Sunday, February 14, 2021

Bones of the Moon (1987).

I've spoken more than once on this site about an informal collection of writers and artists.  They made their respective names during a rough span of time that went on, more or less, from the mid 1970s, all the way to the end of the 80s and start of the 90s.  You may be familiar with some of their names.  Guys like Stephen King still don't need much in the way of an introduction.  At least, not yet.  The same applies to fellas like Neil Gaiman, Dave Mckean, or Alan Moore.  They are all a specific brand name-style of artist.  All I've got to do is just say their names, and sooner or later someone's going to turn up with a list of their favorite moments from a book like Watchmen, From Hell, or The Dream Country.  The same phenomena pretty much applies if you bring up names like Carrie, Christine, or Cujo.  It's that vaunted and dubious level of public recognition that goes along with popular awareness.  

It's the type of success that works as its own kind of double-edged sword.  On the one hand, there's a lingering sense of recognition about your name.  The flip side is there's always the danger that it all amounts to just passing familiarity.  Perhaps there's a difference between how many times you get your name in the papers or the news, versus how many folks have actually read anything you've published.  Is Stephen King a writer, or a filmmaker, for instance?  I think it would be interesting to find out just how many in the audience believe that guy is the latter, rather than former.  It might just tell us a lot about how the audience perceives both the artist, as well as the artwork in their midst.  There's the troubling sense that a lot of the common perceptions of authors like King really amounts to just a kind of halfway knowledge.  It's nothing more the than basest of trivial facts.  The full story, meanwhile gets lost in the image generated by the popular perception.  In that sense, perhaps the best definition of pop culture is to describe it as a place for you to put things in so that you can forget about them.  I suppose I wouldn't mind if my own experience has taught me that such actions carry too great a risk to be carried out with no strings attached.  Forgetting the past can sometimes be a good way to get caught out by it.

In the case of the type of artists I'm thinking of, one of the results has been that while everyone thinks they know about guys like Gaiman, King, and Moore, who else besides a small handful knows about a name like Peter Straub?  What about Dean Koontz, for that matter?  How about Robert McCammon, or Dan Simmons?  Do those names ring any bells?  I think the best answer most of us are left with is: perhaps not.  That's kind of a shame, really, because they make up just as much of the story as the creators of Morpheus or Miracleman.  It's something I might have spoken about more than once before.  For some crazy reason it just helps out if I think about all of these writers as part of an unofficial artistic movement.  One of those minor waves that like to happen every now and then in the field of the arts.  It just seems like a natural enough recurring occurrence, a regular part of the gig, if that makes any sense (and let's face it, is it any more of a puzzle than life itself?  Doesn't mean there can't be perks to it, though).  I can even remember discovering there's an actual, pretty good name for all the stuff they got up to way back in the day.  The phrase I've heard used to describe them is New Wave Fabulism.  It can be found in an essay composed by the author of Ghost Story and The Talisman.  

That's the first place I can ever recall hearing either Pete Straub, or his fellow literary contemporaries referred to in such a neat catch-all term.  I've got to admit, if you need to have a title for all of those scribbling names, then it's a pretty good label, so far as it goes.  I think part of the reason it's so fitting, however, is because it might just be possible to pinpoint its origins.  I wonder if the title might derive from an old 1967 Sci-Fi anthology edited by Harlan Ellison.  It was called Dangerous Visions, and it was billed as a flagship collection.  The stories in it were supposed to be offered as samples of all the new directions the speculative genres were headed for the latter half of the 20th century.  It is just possible that Ellison was aware of the direction things were headed in the writer's field.  If so, he was definitely there to see it all happen.  The curious (maybe even somewhat ironic) part is how few of the names found in the book (the one Ellison meant to act as a kind of brave new standard bearer) ever seemed to go on to leave their mark in this movement.  Most of the famous names in Dangerous Visions belong to older writers like Frederick Pohl, Philip K. Dick, or R.A. Lafferty.  The one writer who could be said to have any future influence was that of J.G. Ballard.  The rest of the field seemed to wind up in the hands of King, Straub, and Moore.  It's one of those weird twists of fate, yet I'm not sure there's much to apologize for.

