right, we'll damn near weep.

Because it bends a lot of people out of shape to know it, I think, but every hurt and every happiness you ever suffer never leaves. They make you who you are, and you carry them around with you, in varying forms, til you die. That's why there shouldn't ever be a person who hears the sadly uplifting gospel bridge of "It's never over; my kingdom for a kiss upon her shoulder" and doesn't immediately think of one specific person. There shouldn't ever be someone who hears those words sung with that voice without remembering with a frightening freshness that feeling, that feeling that there was nothing in all your life you wouldn't have given for one more second of being a whole with that person, that feeling that nothing would ever be alright without them. It was everything, that feeling. It was the whole fucking world for however long you felt it. And Jeff Buckley felt it too.

It takes a special kind of person, I think, to write a song of such paradox with such confidence, but I say what is emotional pain but confident paradox? "Lover, You Should've Come Over" is the truest of all songs in that sense: it is every sad story. We all hear it as we are, sitting at home and feeling normal and good enough, watching the funeral of the outside world parade before our door, and its no coincidence at all that amidst these verses of calmness and acceptance and the signs of a life moving on, every chorus comes back a little stronger than the last, a little more insistent. It's the hardest, and most universal kind of sadness, this: we are happy enough most of the time and as many problems as we may throw up to the sky in the process, the only answer that feels right, and that keeps returning with more and more force: "oh, but I wish you'd come over." It is the tear that hangs inside our soul forever.

And yet Buckley holds out hope: "It's not too late" are his parting words, before the song calms down to its initial lull and fades away, as Jeff himself did not three years later. Because of his untimely departure, we will never know if he was right. Was this optimism his greatest strength or greatest tragedy? Would someone, some day have walked through his door and make it feel, to his hurt and yearning, that his lover had returned? Was the surety that it's never over virtue or vice? The pain is undeniable and universal, but the conclusion is entirely ours to draw, through ourselves and everything we know. That's the magic that Buckley had.

An Entire Shelf Full of the Works of Stephen King

The order in which they appear.

• LISEY'S STORY - A girl whom I care for told me this book was a dud, but I liked the look of it and bought it anyway. I suppose it's conceivably possible that I mayhap should have considered listening to her advice... King loves this effort more than any of his others but I can't for the life of me find any interest in it. I guess I'll finish it someday... after all, when there's nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire.
• THE SHINING - Followed closely by his finest hour. Kubrick's film was a masterpiece, and King's novel is an entirely different masterpiece. There's a certain, untapped variety of horror that comes from detailing the slow journey a person has to take to becoming a monster, and The Shining is the most exquisite example I've come across. A classic tale and genuinely creepy, it also surprised me by using its supernaturalism to drop poetic hints about paternity and alcoholism, as well as paint an exquisite portrait of self denial. Can't always be said of King, but this is one for the ages.
• THE STAND - Longest bastard I ever read, and not quite worth it. As usual, great characters and an entertaining playing ground, but I have to say his televisual adaptation of this monster of a book had the good sense to keep its tongue in its cheek, and I think that's where it triumphed, while the novel ended up floundering in its own seriousness. I did enjoy, however, the throw away (and gleeful) reference to Jim Morrison as an agent of darkness and evil.
  
