The Shape of the Ruins – A Complex and Layered Novel on the Elusive Nature of Political History

“”Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric,” wrote Yeats. “Out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry.” And what happens when both quarrels arise at the same time, when fighting with the world is a reflection or a transfiguration of the subterranean but constant confrontation you have with yourself? Then you write a book like the one I’m writing now, and blindly trust that the book will mean something to somebody else.”

Robert Bolano and Juan Gabriel Vasquez are couple of my favorite Latin-American authors, whose works serve as antithesis to the canonized magical realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Both Mr. Vasquez and Mr. Bolano ostensibly like to insert themselves into their narratives (Bolano shows up as Arturo Belano) and they both possesses the gift to turn a anecdote of some obscure history (pertaining to their nations) into a compelling fiction. May be the Chilean author Bolano differs from Colombian Vasquez in the way he employs his deliberately impassive prose to convey the horror and violence of Latin America’s historical reality. Vasquez’s prose also presents the human toll claimed by the country’s years of violence, but it resonates more with lyricism and poignancy.  

Juan Gabriel Vasquez’ latest novel The Shape of the Ruins (originally published in 2015 and translated to English by Anne McLean in 2018), which got shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize, focuses on pair of political assassinations in 20^th century Colombia that was enveloped in the shadows of conspiracy theories. One was the killing of reformist liberal politician Jorge Eliecer Gaitan whose death plunged Colombia’s capital Bogota into chaos, and the resulting massive riots caused death of 3,000 Colombians (referred to as ‘El Bogotazo’). The riots were followed by ‘La Violencia’, a ten year civil war. Juan Roa Sierra is the man who guns down Gaitan and in the ensuing pandemonium he is lynched by the mob, his body paraded around the streets. But soon there are talks of mysterious elegant men in grey suit, disappearing witnesses, cover-ups, and fall-guys. The other political murder was that of Rafael Uribe Uribe in 1914, a liberal statesman axed to death in broad day-light (Uribe was the inspiration behind the fictional character Aureliano Buendia in Gabriel García Márquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude.”) The perpetrators are captured, but a young lawyer named Tulio Anzola makes public accusations of a conspiracy involving prominent figures (Jesuits, Police chief, Prosecutor, etc).

The Shape of the Ruins, however, isn’t an Oliver Stone’s JFK-style counter-propaganda on the murder of Colombia’s two prominent political figures of 20^th century. It isn’t a conventional political thriller, where the author strongly propagates his version of truth. Vasquez rather deftly explores how the conspiratorial visions smooth over the jagged rifts left by conflict-ridden national history and the perils of obsession over such hearsay and speculations. Vasquez achieves this by injecting his fictionalized self as the narrator-protagonist. As the narrator’s premature twin daughters are fighting for their lives, he attends a party thrown by his friend, Dr Benavides. In the party, Vasquez meets Carlos Carballo, an eccentric middle-aged man obsessed with figuring out the alternative version of 1948 murder of Jorge Eliecer Gaitan. Their initial encounter leads to physical altercation, pushing Vasquez to categorize Carlos as a conspiracy theorist and fantasist. But later when encountering Carballo at a funeral of a writer-friend, Vasquez questions his initial assessment of Carballo. And Carballo approaches Vasquez (with plethora of materials), requesting him to open his mind and write a book that may unravel the secrets behind Gaitan’s death.

Juan Gabriel Vásquez

I like reading novels like The Shape of the Ruins because it takes some elements of historical truth to build an intricate tale around it. In the due process, I have also learned a lot about Colombian history (not just the conspiracy theories behind the political assassinations). Vasquez’ literary world has one foot set in the fact and the other is set among personal memories and private lives. The novel attains immense depth when these two facets of Vasquez’ world meet each other. In fact, the historical, political landscape and private conflicts are beautifully and captivatingly voiced so that it doesn’t get lost among the elliptical narrative. Overall, The Shape of the Ruins is a magisterial novel that deals with pliancy of historical narratives and human obsession for scrutinizing the shadows of the past.

 

The Fisherman – An Emotionally Resonant Horror Fiction

“Maybe whoever, or whatever, is running the show isn’t so nice. Maybe he’s evil, or mad, or bored, disinterested. Maybe we’ve got everything completely wrong, everything, and if we could look through the mask, what we’d see would destroy us.”

