A sense that something's wrong

Quiztunes for Consideration with Sarah Coolidge

Greetings new subscribers! There are a lot of you this week, and I’m glad you’re here, but it’s a weird week to start reading Message from the Underworld because today I’m launching a new feature, an interview series I’m calling Quiztunes for Consideration.

Today’s guest is Sarah Coolidge, editor of Through the Night Like a Snake: Latin American Horror Stories, which was published yesterday and is already on back order. Usually, this isn’t something you want with a book that just came out, but it’s heartening to see such demand for the weird and unusual. Make no mistake, this is a deeply weird book.

Marina Enriquez’s “That Summer in the Dark” (translated by Megan McDowell) is the second story in the collection and it just keeps getting stranger from there. Some of my favorite stories include “The Third Transformation” by Maximiliano Barrientos and translated by Tim Gutteridge. It’s about a man who goes back to his hometown and uncovers a strange and sinister case of possession. “Visitor” by Julián Isaza and translated by Joel Streiker is a mind-bending tale that somehow involves Kermit the Frog.

It’s a strong collection and a testament to Two Lines Press who negotiated with the writers and translators to put it together. I wanted to know how they did it and Sarah Coolidge obliged. Coolidge received her BA in comparative literature from Bard College. She reads in both Spanish and English, and writes essays on photography and international literature.

Jim Ruland: In your introduction you talk about “narativo de lo inusual.” Can you expand on how you landed on that as an organizing principle for the anthology? 

Sarah Coolidge: I’d already started reading work for what would become Through the Night Like a Snake when I came across that term in a New York Times article, and I thought it was such a wonderful term for describing this type of horror-adjacent writing we’re seeing from Latin America these days. So while I didn’t specifically use that term to start out with, it captured what I was going for in my definition of “horror.” I wanted to include some traditional horror stories but also those that were flirting with the genre, or else writing self-consciously into the genre. I think it’s a strangeness and discomfort—a sense that something’s wrong—that unites the stories in this collection. It was important to all of us involved in this collection to showcase a range of styles and voices, to show how varied this “narrativo de lo inusual” is.

JR: I’m a big fan of the McSweeney’s anthology of Latin American crime fiction, which came out ten years ago in 2014. Do you see Through the Night like a Snake as being in conversation with that anthology? 

SC: I hadn’t thought about it to be honest! But that is a great collection. And crime fiction is absolutely related to, arguably a subgenre of, horror. I would imagine there’d be a lot of fun comparisons to make. I do think it’d be worth doing even just to see how the literary landscape has shifted over ten years. For example, I think it’s worth noting that the biggest names in our collection are all female writers, which wouldn’t have been the case ten years ago.

JR: Definitely not! I made my first trip to Latin America with a trip to Chile in December and I gained a better appreciation of that country’s political history. Obviously, that’s very difficult to do with each and every country in Latin America, but my feeling is knowing some of that history is key to understanding why horror is so compelling to contemporary Latin American writers and readers. Can you talk about that in terms of your own experience in Latin American literature? 

SC: Absolutely. Reading sometimes feels like peeling back layers of understanding, depending on how familiar you are with the world you’re reading about. I’ve done a lot of reading about and studying Latin America, in my college days and since, and it does help sometimes to understand the significance of a pointed comment, or a joke, or why an author would set a story in a specific year. In Through the Night Like a Snake, the more explicit references to political violence add a layer of horror for those who notice them. There is the old man rumored to have been a Nazi who moved to Bolivia in Maximiliano Barrientos’ story. The teen girls in Mariana Enriquez’s story wonder why there are no Latin American serial killers, then ask whether the juntas count. And in Antonio Díaz Oliva’s story the protagonist mentions that his experience in the Chilean cult took place during the Pinochet regime. The political context is tucked into each story but points to the pervasiveness of violence—the horrors committed just out of sight. The central horrors in these stories take on new levels when you remember that equally disturbing things are happening, or have happened, just beyond the contours of the story.

JR: I love how weird some of the stories are. Maximiliano Barrientos’s “The Third Transformation” and Julián Isaza’s “Visitor” are really out there. You discussed in your introduction not having a mandate for the anthology but I can imagine the thrill of having those stories come in. Where they considered in Spanish, English, or both?  

SC: I think I first read both of these in Spanish. Joel Streicker sent me a few stories in Spanish to gauge my interest before deciding to translate one. “Visitor” struck me as so strange and specific in the best way. In some ways it’s a familiar storyline, a type of possession, but the details are so strange and at times silly that it becomes a wholly original story. Maximiliano Barrientos was repeatedly recommended to me for this collection. He writes a lot of genre fiction. I think his agent sent me this story, but maybe it was the translator. To be honest, this story is so wild I thought I was misreading the Spanish at times and had to run my synopsis past the agent just to make sure I understood correctly. I love how supremely weird this story is. There’s this tension that builds throughout, and then the truth is revealed and it’s even stranger than you could have ever imagined.

