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Move Under Ground
"Readers will be enthralled, chilled, and astonished." — Tom Piccirilli, author of A Choir of Ill Children
Somewhere back in the 1960s, the stars align for the rising of Old R'lyeh from the depths of the Pacific Ocean. The first witness to this portent of humanity's certain doom happens to be Jack Kerouac. The pioneering Beat author recognizes Cthulhu, H. P. Lovecraft's deity of cosmic entropy, as the source of modern-day conformity, commercialism, and complacency. Kerouac loses no time in recruiting fellow Beats Neal Cassady and William S. Burroughs for a battle against the devastations of the Lovecraftian gods and their "Cult of Utter Normalcy." Together, the three set out on a road trip from California to New York to end the madness — unless it overwhelms them first.
"Those who appreciate sophisticated, progressive horror and fantasy fiction should eat it up." — Publishers Weekly
"A damned fine novel . . . Horror fans looking for something different will definitely enjoy this, and fans of the Beats should find more than enough good stuff here for them as well." — Bookslut
Somewhere back in the 1960s, the stars align for the rising of Old R'lyeh from the depths of the Pacific Ocean. The first witness to this portent of humanity's certain doom happens to be Jack Kerouac. The pioneering Beat author recognizes Cthulhu, H. P. Lovecraft's deity of cosmic entropy, as the source of modern-day conformity, commercialism, and complacency. Kerouac loses no time in recruiting fellow Beats Neal Cassady and William S. Burroughs for a battle against the devastations of the Lovecraftian gods and their "Cult of Utter Normalcy." Together, the three set out on a road trip from California to New York to end the madness — unless it overwhelms them first.
"Those who appreciate sophisticated, progressive horror and fantasy fiction should eat it up." — Publishers Weekly
"A damned fine novel . . . Horror fans looking for something different will definitely enjoy this, and fans of the Beats should find more than enough good stuff here for them as well." — Bookslut
176 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
34 people are currently reading
752 people want to read
About the author
Nick Mamatas
187 books246 followersNick Mamatas is the author of the Lovecraftian Beat road novel Move Under Ground, which was nominated for both the Bram Stoker and International Horror Guild awards, the Civil War ghost story Northern Gothic, also a Stoker nominee, the suburban nighmare novel Under My Roof, and over thirty short stories and hundreds of articles (some of which were collected in 3000 Miles Per Hour in Every Direction at Once). His work has appeared in Razor, Village Voice, Spex, Clamor, In These Times, Polyphony, several Disinformation and Ben Bella Books anthologies, and the books Corpse Blossoms, Poe's Lighthouse, Before & After: Stories from New York, and Short and Sweet.
Nick's forthcoming works include the collection You Might Sleep... (November 2008) and Haunted Legends, an anthology with Ellen Datlow (Tor Books 2009).
A native New Yorker, Nick now lives in the California Bay Area.
Nick's forthcoming works include the collection You Might Sleep... (November 2008) and Haunted Legends, an anthology with Ellen Datlow (Tor Books 2009).
A native New Yorker, Nick now lives in the California Bay Area.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 68 reviews
October 11, 2019
Spooktober read #3!
I am ashamed to say that this has been on my shelves for so long that I actually can’t remember buying it. But to be fair, the timing for finally getting around to “Move Under Ground” couldn’t have been more perfect, as I just re-read “The Dharma Bums” (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... the manic-style Mr. Kerouac is so well-known for was still fresh in my mind, and I was excited to see how he would handle Cthulhu.
As any Christopher Guest fan knows, you have to love something to make fun of it well. I knew Mamatas loved Lovecraft (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), but I didn’t know he loved the Beats too! In “Move Under Ground”, he brings the two together wonderfully. After sleeping for eons, Cthulhu and his sunken city of R’lyeh surface near Big Sur, where Jack Kerouac is busy doing what he does best: writing and drinking. He grabs his friends Neal Cassady and William Burroughs and they drive East, in an attempt to outrun the Ancient Ones flooding their beloved West Coast, but it won’t be smooth sailing for the freewheeling Beats: there will be plenty of Elder Gods, cultists and hallucinatory twists and turns along the way.
I must say, I am pretty glad that someone else thinks that Neal Cassady was a morally bankrupted SOB. I am so tired of Neal/Dean being idolized, but I was pleased to see that Mamatas doesn’t seem to like him much either. And the idea of conformists as the evil agents of the Lovecraftian pantheon is a fascinating perspective. He also cleverly weaves Kerouac’s interest in Buddhism into the narrative, and perfectly captures the way his fellow writers, such as Ginsberg or Burroughs, would react when faced with world-ending tentacular monstrosities.
Mamatas does something amazing with his set up: he captures the rhythmic, often disjointed but vividly evocative style that Kerouac wrote in when he was at top form. This makes this Cthulhu apocalypse feel wild and disorienting, in the same way “On the Road” felt. – and I loved it! But while Mamatas pays a loving homage to the King of Beats, he also doesn’t glorify him: he is very lucid about Kerouac’s flaws and shortcomings.
Sure, this has “gimmicky crossover” written all over it, but it’s fun, surprisingly clever, and a really remarkable homage to two great writers who were both extremely flawed men, but nevertheless left a lasting influence on the books we read. Obviously. I think Mamatas is a very underrated writer, and I would recommend his work to any fans of cerebral Lovecraftiana.
4 and a half stars.
I am ashamed to say that this has been on my shelves for so long that I actually can’t remember buying it. But to be fair, the timing for finally getting around to “Move Under Ground” couldn’t have been more perfect, as I just re-read “The Dharma Bums” (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... the manic-style Mr. Kerouac is so well-known for was still fresh in my mind, and I was excited to see how he would handle Cthulhu.
As any Christopher Guest fan knows, you have to love something to make fun of it well. I knew Mamatas loved Lovecraft (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), but I didn’t know he loved the Beats too! In “Move Under Ground”, he brings the two together wonderfully. After sleeping for eons, Cthulhu and his sunken city of R’lyeh surface near Big Sur, where Jack Kerouac is busy doing what he does best: writing and drinking. He grabs his friends Neal Cassady and William Burroughs and they drive East, in an attempt to outrun the Ancient Ones flooding their beloved West Coast, but it won’t be smooth sailing for the freewheeling Beats: there will be plenty of Elder Gods, cultists and hallucinatory twists and turns along the way.
I must say, I am pretty glad that someone else thinks that Neal Cassady was a morally bankrupted SOB. I am so tired of Neal/Dean being idolized, but I was pleased to see that Mamatas doesn’t seem to like him much either. And the idea of conformists as the evil agents of the Lovecraftian pantheon is a fascinating perspective. He also cleverly weaves Kerouac’s interest in Buddhism into the narrative, and perfectly captures the way his fellow writers, such as Ginsberg or Burroughs, would react when faced with world-ending tentacular monstrosities.
Mamatas does something amazing with his set up: he captures the rhythmic, often disjointed but vividly evocative style that Kerouac wrote in when he was at top form. This makes this Cthulhu apocalypse feel wild and disorienting, in the same way “On the Road” felt. – and I loved it! But while Mamatas pays a loving homage to the King of Beats, he also doesn’t glorify him: he is very lucid about Kerouac’s flaws and shortcomings.
Sure, this has “gimmicky crossover” written all over it, but it’s fun, surprisingly clever, and a really remarkable homage to two great writers who were both extremely flawed men, but nevertheless left a lasting influence on the books we read. Obviously. I think Mamatas is a very underrated writer, and I would recommend his work to any fans of cerebral Lovecraftiana.
4 and a half stars.
August 6, 2013
I may be the wrong person to review this book. I've never read any of the Beat writers who Nick Mamatas lovingly imitates and appropriates in this book, not even Kerouac's On the Road.
I have, however, read plenty of Lovecraft, and other authors treading in Lovecraft's mythos. And, umm, I grew up in California. Albeit not in the 60s. So I kinda know what Mamatas is playing with here.
Move Under Ground was Mamatas's debut novel, and it's quite a trippy read. It really is about Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, and Neal Cassady trying to save the world from Cthulhu.
R'lyeh rises in the Pacific, and Cthulhu hangs as a ghostly specter over the West Coast. The world starts going mad. San Francisco is flooded. So Jack Kerouac hits the road heading East. He hooks up with his buddies Bill and Neal and they try to outrun the end of the world, even as Azathoth is absorbing the East Coast. There are cameos by Allen Ginsberg and probably a bunch of other people whose references I missed.