John Langan’s The Fisherman (2016) was adorned with couple of adjectives – ‘Lovecraftian’ & ‘Literary Horror’ – that pushed me to go through it. Moreover, Mr. Langan was no stranger to horror writing, his spectacular talent is evident in his collection of weird horror tales titled, ‘The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies’ (haven’t yet read his first novel ‘House of Windows’.) Still, the aforementioned adjectives combined with other superlative ones like ‘transcendent’ or ‘cosmic horror’ has become such a cliché nowadays that I also had some skepticism in approaching it. But the pathos and irony Langan employs to draw his bereaved characters easily pulled me in.

The Fisherman is set in the late 1990s, in the mountains of Catskills (in southeastern New York State) that’s punctuated with creeks often frequented by fisherman. The tale unfurls from the perspective of Abe (“Don’t call me Abraham; call me Abe. Though it’s what my ma named me, I’ve never liked Abraham”, our narrator says in the novel’s opening lines), a widower from small-town who is working for IBM. Married late in life to Marie, whom he lost her to cancer with which she was diagnosed shortly after their return from honeymoon, Abe now finds comfort only in fishing, a hobby he picked out of nowhere. Fishing has helped him to keep his job and ascend from the void of alcoholism. The six-feet-seven Dan is Abe’s co-worker, a young man with a wife and twin kids. What eventually brings these men together is not their work, but their grief. Dan loses his family to an accident and few months after Dan’s profound loss, Abe extends to him an invitation to go fishing together. Dan has had a remote interest due to the fishing trips with his father.  

Fishing with Abe, however, brings Dan a sort of peace or at least a distraction. Every weekend, the two men search for known as well as uncharted streams around Catskills areas to fish. One day, Dan proposes that they go to ‘Dutchman’s Creek’. A friendly cook named Howard of Herman’s Diner (surely a nod to H.P. Lovecraft and Melville) hearing about Abe & Dan’s plans warns them against going to the stream. He then tells a pretty long tale about strange events in a village in the beginning of 20^th century that was persecuted by a dark, mysterious force known as ‘Der Fisher’ aka ‘The Fisherman’. The village was later destroyed (the people displaced) to create a reservoir which is now called as the ‘Dutchman’s Creek’. The novel’s strongest second part chronicles the experiences of a Dutch immigrant named Rainer Schimdt, a former academic for some inscrutable reason works as a stone mason during the construction of reservoir. Part III follows Abe & Dan’s unsettling trip to the creek, where they encounter come across unreal and unfathomable things that promises to provide an easy solution to their loss.

John Langan

John Langan utilizes the conceit of nested stories very well, one restrained and realistic while the other is steeped in occult. It is interesting to note how the personal narratives of Abe & Dan intersect with a more expansive cultural and historical narrative. As for the ‘cosmic horror’ elements are concerned, Langan mostly gets it right as he doesn’t fully give into the temptation of explaining in detail the monsters’ physicality or its realm’s reality. Langan’s horrific imagery, conjured by his lively prose, does allow space for readers’ imagination to come up with their own image of the ‘unspeakable horror’. I also found it interesting how the Dutchman tale is not told when Howard recollects it. The story unfolds only when Abe sits and writes down what he heard at the diner. This leads to Abe later questioning if Howard has actually said all the things he has written. Hence a strange resonance forms between the two stories, which only deepens the work altogether.

While Lovecraft’s influence is plainly evident, Langan also frequently alludes to Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and Bible stories. The novel’s ruminative pace in the last part and the toying with language definitely lacks the thrills of the Rainer Schmidt story. Nevertheless, the author maintains the sense of emotional discomfort up until the final passages. Whether Langan is narrating the tale through Abe or Rainer or Jacob, he deeply deals with the issues of loss and grief so as to foreground the human experiences more than the preternatural incidents. Overall, The Fisherman is a grimly fascinating horror/adventure where insurmountable griefs cause as much damage as the luring dark forces. 

Hex – A Chilling Horror Novel with a Well-Thought-Out Premise

“Every last grain of idealism would be sacrificed on the altar of safety.”

