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Through the Eyes of Monsters

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When a despicable character is brought up in literature, the conversation always includes Patrick Bateman from American Psycho and Humbert Humbert from Lolita. These are the typical people whose perspectives we see through in those books. These two books are commonly brought up in the context of controversy, but that is something I won't be addressing. What I will be addressing is the importance of the POV narrative in regards to these types of characters.  The last three novels I read were Zombie by Joyce Carol Oates, Violent Faculties by Charlene Elsby and Crushing Snails by Emma E. Murray. Each one puts the reader in the perspective of a psychopath. In Zombie we are Quentin P___. Crushing Snails slips us into the skin of Winnie Campbell. Violent Faculties allows us to inhabit the mind of an unnamed philosophy professor who was recently fired due to 'budget cuts'.  The character of Quentin in Zombie is based on Jeffrey Dahmer, known for murdering, dismembering seventeen m
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Great Adaptations: The Shawshank Redemption

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  A great adaptation should give you the ability to look at both the book and film in different lights after consuming each piece. There is an immediate compare and contrast. The whole notion of 'the book is always better than the movie' isn't always true. It's not common but it happens. What is even more rare is to have both the book and the adaptation of it manage to be different yet both great.  Reading Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption felt like watching a fisherman cast a series of lines out to catch a fish. Here's the opening paragraph: "There's a guy like me in every state and federal prison in America, I guess- I'm the guy who can get it for you. Tailor-made cigarettes, a bag of reefer if you're partial to that, a bottle of brandy to celebrate your son or daughter's high school graduation, or almost anything else...within reason, that is. It wasn't always that way." The next paragraphs tell us how Red got to Shawshank.
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No Matter Which Way We Turned by Brian Evenson

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Ill Will by Dan Chaon

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"We are always telling stories about ourselves." So goes one of the many unreliable narrators of Dan Chaon's Ill Will. The unreliable narrator is a workshop tool used in countless books. A narrator who witholds information or outright lies to the reader. Patrick Bateman and Holden Cuulfield are two notable characters who deploy this tactic. Ill Will magnifies this technique with multiple unreliable narrators. Broken up into differing perspectives and set on a timelne alternating between 1983, 2012, 2013, and 2014. The story begins when psychologist Dustin hears the news of his adopted brother Rusty being released from prison. The crime being the murder of Dustin's parents, aunt and uncle. Dustin testified against Rusty, believing him to be linked to a satanic cult. A mysterious new patient named Aqil enters into Dustin's life with theories about a string of murders that may be connected by dates of triplets (6/06/06, 7/07/07, etc.). Watching things unr
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An Introduction

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"Books are finite, sexual encounters are finite, but the desire to read and to fuck is infinite; its surpasses our own deaths, our fears, our hopes for peace."      -Roberto Bolano The past few years I've been watching movies less and less. Both new and old. The older brother to this blog, Between the Reels, has become a mere info dump for end of the year best ofs and top 100 updates. In a post titled Best of 2018 Pt. 1, I layed out the reasons why. It's 2019 and content is readily available to stream and beam into your laptop screens. Where is there even time to make in order to read book? The excitement of literature and reading in general is its vastness in so many directions. The near impossible learning curve that is so steep, I will die mostly ignorant. There are no 'experts' on any subject. To admit that one would have to admit there is a ceiling to knowledge on a particular topic. Of all the art forms, it is the most isolated. Thus allowing a more
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