So, is this a Beat novel or a Lovecraft mythos novel? It's both! As I said, I have not read any of the Beat writers, but Mamatas sure has a compelling and convincing style here, and at the same time, he captures the hopeless, alien madness of encountering the Elder Gods like few Lovecraftian authors I have seen. As Kerouac and his blitzed, boozy buddies drift through the blasted Midwest, a Shoggoth-infested Chicago, and on to a post-apocalyptic New York, it's not so much an adventure as a road trip through a hell that would make Virgil piss his pants.
It's a bleak, bleak trip, man. Full of shoggoth orgies and rivers of shit and unspeakable blasphemies.
It may be hard to follow the narrative since Kerouac is narrating like Kerouac and he's stoned most of the time (who can blame him?). Images are nightmarish and surreal. Cthulhu filling the sky as a new feature in the celestial firmament. A man pinching stars out between his fingers. Shoggoth orgies.
The plot is barely there, though there is a climax.
For all that it's an absurd concept, Move Under Ground is a brief little aberration with literary chops, written by an MFA-ish writer who embraces genre fiction and gives it a big sloppy kiss with tongue, then adds tentacles and grue.
That said, I can't say this book really made me want to read On The Road. Not my style, Daddy-O. But if you are into either Beat prose or Lovecraft, even if the mixing of the two sounds bizarre, then you should certainly check out this unique work. 3.5 stars, which I'd like to bump to 4 but despite my bemusement by the concept and my appreciation of Mamatas's literary stunt-writing, the story ended up being too much a vehicle for the style and the author's cleverness.
I have, however, read plenty of Lovecraft, and other authors treading in Lovecraft's mythos. And, umm, I grew up in California. Albeit not in the 60s. So I kinda know what Mamatas is playing with here.
Move Under Ground was Mamatas's debut novel, and it's quite a trippy read. It really is about Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, and Neal Cassady trying to save the world from Cthulhu.
R'lyeh rises in the Pacific, and Cthulhu hangs as a ghostly specter over the West Coast. The world starts going mad. San Francisco is flooded. So Jack Kerouac hits the road heading East. He hooks up with his buddies Bill and Neal and they try to outrun the end of the world, even as Azathoth is absorbing the East Coast. There are cameos by Allen Ginsberg and probably a bunch of other people whose references I missed.
So, is this a Beat novel or a Lovecraft mythos novel? It's both! As I said, I have not read any of the Beat writers, but Mamatas sure has a compelling and convincing style here, and at the same time, he captures the hopeless, alien madness of encountering the Elder Gods like few Lovecraftian authors I have seen. As Kerouac and his blitzed, boozy buddies drift through the blasted Midwest, a Shoggoth-infested Chicago, and on to a post-apocalyptic New York, it's not so much an adventure as a road trip through a hell that would make Virgil piss his pants.
Great Chicago glowed red before our eyes. We were suddenly on Madison Street among hordes of cultists, some of them sprawled out on the street, elongated chitinous scythes where their hands used to be dragging across the ground, hundreds of others gathered around storefront churches or crowded onto corners, all waiting and buzzing. "Wup! Wup! Neal approaches! The Man Of Two Worlds, chosen one of Azathoth! All hail Neal!" I cut the wheel hard and proceeded to downtown Chicago, but there wasn't a true human on the streets anymore. Only mockeries of life: flatulent mugwumps in clouds of swampgas, children oozing along the streets on a mass of thick cilia, hawking newspapers of human skin scrawled with unspeakable blasphemies, letters you couldn't even trace upon a page without the madness coming for you. And those were the remnants of our sweet race, the folks who were people once before R'lyeh rose and the missiles tore their way up from the deserts--there were plenty of pretty girls with a smile for our dream car and swarthy working stiffs, chests broad as barrels and V-shaped torsos leading to chinos and black boots, but there were not women, they were not women, they were not men. Shoggoths to a being they were, phalanges, avatars of insanity and destruction mocking me with human form and countenance.
It's a bleak, bleak trip, man. Full of shoggoth orgies and rivers of shit and unspeakable blasphemies.
It may be hard to follow the narrative since Kerouac is narrating like Kerouac and he's stoned most of the time (who can blame him?). Images are nightmarish and surreal. Cthulhu filling the sky as a new feature in the celestial firmament. A man pinching stars out between his fingers. Shoggoth orgies.
The plot is barely there, though there is a climax.
I nearly gave it all away, but under the world I made, I saw the one Neal made: drowned coasts, the dead everywhere, clicking beetlemen working in their dark, satanic mills, illusions of gilded trade laid bare. Was it any less beautiful? Of course not--misery is mayfly, beauty dross. Only the spirit, ineffable, remains eternal. There was a choice though; I was given a coin and just had to flip it. And there was a choice for me too.
To be Buddha, to embrace bliss, and leave the world as I'd left it after my travels, in ruins. Or to cut loose the silver chord, to set the world alight by offering up my own divine spark, my chance for escape from suffering. Psychic suicide, that's what it was, nothing less. I'd pour every single joy I ever had into Creation, or it would collapse back into Neal's nightmare. Or I could wring myself dry like a dishrag, and walk the earth dead inside, the neighborhood dog-catcher or the blocked writer in front of an eternally blank and unspoiled page, without even the buzz of sweet Marie in my ear anymore.
What's the difference between having no desire and having desire for nothingness? Neal didn't know; that's why he threw his lot in with late-night poker games and cross-country chases for his own tail. He loved his own Nealness too much to lose it without wanting to take the rest of us with him. He desired nothingness, but thought he had no desire. How could the Dark Dreamer not awaken from his feverish sleep and embrace the poor boy? I wasn't too clear on the distinction between the two choices myself, really, but rational thought isn't the key to answering the irrational question, is it?
For all that it's an absurd concept, Move Under Ground is a brief little aberration with literary chops, written by an MFA-ish writer who embraces genre fiction and gives it a big sloppy kiss with tongue, then adds tentacles and grue.
That said, I can't say this book really made me want to read On The Road. Not my style, Daddy-O. But if you are into either Beat prose or Lovecraft, even if the mixing of the two sounds bizarre, then you should certainly check out this unique work. 3.5 stars, which I'd like to bump to 4 but despite my bemusement by the concept and my appreciation of Mamatas's literary stunt-writing, the story ended up being too much a vehicle for the style and the author's cleverness.
October 13, 2007
"What if H.P. Lovecraft's cosmic demons showed up in a Jack Kerouac novel": this could be a gimmicky lark like the Sherlock-Holmes-versus-Dracula kind of thing various people have done, or it could be the kind of dense historical fantasy that Tim Powers is good at, but Mamatas is on to something different. For one thing, he writes the whole thing as Kerouac, not just mimicking his style but with a real feeling for his character and for the things he cared about. But he's also got a good reason for this particular mash-up, a very ambitious reason - and he lets you know this right off by breaking the first promise such stories normally make, which is to leave something unscathed. It's not just our heroes in a secret skirmish with monsters in the sewer; no, Cthulhu has pretty much taken over the world, America is now a dreamlike hell and we are all screwed. Raise your hand if you sometimes feel like that.
Lovecraft wrote a lot about ultimate evil waiting to destroy our bodies and souls - and he wrote like someone who knew nothing about life except what he'd read in Victorian pulp or in Poe, but he still managed to express, in his verbose and nerdy way, the postwar feeling that the established order had cracked and revealed something rotten at the core. What exactly it would mean for it to crack all the way wasn't something he cared to go into, but, thirty years and another world war later, the Beat writers were part of a shift in attention toward those fractures and what might come out of them. What's destruction, what's insanity, is it good or bad; what's humanity, what's freedom, what's worth keeping?
So, following Kerouac's own tendency to assign mythic roles to his friends, Mamatas uses the Beats for different responses to the question: "What do you do when the status quo seems very very wrong?" William Burroughs is the best equipped to deal with Cthulhian America: slimy appendages, half-human authority figures and gratuitous cruelty were how he already saw the world, and now he gets to shoot monsters. Allen Ginsberg laughs and retreats into private playtime. Jack can't go either way - he's too interested in people, and he's trying to practice Buddhist compassionate detachment, a point of view that doesn't grant any special status to the apocalypse. Mamatas writes very convincingly from that point of view, and it's a startling effect, undercutting the nihilistic horror of Lovecraft and Burroughs with humane bemusement at the ways people fall into illusion and violence. The Cthulhu cultists aren't the slavering savages Lovecraft was afraid of; they're conformist citizens in a late-stage fascist delirium, dancing to entertain children that they forgot they killed. (The oddly warm-hearted tone, within the carnival of atrocities, also lets Mamatas be very funny. In one of several little travelogue scenes that would've fit perfectly in On the Road , a small-town waitress snickers at the pretensions of local demon-worshippers, who've "never seen a tentacle" because they're landlocked in the Midwest.)
