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El inconmensurable cadáver de la naturaleza
Christopher Slatsky traza un sobrecogedor mapa del dolor humano y la angustia existencial a través de estas desoladoras quince piezas literarias: La búsqueda desesperada de un padre por su hijo desaparecido lo conduce hasta un extraño paraje cósmico que parece embrujado. Una mujer regresa a la casa de su infancia para encontrar un pasado preservado en una falsa apariencia de vida. Dos ancianas, amigas desde la niñez, se aferran la una a la otra mientras la sombra de la muerte se cierne sobre ellas para revelar lo frágil de la realidad. Los recuerdos de un hijo perdido cobran una nueva dimensión tras una sesión de espiritismo. Un hombre y su perro se sumergen en el corazón de una prueba gubernamental llevada a cabo por una organización militar ocultista. Un anciano se ve sometido a misteriosos experimentos mientras avanza en su descenso a la demencia. Una joven indaga en los recovecos de una tenebrosa leyenda urbana. Una antropóloga forense es convocada a presentarse en la comuna en la que un culto antinatalista obsesionado con contactar con la naturaleza ha cometido un suicidio en masa.
442 pages, Unknown Binding
First published January 28, 2020
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1928 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 68 reviews
February 1, 2020
THE IMMEASURABLE CORPSE OF NATURE blew away all of my preconceived notions about dark and weird fiction!
I was exited to give these tales a chance as soon as I saw the cover of this book. As a lover of anthologies and collections, this was a great way to start off my reading year.
Stories centered around intense grief, like PHANTOM AIRFIELDS are among some of my favorites lately. Steve Rasnic Tem writes these so well and I found this tale reminiscent of Tem's work. (For me, this is among the highest of compliments.)
ENGINES OF THE OCEAN was another piece that deeply affected me, however the stories in the middle of this volume were the ones that told me that I held in my hands something very special indeed.
THE WORLD IS WAITING FOR THE SUNRISE, DEVIL GONNA CATCH YOU IN THE CORNERS, PROFESSOR COGNOSCENTE'S CALIGINOUS CHARMS CARNIVAL, (say that 5 times fast!), FROM A PEOPLE OF STRANGE LANGUAGE, and THE FIGURINE- were, for me, among the very best short, (or long), stories that I've ever read. Period!
This is the type of book that makes me feel inadequate as a reader and reviewer. I feel like anything I have to say could be said better by almost anyone else. I also feel a bit intimidated by the depth of these tales and the use of clear, concise language which, combined, often produced in me feelings of dread, suspense, sadness, and fear. I could never hope to write something, anything, as good as these stories.
Provided to me from Grimscribe Press, founded by a fan of Thomas Ligotti's work, I expected nihilism and helplessness, but these tales are a LOT more than that. It seems to me that I often like and admire the work of authors who adore Ligotti more than I enjoy the work of Ligotti himself. I'm not sure why that is, but it is a truth for me.
There are other reviews at Goodreads that are all more well written than this one, but so be it. I write reviews that are almost always about the feelings the author has inspired in me rather than clinical breakdowns of the text. I have been truthful with you all today about how I feel about this book and about Chrisopher Slatsky in general. Sign me the hell up for whatever else this man writes in the future, though I'm have a hard time imagining a book that I could love more than this one.
My highest recommendation!
*Thank you to Grimscribe Press and the author for the ARC of this book in exchange for my honest feedback. This is it!*
I was exited to give these tales a chance as soon as I saw the cover of this book. As a lover of anthologies and collections, this was a great way to start off my reading year.
Stories centered around intense grief, like PHANTOM AIRFIELDS are among some of my favorites lately. Steve Rasnic Tem writes these so well and I found this tale reminiscent of Tem's work. (For me, this is among the highest of compliments.)
ENGINES OF THE OCEAN was another piece that deeply affected me, however the stories in the middle of this volume were the ones that told me that I held in my hands something very special indeed.
THE WORLD IS WAITING FOR THE SUNRISE, DEVIL GONNA CATCH YOU IN THE CORNERS, PROFESSOR COGNOSCENTE'S CALIGINOUS CHARMS CARNIVAL, (say that 5 times fast!), FROM A PEOPLE OF STRANGE LANGUAGE, and THE FIGURINE- were, for me, among the very best short, (or long), stories that I've ever read. Period!
This is the type of book that makes me feel inadequate as a reader and reviewer. I feel like anything I have to say could be said better by almost anyone else. I also feel a bit intimidated by the depth of these tales and the use of clear, concise language which, combined, often produced in me feelings of dread, suspense, sadness, and fear. I could never hope to write something, anything, as good as these stories.
Provided to me from Grimscribe Press, founded by a fan of Thomas Ligotti's work, I expected nihilism and helplessness, but these tales are a LOT more than that. It seems to me that I often like and admire the work of authors who adore Ligotti more than I enjoy the work of Ligotti himself. I'm not sure why that is, but it is a truth for me.
There are other reviews at Goodreads that are all more well written than this one, but so be it. I write reviews that are almost always about the feelings the author has inspired in me rather than clinical breakdowns of the text. I have been truthful with you all today about how I feel about this book and about Chrisopher Slatsky in general. Sign me the hell up for whatever else this man writes in the future, though I'm have a hard time imagining a book that I could love more than this one.
My highest recommendation!
*Thank you to Grimscribe Press and the author for the ARC of this book in exchange for my honest feedback. This is it!*
October 16, 2019
(Published originally at Signal Horizon )
Geologically, Thomas Ligotti is a somewhat recent addition to the horror canon. Songs of a Dead Dreamer arrived on the scene in 1986, and since, Ligotti has gone from cult author to horror icon. This is due, in part, to the seepage of his ideas into pop culture, but also to the tireless work of his already devoted. The people Ligotti touches are in it for life, and since Penguin has widened his reach even further, there are more people touched than ever.
Grimscribe Press is an advocate on a smaller, but no less fervent scale. Founded by Jon Padgett (who also founded Thomas Ligotti Online, a web forum dedicated to the author and his works), Grimscribe began with Vastarien: A Literary Journal and despite their relative newness, they’ve accumulated quite the pedigree. As a full year has passed and stories published in their journal filter themselves into Best of the Year collections, the curative talent behind Grimscribe has become hard to deny.
The Immeasurable Corpse of Nature by Christopher Slatsky is the first single-author collection to be released under the Grimscribe label, and knowing their eye for talent, it’s something of a statement in itself. This is Slatsky’s second collection (his first being Alectryomancer and Other Weird Tales) and in it, we have a powerful voice tapped deep into the vein of both human and cosmic sorrow. These are stories that traverse crushing grief and malleable time, and Slatsky handles both the intimate and the numinous with a deft, incisive hand.
Of Ligotti acolytes, Slatsky breaks the mold more than most. Where most adopt Ligotti’s clinical eye for prose and knack for putting academics center stage, Slatsky takes more from Ligotti’s philosophy than his stylistic traits. There are no feverish, erudite first-person accounts in this collection, instead Slatsky adopts a reserved, but intimate third-person narrative. His prose drives his stories forward with a grim sympathy for its characters, as if he is all too aware they’re doomed from the start. Built into their structure is a sort of God versus the Ant Hill dilemma, where people—drawn in three-dimensions with all their foibles in place—wander unwittingly into a great, careless meat grinder, oblivious to their dramas. This antinatalist strain is effectively and subtly realized in the majority of the collection, serving more as subtext to stories that stand just fine on their own, and then more obviously in the final story, from which the collection takes its titles. “The Immeasurable Corpse of Nature” is a continuation of Slatsky’s own instincts for following humans like a hunter follows wounded prey, but deals explicitly with an antinatalist cult, bringing the philosophical backdrop to the forefront.
While playing with the clay of a particular philosophy can get repetitious, I think The Immeasurable Corpse of Nature is actually one of the more diverse collections I’ve read in recent years. Slatsky varies his characters, his settings, his eras enough that none of them stand a chance to bleed together. The pacing and tropes of his storytelling adapt as well, giving us the high-concept conceits of “Professor Cognoscente’s Caliginous Charms Carnival,” the one-act play “From a People of Strange Language,” the early twentieth century ghost story, “The World is Waiting for the Sunrise,” and one of my favorites of the collection, the eerie and timely “The Figurine.” The latter comments on the state of our tragedies, by setting it in the wake of one of those mass shootings we’ve become so accustomed to. With measured language, Slatsky paints our world as indeterminately off-center, inherently incongruent, and altogether totally predictable. Tragedies run at the center of “The Figurine,” both senseless and personal, and like magnets, they find ways to connect.
This theme runs center through the entirety of the collection, where human transgressions (or pain) are matched against natural ones, if only to show their own limpness in the face of Slatsky’s eternity. “Palladium at Night” conjures this helplessness perfectly, pairing it with a war-ready narcissism that suggests a pitch black conclusion that feels not only valid, but likely. Here, an immigrant and his injured dog are travelling through Pacific Northwest woods amidst an occult government experiment. The occult is a well-worn workhorse in the world of horror literature, but I like the way Slatsky uses it here, as a means to facilitate our own call of the void. The way the characters in “Palladium at Night” meddle with what they don’t understand, with something close to glee, suggests a world where we are in the driver’s seat, twisting the wheel toward the center lane, laughing maniacally as we head toward oncoming traffic.
The Immeasurable Corpse of Nature is a great work of weird horror, continuing the tradition of not only Thomas Ligotti, but also of M.R. James, T.E.D Klein, and Robert Aickman. It’s really no wonder why Grimscribe chose Slatsky to throw them headfirst into the ring, so to speak, as this is a collection consistent in quality and diverse in content, unified by an unflinching pessimism that roils beneath its surface. And yet, it does not place itself above its characters—instead empathizing with their trials and the meaningless hurt they experience. The result is a deep, affecting resonance, matched only by the reader’s own horror of recognition.
Geologically, Thomas Ligotti is a somewhat recent addition to the horror canon. Songs of a Dead Dreamer arrived on the scene in 1986, and since, Ligotti has gone from cult author to horror icon. This is due, in part, to the seepage of his ideas into pop culture, but also to the tireless work of his already devoted. The people Ligotti touches are in it for life, and since Penguin has widened his reach even further, there are more people touched than ever.
Grimscribe Press is an advocate on a smaller, but no less fervent scale. Founded by Jon Padgett (who also founded Thomas Ligotti Online, a web forum dedicated to the author and his works), Grimscribe began with Vastarien: A Literary Journal and despite their relative newness, they’ve accumulated quite the pedigree. As a full year has passed and stories published in their journal filter themselves into Best of the Year collections, the curative talent behind Grimscribe has become hard to deny.
The Immeasurable Corpse of Nature by Christopher Slatsky is the first single-author collection to be released under the Grimscribe label, and knowing their eye for talent, it’s something of a statement in itself. This is Slatsky’s second collection (his first being Alectryomancer and Other Weird Tales) and in it, we have a powerful voice tapped deep into the vein of both human and cosmic sorrow. These are stories that traverse crushing grief and malleable time, and Slatsky handles both the intimate and the numinous with a deft, incisive hand.
Of Ligotti acolytes, Slatsky breaks the mold more than most. Where most adopt Ligotti’s clinical eye for prose and knack for putting academics center stage, Slatsky takes more from Ligotti’s philosophy than his stylistic traits. There are no feverish, erudite first-person accounts in this collection, instead Slatsky adopts a reserved, but intimate third-person narrative. His prose drives his stories forward with a grim sympathy for its characters, as if he is all too aware they’re doomed from the start. Built into their structure is a sort of God versus the Ant Hill dilemma, where people—drawn in three-dimensions with all their foibles in place—wander unwittingly into a great, careless meat grinder, oblivious to their dramas. This antinatalist strain is effectively and subtly realized in the majority of the collection, serving more as subtext to stories that stand just fine on their own, and then more obviously in the final story, from which the collection takes its titles. “The Immeasurable Corpse of Nature” is a continuation of Slatsky’s own instincts for following humans like a hunter follows wounded prey, but deals explicitly with an antinatalist cult, bringing the philosophical backdrop to the forefront.
