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Madison Smartt Bell

The Color of Night (Vintage Contemporaries) Paperback – April 5, 2011

by Madison Smartt Bell (Author)

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Mae, a blackjack dealer in a Las Vegas casino, spends her free time wandering the desert with a rifle, or sitting in her trailer obsessively watching replays of an old lover escaping the wreckage of 9/11. What she sees in those images is different from what the rest of us would see. She revels in the pure anarchy, thrills at the destruction. These images recall memories of a childhood marked by unthinkable abuse, of her drift into a cult that committed the most shocking crime of the '60s, of her life since then as a feral and wary outsider, caught in a swirl of events at once personal, political, mythic.

Print length

208 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Vintage
Publication date

April 5, 2011
Dimensions

5.19 x 0.66 x 7.91 inches
ISBN-10

0307741885
ISBN-13

978-0307741882
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Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Bell’s novels all have roots that reach to the underworld. He has always opened himself to the monstrous, the nihilistic, the darkly erotic. And now, in this poisonous snake of a tale, he rides a river of terror as it flows through one deeply damaged woman and yokes together acts of incomprehensible violence. Mae deals cards in a Nevada casino and spends what’s left of her long nights prowling the desert, rifle in hand. She is mesmerized by the television coverage of 9/11 after catching a glimpse of a long-lost lover. Memories of Mae’s outlaw past begin to crash into the carapace of her solitude like the death-planes gliding into the towers. Her memories range from her brother’s diabolical abuse to her easy recruitment into what we recognize as the Manson family, with the kill-cult’s hallucinogen-fueled orgies and grotesque killing sprees. Among their peripheral casualties are a famous musician known as O_____ and his love, Eerie, haunting variations of Orpheus and Eurydice. In this sharp blade of a novel, every word is weaponized as Bell stands at the portal to chthonic evil. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Through 15 books, Bell has developed a devoted literary following; aided by nationwide advertising and special reading-group promotion, his latest novel, about a former Manson family member, could crossover to James Ellroy–like mainstream sales. --Donna Seaman

Review

"A truly unnerving mythical novel that asks us to piece together what is left of a shattered collective unconscious. Bell's devastated, traumatized characters surf the debris of who we are and where we've been."--A.M. Homes, author of This Book Will Save Your Life

"A work that makes lucid the shadows and darkening corners that were encroaching on an America increasingly lost to its own history and self-respect. . . . As unforgettable as the events that inspired it." --Robert Stone, author of Dog Soldiers

"In twenty books written over nearly thirty years, Madison Smartt Bell has gone from a writer of enormous promise to a master and more, a living literary resource. As his avid admirers will be happy to tell you, if you haven't read him, you don't know what you're missing. The Color of Night is characteristically brilliant and compelling, a terrifying vision of American dreaming. It may not be pretty, but it's certainly beautiful."--Michael Herr, author of Dispatches

“[A] sharp blade of a novel, every word is weaponized as Bell stands at the portal to chthonic evil.”—Booklist

“A hybrid of mid-career Cormac McCarthy and the film collaborations of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. . . . Bell's skills as a novelist are amply in evidence.”—Kirkus

About the Author

Madison Smartt Bell is the author of fifteen previous works of fiction, including All Souls' Rising (a National Book Award finalist), Soldier’s Joy and Anything Goes. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland, where he teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Goucher College.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

1

Until the day the towers fell, I'd long believed that all the gods were dead. For years, for decades, my head was still. Only sometimes, deep in the desert, the soughing ghost voice of O——. But still, the bell of my head was silent, swinging aimlessly over the void.

***

I could watch it again, as much as I wanted, since the TV kept playing it over and over like a game of Tetris no one could win. No limit to how many times I could consume, could devour those images. Again and again the rapid swelling, ripening to the bursting point, and then the fall. The buckling, crumbling, blooming outward in the great orb of ruin before it showered all its matter to the ground. Those gnatlike specks that swirled around it proved to be mortals, springing out of the flames. Wrapped in the shrouds of their screaming, they sailed down.