The single, most recognizable, and shared trait among all the New Wave Fabulists mainly comes down to the way they had of giving a new voice to a lot of older fantastic tropes and concepts.  They could stumble across a cob web infested idea such as a vampire looking for victims, and give it fresh blood (so to speak) by taking that archetype, and placing it in a modern suburban setting, complete with phones, fax machines, and Monday Night Football.  The result would often amount to an interesting clash and creative tension between the old and the new.  The idea of ancient figures of myth and dream sharing the same space with a bunch of ordinary working stiffs has proven to be a surprisingly durable and enduring artistic paradigm over the last few years.  The trope and its assorted imaginary figures could even be said to have carried on even to a point in which their original creators are now in their elder statesmen years.  Part of it is down to the way it makes the old seem original again.  It carries the same type of charm as Michelangelo doing a riff on the image of a bunch of dogs playing poker.  The very idea itself in incongruous, and yet its carried off with such skill that you can't help being impressed. 

There is one name in particular, that belongs very much in the New Wave wheelhouse, which I haven't mentioned yet.  I also don't believe I caught him among the list of authors Straub mentions in the course of his article cited above.  I'm not even sure what kind of reputation or name recognition he has nowadays.  His name is Jonathan Carroll, and it's kind of difficult to know where to start with this one.  It could be argued, for instance, that his way telling stories is an almost perfect summation of the kind of fantastical surreality that you can find in many of the other Fabulists.  The danger with that sort of approach is that it makes him sound like an untalented copycat, and I'm not at all certain that's the case.  Part of the difficulty is knowing just how to talk about the writer without spoiling a lot of what's to come.  He can sound like some of the authors mentioned above (Jonathan Lethem is one easy example that comes to mind), and yet it's a mistake to say that he has no style or method of approach that's unique enough to be called his very own.  I guess part of the problem is knowing how to describe that approach in a way that makes sense.  Perhaps the best way to get that done is to just talk about it.  The best way to do that is to bring up the third book to published in his career.  It's called Bones of the Moon, and there's not much else way to describes it except...You know what, let me explain.

The Story.

Cullen James is one of those pretty faces in the crowd.  If you had to describe her current status, then  perhaps the best word for it would have to be nominal.  She's doing pretty okay for herself.  Her job is enough to keep her afloat somewhere comfortably enough above the neck.  That's a lot more than others can say for themselves.  She's got no real hassles to deal with.  She lives by herself, and nothing enough has happened in her life to make it a bother.  That's also sort of the problem.  A lot of the problem with having no hassles to deal with is that it also means there's not much in the way of an actual challenge going on, or at least that's the way Cullen sees it.  She has so little to worry about that it bores her to tears.  In that sense, she's really no so unique.  Her pattern conforms to a lot of other young stalwarts who find themselves dangerously near the midlife crisis red line.  If something interesting doesn't happen soon, then she's pretty well fit to split an infinitive.  Perhaps that's why it's such a relief when Danny James walks into her life.

There doesn't seem to be anything special about guys like Dan James.  He plays amateur league basketball for a living, and he seems to be one of those types who are just as good at listening and commiserating as they are at the more normal bedroom routines.  When Cullen starts to fall in love, she's almost reluctant at first.  You see, the last serious relationship she was ever in turned out to be the worst kind of bust.  The guy who knocked her up was one of those Wall Street Wolf types.  He didn't even seem to care that he was a father.  So when Cullen got her abortion no one really seemed to care.  There's seems very little to apologize for.  It's pretty clear she was just being used in all this.  Maybe the best part is that she wised up as soon as she did, and managed to get out from under foot before the possibility of all the real bad stuff had a chance to enter her life.  She's lucky in that sense, and more or less blameless.  The trouble is it took a long while for her to realize all that on a personal, inner level.

Danny James was a great lot of help in that regard.  As far as Cullen was concerned, one of the best part was that it wasn't all just fly-by-night, security blanket type deal.  Instead, it turned out to be the real thing.  The couple were married in an out of the way ceremony somewhere in Europe.  That's where they spent the first years of the marriage.  Danny's job kept them in Italy for a time.  It's also where Cul found out she was pregnant for a second time.  This one came as a welcome relief, as opposed to the emotional train wreck of the last one.  There were one or two moments when a few of the old guilt pangs reared their heads in her mind, though Danny's job transferal back to the States, and life as New Yorkers, did a lot to banish it all from her thoughts.  That's when the dreams began.

