Hey folks! Sorry I’ve been remiss in keeping up with my reading/media diary. Other responsibilities keep getting in the way. Of course, my absence from these pages doesn’t mean that I haven’t been devouring a steady stream of media—my reviews of all three episodes from the fifth season of Black Mirror are already posted, below—but still, I said I’d try to do daily updates, and once more, alas and alack, I have failed you. Oh well… on to this week’s mini-reviews!
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COWS
by Matthew Stokoe
A few years back, I decided to try and find—and read—the most horrifying, disgusting, haunting, disturbing, downright traumatizing novel that I could get my hands on. It was part of an exercise, a challenge of sorts that I put to myself as a would-be writer of horror fiction. I wanted to find writing that did for literature what the New French Extremity has done for cinema since the dawning of the new millennium. And then, I wanted to figure out the techniques employed by said author, borrow them, then hone and/or amplify them, all so that I could eventually write my own stories, become a “success de scandale”, make a bundle of money, inspire a devoted cult of followers who would do whatever I ask of them, and ultimately take over the world.
Ambitious, yes, but a boy has to dream.
Anyhoo, one book that kept popping up on lists of deranged texts was Cows, the relatively short (206 pages) 1997 debut novel by British author Matthew Stokoe.
So I ordered it up from Amazon. And I read it. And, yeah… it’s pretty goddamn fucked up.
Cows is about a pathetic guy named Steven who lives with—and despises—his mother, whom he refers to as “the Hagbeast”. Steven also has a beloved pet dog, named Dog, who has to drag his hind legs behind him because of a broken back (the Hagbeast’s doing). The three of them live in an awful, stinking flat on the outskirts of an unnamed industrial city in England, being awful together. Steven believes the Hagbeast has been trying to kill him for his entire life, mostly by purposely feeding him inedible meals, which she always eats right alongside him.
As the novel opens, however, things are looking up for Steven (although this is definitely relative). After getting his hands on a television set, Steven develops a sense of hope and possibility from the way the people on his favorite shows live their lives. Basing his decision to rebuild his life on the examples they provide, Steven decides to become normal.
With that goal in mind, Steven goes out and gets his first job… operating the grinder at a local slaughterhouse/meat processing plant. There, an individual by the name of Cripps takes him under his wing and introduces him to a new philosophy, a new way of seeing the world, of being in the world. It begins with something sacred and transformative… the First Kill.
“These are your future, if you have the courage. They grow them in concrete boxes under ultraviolet light, they feed them on pellets of their own dead. These are urban cows, boy, man-made without mystery, and they have a gift for us far more important than meat or leather. It isn’t a gift they like to give, though. Not at all.”
“What gift?”
“The experience of killing. Of blowing out their brains and taking away their most precious thing. It smashes the walls you put around yourself, the walls other people put around you to stop you doing what you want. Do you understand me? The things you would do if there was nothing to stop you. Killing is an act of self-realization, it shows a man the truth of his power. And when you know this, boy, the pettiness they try to shackle us with falls away like shit.”
Cripps threw his arms out like he was on a cross.
“Killing frees you to live as you should.”In short order, with a little help from Cripps (and a pneumatic skull-punch), Steven has performed his first kill… and it works. Cripps’ dangerous advice leads to Steven being reborn in blood as a Man of Action. It even gives him the confidence to engage with Lucy, an upstairs neighbor whom he’s long fancied.
For her part, Lucy mostly cozies up to Steven because she needs someone to help her operate the colonoscope she’s had smuggled out of a nearby hospital in order to prove to herself and others that her medical delusions aren’t just a figment of her imagination. But Steven doesn’t care. He believes that he needs a wife to be normal, like the people on TV, and he’s also confident that he can make Lucy want to be normal as well.
There remains one substantial obstacle to all this normalcy, however… the Hagbeast. Tackling her will be the great challenge of his life, necessitating his initiation into ever-higher degrees in the ultimate Secret Society of Killing, degrees far above anything Cripps can offer him. That’s when Steven turns to a new mentor… the Guernsey. And that’s when things get crazy.
From beginning to end, Cows is monstrous and grotesque. On more than one occasion, I was forced to stop reading, lest I become physically sick. The behaviors portrayed are lunatic. There are graphic, detailed descriptions of animal cruelty on an epic scale, torture, rape, murder, cannibalism, coprophilia, self-harm, suicide, and bestiality.
And yet, despite all that, it’s also surprisingly well written, and serves as an insightful meditation on the negative dialectics of authority and hierarchy. Furthermore, Stokoe’s subsequent novels have gone on to be translated into multiple languages, earn critical plaudits from esteemed peers, and win prestigious international literary awards.
So what are we to make of Cows? Did it live up to the hype? Did I learn anything from it? Will I be able to steal Stokoe’s techniques and bend them to my will in future stories of my own? Maybe. Who knows? Who cares? Probably not enough people to keep this review going any longer. And so, with that, I bid you… COWS!
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SOBEK
By James Stokoe
Shortbox Comics, 2019
What’s this? Another Stokoe?!
Yes, but a different one this time, not Matthew, the insane novelist, but
James, the insanely talented comics creator who has brought us such beautiful books
as Godzilla in Hell, ALIEN: Dead Orbit, and Orc Stain.
Sobek is a one-off from
Short Box, a unique UK comics outfit with a box-based, or seasonal, non-subscription
subscription model that I confess to not really understanding. Thankfully, that’s
not a problem, seeing as my favorite comics shop, Toronto’s inimitable The
Beguiling, has plenty of copies for sale.
Combining gloriously
detailed line-work and a gorgeous coloring job on thick and sturdy archive-quality
paper, Sobek is a thing of beauty, coming frightfully close to the Platonic Ideal
of what every comic book should aspire to be. I mean, just look at this splash-page!
The story is as simple as it is entertaining. The evil Egyptian god Set has invaded the city of Shedet, of which the benevolent crocodile god Sobek is the legendary protector. Set has taken up resident in Sobek’s temple, so a small group of citizens travel to Sobek’s mystical lair to let him know, and to beseech his aide. Sobek agrees, and they all make their way back down the Nile, where Set and Sobek face off.
The comedy in this book stems mostly from the characterizations, both verbal and visual. Now, I have no idea if Sobek really was the Dude Lebowski of the Egyptian pantheon, but it works out delightfully in this comic. The same goes for Set being portrayed as a cracked-out Wile E. Coyote type.
Bottom line, if you can get your hands on this book, by all means, BUY IT. I've read it through three times now, and I have yet to grow tired of it.
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OCCULT PRESENCE
By Paqaru, Floating
World Comics
The debut,
digest-sized monograph by Spanish artist Paqaru, in which he creates paradoxically
primitive yet fascinating environments that extend outwards in an almost
mathematical way, then populates them with all manner of characters, from
predator and prey, masters and slaves, acolytes and penitents, animals, monsters,
people and ghosts. Paqaru’s dreamscapes and nightmarish architectures lend
themselves surprisingly well to meditative wanderings, and serve as powerful creativity
prompts. I would definitely buy a second volume of these artworks, and I’m
excited to see what this young artist comes up with next.
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