The plot, if it's a plot, is provided by Jack's unstable friend Neal Cassady, whose descent into even worse behavior gives Jack something to focus on. Neal thinks the breakdown of reality is long overdue, and he's advanced from con-man to sorcerer without getting any smarter. Pursuing him into the ruins of New York allows Mamatas to bring the epic horror story back in touch with the personal one. It's no surprise that Jack's final effort to connect with this damaged guy is directly related to the last hope of the world, but the last scene is still a surprise. The ending, though it seems just right and is written with love, is hard to take for the same reasons that real life is hard to take.
Lovecraft wrote a lot about ultimate evil waiting to destroy our bodies and souls - and he wrote like someone who knew nothing about life except what he'd read in Victorian pulp or in Poe, but he still managed to express, in his verbose and nerdy way, the postwar feeling that the established order had cracked and revealed something rotten at the core. What exactly it would mean for it to crack all the way wasn't something he cared to go into, but, thirty years and another world war later, the Beat writers were part of a shift in attention toward those fractures and what might come out of them. What's destruction, what's insanity, is it good or bad; what's humanity, what's freedom, what's worth keeping?
So, following Kerouac's own tendency to assign mythic roles to his friends, Mamatas uses the Beats for different responses to the question: "What do you do when the status quo seems very very wrong?" William Burroughs is the best equipped to deal with Cthulhian America: slimy appendages, half-human authority figures and gratuitous cruelty were how he already saw the world, and now he gets to shoot monsters. Allen Ginsberg laughs and retreats into private playtime. Jack can't go either way - he's too interested in people, and he's trying to practice Buddhist compassionate detachment, a point of view that doesn't grant any special status to the apocalypse. Mamatas writes very convincingly from that point of view, and it's a startling effect, undercutting the nihilistic horror of Lovecraft and Burroughs with humane bemusement at the ways people fall into illusion and violence. The Cthulhu cultists aren't the slavering savages Lovecraft was afraid of; they're conformist citizens in a late-stage fascist delirium, dancing to entertain children that they forgot they killed. (The oddly warm-hearted tone, within the carnival of atrocities, also lets Mamatas be very funny. In one of several little travelogue scenes that would've fit perfectly in On the Road , a small-town waitress snickers at the pretensions of local demon-worshippers, who've "never seen a tentacle" because they're landlocked in the Midwest.)
The plot, if it's a plot, is provided by Jack's unstable friend Neal Cassady, whose descent into even worse behavior gives Jack something to focus on. Neal thinks the breakdown of reality is long overdue, and he's advanced from con-man to sorcerer without getting any smarter. Pursuing him into the ruins of New York allows Mamatas to bring the epic horror story back in touch with the personal one. It's no surprise that Jack's final effort to connect with this damaged guy is directly related to the last hope of the world, but the last scene is still a surprise. The ending, though it seems just right and is written with love, is hard to take for the same reasons that real life is hard to take.
October 7, 2008
Have you ever thought to yourself, "In a cosmic battle for the future of the world who would win; Jack Kerouac or Chthulu?" OK, you're right, it never even occurred to me either before I heard about Move Under Ground. Which is why it's just about the most preposterously cool premise I've heard for a book in a long time. So of course I had to read it.
Move Under Ground has more going for it than just a good gimmick. Mamatas smoothly overlays the dark, secretive world of H.P. Lovecraft's with the hallucinatory stream-of-conscious commentary of Kerouac at his best to produce one hell of a road trip. The Chthulu world seen through a wasted beat's eyes allows for lavishly horrifying visions. With William Burroughs as Kerouac's sidekick on the ride there are darkly hilarious moments as well.
What really makes this book a treasure is the prose. Move Under Ground is a mine of electric phrases and neon imagery bursting from blackness. But don't try to read this book in the midst of distractions. It requires concentration and imagination to picture everything Mamatas describes.
Move Under Ground has more going for it than just a good gimmick. Mamatas smoothly overlays the dark, secretive world of H.P. Lovecraft's with the hallucinatory stream-of-conscious commentary of Kerouac at his best to produce one hell of a road trip. The Chthulu world seen through a wasted beat's eyes allows for lavishly horrifying visions. With William Burroughs as Kerouac's sidekick on the ride there are darkly hilarious moments as well.
What really makes this book a treasure is the prose. Move Under Ground is a mine of electric phrases and neon imagery bursting from blackness. But don't try to read this book in the midst of distractions. It requires concentration and imagination to picture everything Mamatas describes.
August 9, 2007
It's a really spot-on imitation of Jack Kerouac's style and a pretty well-researched portrayal of Keruoac, Neal Cassady, and William Burroughs, as well as an interesting look at the Cthulhu mythos. However, as an actual plot, waaaaay too much gets resolved by random magic and coincidence and deus ex machina--a point that gets explicitly addressed by the narrator (Jack Kerouac) but not actually resolved in a satisfactory way.
In the end, it feels a bit too dreamlike and consequence-free for me to fully recommend it. But it was a good enough read while it happened to say that I'm glad I read it.
In the end, it feels a bit too dreamlike and consequence-free for me to fully recommend it. But it was a good enough read while it happened to say that I'm glad I read it.
January 13, 2011
Confession: Just before I started reading this book I'd inwardly decided that this would be the last non-Lovecraft Cthulhu themed book I would read. Cthulhu has of late become a cute, and cuddly icon of ironic horror, and the original miasma of unknown dread the character was supposed to have has--for me--become totally lost amongst the internet memes, and cartoon depictions. Along comes MOVE UNDER GROUND.
MOVE UNDER GROUND has very little, if any, of the kitsch and wink/nod that you'd expect from something this thematically high-concept; Jack Kerouac and the Beats vs. Cthulhu. I was expecting a "cool-daddy-o" stream of consciousness road-trip across America ending with a super-heroic Kerouac bare-knuckle brawling with an elder god in a coffee, I couldn't have gotten more different experience.
MOVE UNDER GROUND reads a lot like a lost Kerouac novel; it's filled with the bodhisattva philosophy that populates Kerouac's actual novels, and while it may not be pitch-perfect, it hits the right notes at the right times. It also contains some very good horror writing, as Kerouac and his dharma bums travel across a nightmare apocalypse America that has fallen under the thrall of Cthulhu and the Old Ones. Beatniks and hipsters remain untouched by the taint of the elder gods, but the straighter the suit, the more insectoid and deformed they become. The country is transformed into a wild landscape of lurid horror-- trains become giant white worms crawling the rails, small town folk shout and kill and revel in death, translucent tentacles shroud the sky, worming their way into the hearts and minds of all the squares.
*maybe spoilers*
Kerouac is his Sal Paradise character here, seemingly just along for the ride, observing, vacillating between desire and detachment, pushed by the Buddha's palm toward his final destination. Neal Cassady is a vibrating grifter, making off-page deals with terrible gods for terrible power all in the name of truth and adventure. Seeking the role of the hero, but often becoming the heel. Burroughs is played for laughs, mostly. A reedy junky, detached and almost as insect-like as the shoggoths he fights.
*maybe spoilers*
Just when I thought all of the horror had been drained from the dead dreamer, Mamatas found a way to make Cthulhu scary again.
MOVE UNDER GROUND has very little, if any, of the kitsch and wink/nod that you'd expect from something this thematically high-concept; Jack Kerouac and the Beats vs. Cthulhu. I was expecting a "cool-daddy-o" stream of consciousness road-trip across America ending with a super-heroic Kerouac bare-knuckle brawling with an elder god in a coffee, I couldn't have gotten more different experience.
MOVE UNDER GROUND reads a lot like a lost Kerouac novel; it's filled with the bodhisattva philosophy that populates Kerouac's actual novels, and while it may not be pitch-perfect, it hits the right notes at the right times. It also contains some very good horror writing, as Kerouac and his dharma bums travel across a nightmare apocalypse America that has fallen under the thrall of Cthulhu and the Old Ones. Beatniks and hipsters remain untouched by the taint of the elder gods, but the straighter the suit, the more insectoid and deformed they become. The country is transformed into a wild landscape of lurid horror-- trains become giant white worms crawling the rails, small town folk shout and kill and revel in death, translucent tentacles shroud the sky, worming their way into the hearts and minds of all the squares.
*maybe spoilers*
Kerouac is his Sal Paradise character here, seemingly just along for the ride, observing, vacillating between desire and detachment, pushed by the Buddha's palm toward his final destination. Neal Cassady is a vibrating grifter, making off-page deals with terrible gods for terrible power all in the name of truth and adventure. Seeking the role of the hero, but often becoming the heel. Burroughs is played for laughs, mostly. A reedy junky, detached and almost as insect-like as the shoggoths he fights.
*maybe spoilers*
Just when I thought all of the horror had been drained from the dead dreamer, Mamatas found a way to make Cthulhu scary again.
January 11, 2018
At first, this sounds what in fanfic circles is apparently known as "crack": an idea, a pairing, a crossover so absolutely ludicrous it's too weird and too much fun NOT to read. Like Winnie the Pooh fighting vampires in Sunnydale, or Mohammad on The Cosby Show.
But actually, it makes sense, in a somewhat twisted sort of way. The story is narrated by Jack Kerouac in something that... well, it's been a while since I read On The Road (in Swedish), so I really can't say whether Mamatas apes Kerouac or parodies him, but the prose flows in a jazzy, half-crazy manner that's often a delight to read. And somehow Mamatas manages to marry the beatnik counter-culture thing via Burroughs' bugmen and mugwumps to the huge, impersonal monsters of Lovecraft - or rather, not the monsters themselves but the underlying theme of an ancient, evil world looming just below the surface, the futility of mankind in a world where evil gods can snuff us out without hardly noticing us.
Had I seen the Beast in the sky - the tentacles, snaky scales, the deep burning eyes? Oh yes, under the full moon and everything, "All the hipsters can see him," he said. "Squares can't, and that's the trouble. That's why we have to move under ground now."
Once you're exposed to Lovecraft's monsters, you go mad; somehow this ties in nicely with Kerouac's buddhist leanings and a general anti-consumerist non-conformist spin.
Everyone dies. The soul is immortal. This isn't even real; it's an illusion. The world, it's a mad dream of a blind god.
Mamatas acknowledges two of the 20th century's greatest myth-makers - both Lovecraft and Kerouac created (or were credited with creating) genres, worlds of their own, and as such he lets them create yet a new (or possibly) old world here. He does let his fanboy tendencies get the better of him once or twice, and at times he seems more interested in just putting a somewhat more Burroughsian spin on On The Road than telling a story of his own. But in the end, he does manage to weld it all together - if not seamlessly - and creates a really fun read.
But actually, it makes sense, in a somewhat twisted sort of way. The story is narrated by Jack Kerouac in something that... well, it's been a while since I read On The Road (in Swedish), so I really can't say whether Mamatas apes Kerouac or parodies him, but the prose flows in a jazzy, half-crazy manner that's often a delight to read. And somehow Mamatas manages to marry the beatnik counter-culture thing via Burroughs' bugmen and mugwumps to the huge, impersonal monsters of Lovecraft - or rather, not the monsters themselves but the underlying theme of an ancient, evil world looming just below the surface, the futility of mankind in a world where evil gods can snuff us out without hardly noticing us.
Had I seen the Beast in the sky - the tentacles, snaky scales, the deep burning eyes? Oh yes, under the full moon and everything, "All the hipsters can see him," he said. "Squares can't, and that's the trouble. That's why we have to move under ground now."
Once you're exposed to Lovecraft's monsters, you go mad; somehow this ties in nicely with Kerouac's buddhist leanings and a general anti-consumerist non-conformist spin.
Everyone dies. The soul is immortal. This isn't even real; it's an illusion. The world, it's a mad dream of a blind god.
Mamatas acknowledges two of the 20th century's greatest myth-makers - both Lovecraft and Kerouac created (or were credited with creating) genres, worlds of their own, and as such he lets them create yet a new (or possibly) old world here. He does let his fanboy tendencies get the better of him once or twice, and at times he seems more interested in just putting a somewhat more Burroughsian spin on On The Road than telling a story of his own. But in the end, he does manage to weld it all together - if not seamlessly - and creates a really fun read.
February 3, 2010
Read and enjoyed Move Under Ground by Nick Mamatas last week. It really got me thinking on the old chestnut of writing about historical events and persons--do you write in such a way that someone with zero knowledge of the subject matter going into the novel will be able to follow--at the risk of being overly expository--or do you just plunge in and write for yourself and others who are intimate with the material? The way I write is to (attempt to) juggle the two, including tidbits the aficionado will appreciate that won't punish the ignorant reader, so that you're both educating the novice and rewarding those in the know. In re: Move Under Ground, I'm at least roughly familiar with the cast and especially of Burroughs so never felt lost though I'm sure a great deal of nuance went over my head, but never so much that I minded. Or rather, noticed.
I first heard about the novel before having read any of Mamatas's short fiction and so reacted to it in the same way I reacted to hearing about Warren Ellis' Transmetropolitan way back when: like a complete dumbass. Hearing "it's a SF comic book about an obvious Hunter Thompson character" instilled me with the same amount of confidence or interest as "it's a novel about the Beats facing off against the Old Ones," which is to say, very little. Yet in both cases when I finally checked out the work in question all I could do was kick myself for being such a doubting Thomas--just because I can't imagine a successful fusion of such things doesn't mean it's not possible. Mamatas's novel is the sort of pastiche that makes you wince when you use the word "pastiche" to describe it, because it seems so much better than the p-word would imply. A very fun novel, excellently written.
I first heard about the novel before having read any of Mamatas's short fiction and so reacted to it in the same way I reacted to hearing about Warren Ellis' Transmetropolitan way back when: like a complete dumbass. Hearing "it's a SF comic book about an obvious Hunter Thompson character" instilled me with the same amount of confidence or interest as "it's a novel about the Beats facing off against the Old Ones," which is to say, very little. Yet in both cases when I finally checked out the work in question all I could do was kick myself for being such a doubting Thomas--just because I can't imagine a successful fusion of such things doesn't mean it's not possible. Mamatas's novel is the sort of pastiche that makes you wince when you use the word "pastiche" to describe it, because it seems so much better than the p-word would imply. A very fun novel, excellently written.
February 14, 2011
Beatniks vs. Cthulhu. Abyssmal. I have a problem with quitting a book once I've started it, even though I should. This blessedly short novel is a Lovecraftian homage to (rather than a parody of) the "Beat" literature of the 40's and 50's as exemplified by Jack Kerouac. The premise of the book is that Cthulhu has risen and begun the conquest of 1960's America. For some reason the only people immune to the Call are the down-and-out members of society like junkies and Beatniks. Even against Cthulhu I could not cheer for a band of "heroes" so morally bankrupt, and the plot was not very interesting. Not worth it even for Lovecraft fans.
February 9, 2013
A supernatural stream-of-consciousness journey-battle to keep America free and bountiful for the rich, with only a dubious band of intellectuals standing between Let Them Eat Cake Forever and the savage forces of primitivism.
That is, ghost stories for ownership who fancy themselves literates.
On the surface you have Jack Kerouac, the King of the Beat Generation, and his fellow writers tackling the rise of the Elder God Cthulhu from its dark slumber to devour and transform the world, starting with America. It's the lowdown beats, the heroes at the vanguard of counterculture, against the madness-inducing evil of unstoppable monster gods, who embody the forces of capitalism and lifelessness.
After having a horrific vision of mighty Cthulhu rising from the depths off the coast of California Jack hits the road. He has numerous adventures both on the highways and city streets of 1950's America, encountering the forces of Cthulhu along the way.
At various times he reunites with his friends from his earlier days in the beat movement. It's a race against time to reach New York and save the country (and thus the rest of the world) from magical damnation.
The writing is rather good, deftly conjuring up the substance-fueled hallucinatory insights and nightmares Jack experiences. Moments flow from one to the other much as a dream, and indeed that is what reality is becoming--a dream of madness and mutation where physical laws transform or vanish altogether.
Is it all in Jack's imagination? Is he having a schizophrenic episode where he plunges into the unconscious or is this really happening? There's little time for reflection or grounding out; this is a party of the imagination and there's no going back. The reader must surf the wave and ride this one out; the writing pulls you along.