In her sleep, Cullen finds herself in another place, another time.  It starts with her and a little boy, probably no more than five or six, on an inbound flight to a place Cullen has never seen before, except that she knows it like the back of her hand.  Just from looking out the window she can recall certain landmarks, along with the names of a few mountains in the distance, including the kind of flora and fauna to be found there.  She knows this place she's never heard of, because she has memories of playing wonderful games there as a little girl.  She even knows the name of the land they are visiting.  It's a place like no other.  It's name, is Rondua.  These are all things that may not exist in the waking life.  It doesn't stop her from sharing all her memories with a little boy she knows is her unborn son, Pepsi.  

At first Cullen thinks the dreams are a one-off occurrence, or at least that's what she tries to tell herself.  The trouble is, these night time stage plays don't just pack up their wares and vanish with the light of day, never to be seen or heard from again like the rest of their kind.  For one thing, these dreams almost insist on not behaving like the others.  Instead of just going away, Cullen keeps finding herself back in Rondua when she shuts her eyes.  It's not something that happens every night.  Instead it's just often enough to make itself noticeable.  Another thing has to do with the basic nature of these little sleep dramas.  They don't act like normal dozing fantasies.  It's true they tend to drop off in mid-stride the minute she wakes up.  This at least sounds like the regular pattern for a siesta cinema.  However, when they do come back, they tend to pick up up right where she left off, and just go on from there as if no days, or sometimes even week long interruption has happened.  More than that, the events of the dream seem to be arranging themselves into at least something resembling a coherent narrative.

In the world of Rondua, Cullen finds herself reunited with the son she decided never to have.  Together, mother and son find themselves going on a journey through the various, labyrinthine twists and turns of his mom's dreamscape.  It might be its own unique geography, or else it's an odd, guided tour through the hidden contours of her mind.  They are accompanied on their odyssey by a trio of animals.  A dog named Mr. Tracey, who wears a hat and acts like a surreal, blood-hound version of Gandalf..  Then there is Martio, one of the few camels she knows that can speak a foreign language.  The last is a wolf named Felina.  She used to be a fish, though she grew out of it in time, like most people do.  Cullen is told that she has one simple goal in these dreams, to locate and use the bones of the moon in order to keep Rondua from ending.

In the so-called real world, Cullen is still just a pretty face in the crowd, albiet one with a bit more stability under her belt.  The one crack in the otherwise smooth and placid surface of her life are those crazy dreams.  They seemed cute at first, then they became something of a curiosity and a marvel.  As the dreams grow darker and more ominous, however, the sense of wonder if soon replaced by an ever growing sense of dread.  If there's something on your mind that you can't let go of, and it keeps invading and pervading your sleep, then how can you be sure you're all that sane to begin with?  It doesn't help matter when figures and elements from her dreams begin to creep into her time when isn't asleep in bed.  As if she didn't have enough trouble trying to juggle a young family and a serial killer for a neighbor, now she has to try and see if she can tell the difference between illusion and reality?  No doubt about it, there is something very odd about Cullen James's dreams.

A Familiar Novelty.

There moments when the simple art of literary criticism can be what you might call something of a challenge.  That's not the same thing as saying the job is difficult.  I don't mean to suggest that.  It's just that now and then you run across a text that's written in such a unique and quirky fashion that the critic has to struggle, looking for the right way in for the man on the street.  That's the case with a book like Bones of the Moon.  If I told you the novel is full of descriptive passages that carry a dream-like quality to them, I might be telling the truth.  I'd also be doing the reader a disservice by scratching no more than the surface of things.  That's why in order to give a proper idea of the book under discussion, I'm afraid I really don't have much choice except to let the story do the talking for me.  A good example of the general atmosphere of this novel can be found when the main protagonist gives the readers their first description of the fantastical world at the heart of the novel:

"I remember when the sea was full of fish with mysterious names Mudrake, Cornsweat, Yasmuda, and there wasn't much to do in a day.  Clouds moved like bows over the sky.  Their music was silver and sad.  Your father drove a fast little sports car that sounded like a happy bee and he drove me wherever I  pleased (47)".  That sounds kind of odd at first glance.  It's pretty certain there are no species of fish with names like that.  Also one of those words describes the chemical leavings of an actual plant, not an ocean going life form.  Clouds that can sing?  What's up with that?  Does the writer know what he's talking about?  If these are all a fair sample of the first reactions that come most natural to you, then all I can do is give you fair warning to buckle up, and just try to get as comfy as you can manage.  Cause this sort of thing is gonna be here all damn night.  This author is just getting started with the likes of that stuff.

