A Bend in the River (1979)

V.S. Naipaul’s novel of postcolonial Africa is a portrait of a shifting mosaic of chaos alternating with brief periods of peace. Salim is the main character and first-person narrator. Much of the action and characters are abstracted, though it’s possible to speculate on real-life sources. As the novel begins, Salim has purchased “a shop” and moved from an eastern coastal region to a small town in the interior located, yes, at a bend in a river. We don’t learn what town, what river, or even what Salim peddles in the shop. I think the intent is to make this a generic postcolonial tale. The current president of the unnamed country is referred to only as “the President.” He is a pervasive, distant presence, attempting to work the politics and economy to the greater good of the country and its populace. But his administration is also riddled with corruption, of course. Salim is a smart survivor, able for the most part to avoid the troubles all around him even as they threaten to bring him down with others in his circle of friends and acquaintances. The novel takes place over many years, during which the government’s approach to improvements changes constantly. Salim has a number of contacts, including a servant, who all get their time in this story. Some readers have taken A Bend in the River as a defense of European colonialism but I don’t really see that. In many ways this colonialism introduced terrible political ideas to Africans even as it destroyed practically everything that could contribute to stability. It seems to me Naipaul is pretty clear about that. Colonialism provided some stability, arguably, but changed life in Africa much for the worse. The chaos that followed independence, in about the 1950s and 1960s, is artifact of the failure of colonialism. Naipaul is scrupulous about not raising emotions of outrage, though he easily could have with some of the things going on here. Some of the worst, toward the end, did reach me and I could feel the rage. Naipaul seems more intent on keeping the temperature cool, even slightly comic, which ultimately made this novel feel more credible to me. I don’t think there’s any question he is addressing the problems colonialism brought to Africa. It was still trying to recover in 1979. It’s still trying to recover now. Read this with exercises by Joseph Conrad and J.M. Coetzee.

In case the library is closed due to AI assault, which is not happening.

The Thing (1982)

USA, 109 minutes

Director: John Carpenter

Writers: Bill Lancaster, John W. Campbell Jr.

Photography: Dean Cundey

Music: Ennio Morricone

Editor: Todd C. Ramsay

Cast: Kurt Russell, Wilford Brimley, T.K. Carter, David Clennon, Richard Dysart, Richard Masur, Keith David, Charles Hallahan, Peter Maloney, Donald Moffat, Adrienne Barbeau

I see my Halliwell’s film guide falls decidedly on the side of the 1951 original of this picture, which gets two stars to John Carpenter’s 1982 remake’s none: “filled with revolting detail which alienated most audiences,” it tut-tuts. That’s funny because most audiences I know are united on preferring the Carpenter version (billed fore and aft in the titles as John Carpenter’s The Thing so file under J). That includes me, both thumbs wildly up, Howard Hawks or no. I’m not always on the side of, well, let’s call them modernists. I think, for example, many of them might also prefer Philip Kaufman’s 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers to the 1956 original directed by Don Siegel. I definitely prefer the original in that case.

My problems with The Thing as a franchise may start with the original 1938 story by John W. Campbell, Jr., “Who Goes There?” I found it deeply pulpy and dull but a reread may be in order at some point. There is no denying its place as a pioneering landmark of horror SF, with aliens from outer space that have an unusual ability to mimic other species biologically. Even Halliwell’s noticed that the 1951 movie, widely rumored to have been directed by Howard Hawks, dropped the conceit, noting it contains “the first space monster on film, and is quite nimbly made, though it fails to use the central gimmick from the original story.” It is actually exactly that central gimmick that makes Carpenter’s version superior in my mind, along with a bigger budget, a few decades of special effects technology improvements, and a commitment to the visceral. Some other time for nimble direction.

“The Thing in the Weeds” (1913)

William Hope Hodgson’s story of troubles at sea on a dark night of the soul appears in his Sargasso Sea Stories collection, which unfortunately seems to be hard to find at the moment. Not even Project Gutenberg has it online. There are some cheapie kindle products that carry this story, a Delphi kindle collection for Hodgson which includes practically everything he wrote, and a “megapack” that is not as ambitious. In “The Thing in the Weeds” a ship at sea plies relatively uncharted sectors of the northern Atlantic Ocean. It has been pushed there by unusual conditions of the winds and currents. The troubles start with a bad smell after dark one night, as heavy, impenetrable fog creeps in. Then the attacks by ... something ... begin. The second section of the story, the following day, is more where the impulse for rational explanations is indulged, as it turns out to be a giant squid. This story could still fall within realms of the fantastic and/or weird—maybe squids don’t get this big or this aggressive. I don’t know. Maybe they don’t smell this bad. It feels plausible enough, maybe, for people to believe it in 1913. Still, in this case, just to be a second-guessing bitch, I think I’d have preferred less explanation and more ongoing bad news. When attacks occur at night at sea, and a dark monster of some kind is referred to as a “thing”—well, then, you know you’ve got real trouble. Monsters and other horrible stuff at sea was one of Hodgson’s specialties, as the original collection would suggest. The best of his seagoing stories at large is likely “The Voice in the Night”—the “thing” in that one is an inevitably encroaching fungus that tastes good when you’re starving at sea but has unfortunate effects. “You don’t want to know what happens to them,” as cartoon characters often warn one another. I would classify “The Thing in the Weeds” as reasonably good “night of terror” stuff as well as a perfectly competent seagoing tale. But ultimately it is too concerned for me with explanation, which renders it more of an adventure story. Not that there’s anything wrong with that—and Hodgson was always good at whatever he applied himself to—but adventure, lost world, and mostly or entirely invisible monster stories are not really what I’m looking for.

