by Dennis Seine & Michelle Souliere
Hi everyone! The summer kind of ran away with us, as it does… but Dennis and I finally got our act together and did some tandem reads. Here’s a twofer to make up for the year-plus gap since our last (207)TERROR post: Prophecy by David Seltzer and Weaveworld by Clive Barker!
Prophecy by David Seltzer
The book is © 1979 by Paramount Pictures, and was based by Seltzer on his own screenplay. Which means overall it follows the movie really closely, but has some interesting differences (Seltzer reportedly wound up leaving the production over conflicts with the director, John Frankenheimer). It’s always a nice surprise when you read a movie tie-in and find out that you get some “extra” story that adds some elements to the book which make it worth the read.
At any rate, the blatantly ridiculous Maine placenames were just sloppy and made me want to slap David Seltzer and say in my angry librarian voice, “Young man, has no one told you to perhaps do a little research when you’re writing about a place you don’t know?” Maybe you think I’m being overly protective of Maine, but… MANATEE FOREST in MANATEE COUNTY, Maine?!!! Whaddya think this is, Florida?!! It started everything off on the wrong note for me.
That said, the rest of the book is pretty darn evocative. As Dennis pointed out in our discussion over pizza, the main character is written very believably, and the theme of pollution awareness/discovery that threads through the book with dire results is in fact well-researched, and when you come down to it, that’s more important than little ol’ Maine being depicted properly, I’ll be the first to admit.
Prophecy was a solid, worthwhile bonus whether you’ve seen the movie or not, immersing readers in a remote forest landscape where something has begun going horribly, horribly wrong. Not only that, it puts you in the company of people who are working to do something to push back and fix what is wrong, so as horrible as it is, it isn’t fatalistic. There is some real horror in it: human horror, eco-horror, rats-biting-babies horror, giant mutant bear horror, and more. It was gut-wrenching at times, mostly because of the tension that kept building throughout the tale.
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Weaveworld by Clive Barker
Wow, where to start with this one? I’d been meaning to read this forever. I’ve read a ton of Barker’s shorter works, but thus far hadn’t gotten to any of his biggies, like Everville, Great and Secret Show, etc. Somehow it became time to read this one with Dennis, and off we went! I thought I would like it, but I was unprepared for what it did to me, not the least of which was affect my dreams. Literally, and deeply.
But first I’ll let Dennis set the Weaveworld scene for you in his own words:
Why did it take me such a long time to finish Weaveworld, by Clive Barker?
I’ve been pondering that question for some time. Definitely not because the book was poorly written, or that the plot wasn’t going anywhere. The characters were very engaging. The settings sublimely surreal. The language magical.
So none of that.
Sure, the book is the size of a small fist. Obviously it takes a tremendous amount of time to read a monster of that magnitude.
But to me, it never became the page-turner I imagined it would be. Or even hoped it would be. But in an odd way that only Barker can achieve, it made this book even better.
At the risk of sounding cheesy, I think the main reason it took me such a long time to finish this stunningly creative novel, was because it wants to be treasured. It wants to be admired. It demands your full attention. It requires your respect.
And that’s all Barker. He is on a different planet when it comes to creating different worlds.
In this dazzling novel, we start out in grey, dreary Liverpool, where we find Calhoun Mooney, stuck in a dead-end job and taking care of his aging father.
Cal also has homing pigeons to take care of. And when one escapes, he chases it all over his depressing hometown to tumble onto a scene where a carpet is being moved.
Now, a magic carpet is one thing.
This carpet is something else. As Calhoun falls onto the carpet from a wall while trying to catch the escaped pigeon, the tapestry presents him with a vision of an entire world hidden in the material used to weave the carpet. A world known as the Fugue.
This world was woven by an old, magical race called The Seerkind, to protect themselves and their magic against the brutality of our world, and to protect themselves against a sort of abstract force called The Scourge.
After his vision, Calhoun gets wrapped up in events when he meets Suzanna Parrish. She is the granddaughter of Mimi Laschenski, the older caretaker of the tapestry, now in a nearby hospital. And together with Cal, Suzanna soon gets swept away in the magic the tapestry offers, as well as the antagonists who want to destroy this world by unravelling the tapestry.