The closest bit of narrative logic Carrol is willing to toss his audience's way can be found early on.  It's near the start of things when Cullen herself is just starting to get used to the strange fantasies that begin to play out in her sleep.  "The dream came and went like the spring breezes.  Most nights nothing happened; I dreamed of Danny, or silly unimportant things that had no meaning.  One night I dreamed Mr. Tracey was putting on a magic show for us and I woke up right after he said, "Never ask a magician to do his tricks twice.  Then they lose all there magic."  But now and then another episode appeared on my "dream screen" and by turns I was drawn and repelled by a new world which was growing and filling out before me.  I didn't know whether or not it was common for people to have continuous dreams; each night a different but contiguous part of some mysterious whole.

"Everything there was unusual, somehow wonderful.  The island was named Rondua.  The only inhabitants I'd seen so far were the big animals...and others.  I learned to set my expectations aside and be open to the waves of new stimulus that were forever washing over me.  It was a lesson similar to what I had learned in my waking life with Danny, only Rondua was allowed to be and do whatever it pleased because it lived on the other side of sleep, where all bets were off and giant camels spoke Italian (49-50)".  Those whole set of passages are perhaps the most significant in the novel, at least from a specific standpoint.  It's the one part in the novel that is willing to provide a sort of off-ramp for any sector of the audience that wants to cut its losses and get off at the next stop.  It isn't just a caveat emptore.  This is the author flat-out telling his readers that shit's about to get as weird as his imagination will allow, and he's not gonna bother holding anything back.  We're entering a story whose basic, overall logic is going to be very similar to that of Lewis Carroll, and the people in the cheap seats will either have to help cut bait, or get off the pot.  Otherwise, just strap in and try to enjoy the ride, man.

So how does this dream logic play on in actual practice?  Again, it's best to let the book answer that question with a few select passages that do the talking a lot better than I can.  "Rondua returned.  Pepsi and I rode across uninterrupted plains, seated comfortably on the heads of the animals.  There were salmon-colored pyramids in the distance which contrasted sharply with the still-black volcanic ground we passed over.  Felina the Wolf told us the story of her ancestors; of how they rose from the sea as red fish and gave their scales back once they had reached land.  It turned out that all of the animals in Rondua had metamorphosed from one species to another when they came here.  Clever Pepsi asked if we would have to change too, now that we were here.  Mr. Tracey, his velvety hat glued to his bobbing head, said we already had.

"Martio the Camel often acted as tour guide, pointing out blue pterodactyls that flew in the distance one morning, telling us to watch closely, another day as the sun began to split in half to mark the end of another Ronduan month.  Many of those early dreams were long panoramic views of the countryside.  There was conversation, but I often lost tracks of what was being said because I was more interested in what I was seeing.  Also, I later realized I paid more attention to the countryside because I already knew many of the stories.  Like jokes we hear and then forget until someone begins telling them again, I could have interrupted the animals many times and told my son what came next: how the mountains had learned to run, why only rabbits were allowed pencils, when the birds had decided to become all one color.  This knowledge notwithstanding, I still hadn't a clue of why we were in Rondua (56-7)".

If passages like these are enough to leave a vague sort of impression on the reader, then the next question to ask is just what the hell is it all supposed to mean?  From a pure surface glance, it looks as if some smart-aleck had spent a great deal of time pondering over the images from some of the most famous and/or obscure Rock concept albums from the 60s and 70s, and then decided to place them alongside each other altogether in a book.  It's easy enough to understand how someone would come away with such an impression, I guess.  However, the truth seems to be a lot simpler.  Carroll just decided to give his imagination free reign, and this is the result.  It's meaning, however, might take a bit more excavation.  The other thing that sort of jumps out at the reader, aside from the general surreality of a lot of the proceedings, is that Carroll decided not to just let the whole thing be a wall-to-wall experience in the unreal.  He also left room for normalcy in the course of the story.  His narrative keeps switching back and forth between Cullen's trials in her waking life, and the struggles she finds waiting for her in the dream world.  This results in a curious see-saw action, where the plot swings back and forth between the humdrum and the fantastic.