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Beatles, “Come Together” (1969)

[listen up!]

This song was paired on the first single from Abbey Road with Frank Sinatra’s favorite Beatles song, the George Harrison-penned “Something.” For what it’s worth, my Billboard book says “Come Together” peaked at #1 for a week whereas “Something” stalled at #3 for two weeks. Not sure how that works, now or in 1969. I’m just reporting the facts. “Come Together” is credited to Lennon / McCartney according to their longstanding tradition, but it’s obviously a John Lennon song. In 1969, “Come Together” and Abbey Road more generally—and certainly the nearly eight minutes of “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” when I finally got to it—represented a ne plus ultra to me of rock music. I was listening to “Come Together” on AM but they were also playing it on FM. But I don’t hear it that way so much anymore. Beatles forays into rock, as such and as found for example all over the White Album, seem more peculiar, insular, and separate. No one did rock quite like the Beatles. I would look now more to, say, Jimi Hendrix’s Band of Gypsys, recorded January 1, 1970, as a standard of rock at that time, for better or worse. But the appeal of “Come Together” is enduring, among other things capable of evoking acute memories of the time for me. The words are heavy but nonsensical, insinuating ineffable, slightly menacing vapors the way Lennon could (see also “I Am the Walrus” or “Happiness Is a Warm Gun”). The Beatles’ “Come Together” is a stone classic and even it it’s possible I’ve heard it too much in my life it can still reach me unexpectedly. I also like the 2015 video on youtube, swirling in urgent shades of yellow, red, and orange, with the familiar kooky psychedelic animated style the Beatles adopted, as in Yellow Submarine, but wearing the costumes featured on the Abbey Road album cover, John all in white, Paul barefoot with dark jacket, etc. Good stuff.

Faces of Death (2026)

Although the original 1978 Faces of Death turned out to be mostly a put-up job (see also Cannibal Holocaust) it did include some of its main selling point, that is, actual footage of deaths, accidents, and corpses. I want to be clear I never went for it, nor for Mondo Cane or a similar series in the ‘90s whose name escapes me and appears to be forgotten even by the internet. I realized my limits with these exercises—plain images of death too real do not work for me as entertainment or in any other way. This so-called “reimagining” of Faces of Death is more my speed, all fiction and special effects, though sadly it does not have anything in particular to recommend it. Barbie Ferreira plays Margot Romero (Romero, wink-wink), who works for a social media company reviewing videos that have been reported by users. She approves some, disapproves others—her choices can be a funny commentary on this crazy world we live in today and may be the single best part of the picture. She runs across a series of videos made by the same content creator re-creating some of the mayhem and specific deaths in the original Faces of Death. Margot has her own sad history with gonzo internet content creation which we find more about in piecemeal fashion. She’s on the case but no one, of course, will listen. This Faces of Death relies on all kinds of familiar tropes such as only one character who can see the truth and is unable to convince anyone else, including police. Also, victims tend to make terrible decisions, as seen in countless other horror movies. Viewers often speak aloud to the screen, saying, “No, please, don’t do that.” Or wait, that was just me sitting by myself in my room. The motto of this picture: “The first rule of content creation is give the people what they want.” And we know well, in this day and age, all the things that can mean: conflict, violence, gore, and mean comments. Charli XCX has a part as one of Margot’s coworkers. Dacre Montgomery is the terrible killer, Arthur Spevak. You might recognize him from the TV series Stranger Things. I had hopes this Faces of Death would be better than it is, but it’s competent enough—and Ferreira is good enough in the main role—it’s probably worth putting toward the back end of some weekend double feature or horror fest.