Dutch novelist Thomas Olde Heuvelt’s Hex was written and published in the author’s native language in 2013. In 2015, he won the Hugo Award for his novelette ‘The Day the World Turned Upside Down’. Subsequently, the English translation of Hex was taken over by Nancy Forest-Flier and got published in 2016 through Tor Books. Nevertheless, it wasn't a mere translation. Thomas Ode Heuvelt used the opportunity to rewrite some of the portions, and most importantly he changed the Dutch setting and transplanted it to a village in New York State. Although (those who read both versions say) there’s not much difference in terms of premise, Thomas was said to have subtly enhanced his themes in the English version (especially with the ‘revised ending’).

The chief absorbing factor of Hex is its strange setting and how the author slyly amalgamates super-natural goings with the quotidian small-town life (a lot of parallels could be drawn with the eerie premises often cooked up by Stephen King). Hex is set in the remote town of Black Spring, which once bore the name of ‘New Beeck’, back when it was occupied by puritanical Dutch trappers in the 17th century. With a population of roughly 3,000, the 21^st century Black Spring is like any small-town community that's occupied by people of different ethnicity, religion, temperament, etc.  But in one distinct way, Black Spring is not like any other small-town community: the specter of a 17^th century witch haunts the residents. Arms shackled by chains, eyes and mouth sewn shut, the emaciated Black Rock Witch aka Katherine Van Wyler randomly materializes around the town. Katherine -- mother of two children -- tried, tortured and executed for dabbling with witchcraft by the 17^th century settler colony members has kept the denizens under her spell for centuries.

Although the power of Katherine’s doom-invoking spells are curbed by her sewn eyes and mouth, Black Spring people can’t spend more than a week outside the town without experiencing intense suicidal thoughts. Over the decades, attempts to study her have only led to unnecessary loss of lives. Hence, generations of Black Spring residents has preserved the secret about the witch’s existence through a meticulously organized security apparatus, known as HEX. Run by few selected council members, HEX’s duty is to monitor Katherine’s movements 24*7. Since the witch can materialize at any place within the town, the control center also takes pains to avoid the ‘outsiders’ encountering the ghastly specter. And the people of Black Spring has quite used to the witch’s presence despite her frightful appearance (she enters houses at will and sticks around as families eat and sleep). However, Katherine is pretty much like a dormant volcano or a dangerous primitive evil who may breach this sophisticated, high-tech set-up and bring hell upon the small-town. Moreover, few angst-ridden adolescents, in an effort to change the status quo, disregard the respectful distance they must keep from the witch.

Hex heavily draws upon familiar yet potent elements of small-town horror: the atmosphere of conformity, rebellious teenagers, mass hysteria, sinister secrets, etc. The novel largely unfolds from the perspective of Grant family (reader’s entry point into the ‘bewitched’ town). The rapport shared between elder Grants – father Steve, mother Jocelyn—and younger Grants –Tyler and Matt – gradually bestows upon us the details of everyday life in a town subjected to the looming presence of a supernatural phenomenon. The early dinner-table argument between Steve and Tyler, a teenager intolerant of the quarantine imposed by HEX, deftly sets up the novel's themes of parenting, survival, guilt, generational tension, etc. What I particularly liked about Hex is the exciting world-building: from divulging the pragmatic, spontaneous methods of the town’s control center in ‘normalizing’ the witch situation to detailing the dark origin tale of Katherine van Wyler. Thomas has also done well in not turning the witch into a typical phantasmal antagonist. Katherine’s villainy is mostly ambiguous as the flawed populace’s fear and paranoia (that is to say the very human nature) itself activates a set of chaotic events.

I was a bit disappointed with the middle part of the novel. After careful characterization and frightening developments, these portions seemed to ramble. Nevertheless, from the ‘flogging’ scenario, the story flow once again turns genuinely eerie. The bleak climactic events are very well conjured, reinforcing the author’s idea of how sometimes the human nature is as just much threatening and virulent as the malevolent super-natural phenomenon. Overall, Hex is one of the utterly captivating horror novels I have read in recent times (Warner Bros. has purchased the rights for the novel and are apparently in the process of creating a TV series.)