This is a case of book design getting me to pick up the book. The sky appeared to swirl around the moon, and then I saw the silhouetted arm sticking out of the waves. I stopped and picked up the book and read the jacket copy and checked it out (from my local library).
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The Night Ocean by Paul La Farge was categorized and shelved as a mystery by the library, but I would have placed it in literary fiction.
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It was promoted as being inspired by "H. P. Lovecraft and his circle," but it is less H. P. Lovecraft and his Cthulhu Mythos than it is Robert Bolaño and his novel The Savage Detectives. It is a love story to literature through the lens and lives of some of the purveyors of weird fiction.
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The main stories are anchored upon two apparent (although maybe not) suicides—Charlie Willett in the present day and Robert Barlow in 1951—and the author/weird fiction fan L. C. Spinks who is their connection. A possibly homosexual relationship between Barlow and Lovecraft and the discovery of The Erotonomicon underlie all. And it is all complicated by Charlie Willett's fandom of Lovecraft, as a black man who reads and relishes a (now) known (and known to him) racist.
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There are plenty of references and appearances by authors of weird fiction and science fiction—
Frederick Pohl, Clark Ashton Smith, August Derleth, Donald Wandrei, Hart Crane, Ambrose Bierce. Williams S. Burroughs appears in multiple storylines as one-named "characters" Bill and Lee, in addition to some of his famous "routines" from Naked Lunch being mentioned.
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For as many of the literary "in jokes" that I got, I'm sure there were twice as many that I missed. The characters are so well written and their stories so compelling that I found myself reading late into the night and filling up my free time with reading so I could find out what happened next.
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I highly recommend this book to fans of mysteries, science fiction, biographies, and literary fiction.
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