Customer Reviews

Demonology

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

Though endlessly influential from the get-go, Rick Moody's works have evolved considerably. If Purple America felt over-stylized to you, check out Demonology or his subsequent autobiography The Black Veil. They are especially powerful if read in that order. The title story of Demonology alone is worth the cost, and I can believe Moody's claim in an interview that after writing it he has been unable to re-read it. It is a very painful account of his sister's death, thinly veiled in fiction (thin to the point that the narrator comments on the story's autobiographical tint). The reviewers who argue that Moody changes tone too quickly and explicitly gives clues of impending disaster miss the point; the tragedy is a given. The beauty of his prose is in building up the context, prolonging what everyone knows or senses from foreshadowing and from the story's mood, until it reaches the point that he must resign himself to writing the conclusion. It is a beautiful method.

The collection begins and ends with stories told by a male narrator addressing his dead sister (though the two pieces have nothing in common otherwise). "The Mansion on the Hill" is the story of an underachieving, slightly unbalanced guy who fails, catastrophically, at playing the avian mascot for a fast-food fried chicken joint. He lands a job at the Mansion on the Hill, a theme-room wedding venue that feels more like a funeral home, and slowly becomes enmeshed in the pathetic, lovelorn lives of his mostly dispirited coworkers; the climax of the story comes when he learns that his sister's former fiance is scheduled to be married at the Mansion on the Hill, less than a year after the sister's death. "Mansion" attempts to balance the fine line between comedy and tragedy, but the tone is uneven, and the desired effect is often unclear: was that supposed to be funny, or sad? In the end, it's merely pathetic, in all the various meanings of the word.

"Demonology," by contrast, feels much more intimate and personal, even autobiographical. It recounts the narrator's recollections of his sister in brief, unconnected snapshot scenes, which more or less center around Halloween and trick-or-treating (hence the candy), then jumps to a dispassionate description of her last moments; finally, the narrator addresses the sister, telling her how he feels in her absence despite (and because of) her inability to hear him. Though the narrator is the surviving sibling, he removes himself from the story, placing the focus squarely on his dead sister; it's a nice twist that she becomes present by her absence, alive in memory.

The finest pieces are those told in a fluid, stream-of-consciousness narrative, where the plot must be sifted out with careful attention to the flow of words. In just two-and-a-half pages, "Drawer" recounts an estranged husband's violent destruction of a piece of furniture that is, to him, symbolic of the failure of his marriage, but this can only be determined after the fact (and, probably, after several readings). "Boys" is a beautiful, lyrical story about two brothers growing from infancy to adulthood in the same house. The phrase "boys enter the house," used again and again until it feels like a litany, anchors the story and evokes the lengthy procession of mostly identical days; in the end, it gives way to "boys, no longer boys," as the children assume the role of adults in the face of tragedy.

Not all of the stories work perfectly, of course. "Pan's Fair Throng" is a mostly vexing, overlong piece that blends present-day realism, fairy-tale convention, and Fakespearean tone into a baffling hodge-podge that defies interpretation. It appears to be the story of a young hacker who goes on trial for turning another young man into a monkey by feeding him a potion. Despite some impressively authentic medieval speech, the tone often veers alarmingly into preciously post-modern pop-culture references, and the result is a muddy, confusing pastiche that isn't nearly as funny as the author probably thinks it is. "Surplus Value Books: Catalogue Number 13" purports to be a sale listing for the narrator's rare-book collection, many of which turn out to be "valuable" only because of their connections to central figures (or romantic obsessions) in the narrator's life. The conceit of personal-history-as-catalog-notes would be more interesting if it hadn't already been used, to greater effect, earlier in the book; as it is, the premise doesn't wear well with repetition, and feels a little too cute.

On the whole, however, Moody is a strikingly original and ferociously smart writer with a knack for offbeat protagonists in unusually imagined situations. Although regretfully fond of italicizing words, phrases, and entire paragraphs at times (the reason is unclear; often, it seems intended to give a heavily ironic emphasis to the words italicized, but the author's constant and unrelenting use of the device quickly weakens its impact), Moody writes well and evocatively; the reader may be confused or frustrated at times, but will never be bored. After finishing the book, I think I may finally have found the real reason for the cover image: like Smarties, these little stories are oddly addictive, despite their bittersweet tang. I purchased this book through Amazon.com right after another great purchase, THE LOSERS' CLUB by Richard Perez, about an unlucky writer addicted to the personals. Both books are from experimental, somewhat "edgy" New York authors, but that's where the similarity ends, although I recommend each highly.

Despite a cool title and gorgeous cover, this book falls short once you open it up. The italics for one. They're the literary equivalent of someone whispering in your ear when you're trying to watch on a movie, they jolt you from your absorption and leave you unsure of what is going on.

Second, this collection is very uneven. A few stories are very good, several are passable, and many are downright infuriating to try and grasp the point of. I don't believe "literary fiction" has to wear its incomprehensibility and pretentiousness like a badge of honor, in order to garner admiration.

