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'Trying to capture the experience of a character on the brink of insanity is daring and rarely successful. When it works—think William Burroughs at his best—readers must be able to encounter the narrator's skewed psychology without becoming lost amid the hallucinatory logic. The Orange Eats Creeps performs this tricky balancing act, which partly explains how Grace Krilanovich can inhabit a ludicrous plot (hobo vampires?) without tumbling into horror kitsch. She nails the shaky worldview of a supernatural teen narco-insomniac who drifts in and out of dreams as fluidly as she drifts in and out of sexual encounters: sometimes ecstatic, sometimes in agony, often sliding between those poles within a single sentence. But even as she charges into dark psychological alleys and scrambles straightforward syntax, she keeps us grounded with familiar settings—a Safeway, say, where our narrator flips through the pages of People—and shots of laconic prose. Her nights are hazy, but by morning she's back to reality, "on the hood of a blue Honda in the rain, waking up with someone else's greasy sock balled up in [her] hand." Like Brian Evenson's The Open Curtain, this novel immerses the reader in the warped perspective of its protagonist without ever quite sacrificing sense.
'Vampirism is a well-worn horror trope, but Krilanovich finds unique things to say with it. Being undead, here, is the defining paradox of the teenage female experience: to be both immortal and rapidly aging. Orange Eats Creeps is also about the succubuslike existence of homeless teens who "dry-hump reality," feeding off society's dregs, eating from garbage cans, and living in abandoned trailers. Ultimately transformative, they consume cultural detritus and clichés—drugs, horror stories, half-eaten burritos—to fuel a wild, and often terrifying, inner world.' -- Adam Wilson, Bookforum
Grace Krilanovich The Orange Eats CreepsTwo Dollar Radio
'It’s the ’90s Pacific Northwest refracted through a dark mirror, where meth and madness hash it out in the woods. . . A band of hobo vampire junkies roam the blighted landscape—trashing supermarket breakrooms, praying to the altar of Poison Idea and GG Allin at basement rock shows, crashing senior center pancake breakfasts—locked in the thrall of Robitussin trips and their own wild dreams.
'A girl with drug-induced ESP and an eerie connection to Patty Reed (a young member of the Donner Party who credited her survival to her relationship with a hidden wooden doll), searches for her disappeared foster sister along “The Highway That Eats People,” stalked by a conflation of Twin Peaks’ “Bob” and the Green River Killer, known as Dactyl.
'With a scathing voice and penetrating delivery, Grace Krilanovich’s The Orange Eats Creeps is one of the most ferocious debut novels in memory.' -- Two Dollar Radio
Excerpt
Down by the creek there’s a small town by the name of Irondale, a single lane of highway tacked down right in the middle of a lush forest wilderness the likes of which would do Marty Stouffer proud. I found the rest of my hobo buddies camped out among a few modest houses and sheds situated on a dozen acres littered with mobile home trailers and smelly Meth accoutrements, a display resplendent of the region’s claim to fame in the local papers: seedy clusters of mutant skinless stripped-bare mobile home trailers. This was one of the famous Meth squats of Irondale, a real mustache on the face of depravity.
The Jefferson County Leader routinely sent out reporters to lurk behind some crap-filled bathtub, taking notes. More than one soul had been absorbed. Irondale stood as a living monument to Meth dudes who had casually reached a level of ingenuity whereby — after selling the metal siding off their trailers for scrap — they found themselves with nothing left to practice tagging on, so they put the word out, soliciting others to haul in something to fill the void. A yard full of wrecked shit fulfills many needs, doubling as shelter, jewelry, target practice, and . . . ? Some neighbors were once baffled to see a Meth squatter hauling a boat filled with garbage on a trailer with no wheels. When the trailer couldn’t be coaxed into going any further it was unceremoniously abandoned out in the middle of the road, which even by Meth squat standards is pretty resourceful. The garbage that actually did make it onto the property was cast off behind some trees, or used to prop up one of the corners of the skinless trailer, or else dragged off by wild animals for use in their own squats. Very little could grow on Meth squat land and what did was burned down. Massive jamborees were held around giant cauldrons of altered medicine that bubbled delectably away at the fire.
