Imaginarium 2012
Rannu Fund
Chiaroscuro Reading Series
FLUID LEVEL LOW!
The more liquid we are, the more we can fill the Intar-Tubes. Please help us FLOW!
2012 Goal
$5,000
$4,000
$3,000
$2,000
$1,000
Newsletter
Home Before Dark
reviewed by
This is a lovely chapbook showcasing the talent of (certainly by my standards) one of North America's foremost magic realists, in an edition of 350 numbered and 26 lettered copies.
Yes, some may question the use of the term "magic realism" and complain that this literary "movement" is a South American phenomenon. Perhaps so, but when similar themes are explored in similar ways, but given a North American spin, the result is still recognizably "magic realism." Everyday people, places, and things conceal within them some kind of magic - some kind of secret power or influence. We can debate the differences between the South and North American versions, but they are simply two sides of the same coin. Otherwise, just call it California Gothic. It's the words that count, not the label.
James Blaylock has taken the ghost story and given it a unique California feel. After helping to pioneer Steampunk, Blaylock seems to have concentrated primarily on tales of ghostly presences and their effect on contemporary protagonists. He has taken his original amusingly eccentric villains and made them much more human, and much creepier, too. But there are no villains in this tiny gem of a tale, only a certain nostalgia. "Home Before Dark" is not so much a ghost story as a story full of ghosts. Ghosts of one man's past. Blake is on his way home, traversing an arroyo when he is visited by someone from his past, someone he misses terribly. With poetic prose reminiscent of Robert Frost, Blaylock takes us along on Blake's jaunt.
The beauty of Blaylock's prose is in full flower here, for instance: "He had come home unannounced one rainy October evening, and he had lingered in the wet street, possessed by the inexpressible sadness of lost and irretrievable things..."
I think I know that sadness, and I know that the merest story from James Blaylock's gentle pen will set itself deeply into my soul and resonate forever.