While playing with the clay of a particular philosophy can get repetitious, I think The Immeasurable Corpse of Nature is actually one of the more diverse collections I’ve read in recent years. Slatsky varies his characters, his settings, his eras enough that none of them stand a chance to bleed together. The pacing and tropes of his storytelling adapt as well, giving us the high-concept conceits of “Professor Cognoscente’s Caliginous Charms Carnival,” the one-act play “From a People of Strange Language,” the early twentieth century ghost story, “The World is Waiting for the Sunrise,” and one of my favorites of the collection, the eerie and timely “The Figurine.” The latter comments on the state of our tragedies, by setting it in the wake of one of those mass shootings we’ve become so accustomed to. With measured language, Slatsky paints our world as indeterminately off-center, inherently incongruent, and altogether totally predictable. Tragedies run at the center of “The Figurine,” both senseless and personal, and like magnets, they find ways to connect.
This theme runs center through the entirety of the collection, where human transgressions (or pain) are matched against natural ones, if only to show their own limpness in the face of Slatsky’s eternity. “Palladium at Night” conjures this helplessness perfectly, pairing it with a war-ready narcissism that suggests a pitch black conclusion that feels not only valid, but likely. Here, an immigrant and his injured dog are travelling through Pacific Northwest woods amidst an occult government experiment. The occult is a well-worn workhorse in the world of horror literature, but I like the way Slatsky uses it here, as a means to facilitate our own call of the void. The way the characters in “Palladium at Night” meddle with what they don’t understand, with something close to glee, suggests a world where we are in the driver’s seat, twisting the wheel toward the center lane, laughing maniacally as we head toward oncoming traffic.
The Immeasurable Corpse of Nature is a great work of weird horror, continuing the tradition of not only Thomas Ligotti, but also of M.R. James, T.E.D Klein, and Robert Aickman. It’s really no wonder why Grimscribe chose Slatsky to throw them headfirst into the ring, so to speak, as this is a collection consistent in quality and diverse in content, unified by an unflinching pessimism that roils beneath its surface. And yet, it does not place itself above its characters—instead empathizing with their trials and the meaningless hurt they experience. The result is a deep, affecting resonance, matched only by the reader’s own horror of recognition.
November 2, 2019
I’ve seen Christopher Slatsky compared to Thomas Ligotti, and while I can certainly agree that his writing does explore anti-natalism and incomparable bleakness like everybody’s favourite sad man, I felt just as much of a Brian Evenson vibe from reading some of the hazy, surreal tales collected here.
Take “Phantom Airfields” for example. Great grief and violence combine with unreliable muddling of memory and unforgettable imagery to create a sense of unsettling unreality with a powerful ending, leading to one of the most moving stories in the book.
Stories like “Engines of the Ocean” demonstrate another fantastic aspect of Slatsky’s writing: combining Twilight Zone type premises with profound human sadness. Because while this may be a horror collection, it’s also a book in which bone-deep loss is as much of a uniting principal as awe in the face of the numinous.
Then you get to stories like “Carcass of the Lion” which don’t quite knock it out of the park. You’ve got some classic sylvan dread and likeable, broken characters but I think the language, trying to be poetic or overly florid gets in its own way.
The “Weird Fiction Non-ending” was also not my bag.
I don’t mind ambiguity, but this wasn’t an ending and encapsulates some of the problems I have with “the new weird”.
I was starting to have some doubts, and after the essay left me cold I wondered if this collection was front-loaded; hitting the ground running before circling the same ideas like the vultures of diminishing returns.
Then “The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise” grabbed me by the neck and throttled me for being a doubter. A wonderfully realized period piece reminiscent of the very best of Daniel Mills with a gut-wrenchingly honest portrayal of grief.
From there, the conductor throws the breaks out the window and the reader is trapped on this train, careening toward parts unknown. Characters from all walks of life are all doomed to be swallowed up by the unknown. Damned to face dummies, ancient magicians, and the malleable nature of a carnivorous reality. As with Carcass of the Lion, sometimes the language gets in the way, and yet sometimes it enhances the intended effect as only a master stylist can. I presume this is simply the natural effect of a writer operating in so many different register and constantly trying new things. This is not a man on auto-pilot.
Nobody who writes a story as simply chilling as The Figurine could be. Just when you think Slatsky is going to bob, he weaves, and you take another haymaker to the gut. Then, as you recover and think you may have a fighting chance, Sparagmos lays you out. I’m at a loss to discuss this story. It’s a more devastating story than most writers write in their entire career. A surreal horror masterpiece. If you’re curious about this author and want to check out one story in particular, make it that one.
Overall, this is a bleak, depressing, yet fascinating collection. Many of the stories feel like inescapable traps for the characters. There is no winning or escaping against what we cannot even begin to fathom. But the awe is in how Slatsky gets there.
This is the work of a writer that will only get more vital with time. The train seems to finally be slowing down, now. You should get on before it speeds away.
Take “Phantom Airfields” for example. Great grief and violence combine with unreliable muddling of memory and unforgettable imagery to create a sense of unsettling unreality with a powerful ending, leading to one of the most moving stories in the book.
Stories like “Engines of the Ocean” demonstrate another fantastic aspect of Slatsky’s writing: combining Twilight Zone type premises with profound human sadness. Because while this may be a horror collection, it’s also a book in which bone-deep loss is as much of a uniting principal as awe in the face of the numinous.
Then you get to stories like “Carcass of the Lion” which don’t quite knock it out of the park. You’ve got some classic sylvan dread and likeable, broken characters but I think the language, trying to be poetic or overly florid gets in its own way.
The “Weird Fiction Non-ending” was also not my bag.
I don’t mind ambiguity, but this wasn’t an ending and encapsulates some of the problems I have with “the new weird”.
I was starting to have some doubts, and after the essay left me cold I wondered if this collection was front-loaded; hitting the ground running before circling the same ideas like the vultures of diminishing returns.
Then “The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise” grabbed me by the neck and throttled me for being a doubter. A wonderfully realized period piece reminiscent of the very best of Daniel Mills with a gut-wrenchingly honest portrayal of grief.
From there, the conductor throws the breaks out the window and the reader is trapped on this train, careening toward parts unknown. Characters from all walks of life are all doomed to be swallowed up by the unknown. Damned to face dummies, ancient magicians, and the malleable nature of a carnivorous reality. As with Carcass of the Lion, sometimes the language gets in the way, and yet sometimes it enhances the intended effect as only a master stylist can. I presume this is simply the natural effect of a writer operating in so many different register and constantly trying new things. This is not a man on auto-pilot.
Nobody who writes a story as simply chilling as The Figurine could be. Just when you think Slatsky is going to bob, he weaves, and you take another haymaker to the gut. Then, as you recover and think you may have a fighting chance, Sparagmos lays you out. I’m at a loss to discuss this story. It’s a more devastating story than most writers write in their entire career. A surreal horror masterpiece. If you’re curious about this author and want to check out one story in particular, make it that one.
Overall, this is a bleak, depressing, yet fascinating collection. Many of the stories feel like inescapable traps for the characters. There is no winning or escaping against what we cannot even begin to fathom. But the awe is in how Slatsky gets there.
This is the work of a writer that will only get more vital with time. The train seems to finally be slowing down, now. You should get on before it speeds away.
March 2, 2020
As in Slatsky's first collection, it feels like there's some Ligotti here philosophically, some Aickmanesque ambiguity, and perhaps just a touch of Ramsey Campbell in how the horror invades mundane reality through little hints. Compared with his first collection, these feel a bit more grim and emotional, but more ambiguous too.
Its been some years since I read Slatsky's first collection, but I believe I like it a bit more. I was let down by the ending of many of these stories. Even when they have great moments, the endings often didn't come together for me. Sometimes it feels like there's too many disparate elements and the sum feels less than its parts. I think I missed the more explicit philosophical angle too, although this certainly comes through strongly in some stories.
My favorite stories would be Palladium at Night, Devil Gonna Catch You in the Corners, The Figurine and the title story. The title story is to me the obvious stand-out.
Phantom Airfields
This is an emotional story of losing a child, and getting no answers from universe, or anywhere else. What I liked most here was the sympathy you feel for the character and his palpable pain and turmoil. It also has some weird little conspiratorial touches throughout that are chilling. A man mourns the disappearance of his son, which he believes is somehow connected with an old airfield.
Engines of the Ocean
This was an OK story, it's a bit like the first one -- someone returns to a place that reminds them of someone in their life who has died/disappeared. It had a Ramsey Campbell feel. A young woman returns to her old family home, abandoned, but spookily inhabited.
The Carcass of the Lion
Another story of painful emotions, this time about letting go of a lifelong friend. I did like the weird little cosmic touches that run through this one, but in the end I was like...did this make literally any sense? A woman takes care of her neighbor who is slowly succumbing to cancer, but becomes increasingly concerned about her odd behavior, and its connection with a dense forest nearby.
The Numinous in God, Nature, and Horror
A brief, but interesting essay on the awe and wonder nature inspires, how this seems universal whether speaking of nature, religion or weird fiction. I especially liked, Humans are “promiscuous” teleologists, interpreting natural phenomena as being there for us. The world revolves around Homo sapiens, and any perceived design is surely the consequence of supernatural forces choosing to single out humanity.
The World is Waiting for the Sunrise
This wasn't among my favorites, but it's certainly not one of the worst. This one touches on the desperate need to believe something, anything. The first half is a bit slow, but it makes up for it. A woman in the 1920's starts faking seance phenomena to comfort her husband who is grief-stricken about their son's death.
Palladium at Night
I liked this one, primarily for the main story which has a great sense of foreboding, and not so much for the backstory that intrudes throughout with an attempt of explanation for the events, but which feels like Laird Barron at his most vague and befuddling but thankfully lacking the pomposity. I've always thought a fire tower is a great location for a horror story. A homeless man makes some creepy discoveries while squatting in an abandoned fire tower.
Devil Gonna Catch You in the Corners
This was one of my favorites, although it wraps its secrets in a veil of ambiguity, it shines for its growing sense of isolation and uncanny events that effectively come together in a creepy conclusion. A young woman records in her diary the strange events that befall her while taking care of her ill uncle at his rural home.
Professor Cognoscente’s Caliginous Charms Carnival
This one reminded me a bit of Lovecraft's "From Beyond" although it takes a somewhat different path. Short, but effective. A man visits an elderly magician who had a profound effect on him as a child.
The Anthroparian Integration Technique
This is one of the most Ligottian stories, not just the philosophy, but in the shabby setting and mood. It's brief, but has a good sense of mounting expectation and an ending like a cruel joke, the most cruel of conte cruels. A suicidal young girl is taken to an experimental occult therapist.
From a People of Strange Language
This is a play in six parts. I found it a little slow starting out, but it was among the best entries in the book and achieves a great sense of cosmic horror at the end. A group engaging in a séance summon something which uses language to change reality.
The Figurine
This is among the very best stories here, it's filled with a deep sense of grief and emotional pain that feels all too real and timely, but also has an interesting horror angle that really delivers. A young man returns home from college after his young sister is killed in a mass shooting.
Affirmation of the Spirit: Consciousness, Transformation, and the Fourth World in Film
This is a philosophical essay on the idea of film being an independent entity.
SPARAGMOS
This is a surreal story, told by a very unreliable narrator suffering from dementia. It's a very disorientating read; is the narrator merely losing his memory, or is he gaining insight into the left over detritus from a lifetime of seeking meaning in a meaningless world? A man with dementia finds himself surrounded by a maze of garbage and refuse, and some menacing people who seem to be inspecting it all.
Queer Woman Surgeon
This story is a lot of fun, very well-written and engaging. I really enjoy stories where researching into creepy folklore comes to haunt the researcher. Gemma Files' "Experimental Film" might be my favorite example of this. A college student writing a dissertation on the slit-mouth woman of Japan folklore finds some unnerving stories of sightings outside of Japan, by people who have never heard of the legend.
The Immeasurable Corpse of Nature
This was by far my favorite story in the collection, it's on another level, none of the others comes close. This one is thick with a dark philosophical worldview, and full of grotesque, stomach-churning details that reinforce it. A forensic anthropologist who has seen it all is called to one of the worst crime scenes she's ever worked in -- the mass suicide of an anti-natalist cult.