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'Though unrelated to Lovecraft, in spite of the allusive title, Dark Stars Rising is a true Necronomicon, a Black Bible of transgression and transcendence, of the Other and the Beyond. Big words, I know, but this is a big book – big in every sense. More than 560 pages of large format (8 of them in glorious color) are crammed with 27 long interviews with some of the most daring fringe artists in various modes of the One & Only True Art: that of pushing Boundaries! Whether they're expressing themselves through directing, producing and starring in movies, or their respective modes include photography, music, magic, self-torture, stand-up comedy, performance etc. – all of them share a rare passion and total devotion to their Art, and revealing talks with these "dark stars" are nothing short of inspirational.
'Dark Stars Rising reveals a candid and warm side of Divine, the inimitable star of John Waters's trash epics and puts a new light on erotic death trips of Richard Kern's photos and short films. Udo Kier, another cult star of high camp, shows off more lucidity, humor and insight than many of his better known colleagues. Jim Vanbebber talks about the low budget splatter of his Chunk Blower, My Sweet Satan and Charlie's Family, while Buddy Giovinazzo (Combat Shock, Life is Hot in Crack Town) rises from a similar background of shoestring moviemaking to reveal his deals with Troma and why Maniac 2 (with Joe Spinell, again) never happened.
'The mystical insights are oozing from the thorough, career spanning and thought-provoking interviews with the masters of (oc)cult cinema like Alejandro Jodorowsky and Richard Stanley, while the somewhat academic, yet still down-to-earth and funny Dennis Paoli bares all about his collaborations with Stuart Gordon (Re-Animator, From Beyond, Castle Freak, etc.). Chas. Balun, veteran of horror-zines, and Johannes Schonherr, critic, festival programmer and author of Trashfilm Roadshows: Off the Beaten Track with Subversive Movies (also from Headpress) uncover the varieties of extreme cinema from around the world. French provocauteur Gaspar Noe is here, too, to put his Argentinean background in perspective with French influences in making the angry movies like I Stand Alone and Irreversible.' -- Beyond Hollywood
Shade Rupe Dark Stars Rising: Conversations from the Outer RealmsHeadpress
'DARK STARS RISING is a collection of 27 candid interviews spanning 24 years with unique and free-thinking artists, from America to Austria, and beyond. Working in different media, countries, constraints, and freedoms, the vortex here is created by New York film writer Shade Rupe, known for his avant interests and the cultural realm he inhabits with his Funeral Party books. Everyone in this collection has produced artifacts that affect the heart, mind, soul, and future. A visually stunning package, DARK STARS RISING contains over 500 photographs and illustrations, many of them rare and hitherto unseen. Eight color plates and a selection of choice reviews rounds out this amazing book.' -- Headpress
The Players: Richard Kern, Alejandro Jodorowksy, Buddy Giovinazzo, Udo Kier, Jim VanBebber, Dennis Paoli, Tura Satana, Teller, Brother Theodore, Peter Sotos, Johannes Schonherr, Chas. Balun, Divine, Floria Sigismondi, Hermann Nitsch, Genesis P-Orridge, William Lustig, Dennis Cooper, Gaspar Noe, Johanna Went, Zamora, The Torture King, Andre Lassen, Arnold Drake, Richard Stanley, Dame Darcy, Stephen O'Malley, Crispin Glover
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from The Temple of Ghoul
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'Frantz Fanon's relatively short life yielded two potent and influential statements of anti-colonial revolutionary thought, Black Skin, White Masks (1952) and The Wretched of the Earth (1961), works which have made Fanon a prominent contributor to postcolonial studies.
