Saturday, September 17, 2011

Clive Barker and the Dearthly Imagination

Anyone else read Clive Barker? I'm halfway through Imajica. Is there a reason why the fiendishly creative author of the Books of Blood, the most inventive horror since H.P. Lovecraft, has done nothing in The Great and Secret Show and Imajica but re-write Weaveworld, only not as well? Damn it, “In the Hills, the Cities” almost made my brain explode. Ian made me read it while he sat there so he could watch me experience the reading of it. Imajica makes me feel like I'm forever reading with the next clause pre-ringing in my head, already surfing the next sentence I haven't read yet.

(Not to mention Hellraiser, the single greatest re-imagining of Hell since Dante Alighieri. That is why an ex-girlfriend scorned sequel Pinhead in the Catholic church: the Cenobites were miles away from Christianity.)

Modern Grotesque

Stephen Green compares, properly, San Francisco's Planning Commission to the Red Guards : “In a 5–0 vote, it ordered Johnston to build a...