It didn't matter how many saw one watching, since none can know another's heart or mind. I had not known my blood could rise like that. Still, again, despite the years, the withering of my body.

Sometimes the television showed a plane biting into the side of a building, its teeth on its underside where the mouth of a shark is—then flame leaped up from the wound like the red surge from an artery. Then there were shots of living mortals on the street, wailing, raking the flesh from the bone of their faces, or some of them frozen, prostrate with awe.

So I saw Laurel for the first time again, Laurel kneeling on the sidewalk, her head thrown back, her hands stretched out with the fingers crooked, as weapons or in praise. Blood was running from the corners of her mouth, like in the old days, though not for the same reason.

2

Inside the casino, it never happened. Nothing there can enter in. Only the whirl of lights and the electronic burbling of machines, rattle of dice in the craps table cups, an almost inaudible whisper of cards, the friction-free hum of roulette wheels turning. Nothing is permitted to change.

It is a sort of fifth-rate hell, and I a minor demon posted to it. A succubus too indifferent to suck. I have my regulars, of course. Sometimes I even know their names. I deal them cards and they lose money. Occasionally one of them wins, of course, but not for long.

"Mae," tonight's mark says. My name's a little sinister in his faint Slavic accent. He's told me his but I've forgotten. A retired airline pilot, I think he said. Some would find him good-looking, in that square-headed way all the pilots have. Silver hair and a face burnt to wrinkly leather. It takes a long time to catch a buzz from the watered drinks they give free here, but my regular has the determination to do it.

"When you get off work, Mae? When you coming home with me?" I part my painted lips to show my pleasant teeth to him, smooth away the black wing of my hair. I am conscious of not looking up at the dark bulb in the low tiled ceiling, where the two of us are captured by a fish-eye lens. I am older than he, perhaps a lot older, but as far as I know he doesn't know it.

I show my hole card: eight to a jack. Not much of a hand, but my regular took a hit too many and he's busted.

I might have worked a double shift, meaning sixteen hours straight. Sometimes I do. I don't get tired. Even in a fifth-rate hell there is no sense of the passage of time. I don't remember anything unusual that day—if there were fewer people than we normally got, a sudden emptying of the place, illumination from outside. No I don't think there was that. It hardly matters what I recall, since no one is going to call me to witness, at least not on that point.

Probably two hours of darkness remained by the time I got into my car. It takes barely a quarter of that to drive from the casino to my dwelling. I don't listen to the radio. i don't like the chatter, and I don't like music with singing in it, and I don't like to hear guitars or strings. Maybe I listened to piano during the dark drive, Bach or Chopin, in a minor key. No voice told me what rent had been torn in the world that day. When I went into the desert, I still didn't know.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage (April 5, 2011)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 208 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0307741885
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0307741882
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 7.8 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.19 x 0.66 x 7.91 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #3,675,077 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #8,454 in Women's Friendship Fiction
- #20,520 in Women's Domestic Life Fiction
- #21,786 in Psychological Fiction (Books)

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Madison Smartt Bell

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Madison Smartt Bell is a critically acclaimed writer of more than a dozen novels and story collections, as well as numerous essays and reviews for publications such as Harper’s and the New York Times Book Review. His books have been finalists for both the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, among other honors.

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3 star		20%
2 star		14%
1 star		7%

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Gea

If D had an eye for weakness, he liked it mixed with strength.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 29, 2011

Verified Purchase

The Color of Night is a beautiful, haunting, and disturbing story, which I found fascinating. I see it as a character study about a girl's transformation from victim to predator. Madison Smartt Bell charts Mae's evolution through flashbacks that describe her sexual abuse at the hands of her brother with excruciating psychological verity. Mae says of Terrell, "He never forced. He persuaded. . ," thus making her complicit in her own abuse. Mae's brother is the trigger that unleashes the animal inside her, along with the voices and the lure of pain.

