Mark Schiffer
A compelling and short riff on the concept of the Library of Babel as put forward by Borges. A library is (near) infinite and contains every variation of every written work. It's hell, which is not eternal. You can get out if you find the book containing your life experiences. Milleniums pass. Stuff gets bleak.
Where is the humanity of being the worst person, in the worst place, at the worst time, doing the worst things? Dirty Snow (aka: The Snow is Dirty) by Georges Simenon is a bleak, ugly experience by design. Frank is a 19-year-old piece of human trash who lives in some unnamed European city devoid of beauty. It is the middle of some kind of fascist occupation, wherein murder, human trafficking, and weapon sales go ignored while accidentally passing off a counterfeit bill can result in long-term imprisonment or torture.
For approximately 200 pages we are at Frank's side, and in his head. He commits some low-level and high-level crimes against humanity, and tromps through the snow glowering at every person who crosses his path. And yet, something about the reading experience aligns with what we know of humanity. Dirty Snow was written in 1946, with Simenon only having left Occupied France the year before – just before the War ended. One can only imagine what it would be like to immediately set out to write a crime novel set in a version of the city only just vacated which was occupied by a Fascist regime. There's something true, nightmarish, and compelling about Simenon's Dirty Snow.
Off-putting (but never overwhelmingly so) alternative history/sci fi/horror thing. Def worth a read, will undoubtedly be checking out Within the Wires at some point.
A book which is either a memoir or a fictional construct is found and published with commentary from state censors/cultural critics. It consists of the experiences of the creator of a complex form of therapy developed in response to deeply rooted childhood traumas on a universal level. These traumas are the result of WWI not ending. The therapy is meant to erase the ties between parent and child, with the goal being to simultaneously wipe out any already existing childhood memories of trauma.
This was a complex and engaging piece of grounded sci-fi. Really dug it.
Some pretty fascinating deep dives into cult life, but its shortcomings reminded me why I generally prefer to read true crime works written by people not directly involved in the events. I don't particularly want to hear about one man's journey to self-actualization when I pick up a cult book. Still, compellingly written.
Crime fiction has many shapes. Taking Charlotte Armstrong's Mischief as an example - the entirety of the novel's action takes place in and around an adjoined hotel room where an absolutely unhinged woman is babysitting a 9-year-old girl. A series of missed connections and coincidences result in potentially the worst possible thing happening to a loving, pointedly positive family. Whether or not it happens is the core of Mischief's tension.
Part of what impresses so much about this tension is that it is pulled off with a minimum of on-page violence or grotesquery. Much of Armstrong's work leans into lengthy and engaging dialogues and descriptions of facial expressions except for one knock-down prize fight in the latter half. We are so keyed into the potential “state of things” on the various fronts of the characters that the degree of suspense the novel pulls off is practically stomach-wrenching at times. Filmed as Don't Bother to Knock with Marilyn Monroe, Mischief has aged remarkably well.
It's been said that if you want to learn about the social issues and existential dilemmas of a culture, you read the crime fiction it's produced. Somehow learning about the worst possible action a person can commit and the way it can be the result of a network of influences can teach a reader how a person should and should not live their life. Frederic Brown's Here Comes a Candle (1950) not only reflects the potential horrors of living in post WWII urban society, but it does so in a shockingly contemporary manner. It is unflinchingly grotesque and readable.
Brown's protagonist, Joe Baily, is just trying to make his way through life in the city. He's making next-to-no cash, and none of it legitimately. A series of bizarre and upsetting childhood events have left him reeling with traumas with incalculable consequences. The terrors of the nuclear age leave Baily and his acquaintances uncertain of life's moral center. And yet, as a human with agency, what's a guy to do?
Possibly the most fascinating element of Here Comes a Candle is its structure. Scattered throughout the work are flashbacks which alter the medium of the text. We have a play, a radio drama, a scientific description of a videotaped dream, a sportscast, and a newspaper article. Each of these serves to illuminate both Joe's interior life and his past experiences. Though this framework is inventive, it never comes across as gimmicky. Here Comes a Candle was recently reissued by Centipede Press, but exhaustingly this release now appears to be OOP. One can only hope a different publisher puts it back out. Perhaps Valancourt, or Hard Case Crime?