Fantastic Metropolis

Books

Alphabetical by author, assorted books read in 2003, two of which actually came out in 2003.

The Off Season, Jack Cady

A novel filled with absurdity and warmth, which I had been meaning to read since it came out in 1995. In it, a narrative “we” tells the story of unique town in the Pacific Northwest, looking back on a past cataclysm between good and evil. Cady was a master whose recent passing leaves a gap the size of the world.

The Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke, Mark Chadbourn

I don’t know anything about Chadbourn’s other fiction, but I found this novella fascinating, a story of dark, hidden forces and obsession with art. What if the painter Richard Dadd could really see fairies when he painted The Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke? They might not be happy about it.

The Course of the Heart, M. John Harrison

The story of three college friends who perform a ritual that they regret for the rest of their lives. Dark and compelling, with characters so suspended in their own misery they are impervious to anything else. Published in England in 1992, Night Shade Books is giving it its first U.S. release in 2004.

Our Lady of Darkness, Fritz Leiber

This is a classic novel of dark weird fiction that I finally got around to trying. Reading it was like talking to a long-lost cousin. What took me so long?

The Knight Has Died, Cees Nooteboom

A writer named Steenkamp dies in Barcelona after spending time on a nearby island, and another writer comes to complete Steenkamp’s last work, a book about a writer who dies. The moody and complex story drifts back and forth from the living writer (first person past tense) to the deceased Steenkamp (third person present tense), accompanied by bursts of beautiful, dreamy prose.

Pedro Páramo, Juan Rulfo

A young man, at his dying mother’s last wish, travels to the village of Comala to confront Pedro Páramo, the father he never knew. It sounds like a simple story, easily distilled to one sentence. But what strange beings does he encounter in Comala, a town populated by memories, ghosts, images of past lives? First published in Mexico in 1955, it tears linear narrative into little strips and reconfigures them forming a maze that I’m still finding my way out of.

Monstrocity, Jeffrey Thomas

Somehow combining Lovecraftian elder gods with his own Punktown milieu, Thomas has created a fun tale of love and (literally) monstrous corporate greed.

Veniss Underground, Jeff VanderMeer

Part retelling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, part nightmare vision of an anarchic, bureaucratic world inhabited by people just like you and me, plus a mad inventor named Quinn and his genetically engineered meerkats. The scene in the hall of body parts is incredible.

Louisiana Breakdown, Lucius Shepard

As has been said elsewhere on this site, Shepard produced a lot of amazing fiction in 2003. Funny, because of his lush prose, he’s not thought of as a minimalist, but this short novel illustrates his skill with setting, language, and a complex story that some would have drawn out to 400 pages, but which he distills into its essential elements.

Music

Just An American Boy, Steve Earle

Both live album and anti-war statement. I read an article last year about how protest songs are soon dated. If the message of this album is ever dated, it will mean the world is in a much better place–I’ll be happy with that and I’m sure Earle will too.

The Party Platform… Our Schedule is Change!, Total Sound Group Direct Action Committee

The latest from guitarist Tim Kerr (Big Boys, Poison 13, Lord High Fixers) and vocalist Mike Carroll (also Poison 13 and Lord High Fixers). Ragged blues-punk. Guitars growl, organs squeak, and voices bark out a series of intense journeys into the realm of the raw.

Hala Strana, Hala Strana

Improvisational instrumentals based on Eastern European music. Sometimes dreamy, sometimes screeching playing with a ragged insistence, featuring an assortment instruments, including guitar, cello, violin, harmonium, optigan, drums, gourd guitar, clay flowerpots, glockenspiel, bottles, harpsichord, and laundry cart.

Reissues

With These Hands, Alejandro Escovedo

With Escovedo suffering from Hepatitis C and lacking health insurance, Rykodisc re-issued this out-of-print 1996 album and added a bonus disc of an outtake and parts of two live sets, one electric, one acoustic. The combination makes it a great introduction to his music.

Positively and For the Country, Dumptruck

I don’t have these yet, but I will soon. Dumptruck was one of my favorite guitar-pop bands of the mid-1980s, and this is the first cd releases for both of these albums, Positively (1986) and For the Country (1987).

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Robert Freeman Wexler is the author of In Springdale Town (PS Publishing, 2003), a novella, and Circus of the Grand Design, a novel forthcoming from Prime Books in the Summer of 2004.