'Fanon was born in 1925, to a middle-class family in the French colony of Martinique. He left Martinique in 1943, when he volunteered to fight with the Free French in World War II, and he remained in France after the war to study medicine and psychiatry on scholarship in Lyon. Here he began writing political essays and plays, and he married a Frenchwoman, Jose Duble. Before he left France, Fanon had already published his first analysis of the effects of racism and colonization, Black Skin, White Masks (BSWM), originally titled "An Essay for the Disalienation of Blacks," in part based on his lectures and experiences in Lyon.
'For Fanon, being colonized by a language has larger implications for one's consciousness: "To speak . . . means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization" (17-18). Speaking French means that one accepts, or is coerced into accepting, the collective consciousness of the French, which identifies blackness with evil and sin. In an attempt to escape the association of blackness with evil, the black man dons a white mask, or thinks of himself as a universal subject equally participating in a society that advocates an equality supposedly abstracted from personal appearance. Cultural values are internalized, or "epidermalized" into consciousness, creating a fundamental disjuncture between the black man's consciousness and his body. Under these conditions, the black man is necessarily alienated from himself.
'Fanon insists, however, that the category "white" depends for its stability on its negation, "black." Neither exists without the other, and both come into being at the moment of imperial conquest. Thus, Fanon locates the historical point at which certain psychological formations became possible, and he provides an important analysis of how historically-bound cultural systems, such as the Orientalist discourse Edward Said describes, can perpetuate themselves as psychology.' -- Jennifer Poulos
Frantz Fanon Black Skin, White MasksGrove Press
'In this study, Fanon uses psychoanalysis and psychoanalytical theory to explain the feelings of dependency and inadequacy that Black people experience in a White world. He speaks of the divided self-perception of the Black Subject who has lost his native cultural originality and embraced the culture of the mother country. As a result of the inferiority complex engendered in the mind of the Black Subject, he will try to appropriate and imitate the cultural code of the colonizer. The behaviour, Fanon argues, is even more evident in upwardly mobile and educated Black people who can afford to acquire the trappings of White culture. Originally formulated to combat the oppression of black people, Fanon's insights are still influential today, being utilized by various groups such as the Palestinians, the Tamils, African Americans and others, in their struggle for cultural and political autonomy. Fanon presents both historical interpretation and underlying social indictment.' -- Wikipedia
Excerpt
I came into the world imbued with the will to find a meaning in things, my spirit filled with the desire to attain to the source of the world, and then I found that I was an object in the midst of other objects.
Sealed into that crushing objecthood, I turned beseechingly to others. Their attention was a liberation, running over my body suddenly abraded into nonbeing, endowing me once more with an agility that I had thought lost, and by taking me out of the world, restoring me to it. But just as I reached the other side, I stumbled, and the movements, the attitudes, the glances of the other fixed me there, in the sense in which a chemical solution is fixed by a dye. I was indignant; I demanded an explanation. Nothing happened. I burst apart. Now the fragment have been put together again by another self.
As long as the black man is among his own, he will have no occasion, except in minor internal conflicts, to experience his being through others. There is of course the moment of “being for others,” of which Hegel speaks, but every ontology is made unattainable in a colonized and civilized society. It would seem that this fact has not been given sufficient attention by those who have discussed the question. In the Weltanschauung of a colonized people there is an impurity, a flaw that outlaws any ontological explanation. Someone may object that this is the case with every individual, but such an objection merely conceals a basic problem.
Ontology—once it is finally admitted as leaving existence by the wayside—does not permit us to understand the being of the black man. For not only must the black man be black; he must be black in relation to the white man. Some critic will take it on themselves to remind us that this proposition has a converse. I say that this is false. The black man has no ontological resistance in the eyes of the white man. Overnight the Negro has been given two frames of reference within which he has had to place himself. His metaphysics, or, less pretentiously, his customs and the sources on which they were based, were wiped out because they were in conflict with a civilization that he did not know and that imposed itself on him.