Among their enemies are Immacolata, an extremely powerful Seerkind who travels with her ghostlike, sadistic sisters, and who is out for revenge; Shadwell, a salesman who wears a magical jacket that can convince you to do whatever Shadwell wants by showing and giving you that which you most desire (at a price, Leland Gaunt anyone??); and Hobart, a straight-lined, hard-nosed cop who is the polar opposite of anything magical.
As a reader, you travel along, all over the United Kingdom and into The Fugue. England, or our world in its entirety, is a dreadful place. In Suzanna’s words:
“She’d taken the harlot century she’d been born into for granted, knowing no other, but now - seeing it with his eyes, hearing it with his ears – she understood it afresh; saw just how desperate it was to please, yet how dispossessed of pleasure; how crude, even as it claimed sophistication; and, despite its zeal to spellbind, how utterly unenchanting.”
The Fugue is the complete opposite, for instance when Cal visits a dreamlike place called Venus Mountain:
“In several of the spheres he saw shapes that resembled human fetuses, their heads vast, their threadlike limbs wrapped around their bodies. No sooner seen than gone; and in their place perhaps a splash of bright blue, that made the globe into a vast eyeball. In another, the gases were dividing and dividing, like a cell in love with itself; in a third the clouds had become a blizzard, in the depths of which he saw a forest and a hill.”
Clearly, here Barker shows his immense talent as an author and a visual artist at once.
And that to me is what makes Weaveworld so mesmerizing.
I have a few issues with the plot. The absolutely terrifying Immacolata and her sisters (Barker here truly shows his mastery as a horror author) go out with a whisper, leaving Shadwell the salesman to become the main villain too early in the story. The Fugue gets going, but then disappears again, only to re-appear later, which slowed the plot down immensely. And the Scourge to me was too general, too undefined, and too connected to Shadwell to be as intimidating as I first thought it was.
But the world Barker paints is unlike any world I’ve read about. I read and re-read pages as I was going. Sometimes I had to put the book down just to catch my breath, being completely overwhelmed with the imagery. Sometimes I stopped reading for a few days, just to cleanse my palate with some easy gore ‘n guts. But I always came back to The Fugue, and was filled with sadness each time I left.
Barker is a very special man. He has been struggling with his health for some time now, but recently appeared at a few events. Now he has gone back to wherever he conjures his magic. He has gone back to writing.
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| my favorite version - the UK cover art for Weaveworld! |
It affected my dreams, and Dennis had a ghost dream that seemed tied in too, which of course I forgot to write down, so it remains an ephemeral nuance, haunting us both.
We both find Barker’s voice to be unique, and I’ll go so far as to say it is phantasmagorical. When people come into the shop and say, “I’ve just been reading Clive Barker and he’s amazing! Do you have any recommendations for other authors like him?” it is incredibly hard to come up with anyone. Beyond single examples here or there (Laidlaw’s The 37th Mandala for example), authors with that adeptness in intertwining magic and horror are hard to come by.
Dennis pointed out that this book shows Barker’s evolution beyond the pure horror of his Books of Blood, and I certainly agree. It also demonstrates a holistic view of monsters to me, moving further along the lines he drew in the stories that became Cabal.
Dennis and I both found Immacolata horrifying. I was entirely surprised that there was any potential for her to find redemption, she was so far gone down the destructive path. I also found the Scourge horrifying – it was a monster which was also a villain.
Dennis found suspension of disbelief difficult when it came to the salesman, Shadwell, and his story arc.
Speaking of salesmen, I was curious about where Weaveworld fell sequentially alongside King’s Needful Things, and was intrigued to discover that it preceded King’s work by four years (1987 vs 1991). Not to say that there was any lifting there, just similar themes, the age-old story of selling something to people that they think they can’t live without, and taking the most precious things from them in return, perhaps without full disclosure (or realization). It’s an old, old story.
Some of the fear of fascism in the latter parts of the book were visceral and horrifying in their own right, a little too close to the possible futures of recent years for my comfort.