Its been some years since I read Slatsky's first collection, but I believe I like it a bit more. I was let down by the ending of many of these stories. Even when they have great moments, the endings often didn't come together for me. Sometimes it feels like there's too many disparate elements and the sum feels less than its parts. I think I missed the more explicit philosophical angle too, although this certainly comes through strongly in some stories.
My favorite stories would be Palladium at Night, Devil Gonna Catch You in the Corners, The Figurine and the title story. The title story is to me the obvious stand-out.
Phantom Airfields
This is an emotional story of losing a child, and getting no answers from universe, or anywhere else. What I liked most here was the sympathy you feel for the character and his palpable pain and turmoil. It also has some weird little conspiratorial touches throughout that are chilling. A man mourns the disappearance of his son, which he believes is somehow connected with an old airfield.
Engines of the Ocean
This was an OK story, it's a bit like the first one -- someone returns to a place that reminds them of someone in their life who has died/disappeared. It had a Ramsey Campbell feel. A young woman returns to her old family home, abandoned, but spookily inhabited.
The Carcass of the Lion
Another story of painful emotions, this time about letting go of a lifelong friend. I did like the weird little cosmic touches that run through this one, but in the end I was like...did this make literally any sense? A woman takes care of her neighbor who is slowly succumbing to cancer, but becomes increasingly concerned about her odd behavior, and its connection with a dense forest nearby.
The Numinous in God, Nature, and Horror
A brief, but interesting essay on the awe and wonder nature inspires, how this seems universal whether speaking of nature, religion or weird fiction. I especially liked, Humans are “promiscuous” teleologists, interpreting natural phenomena as being there for us. The world revolves around Homo sapiens, and any perceived design is surely the consequence of supernatural forces choosing to single out humanity.
The World is Waiting for the Sunrise
This wasn't among my favorites, but it's certainly not one of the worst. This one touches on the desperate need to believe something, anything. The first half is a bit slow, but it makes up for it. A woman in the 1920's starts faking seance phenomena to comfort her husband who is grief-stricken about their son's death.
Palladium at Night
I liked this one, primarily for the main story which has a great sense of foreboding, and not so much for the backstory that intrudes throughout with an attempt of explanation for the events, but which feels like Laird Barron at his most vague and befuddling but thankfully lacking the pomposity. I've always thought a fire tower is a great location for a horror story. A homeless man makes some creepy discoveries while squatting in an abandoned fire tower.
Devil Gonna Catch You in the Corners
This was one of my favorites, although it wraps its secrets in a veil of ambiguity, it shines for its growing sense of isolation and uncanny events that effectively come together in a creepy conclusion. A young woman records in her diary the strange events that befall her while taking care of her ill uncle at his rural home.
Professor Cognoscente’s Caliginous Charms Carnival
This one reminded me a bit of Lovecraft's "From Beyond" although it takes a somewhat different path. Short, but effective. A man visits an elderly magician who had a profound effect on him as a child.
The Anthroparian Integration Technique
This is one of the most Ligottian stories, not just the philosophy, but in the shabby setting and mood. It's brief, but has a good sense of mounting expectation and an ending like a cruel joke, the most cruel of conte cruels. A suicidal young girl is taken to an experimental occult therapist.
From a People of Strange Language
This is a play in six parts. I found it a little slow starting out, but it was among the best entries in the book and achieves a great sense of cosmic horror at the end. A group engaging in a séance summon something which uses language to change reality.
The Figurine
This is among the very best stories here, it's filled with a deep sense of grief and emotional pain that feels all too real and timely, but also has an interesting horror angle that really delivers. A young man returns home from college after his young sister is killed in a mass shooting.
Affirmation of the Spirit: Consciousness, Transformation, and the Fourth World in Film
This is a philosophical essay on the idea of film being an independent entity.
SPARAGMOS
This is a surreal story, told by a very unreliable narrator suffering from dementia. It's a very disorientating read; is the narrator merely losing his memory, or is he gaining insight into the left over detritus from a lifetime of seeking meaning in a meaningless world? A man with dementia finds himself surrounded by a maze of garbage and refuse, and some menacing people who seem to be inspecting it all.
Queer Woman Surgeon
This story is a lot of fun, very well-written and engaging. I really enjoy stories where researching into creepy folklore comes to haunt the researcher. Gemma Files' "Experimental Film" might be my favorite example of this. A college student writing a dissertation on the slit-mouth woman of Japan folklore finds some unnerving stories of sightings outside of Japan, by people who have never heard of the legend.
The Immeasurable Corpse of Nature
This was by far my favorite story in the collection, it's on another level, none of the others comes close. This one is thick with a dark philosophical worldview, and full of grotesque, stomach-churning details that reinforce it. A forensic anthropologist who has seen it all is called to one of the worst crime scenes she's ever worked in -- the mass suicide of an anti-natalist cult.
March 11, 2020
This is the second volume of short stories by Christopher Slatsky reprinting thirteen items previously published in the small press, plus two new tales, one being a novella.
I had previously read Slatskys earlier volume ‘Alectryomancer and Other Weird Tales’ and unsurprisingly the current volume is similar to its predecessor in that it offers a range of stories in somewhat disparate genres; in this case ’speculative’, horror (especially body horror), science fiction and a play so although the volume under consideration is ‘more of the same’, I thought it a considerable step up from its predecessor.
Loss and alienation are often a part of the plot, many of the protagonists have come into contact with domestic violence or have troubled childhoods or lost children and a couple of the pieces are concerned with spiritualism, a generally bleak numinousity permeates most of stories perhaps showing the influence of Ligotti. Another reviewer also (astutely) references Brian Evanson and I would certainly agree that Slatsky has a surrealistic edge to him, but not to the extent (thankfully) that Evanson does.
I found most of the stories had some good images, for example the mutant honeycombs of bees as an analogy for mutant cancer cells and the final paragraphs of ‘The World is Waiting for the Sunrise’ a story of fraudulence and mediumship, though who the victims are is hard to fathom Palladium at Night’, perhaps my favourite of the book is a science fiction tale mixing government experimentation and a protagonists escape into the ‘natural’ world and has some genuinely creepy moments and is infinitely more inventive than my description of it.
And yet and yet and yet, its very diversity makes it a bit of a curates egg. Slatsky seems to work best when his fiction is more speculative or abstract in its telling, and stories that are firmly based in a time period other than the here and now or in countries other than America have little jarring elements that spoil the flow of the story. For example ‘The Carcass of the Lion’ (the bee story) is definitely located in England and yet the vocabulary features Americanisms ‘soft verges’ (of roads), ‘neighbors’ etc, or is just plain odd - our protagonist takes a walk to her friends ‘shire’.
Similar issues occur with ‘Devil Gonna Catch You In The Corners’,set in the 1849, and ‘The World is Waiting for the Sunrise’, set in 1924. In this case it is the language that ‘feels’ wrong, our Victorian girl writes in a very prim and educated manner which doesn't chime with her lower class background, at least as I perceive it. I have similar misgivings over the style of ‘The World…’ which although full of period references just doesn't 'ring true'. Perhaps this made me hyper-critical, as reading ‘Queer Woman Surgeon’ (set in the early ’80’s) I felt it would work far better if it were set in the current day. I admire Slatskys experimentation, but don't think he needs to do it. Its almost as if he has too many ideas and allows his enthusiasm to run away with him.
I feel some responsibility for these issues should lie with the editor (Jon Padgett) for not perhaps picking up on some of these and other more basic anomalies, such as an odd timeline for the first day of pathologist (and functioning heroin user) Mina Fawn in ‘The Immeasurable Corpse of Nature’. This again has lots of great ideas but they are not followed through enough and it would seem to me that there was room for greater development. That said, the novella takes such an unexpected twist that I had to check I hadn't turned two pages so perhaps it could even have been two novellas rather than one. I preferred the latter to the former half of the story which, once again, is the visionary side of his writing.
It might seem like a lot of nit-picking for a book that is three stars, ie I actually ‘liked it’! This is partly borne out of my frustration that what could have been a great book isn’t. Slatsky has good ideas and a good turn of phrase and on these criteria is an extremely interesting writer and very worth reading. But it's like viewing a painting in a wrong frame. Its a good, possibly great, painting but the frame jars and you find yourself thinking about that rather than the image. But I would much rather that, than a terrible image in a lovely frame…
I had previously read Slatskys earlier volume ‘Alectryomancer and Other Weird Tales’ and unsurprisingly the current volume is similar to its predecessor in that it offers a range of stories in somewhat disparate genres; in this case ’speculative’, horror (especially body horror), science fiction and a play so although the volume under consideration is ‘more of the same’, I thought it a considerable step up from its predecessor.
Loss and alienation are often a part of the plot, many of the protagonists have come into contact with domestic violence or have troubled childhoods or lost children and a couple of the pieces are concerned with spiritualism, a generally bleak numinousity permeates most of stories perhaps showing the influence of Ligotti. Another reviewer also (astutely) references Brian Evanson and I would certainly agree that Slatsky has a surrealistic edge to him, but not to the extent (thankfully) that Evanson does.
I found most of the stories had some good images, for example the mutant honeycombs of bees as an analogy for mutant cancer cells and the final paragraphs of ‘The World is Waiting for the Sunrise’ a story of fraudulence and mediumship, though who the victims are is hard to fathom Palladium at Night’, perhaps my favourite of the book is a science fiction tale mixing government experimentation and a protagonists escape into the ‘natural’ world and has some genuinely creepy moments and is infinitely more inventive than my description of it.
And yet and yet and yet, its very diversity makes it a bit of a curates egg. Slatsky seems to work best when his fiction is more speculative or abstract in its telling, and stories that are firmly based in a time period other than the here and now or in countries other than America have little jarring elements that spoil the flow of the story. For example ‘The Carcass of the Lion’ (the bee story) is definitely located in England and yet the vocabulary features Americanisms ‘soft verges’ (of roads), ‘neighbors’ etc, or is just plain odd - our protagonist takes a walk to her friends ‘shire’.
Similar issues occur with ‘Devil Gonna Catch You In The Corners’,set in the 1849, and ‘The World is Waiting for the Sunrise’, set in 1924. In this case it is the language that ‘feels’ wrong, our Victorian girl writes in a very prim and educated manner which doesn't chime with her lower class background, at least as I perceive it. I have similar misgivings over the style of ‘The World…’ which although full of period references just doesn't 'ring true'. Perhaps this made me hyper-critical, as reading ‘Queer Woman Surgeon’ (set in the early ’80’s) I felt it would work far better if it were set in the current day. I admire Slatskys experimentation, but don't think he needs to do it. Its almost as if he has too many ideas and allows his enthusiasm to run away with him.
I feel some responsibility for these issues should lie with the editor (Jon Padgett) for not perhaps picking up on some of these and other more basic anomalies, such as an odd timeline for the first day of pathologist (and functioning heroin user) Mina Fawn in ‘The Immeasurable Corpse of Nature’. This again has lots of great ideas but they are not followed through enough and it would seem to me that there was room for greater development. That said, the novella takes such an unexpected twist that I had to check I hadn't turned two pages so perhaps it could even have been two novellas rather than one. I preferred the latter to the former half of the story which, once again, is the visionary side of his writing.
It might seem like a lot of nit-picking for a book that is three stars, ie I actually ‘liked it’! This is partly borne out of my frustration that what could have been a great book isn’t. Slatsky has good ideas and a good turn of phrase and on these criteria is an extremely interesting writer and very worth reading. But it's like viewing a painting in a wrong frame. Its a good, possibly great, painting but the frame jars and you find yourself thinking about that rather than the image. But I would much rather that, than a terrible image in a lovely frame…
August 21, 2020
Flawless.
April 2, 2021
Another great collection from Slatsky, phenomenally upsetting stuff. The title novella is certainly up there for one of my favorite works of 21st century weird writing.
