![]() ![]() He’ll get justice even if it means murdering everyone in the town on Personville. As a consequence, he embarks on a killing spree that renders him “blood simple” (the source of the title of the excellent Coen Brothers’ film). (Of course, after reading this, I feel as if my imagination is fairly limited.) In that one, our Continental Op is a man determined to find justice in a world too flawed to provide it. As far as I’m concerned, this comes as close as anything I can imagine to capturing the spirit of Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest, arguably the first great hardboiled work of literature. All the better, I suppose this is so radical and disturbing that I’m comforted to feel I’m not quite alone in my admiration. ![]() ![]() Apparently quite a few people already admire what Evenson’s doing. ![]() At least that’s the impression I get from the solid appreciation by Peter Straub that serves as the afterword to the edition I read. I gather I’m late to the Brian Evenson party. It’s also an extraordinary novel, maybe even a masterpiece, so I’m glad I did. If I’d had a clearer understanding of what this was about, I would never have picked it up. It will either give you nightmares from what it says or give you nightmares for what your not reacting to it says about you. It’s unsettling in what it has to say and in how it says it. It opens with a man reflecting on how he recently had his hand chopped off with a cleaver, and then it gets only darker and bloodier. It is as violent and nihilistic as anything I’ve ever read. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |