Talking In Obscurity, "The Hellbound Heart," by Clive Barker

 

Or Download This Episode Here: https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/8ip62a/Hellbound_Heart_podcast_Editakj8v.mp3

This is a special episode of Talking In Obscurity. James Reinhardt, who has written reviews before on WIO, joins Steven and me in discussing Clive Barker's "The Hellbound Heart." This is the story that inspired the movie "Hellraiser."

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Author's Website: http://www.clivebarker.info/

"Devolution," by Max Brooks--Guest Fiction Review By: James Reinhardt

In 2003, author Max Brooks burst onto the scene with “The Zombie Survival Guide.” Right at the perfect cultural moment, catching a wave of revived interest in the zombie sub-genre after the release of “28 Days Later” and just before Zack Snyder’s “Dawn of the Dead” remake and Edgar Wright’s “Shaun of the Dead” revitalized the zombie movie for the 21st century. In 2006, in the middle of this renewed interest in zombies, Brooks published “World War Z,” an instant success spawning countless imitators and, like every successful book, eventually a movie. While most zombie media before WWZ took a smaller approach mostly focusing on a small group of survivors, WWZ looked at a zombie apocalypse on a global scale, offering multiple points of view as a UN employee gathered first-hand accounts of the zombie war.

Now, Max Brooks returns with a new horror novel, but this time decides to follow up zombies with something entirely different...

Bigfoot!

 

If you remember from my last post on this blog, I’m a sucker for the paranormal and Cryptozoology, and in the world of Cryptids, there’s nothing—ahem—bigger than the big guy himself, Bigfoot, or Sasquatch, as some call him.

Bigfoot has grown beyond being a figure of the paranormal and fringe-science and has become something of a staple of American folklore, a sort of new world version of the European Green Man legend symbolizing both harmony with nature but also nature’s wrath. The big, hairy guy has also carved out a nice niche for himself in pop-culture, figuring in commercials, TV shows, and films. Depending on what you watch, Bigfoot is either depicted as a kindly gentle giant or a raging monster, with nothing in between, and there’s an entire sub-genre of straight-to-VOD “Bigfoot attacks” movies.

So when I found out that Max Brooks’ next novel would be a Bigfoot story, I couldn’t wait to see what the man who revolutionized zombie literature would do for Bigfoot. Bigfoot has quite a... spotty literary history, to say the least. There’s no shortage of pseudo-scientific Bigfoot books out there, most of which are just rehashes of Bigfoot eyewitness accounts mixed in with the author’s own theories, as well as outlandish “true” stories which read like lousy fiction that the author was hoping to pass off as real (much like “The Mothman Prophecies.”) There have been a few attempts at Bigfoot horror fiction, with mixed results, and of course, there’s an entire section of Amazon dedicated to Bigfoot erotica for the Kindle, if you’re into that sort of thing (no judgment here if you are).

So anyway, a respected author like Max Brooks taking a stab at Bigfoot was a big deal for me. Apparently, Brooks first developed this story as a film for Legendary pictures but then decided that he wanted to do it as a novel first (Legendary announced that it was once again developing “Devolution” as a film just days after the book was released). So how did Brooks’ fair at writing a horror novel about Bigfoot?

***The Non-Spoiler part of this review***

What I love about this book:

Brooks paints a good picture of city folk who like the idea of getting back to nature but have no idea what that actually entails. This is a story about modern people looking to get in touch with nature while also enjoying all of the conveniences of modern life, only to find out how merciless nature can be. I really enjoyed how the characters in this book had not only to learn how to survive and adapt but also fight against an enemy that no human has ever faced before. Two of my favorite horror movies, Wes Craven’s “The Hills Have Eyes” and Neil Marshall’s “The Descent,” are about normal people who must revert to their most primal nature in order to survive against enemies that have avoided the influence of society, and that’s very much the crux of this story as well. The title of the book, “Devolution,” very much refers to the characters in the story and how they must shed the trappings of modern society, and their own humanity, to survive.