November 21, 2025
Un libro de relatos weird que me ha decepcionado bastante. Tiene algunas historias interesantes pero en general creo que el autor toca muchos temas tanto fantásticos como de terror sin llegar a destacar en ninguno. Y la pena es que hay algunos relatos con potencial pero también al final naufragan y no se cierran de manera redonda. A parte los dos ensayos me han parecido bastante aburridos.
Destacaría los siguientes relatos:
Mótores del océano(***): Nostálgica historia sobre una joven que vuelve a su pueblo natal y a la casa de sus padres y se la encuentra medio sumergida en arena. Me recordó a un capítulo de "La dimensión desconocida".
Palladium en la noche(****): El mejor cuento. Va sobre un chico y su perro que van a investigar una antigua torre del ejército donde parece se hicieron unos experimentos. El perro se infecta al pisar una astilla y una extraña y negra figura parece seguirles. Intrigante.
Carnaval de los encantos caliginosos del profesor Cognoscente(***): Un chico visita al mago que le inspiró de joven para dedicarse a la magia. Al llegar a su casa, este insistirá en que se quede para contemplar sus viejos trucos.
La técnica de integración antropoparia(***): Una chica con ideas suicidas va a visitar a un extraño psicólogo que le convence de que todos llevamos dentro un serafin y debemos cuidarlo ya que somos meros envoltorios de carne. Interesante pero no remata.
De un pueblo de lenguaje extraño(****): Pequeña obra de teatro sobre una sesión espiritista que acaba mal. Este me resultó muy redondo e interesante.
El inconmensurable cádaver de la naturaleza(***): Una pequeña novela que empieza super potente con una forense que es llamada a investigar una zona donde se suicidaron los miembros de una secta antinatalista. En la zona abundan espantapájaros hechos con carne y la protagonista estudia con ahinco los horrores que parece que perpetró la líder de la secta, una extraña bióloga.
Tiene una premisa muy interesante pero el final no me termino.
En fin, creo que Slatsky ha resultado un poco deprimente e metafísico para mí.
Destacaría los siguientes relatos:
Mótores del océano(***): Nostálgica historia sobre una joven que vuelve a su pueblo natal y a la casa de sus padres y se la encuentra medio sumergida en arena. Me recordó a un capítulo de "La dimensión desconocida".
Palladium en la noche(****): El mejor cuento. Va sobre un chico y su perro que van a investigar una antigua torre del ejército donde parece se hicieron unos experimentos. El perro se infecta al pisar una astilla y una extraña y negra figura parece seguirles. Intrigante.
Carnaval de los encantos caliginosos del profesor Cognoscente(***): Un chico visita al mago que le inspiró de joven para dedicarse a la magia. Al llegar a su casa, este insistirá en que se quede para contemplar sus viejos trucos.
La técnica de integración antropoparia(***): Una chica con ideas suicidas va a visitar a un extraño psicólogo que le convence de que todos llevamos dentro un serafin y debemos cuidarlo ya que somos meros envoltorios de carne. Interesante pero no remata.
De un pueblo de lenguaje extraño(****): Pequeña obra de teatro sobre una sesión espiritista que acaba mal. Este me resultó muy redondo e interesante.
El inconmensurable cádaver de la naturaleza(***): Una pequeña novela que empieza super potente con una forense que es llamada a investigar una zona donde se suicidaron los miembros de una secta antinatalista. En la zona abundan espantapájaros hechos con carne y la protagonista estudia con ahinco los horrores que parece que perpetró la líder de la secta, una extraña bióloga.
Tiene una premisa muy interesante pero el final no me termino.
En fin, creo que Slatsky ha resultado un poco deprimente e metafísico para mí.
June 13, 2020
Many of these stories unwind from unreliable narrators who view the world through a fog of trauma. “Phantom Airfields” is an unsettling view into a parent’s loss of a child. “The Anthroparian Integration Technique” is processing depression.
I think I liked the stories that bent into an unreliable place and time that are possibly the stage of a puppet show. “Devil Gonna Catch You in the Corners” has a delightful downward spiral of slowly crumbling reality and likely demonic possession. “Professor Cognoscente's Caliginous Charms Carnival” lives on the corner of the street where all of Ligotti’s prestidigitators reside. “Affirmation of the Spirit: Consciousness, Transformation, and the Fourth World in Film” is a nihilistic treatise that really blurs the line between academic paper and short fiction. “Queer Woman Surgeon” blended the found footage / epistolary ephemeral nature of an academic paper and a story about ghost hunting. While I like the original title “The Bruised Veil” a little more, a modern application of an antiquarian turn of phrase is not quite as effective as a different title could be.
Probably my favorite of the bunch is the eponymous “The Immeasurable Corpse of Nature” as this novelette encapsulates everything about this collection. Unreliable narrator haunted by their past and their choices. Academic rigor from the deep detail of corpse decomposition, particularly of children. Bleak, nihilistic outlook of the world that refuses to let the crimes of the world go unrecorded (including the Tri-State Crematorium in my neck of the woods!) Then wrap all this up with the post-mortem investigation of a suicide cult in a rotting small town, and everything is fertilizer for a rebirth and new phase of fecund evolution. The monsters lurking in the shadows of this story were just the icing on the cake.
I think I liked the stories that bent into an unreliable place and time that are possibly the stage of a puppet show. “Devil Gonna Catch You in the Corners” has a delightful downward spiral of slowly crumbling reality and likely demonic possession. “Professor Cognoscente's Caliginous Charms Carnival” lives on the corner of the street where all of Ligotti’s prestidigitators reside. “Affirmation of the Spirit: Consciousness, Transformation, and the Fourth World in Film” is a nihilistic treatise that really blurs the line between academic paper and short fiction. “Queer Woman Surgeon” blended the found footage / epistolary ephemeral nature of an academic paper and a story about ghost hunting. While I like the original title “The Bruised Veil” a little more, a modern application of an antiquarian turn of phrase is not quite as effective as a different title could be.
Probably my favorite of the bunch is the eponymous “The Immeasurable Corpse of Nature” as this novelette encapsulates everything about this collection. Unreliable narrator haunted by their past and their choices. Academic rigor from the deep detail of corpse decomposition, particularly of children. Bleak, nihilistic outlook of the world that refuses to let the crimes of the world go unrecorded (including the Tri-State Crematorium in my neck of the woods!) Then wrap all this up with the post-mortem investigation of a suicide cult in a rotting small town, and everything is fertilizer for a rebirth and new phase of fecund evolution. The monsters lurking in the shadows of this story were just the icing on the cake.
April 19, 2020
Fantastic collection of weird horror by one of the better literary writers in the field today.
See my full review in Black Static Magazine #74 (March/April 2020)
See my full review in Black Static Magazine #74 (March/April 2020)
February 22, 2023
I loved every story on this collection - that almost never happens!
The title story is one of the best recent cosmic horror tales I've read recently.
I can't wait to see what Christopher Slatsky comes up with next.
The title story is one of the best recent cosmic horror tales I've read recently.
I can't wait to see what Christopher Slatsky comes up with next.
November 1, 2020
Slatsky is clearly a contemporary horror writer of note, especially in the realm of Ligotti adjacent and philosophical horror writers.
I appreciate that, while many (but not all) of the stories include the mannequin/dummy/anti-natalist set of tropes and images, they often go further afield and innovate and experiment with other themes and ideas.
The fiction tends to be somewhat analytical and structured, and this meshes well with the inclusion of the non-fiction essays. Many of the stories have an almost 'realist literary' feel at the outset, with weird elements slipping in as the work progresses.
The wide grasp and usage of 'fields', from forensic anthropology to Japanese internment, is interesting and, I felt, very well done.
I appreciate that, while many (but not all) of the stories include the mannequin/dummy/anti-natalist set of tropes and images, they often go further afield and innovate and experiment with other themes and ideas.
The fiction tends to be somewhat analytical and structured, and this meshes well with the inclusion of the non-fiction essays. Many of the stories have an almost 'realist literary' feel at the outset, with weird elements slipping in as the work progresses.
The wide grasp and usage of 'fields', from forensic anthropology to Japanese internment, is interesting and, I felt, very well done.
June 5, 2020
Virtuoso: it is the word I am thinking of when trying to describe Christopher Slatsky's newest collection, "The Immeasurable Corpse Of Nature". A strange patchwork of stories, theater play and essays, it actually functions perfectly because of the author's talent. Juggling with classical settings and narrations, from folk-horror to cosmic-horror, with a few detours with psychological-horror, what could have been an arduous journey though depleted tropes and themes becomes quite a fantastic resurrection of the genre. It is an uncanny object, not dissimilar to Poe's raven, but in a monstrous format, acquiring the reader's attention from start to finish.
December 29, 2019
There is a certain exuberance of dread you get from Slatsky, unforgettable imagery, macabre settings, sadness that bleeds. You feel the characters pain, smell their fear and bleed beside them to the end.
This collection shows how deep his surreal mind dips into the unknown paths, a body farm under strict surveillance and realms of darkness and depression.
Big fan of Slatsky’s work and now I wait to see what comes next.
Top favorites:
-Engines of the Ocean
-The Carcass of the Lion
-Devil Gonna Catch You in the Corners
-Queer Woman Surgeon
-The Immeasurable Corpse of Nature
This collection shows how deep his surreal mind dips into the unknown paths, a body farm under strict surveillance and realms of darkness and depression.
Big fan of Slatsky’s work and now I wait to see what comes next.
Top favorites:
-Engines of the Ocean
-The Carcass of the Lion
-Devil Gonna Catch You in the Corners
-Queer Woman Surgeon
-The Immeasurable Corpse of Nature
September 24, 2022
I just finished this book, The Immeasurable Corpse of Nature, and I need to say it is incredible. While it is a horror collection of sorts, it’s not a book of traditional horror tropes but instead it consists of stories that showcase the depravity of human nature. There are so many unique themes throughout the stories that deal with the occult, something cosmic, or something just straight up horrifyingly realistic that I haven’t seen before. The stories are told in many different formats and time periods so you never know what’s coming next. A notable story for me was ”The Figurine” which follows a boy trying to process the death of his little sister who was killed in a school shooting. The whole story gutted me and then the end absolutely ended me. It was truly horrific as I am a teacher and that in and of itself is one of my greatest fears.
I cannot recommend this enough. I don’t see tons of people talking about it and I think it deserves so much more credit. It’s been awhile since I read a book I loved THIS much. It could very well be my unexpected favorite of the year and knock down My Year of Rest and Relaxation, which is truly a shock. Please read this.
I cannot recommend this enough. I don’t see tons of people talking about it and I think it deserves so much more credit. It’s been awhile since I read a book I loved THIS much. It could very well be my unexpected favorite of the year and knock down My Year of Rest and Relaxation, which is truly a shock. Please read this.
May 3, 2021
Uncanny and disquieting hauntingly good tales conjured before you with the grotesque and beauty, the cosmic, the internal and philosophical, memorable tales administered with the lucid and existential visceral writing, with souls in crucibles and cruxes, complexities and questions as denizens of this earth against the grain of masses seeing through a certain eye and view with deep and vast gracefully probing poetic prose style.
Phantom Airfields
There is a devastating loss of a young child with a father at his end of hope and has ideas of ending it all and harm, a trigger warning for someone in a dark low place at present.
A spaceman character in this and possibly providing one small step to a little closure.
A short somber disquieting tale permeating the heart for a time.
Engines of the Ocean
A case of shady and obscure memories with an absorbing haunting tale of discoveries with a curious Cordelia traveling back to her childhood home.
The Carcass Of The Lion
The short starts with a nicely crafted evocation of two women, friends, one a beekeeper with bees around her, along with a great little simile.
“The beekeeper’s veil stuck to Sylvia’s sweaty forehead, fine gaps in the material blurring Hazel’s body into a gauzy ghost. The flurry of insects around her now made it appear as if she had a halo of bees. The hive boxes seemed strange in this setting, like building blocks left behind by a monstrous child. Sylvia continued walking alongside a stream that originated in the forest, bubbling from below into a thin path to join a shallow pond the bees and other wildlife used as a water source.
“Hazel. Dearest. What in the world are you up to out here?”
Hazel turned on hearing Sylvia’s voice, startled by the sight of her in full beekeeper regalia, as if she were a bug-eyed alien from a 50s sci-fi flick just stepped from its saucer.”
