Notes for the Wounded Rooms

by Jamie Grefe

Notes For The Wounded Rooms is the latest in the RoosterVision series, which presents personal analysis alongside critical discussion of films that have had everlasting impacts on authors and their own works. Jamie Grefe's book, Notes For The Wounded Rooms, takes a detour from the previous entries, which focused on single films, and presents the reader with a chronicle of many films and how they weave in and out of the author's own life and psyche. Each "room" a different film and a different portrait of lived moments. Please, step inside...

122 pages, Paperback

Published March 1, 2018

About the author

Grefe is the author of THE MONDO VIXEN MASSACRE (Eraserhead Press), CANNIBAL FATALES (Dynatox Ministries), and MUTAGON II (Dynatox Ministries). Short stories, non-fiction, and poetry have been published in such venues as Birkensnake, elimae, New Dead Families, The Bacon Review, Sein und Werden, Counterexample Poetics, Pulp Metal Magazine, LIES/ISLE, Untoward Magazine and Gone Lawn.

Besides writing, Grefe has performed noise/experimental music alongside such acts as Runzelstirn and Gurgelstock, Magical Power Mako, Yan Jun, and Violent Onsen Geisha.

Reviews

[Janie · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Notes for the Wounded Rooms, the author explores the allure of horror movies and the ways in which he identifies with them. Each chapter, or room, is an entrance to a different facet of fear; an introduction to the roots of obsession and the mirroring of "the other" that dwells within. The text is personal, whispering of ghosts, insecurity, and the underside of the familiar.

Many of the films presented are off the bloody and beaten path. In obscurity there is discovery. The unthinkable hides behind masks, and we don these masks to unveil ourselves. In observing the indescribable on screen, we are soothed through substitution. Horror is found in all environments: within families, in the homes of strangers, and in the closest of relationships. Horror mutates and shifts perspectives, and we like to watch the worst unfold from the safety of the theatre. However, take heed of the author's closing words: "I promise to keep you safe. I cannot keep you safe." This is an artist's love song to the genre.