On the deeper level there's an interesting theme going on; that of betrayal--by your peers, or through your own actions--being the very mechanism by which domination and control re-adapt to maintain themselves over the population. It's a theme that's been visited before, but this is still a fresh take.
The trouble with the story is that it gets the sides mixed up. We're on the wrong side, POV wise. A lot gets missed out as a result.
See, Lovecraft's Cthulhu works often struck me as a variation of Sherlock Holme's "squires on a night out" setup. Privileged individuals with the leisure time and funds available to investigate supernatural threats to western man's dominance of earth.
The forces of the Elder Gods such as Cthulhu mainly stood in for the forces of primitive instinct that lurked in the hearts and minds of non-persons. In other words, rich peoples' fears of the poor--that bewildered herd that might break free at any moment and decide their own fates.
The book takes the position of Cthulhu and the Elder Gods as evil--manifestations of ownership and control, of the soulless life that modern industrial death culture breeds. But I think this is a complete error, rather the Elder Gods are aligned with the forces of nature, with instinct, and our deepest selves. They're the good guys!
In the book Jack is probably portrayed accurately in that he would likely struggle against the Elder Gods, but this still feels off to me. Wouldn't the beat generation actually be trying to help Cthulhu awaken? I can't help but sense they would be fighting for revolution on a grand and natural scale by invoking those very forces of primitive nature hidden within the dark corners of the universe.
The entire conflict of the book boils down to the choice of destroying the world in madness and horror or letting it continue on but at the cost of your soul. It's a trap, of course. Obviously the moral thing to do is sacrifice yourself, but it's the old adage "you can't buy your heart's desire for the price of your heart."
I mean, we have madness and horror now! How are beetle-men in suits and shape-shifting monsters any different than what we have today? At least with Cthulhu it's all out in the open, naked, pure and honest--that's the real revolution and renewal of consciousness, and the ending of the book suggests Jack and his buddies maintained exactly what they were programmed to uphold by the system they pretended to thwart.
Whew, thank goodness! Scrooge McDuck was starting to worry he'd have to buy some hardware and see if nukes really work against Star Spawn. Now he can buy that mansion in Antarctica after all!
That is, ghost stories for ownership who fancy themselves literates.
On the surface you have Jack Kerouac, the King of the Beat Generation, and his fellow writers tackling the rise of the Elder God Cthulhu from its dark slumber to devour and transform the world, starting with America. It's the lowdown beats, the heroes at the vanguard of counterculture, against the madness-inducing evil of unstoppable monster gods, who embody the forces of capitalism and lifelessness.
After having a horrific vision of mighty Cthulhu rising from the depths off the coast of California Jack hits the road. He has numerous adventures both on the highways and city streets of 1950's America, encountering the forces of Cthulhu along the way.
At various times he reunites with his friends from his earlier days in the beat movement. It's a race against time to reach New York and save the country (and thus the rest of the world) from magical damnation.
The writing is rather good, deftly conjuring up the substance-fueled hallucinatory insights and nightmares Jack experiences. Moments flow from one to the other much as a dream, and indeed that is what reality is becoming--a dream of madness and mutation where physical laws transform or vanish altogether.
Is it all in Jack's imagination? Is he having a schizophrenic episode where he plunges into the unconscious or is this really happening? There's little time for reflection or grounding out; this is a party of the imagination and there's no going back. The reader must surf the wave and ride this one out; the writing pulls you along.
On the deeper level there's an interesting theme going on; that of betrayal--by your peers, or through your own actions--being the very mechanism by which domination and control re-adapt to maintain themselves over the population. It's a theme that's been visited before, but this is still a fresh take.
The trouble with the story is that it gets the sides mixed up. We're on the wrong side, POV wise. A lot gets missed out as a result.
See, Lovecraft's Cthulhu works often struck me as a variation of Sherlock Holme's "squires on a night out" setup. Privileged individuals with the leisure time and funds available to investigate supernatural threats to western man's dominance of earth.
The forces of the Elder Gods such as Cthulhu mainly stood in for the forces of primitive instinct that lurked in the hearts and minds of non-persons. In other words, rich peoples' fears of the poor--that bewildered herd that might break free at any moment and decide their own fates.
The book takes the position of Cthulhu and the Elder Gods as evil--manifestations of ownership and control, of the soulless life that modern industrial death culture breeds. But I think this is a complete error, rather the Elder Gods are aligned with the forces of nature, with instinct, and our deepest selves. They're the good guys!
In the book Jack is probably portrayed accurately in that he would likely struggle against the Elder Gods, but this still feels off to me. Wouldn't the beat generation actually be trying to help Cthulhu awaken? I can't help but sense they would be fighting for revolution on a grand and natural scale by invoking those very forces of primitive nature hidden within the dark corners of the universe.
The entire conflict of the book boils down to the choice of destroying the world in madness and horror or letting it continue on but at the cost of your soul. It's a trap, of course. Obviously the moral thing to do is sacrifice yourself, but it's the old adage "you can't buy your heart's desire for the price of your heart."
I mean, we have madness and horror now! How are beetle-men in suits and shape-shifting monsters any different than what we have today? At least with Cthulhu it's all out in the open, naked, pure and honest--that's the real revolution and renewal of consciousness, and the ending of the book suggests Jack and his buddies maintained exactly what they were programmed to uphold by the system they pretended to thwart.
Whew, thank goodness! Scrooge McDuck was starting to worry he'd have to buy some hardware and see if nukes really work against Star Spawn. Now he can buy that mansion in Antarctica after all!
October 20, 2023
Nick Mamatas wrote a book that combines two of my top literary fellows: Kerouac and Lovecraft, so this one was on my list to read for a while. I finally bought the book and dug in, and I was not let down. The book crosses the country from Big Sur to New York lighting a dystopian sky with images of Cthulhu’s tentacles. In a unique feat of world building the Cthulhu elements are woven through with a deft hand. Nick’s narrative is playful and shows that he has spent a lot of time tinkering with Kerouac’s prose. He mimics Jack’s writing right down to the syncopation of his beats. I felt like I was reading “On the Road to Innsmouth” or some such. This Kerouac meets Cthulhu mash-up is in good hands with Nick Mamatas.
February 3, 2018
This one is difficult for me to evaluate--it's a book that executes well on its premise but just isn't for me. It imagines a Lovecraftian end-of-the-world scenario as perceived by Jack Kerouac and the other Beat writers; it follows Kerouac and William Burroughs as they traverse America in pursuit of Neal Cassidy, who may be somehow responsible for the whole mess. Wonderful idea, but I've never done well with Beat literature. As a result, this was a real struggle for me to get through. If you're in the target audience (you enjoy Lovecraft and you really love "On the Road"), it'd probably be just about perfect. But I only meet 50% of those criteria.
September 13, 2021
This made a strong first impression, with an uncannily convincing Kerouac simulacrum that makes for a really fresh narrative voice in a kind of well trodden space for weird horror. I spent a lot of the middle disliking but trying to rationalize some of the horror choices--it feels very capital-L Lovecraft rather than the more idiosyncratically and insularly Beat horror I had kind of envisioned, and it leans on a "squares=cultists or monsters, beats as immune/heroes" in a way I found quite trite at times--as inevitable or logical in some way. Kerouac has this kind of inherently solipsistic streak and it blends the horror with the similes and moods of his prose in an interesting way. And maybe the way the world building blends with the Beat worldview is the only way to keep this from just puncturing the Beat vibe that makes it desirable in the first place, like a more serious story would reduce Jack to practicality in a way that would feel too universal. But by the end I'd completely lost interest. The prose is too stream of consciousness, the story too unmotivated and arbitrary, the weirdness too boilerplate overall (many of the specific images and events are well done but overall it's a very standard kitchen sink Lovecraftian apocalypse).
December 9, 2020
Abandoned. It’s just not for me.
February 6, 2025
Beat-Literatur trifft auf den Cthulhu-Mythos. Eine wahrhaft aufregende Mischung. Das machte den Rezenten aufmerksam.
Kalifornien, irgendwann Anfang der Sechziger Jahre. Jack Kerouac, der an der Küste ein einsiedlerisches Leben führt, merkt, dass sich in den Briefen seines Freundes Neal Kassidy zwischen den Zeilen etwas verborgen ist, dass sein Freund und Weggefährte etwas heraufbeschwört mit seiner Gier nach Nichts.