I found that, although I didn’t like her much at the beginning of the book, by the end, I had become genuinely curious about hearing Geraldine’s version of the events in Weaveworld. She seemed to have come to some major realizations at some point that seem like they would make their own novella if recorded for us to read.
Dennis agreed with Liverpool as an apt setting. Normal life seeming so gray and steady, and then with the arrivals of the Weave it was disrupted, became wildly colorful. I found the drab aspects reminiscent of Ramsey Campbell’s depiction of Liverpool in his horror novels.
Dennis had questions. Is Shadwell the salesman a manifestation of “the worst part of America”? The whole story arc has the feel of the constant struggle against the glamours of shiny modern life/capitalism, versus dire costs incurred down the line from these seemingly innocuous decisions to fall in line with popular culture and the consumption it entails.
More questions! Dennis speculated that the Weave and Shadwell are two sides of the same coin. And maybe about 150 pages could be cut? Also, so many romances were left unblossomed. Why doesn’t Barker “go there”?
We both came to the conclusion that again, the book was written the way it was to mirror real life (always an intriguing drive when ostensibly you’re writing fantasy). I have to say that it really isn’t a typical horror novel. It’s much closer to some examples of great literature, where you experience that viewpoint/world via reading a book. Reading Weaveworld is a visceral, disorienting experience.
Dennis found the visuals very clear and direct. He thought Barker is the weaver, but you also have to do some work as you read the book. (If we have to compare Weaveworld with Prophecy, the ride is completely different.) His critiques included the complaint that Shadwell’s ability to find the Scourge was too easy. I agreed -- it was too pat, and smacked of predetermined plot point.
Immacolata was a much better villain than Shadwell, and Dennis thought Barker should not have switched and put Shadwell in the driver’s seat. I agreed – Shadwell was a lackey and when he aspired to greatness he should have been smacked down, rather than allowed to pretend to leadership. Immacolata was admirable (although despicable) as a villain, a terrific (noun), or terrific (adj) in the oldest and most complete sense of the word.
In the end, we both agree – Clive Barker is a magician.
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I’ll leave you with one of my favorite passages:
In the darkness she heard Apolline again, talking of some Principle. Then she opened her eyes.
What she saw almost made her cry out. The sky seemed to have changed colour, as though the gutters had caught fire, and the smoke was choking the street. Nobody seemed to have noticed, however.
She turned to Jerichau, seeking some explanation, and this time she let out a yell. He had gained a halo of fireworks, from which a column of light and vermilion smoke was rising.
‘Oh Christ,’ she said. ‘What’s happening?’
Apolline had taken hold of her shoulder, and was pulling on her.
‘Come away!’ she shouted. ‘It’ll spread. After three, the multitude.’
‘Huh?’
‘The Principle!’
But her warning went uncomprehended. Suzanna – her shock becoming exhiliration – was scanning the crowd. Everywhere she saw what Jerichau had described. Waves of colour, plumes of it, rising from the flesh of Humankind. Almost all were subdued; some plain grey, others like plaited ribbons of grimy pastel; but once or twice in the throng she saw a pure pigment; brilliant orange around the head of a child carried high on her father’s back; a peacock display from a girl laughing with her lover.
Again, Apolline lugged at her, and this time Suzanna acquiesced, but before they’d got more than a yard a cry rose from the crowd behind them – then another, and another – and suddenly to right and left people were putting their hands to their faces and covering their eyes. […]
‘Damn you,’ said Apolline. ‘Now look what you’ve done.’
Suzanna could see the colours of the haloes changing, as panic convulsed those who wore them. The vanquished greys were shot through with violent greens and purples. The mingled din of shrieks and prayers assaulted her ears.
‘Why?’ said Suzanna.
‘Capra’s Principle!’ Apolline yelled back at her. ‘After three, the multitude.’
Now Suzanna grasped the point. What two could keep to themselves became public knowledge if shared by three. As soon as she’d embraced Apolline and Jerichau’s vision – one they’d known from birth – the fire had spread, a mystic contagion that had reduced the street to bedlam in seconds.
#207terror
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