Then there is talk of an enemy, Cancer.
Sylvia wonders later in the very realm of the past, retreading, reviving terrors and fears, these complexities all brought back again by another encounter with this species and she ponders on the whole real truth of it all and the deeper layers of complexities in relation to it.
Maybe a folk horror this could be along with existential visceral writing.
There is a great arrangement of words with this short poetic sympathy of a tale incorporating beauty and splendor, somberness and death.
Also to note, I am no expert and sometimes doubt my summarizes.
“Random, vicious events splayed out across history’s timeline, contrasted against humanity’s calculated depravity. No rhyme or reason to anything—unless it was humanity’s proclivity for barbarism. A roll of the dice by a malicious gambler.”
“She was an imaginative child. Whatever it was would be long dead now. Maybe she’d dreamt the whole encounter.
But it wasn’t just the strange animal sighting long ago that prevented her from going into the woods—the idea that some faiths prayed to nature, and practiced their rituals deep within sacred groves, was also deeply worrisome. Communicating with vine-clad gods under leaf shade, dancing upon sidhe mounds with demi-gods below centuries old branches—the very thought filled her with a delicious fear. Hadn’t she once played hide-and-seek here? The thought was a blur. She didn’t recall having any companions her age to play with in the area, but the impression she’d hidden deep inside a hole out there while something tried to find her was persistent. She shuddered at the morning chill and the memory. The woods terrified, the woods exhilarated.”
“She was just an artist imagining what could’ve been. Dreams were all well and good, but the practical aspects of life all too often atrophied aspirations. Marriages failed. Parents weak and filled with rage.”
“Nature created glorious structures with no intent or foresight, the Giant’s Causeway being one such example. Competence without comprehension. The illusion of purpose by the purposeless.
But she couldn’t imagine how this heptagram star-shape was possible by chance alone, by unthinking bees, without a guiding hand. The colors in the comb were captivating, a nacreous sheen, though such a simple description didn’t adequately convey the depths of its beauty. Sylvia felt tongue-tied, dizzy and sour-mouthed.”
The Numinous in God, Nature, and Horror
“Why this submissive dread, this overwhelming fascination with the ineffable that invariably informs so much art, so many religions, and horror fiction specifically? Most importantly, does the numinous reside within the believer and non- believer; the deist, polytheist, monotheist, atheist, and the secularist throughout human history?”
He poses some very deep questions like these and leaves plenty to ruminate along with two paintings a first for me learn of by Woman before the Rising Sun (Woman before the Setting Sun) by Caspar David Friedrichand and Wind Blown Grass Across the Moon by Hiroshige.
He talks on memories from a younger self and references Blackwood’s “The Man Whom the Trees Loved, I have to re-read, and then talks on “the terrifying grandeur of weird storytelling” what a great treatise on these matters, awe struck.
Just ponder over this excerpt:
“I have a distinct memory of when I was 5 and we’d just moved from Southern California to Oregon, to our new home, a house hidden away in the woods on an isolated 32-acre forest covered mountain. I remember the first night there, standing by myself outside, looking into the dark woods free of any light pollution in such a distant place. I was dumbstruck by the majesty and mystery of it all. Like Sanderson in Blackwood’s “The Man Whom the Trees Loved,” I too was consumed by what I can only describe as a pantheistic fervor and raw atavistic fear at what I could not comprehend lurking within the darkest depths of the forest. I experienced that pious terror in the grandeur and power where nature, religion, and horror embrace.
The vastness of the natural world may invoke reactions similar to those moved by pious revelations, and this is of great relevance to the terrifying grandeur of weird storytelling. The uncanny is omnipresent, and seems to be an innate aspect of being human, of how we view the world and how the irrational, surreal, and disturbing distortion of the physical world invokes unease.”
Another interesting recommendation arises with Necromancers by R.H Besnon.
He may have penned the name of this collection from writing this piece as I notice these two lines “Vastness. Light years. Parsecs. Immeasurable gulfs.”
This work discusses the numinous, God, Nature and horror, fear and wonder, there be views expressed one may agree or disagree, he does successfully bring to account matters, hearts at battle with, ones from many denizens of this earth that cannot be dismissed without tangible things.
The World is Waiting for the Sunrise
There be sensing in this, joining hands and in the darkness of the room round a table waiting for a sign kind of affair.
There is remembering of the past and of one once alive along with the pensive unraveling of the tale layered out with gracefully probing prose style.
A heart of one Alice at battle with the prospect of communication with her son and the ramifications upon her beliefs through a seance, will she meet for more summoning?
Palladium At Night
He had his share of troubles various kinds and of recent, well eight months recent, drinking ones, he wanted some solitude and alone time in the tower away from the city.
When his watch stopped and died and phone battery suddenly dead en route to the tower trepidation will be mounting.
There be the rational and irrational colliding, memories of old in new terrain recalling and strange discoveries and signs of wickedness of old await amongst the dilapidated tower and the Leman Observatory and its surrounding wilderness.
One will be thinking if a break needed in a tower in middle of nowhere do deep research on the history of the land, the off the books kind.
From the offset one has empathy for the dog Cadejo and immersed with concern of what his friend has lead him to.
Trepidation and horror viscerally done.
“But Irepani welcomed solitude. He’d wanted to spend a few nights in the tower ever since hearing about it. The idea of being far from civilization and its trappings appealed to him. The lookout was perfect; nothing to rent and no way anybody would know he’d squatted there for a few days. He’d be safe. Hopefully the wild would help quell those alcoholic naggings that refused to completely vacate his system. Just get away from it all. The city. The part-time job. The past. He was grateful for everything in his life, especially his cousin Lorena, his dog Cadejo the Third, and God, but he needed to get away.”
“Time was an artificial construct, and constructs may be torn down.”
“Addiction was just the consequence of bits of matter jumbled together to pretend it had some inherent value.”
Devil Gonna Catch You in The Corners
Terrible journals and diaries delivering morbidity.
Malevolent presence in a hauntingly good tale.
Her uncle once was in the art of “holding spirited colloquies with that ill-shaped doll” with “Fox-Faced Rannie.”
Old memories unearthed, new discoveries and complexities arrive in terrain of old and an unwillingness to “upset Uncle’s delicate constitution with frivolous investigations,” and hoping no interloping of sleep will follow.
“It has been a trying journey over narrow deer-paths and rutted trails. Heavy branches of ancient oaks cast the way in shadow, yet I continue to write my thoughts in my diary—what Father mockingly refers to as “belles-lettres”. When I was a child, I kept a daily record during the two-month emigration from New-England to the Willamette Valley where Father had been hired by the Hudson’s Bay Company; as an adult, a mere two-days’ travel will not dissuade me from continuing to write. These valleys, these streams that break the monotony of impenetrable alder and oak forests make the wagon’s passage that much more difficult.
I have left home as my parents offered my services to Uncle Jon Sutton, who has taken ill and is convalescing in his isolated country estate. Being his only niece, it was decided to send me to assist with any daily tasks necessary to maintain his orderly domicile, while a nurse Marjorie attends to his health. I consider it fortunate I am bound for Uncle’s distant place and not condemned to settle somewhere like Mudtown, for the tales of that city’s squalor invite much hesitation.”
“The bracing air out here is invigorating; the black soil encourages the growth of tangled green that covers the land in such lavish amounts that I feel as if I’m within a faery tale. This is God’s country indeed.”
“It is a curious thing, this ventriloquist talent. To think that it was recently perceived a malefic art, a divine throat spoken, or, conversely, a gift from disreputable imps and devils! But now ventriloquism is all the rage with the public—jugglers and conjurers readily demonstrate its charms.”
Professor Cognoscente’s Caliginous Charms Carnival
Sorcerer and apprentice, apostle, there be talk on practices of magic and Occult.
Illusions and corruption await.
He really should have not pursued Professor Cognoscente.
The Anthroparain Integration Technique
Bian has depression and a new treatment sought out, an unconventional form with certain stages of therapies, rituals and happenings.
The Figurine
Sister gone, big brother confronting her tragic loss and new concerns arise after finding a mysterious uncanny figurine hidden under her bed.
A haunting unsettling strange tale containing evil that males do.
Sparagmos
That Word that starts with D now commonly attributed to an ailment and illness many denizens of this earth in increasing great numbers plagued and suffering with.
Dementia.
This stories core tragedy at the heart of Glen, a once radio talk show host.
Desperate hours and days with fading things, finding ones abode and familiar faces strange and puzzling.
“Glen Steinman consulted his journal. The radio talk show sputtered nonsense.
…outside town, 6-year-old Jerry Grace holds the decapitated head of his friend while his father looks on proudly.
But that couldn’t be correct. Glen tried to record everything in his journal, wrote down questions which he answered first thing every morning. He filled in crossword puzzles, practiced spelling tests to hone his mental acuity. Dementia couldn’t win as long as he kept writing everything down. He’d beat this.”
“A diseased memory, a mental snapshot of his children’s faces was smeared like a drop of water on ink in his notebook. But he couldn’t forget about them. Not yet. He had to find his way to the center of the maze first.”
“Words were no longer processed in his brain correctly. Language had become a creaking, tilting Tower of Babel, threatening to scatter all coherence to the wind. Dementia had perverted his ability to understand. He turned the radio’s volume down.��
“Everything was dependent on memory. Without memory, the world had no meaning.”
The Immeasurable Corpse of Nature
Mina a Forensic Anthropologist in search of what had taken place at Omelas Farm, anxieties induced hence forth at the farm, the secrets, and what lies beneath.
Certain real and surreal matters become clearer for Mina in the tales grotesque philosophical finale.
Reviews will be available also with excerpts -->
https://www.more2read.com/review/the-immeasurable-corpse-of-nature-by-christopher-slatsky/
Phantom Airfields
There is a devastating loss of a young child with a father at his end of hope and has ideas of ending it all and harm, a trigger warning for someone in a dark low place at present.
A spaceman character in this and possibly providing one small step to a little closure.
A short somber disquieting tale permeating the heart for a time.
Engines of the Ocean
A case of shady and obscure memories with an absorbing haunting tale of discoveries with a curious Cordelia traveling back to her childhood home.
The Carcass Of The Lion
The short starts with a nicely crafted evocation of two women, friends, one a beekeeper with bees around her, along with a great little simile.
“The beekeeper’s veil stuck to Sylvia’s sweaty forehead, fine gaps in the material blurring Hazel’s body into a gauzy ghost. The flurry of insects around her now made it appear as if she had a halo of bees. The hive boxes seemed strange in this setting, like building blocks left behind by a monstrous child. Sylvia continued walking alongside a stream that originated in the forest, bubbling from below into a thin path to join a shallow pond the bees and other wildlife used as a water source.
“Hazel. Dearest. What in the world are you up to out here?”
Hazel turned on hearing Sylvia’s voice, startled by the sight of her in full beekeeper regalia, as if she were a bug-eyed alien from a 50s sci-fi flick just stepped from its saucer.”
Then there is talk of an enemy, Cancer.
Sylvia wonders later in the very realm of the past, retreading, reviving terrors and fears, these complexities all brought back again by another encounter with this species and she ponders on the whole real truth of it all and the deeper layers of complexities in relation to it.
Maybe a folk horror this could be along with existential visceral writing.
There is a great arrangement of words with this short poetic sympathy of a tale incorporating beauty and splendor, somberness and death.
Also to note, I am no expert and sometimes doubt my summarizes.
“Random, vicious events splayed out across history’s timeline, contrasted against humanity’s calculated depravity. No rhyme or reason to anything—unless it was humanity’s proclivity for barbarism. A roll of the dice by a malicious gambler.”
“She was an imaginative child. Whatever it was would be long dead now. Maybe she’d dreamt the whole encounter.
But it wasn’t just the strange animal sighting long ago that prevented her from going into the woods—the idea that some faiths prayed to nature, and practiced their rituals deep within sacred groves, was also deeply worrisome. Communicating with vine-clad gods under leaf shade, dancing upon sidhe mounds with demi-gods below centuries old branches—the very thought filled her with a delicious fear. Hadn’t she once played hide-and-seek here? The thought was a blur. She didn’t recall having any companions her age to play with in the area, but the impression she’d hidden deep inside a hole out there while something tried to find her was persistent. She shuddered at the morning chill and the memory. The woods terrified, the woods exhilarated.”