JR: Anything can be horror. A trip to the dentist, a family reunion, but Mónica Ojeda’s “Soroche” is absolutely harrowing. That’s not really a question, but I’m in awe of the power of that story. 

SC: I agree! This story was exactly what I’d hoped for when I asked for stories that would expand the definition of horror. I think the translators even said when they sent it that they weren’t sure whether we’d think it counted as horror. But they loved it and had to send it. And I’m so glad they did! Mónica Ojeda is such a talented writer of uncomfortable scenarios—so that feelings themselves transform into a kind of horror.

JR: If there was any doubt that Marina Enriquez is a superstar Our Share of Night cemented it. What voices do you think have a shot of breaking outside their native country and into other parts of the Americas? 

SC: Any of the authors would be deserving! Mónica Ojeda, Camila Sosa Villada, and Giovanna Rivero all have books out in English and more work coming, so they’re well on their way. It’s tough to know who will break out. So much of it has to do with finding the right project, the right translator, the right press to take a chance. I was really taken by Lina Munar Guevara’s story. It was so short but really packs a punch. Hopefully with time all these authors get their due.

You can order a copy of Through the Night Like a Snake: Latin American Horror Stories through Bookshop.org.

Los Angeles Times

I have two new pieces for the Los Angeles Times. The first already feels like yesterday’s news: a newsletter I wrote for the Book Club about the five films nominated for Best Picture that began their lives as books. The second is a profile of Katya Apekina, whose new novel, Mother Doll, came out yesterday.

I asked Ruth Madievksy, Ottessa Moshfegh and Lis Locascio for their takes on the book. Lisa’s quote didn’t make it into the story, so here it is:

Readers of her first book know that Katya is a brilliant writer. Mother Doll shows off one of her other great talents—she's one of the funniest people I know, with a surreal, biting sense of humor that is as Russian as it is Angeleno. Despite being pitch-dark in sardonic tone, Katya’s work is also full of hope and possibility; that’s what makes her one of the most unique and exciting authors publishing today.

Lisa has a fascinating newsletter called Not Knowing How that you should check out.

I hope you’ll give both stories a click so that whoever monitors these things at the Los Angeles Times knows that people are reading engaging with my work. Or whatever. To assume that any media company knows what it’s doing in 2024 requires a huge leap of faith.

One Book, San Diego

I don’t spend a lot of time looking at the metrics that Substack provides me about how these newsletters perform. I love hearing from readers and if you like something enough to tell me, that’s enough for me. I’m not going to let data dictate the kinds of things I write about.

I have noticed some trends: the more personal a piece is, like when my mother died, the greater the number of people who unsubscribe. Also, most of you don’t click on the links, which is fine. When I read a newsletter, I want to read what the author has to say, not follow a trail of links around the internet. Maybe if I was working in an office somewhere and actively using the internet to kill time I’d click on more links. We’re all busy. I get it.

Still, I’m going to ask you to not only click on this link, but fill out a form to nominate my novel Make It Stop for One Book, One San Diego. To be honest, I’m not even sure this is a good idea, but I love the notion of unsuspecting readers grappling with this strange, dystopian universe where healthcare has run amok.

Airborne

I’m flying on a Boeing today so if this is going to be my last newsletter, I’d like to share a joke I plan on telling at my father’s St. Patrick’s Day luncheon in Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia on Sunday. I heard a different version of this joke many years ago in Ireland. Special thanks to Joe O’Brien for publishing it in his zine Flop Sweat at least 20 years ago, maybe more. Here it is…

President Trump was visiting a school in Northern Ireland and upon being informed that a class was studying Shakespeare’s tragedies started quizzing the students. “Who can give me an example of a tragedy?”

Mary raised her hand and said, “If my cat got run over by a car, would that be a tragedy?”

Trump thought about it and said, “No, that would be an accident, but it wouldn’t be a tragedy.”

Lisa raised her hand and said, “If my granny had a fall and died, would that be a tragedy?”

Trump thought about it and said, “No, that would be a terrible shame, but it wouldn’t be a tragedy.”

Johnny raised his hand and said, “If the plane you were flying in exploded, would that be a tragedy?”

Trump thought about it and said, “Yes, indeed it would. How did you know that would be a tragedy, Johnny?”

Johnny replied, “Because it wouldn’t be an accident, and it wouldn’t be a shame.”

Thanks for reading. I’ll be back next week with some developments in the My Damage movie. In the meantime stay safe and have a lovely St. Patrick’s Day.

If you’re new to Message from the Underworld and you enjoyed this newsletter, you might also like my latest novel Make It Stop, or the paperback edition of Corporate Rock Sucks: The Rise & Fall of SST Records, or my book with Bad Religion, or my book with Keith Morris. Message from the Underworld comes out every Wednesday and is always available for free, but paid subscribers also get Orca Alert! on most Sundays. It’s a weekly round-up of links about art, science, and killer whales.