It may be that a closer look into what goes on in the novel's real secondary world can help unravel at least bit of the mysteries behind the narrative.  The two biggest plot points on this side of the Mountains of Coin is that our main character once had an abortion, and that there's a serial killer living somewhere next door.  As you can guess, both elements wind up being pretty significant to the plot.  Alvin Williams, nicknamed the Axe Boy by the story's main lead, is somewhat interesting, at least in terms of his overall role in the novel.  Carroll brings him up, right at the start, on the very first page of the book.  We first meet Cullen as she muses over Williams, and the atrocity that got him first arrested, and then committed to a sanitarium.  In that sense, the novel starts off on a somewhat appropriate, ominous note, as the reader is lead into a discussion of the difference between stable and unsound minds.  It kind of reads as if we're being reintroduced to Norman Bates after a long hiatus, and are just catching up.  The result makes for an intriguing combo.  Crazy dreams and a killer next door, what more could you ask?

It isn't until the reader goes over these passages once again that it begins to hit home just what the narrative strategy is in these brief opening segments.  We don't realize at first that we are in the hands of an unreliable narrative.  That's mainly down to Carroll's skill in realizing Cullen as a character.  Her narration is so three-dimensional that we find ourselves siding with her on a level that is so automatic and instinctive, that our minds barely even register what it is we're doing.  This makes it very easy to overlook what is being discussed right at the very start.  Cullen has two reasons for starting with the Axe Boy, and his crimes.  The first is because it happened, technically, right under her own two feet.  The second is that her own story is forcing her to ask whether or not she may be enjoying her own private version of insanity?  This question is put with such delicacy, however, that it's easy for it to get lost in the shuffle of incident that occurs not long after this brief moment of rumination.  However, it also lingers as a background presence throughout the rest of the pages.  It might also have an important relation to the second aspect at the heart of the novel, and what it's ending might mean.

These are all discussions that will have to arrive in their proper order.  Before we can get to those matters, there are still one or two elements to deal with in terms of the novel's villain.  Part of the question revolves around just who the bad guy is supposed to be, anyway?  In addition to Al Williams, there is another figure, one who finds his place in Cullen's (dreams, visions?), and who almost winds up taking on a greater part of her focus as the story progresses.  There is such a thing as giving too much away, so rather than telling it all straight off, I'll just note that this second (or is it primary?) antagonist seems to be a mixture or combination of other individuals we've seen before.  By reputation, he comes off as something akin to the dark lord Sauron.  In person, however, he reminds me a lot of the villain from Stephen King's The Stand.  

Perhaps it needs to be said here that I'm not listing these facts (or at least what I can interpret from them) as a form of criticism.  In terms of characterization, I'm afraid I've been unable to find anything worth complaining about.  He's not written in a way that was particularly bothersome, and in fact his scenes wind up being the most unnerving in the entire book.  As for the charge that all Carroll has done is just a copy and paste job from the works of others?  I'm left having to declare such a rush to judgment invalid.  To me, such criticisms as this have a tendency to come off as particularly ill-read.  There is nothing that can inherently prove that King was being ripped off by Carroll at any point in the latter's story.  

Nor is it entirely fair to say that a figure like Randall Flagg and Carroll's villain are one and the same.  Going by this logic, you might just as well make the case that King is the real guilty party here, for being the one to rip his villain off from Tolkien.  The trouble is if you press this logic to its end point, then the entire edifice of 20th century art collapses under the weight of assumed collective plagiarism.  The truth is a lot more simple than this, I'm afraid.  You see figures like this in tales as diverse as The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Something Wicked This Way Comes, or Star Wars.  It's more correct to speak of an archetype with a healthy shelf life and staying power, rather than uninspired copying on Carroll's part.  In that sense, I'm afraid Carroll is able to get his effort's worth out of this figure.  An interesting question this novel makes us ask is just what, if any connection this dream menace might (or may not) have to do with Alvin Williams?  This is an issue that gets complicated real fast.  Here is yet another part where I'm forced to draw the curtains once more in the desire to let the  reader experience it all for himself. 

This same problem also sort of applies to the second (or perhaps it really is the primary) element driving the entire plot.  It all has to do with the character of Pepsi, and what his real role or nature is in Cullen's story.  He's sort of like the first person we meet in the main lead's dreams.  In her sleep, she wakes up to find herself on a plane with her son, and it's like that's just the sort of thing you know instantly when you're dealing with dream logic.  It makes no sense in a real world context, and it still doesn't matter when your awake mind is no longer engaged, and all you're left with is the imagination for company.  Cullen just knows who the kid is, along with his name.  It's sort of what you expect to find waiting for you in a dream.  Bear in mind, the way I'm describing all this makes it sound cut and dried.  And, to be fair, maybe it is?  Yes? No?  Maybe so?  I don't know.  That's pretty lame as far as answers go, yet it's best I've got, really.  That's sort of because its all the novel is willing to leave you with.  I said above that Cullen is hinted as being a somewhat unreliable narrator.  The way things end just serves to heighten this potential plot element.  The reader is left to make up their own minds over whether Cullen's adventures were real, or else they were just her way of dealing with her own guilt.