“She was just an artist imagining what could’ve been. Dreams were all well and good, but the practical aspects of life all too often atrophied aspirations. Marriages failed. Parents weak and filled with rage.”
“Nature created glorious structures with no intent or foresight, the Giant’s Causeway being one such example. Competence without comprehension. The illusion of purpose by the purposeless.
But she couldn’t imagine how this heptagram star-shape was possible by chance alone, by unthinking bees, without a guiding hand. The colors in the comb were captivating, a nacreous sheen, though such a simple description didn’t adequately convey the depths of its beauty. Sylvia felt tongue-tied, dizzy and sour-mouthed.”
The Numinous in God, Nature, and Horror
“Why this submissive dread, this overwhelming fascination with the ineffable that invariably informs so much art, so many religions, and horror fiction specifically? Most importantly, does the numinous reside within the believer and non- believer; the deist, polytheist, monotheist, atheist, and the secularist throughout human history?”
He poses some very deep questions like these and leaves plenty to ruminate along with two paintings a first for me learn of by Woman before the Rising Sun (Woman before the Setting Sun) by Caspar David Friedrichand and Wind Blown Grass Across the Moon by Hiroshige.
He talks on memories from a younger self and references Blackwood’s “The Man Whom the Trees Loved, I have to re-read, and then talks on “the terrifying grandeur of weird storytelling” what a great treatise on these matters, awe struck.
Just ponder over this excerpt:
“I have a distinct memory of when I was 5 and we’d just moved from Southern California to Oregon, to our new home, a house hidden away in the woods on an isolated 32-acre forest covered mountain. I remember the first night there, standing by myself outside, looking into the dark woods free of any light pollution in such a distant place. I was dumbstruck by the majesty and mystery of it all. Like Sanderson in Blackwood’s “The Man Whom the Trees Loved,” I too was consumed by what I can only describe as a pantheistic fervor and raw atavistic fear at what I could not comprehend lurking within the darkest depths of the forest. I experienced that pious terror in the grandeur and power where nature, religion, and horror embrace.
The vastness of the natural world may invoke reactions similar to those moved by pious revelations, and this is of great relevance to the terrifying grandeur of weird storytelling. The uncanny is omnipresent, and seems to be an innate aspect of being human, of how we view the world and how the irrational, surreal, and disturbing distortion of the physical world invokes unease.”
Another interesting recommendation arises with Necromancers by R.H Besnon.
He may have penned the name of this collection from writing this piece as I notice these two lines “Vastness. Light years. Parsecs. Immeasurable gulfs.”
This work discusses the numinous, God, Nature and horror, fear and wonder, there be views expressed one may agree or disagree, he does successfully bring to account matters, hearts at battle with, ones from many denizens of this earth that cannot be dismissed without tangible things.
The World is Waiting for the Sunrise
There be sensing in this, joining hands and in the darkness of the room round a table waiting for a sign kind of affair.
There is remembering of the past and of one once alive along with the pensive unraveling of the tale layered out with gracefully probing prose style.
A heart of one Alice at battle with the prospect of communication with her son and the ramifications upon her beliefs through a seance, will she meet for more summoning?
Palladium At Night
He had his share of troubles various kinds and of recent, well eight months recent, drinking ones, he wanted some solitude and alone time in the tower away from the city.
When his watch stopped and died and phone battery suddenly dead en route to the tower trepidation will be mounting.
There be the rational and irrational colliding, memories of old in new terrain recalling and strange discoveries and signs of wickedness of old await amongst the dilapidated tower and the Leman Observatory and its surrounding wilderness.
One will be thinking if a break needed in a tower in middle of nowhere do deep research on the history of the land, the off the books kind.
From the offset one has empathy for the dog Cadejo and immersed with concern of what his friend has lead him to.
Trepidation and horror viscerally done.
“But Irepani welcomed solitude. He’d wanted to spend a few nights in the tower ever since hearing about it. The idea of being far from civilization and its trappings appealed to him. The lookout was perfect; nothing to rent and no way anybody would know he’d squatted there for a few days. He’d be safe. Hopefully the wild would help quell those alcoholic naggings that refused to completely vacate his system. Just get away from it all. The city. The part-time job. The past. He was grateful for everything in his life, especially his cousin Lorena, his dog Cadejo the Third, and God, but he needed to get away.”
“Time was an artificial construct, and constructs may be torn down.”
“Addiction was just the consequence of bits of matter jumbled together to pretend it had some inherent value.”
Devil Gonna Catch You in The Corners
Terrible journals and diaries delivering morbidity.
Malevolent presence in a hauntingly good tale.
Her uncle once was in the art of “holding spirited colloquies with that ill-shaped doll” with “Fox-Faced Rannie.”
Old memories unearthed, new discoveries and complexities arrive in terrain of old and an unwillingness to “upset Uncle’s delicate constitution with frivolous investigations,” and hoping no interloping of sleep will follow.
“It has been a trying journey over narrow deer-paths and rutted trails. Heavy branches of ancient oaks cast the way in shadow, yet I continue to write my thoughts in my diary—what Father mockingly refers to as “belles-lettres”. When I was a child, I kept a daily record during the two-month emigration from New-England to the Willamette Valley where Father had been hired by the Hudson’s Bay Company; as an adult, a mere two-days’ travel will not dissuade me from continuing to write. These valleys, these streams that break the monotony of impenetrable alder and oak forests make the wagon’s passage that much more difficult.
I have left home as my parents offered my services to Uncle Jon Sutton, who has taken ill and is convalescing in his isolated country estate. Being his only niece, it was decided to send me to assist with any daily tasks necessary to maintain his orderly domicile, while a nurse Marjorie attends to his health. I consider it fortunate I am bound for Uncle’s distant place and not condemned to settle somewhere like Mudtown, for the tales of that city’s squalor invite much hesitation.”
“The bracing air out here is invigorating; the black soil encourages the growth of tangled green that covers the land in such lavish amounts that I feel as if I’m within a faery tale. This is God’s country indeed.”
“It is a curious thing, this ventriloquist talent. To think that it was recently perceived a malefic art, a divine throat spoken, or, conversely, a gift from disreputable imps and devils! But now ventriloquism is all the rage with the public—jugglers and conjurers readily demonstrate its charms.”
Professor Cognoscente’s Caliginous Charms Carnival
Sorcerer and apprentice, apostle, there be talk on practices of magic and Occult.
Illusions and corruption await.
He really should have not pursued Professor Cognoscente.
The Anthroparain Integration Technique
Bian has depression and a new treatment sought out, an unconventional form with certain stages of therapies, rituals and happenings.
The Figurine
Sister gone, big brother confronting her tragic loss and new concerns arise after finding a mysterious uncanny figurine hidden under her bed.
A haunting unsettling strange tale containing evil that males do.
Sparagmos
That Word that starts with D now commonly attributed to an ailment and illness many denizens of this earth in increasing great numbers plagued and suffering with.
Dementia.
This stories core tragedy at the heart of Glen, a once radio talk show host.
Desperate hours and days with fading things, finding ones abode and familiar faces strange and puzzling.
“Glen Steinman consulted his journal. The radio talk show sputtered nonsense.
…outside town, 6-year-old Jerry Grace holds the decapitated head of his friend while his father looks on proudly.
But that couldn’t be correct. Glen tried to record everything in his journal, wrote down questions which he answered first thing every morning. He filled in crossword puzzles, practiced spelling tests to hone his mental acuity. Dementia couldn’t win as long as he kept writing everything down. He’d beat this.”
“A diseased memory, a mental snapshot of his children’s faces was smeared like a drop of water on ink in his notebook. But he couldn’t forget about them. Not yet. He had to find his way to the center of the maze first.”
“Words were no longer processed in his brain correctly. Language had become a creaking, tilting Tower of Babel, threatening to scatter all coherence to the wind. Dementia had perverted his ability to understand. He turned the radio’s volume down.��
“Everything was dependent on memory. Without memory, the world had no meaning.”
The Immeasurable Corpse of Nature
Mina a Forensic Anthropologist in search of what had taken place at Omelas Farm, anxieties induced hence forth at the farm, the secrets, and what lies beneath.
Certain real and surreal matters become clearer for Mina in the tales grotesque philosophical finale.
Reviews will be available also with excerpts -->
https://www.more2read.com/review/the-immeasurable-corpse-of-nature-by-christopher-slatsky/
May 1, 2022
Airfields: full of sound and fury and signifying nothing, stewing in imagery and angst. Effective, nevertheless.
Engines: underwater ocean, secret geography, sunless sea, salt daddy. There's like one good idea here and it's wasted.
Carcass: Colour Out of Space. Weird fungi, weird bees, don't mind if I do, but leaves me cold aside from that.
Numinous: waste of ink.
Sunrise: fake medium experiences real magic. I think it's too indulgent.
Palladium: ambivalence. Neat speculative ideas and visions brought down by narrative execution.
Devil: spooky puppets, but antebellum! Neat dollhouse concept brought down by execution. I am ambivalent about the sexuality.
Professor: secret wisdom whatever.
Technique: angel egg fetus? Is that anything? [No, it's not.]
Language: fake medium experiences real magic. The drug and race ideas are just... Devices, I guess, which feels wasteful. The gradual takeover is effective, but this effect is immediately squandered.
Fugurine: hoooooo boy. One good idea in the geometry of the house. Everything else feels... tasteless — perhaps somebody else could have done this better.
Affirmation: the use of "Cinemassacre" is telling, and lazy. There's a brief description of a spooky movie... and some convoluted explanation of why watching a movie should be spooky in itself? Who cares.
Sparagmos: (Slatsky frantically trying to finish the book the morning it's due) dementia hoarder garden maze? Is that anything? [No, it's not.]
Surgeon: yeah man write about academic analysis and a yokai and the Black Dahlia and a grad student and hell why not describe the difficult and historically resonant life stories of two interviewees too and also the experience of consciously mediating and recapturing heritage and addressing queerness, that'll work super well
Title story: yeah man write about academic analysis and experimental design and cult mentality and antinatalism and also why not lazily write about anti-antinatalism and heroin addiction and the self-conscious personal dimension of the immigrant experience and queerness and racism and white supremacy and the collision of cosmic horror and psychological horror and oh maybe also art imitating life and vice versa and weird spooky scarecrows and maybe even weird mud creatures that are metaphorical for heroin and don't forget the decay of small-town America and oh why not also make the narrator unreliable (so about half the story is worthless in a sense, because only the internal state is meaningful) and genocide investigations and generally pondering what evil lurks in the hearts of men and vaguely plausible science and vaguely ominous images that show up one and never again and, beyond all else, gratuitous descriptions of cadavers, microcosmic or macrocosmic, Slatsky doesn't care, just give him a few pages to reaaallyyy get rolling and launch into an extended rumination about corpses.
----
So what do you rate this???
---
In retrospect, and in summary:
Absolutely artless language, 100% telling 0% showing. Browbeats with an abundance of irrelevant details to disguise this, but make no mistake, the details contribute nothing.
Related: a good editor could cut the book in half by trimming superfluous descriptions. Yet at the same time, themes and ideas and genuinely cool concepts are underexplored. How does that work out? I guess it's just not very well written.
I'm happy to see that there is representation beyond the usual (frankly dull) white male default — several qualitatively different immigrant stories, addicts, fair number of women, some brief mentions of queerness, which is great, but honestly adds up to nothing. Don't just check a box, give these topics the attention they deserve and make the connections to the horror themes clear. Focus!
The lack of focus and purpose is obvious toward the end of the book, and some things are in such poor taste that it feels like last-minute choking. Dementia, loss of memory and identity and trust are scary enough without horror. Child abuse and mass shootings are quite unpleasant enough on their own. But cramming everything together in thirty pages doesn't create a sense of terror or even banality of evil. It just reads like bizarro fiction. I don't think there's anything wrong with Ass Goblins of Auschwitz: it's a legitimate avant-garde art; I'm just not interested in seeing it lumped together with Ligotti-like weird fiction.