• THE GIRL WHO LOVED TOM GORDON - I think the second King book I read, and one short and sweet enough to sidestep his usual pitfalls. I think this was also one of the first books he wrote after "the accident" and so, for my money, proof pudding that he didn't lose his touch in the process. As with all the best supernatural evils, the one at work on this little girl who gets lost in the woods is vague and possibly imaginary, largely combined with the victim's own subconscious. This is one of the best examples of King's unadulterated connection with those driven mad by horrific circumstance. He does it better than most any other, and he did it five fold here.
• BAG OF BONES - I found this book to be a loser. I much prefer when the ghosts are mysteries - to discover their secrets so thoroughly deadens it a little for me, and reminds me too directly I'm reading trashy horror. The description of grief (big shot writer loses his wife) is good, and suspense is there in stops and starts, but I could very well have lived without this one, I'm afraid.
• NEEDFUL THINGS - Not dissimilar to The Stand, Needful Things is an ensemble piece with a demon for a villain that goes on far too long. I did enjoy it, however, until the last fifty pages or so (to be fair, even The Shining fell short in its closing... the only King book I've read not to do so is Pet Sematary). Set in the author's favourite town in the world (poor Castle Rock, Maine), the characters would feature, as so many of King's do, in quite a few subsequent efforts, including Gerald's Game and Bag of Bones. Also, those who remember Keifer Sutherland's classic bully character from the King-inspired Stand by Me (1986) will be delighted to see he plays a huge part in the latter half of Needful Things, even though he was omitted from the movie version entirely. Couldn't afford to bring Keifer in, I expect.
• IT - Haven't read it yet.
• GERALD'S GAME - Almost a really solid effort, I think I would've loved Gerald's Game if it were a novella. Instead, I find it to be a great idea that was stretched to a format it couldn't quite support and ran out of steam. Nonetheless, I salute King for successfully combining a decent horror situation and a novel-length meditation of gender issues, social sexual discrimination and blatant misogyny. He's a guy, so he was probably wrong about it all, but from my limited standpoint I think he made some valid observations. Often, women get done treated no good. All the same, nothing would have been lost to shorten it a bit, I think.
• MISERY - My first. Probably the most spectuarly horrific novel this side of Rosemary's Baby... and it did it all without a shred of anything supernatural. Aside from the personal discrepancies I have with Lisey's Story, I'm with King a hundred per cent on Misery - he describes its writing as catching "a really big wave", and I felt the same way reading it. Blunt and mercifully short, Misery is the mother of all tongue-in-cheek personal allegories, the intimate tale of a popular writer literally held captive by the embodiment of fanaticism, but it also is one of the highest forms of trash literature. This is one of the few novels that's going to make you forget how ridiculous it fundamentally is. And I think we can all appreciate the irony of King's real life car accident much later in life - serves him right for being so damned autobiographical all the time.
  
• CUJO - Some novels, some by the very author of discussion in fact, are like emotional punches to the face. Cujo is an all out emotional beating: it punches you in the face with brass knuckles, kicks you in the shins and winds you, drops you to the ground and then kicks you in the ribs. Then it cuts off your cock. That aside, it is a pretty masterful example of how well Mr. King understands his genre of choice, how deeply he understands it and how he can manipulate its dark appeal into grand statements on humanity no matter how lame the material. Intellectually, we can't get past the fact that Cujo is a story about a Giant Rabid Dog. Emotionally however (and this is where we take the beating) what we can't get past is that is a story about the cruelty of fate and the indifference of the universe - how the simple crumbling of the figurative cookie can sometimes seem like a cosmic symphony of things going wrong for you, and how with a little ominous narration it can all seem preordained. No one wants to think that bad luck could ruin their lives so abrasively and completely, and King shows us here in painful and realistic detail exactly how that could happen. Though it's hard to imagine wanting to write a novel about an evil dog, its also hard to imagine such a novel being done any better than this.
  
• NIGHTMARES AND DREAMSCAPES - The afterthought to King's small canon of short-story compilations. Of the handful I've read, Nightmares and Dreamscapes doesn't have the fierce bite of Nightshift or Skeleton Crew, but the stories are nonetheless good. So far, Suffer the Little Children is the pick of the litter - a beautiful dozen pages of straight out creepy kid brilliance. I'm also looking forward to his completely non-fiction, non-horror essay on little league baseball. He does love baseball so.

Aside from the short stories, I think the only ones I'm really interested in getting now are Carrie and Salem's Lot... the man has just written too many books, but I feel I'm nearing having 'the essentials'. Sometimes we have to live with the essentials.

Hope all are gearing up for a doozy of a new years. Gotta go practice for Flowers' end of year gig now.

If you enjoy the semi-trashy macabre work of Stephen King, both he and I recommend Richard Laymon and Clive Barker.