Und dann sieht Kerouac auch schon den großen Cthulhu in seinem Heim R’yeleh aus dem pazifischen Ozean erheben, um die Welt in sein Schreckensreich zu verwandeln. Und das drückt sich in de Verwandlung der Menschen in Mugwamps aus. Mugwamps ist ein Begriff aus „Naked Lunch“ von William Burroughs, ebenfalls ein Beatnik, und bezeichnet in „Abwärts“ insektenhafte Wesen, Geschöpfe, die Cthulhu ganz untertan sind.
Kerouac bricht auf, um nach Neal Kassidy zu suchen. Er, der seine Abenteuer selbst erzählt, gerät immer wieder in Lebensgefahr. Seine Reise wird ein Alptraumtrip. Seine erste Station ist San Francisco. Cthulhu ist ihm auf den Fersen und lässt die Stadt im Pazifik versinken.
Im Mittelwesten versuchen die Einwohner eines Ortes ihn zu lynchen, doch William Burroughs, der ihm halb gefolgt ist und sich halb herumgetrieben hat, rettet ihn, in dem er den Lynch Mob zusammenschießt. Burroughs war bekannt für seinen Hand zu Pistolen. Aber auch danach wird er mehrmals vom großen Widersacher fast erwischt.
Kerouacs und Burroughs’ Reise endet in New York, das mittlerweile ganz im Bann des großen Alten steht, und das Big Business auf groteske Weise fortgeführt wird.
Kerouac muss feststellen, dass Neal Cassidy längst nicht mehr auf seiner Seite steht, sondern dass der längst in höheren, der Lovecraftschen Mythologie zufolge in unmenschlichen Sphären schwebt, und damit auch ein Werkzeug des großen Alten geworden ist. Kerouac erkennt auch, dass er einen hohen Preis zahlen muss, um die Welt zu retten und den Großen Alten wieder zu verbannen muss. Denn ihm wird klar, dass sein und Kassidys Schreiben mit der Welt zusammenhängt. Kerouac erscheint alles so, wie er es in einen wilden Groschenroman selbst geschrieben hätte.
„Abwärts“ ist eine mystische Tour durch ein verwandeltes Amerika, in dem das Grauen und der Wahnsinn herrscht. Es ist voller surrealer Bilder, die bei allem Grauen auch nicht eines gewissen Humors und auch der Ironie entbehren. Das hängt auch mit der Sprache zusammen, in . Es ist die Sprache Keroaucs, die voller Synästhesien und wilder Vergleiche ist. Für Joachim Körber als Übersetzer war das sicher ein besonderes Stück Arbeit. Die ist ihm aber auch recht gut gelungen.
Und anders als in anderen Romanen und Erzählungen, die sich um den Mythos ranken, ist die Grenze zwischen metaphorischer Darstellung und dem tatsächlich Erfahrenen recht unscharf. Kerouac zweifelt zwar nicht an seinem Verstand wie die eher nüchternen Berichterstatter HPLs, dazu hat er zu viel Phantasie und ist zu abgedreht. Aber er ist eben ein Schriftsteller, der auf dem Grat zwischen Genie und Wahnsinn balanciert. Nur sein Außenseitertum verbindet ihn mit den HPL und seinen Figuren.
So ist also „Abwärts“ ein einzigartiges Leseerlebnis. Eine Spannung hält sich bis zum Schluss, Mamatas Phantasie schwingt sich am Ende noch zu einem grausigen Finale auf. Zurück im Kopf des Lesers bleibt Verblüffung und ein unverwechselbarer Eindruck eines indirekt kritischen Abgesangs auf die Beatnik-Literatur. Bisher sicher der Höhepunkt der Paberbacks bei Edition Phantasia.
Kalifornien, irgendwann Anfang der Sechziger Jahre. Jack Kerouac, der an der Küste ein einsiedlerisches Leben führt, merkt, dass sich in den Briefen seines Freundes Neal Kassidy zwischen den Zeilen etwas verborgen ist, dass sein Freund und Weggefährte etwas heraufbeschwört mit seiner Gier nach Nichts.
Und dann sieht Kerouac auch schon den großen Cthulhu in seinem Heim R’yeleh aus dem pazifischen Ozean erheben, um die Welt in sein Schreckensreich zu verwandeln. Und das drückt sich in de Verwandlung der Menschen in Mugwamps aus. Mugwamps ist ein Begriff aus „Naked Lunch“ von William Burroughs, ebenfalls ein Beatnik, und bezeichnet in „Abwärts“ insektenhafte Wesen, Geschöpfe, die Cthulhu ganz untertan sind.
Kerouac bricht auf, um nach Neal Kassidy zu suchen. Er, der seine Abenteuer selbst erzählt, gerät immer wieder in Lebensgefahr. Seine Reise wird ein Alptraumtrip. Seine erste Station ist San Francisco. Cthulhu ist ihm auf den Fersen und lässt die Stadt im Pazifik versinken.
Im Mittelwesten versuchen die Einwohner eines Ortes ihn zu lynchen, doch William Burroughs, der ihm halb gefolgt ist und sich halb herumgetrieben hat, rettet ihn, in dem er den Lynch Mob zusammenschießt. Burroughs war bekannt für seinen Hand zu Pistolen. Aber auch danach wird er mehrmals vom großen Widersacher fast erwischt.
Kerouacs und Burroughs’ Reise endet in New York, das mittlerweile ganz im Bann des großen Alten steht, und das Big Business auf groteske Weise fortgeführt wird.
Kerouac muss feststellen, dass Neal Cassidy längst nicht mehr auf seiner Seite steht, sondern dass der längst in höheren, der Lovecraftschen Mythologie zufolge in unmenschlichen Sphären schwebt, und damit auch ein Werkzeug des großen Alten geworden ist. Kerouac erkennt auch, dass er einen hohen Preis zahlen muss, um die Welt zu retten und den Großen Alten wieder zu verbannen muss. Denn ihm wird klar, dass sein und Kassidys Schreiben mit der Welt zusammenhängt. Kerouac erscheint alles so, wie er es in einen wilden Groschenroman selbst geschrieben hätte.
„Abwärts“ ist eine mystische Tour durch ein verwandeltes Amerika, in dem das Grauen und der Wahnsinn herrscht. Es ist voller surrealer Bilder, die bei allem Grauen auch nicht eines gewissen Humors und auch der Ironie entbehren. Das hängt auch mit der Sprache zusammen, in . Es ist die Sprache Keroaucs, die voller Synästhesien und wilder Vergleiche ist. Für Joachim Körber als Übersetzer war das sicher ein besonderes Stück Arbeit. Die ist ihm aber auch recht gut gelungen.
Und anders als in anderen Romanen und Erzählungen, die sich um den Mythos ranken, ist die Grenze zwischen metaphorischer Darstellung und dem tatsächlich Erfahrenen recht unscharf. Kerouac zweifelt zwar nicht an seinem Verstand wie die eher nüchternen Berichterstatter HPLs, dazu hat er zu viel Phantasie und ist zu abgedreht. Aber er ist eben ein Schriftsteller, der auf dem Grat zwischen Genie und Wahnsinn balanciert. Nur sein Außenseitertum verbindet ihn mit den HPL und seinen Figuren.
So ist also „Abwärts“ ein einzigartiges Leseerlebnis. Eine Spannung hält sich bis zum Schluss, Mamatas Phantasie schwingt sich am Ende noch zu einem grausigen Finale auf. Zurück im Kopf des Lesers bleibt Verblüffung und ein unverwechselbarer Eindruck eines indirekt kritischen Abgesangs auf die Beatnik-Literatur. Bisher sicher der Höhepunkt der Paberbacks bei Edition Phantasia.
December 7, 2019
Mamatas kick-started his career with this rollicking road-trip adventure clashing the Beats with the Cthulhu Mythos. Far from foreign bodies, as he shows, these two entities share dark links, both navigating existential voids and the lure of enlightenment on broadly individualist terms. Among the book's most confident chapters are in the beginning, where Jack is in Big Sur mode but seamlessly interwoven into his ecstatic Western Buddhist stream-of-consciousness are intimated the horrors that await him. Here, the spirit elevates only for Cthulhu's face-tentacles to give it a slimy caress.