----
Special shout-out to the neo-Nazi girl in the title story, whose description is just an excruciating and endless enumeration of neo-Nazi symbols and signals. I'm sure the neo-Nazis in the target audience really appreciate it, although I admit I'm at a total loss as to what the rest of us are supposed to get out of it. The overarching question of why she is a neo-Nazi -- what purpose this serves to the plot or themes of the story -- eludes me. Perhaps it's a PNW thing. Anyway, it strikes me as gratuitous and fawning, and not much else; at least pretend there's a point to it. I don't mean to overemphasize it, but to me it was an excellent example of the overall lack of economy in the writing.
---
Maybe 60% through I was thinking it's about a 4 star book, with some awkwardness in language but basically good and original ideas, but the last five stories completely squandered that. Chaotic, totally unfocused, trying to cover a range of ideas and themes and traumas that would take a better writer ten times as much space to cover in detail and in good taste. The representation is good, but feels performative, especially after struggling through pointless pages of "this is what neo-Nazis look like" courtesy of WikiHow -- although I suppose I should be thankful that the representation doesn't get to the point of being self-defeating, like in The Fifth Season and its sequels. So the narrative isn't good, but also the language isn't good and doesn't bring any intrinsic joy to read (unless you're really into reading a hundred samey descriptions of corpse handling). So this book didn't really speak to me, and felt overstuffed yet curiously undeveloped.
----
Read Airfields, Engines, Carcass, and Palladium. Perhaps read Language and the last two stories, and make up your own mind: even if the execution is uneven, it's an impressive attempt.
-----
Update one year on (1 May 2022): wow I remember practically nothing from this book, except the premise of "Palladium." The title story didn't come to me even after reading my own review, and probably for the better because I've read such more effective fictional treatments of addiction within the past year.
Engines: underwater ocean, secret geography, sunless sea, salt daddy. There's like one good idea here and it's wasted.
Carcass: Colour Out of Space. Weird fungi, weird bees, don't mind if I do, but leaves me cold aside from that.
Numinous: waste of ink.
Sunrise: fake medium experiences real magic. I think it's too indulgent.
Palladium: ambivalence. Neat speculative ideas and visions brought down by narrative execution.
Devil: spooky puppets, but antebellum! Neat dollhouse concept brought down by execution. I am ambivalent about the sexuality.
Professor: secret wisdom whatever.
Technique: angel egg fetus? Is that anything? [No, it's not.]
Language: fake medium experiences real magic. The drug and race ideas are just... Devices, I guess, which feels wasteful. The gradual takeover is effective, but this effect is immediately squandered.
Fugurine: hoooooo boy. One good idea in the geometry of the house. Everything else feels... tasteless — perhaps somebody else could have done this better.
Affirmation: the use of "Cinemassacre" is telling, and lazy. There's a brief description of a spooky movie... and some convoluted explanation of why watching a movie should be spooky in itself? Who cares.
Sparagmos: (Slatsky frantically trying to finish the book the morning it's due) dementia hoarder garden maze? Is that anything? [No, it's not.]
Surgeon: yeah man write about academic analysis and a yokai and the Black Dahlia and a grad student and hell why not describe the difficult and historically resonant life stories of two interviewees too and also the experience of consciously mediating and recapturing heritage and addressing queerness, that'll work super well
Title story: yeah man write about academic analysis and experimental design and cult mentality and antinatalism and also why not lazily write about anti-antinatalism and heroin addiction and the self-conscious personal dimension of the immigrant experience and queerness and racism and white supremacy and the collision of cosmic horror and psychological horror and oh maybe also art imitating life and vice versa and weird spooky scarecrows and maybe even weird mud creatures that are metaphorical for heroin and don't forget the decay of small-town America and oh why not also make the narrator unreliable (so about half the story is worthless in a sense, because only the internal state is meaningful) and genocide investigations and generally pondering what evil lurks in the hearts of men and vaguely plausible science and vaguely ominous images that show up one and never again and, beyond all else, gratuitous descriptions of cadavers, microcosmic or macrocosmic, Slatsky doesn't care, just give him a few pages to reaaallyyy get rolling and launch into an extended rumination about corpses.
----
So what do you rate this???
---
In retrospect, and in summary:
Absolutely artless language, 100% telling 0% showing. Browbeats with an abundance of irrelevant details to disguise this, but make no mistake, the details contribute nothing.
Related: a good editor could cut the book in half by trimming superfluous descriptions. Yet at the same time, themes and ideas and genuinely cool concepts are underexplored. How does that work out? I guess it's just not very well written.
I'm happy to see that there is representation beyond the usual (frankly dull) white male default — several qualitatively different immigrant stories, addicts, fair number of women, some brief mentions of queerness, which is great, but honestly adds up to nothing. Don't just check a box, give these topics the attention they deserve and make the connections to the horror themes clear. Focus!
The lack of focus and purpose is obvious toward the end of the book, and some things are in such poor taste that it feels like last-minute choking. Dementia, loss of memory and identity and trust are scary enough without horror. Child abuse and mass shootings are quite unpleasant enough on their own. But cramming everything together in thirty pages doesn't create a sense of terror or even banality of evil. It just reads like bizarro fiction. I don't think there's anything wrong with Ass Goblins of Auschwitz: it's a legitimate avant-garde art; I'm just not interested in seeing it lumped together with Ligotti-like weird fiction.
----
Special shout-out to the neo-Nazi girl in the title story, whose description is just an excruciating and endless enumeration of neo-Nazi symbols and signals. I'm sure the neo-Nazis in the target audience really appreciate it, although I admit I'm at a total loss as to what the rest of us are supposed to get out of it. The overarching question of why she is a neo-Nazi -- what purpose this serves to the plot or themes of the story -- eludes me. Perhaps it's a PNW thing. Anyway, it strikes me as gratuitous and fawning, and not much else; at least pretend there's a point to it. I don't mean to overemphasize it, but to me it was an excellent example of the overall lack of economy in the writing.
---
Maybe 60% through I was thinking it's about a 4 star book, with some awkwardness in language but basically good and original ideas, but the last five stories completely squandered that. Chaotic, totally unfocused, trying to cover a range of ideas and themes and traumas that would take a better writer ten times as much space to cover in detail and in good taste. The representation is good, but feels performative, especially after struggling through pointless pages of "this is what neo-Nazis look like" courtesy of WikiHow -- although I suppose I should be thankful that the representation doesn't get to the point of being self-defeating, like in The Fifth Season and its sequels. So the narrative isn't good, but also the language isn't good and doesn't bring any intrinsic joy to read (unless you're really into reading a hundred samey descriptions of corpse handling). So this book didn't really speak to me, and felt overstuffed yet curiously undeveloped.
----
Read Airfields, Engines, Carcass, and Palladium. Perhaps read Language and the last two stories, and make up your own mind: even if the execution is uneven, it's an impressive attempt.
-----
Update one year on (1 May 2022): wow I remember practically nothing from this book, except the premise of "Palladium." The title story didn't come to me even after reading my own review, and probably for the better because I've read such more effective fictional treatments of addiction within the past year.
October 11, 2021
Excellent collection of dark, modern ‘weird’ tales. Slatsky’s style is engaging, eloquent, and distinguished. There’s some experimentation with form but it feels fresh rather than self-indulgent. The plots of the stories touch on everything from child abductions to creepy towns, seances and magicians, dementia to ventriloquism, school shootings to ‘anti-natalist’ cults. Familiar ingredients for classic horror and gothic fiction but channeled through Slatsky’s distinctive nightmarish vision.
In short, if you read dark supernatural fiction, this book is a must for your collection. Highly recommended. I loved it.
In short, if you read dark supernatural fiction, this book is a must for your collection. Highly recommended. I loved it.
April 8, 2021
Another utterly stunning collection of eclectic and surrealistic horrors from Slatsky. I've deeply enjoyed both of his tomes I've read thus far, two of the finest examples of the modern weird out there.
August 29, 2020
This book messed me up, but I was asking for it.
I first encountered Slatsky earlier this year with his collection "Alectryomancer," which melted my brain into a pile of mush and left me equal parts fascinated and repulsed by the gorgeous, hopeless nihilism it explored.
I'm glad to say that Slatsky has, if anything, honed his style even further here. These stories are devastating, atmospheric, mind-expanding, and weird as hell. He reminds me of a version of Ligotti that cares much more deeply about his characters. The hopelessness, the confusing, oppressive forces that antagonize the tales, it's all there, but matched with nuanced characters who bring a humanity to the stories that writers like Ligotti sometimes lack. It's quite a balancing act.
Admittedly, he can be a frustrating writer at times. A few of the stories left me scratching my head afterward, but the cold feelings they left in me lingered in such a way that I believe their smokescreen approach is by design.
Peppered in with prose fiction are two essays and a play, all related to Slatsky's overarching themes, but he shines brightest in his short stories and in the titular novella, the crown jewel of this collection, which is one of the most devastating tales I've encountered in some time.
I recommend this to any fan of literary weird fiction.
Top stories: The World is Waiting for the Sunrise, Palladium at Night, Queer Woman Surgeon, The Immeasurable Corpse of Nature
Bottom stories: Sparagmos, Devil Gonna Catch You in the Details
I first encountered Slatsky earlier this year with his collection "Alectryomancer," which melted my brain into a pile of mush and left me equal parts fascinated and repulsed by the gorgeous, hopeless nihilism it explored.
I'm glad to say that Slatsky has, if anything, honed his style even further here. These stories are devastating, atmospheric, mind-expanding, and weird as hell. He reminds me of a version of Ligotti that cares much more deeply about his characters. The hopelessness, the confusing, oppressive forces that antagonize the tales, it's all there, but matched with nuanced characters who bring a humanity to the stories that writers like Ligotti sometimes lack. It's quite a balancing act.
Admittedly, he can be a frustrating writer at times. A few of the stories left me scratching my head afterward, but the cold feelings they left in me lingered in such a way that I believe their smokescreen approach is by design.
Peppered in with prose fiction are two essays and a play, all related to Slatsky's overarching themes, but he shines brightest in his short stories and in the titular novella, the crown jewel of this collection, which is one of the most devastating tales I've encountered in some time.
I recommend this to any fan of literary weird fiction.
Top stories: The World is Waiting for the Sunrise, Palladium at Night, Queer Woman Surgeon, The Immeasurable Corpse of Nature
Bottom stories: Sparagmos, Devil Gonna Catch You in the Details
March 22, 2020
Christopher Slastky has produced one of the best works of modern weird fiction. Period. This book is a slow read, but that is by design. Slatsky is a careful, purposeful writer and his readers must be as well. The diversity of settings are connected by a similar imagining of the afterlife, in which the dead are real and present and speaking. Philosophical musings, scientific vocabulary and murky, quickstand grief color this bleak, beautiful book.
June 28, 2021
Unbelievably good. Each tale grabbed me immediately. The ending of The Figurine floored me so much that I had to reread Affirmation of the Spirit which followed it. I just couldnt focus on it thinking about what I had just read. So many excellent works in here, I know I will be rereading this in the future.
December 31, 2021
A surrealist horror masterpiece. I'm still wrapping my head around it all and I think there's instances in some stories that foreshadow and explain some aspects of other stories. I'll have to read it again to find if this is true.
October 14, 2021
Five meaningless, pointless stars.
August 15, 2022
These stories are what would happen if Ligotti liked humans enough to bother tackling social issues in his fiction.
December 30, 2022
4.5* Really good dark stuff with plenty of room for reader interpretation, but occasionally a bit too spare. Titular story was excellent.
September 6, 2021
Really impressed with this one. I will have to get more of his work. The title story was moving and the story about memory loss was absolutely terrifying to me.
February 6, 2023
Awesome.
