In September of 2008, during the course of about three weeks, I read obsessively, and frantically, five of the ten works by author Steve Erickson. My sudden interest was sparked by several factors that aligned at the right time, namely, this interview, my homesickness for Los Angeles, and the frequent bouts of alienation and misanthropy I was experiencing from the recent move and the start of my graduate education. When, on a whim, I picked up a copy of Zeroville at Half Priced Books
I could not have possibly foreseen at that time the all consuming obsession that would follow. If you're going to read these novels right, they involve a good amount of internet research, film viewing, and evenings sitting on the porch smoking cigarettes and reminiscing about lost loves and the nature of time. For me, Erickson was like an fierce unstable lover or a chemical addiction. The only difference was that his novels were a lot harder to come by than standard drugs, and if I somehow found time to do my Phonology assignments it was only because Amazon.com doesn't ship used books overnight.
Since that initial infatuation, I've remained a faithful reader, but have not since experienced the exhilaration of my first encounter. What I've attempted here was to record my initial thoughts and feelings as I made my way through this particularly captivating thoughtscape. This is a breakdown of those memorable three weeks.
Zeroville
Reading Time: under 24 hours
Landscape: Hollywood, New York, Spain, Paris, An insane asylum in Oslo.
Sexscape: Practically non-existent compared to the other four novels.
Thoughts: I find it ironic that I read this novel first, because at the time I couldn't get over how weird it was. Having read the rest, this book seems positively tame in comparison. At the time however, I had a difficult time wrapping my head around two things in particular. Thing the first: most of the novel is extremely hyper-realistic in terms of historical accuracy. There are lists upon lists and mentions upon mentions of directors, films, novels, actors and events that Vikar encounters during his descent into Hollywood that are completely bound in reality, until at one point, he picks up a newspaper with an article about the kidnapping of the granddaughter of Charles Foster Kane. Vikar, having seen Citizen Kane earlier in the novel, reads the article and speculates whether the kidnapper were driven by film lust or money lust. He does not speculate on the fact that Charles Foster Kane is in fact, fictional. WTF, right? Thing the second would be the entire third of the novel where he goes on a scavenger hunt for lost films that contain, along with every other film in the history of film, a single frame from a recurring dream he's had. The climax of course, takes place in said dreamscape. The fact that the resolution for the novel involves Vikar removing piece by piece, his/the collective unconscious from the history of film, was, as I later discovered, maybe the most vanilla ending to an Erickson novel to date.
Reactions: The first thing I did as soon as I finished this book was go out open an account at I Love Video so I could rent A Place in the Sun. I also found myself drawing unfounded connections to things in my own life as if they held some deeper universal meaning that I had yet to discover. Mindfuck city.
Memorable quote: God has seeped his way into Los Angeles after all, and found His instruments there by which to sacrifice the city's children.The Sea Came in at Midnight
Reading Time: 2 days
Landscape: Los Angeles, New York, Tokyo, the edge of the apocalypse.
Sexscape: The plot centers around a 17 year old sex-slave/tool of the apocalypse who has sex with men in order to steal their dreams, and the wife of a disturbed pornographer who unwittingly and regretfully inspires him to take their films to a place darker than she imagined was possible.
Thoughts:Disturbing but hopeful. Though the characters are dealing with situations that are far above and beyond anything I might ever be faced with, it was easy to relate my own experiences, motives, and reactions to theirs. Sometimes you need to make use of the extreme to be able to see a connection. While certain plot points may at times seem extreme or contrived, the characters remain very real. I said to a friend: "It's not as though I myself have ever accidentally given birth to the age of snuff films, but I could
relate to it."
Reactions: It was around the ending of this book that Erickson's narrative style began creeping into my constant inner monologue. I found that I was talking to myself more than usual, and my conversations were much more quaint and sarcastic than ever before. Spending most of the day reading a book like this makes you (me) start narrating the most mundane details of your life as if they were somehow important in the grander scheme of existence. "She stood up and moved slowly to the computer. Her Syntax homework was taunting her like a small child begging for the attention it deserves."
Memorable quote: "I'll bet you just thought you were being pithy. That will teach you to write pithy sex ads."Days Between Stations
Reading Time: 2 days
Landscape: The novel moves between San Francisco, a post sand storm LA covered in sand dunes and on the verge of chaos, a Paris in the coldest winter it's seen in years with dwindling energy, a Venice Italy where a team of bikers disappear for days along the canals, and a train that doesn't seem to run along a linear track.
