CREEMEDIA

CREEMEDIA

THE SQUASHEDEYE THEORY

CLIVE BARKER�S BOOKS OF BLOOD, VOLUMES I—III by Clive Barker (Berkley)

Richard C. Walls

by

There�s something to be said for explicitness. This morning on the news I saw a story about a group in Alabama which won a court case in their ongoing effort to have religion �restored� to the public schools, particularly in the history classes where, they say, God has become a non-Person and the glories of His Earthly hierarchy remain unsung. To which, remembering how godawfully dull my own history classes were, I sigh amen. What�s needed to juice up school days are history books that evoke the crackle and pungent smell of heretics burning flesh, the stomachchurning details of genocidal holy wars, the unwholesome alliance between churches and blood-thirsty military regimes, the awesome sight of huge burning crosses throwing their ghastly light on lynched, mutilated bodies... This is only part of the story, of course (there�s much niceness to report, too) but one has to be thankful for the good and brave Alabamians� willingness to open this Pandora�s box during these censorious times.

Another hearty soul fighting the good fight, though on a different front, is English writer Clive Barker. That Barker, who specializes in longish short horror stories (usually between 30-50 pgs.; there are 16 collected in these three volumes), should appear at a time when so many people are backpeddling from explicitness is both unexpected and encouraging—it�s not just mere hype that has moved blurbmeister Stephen King to designate Barker�s work as �important.� In fact, Barker�s stuff is most recommended to those who find that King�s sloppily verbose tales of sentiment and rot no longer raise the little hairs on the back of their necks. Undoubtably influenced by the splatter films of the past 15 years (the post-ratings era—again we must thank the would-be censors), Barker is taking the horror story to new levels of graphicness. Even some of the titles make one approach with caution: �Rawhead Rex,� �The Skins Of The Fathers,� �Pig Blood Blues,� �The Midnight Meat Train.� Simultaneously, he has brought to this unsavory genre the most sophisticated writing style since Peter Straub (who I think is actually a bit too polished for his chosen field). It�s not just the touch of allegory, the unobtrusive philosophical musing, the atmosphere drawn with steady-handed brushstrokes, or even the recognizably modern, neurotic threedimensional characters—it�s the grace and glee Barker brings to his depictions of grisly slaughters, eye-gougings and eviscerations, unspeakable degradations. Barker�s great accomplishment is that he has refined vulgarity, has taken the adolescent snotball aesthetic of the gross-out and treated it like an adult. His tales are what King�s came close to being before his modest bourgeois ambition (celebrating normalcy) tempered his vision: EC Comics for grown-ups.

I�ve been purposely mum on plots �cause in summary they sound misleadingly silly and because one of Barker�s special talents is coming up with unexpected concepts—it�s a testament to his fecundity that any one of these tales would supply most horror writers with material for a whole novel. And the stories keep coming— while I was reading these three paperbacks, two hardcover collections appeared, The Inhuman Condition and In The Flesh. Sight unseen, I can safely recommend them—how could they be other than chilling, excellent?

OK, one last stab at Significance, then I�m out of here: the importance of graphic horror vis-a-vis the well-being of the Republic was best expressed by a Gahan Wilson cartoon I saw once in The Magazine Of Fantasy And Science Fiction. It depicted a Veteran�s Day type of parade, but instead of the usual spruced-up vets and welltended symbols, the participants were maimed, rotting corpses in ragged uniforms, carrying burned and torn flags—the real victims of real wars. One of the parade watchers had turned to the person next to him and was saying, �Gee, I dunno.. .this is kinda depressing.� You either get the point or you don�t. But I think that access to graphic depiction, generally, keeps us healthy and sane. And there�s something to be said for cheap thrills, too.