For some readers, those who come to a story expecting some kind of perfect closure, that's going to come off as an automatic criticism.  However, with that said, I'm not sure that's what my statement amounts to.  Bear in mind, I'm not saying the way Carroll ends his book is the absolute correct, unavoidable way all stories should end.  In fact I can think of a lot of other examples where I know this approach would be the wrong one to close on.  There are even one or two other stories (that shall remain nameless) where I felt I could point to the ending and just think, "Yeah, okay, I was just being trolled, or something like it the whole damn time".  That's not the vibe I'm getting in this case, for what it's worth.  Instead, what happened is, when I closed the book after I got done with it, I had this goofy sense of satisfaction in my mind.  At the same time, there was a lingering sort of question over what exactly did I just read, anyway?  

On top of that, however, it was almost like it didn't have to matter as much.  So it was like all of these elements coming together and managing to cancel each other out in a satisfying way, if that makes any sense.  I raised the specter of the unreliable narrator, and it's a trope that gets introduced and never resolved.  However, I think Carroll realized that either wasn't as important, or else the ambiguity was somehow in service to the plot, rather a detriment.  What it all seems to come down to is where your individual tolerance level is for a book like this.  It makes sense to call it a fantasy novel.  However its one of those books where the reality of the fantasy it always somewhat in doubt, unless it isn't, of course.  

Conclusion: Well worth the time, if you allow for it.

In addition to all of these plot intricacies, there's also just the general, overall weirdness of the story itself.  I've already provided some snippets of the kind of surreal nature that Carroll uses to flesh out his text.  That still leaves the question of what's the best way to describe it all.  Then there's the matter of its public reception.  For some reason, my mind insists on looking at the two matters as interrelated.  I suppose this makes a kind of sense, inasmuch as a book is both a product of the imagination, as well as an object and subject whose very nature depends on its reception by others.  I think the best way to illustrate this book is to describe it as a Neil Gaiman pre-cursor.  This can all be found in the novel's settings, where it's fundamental dream logic determines how the narrative unfolds.  We start out in a typical modern setting (at least for the late 1980s), and the descriptions and dialogue all convey what might be called a sense of the real.  However, even in these opening pages there is a palpable fairy tale quality, combined with a note of unease by having the story open with the Axe Boy and his crimes.  It almost gives the sense of Red Riding Hood recalling the Big Bad Wolf in retrospect.

Already Carroll has established a setting in which the norm and the abnormal are sharing an uncomfortably close level of confined space.  The reader is then rushed away from this note of unease by having us watch as the main protagonist recounts her attempts to get into a life of the aforementioned norm.  This is a goal she achieves early, and it seems as if all goes well.  It is here that Carroll begins to pull the rug out from both his character, and the audience along with her.  The world within a world of Rondua is like what you get if you took a child's toy chest, the paintings of Escher, Dali, Rockwell, The Arabian Nights, along with Magritte, and mashed them all together to create an almost pitch-perfect fantasy landscape.  It is the very fact that Carroll cements this consequent secondary world under the logic of dreams that allows the reader to go with Rondua's own weird, yet somehow easy going flow.  As a result, the author can throw in an off-the-cuff image of two lions discussing what's the best place to have dinner at, and not have it come off like the ravings of a madman.

At least this is how the text reads to me.  I can't say for certain how the rest of the audience will take it.  Perhaps a part of the answer to that question is provided by looking at the author's notoriety.  When it comes to assessing Carroll's public reputation, two things stand out.  The first is that he's not mired in obscurity.  His writings are popular enough to keep a kind of base level awareness of him as a going concern.  The second is that this same level makes him into something of a cult celebrity.  The case can be made for him as a legitimately good writer.  For whatever reason, however, Carroll has somehow never quite gained the level of popular recognition that's greeted the likes of Gaiman or Alan Moore, the two artists who arguably share the most in common with the type of writing Carroll has chosen or is artistically inclined to provide.  Indeed, the earlier comparison between Carroll and Gaiman wasn't chosen in an offhand manner.  Both writers display a fascination with fantasy tropes combined with a comfortable surrealism of expression that often leads to a breakdown in their respective works between the borders of the real and unreal.  This is something Carroll's book excels at as we begin to reach the final pages. 