Later, D., leader of The Family, will pick up where Terrell left off, honing Mae's predatory instincts while using her as a tool to serve his own needs. D. orchestrates "the invasion of arousal, willing or no," turning Mae's body against her and against others as well.

The miracle in all of this is that despite the devastation inflicted upon her body and mind, Mae is still able to love fiercely and tenderly. At turns, both jealous and protective, she ruthlessly avenges her lover, even as she actively participates in her destruction. And so, not only is this a novel of violence, it is a love story as well.

Bell's language is gorgeous and darkly erotic. He expertly weaves luscious myth throughout the narrative that deepens and enriches the story. Bell writes about our blackest nightmares in a beautiful, seductive, and detached manner, as Mae is seductive and detached herself. The reader is pulled in, mesmerized and repulsed by the horror, yet unable to look away. Bell seduces the reader as Terrell and D. have seduced Mae.

Although The Color of Night is a violent novel, there is a point to the violence. It illustrates how we as humans transmit our pain from one person to another, keeping it alive, feeding it, as it expands and spreads throughout the world. Mae expresses this when referring to one of her victims, "It stays with me, her dying look- how finally, how absolutely she accepted Ate, the suffering passed on to her through me." If only we could eat our own pain, contain it within ourselves, instead of passing it on to others, then perhaps the damage could be contained.

2 people found this helpful

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Ally Grace

Simpler would have been better

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 15, 2013

Verified Purchase

On a sentence level, the book is beautifully written, though I could never really connect the style of the writing with the voice of the character. They didn't match well for this reader. I would have preferred more attention to the story between Laurel and Mae; the allusions to Greek myth felt pretentious and detracted from what might have been interesting. At the end, I wanted more, which would be good except that it was the first time reading the novel that I felt that way. Didn't do much for me as a reader.

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Greg Olear

Dark, spare, and beautifully written

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 20, 2011

Verified Purchase

Bell finds the shortest distance between two points -- in this case, Helter Skelter and 9/11 -- is a detour to the underworld of Greek myth.

Dark, spare, and beautifully written, THE COLOR OF NIGHT accomplishes one of the most difficult things a writer can attempt: it makes potentially repellent subject matter entertaining. This novel is a master class on how to properly handle gruesome material.

2 people found this helpful

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David H. Eisenberg

Mythic, sensual, dark, compelling and oddly - fun

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 20, 2018

I really like this book a lot. I gave it 5 stars, then four, now five again and finally four. It is mythic, sensual, dark, compelling and oddly - fun, all at the same time. It weaves together two eras - the hippy era of the sixties and post-9/11. At first, I thought the dates didn't work, but if Mae was born in '53, and therefore was 16 in '69 (when the Manson killings/arrest took place), she'd be about 47/8 when 9/11 happened, which makes sense for where she was in her life.

I had two criticisms. The first I realized was personal taste. I don't like plot holes that don't get filled. For example, when Mae and Laura kill someone, I couldn't tell who it was - at first, I thought I knew, but I was clearly wrong - and maybe it did not matter. Maybe that she doesn't tell who it was is the point, to show how disturbed she is. But, the ending did not satisfy me and endings should, even if they don't explain everything, be satisfying, and not feel simply as the author ran out of ideas. Maybe it will satisfy some others or they will believe they can figure out what is about to happen. But, I do not believe it will satisfy most people. Anyway, though I could give a book without a good ending five stars, I don't feel it here. Still, though only four stars, I highly recommend it and will now try his other work.

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Tomic101

Hypnotique

Reviewed in France 🇫🇷 on April 2, 2012

Verified Purchase

Très beau récit alternant les sections psychédéliques empreintes de références mythiques et la réalité brutale d'une protagoniste traumatisée par le passé lointain (sa jeunesse) et plus proche (les attentats du 11 sept.)
Le narrateur fait parfaitement remonter cette violence à la surface, de façon sous-jacente, implicite, indirecte, puis brutalement imprévisible.
Récit très compact qui heurte de plein fouet: je l'ai relu une seconde fois dans la foulée!

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