“The Uncharted Isle” (1930)

I thought this story by Clark Ashton Smith was pretty darn good—sometimes, in the wastelands of horror fiction, a good story gives me relief and gratitude. So imagine my surprise and chagrin to find it ranked 4 (below average) and 6 (slightly above average) on the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB), where, admittedly, the rankings are scanty. I overcompensated with a 9 (very good but not quite perfect), which should maybe be an 8 (good; recommended)—present standings with my vote: 6.33. But come on. Sure, there’s maybe not much original about the premise. A man, the first-person narrator, is lost at sea, adrift in a small boat after a terrible fire on his ship. He washes up on an island where nothing is right. He doesn’t recognize the vegetation. He doesn’t even recognize the stars at night. Things only get more weird from there. The obvious interpretation is that he is still on the boat at sea, dreaming, or perhaps raving mad. It doesn’t feel like a dream, however. I haven’t read enough Smith yet to know whether he’s even good at dreams, but I don’t think it’s what he’s trying for here. What makes the story work for me is how real it feels, in spite of its fantastic details. Indeed, the details are crazy good and unnerving. He spends a day or so recovering with fresh water, strange fruit, and rest, then explores the island interior. He discovers a community on the other side. He wanders in and finds people there of an unknown ethnicity. He is unable to communicate with them. He appears to be like a ghost, walking unseen among them. They are preoccupied with something that seems to be of great concern. “At first I couldn’t make out what they were doing, or trying to do; but plainly they were much in earnest about it. Some were looking at the sea or the sun, and then at long scrolls of a paper-like material which they held in their hands; and many were grouped on a stone platform around a large, intricate metal apparatus resembling an armillary.” The strong implication, as the story goes along, is that they too are in a wrong place, or something has gone wrong with what they know. The vegetation and the sky may not be theirs either. It feels like interdimensional membranes have grown thin, or something equally out of Algernon Blackwood. It’s a very simple story—in then out of whatever this reality is. What makes it work is that this “other” place is so well and fully imagined. The details are precise and weird, even if the ostensible explanation—it was all the dream of a man adrift at sea for “days and days”—is lame. You come away feeling it could not possibly be just a dream.

Clark Ashton Smith, The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies
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Something Else by the Kinks (1967)

By 1967 the Kinks were well into their hiatus from inventing rock (“You Really Got Me,” “Who’ll Be the Next in Line,” etc.) and on to the semi-twee songwriting exercises of the Davies brothers Ray and Dave, chiefly Ray. Music hall and other home sources were increasingly turned to for so-called “baroque pop,” with, for example, the nearly perfect scanning of “A Well Respected Man,” or the lesser-known “Most Exclusive Residence for Sale,” both of which are from their previous LP Face to Face. Something Else is the album where Ray took over from signature producer Shel Talmy, for better or worse. That’s a close call, as Talmy has impressive credentials just with the Kinks, let alone with the Who (“My Generation”), the Easybeats (“Friday on My Mind”), Roy Harper (Folkjokeopus), and many others. Arguably Something Else comes on as dreary and slow but the merits of all its songs eventually disclose, at least that’s how it has worked for me. The big hit here, though it missed the top 40 in the US, is “Waterloo Sunset,” perhaps the single most highly rated song by the Kinks at large critically. Rock critic Robert Christgau called it “the most beautiful song in the English language,” many others have explicitly agreed, and the 2021 Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list lodged it at #14. I like it too, but for this era of Ray Davies’s songwriting still prefer “A Well Respected Man” and “Sunny Afternoon,” perhaps from the exposure, as they did make the US top 40. I had to work at Something Else a little, as I’ve said. The deluxe versions do little to improve it, with too many stereo / mono duplications that don’t do much for me. Dave’s contributions (“Love Me Til the Sun Shines,” “Funny Face,” and cowriting “Death of a Clown”) evoke some of the band’s rock inclinations to good effect, lending a nice bolt of it to the proceedings. There’s some interesting sense or awareness of the sun here. “Love Me Til the Sun Shines” is followed by “Lazy Old Sun,” which is a bit too droll for me, as is its follow-up, “Afternoon Tea,” even though I’m still singing along. “Funny Face” sets things right again at that point, rock-wise. I feel like I have ended up liking Something Else almost against my will, an unsettling sensation. But I’ll probably play it again one of these days soon.

The Intruder (2004)

L'Intrus, France, 119 minutes

Director: Claire Denis

Writers: Claire Denis, Jean-Pol Fargeau, Jean-Luc Nancy

Photography: Agnes Godard

Music: Stuart Staples

Editor: Nelly Quettier

Cast: Michel Subor, Gregoire Colin, Yekaterina Golubeva, Beatrice Dalle, Florence Loiret Caille, Alex Descas, Bambou, Lolita Chammah

Not surprisingly, perhaps, director and cowriter Claire Denis likely intends many different things by the title of this ponderous and obscure but enrapturingly beautiful picture. Based on an essay by the French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, it’s the story of a one-time mercenary, Louis Trebor (Michel Subor), in search of literally a new heart and thereby somehow his long-estranged son. The heart is thus an intrusion into his body, he wants desperately to intrude on his son’s life, and the movie itself is an intrusion into the essay (which I don’t know). Early in the show, living in a cabin on an isolated mountain of the western Alps, Louis kills and disposes of the body of a random nighttime intruder into his cabin. So on so forth. The knife is an intrusion on that body. Scraping electric guitar music by Tindersticks principal Stuart Staples.