If I had to suggest a reason for Carroll's relative lack of popular recognition, then I suppose it can be summed up in just one word: Sandman.  Whether the reader considers it fair or otherwise, the fact remains that it was Gaiman who made the (in retrospect) smart choice, or wise creative decision to carve out his name in the one medium which at that point in the late 80s was experiencing a surge in its mainstream clout and popularity.  He did this in part by ensuring that he created a work in the comic book world that was as much unlike any of the other work that was being produced in the field.  No one had ever attempted something as epic and avant-garde as a comic like Sandman.  The only thing that has ever remained or come close to it was the graphic novel efforts of Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell.  

Another thing that makes the Dreaming Chronicles so easy to point to is the way they had of almost providing a kind of go-to reference of for where the collective headspace of the New Wave Fabulists were at.  In terms of bare plot, there's nothing in the work of Gaiman, Moore, Carroll, King, or Straub that differences them all that much from writers that came before.  Guys like Arthur Machen or Lord Dunsany had pioneered the concept of unnatural happenings in everyday surroundings as far back as the dawn of the 20th century.  In that sense, it's perhaps a mistake to say there is any real difference in the sort of stories being told by either Lovecraft or Moore.  Each is a fantasist of one stripe or another.  All the New Wave writers did was to find modes of expression that would make all this old material palatable to the audiences of their generation.  It's the sort of process that probably happens all the time.  Right now, we seem to be in the middle of trying to find the proper voice for these old tropes once again.

The point in all this is that Carroll was, and still remains, very much a part of this process.  The difference is that the popularity of works like Sandman and Watchman might have gone a long way to making it harder for him to get his voice heard.  When all the kids on the block are busy going ape for this hip new trend in their favorite comic books, that can sometimes make it tough from them to realize when the same idea is being applied just as well in a novel tucked away up on a bookstore shelf.  One other thing I should make clear here is that none of this is to say that Carroll is just a copycat of Gaiman's style.  Far from it.  

While the territory seems familiar, Carroll is artist enough to discover and record in his own voice.  The only real shame is that he was never the first out of the gate.  That's why it's easy to read his work and think that this bit could sound like something out of King, or maybe this passages sounds a bit like Gaiman.  That may be true, yet it's not the same thing as plagiarism.  It's all about a series of artists all discovering the same stage, or creative space, and then falling victim to having to jockey for position in a crowed market.  That can sometimes cause a lot of valuable voices to go unheard.  Carroll has avoided this fate, yet perhaps his efforts deserve a better platform than what he's been given.  All of which is to say I can come away from a book like Bones of the Moon and give it a very positive recommendation.  It has all the comforts of an old fairy tale, or even a modern reworking of the same concept, combined with a what I've got to think of as the right amount of creativity to make the whole thing readable from start to finish.  You can do a lot worse these days than read a book by Jonathan Carroll. 


  1. (1) "Is Stephen King a writer, or a filmmaker, for instance? I think it would be interesting to find out just how many in the audience believe that guy is the latter, rather than former." -- Interesting point. In terms of his wide-scale fame, it *might* even be the case that a majority of people who know his name nowadays know him from being on Twitter. I don't think so; he's not George Takei. But it might be trending in that direction. Eliminating that from the thought process, I absolutely think he's better known for the movies than for the books. It's a bummer on the one hand, but then again, how many people discovered his books thanks to knowing the movies? Probably a lot. So I think it's probably a net win.

    (2) "In that sense, perhaps the best definition of pop culture is to describe it as a place for you to put things in so that you can forget about them." -- That's one way of looking at it. Another might be that pop culture is kind of like a curation of things which are worth deeper exploration if and when the time and desire to do so arises. That's probably not accurate, because too many things which demonstrably are NOT worthy of deeper exploration manage to get in there. But maybe there's something to it.

    (3) "who else besides a small handful knows about a name like Peter Straub? What about Dean Koontz, for that matter? How about Robert McCammon, or Dan Simmons? Do those names ring any bells? I think the best answer most of us are left with is: perhaps not." -- I think Koontz and Simmons are reasonably well know; Straub much less so, and McCammon is downright obscure at this point. But they've all got their fans, and if one goes full-bore into that deeper exploration of King we mentioned as being a hypothetical outcome for x-number of people who know him from the movies, I think all of those names are likely to turn up as being worthy contemporaries. I think you probably get there via Clive Barker as well, and maybe even via Gaiman or Moore. So personally, I don't think any of their names are ever going to fade all the way out.