The black man among his own in the twentieth century does not know at what moment his inferiority comes into being through the other. Of course I have talked about the black problem with friends, or, more rarely, with American Negroes. Together we protested, we asserted the equality of all men in the world. In the Antilles there was also that little gulf that exists among the almost-white, the mulatto, and the nigger. But I was satisfied with an intellectual understanding of these differences. It was not really dramatic. And then. …
And then the occasion arose when I had to meet the white man’s eyes. An unfamiliar weight burdened me. The real world challenged my claims. In the white world the man of color encounters difficulties in the development of his bodily schema. Consciousness of the body is solely a negating activity. It is a third-person consciousness. The body is surrounded by an atmosphere of certain uncertainty. I know that if I want to smoke, I shall have to reach out my right arm and take the pack of cigarettes lying at the other end of the table.
The matches, however, are in the drawer on the left, and I shall have to lean back slightly. And all of these movements are made not out of habit but out of implicit knowledge. A slow composition of my self as a body in the middle of a spatial and temporal world—such seems to be the schema. It does not impose itself on me; it is, rather, a definitive structuring of the self and of the world— definitive because it creates a real dialectic between my body and the world.
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p.s. Hey. ** Brendan, Hey, B. Oh, man, sorry. I feel like I have spates of those same thoughts about my work every month or two, so maybe it's normal? I tell you what I tell myself for whatever it's worth: You're overthinking it, and you're giving to much power over your work to the collective viewer, about whom you're making too many emotion-based assumptions as a way to beat yourself up. Plus, you have just put yourself in full-time artist mode after a long time of having to make art in the margins, and I suspect you're putting too much pressure on yourself. Distract yourself until you can relax and then make art that you have fun making and that rivets you irregardless of whether you think it measures up or not. That's what I do. It always works eventually. ** David Ehrenstein, Hey. 'Kaboom' came and went here a few months ago, and I missed it, so I'll probably just watch it on DVD at some point. The arcades of Paris and I are semi-old friends at this point. My favorite arcade is the one that runs by the Musee Grevin in fact -- one of the most preserved and still prettiest of them. ** Dandysweets, Hi. Oh, artistic rustiness, sure, totally natural. Like I always say, I guess, you just need to start doing it regularly and not expect too much of yourself at first and get art making to be a habit again, and the rust will fade away, I'll bet you. Work abroad? Like where? I don't think I know what Nordic cuisine is. I'll look into it. Is it pretty meaty? I sort of imagine it would be, for some reason? ** The Dreadful Flying Glove, Yes, you directing the Sun Ra College is a super idea indeed. Well, I mean, obviously. Although you as a revenue gobbling software designer is pretty tasty too. What other way is there towards a big something than fumbling towards it? Oh, I suppose there's a jet stream out there or inside one that you could ride. I feel fumbly myself right now, I guess. It's weird how fast you can go from locked in to clawing. I have all the faith in the world in you, man. ** Pilgarlic, Heights is my big fear. High heights. Like I've said before, just thinking too much for even a second about astronauts doing space walks sends me into a panic. I mean, I rewatched 'Wall-E' recently, like I said, and there was a scene where Wall-E was traveling through outer space clinging onto a ridge on the outside of a spaceship, and I was so freaked out and shaky, I had to look away. Strangeness. Black Death Vodka, no, I don't know that. I remember Death Cigarettes. Brennivan sounds yum. One of the performers in 'TIHYWD' is Icelandic. I'll see if she would be willing to try to sneak me some the next time she heads over here. ** 'Stoopid Slapped Puppies', Nick! Computers are after you? Well, then, fuck them. Well, except mine, I guess, since, without it, I would never have known you. Although it is elderly and fucking up and threatening to die on me any minute. Yeah, every time my granddad on my dad's side saw me, he would bite one of my ears. I mean hard. There are still faint teeth marks in them. And he'd laugh and making chewing and swallowing sounds while he bit my ear. It was creepy. Oh, great that you found