“”To know itself the universe must drink the blood of its children.” Her voice cracked like an ice shelf collapsing; it roared across an improbable expanse of inches. The talon pressed against my pupil. It went in and in.” ~Laird Barron, ‘Swift to Chase.’
“The foxes run. The foxes die. I mourn them, but I understand that there is a danger in mourning for those who would not mourn you in return. Empathy is for those who can afford it. Empathy is for the privileged. Empathy is not for nature.” ~Tanya Tagaq, ‘Split Tooth.’
Happy October. The best month is upon us so it is time to be thematic.
As of the time of this writing, I am one story away from closing out Not a Speck of Light, Laird Barron’s latest collection of short stories. I imagine that reviews of this specific work will be rapidly proliferating, so I am more interested in examining the overall themes of his oeuvre. All I will say about the latest publication is that it is excellent- as much so as his last collection Swift to Chase. As is normal, there are three or so stories on average from each work that really stick with me, a whole lot I enjoy thoroughly, and one or two that I am simply (but not negatively) baffled by.
Barron’s publicly available biography is well known because it is so interesting. Born and raised in Alaska, he worked in fishing and dog sledding, and spent some time in Washington State before moving to upstate New York. These three locations are extremely present in his works. Interestingly, he seems to be working backwards, with more recent stories being more likely to be set in Alaska. His earlier work was Washington-focused. There is also a novel series set in New York State, which retains the weirdness of his shorter fiction if more indirectly but is more focused on two fisted mystery and action.
Most of Barron’s stories are readable as self-contained and stand alone entries. Yet there is a clear overlap and greater cosmos going on here. Characters reappear, as do cults and monsters. Old Leech, an eldritch being who loves humanity “in his own way”, enjoys feasting on our suffering to sustain either his power or perhaps merely to slake his boredom. The world is animalistic and very much alive. But it is not a Live, Laugh, Love world- although you can do all of those things in it if you like.
Something that brings all of Barron’s work together, at least from my own perspective, is the same thing that has attracted me to for eleven years now: Its ruthless paganism. Barron’s protagonists are like Robert E Howard’s in the sense that they are tough and fight back no matter the odds. Unlike Howard, however, who was very much on Team Humanity, human supremacy never exists in Barron’s world. No one wins out over entropy. The food chain, like in Lovecraft of Clark Ashton Smith, is not stacked in favor of man. People fight back, but they often go down fighting. Specific underlings and odious toadies can get their comeuppance, but the protagonists don’t really win either in the long run. I have long maintained that Barron is really a modern Sword and Sorcery author more than even a horror author. That older and better form of fantasy was rooted in an earthy defiance of established order combined with naturalistic sensibilities. Horror was everywhere, but so was adventure. The world was predatory and so were its heroes.
A film example of sword and sorcery in the modern day which also goes unrecognized is the film Mandy, a movie I suspect Barron has seen, especially considering the direction some of his newer stories have taken in the past few years. In this way it takes one to know one as that film also influenced my own writing.
What you get with Barron is a kind of beautifully sparse and atmospheric writing style. Cormac McCarthy doing the pulps. But to say this is pulp is not to deny its literary value. In a culture where we are expected to be awash in Platonic idealism and a mandatory public moralism, it is of cultural value to take the human glasses off from time to time and see the surging tide of instinct and feeding that undergirds our experience. Life is visceral, and above such notions as good and evil. Suffering is everywhere, but so is the joy of combatting it. The pulps understood this drive, to see the awe in horror. Mysterium Tremendum made manifest. To choose life is to choose confronting, perhaps embracing, horror. Personally, I think these kinds of outlooks are extremely useful to meet many present challenges.
Barron shows us a world where everything eats everything else. An endless cycle of predation and consumption. It is perfectly in line with the view of the surviving shamanistic traditions or the old gods. This is the shamanic journey, where one is devoured by monstrous animals before being reborn with the devouring beast as a personal guide. One lives, laughs, and loves with a bloodstained mouth. As the musician and author Tanya Tagaq once put it while complaining about PETA’s demonization of traditional indigenous communities continuing to hunt: “We’re animals! We’re meat! We’re so stupid to think we are not.”
I am not one to become personally invested in people I do not know directly. When famous people I respect become ill or die it does not impact me like it does others. One very big exception to this, I found out, was when it was announced not too long ago that Laird Barron had a sudden and major medical emergency. A jolt passed through me fearing the worst. It was the fear that we would lose one of our best living authors. Someone who spoke to a reality lost in the endless publications of mainstream literary fiction with its endless focus on human subjectivity. Someone who had been one of the main reasons I had gotten back into writing fiction after years of inactivity on that hobby. Thankfully, he pulled through. Old Leech isn’t done digesting us yet. Here is to many more- both years and publications.
I can’t help but wonder if he listens to atmospheric black metal.
The Trickster's Guide to Geopolitics 