Evoking the monstrous

AWP, Ron Currie Jr, The Unworthy & Victorian Psycho

How is everyone doing? Did you fall for any April Fools’ pranks? I had an unusually busy weekend, venturing up to LA on Friday morning for a pair of back-to-back AWP off-site readings.

The first was held at Sick City Records on Sunset Boulevard, just blocks from Dodgers Stadium. I took advantage of the opportunity to walk up to Guisados for some tacos and something called a Dodgerata, which is basically blue horchata. The reading was a mix of old friends and new acquaintances, including

Aug Stone

, Shawnte Orion, Brian O’Hare, Rosemarie Dombrowski, Brendan Constantine, and Erik Bitsui who was my student at NAU in Flagstaff, Arizona waaaaay back in 1993.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t stay for the whole event and had to jet downtown for an event co-sponsored by Rare Bird, who published my novel Make It Stop. I got to hear Sarah Lippmann read from her WIP and chop it up with the Rare Bird crew.

At both events I read the opening pages from Black Van, an angry little rant about punk rock, addiction, and death. It’s not the kind of piece you can read in a laid-back manner. It demands intensity. Sometimes you have no idea how the work is being received. Sometimes you can feel the audience come along with you. At both events the crowd was into it. I can’t tell you how gratifying it was to get that feedback both in real time and after the shows. It’s the kind of memory that can fuel the long months ahead as I revise and revise again.

After crashing at Razorcake HQ I had an early meeting with old friend Martin Ricker of Dorothy books before heading back to San Diego in time to record a podcast with Writers on Writing, which you can listen to here. On Sunday morning Nuvia and I got up for an early morning hike in Santa Ysabel before going to the Oddities Flea Market to see my friends Ryan and Regina. I also bumped into local artist Carrie Hudson and bought some cool mermaid-related art from some of the artists at the show.

Portrait of the Artist with Blue Milk, Erik Bitsui & Brendan Constantine

Then it was off to The Book Catapult for a conversation with Ron Currie, Jr. about his new book The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne, a sprawling crime saga set in Waterville, Maine, where the drug trade in Little Canada is ruled over by its queenpin Babs Dionne. It’s part family drama and part grisly crime story with a whiff of the supernatural. It’s also extremely funny and is getting rave reviews from the literary press and friends who have read the book, including Tod Goldberg and Ivy Pochoda.

I’ve known Ron on and off the internet since the early days of the 21^st century when we were submitting short stories to Zoetrope Virtual Studio. He also participated in Vermin on the Mount on the heels of his debut God Is Dead in 2007 and I’ve caught up with him on a couple of occasions while he was visiting the West Coast on various book tours.

During our conversation Ron, who grew up in Waterville, told me he modeled his main character after his grandmother, a larger-than-life character and the matriarch of his family. He told the audience he was raised largely by women, a situation not uncommon in Waterville because the men were either “at work, at the bar, or dead.”

There are very few men in this book and the most noteworthy of the bunch is called simply “The Man,” a cartoonishly evil villain: imagine Anton Chigur if he’d been kicked out beauty school (there’s more to that story but I won’t spoil it here.)

The story is told through multiple points of view and explores all of the characters in great detail, which can bog down some books but not this one. It’s a propulsive read with a unique cast of characters that will keep you hooked through the finish. I predict we’re going to be hearing quite a bit about this book…

Ron Currie Jr. in convo, Santa Ysabel, The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne

The Unworthy by Augustina Bazterrica trans. by Sarah Moses

While driving around California last month I listened to a couple of highly anticipated novels. The Unworthy is Bazterrica’s follow-up to Tender Is the Flesh, a story set in a world where humans turn to mass market cannibalism. I didn’t love Tender Is the Flesh, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. (I’m still thinking about it TBH.) Bazterrica’s evocation of a world where such monstrousness is possible is utterly convincing and has stayed with me long after the memories of other novels have faded.

I read Bazterrica’s experimental short story collection last year and couldn’t wait to read The Unworthy, a post-apocalyptic story set in a cloistered religious cult that incorporates the worst of Catholicism and none of its virtues. The cult is presided over by the Superior Sister who dominates a group of Minor Saints, Diaphanous Ones, and The Unworthy, wanderers from the destroyed world who have found their way to this place ruled by fear, punishment, and mutilation.

The story is told through the diary entries of a woman who keeps a secret record of the horrible things she witnesses inside the walls of the cloister and who develops intense feelings for a new arrival. It’s a short novel and while it’s not the most original set-up it’s beautifully written and charged with tension. Highly recommended. I’ll probably come back to this one for the experience of reading the words on the page. It’s that good.

Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito

When I was in Barcelona earlier this year, I kept seeing people reading Victorian Psycho by the Spanish writer Virginia Feito. I saw copies in Spanish and Catalan in bookshops all over the city but never in English. When I saw an older woman reading it in a café, I asked Nuvia to ask her how she was liking the book. The woman said it was “very macabre and very different” and she seemed a little embarrassed to be caught reading such a strange book in public.

After listening to the novel in the car last month, I can see why. The story is about Winifred Notty a governess with a murky past who accepts a position at a dreary country house on the moors. It quickly becomes apparent that Winifred isn’t just a little bit strange, but a full-on psychopath with a penchant for depravity and murder. As the bodies start to pile up, so does the gore.

Let’s just say Victorian Psycho lives up to both its title and to its easy comparison with American Psycho, and might even have a higher body count. It’s a short novel, so its kills per page ratio is higher.

Gratitude and farewell

Thanks to everyone who nominated Make It Stop for One Book, One San Diego. It really means a lot. Corporations have a way of rendering the efforts of individual artists invisible, like what we do doesn’t matter. I don’t believe that, of course, but being told by so many people that they’d nominated Make It Stop was heartening.

Yesterday I learned of the passing of Tim Mohr, whose book Burning Down the Haus, the definitive account of East German punk, has been on my reading list for way too long. Mohr was also a talented translator for Europa Editions, whose editor posted this lovely tribute.

I’m also saddened to hear that we lost the writer and literary critic John Domini. During the early days of the literary internet I’d see John’s work all over the place. He was a great example of what a literary citizen can be: a working writer who was widely read, had strong opinions, and was well-traveled. I probably wouldn’t be writing this if John wasn’t a gregarious and kind-hearted soul, a gentleman through and through. Rest in power, John.

April events in SD and LA

I’ve got some more events this months, one in San Diego on 4/13 and one the following weekend on 4/19. More details next week but mark your calendars.

Thanks for reading! Tomorrow I’m off on another adventure and next week’s Message from the Underworld will come from someplace far from California but near to my heart. If you liked this newsletter you might also like my latest novel about healthcare vigilantes 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. I have more books and zines for sale here. And if you’ve read all of those, consider checking out my latest collaboration The Witch’s Door and the anthology Eight Very Bad Nights.

Message from the Underworld comes out every Wednesday and is always available for free, but paid subscribers also get my deepest gratitude and Orca Alert! on most Sundays. It’s a weekly round-up of links about art, culture, crime, and killer whales.