    I still think McCammon's name is waiting to explode if anyone ever figures out how ripe his stuff is for being turned into television shows, by the way.

    (4) I've heard of Carooll, but not of this particular novel. Sounds like one well worth reading. I dig that first cover, too! Never judge a book by a cover, of course, but I don't think it's a bad thing to let the cover intrigue one.

    (5) There's a character in King's "The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon" named Pepsi. I wonder if he got that from this?

    (6) "His narrative keeps switching back and forth between Cullen's trials in her waking life, and the struggles she finds waiting for her in the dream world. This results in a curious see-saw action, where the plot swings back and forth between the humdrum and the fantastic." -- I like the sound of this more and more.

    (7) "There is nothing that can inherently prove that King was being ripped off by Carroll at any point in the latter's story." -- My wild guess based on what you've written is that King would not have seen Carroll's work as being a ripoff. Probably not even as an homage; I think he would have felt like it simply came from the same wellspring as Flagg had come from. And he would view that as being entirely fair game.

    (8) Speaking of Tolkien, did you know that there is a television series based on "The Lord of the Rings" being made by Amazon? Actually, it's based more on "The Silmarillion," from the sound of things, and will be set in the Second Age. Allegedly Sauron is going to be a real character, walking around spreading his evil. Sounds like it might be a disaster, BUT, on the other hand, I do think there's a story to be told there. So I'm open-minded.

    (9) I need to tackle "Sandman" one of these days.

    And some Jonathan Carroll, as well, evidently!

    1. (1,2,3) Well, I sure hope that's the case. Some of the sentences in this article come from doing one's damnedest to take a survey of the pop landscape and not seeing people going as in-depth to these things as they cane or should. There's a phrase I've run across that really kind of got me worried. It's called Mainstream Obscurity. A good short definition is what happens to iconic moments or actors from the days of yore when they cease being known for their original accomplishments, and instead live on more as satirical references and allusions that do nothing to demonstrate why they are important, except as little more than a punchline. A much more expansive definition can be found here:

      That said, I do know a there are a lot of names out there that sure as hell don't deserve obscurity, aside from the usual suspects. The good is news is that's why this blog kind of exists. They more awareness of obscure art and artists I can get out, the better, in my estimation.

      (4) Where did you hear of him from, anyway?

      (5) I've asked myself that same question. I do sort of wonder if that might be the case. I know my copy contains a very enthusiastic blurb by King on the front cover, so that could very well be a case of intertextual acknowledgement.

      Which sort of begs the question, if that should be true, then what does the reference say about the nature of the latter author's "Tom Gordon" book? Might it be King's attempt to take things in a similar direction? Interesting food for thought.

      (6) Hope you like literary mind trips.

      (7) Yeah, what he said.

      (8) I've heard, and I repeat what I've said elsewhere. There are a handful of stories out there that are fundamentally unadaptable. LOTR is one, "Dune" is another, along with certain stories by Gene Wolf. I don't know how well they can do "Sandman" as a TV show either. Though I've heard good things about the audio drama.

      (9) I'd call it a pretty good investment.


    2. (4) Good question! I'm not really sure. At a guess, I'd say I probably saw his name on some anthologies or something of that nature.

      (6) I do!

      (8) Interestingly, King gave an interview today (yesterday?) in which he said he no longer feels anything is unfilmable:

      I don't entirely agree, but it's interesting that he feels that way. I think most anything can theoretically be adapted from one medium into another, but some things certainly require more effort than others, and some would require so much as to be impossible in any practical sense. Moore's "Promethea" is probably the best example I know of.

    3. (6) Good on ya, then.

      (8) Eh, let's put it this way. If it were at all possible, then I'd have to suppose that the most ideal sort of adaptation for something like "Promethea", or "Dune", or "The Dark Tower" would have to be the radio drama.

      The reason(s) are pretty simple. You have to rely on words over images. This forces the listener to pay attention to the writing more than they might normally be inclined to.

      The second reason is because the lack of any visual element might just allow room for the original story to still have its place, while also keeping the creative integrity that makes a book like "Dune" what it is well good and intact. The writing itself can then be the special effect, and the reader is allowed to join in and realize the same world the words place inside their heads.

      At least that's the best compromise I can figure.