Sexscape: I felt significantly less guilty getting aroused by this novel, probably because it was based in a love story, though it didn't neccesarily depart for the standard issues of power and misplaced sexuality of the previous two novels. The type of cunnilingus where one's tongue defies space and time. Also some brothels, incest, and what someone thinks is incest but isn't.
Thoughts: I really genuinely love and admire this novel in ways I've never felt before. It sounds pretty hokey when you describe the plot, setting, or characters, but it has an incredible amount of heart, and it brings out whatever sadness, hope, longing and despair was lurking dormant inside you. These poor people are just lost in this decaying world that they don't understand, they're haunted by a past that some of them can't even remember, and they're all just trying to love and be loved in a way that seems right and true.
Reactions: When you're reading a book like this, you start looking at strangers on the street as if they harbor a secret that they need you to uncover. More so than usual.
Memorable quote: Both of them had known, the moment before he touched her, what it would be like, how it would feel. Both of them knew, the moment he kissed her, that in another time and place, they had done it before.
"Where do I know you from?" she heard him whisper.
"I don't know."
Amnesiascope
Reading Time: 2 days
Landscape: Ravaged by "the Quake," Los Angeles is perpetually on fire, overrun with prostitutes and pornographers, left for dead by the rest of the country, subject to flash floods and has been divided into several different time zones.
Sexscape: The novel centers around a journalist, but he hangs/has sex with mostly pornographers and prostitutes.
Thoughts: As far as sex narratives in Los Angeles go, this was somewhere between the guilty pleasures of The L Word and the stomach sickness of a Bukowski novel. Something very primal in me wanted to see this city burn.
Reactions: Truthfully the noteworthy result of reading this book was the nearly breakneck speed at which I reached for Our Ecstatic Days when it was finished.
Memorable quote: Besides working for the newspaper, Dr. Billy is also trying to get financing for a film documentary he is making about sex addicts in Copenhagen, which followed his magnum opus, a documentary about sex addicts in Bombay. At one point years back he was awarded a grant by a mysterious millionaire in San Francisco, the terms of which were that he would tour the world for a year with his wife Jane and make a documentary about international sex addicts. Soon after the money came in, the millionaire died and Dr. Billy sort of forgot about making the documentary and just took the world tour. Rio de Janeiro was nice I hear. The newspaper seized on this freakish development to name Dr. Billy it's "international" correspondent until, weary of all those tedious stops on the itinerary like Bangkok and Barcelona, he returned to America in a fit of ennui, whereupon the paper instantly named him it's national correspondent. Now he drops into the office every once in a while to groan about the onerous task of traveling the world on a dead millionaires money.
Our Ecstatic Days
Reading Time: 8 days
Landscape: A lake (with a temporal/spacial vortex at the bottom) appears at the intersection of Laurel Canyon and Sunset and grows until the greater part of the city is completely underwater.
Sexscape: The two main characters are the 17 year old from The Sea Came in at Midnight who has become a professional dominatrix, and one of her clients.
Thoughts: Truly heartbreaking in a way I didn't expect. The narrative neither adds to or detracts from the emotions running rampant through the novel, but it does add to the readers sense of confusion, hopelessness and general sinking feeling. Whatever pleasure I gleaned from imagining Los Angeles ablaze was extinguished when the gas station on Crescent Heights disappeared beneath the murky water.
Reactions: This book took so much out of me that I had to stop and take a breather. It's the last Erickson I read because I literally just couldn't go any further. The narraitive structure itself is a struggle, but the plot alone makes you feel as though you're having your heart ripped out in a dark room by a stranger. It's not surprising, having read Zeroville that it was the follow up to this book. I mean, there's really no degree of weirdness that can top this. Your only option at that point is to write something linear that follows one character and has a beginning, middle, and end, because if you tried to push to narrative envelope any further, the result wouldn't even be a novel, it would be a daisy, tied to a paper bag full of postage stamps underneath a blinking traffic light. I think you know what I mean.
Memorable quote: Are you a monkey? I say and he says "No I'm not a monkey!" Are you a boy? and he answers, "Yes! I'm a boy!" except last time. Last time I said, Are you a boy? and he said, "No, please!" and puzzled I said then what are you? and he answeredI'm a Bright Light.
A special thank you to Ryan and ShelfLife for publishing this review.