Thirdly, the characters have little to no depth, with the exception of a few narrators. We get their physical descriptions, what music they like, and where they shop, yet nothing about what they believe in, what they enjoy doing in their spare time, their political stands, etc. Brand names do not a multi-dimensional character make.

My recommendation: Skip it.

Moody's an unusual case. He's too smart and too talented to be considered a writer of popular schlock, but he's not smart enough or talented enough to be taken seriously as a literary writer. His work is easy to read and is an agreeable way to kill some time, but there's virtually no depth to what he writes, and in this book in particular there's a lot of sloppy writing. This book would have benefited from the handiwork of a caring editor. Moody is an obvious example of a writer spreading himself way too thin. He continues to write in the manner of an up-and-coming writer in his early twenties--there's no sign of maturing in his work. This book is pretty much for his fans; it's not likely to convert anyone.

I defy anybody out there to claim that they have no demons. The trick is bringing them out in the light. Nobody does this better in modern fiction than Mr. Moody. Passages turn from horrifying to hilarious in three words - and back again in the next three. How many books have you ever read that could make you laugh uncontrolably and then cry in the same way? For twenty bucks you can buy a mirror for your soul - hold it up, find the demons that scare you, the ones you have fun with; choreograph a dance with them and then tuck them into bed. Tuck yourself in too, but don't count on sleeping - this book will make you keep reading. I loved it.

Once again Rick Moody demonstrates that he is one of our finest writers in this fine collection of short stories. He is now one of our most astute observers of suburban life in the northeastern United States, crafting richly textured vignettes on despair with his sparse, lyrical prose. Not every story in this collection succeeds, but most show Moody at the top of his form. Indeed, the title story of this collection is one of the most amazing, emotionally gripping tales I have read on how a dysfunctional family copes with unexpected tragedy. This sparkling gem is by itself worth the price of this book.

Rick Moody is known as one of the most talented writers in the United States, and the strongest stories in this collection bear this out. When he's on, Moody's stories have the momentum of a runaway train, hurtling toward an end that never seems certain until the final word comes to rest. He can be absurdly funny and heartbreakingly insightful in the same paragraph, giving these stories a power they never would have realized at the hands of a lesser writer. His description of ostriches had me laughing out loud (and smiling now, writing of it) while the final story, in the context of all that had come before, is one of the most loving, most wounded, most sincere stories I've read of late.

Moody is not perfect, of course. Some of these stories are clearly better than others. When he's at his best, Moody allows his narrator the unselfconscious telling of events; however, occasionally the narrator steps out of the story to announce context or philosophy or an awareness of the medium, rapidly deflating the stories, the illusion gone. Perhaps Moody intended this effect (the removal of the chicken mask in the opening story), but it didn't work for me.

All in all, this is a fine collection from a fine writer. Readers of short stories should not hesitate to make this book a part of their libraries.

I'm not saying Rick Moody is a bad writer. He can shift between social classes and write them all well. He has all the stylistic and linguistic pyrotechnics. He is intelligent, and is trying to deal with more than just ideas.

But this collection lacks true emotional depth. Loss never transcends into grief, insecurity does not go to neurosis, love is never passion. It's small emotions that define this book, and I feel that the more experimental and language-intensive the work is, the more emotional substance needs to be there to support the structure. It's as if he has the same candy coating as Eggers and Wallace, but without the chewy center of hard-to-handle truth.

I liked enough of the style to keep an eye out for future work, but can't recommend this collection as anything outstanding.

Rick Moody is a major talent, so major that placing him in the context of other contemporary writers is difficult at best. Moody is Moody and he is either your cup of tea or he's not. His style of writing is kaleidoscopic. In this volume of thirteen short stories we are treated to a taste of what makes him so diverse, so fine a taleteller. From his complexly mesmerizing, rambling story in "Mansion on the Hill" to the terse three page "Drawer" to the hilarious take on a chronic loser in "The Double Zero", Moody's style pushes us along into places we'd sometime rather not go were it not for the brouhaha of the sales pitch of the author. I found some of the stories mannered, some a touch labored by writing gimmicks (must we be warned that evil or tragedy lurks behind the next page?. But this guy knows people and the bizarre American Gothic twisted humor that underlies much of our relationships. He tackles social issues, moral issues, foibles, stodgy thinking and just about every method of fantasy/memory that we use to button our past......and he makes it all interesting, even while we are embarassed to admit that we relate to his characters. This collection is yet further proof that Rick Moody is a force to contend with in contemporary American literature. Try it!

It's easy to understand Moody's appeal. His short fiction offers facile experimentalism with a commercial gloss. His idea of innovation is to go a little crazy with italics in unexpected places. Readers feel flattered, unthreatened. Moody is a "safe" writer--he'll never take you any place that might unsettle you. The occasional comparisons to Cheever and Updike are especially troubling, because as a stylist Moody has few discernible gifts other than the colloquial crispness one associates with overexcited magazine features. Moody is not a major writer. That he is mistaken for one, and promoted as one, and accepted as one, says a lot about the decline of literary fiction in this country.