Simulacrum and Other
Possible Realities
Jason V. Brock.
Hippocampus
ISBN13: 97801061498-055-1
2013,
$20.00, Trade paper
It sometimes seems that
stories—often much like their authors—have shapes and textures. Some feel warm
and fuzzy; others are free-form, open, unrestrained; still others are
distanced, controlled and controlling.
After reading the stories and
poems that comprise Jason V Brock’s
Simulacrum
and Other Possible Realities,
I realized that no one else could have
written these pieces, brought the same sharpness of focus, the same intensity,
the same crispness of intellect to bear on such a variety of subjects. I’ve
only met Jason once, at the 2012 Horror Writers Association Conference, when he
served as a mediator-of-sorts between Rocky Wood and me on a Stephen King
panel. Rocky was having serious problems speaking, so as others on the panel
contributed their ideas, he wrote his responses on his computer; when the time
came, Jason read them aloud and commented on them. At the same time, he
re-stated panelists’ comments and audience questions for me, since I could frequently
neither hear nor understand them. I was impressed with his skill in handling
several tasks simultaneously, in remaining true to the individuals’ intentions
and at the same time bringing a unique perspective to them. I left the panel
grateful to have had his help and to have met him.
The stories and poems in Simulacrum fit perfectly with my view of
the author. They try to mediate, to transliterate as it were, from one mode of
thinking to another. The headnote story, “What the Dead’s Eyes Behold” is
rather like a 21st-century version of Robert Browning’s remarkable
study of abnormal psychology, “Porphyria’s Lover.” In it, the narrator speaks
of looking into his beloved’s eyes and, seeing there an instant of perfect,
undiluted love for him, “found/A thing to do”—he wraps her hair three times
around her throat and strangles her, thus encapsulating forever that single
moment. “And yet,” he notes almost as an afterthought, “God has not said a
word.”
In Brock’s story, the backgrounds
are diametrically opposed to Browning’s. There is no quest for an eternal
moment caught in an instant, for perfect love; instead, the character and his
victim/sacrifice, Calliope, exist in a world without love, without eternals.
And instead of searching for a phantom togetherness in a fraction of time, they
deny that any such togetherness can exist. All that exists is death. And, for
the narrator, the moment when living eyes look upon death. Hers…and his.
Browning’s lover found solace and
comfort; Brock’s cannot.
Near the end of the collection,
Brock has included his stand-alone novella, “Milton’s Children.” In some ways
it is the opposite of “What the Dead’s Eyes Behold.” It is external and
objective, the report of an expedition to a cluster of previously unknown
islands near the Antarctic. Yet, inexorably, what seems like an everyday
mission rapidly shifts to a phantasmagoria of horror ultimately equally
inexplicable and inconclusive. (For a longer review of the story, see
http://michaelrcollings.blogspot.com/2013/01/jason-v-brocks-miltons-children.html
or
http://hellnotes.com/miltons-children-book-review
).
In between, Brock has incorporated
a wide range of stories that challenge the notions of normalcy, rationality,
and acceptability. “The Central Coast” has at its core a haunted bottle of wine
and the unforeseen consequences of a single drink. In “One for the Road,” there
is clearly a serial killer and a victim; the quandary is determining which is
which…and who is who—a leitmotif that
recurs in story after story. “The Hex Factor” takes as a given a world in which
hexes and magic not only work but are proprietor; what would the results be if
someone stole another’s Grimoire? “Valor: A Fable” is, again, a story about
choice and consequence, told in a just-so-slightly archaic diction that
perfectly weds tale to meaning.
And more….
Throughout, Brock deals with
questions of death and mortality (with a few glances at immortality), of
consequence, of choice, of the nature of identity itself. He does not hesitate
to incorporate politics, morality, and social causes into the fabric of the
stories, but in each instance, what might be merely an authorial intrusion
becomes welded to the story itself; to think about vegetarianism in “Milton’s
Children,” for example—as the opening pages insist that readers do—is to
prepare for the climax, for the realities that the characters discover on the
island.
Intercut with the stories are
poems that are as compressed and as trenchant as the tales themselves.
Typically, Brock explores multiple approaches: line-length free verse;
occasional spates of rhyme; typography and the visual effects of composition;
even variations in fonts to suggest shifts in meaning.
Taken as a whole,
Simulacrum and Other Possible Realities
is
echt
-Jason V. Brock. Each story,
each poem carries his unique imprint. Some might take longer than others to resolve,
but I the act of considering each lies a significant portion of their power.
Recommended.