An absolutely flawless collection of short stories, essays, and even dramatic works that examine human relationships with the stunning - often times overwhelming - transformative forces of nature. Slatsky is kind of like the Locke to Ligotti’s Hobbes - at least that’s how I read him. It’s not that nature, the universe, etc. is objectively hostile or ugly. It’s just that nature has nature shit to do, and unfortunately, that involves a lot of death and decay. It’s not going to go out of its way to cater to the delusions of a species that practically amounts to a colony of ants on the cosmic highway. In the meantime, while we're here, do we respond with horror or with awe? This is a book for people who have felt a little bit of both. The first story, Phantom Airfields, is one of the most haunting things I’ve ever read. It deals with grief and the loss of a child using some truly emotionally devastating nightmare imagery. I don’t think I’ll ever forget it. I’m not even sure it’s the best story in the book, but it’s one of many that needs its own movie adaptation.
One of the many amazing things about this particular body of work is the way that the stories seem to uniquely focus on transformation/spiritual awe by way of processing extreme emotional trauma or simply coming to grips with harsh truths (and how little of those “truths” we will ever actually comprehend). These stories are horrific (one in particular made me set the book down and walk away for a while), but there is something weirdly transcendent in the way they seem to suggest forces of grief, rot, and despair so strong that they can actually wash over us and leave us metaphysically changed. Call me crazy, but by default I think some of this stuff circles back to optimism - at the very least, it deals with perceptions of ugliness so deep and penetrating that they are inevitably warped into things of beauty and majesty.
Read this if you have any interest at all in Philosophical Horror. It's long for a collection of short stories, and it ends with a novella (which is where the book get its title, and is also, ironically, my least favorite). It gets a little emotionally daunting, and if you read the book in sequence you'll probably be glad to exhale after you finish. But it's so worth it. This is the kind of shit that you read and never forget. I am excited for Christopher Slatsky's future, and would like to make the humble suggestion that he try his hand at screenwriting some day. He has a hell of a talent.
Other favorites include: The World is Waiting for the Sunrise, Devil Gonna Catch You in the Corners, Professor Cognoscente's Caliginous Charms Carnival, and The Anthroparian Integration Technique. In the entire book, Sunrise was my favorite.
The single dramatic work in the book, From a People of Strange Language is clever in the way it subverts expectations and toys with your understanding of what medium you’re actually reading in until the last couple pages.
Just get it. Get it, read it, thank me later.
An absolutely flawless collection of short stories, essays, and even dramatic works that examine human relationships with the stunning - often times overwhelming - transformative forces of nature. Slatsky is kind of like the Locke to Ligotti’s Hobbes - at least that’s how I read him. It’s not that nature, the universe, etc. is objectively hostile or ugly. It’s just that nature has nature shit to do, and unfortunately, that involves a lot of death and decay. It’s not going to go out of its way to cater to the delusions of a species that practically amounts to a colony of ants on the cosmic highway. In the meantime, while we're here, do we respond with horror or with awe? This is a book for people who have felt a little bit of both. The first story, Phantom Airfields, is one of the most haunting things I’ve ever read. It deals with grief and the loss of a child using some truly emotionally devastating nightmare imagery. I don’t think I’ll ever forget it. I’m not even sure it’s the best story in the book, but it’s one of many that needs its own movie adaptation.
One of the many amazing things about this particular body of work is the way that the stories seem to uniquely focus on transformation/spiritual awe by way of processing extreme emotional trauma or simply coming to grips with harsh truths (and how little of those “truths” we will ever actually comprehend). These stories are horrific (one in particular made me set the book down and walk away for a while), but there is something weirdly transcendent in the way they seem to suggest forces of grief, rot, and despair so strong that they can actually wash over us and leave us metaphysically changed. Call me crazy, but by default I think some of this stuff circles back to optimism - at the very least, it deals with perceptions of ugliness so deep and penetrating that they are inevitably warped into things of beauty and majesty.
Read this if you have any interest at all in Philosophical Horror. It's long for a collection of short stories, and it ends with a novella (which is where the book get its title, and is also, ironically, my least favorite). It gets a little emotionally daunting, and if you read the book in sequence you'll probably be glad to exhale after you finish. But it's so worth it. This is the kind of shit that you read and never forget. I am excited for Christopher Slatsky's future, and would like to make the humble suggestion that he try his hand at screenwriting some day. He has a hell of a talent.
Other favorites include: The World is Waiting for the Sunrise, Devil Gonna Catch You in the Corners, Professor Cognoscente's Caliginous Charms Carnival, and The Anthroparian Integration Technique. In the entire book, Sunrise was my favorite.
The single dramatic work in the book, From a People of Strange Language is clever in the way it subverts expectations and toys with your understanding of what medium you’re actually reading in until the last couple pages.
Just get it. Get it, read it, thank me later.
February 22, 2021
After I read John Horner Jacobs' A Lush and Seething Hell, I got this idea for a weird horror concept that I thought could be really great, but almost impossible to pull off. It's a pretty obvious and very broad idea: what if you could capture the existential cruelty of evolution? Apparently Chris Slatsky had a very similar idea, but he actually gave it enough tries to fill a book. The results are mixed--much better than I might have feared but not the last word on the subject by any means. Maybe Slatsky will do a novel someday.
The big difference between ICoN and most collections in this genre is that none of the stories feature "entities." They're deeply psychological and experiential, and while that never veers into frustrating "it was all a dream" territory, it works better in some stories than others. A lot of the stories replace their monsters with the horrifying edges of real human experience, and while I think this is a reasonable impulse, it sometimes feels a bit shallow, like he's writing about things that have a *reputation* for being horrible, or things that are strongly stigmatized by society, but not really capturing their essence. The best stories, IMO, are the ones that focus less on grief, guilt, etc, on their own, and more on blending them with memorable imagery. The creeping subterranean sea of Engines of the Ocean and all the ways it manifests, or the uncanny natural history of Carcass of the Lion (I mean, of course that was going to be my favorite) were standouts to me.
There's also a whole set of stories here that show far too much and far too overt influence from Ligotti for my taste. I just don't think you can get away with putting non-fiction essays in these collections, or even as much philosophical exposition as he tries in some of the other stories. It's too heavy-handed, and it invites the reader to engage the stories on a level that conflicts with the rest of the material. Maybe some present-day Borges out there will pull it off, but I don't think it works for Slatsky. Aesthetic fixations, some from Ligotti and others with less obvious origins, also show up here in ways I frankly wish the genre would get over. Ventriloquist dolls, carnival magicians, seances, etc. Some of the stories with ideas that play more to my tastes, in a vaguely Laird Barron-esque mode, simply have the genre's endemic unsatisfying trail-off ending.
Once again I find myself wishing that weird horror authors would fret less about popping the bubble of their ambiguity and just go hog wild into their nightmares.
The big difference between ICoN and most collections in this genre is that none of the stories feature "entities." They're deeply psychological and experiential, and while that never veers into frustrating "it was all a dream" territory, it works better in some stories than others. A lot of the stories replace their monsters with the horrifying edges of real human experience, and while I think this is a reasonable impulse, it sometimes feels a bit shallow, like he's writing about things that have a *reputation* for being horrible, or things that are strongly stigmatized by society, but not really capturing their essence. The best stories, IMO, are the ones that focus less on grief, guilt, etc, on their own, and more on blending them with memorable imagery. The creeping subterranean sea of Engines of the Ocean and all the ways it manifests, or the uncanny natural history of Carcass of the Lion (I mean, of course that was going to be my favorite) were standouts to me.
There's also a whole set of stories here that show far too much and far too overt influence from Ligotti for my taste. I just don't think you can get away with putting non-fiction essays in these collections, or even as much philosophical exposition as he tries in some of the other stories. It's too heavy-handed, and it invites the reader to engage the stories on a level that conflicts with the rest of the material. Maybe some present-day Borges out there will pull it off, but I don't think it works for Slatsky. Aesthetic fixations, some from Ligotti and others with less obvious origins, also show up here in ways I frankly wish the genre would get over. Ventriloquist dolls, carnival magicians, seances, etc. Some of the stories with ideas that play more to my tastes, in a vaguely Laird Barron-esque mode, simply have the genre's endemic unsatisfying trail-off ending.
Once again I find myself wishing that weird horror authors would fret less about popping the bubble of their ambiguity and just go hog wild into their nightmares.
December 23, 2021
4.5 stars, because I need to close this book before Christmas. It's doing nothing for my holiday spirit.
This is the brand of weird horror/lit that's been lighting my fire these days. But it's a very pitiful fire, its lame embers licking with a dull, dry tongue at the crushing black cosmos that surrounds it.... Why burn, then, fire? Why? Oh...shit. I gotta take a break from this stuff.
Slatsky's main thesis centers on grief and guilt (which, you know, pair together pretty well) and their transformative qualities. Each character sinks through their reality, unable to cope with whatever tragedy is afflicting them, and eventually winds up in some nightmarish liminal space, where their grief is the only reality--a hell of their own making, one suspects. Mad Silent Hill 2 vibes. I love it (shuddering).
The ideas, images, and creativity in Slatsky's stories are all top notch, even if the guy might benefit from spending a little less time staring into the void. I worried about him a couple times, wanted to offer a hug. The latter half of the stories in particular introduce some darker subject matter, not that any of the stories are suitable for lighthearted reads. These later ones sometimes toe the "too edgy" line, but if anyone's able to approach these subjects, it's probably this guy.
My only other criticism would be that the stories all follow roughly the same recipe. Change up the ingredients, but the cakes come out mostly looking the same. I would love to see what he could do with a novel, though the quick dips with short stories are probably easier to digest. Also, I've taken a long time with this one, partially due to short story fatigue, and also because these kinds of tales do become oppressive after a while--maybe another reason a novel wouldn't quite work. Hard to call this a criticism though. "Hey, c'mon! give us a lil smile!"
I could go on, but I'll start rambling like a madman soon. And we all know how that turns out.
**Edit** You know, I take it back. A few of the stories use different styles and forms--interviews, academic research, and critical articles--and there's even a play in here. So, it's wrong of me to say the collection is formulaic. I appreciated the different styles. I was even fooled by the second critical journal, not realizing, with relief, it was actually fiction until after finishing it. I guess what I meant is the escalation to surreal horror became familiar, with similar cut-it-off-at-peak-weirdness denouements. Again, this is kinda inherent in the genre, so can't be lobbed as a real criticism of The Immeasurable Corpse of Nature.
This is the brand of weird horror/lit that's been lighting my fire these days. But it's a very pitiful fire, its lame embers licking with a dull, dry tongue at the crushing black cosmos that surrounds it.... Why burn, then, fire? Why? Oh...shit. I gotta take a break from this stuff.
Slatsky's main thesis centers on grief and guilt (which, you know, pair together pretty well) and their transformative qualities. Each character sinks through their reality, unable to cope with whatever tragedy is afflicting them, and eventually winds up in some nightmarish liminal space, where their grief is the only reality--a hell of their own making, one suspects. Mad Silent Hill 2 vibes. I love it (shuddering).
The ideas, images, and creativity in Slatsky's stories are all top notch, even if the guy might benefit from spending a little less time staring into the void. I worried about him a couple times, wanted to offer a hug. The latter half of the stories in particular introduce some darker subject matter, not that any of the stories are suitable for lighthearted reads. These later ones sometimes toe the "too edgy" line, but if anyone's able to approach these subjects, it's probably this guy.
My only other criticism would be that the stories all follow roughly the same recipe. Change up the ingredients, but the cakes come out mostly looking the same. I would love to see what he could do with a novel, though the quick dips with short stories are probably easier to digest. Also, I've taken a long time with this one, partially due to short story fatigue, and also because these kinds of tales do become oppressive after a while--maybe another reason a novel wouldn't quite work. Hard to call this a criticism though. "Hey, c'mon! give us a lil smile!"
I could go on, but I'll start rambling like a madman soon. And we all know how that turns out.
**Edit** You know, I take it back. A few of the stories use different styles and forms--interviews, academic research, and critical articles--and there's even a play in here. So, it's wrong of me to say the collection is formulaic. I appreciated the different styles. I was even fooled by the second critical journal, not realizing, with relief, it was actually fiction until after finishing it. I guess what I meant is the escalation to surreal horror became familiar, with similar cut-it-off-at-peak-weirdness denouements. Again, this is kinda inherent in the genre, so can't be lobbed as a real criticism of The Immeasurable Corpse of Nature.
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