THE LAST HORROR NOVEL IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD
Brian Allen Carr. Lazy
Fascist Press, $9.95 paperback (128p) ISBN: 978-1621051466
The
line between genre works and literary works is one that is invoked and argued
over above and beyond its importance. Some of the most successful and most
interesting writers of the twentieth century have created great works that
straddle, blur, or evaporate this line and have done so without dwelling too
much on their breaches. It seems that many of the writers that consciously
adhere to the restrictions of genre or ‘literature’ do so mostly out of
laziness or lack of imagination, though just as often these classifiers are
placed (unwillingly even) on talented authors by others out of laziness or lack
of imagination.
The Last Horror Novel in the History of the
World, Brian Allen Carr’s latest novella, is prefaced by a rather
hyperbolic, though not totally off base, introduction by Tom Williams which
sets out to address Carr’s meshing of genre and literary styles. The preface
establishes a strange tone for the work, one that hazards drawing the reader’s
focus unduly toward the line between the two schools while distracting from the
work itself. While it is true that The
Last Horror Novel includes aspects classically considered found in either
Literary and Genre works, this is not nearly as groundbreaking, nor are the
elements as integrated as the preface would have the reader believe. Regardless,
The Last Horror Novel is a generally
enjoyable, if a little uneven, work.
The
novella follows a handful of natives of (hopefully fictional) Scrape, Texas—a
desperate, drunken, poverty stricken border town where activities for the
natives include drinkin’, fuckin’, shootin’ and little else—as they encounter a
series of horrific, apocalyptic events. It should be noted that there is a
considerable amount of blatantly illogical racism here, well used for depicting
the characters and the reality of the area.
In the
first section, Carr captures Scrape vividly in a series of vignettes, touching
all the points you would associate with a dusty border town, evoking a place we
have all heard of without unduly essentializing or sinking to stereotype. Carr’s
language pops wonderfully in this section. In only a few lines he is able,
through the description of one character, to paint a whole section of the town,
‘Mindy keeps her herpes secret. Crawls in and out of
apartments that smell of new carpet and microwaved soup.
She
knows the boys of high school intimate.
They
are sharkskin smooth and firecracker quick.
They whip in and out of her like snake
tongues tasting air.
She examines their tightness, the curls in
their hair.
Gives them more than they want of her.
Make them say her name.’
And
regularly includes gems like, ‘The black magic of bad living only looks hideous
to honest eyes.’ He builds up the stifling heat, boredom and malaise
effortlessly into an unquestionably lush world. This was the strongest section
in the novella.
Just
as we get to understand the world of Scrape, it flips upside down. Scrape is
apparently cut off from the rest of the world and an intense, bone piercing,
bottle smashing screaming infiltrates the lives of the characters. Carr
switches gears and tells us an old border ghost tale regarding ‘La Llorona,’ a
tragic character who, rather than giving her children to an unfaithful husband,
chooses to drown them. While the change between stories seems abrupt and the
prose tones down a bit, the tale of ‘La Llorona’ dovetails nicely into the
crushing sadness and despair of Scrape.
The
next section is a semi-comic depiction of the residents of Scrape as they come
to terms with ‘La Llorona’ and the horde of zombified children she leads into a
nearby body of water. Here, the work
takes on its more standard horror genre aspects, and I have to admit I lost a
bit of interest. A scene where a drunken group of hunters nonchalantly blows
apart the oblivious children is mildly funny, but trivializes the despairing
vision of Scrape that Carr had so painstakingly, and thoroughly, built. The
previously separate groups of characters come into contact with each other in
different ways.
As ‘La
Llarona’ and the plague of children pass, the survivors engage in the classic
horror trope and hole up in an abandoned house. Here they witness another wave,
this time a plague of autonomous black hands which crawl along the ground.
Facing their imminent demise, the survivors begin to make the tough decisions
like who should live and who should sacrifice themselves while taking out as
many of the hands as possible. Keeping with the border theme, this involves,
rather than picking straws, picking cheap beers out of a cooler. This part does
involve some thoughtful implications regarding a long sober character’s
struggle with drinking in the face of death.
The
book ends on a thoroughly absurd note, the Devil is involved, and one which
seems to have been written in with too much haste.
Overall,
The Last Horror Novel is a quick and
enjoyable read. I am tempted to say it lacks depth, though this is not totally
true. Rather, Carr builds a significant amount of depth, then seems to grow
bored with it, or at least moves to favor the standard horror aspects instead.
He revisits them here and there but does not develop them to their full extent,
which I found disappointing. While The
Last Horror Novel does engage in both genre and literary styles, these are
(unfortunately) put together piecemeal rather than used together. (May 2014)
Purchase The Last Horror Novel in the History of the
World HERE.
Reviewer bio: Sam Moss
is from Cascadia. He has had his work in theNewerYork, Signed Magazine and The
Eunoia Review. His fiction chapbook Rural Information was published in
January 2014 by the Rockwell Press Collective. He writes at perfidiousscript.blogspot.com
and nadadadamagazine.blogspot.com