In fact, thinking of it some more, the title can be taken as an intrusion into cinema history. It’s stupefyingly generic. There are other movies or TV miniseries called The Intruder from 1933, 1953, 1962, 1975, 1979, 1981, 1999, 2005, 2010, 2016, 2019, 2020, 2024, and 2025. I don’t think I’ve seen any of them. The most famous might be the 1962, directed by Roger Corman and starring William Shatner, Frank Maxwell, and Beverly Lunsford. The 2019 horror show gets pride of place in the IMDb search returns. I’m not saying all these intrusions are conscious on Denis’s part, especially not the other pictures. But I bet a bunch of them are. It’s just the way she rolls.

“The Black, Dead Thing” (1933)

Frank Belknap Long’s original title for this story, as published in the edition of Weird Tales pictured above, is a nice artifact of the H.P. Lovecraft era in horror, heaving up with many a gasping shudder “The Black, Dead Thing”—you can positively feel the quivering in that comma. Long was among Lovecraft’s best-known correspondents. “Second Night Out,” the way I found this story in an Alfred Hitchcock-branded anthology and the way it mostly appears in reprints now, is quite a bit more reserved, focused on a key point in an oceangoing journey as I understand it: getting one’s “sea legs” after a day or two of nausea from the pitching rolls of the deep sea. I like the ambiguity, which is in the story but not the original title, that the incident at hand could as well be a delusion while sick. On the other hand, in many ways the story does seem to be focused on erasing any possibility of mistake. Long’s story reminded me of F. Marion Crawford’s classic 1885 “The Upper Berth,” with its creepy corporeal ghost onboard a ship at sea. This thing, like that thing, smells bad. Coming into contact with it, in the dark of course, it feels like a writhing eel. That’s colorful. Our guy’s vacation probably never had a chance and we’re told he spent a long time saving the money for it. I will mention that the black, dead thing is thankfully not racism (you have to worry about that in 1933) but rather something more on the cosmic order, ancient and eternal. Long attacks with blunt instruments, shocking us with darkness and sensory details, attempting somewhat successfully to numb us by evoking a massive featureless face of evil. Whoever changed the title might have done Long and all of us a favor, more lulling us into what becomes a brutal inexplicable life-or-death confrontation. And this, whatever it is, we learn, always seems to happen to someone on the second night out of this voyage. I wouldn’t call this story a classic—so far Long looks to me like one of the more minor figures in Lovecraft’s personal coterie—but I must say I appreciated getting to the eel thing on my own within the story, rather than shrieked at me from the title.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents Stories for Late at Night, ed. Robert Arthur
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Brian Eno With Kevin Shields, “The Weight of History” (2018)

[listen up! (9:12)]

Here’s one of those special Record Store Day products that’s definitely worth a listen. Full disclosure, I still have not made a Record Store Day purchase. This lengthy track was released as one side of a so-called double-A-sided 12-inch single. It comes of a collaboration between ambient meister Brian Eno and My Bloody Valentine principal Kevin Shields, an association that feels so natural it also feels overdue for 2018. The other side of the 12-inch, “Only Once Away My Son,” was recorded in 2017, but that’s not much better. As a dirge, “The Weight of History” feels haunted, with foghorn bottoms, unexpected crackling textures, winsome melody, and moaning. In many ways it seems most like just another artifact in Eno’s ambient gallery. But if there’s one thing Eno is good at (and actually there are many) it’s collaborating. Shields and MBV had a reputation for making the loudest music anyone had ever heard in concert, and the albums were decked out with dense layers of feedback and other churning, vibrating noise as setting for delicate melodies. Eno provides the gently lilting tape loops here while Shields works his gentled tremolo-based distortions. Google AI, which sounds like a fan, lets it rip (sourced to Wikipedia and GuitarGangsters.net): “Shields scales back the aggressive, wall-shaking volume of My Bloody Valentine in favor of micro-textured ambient architecture. He swaps explosive distortion for subtle, process-driven soundfields that lock into Brian Eno's generative and tape-loop aesthetics.... Instead of aggressive whammy-bar chord sweeps, Shields applies his signature pitch-bending tremolo control to sustain string whines and single-note drones, keeping the pitch gently drifting and ‘out of tune’ by micro-intervals.” All I can add is: Yup. No wonder people get hooked on using our future robot overlords to help write.