I’ll also give it to Max Brooks—he did his Bigfoot research. The Sasquatches in this novel exhibit behavior that’s commonly detailed in eyewitness accounts like rock throwing, tree knocking, howling, and having an overpowering stench. “Devolution” also contains references to Teddy Roosevelt’s book “The Wilderness Hunter,” in which Roosevelt recounts tales he’s heard of Bigfoot. There are also references to the Ape Canyon incident, something that Brooks seemingly drew a lot of inspiration from, where allegedly miners shot a Bigfoot in an area around Mount St. Helens known as “Ape Canyon.” Then later that night, their cabin was set upon by a group of giant, angry gorilla-like beasts.

The big, hairy invaders are also all given distinctive looks and personalities, which I appreciated, though the Bigfoot in this book fall more into the “raging beast” category of Bigfoot. Brooks made a worldwide zombie plague seem plausible in “World War Z,” and he does the same with Bigfoot in this novel, taking great pains to make his Sasquatches seem like something you could encounter in the woods if you went hiking too far off the beaten path...

What I didn’t love about this book: 

While the Bigfoot in this book are given some depth and personality, I feel like the human characters could have used a little more of that. Most of this story is told through the POV of the character of Kate, detailing the events in her journal, and I feel like the choice to tell this story through one character’s eyes hinders it because a lot of the supporting characters get very little development. Horror stories only work if you’re scared for the characters in the story, and we get plenty of insight into the mind of Kate since she’s the one telling most of the story, but we only get her view of the rest of the characters. Dan, her partner, gets the most development after Kate, followed by Mostar, an artist with a past that gives her unique insight into having to survive.

Sadly, some of the additional side characters all blended together, to the point where I found myself having to refer to earlier in the book to remind myself who a certain character was. We never really get to know a lot of the supporting cast beyond surface-level character traits. While I feel like Brooks wanted some of his characters to come off as shallow and vapid, it leaves the reader uninvested in the story, when bad things start to happen. 

I also could have used a little more growth in Kate and Dan’s relationship. When we first meet them, Dan has grown emotionally distant, which has put a strain on their relationship, but as the story goes, Dan finds new purpose as the town’s “handyman.” Sadly, we don’t really see how this impacts their relationship as the latter half of the book focuses mostly on the conflict with the Bigfoot. Granted, a fight for survival against 7-foot tall apes takes precedent, but I would have liked a few more moments between the main characters growing either closer because of this conflict or it driving a bigger wedge between them.

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Author's Website: https://www.maxbrooks.com/

***The Spoiler part of this review***

***Ye be warned to turn back now***

"The Mothman Prophecies," by John A. Keel--Guest Nonfiction Review By: James Reinhardt

I’m a sucker for a good “true” paranormal story. There’s something fun and escapist about letting yourself believe, even for a moment, that you could be hiking one day and come face to face with a Sasquatch, or be driving down a lonely road one night only to have a strange craft fly overhead. Up until a few years ago, I was a hardcore believer in the paranormal and strange phenomena. Part of it was definitely escapism on my part, choosing to believe that there’s some mystery and magic left in this world. In my old age, though, I’ve become much more skeptical, and though I still read these stories for fun, I tend to take them with a massive grain of salt.

One of the most fascinating and well known paranormal incidents is the “Mothman” of Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Allegedly, people in West Virginia were witnessing a large, monstrous being with wings and glowing red eyes between 1966 and 1967. In addition to the Mothman sightings, the area around Point Pleasant was allegedly plagued with all sorts of paranormal fun like UFOs and Men in Black sightings. Everything seemed to come to a head with the collapse of the Silver Bridge in December 1967, which caused the deaths of forty-six people.

Writer John A. Keel’s The Mothman Prophecies is considered the definitive account of the events of 1966-67 and is a classic of paranormal literature, and even got a film adaptation in 2002. Keel claims to have been a central player in whatever happened in Point Pleasant. Going so far as to claim that he and other people in the Ohio Valley area not only witnessed strange things like UFOs but also had contact with bizarre, otherworldly entities that foretold coming disasters like the bridge collapse.


What I love about this book:

Very little...

I won’t lie; this was a tough book to sit through. I listened to the audiobook, so I’ll give it this: it’s certainly never boring. The writing is fast, loose, and simple, so you’ll keep listening (or reading), and some of the encounters in the book with the strange and unbelievable (if they actually happened) are kinda fun and interesting to hear about.

