Let's Talk About Scary Stuff

I've had The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (and other stories) on my shelf for a while now. The same $3.95 copy I picked up from Barnes & Noble at the beginning of the summer. I was planning on it being a "beach book", but instead I chose House of Leaves (which I don't recommend...although my arms looked great my the time I was done reading it). Turns out, the Jekyll Hyde book would have probably been a better choice for a couple reasons:

1. Light, easily fits in a beach bag, and it was only $4. The paper back books that I read tend to get a little more wear and tear.

As my boyfriend once stated: "I can always tell which books you've read"...but only because I nearly ruined his copy of Dubliners; it was in my backpack when I got stuck in a torrential downpour waiting for the T without an umbrella in which everything got soaked. I'm surprised Ulysses made it relatively unscathed. Only two pages fell out.

2. Now that I'm currently reading the "other stories" part of the book, I am realizing that these stories are more like the cheap romances that you pick up at an airport...except the scary, Victorian era version. These short stories were usually published in magazines, or if they were longer (like Dr. Jekyll) they were little books that only cost one shilling, giving them the nickname "shilling shockers". I can understand that these 150 page books were short, graphic, inexpensive novels that were popular in the 1800s, and not at all shocking, because obviously this is 2015, and we are all desensitized. 

So if these are like the modern day cheap-o books we pick up for beach reads, why has Stevenson been able to stay in publication for 120 years? My guess is that Dr. Jekyll (rather, Mr. Hyde) just really freaked the shit out of people. I was reading about the play version in the convenient little introduction at the beginning of the book, you know, the part where the pages are still roman numerals...and it's like any new, exciting piece of entertainment. The play caused people to faint, and scream, but by this point in time we all know the story. It was even featured in an episode of Arthur if you remember.

It's sort of like if we were going to see Weber's terrifying opera Freischütz (1821) tonight, we wouldn't really be at all frightened by the Wolf's Glen scene. Although, funny story. We watched this at the arts high school I went to, and us being high schoolers and all, noticed that in this particular production, there is a rabbit in the background jacking off. Talk about shocking. It's here if you want to see it:

So maybe there is still room to be shocked, but this scene terrified a very young Wagner who then went on to create his own fantastical operas. But the point is, we wouldn't be scared. Just be slightly mortified at what we are all watching, so we might awkwardly giggle. 

Things we are scared of now? Zombies, ghosts, monsters, Republicans. Well, the first three are the same things that were scary hundreds of years ago, but they've evolved to be terrifying. If this was shown during the time of Dr. Jekyll, people wouldn't have fainted...they would have DIED. 

mwahaha:

(Shamelessly promoting my favorite movie with the best music)

OH and speaking of monsters...

Moving on, it's important to do at least a tiny bit of research when reading books. To get a sense of the lives the lead, where they lived, what was happening during the time they were writing and how it influenced them, and I do this will all artists. Authors, painters, actors, composers, choreographers, etc. My favorite thing is to read or watch (if available) interviews, to get a sense of what these artists are like as actual humans. 

During my search for any sort of information about the author of Dr. Jekyll, and equally famous Treasure Island, I found the official Robert Louis Stevenson Website. There's even an RLS day, although I'm pretty sure it's only celebrated in his hometown of Edinburgh, Scotland. Sort of like Bloomsday, a celebration of Ulysses in Ireland.

So to sum everything up...

No, I do not think Dr. Jekyll's story is about booze, I don't think it's worth it to talk about themes (yes it's about good vs. evil and evil wins), and I don't think there is a whole lot there to analyze. I mean, let's be real, you can really analyze anything to death, but that's not what these stories are about. They are meant to be entertaining, to shock you, and to be scary. 

Yes, reading it today will be underwhelming. We know the story of Dr. Jekyll, so we know how it's going to end. A Lodging for the Night is even more anticlimactic. RLS was writing an historical thriller (yes, this happened in the Victorian era), and it takes place in Paris in 1456. Thrilling. To think of Medieval Paris is the only thing that's cool about it, because it's hard to do. Instead of the romantic walks around the Eiffel tower and eating baguettes, we're stuck with wolves roaming the streets, and people freezing to death outside. A promising opening, involving a group of drunken thieves and a murder, it  fizzles out after seven (7) pages containing dialogue about being a thief and why it's bad. 

Currently, I'm right smack in the middle of The Suicide Club, which is probably the "scariest" so far. But really it's just anxiety. Boiled down, the fate of the members depends on which cards you are dealt, which is another take on Russian roulette. I do not have a good relationship with Russian roulette (I don't know anyone who does) as it took me about a month to watch the Deer Hunter, pausing in between scenes and letting weeks pass before starting it up again. 

Do I recommend it? Sure. It's still pretty okay writing. It's a good way to pass the time on the T, or when it's slow at work. I don't really read it at home for pleasure, but that's because I'm also reading Infinite Jest and I can't bring it out of the house because it's over 1,000 pages. Plus, it's a monster that I just can't even talk about right now because I don't know how. 

