Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)

Zora Neale Hurston’s classic of the Harlem Renaissance has followed a tortuous path in its relatively brief time. Poorly reviewed when published, Hurston was subsequently attacked on dignity grounds. Folks like Richard Wright were embarrassed by her celebrations of the culture of poor Blacks. The book went out of print. All of her books, novels, nonfiction anthropology collections from oral tradition, and a memoir, went out of print. She was working as a maid and substitute teacher at the end of her life. Their Eyes reads to me as somewhat disjointed and it is very thick with dialect. But there is great beauty in many of the descriptive passages, and Janie is a lively and always interesting character with lots of interesting characters and situations around her as she travels Florida pursuing her destiny. There is a hurricane scene that is amazing. Hurston died in 1960. There was an attempt to revive interest in her in the late ‘60s, in the context of the civil rights movement. That effort fizzled and her books again went out of print. In 1975 there was another attempt, in the context of second-wave feminism, and this one stuck. It started with an essay by Alice Walker published in Ms. magazine. Hurst’s books have been read, taught, and stayed in print ever since. I suspect Wright, whose Native Son is one of the great novels of the 20th century, may have been uncomfortable with the frank sexuality of Janie, who has no problem leaving her first marriage to marry her second husband without divorcing, and was otherwise perfectly faithful to her partners even when they mistreated her. The larger point may be that Janie’s first marriage was not really her choice, at age 17. Her grandmother picked him for her. The other two—both of whom die, with Janie still in her 40s in the present time of this novel—may have been odd unions and perhaps not her best options, but at least they are her own choices. It’s not hard to see how Their Eyes works better as feminism than civil rights. At any rate, it’s a rollicking tale that travels far in Florida. I like the setting very much, and parts of this shaggy tale are just knockout good.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.

“Son of Celluloid” (1984)

This might be the story that finally sold me on Clive Barker because it shows his impressive range with a variety of sources. It also has many of his flaws, for example starting slow with an arguably unnecessary overture piece. The story proper really starts when we get to the end of the night at a rundown repertory movie theater—the night’s show had been a spaghetti western double feature with Clint Eastwood. The only staff are Ricky the janitor, a big thinker and drug-taker, and Birdy the manager, who is 34 and overweight. A woman is waiting in the lobby for her date, who went to the restroom. Ricky goes to check on him and the Barker carnival whirs into existence. The restroom is not a restroom but has become a desert scene from a western movie and someone is firing gunshots at Ricky. The date has already been killed. Ricky has a very hard time getting back to the reality of the restroom and theater, and this is only the start of a phantasmagoric lunacy that unfolds as Ricky and Birdy try to close the theater for the night. There is a monster in there with them and it is so weird you really should get it from Barker in the story. It’s rooted in movie pop culture the way “New Murders in the Rue Morgue” is rooted in Edgar Allan Poe. But it is also all Barker. The gore proceeds logically, focusing on the organs with which we consume movies. Barker likes to go prolix—let him. He tends to close all open loops, which is good because he opens so many of them. I could complain about too much explaining, but not everything is explained and that’s good enough in that regard. The main thing, so often, is that you just don’t know where he’s going. You expect him to go for extremes, as the putative author of splatterpunk, but you can’t guess which ones. Sometimes it feels too loose and wild, but the appeal often remains wondering where he’s headed. I love this one because it doesn’t love just great cinema, but also the venues where it’s shown, or was once (the style of repertory theater I knew in the ‘70s and ‘80s is all but dead now). And what a monster this one has!

Clive Barker, Books of Blood, Vols. 1-6 (Vol. 3 kindle)
Read story online.