on THE NIGHTSTAND

Amnesiascope by Steve Erickson

Well, it has finally happened: the "real" world has become stranger than a Steve Erickson novel. With a summer and early fall that had the worst national wildfire season on record; multiple school shootings involving disturbed individuals and perverts; a Florida politician in charge of drafting Internet predator laws likely preying upon young male pages via email, while his political party's leadership knowingly covers up for him; drug recalls; an E-coli tainted spinach ban; various viruses on the verge of becoming pandemics; a country mired in a Middle East war, with Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan as the beginning of the nightmare, with more to follow; and a presidential cabinet that is hallucinatory, fueled by oil dreams and fundamentalist Christianity; it is hard to read a Steve Erickson novel and believe that he is not a visionary.

I am currently reading his novel Amnesiascope. Like many of his other novels filled with his surreal, apocalyptic imagery and imaginings, Amnesiascope is a parallel universe that teeters on the verge of breaking into our own lives. Elements from preceding novels Days Between Stations, Rubicon Beach, and Tours of the Black Clock make appearances here and elements from Amnesiascope will crop up in following novels The Sea Came In At Midnight and Our Ecstatic Days. The Cathode Flower Club, the film Death of Marat by Adolphe Sarre (as well as the character Adophe Sarre, from Days Between Stations), and imploding Los Angeles are a few of the recurrent themes that play a prominent role in Amnesiascope.

The self-effacement and doubt that plagues all of Erickson's narrators is prevalent here in the life of the nameless protagonist. Time and memory are highlighted as per usual. Sexuality destroys relationships as the "real" world crumbles around the narrator and the other characters.

It feels good to shrug off some of the cares of the "real" world and move into this fictional realm, even if it oftentimes feels real itself. I haven't been within the pages, walls, and geography of a good novel for some time, but am glad to have made the journey.

Also on THE NIGHTSTAND right now:

*Close Range: Wyoming Stories by Annie Proulx—I started reading this because it contains the short story "Brokeback Mountain," which is much better than the film directed by Ang Lee. That, however, is another story for another time.

*Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2 by Annie Proulx—Some of the stories in Close Range pushed me toward this volume of short stories.

*The September issue of The Believer, "The Games Issue," with interesting articles on Dungeons & Dragons founder and "creator" E. Gary Gygax, Oulipo, and video wargames.