Finishing up his reviews from Fantaspoa, Stephen tunes into THE KIRLIAN FREQUENCY. #horror #amwatching #dj #radio
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Next up from the Fantaspoia Film Festival, Stephen discovers ADORABLE HUMANS, saying, "What makes the Danish collection Adorable Humans stand out is not that every segment lands equally, but that the collection shares a surprisingly cohesive emotional and thematic heart." #horror #amwatching #amwatchinghorror #fairytales #anthology #movies
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Had a few reviews go up this weekend, in case you missed them. Stephen has three from Fantaspoia Film Festival, starting with BUFFET LIBRE, about which he says it "...caught me off guard in the best way." #amwatching #foodie #foodstagram
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Night of the Living Dead fans will want to pick up Daniel Kraus' PARTIALLY DEVOURED: HOW NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD SAVED MY LIFE AND CHANGED THE WORLD. Read what Stephen thought of this release from Counterpoint! #books #bookstagram #zombies #bookreview #horror #amreading
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INFINITE SUMMER is now out from One Eyed Films. Stephen says, "...the movie’s synthesis of teen-film energy with speculative horror is consistently engaging." #horror #amwatching #movies #comingofage #summer
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Happy New Year! Musicalia #151: The New Slide is available @thedrunkenodyssey . You can access the new playlist and archives through the link in my bio. This week features Sessa, Hildur Guðnadóttir, Damon Smith, and more.
Musicalia #149: A Smack of Olives is available @thedrunkenodyssey . You can access the new playlist and archives through the link in my bio. This week features @djbabatr , @kellymoran__ , Matthew Shipp, Charlie Feathers, and more.
In his introduction, Brandon Grafius recalls being ten years old and attempting his first cover-to-cover read of the Bible. He found himself not shocked by the dull stretches but by the strange, violent, and uncanny bits never mentioned in Sunday school. That early discovery stayed with him, eventually inspiring his work on a PhD in the Hebrew Bible. In Scared by the Bible: The Roots of Horror in Scripture, he argues horror isn’t a modern invention, but rather one of the Bible’s native storytelling modes. The Bible, he notes, is a collection of genres, and the discomfort new readers often feel when approaching scripture comes from viewing it solely as a moral handbook rather than a multifaceted text where terror and transcendence can coexist.
Importantly, Grafius doesn’t argue that the Bible is horror, but that it uses horror and its imagery, unease, and existential anxieties to grapple with human fear, justice, power, and meaning.
Stylistically, the book recalls the approachable, enthusiastic, and clear tone of How to Read Literature Like a Professor. Grafius provides a gateway text for readers new to horror criticism or biblical studies.
You can read my full review at the Horror DNA link in my bio.
Musical is #148: Dancing in the Void is available @thedrunkenodyssey —a weekly poem and playlist. You can access the new one and the archives through the link in my bio. This week features Michel Magne, Oliver Nelson, Aby Ngana Diop, and others.
Musical is #147: Imagined Guests is available over @thedrunkenodyssey . A weekly playlist with a poem. You can get the new one and the archives through the link in my bio. This week features film music, @meklitmusic , @igorrr , and others.
Michael Lentz’s Shattenfroh is a challenging, 1,001-page experimental German novel about Nobody, who sits imprisoned at a table by his father, wearing something like a plague mask. His name is a nod to the Latin nemo and the Cyclops episode in The Odyssey. I’m barely gesturing toward the amount of wordplay here, much of which I likely missed. The story unfolds through Nobody’s “brain fluid,” producing prose that echoes Samuel Beckett, while incorporating touches of Franz Kafka’s magical existentialism, among other flavors.
Nobody becomes and interacts with various beings in art history. There are glorious appearances by Hieronymus Bosch’s hybrids. Episodes occur inside other famous paintings as Lentz explores German and religious history and the many ways states and groups have inflicted torture, particularly through crucifixion. There’s a wild, cruel humor reminiscent of Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel, a story that includes a giant urinating and flooding a town. The title Shattenfroh plays with several German words, especially Schadenfreude—pleasure in others’ suffering. Much of the novel grapples with witnessing and complicity. One striking section reproduces Nobody’s handwritten list of people who died during Allied bombings of Düren. When faced with a list of the dead, do you read the names? What does that act mean? If you ignore them are you erasing them again? This recalls Pasolini’s Salo, which also turns the viewer into witness and accomplice—but Lentz’s version, for me, cuts even deeper. The novel has a bizarre balance of humor and horror like watching films by Michael Haneke and Terry Gilliam at the same time. (Continued in comments.)