that writing place again. Be patient yet diligent with yourself. Don't stress any initial clogginess. I talked to Jesse yesterday, and, as I had glimpsed your post before the talk, I said hi for you, and he's going to write to you. Always a blessing to get to talk with you, great Nick. ** Jax, Hi, pal. I did finally crack it, phew. Looking after his hallucinogenic plant collection? Wow, ha ha. Are you tempted to downsize them a little bit, if you know what I'm saying? Oh, I forgot you did that story, so you do have the novel's voice at least sort of in place, good. Yeah, letters in fiction tend to have this inherent passivity, I guess. Interesting to try to fight that, though. I tried in 'Frisk'. Maybe give the letters idea a shot if they're being really hardass about a single POV, which is a bizarre rule. Big congrats on getting shortlisted. Very cool! That's totally a victoire no matter what happens. Excellent! ** MANCY, Hey. Oh, I have a few artist friends in LA who transport and hang art as their money-making job. According to them, it's not a bad job at all, and the money isn't horrible. That might be a solution. I hope your bro is busy. I think the art buying market is getting healthier all the time right now, so maybe that'll work. ** Scunnard, Well, I think you might be safe from the school kids in the Death Museum. Well, unless Thailand's idea of education is very in your face. And maybe in the Vodka Museum, although I saw a whole bunch of tipsy 10 - 12 year olds stumbling around when I was in Russia. ** Alan, That small interior window sounds cool. The whole spying and peephole thing. I found the Fanon book -- the one in the post today, obviously -- inspiring and instructive, although I had to kind of read around his dated views about women, and quite nicely written. I don't really see how the Lenin quote connects with what I read, but I might have missed something because I was concentrating on his ideas about racial identity and racism pretty much. ** Allesfliesst, Hey, K. A nose example ... mm, I'd have to search around to find an image, which I can't do mid-p.s., but I'll try to find an example by tomorrow. In layman's terms, it's a turned up nose or a pixie-ish nose. There are many variations and sizes out there, all very wobbly knees-making for me. Yeah, I'll see if I can find a top notch example. Man, your 'Empire of Signs'! That's my favorite Barthes. Now I really wish I spoke German. ** _Black_Acrylic, That was pretty cool, even if I'm not 'SSP'. ** Steevee, Essays and think pieces, nice. I'd love to see/read you getting to stretch out in that form more often. I didn't even know Alex Cox was still directing films. I don't think they get released much in France either. ** Armando, Oh, you know, when people say they've given up writing novels or recording albums or making films or whatever, the law of averages says it probably won't be the case. It seems like almost everyone ends up doing it again. In Bret's case, I hope so, and I'll bet he does. He likes to say overly impactful sounding things sometimes. We'll see. ** Emptythesun, Hey, Joseph. Thai Judas Priest cover band, a must. Damn. I'm going to search google on the offchance. Yeah, what's up with your next novel? Who has ended up publishing it? When is it due and all that? Franco strikes again, ha ha. Oh, I like him and what he does that I've seen and his stance and all that. I will admit that I'm a bit tired right now of seeing him written about in what seems like every possible context, but, at the same time, man, the energy and productiveness is pretty impressive and admirable and interesting. Obviously, I think it would be great if he's in the anthology. I'm thinking about a possible speed story, making mental notes. Like I said, I'm going to try. I just need to try to find if there's a way in that feels new or challenging to me or something. That Kan Mikami clip is amazing! Thanks a ton. Everyone, courtesy of Emptythesun, and in the light and spirit of TM's Keiji Haino post, check out this incredible live clip of the great Kan Mikami. Highly recommended. Yeah, your Stokoe descr. was beautiful, as was/is -- and maybe even more so -- your take/read/report on B.E.E. Wow. Dude, this is no news, but you are such a fantastic writer. Heavy Kudos and thanks. ** Andrew, Hey. I'll see if I can find a clip of that Divine appearance somewhere. I haven't seen the much hyped Mugler show to which you refer. I'll ask Yury if he has. It's already happened? Mugler's trying to up his profile and relevance, obviously. 