His Kerouac impression is spot-on and clearly takes center stage, even when it's not warped into the fantastical or the intertextual; indeed, at times I felt an embarrassed desire for a version of the book with all the horror taken out leaving just riffs on Big Sur and On The Road. Further on, turns of the adventure left me cold or even went over my head. The balance between comedy and horror, carefully scaffolded in the first part, is eventually dropped for an ever-grimmer dystopia, taking me from fascinated to kind of bummed out. Don't get me wrong, it's worth it: Mamatas lavishes us with visionary imagery of an American nightmare turned inside out and tentacular.
His vision, then, is hardly without a statement, as his take on Kerouac is hardly a hagiography. Mamatas is not shy about the dead-ends Kerouac's quest leads, or for that matter, his homophobia, his latent hawkishness, his string of discarded women and lives carelessly meddled with. Road-trip enlightenment, here, is not an escape from tentacular capitalism but an excrescence thereof. The book in its climax defines the dilemma as "wanting Nothingness versus wanting nothing", with both insectoid accountant acolytes and sanctified diesel-powered bums like Dean Moriarty eventually siding with the former.
Yet, Mamatas does love his hero enough to redeem him, if only to reward him with the bitter slump of real Kerouac's old age. The book ends on the truest of cliches: the species' propensity for self-destruction. Jack looks on as the Cold War escalates and comprehends nothing, not even picking the right side, yet understands his adventure to have been nothing but another story of humans gleefully dancing off the cliff.
Standout scene: Dean Moriarty's wedding / banquet / interspecies orgy.
His Kerouac impression is spot-on and clearly takes center stage, even when it's not warped into the fantastical or the intertextual; indeed, at times I felt an embarrassed desire for a version of the book with all the horror taken out leaving just riffs on Big Sur and On The Road. Further on, turns of the adventure left me cold or even went over my head. The balance between comedy and horror, carefully scaffolded in the first part, is eventually dropped for an ever-grimmer dystopia, taking me from fascinated to kind of bummed out. Don't get me wrong, it's worth it: Mamatas lavishes us with visionary imagery of an American nightmare turned inside out and tentacular.
His vision, then, is hardly without a statement, as his take on Kerouac is hardly a hagiography. Mamatas is not shy about the dead-ends Kerouac's quest leads, or for that matter, his homophobia, his latent hawkishness, his string of discarded women and lives carelessly meddled with. Road-trip enlightenment, here, is not an escape from tentacular capitalism but an excrescence thereof. The book in its climax defines the dilemma as "wanting Nothingness versus wanting nothing", with both insectoid accountant acolytes and sanctified diesel-powered bums like Dean Moriarty eventually siding with the former.
Yet, Mamatas does love his hero enough to redeem him, if only to reward him with the bitter slump of real Kerouac's old age. The book ends on the truest of cliches: the species' propensity for self-destruction. Jack looks on as the Cold War escalates and comprehends nothing, not even picking the right side, yet understands his adventure to have been nothing but another story of humans gleefully dancing off the cliff.
Standout scene: Dean Moriarty's wedding / banquet / interspecies orgy.
Read
July 11, 2019*insert gif of Triple H tapping out here*
I don’t know... two of my fave literary things: beats and Cthulhu - but I can’t follow this for the life of me. Shout out to the writer’s awesome rendition of beat style though! Guy kills it.
I don’t know... two of my fave literary things: beats and Cthulhu - but I can’t follow this for the life of me. Shout out to the writer’s awesome rendition of beat style though! Guy kills it.
Want to read
January 21, 2015Stumbled across this rather randomly, and am just getting started on it, but I have to say I find its entire premise to be fascinating. Basically this book is written from the perspective of Jack Kerouac in the days immediately following the publication of On the Road, holed up in a Big Sur cabin, freaking out over incipient fame and and receiving ominous letters from Neal Cassidy up north in San Francisco. Pretty quickly things take a turn for the Lovecraftean, complete with tentacled shoggoths, R'Lyeh rising out of the Pacific, and various flavors of many-angled horror rolling down Highway 1 towards our hero.
I hadn't considered before how good a fit the phantasmagoria in beatnik poetry and writing would be for the Lovecraftean mythos , but it seems obvious now (think William S. Burroughs & Naked Lunch: The Restored Text, or Allen Ginsburg's references to Moloch in Howl and Other Poems). Totally digging this (so far).
I hadn't considered before how good a fit the phantasmagoria in beatnik poetry and writing would be for the Lovecraftean mythos , but it seems obvious now (think William S. Burroughs & Naked Lunch: The Restored Text, or Allen Ginsburg's references to Moloch in Howl and Other Poems). Totally digging this (so far).
December 21, 2015
[3.5 stars]
Everyone's somewhat familiar with Jack Kerouac's story: spent a lot of time On the Road with Neal Cassady, flipping off society and leaving a trail of Jazz, sex, abandoned kids, and burnt rubber across the American highway system (and part of Mexico), then doing all of that some more while also practicing Casual White Man Buddhism in the Pacific Northwest. Then of course, fighting against the literal incarnation of Ginsberg's Moloch that is the Dark Dreamer himself, Cthulhu.
Our memories may differ a bit on that last one.
"The Beats fight Cthulhu" is a premise for a book I had to read, regardless of quality, but Mamatas managed to pull it off surprisingly well. For better or for worse, he's pretty good at emulating Kerouac'styping writing style, and he managed to competently and believably marry the Beats and Lovecraft's weird distortions of reality into something that feels organic, and rarely fanfic-y. Kerouac has sex with a Bodhisattva? Sure. Neal Cassady becomes some strange willfull chaos demon? He wasn't already? The Moloch that Ginsberg used metaphorically in Howl is just literally Cthulhu? And the Squares are just cultists? Sure, why not.
It's not perfect, but it's a lot of fun.
Everyone's somewhat familiar with Jack Kerouac's story: spent a lot of time On the Road with Neal Cassady, flipping off society and leaving a trail of Jazz, sex, abandoned kids, and burnt rubber across the American highway system (and part of Mexico), then doing all of that some more while also practicing Casual White Man Buddhism in the Pacific Northwest. Then of course, fighting against the literal incarnation of Ginsberg's Moloch that is the Dark Dreamer himself, Cthulhu.
Our memories may differ a bit on that last one.
"The Beats fight Cthulhu" is a premise for a book I had to read, regardless of quality, but Mamatas managed to pull it off surprisingly well. For better or for worse, he's pretty good at emulating Kerouac's
It's not perfect, but it's a lot of fun.
May 11, 2016
In the years from high school through grad studies, in my spare time, I immersed myself pretty thoroughly in both the extended Lovecraftian library and everything then in print by Kerouac, Burroughs, and company. That was, as they say, long ago and in another country and I haven't been back very often.
I couldn't resist reading a novel, well-reviewed here and there, that promised to merge the two disparate orbits of pop literature, even though I generally dislike fiction that uses real people as characters. No real surprise then that my reaction to this book is "meh," mostly because I found it way longer than its concept was able to support. The pastiche of Kerouac's style was effective at first but wore very thin by about the halfway point. Mostly I was put off by the near pointlessness of the story, the repetitive analogy of eldritch horror to mundanity, and the intrusion of elements that felt gratuitous without adding significant entertainment value.
On the positive side, there were some very impressive scenes in the early chapters that felt quite believably like a Kerouac account of a cosmic nightmare and others that were very funny. I liked it enough to want to read other works by the same author that are not deliberately derivative of things perhaps better left in the grave of memory.
I couldn't resist reading a novel, well-reviewed here and there, that promised to merge the two disparate orbits of pop literature, even though I generally dislike fiction that uses real people as characters. No real surprise then that my reaction to this book is "meh," mostly because I found it way longer than its concept was able to support. The pastiche of Kerouac's style was effective at first but wore very thin by about the halfway point. Mostly I was put off by the near pointlessness of the story, the repetitive analogy of eldritch horror to mundanity, and the intrusion of elements that felt gratuitous without adding significant entertainment value.
On the positive side, there were some very impressive scenes in the early chapters that felt quite believably like a Kerouac account of a cosmic nightmare and others that were very funny. I liked it enough to want to read other works by the same author that are not deliberately derivative of things perhaps better left in the grave of memory.
October 1, 2009
After the publication of 'On the Road', Jack Kerouac is hiding out in a cabin in Big Sur on the edge of the pacific when he starts getting letters from his old road buddy Neal Cassady. Something is seriously sick at the heart of America and only the beats and the poets and the bums can see it. Mugwumps, beetlemen, squid handed girls and murderous cultists are on the streets and the only way to avoid them is to move underground. Oh, and somewhere out in the dark waters the dead city of R'lyeh is rising and a dreaming god is about to wake up.