What I don’t love about this book:

Remember when I said that it was tough to get through? Listening to this book in audio format was a lot like listening to my drunk uncle rant and rave about all of his conspiracy theories for eight hours straight. Most of the book is filled with Keel’s rambling, incoherent thoughts as he careens wildly from one topic to the other with barely any connecting thread. There were several points where I had to stop and ask aloud, “What are you even talking about?”

This entire book is filled with Keel passing conjecture off as fact, and he makes a lot of wild claims with little or no evidence to back it up. He posits several different explanations for what the strange entities in this book are and claims that each explanation is “definitive” with nothing to support his claim. Also, he can’t seem to make up his mind if these strange beings that he writes about are extraterrestrials, extra-dimensional beings, or “thought forms” given life by people’s belief in them (the proper term for this is “tulpa”).

Keel, in addition, claims every great leader in history was made that way after contact with these beings, and he also says that every terrible person from history is also because of contact with these aliens or whatever. And before you ask, no, Keel does not have examples or sources to back this up.

Also, for a book called, “The Mothman Prophecies,” there’s precious little of the Mothman in this book. Keel details eyewitness encounters with the strange, flying creature early in the book, but then he spends the rest of the time focusing on UFO encounters, alien contact, and the MiB.

Oh, and did I mention the old school, 1970s racism, and sexism that is rampant throughout this book? Keel uses the terms “negroid,” “negro,” and “oriental type” far too liberally for my liking, and whenever there’s a female witness, Keel will always be sure to let you know how attractive (or unattractive) he thinks she is.

The book "The Mothman Prophecies" is a strange dichotomy because Keel seems desperate to create a narrative that these alien visitors had something to do with the collapse of the Silver Bridge. Still, there is no real, concise narrative throughout this book. Since he presents this as non-fiction, I understand the challenges of trying to frame a story around alleged real-life incidents, since life rarely fits into a nice bow like most stories. Keel’s attempts to force a real-life tragedy into a story about aliens and flying monsters feel like it was done in very poor taste. This book was written in 1975, several years after the bridge collapsed, and Keel claims that the entities warned him beforehand that a tragedy was going to strike on the Ohio River.

Oh yeah, and he also claimed that the entities warned him about Martin Luther King Jr’s death (once again, for reference, King was assassinated in 1968, and “The Mothman Prophecies” came out in 1975).

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and seeing how this book was written several years after these tragedies, means there’s no way to prove that Keel knew about these tragedies before they would happen unless you take his word for it. With nothing to corroborate his claims, it really feels like Keel just kinda made up this narrative about aliens—or tulpas, or extra-dimensional beings or whatever. Their so-called warnings to him about these tragedies just to give his story some semblance of a narrative, and exploiting real-life tragedy for the sake of a story makes this book feel sleazier than your usual run of the mill paranormal story.

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Parting thoughts:

I’ve always been interested in stories of the Mothman since I was young, and I’ve always said that if what happened in Point Pleasant was real, then it was one of the most significant paranormal events of the 20th century. Likewise, if what happened in Point Pleasant wasn’t real, then it’s one of the most interesting cases of mass-hysteria of the 20th century.

I did a lot of research into Keel and what happened in Point Pleasant after finishing this book, and many skeptical explanations have been offered for what exactly The Mothman was, with the most prevalent being that people were seeing a Barred Owl. This book seems to be the thing that generated the “Mothman caused the Silver Bridge collapse” narrative that continues today, and I can’t help but feel that most of what transpires in this book has been made up. Many who knew Keel say that he was a very “mischievous” figure that “didn’t take his own writings seriously,” which further makes me feel that Keel is trying to pass off lousy science fiction as fact in this story. Keel himself refers in the book, several times, to his own failed attempts at writing fiction.

In the end, I can’t even say that Mothman Prophecies is a fun read. It’s an infuriating, rambling, borderline incoherent story that attempts to create a paranormal narrative around a real-life disaster. I would say that you, dear reader, are better off watching the 2002 movie The Mothman Prophecies, which has about as much Mothman as this book does, as in, very little Mothman. At least that movie is a semi-coherent story, though, but like this book, it tries passing off fiction as reality.