Anyways, check out the RLS website. It's so nerdy. 

And if you see the book, pick it up. Totally worth the $4. 

Dead Babies: A Rather Explicit Post

 Disclaimer: this is going to be explicit, so if you're under 13 or if you're easily offended/disgusted, you might want to skip this one.

Dead babies. By now we've all heard the extraordinarily disgusting and perverse "dead baby jokes", where the teller of the joke tries to push the very limits of just how disgusting and perverse they can make them.

And that so ends the connection (disgust) between the jokes themselves and the book Dead Babies written by Martin Amis, shown below:

When I finished this book, my immediate reaction, and pardon my French, was "What the flying fuck did I just read?!" (Yes, the f-word had to be involved because there is literally no other word I can think of to explain this book).

To give you an overview without spoilers:

This book is probably the worst, yet best written book that I have ever read, that is populated by horrible, infantile assholes juxtaposed next to advanced vocabulary, doing unspeakably horrible things to each other. When they aren't being horrible to each other, they are horrible to neighbors (crapping down their chimneys), visitors (so much to say here, that I won't), and local wildlife (shooting birds after laying down seeds for them in their yard). 

The examples above that I have given are the least offensive in the entire book. There is no break in the debauchery (it's essentially about four super rich people in England who invited over three sexually adventurous friends from America to do drugs in a big house together with a really ugly fat short guy, a prostitute with "a heart of gold", and Johnny who we don't meet until the last four pages), depravity, and douchebaggery. Being published in the 70s, I had to wonder how this book was perceived in the 80s, 90s, and 00s. I don't think it aged well, but this book is glorious. It's hilariously dark, and grotesque. I've wanted to read Amis for a long, long time as he's been always in the back of my mind, and I seriously think I've stumbled upon my favorite writer. Which probably makes me really effed up. The entire book is comprised of short, fucked up back stories of each character, interlaced with the drug induced sexual encounters of the present. 

I expected satire when I opened up this book for the first time. What I didn't expect was the amount of debauchery. Once I got used to the constantly drunk and high characters, described in such a way that even someone who has never done drugs before would understand (not that I would know), I then had to adjust to the discomfort of this book. I couldn't read it on my way to work on the T, due to the fear that some curious bystander would take a look over my shoulder and read a few sentences and step back far, far away from me. I laughed, I cried out "ew!!" a few times, and then the last four pages are unexpectedly terrifying, memorable, kind of funny in a weird way, illuminating, and different from anything in the whole book. 

The entire weekend that the book takes places over is careening towards only one ending: utter destruction. It's just a matter of finding out how. What I didn't expect was what happens in the last few pages. If anything, read the damn book just to be utterly surprised. It's so surprising and over so fast, that I actually had to go back several times and reread the last chapter, just to make sure it actually happened. The characters, although unfamiliar and unsympathetic, are believable. They are engaging fuck-ups. 

If I had to pick one character to relate to, I would pick the constantly drunk, gin loving Giles, who by 12:30 in the after noon had "consumed five Gin Rickeys, four gin and tonics, three gin and its, two gin and bitters, and one gin" (Amis, 47). This could possibly reflect an outing after a particularly bad wait shift at the restaurant. My love for gin is the only thing that connects me to any other person in this book.

It's impossible to think that this book wasn't written by someone on a lot of drugs, but it's very possible that the author has done no drugs whatsoever. He writes at the beginning:

"Not only are all characters and scenes in this book entirely fictitious; most of the technical, medical, and psychological data are too. My working maxim here has been as follows: I may not know much about science but I know what I like." 

Damn.

So why the title Dead Babies? The "dead babies" in this book are the sobering moments. There is a sinister character in this book who remains a mystery until the very end, who makes his presence known in little blips of their weekend. Writing scary letters, destroying personal property, playing on irrational but very real fears of the other characters. This is a terrifying character who we as readers tend to forget exists, along with the others, in a book that is only slightly over 200 pages. He only comes into complete fruition on page 203. The book ends on page 206. 

This is a book that I could totally see being a Kubrick movie. In fact, if you mash together A Clockwork Orange and Eyes Wide Shut, you might get a sense of what this book is about. Somebody did try to make a movie adaptation. While searching for a real trailer, I found this, which gives us little information as to the plot, but offers a pretty good snapshot of what is in store:

The movie wasn't well accepted, from what I have read. Even watching interviews of Martin Amis and hearing him speak about his work, you would never expect a book like Dead Babies to be written by any sane person. I think what I like about it is that it's ballsy writing. Who writes two, count 'em: two satires...about the holocaust? 

His others works vary from fiction no non fiction, and it's very good writing based on really not good subject matter, and you feel like you're going to go to hell if you laugh, but you just can't help it sometimes. 

Just one big dead baby joke.