In a nutshell this is HP Lovecraft crossed with Jack Kerouac on a road trip across America. What could have been a simple parody is actually a surreal bit of beat poetry that captures the tone of both of its sources in a remarkably effective and ultimately horrifying way. As well as Neal Cassady, other characters from the beat generation including Allen Ginsburg and William Burroughs put in appearances with nods to their particular oeuvres. Fans of 'Naked Lunch' will appreciate the importance of arming yourself with canisters of bug spray ...
An excellent short read, and available as a free e-book too.
In a nutshell this is HP Lovecraft crossed with Jack Kerouac on a road trip across America. What could have been a simple parody is actually a surreal bit of beat poetry that captures the tone of both of its sources in a remarkably effective and ultimately horrifying way. As well as Neal Cassady, other characters from the beat generation including Allen Ginsburg and William Burroughs put in appearances with nods to their particular oeuvres. Fans of 'Naked Lunch' will appreciate the importance of arming yourself with canisters of bug spray ...
An excellent short read, and available as a free e-book too.
January 12, 2009
What if R'lyeh rose off the coast of california and jack kerouac, william burroghs and neal cassady had to defeat the great old ones, after crossing the country from San Francisco to New York?
Frankly, the idea is better than the book. The book is fun, and Mamatas does a fair job with some of his impersonations, although at the end, he never really captures keroauc. Then again, maybe he does, it has been many years since I last read On The Road... maybe the problem is that Keroauc's gifts don't really lend themselves to a fantasy darker than the one he describes himself ie the America he, Neal and the Beats decried. They narrative never really reconciles the worlds of the Diamond Sutra and that of the Elder Gods.
If you are a Lovecraft fan, this book is a must... we just don't get that many chances. If you are a Kerouac fan, you should probably stay away.
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn
Frankly, the idea is better than the book. The book is fun, and Mamatas does a fair job with some of his impersonations, although at the end, he never really captures keroauc. Then again, maybe he does, it has been many years since I last read On The Road... maybe the problem is that Keroauc's gifts don't really lend themselves to a fantasy darker than the one he describes himself ie the America he, Neal and the Beats decried. They narrative never really reconciles the worlds of the Diamond Sutra and that of the Elder Gods.
If you are a Lovecraft fan, this book is a must... we just don't get that many chances. If you are a Kerouac fan, you should probably stay away.
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn
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November 17, 2008I think I would have liked this novel more if it didn't involve actual historic characters... I'm terribly biased against novels that try to interpret real human beings... for instance, even if the main character was simply called "Jack" and it was explicitly implied he is Jack Kerouac, but never called that, it would have been better for me... the author does a good "creative writing 101" impersonation of beat writing mixed with h.p. lovecraft lore, which is a great idea, but unfortunately falls flat for most of the book because it does not seen genuine, but merely a stylistic choice. Honestly, it is difficult to remember most of the book, I remember it being a garbled and complete mess, not unlike something by Jack Kerouac, but whereas Kerouac never sticks to a plot or narrative structure, and never rushes through a sequence for the sake of a plot or narrative structure, this book attempts to, and that is why it ultimately fails.
September 29, 2011
It does get tiring, like any other Kerouac read, from effusions left and right, only in Move Under Ground it is countless descriptions of deep blackness, monstrous evil, and utter emptiness. Mamatas has conquered the Kerouac formula and transitioned it relatively well.
He is obviously a Beat scholar, and peppered amid the fiction are small but acute observations on the relationships between the Beats.
Only hang up I have is, which is true for most Cthulhu lore, the role of cultists. I mean, is there a leader who tells them to hog-tie people and bleed them dry? Or does the compulsion arise simultaneously in an entire town? Why are some people affected and others aren't?
Finally a satisfactory albeit dark and discouraging explanation for Kerouac's crash and burn at the end of his short life. If you like your reads weird and short, it's time to Move Under Ground.
He is obviously a Beat scholar, and peppered amid the fiction are small but acute observations on the relationships between the Beats.
Only hang up I have is, which is true for most Cthulhu lore, the role of cultists. I mean, is there a leader who tells them to hog-tie people and bleed them dry? Or does the compulsion arise simultaneously in an entire town? Why are some people affected and others aren't?
Finally a satisfactory albeit dark and discouraging explanation for Kerouac's crash and burn at the end of his short life. If you like your reads weird and short, it's time to Move Under Ground.
May 31, 2016
Kerouac vs Cthulhu. A beatnik pastiche with lots of lovecraft thrown in. Its really well done, of course the gap between the beatniks and lovecraft isn't as wide as you might think. Anyone who's read Kerouacs 'Dr.Sax' or Ginsbergs poem 'Howl' will see distinct touches of eldritch horror.
Surprisingly for a pastiche this isn't played for laughs, its a proper beat novel with all the humour, sleaze and darkness that one would expect. Because it stars Kerouac as opposed to Sal Paradyse there is a biographical element to it and i wonder how true to Kerouacs personality and opinions this portrayal is.
Some might find it a little vague in places especially towards the end but overall this is a great impression of the beats but with a little better focus and story than Kerouac usually managed.
Surprisingly for a pastiche this isn't played for laughs, its a proper beat novel with all the humour, sleaze and darkness that one would expect. Because it stars Kerouac as opposed to Sal Paradyse there is a biographical element to it and i wonder how true to Kerouacs personality and opinions this portrayal is.
Some might find it a little vague in places especially towards the end but overall this is a great impression of the beats but with a little better focus and story than Kerouac usually managed.
October 17, 2019
In my recent reading, I have discovered some Lovecraftian tributes that are enjoyable treasures for anyone with even a passing acquaintance with the old boy’s Cthulhu mythos. Here are my impressions and analyses of Nick Mamatas’ novels Move Under Ground and I am Providence. I'll get to reviewing the others in good time.
Mamatas, on the horn, blows the tune in long, winding solos that carry Kerouac and Neal Cassidy across the U.S., pitting them against the cosmological forces of darkness that are sweeping across the country and, presumably, the world. Some sections are a little dense, but others are rewarding and beautiful, fusing facts about Kerouac’s life and the Old Ones, the Deep Ones and Nyarlathotep.
Please see the full review on my blog...
https://jameskmoran.blogspot.com/2019...
Mamatas, on the horn, blows the tune in long, winding solos that carry Kerouac and Neal Cassidy across the U.S., pitting them against the cosmological forces of darkness that are sweeping across the country and, presumably, the world. Some sections are a little dense, but others are rewarding and beautiful, fusing facts about Kerouac’s life and the Old Ones, the Deep Ones and Nyarlathotep.
Please see the full review on my blog...
https://jameskmoran.blogspot.com/2019...
April 30, 2011
A great premise that seems counterintuitive at first, but ends up working better than you could have imagined. Basically "Move Under Ground" is a crossover novel between the Beat and Cthuluhu mythos'. Nick Mamatas does a great job mixing Kerouac's writing style with Lovecraft's and the result is like a literary reeses' peanut butter cup. It's a shame that this book doesn't seem to be widely promoted/distributed. It's a great treat for Kerouac/Lovecraft fans.
Also, Burroughs gets what is probably the greatest one-liner of all time.
Also, Burroughs gets what is probably the greatest one-liner of all time.
October 11, 2017
I liked the general feel of unconsciousness and the dark and eerie hallucinatory visions of the main protagonist but at times I lost the main story line and what these scenes/passages really had to do with bringing the story along.
the author really captured a laid back and quite beat-esque language, although at times it felt forced to me. I'm not sure if I would read it again, but it was a nice quick read at the end of the day.
the author really captured a laid back and quite beat-esque language, although at times it felt forced to me. I'm not sure if I would read it again, but it was a nice quick read at the end of the day.
August 19, 2008
This is a relatively short but very densely written exploration of the question of what would have happened if Lovecraft's monsters had risen in the 1960's and the only superheroes available to oppose them were the Beat literary circle of Willliam Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, and Neal Cassady. It's a wacky concept that leads to a very well-written fun story.
August 16, 2016
Nick Mamatas nails the voice of Kerouac in this very weird piece of fiction. While I'm familiar with much of the work of the beats and gonzo writers, I'm less familiar with Lovecraft. Still, as much as beatniks vs cthulhu seems like a gimmicky match up, it works here simply because there's so much effort with the voice and style.
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