'Zombie Boy' is known over here. With suspicion, I think. I'll ask Yury. He'll have an informed take of some sort. ** L@rstonovich, Hey, man. I saw your email in my box this morning, and I'll make the change in the post. Thanks a lot! Oh, yeah, I love the landscape of Arizona. Road trips I've taken through northern Arizona and, even more amazing, southern Utah are among the best things I've ever done/ seen. Cool. ** Sypha, Sorry to hear about the stress-related headaches and eye strain. Vacation sounds just about right. Mm, I don't think I agree about 'AP' being Bret's best. It's great, of course, but I love 'Glamorama' and 'Lunar Park' too. I still haven't read 'IE', but the only novel of his that I'm not very into is 'Rules of Attraction'. Otherwise, he's pretty consistently topnotch. ** Creative Massacre, Hey. Oh, I see, about your mom's issues. Ugh. And American health care or the absence thereof, boy, I hear you on that. I hope something can get sorted out so your mom can have that procedure. It's worth a shot, right? Well, a bad week for you, for sure, and hopefully all the shit has reared then started lowering its annoying head by now. Thanks for the wrestling clip! I'll watch it once I get out of the p.s. today. ** Misanthrope, There was a Death Museum in Hollywood for a while. It just wallowed in shock and death and was just awful. It literally made me so nauseous that I had to leave. Yeah, right, I'm going to hate your post. What are the chances of that? None. No surprise, but AK is just way too squeaky normal looking and seeming for me. Oh, well. ** Inthemostpeculiarway, Hi. I think you're right about Natalie Portman. She's already inducing fatigue, in me at least. Oh, it's a US version of 'Skins'? Right, then, that makes sense. What a thoughtful dentist. Not sure about the clumsiness part. It is kind of endearing, though. That staircase/ rusty eyes dream would make a very nice scene in the right movie. I was just reading about the new big Starbucks cup in the news yesterday and thinking why and who cares? I mean, a bigger cup of 'coffee'. I mean, hunh?! I think it's fine that you were thinking about the barista's arms while he was unloadinghis problems. Compared to how necrophiliacs think, that's nothing, you know? I want to see that Joan Rivers doc. The Anne Hathaway as Catwoman thing is a bit ... mm, surprising, to put it nicely. But who knows, right? People were suspicious when Heath Ledger was going to be the Joker. My day: Kind of weird. I did finish the text for Gisele finally. I sent it to her. She likes it a lot, which is a relief. We'll have to see if it works when spoken aloud though. It's really complicated. I kind of used a variation on the labyrinthine, puzzle-like voice I used in my novel. Anyway, that was the best part of yesterday. I don't want to say too much about this that's very clear, but that email guy persisted in writing to me and threatening me yesterday. Basically, he says something of his was 'stolen' and put either on the DC website or the blog, but he refuses to say what it is that was supposedly 'stolen', and he is demanding over and over that I give him my address so he can write to me by mail and tell me what I supposedly 'stole' by that method. I kept telling to just tell me what I 'stole' in an email, and that I would delete it and say it had been used without his permission, etc., but he kept refusing to say what the offending thing is, and yesterday he went ballistic and made not so veiled threats that he was going to find and physically attack me and sue me for everything I have if I didn't give him my address. He seems to be totally obsessed with getting my address, and the 'copyright infringement' accusations seem bizarre and bogus, and it's pretty creepy. It's gotten so weird that my agent is now trying to intervene, steer him away from me, and find out what the fuck the guy wants. Anyway, all of that took up a bunch of yesterday and was taxing on my emotions and concentration. So, the day was kind of lost and full not much of interest otherwise. I'm going to try to go out and do something of note today, and, if I do, I'll tell you all about it. So, how was your Thursday? ** Alexp336, Well, yeah, precisely, right? That 'moral' thing especially. I get called amoral all time. When I say, no, I actually have faith in the morality of my readers, and that I hardly think they need to have what's 'right' and 'wrong' in my books dictated to them, and that I'm writing from and about confusion, and that I think confusion is the truth, the response is bewilderment. People seem to need things to be made utterly obvious before they can take comfort in them. I don't know why they can't trust themselves. It's the strangest thing, or maybe it's not strange at all. I mean, look around, right? ** Okay, the post today is pretty self-explanatory, I think. Enjoy, I hope. I'll see you tomorrow.
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