The Hike – A Suburban Dad’s Psychedelic and Darkly Humorous Journey

“There comes a point in life when you’ve seen so much that hardly anything surprises you or bothers you, and that’s a shitty moment. Wisdom is so terribly overrated.”

Drew Margary’s genre-bending novel The Hike (published August 2016) is the kind of fun read I’d like to dabble with after going through weeks of heavy and deep literary fiction. This crazily entertaining novel opens with a man named Ben, a regular family guy (a wife and three kids), going on a hike to shake off the tedium of his hotel atmosphere, while taking up a business trip near the picturesque Pennsylvania countryside. What was supposed to be a leisure walk soon turns into a nightmare as Ben is caught in a loopy, unwinding path. Reluctantly taking up the advice to never veer off the well-marked ‘Path’, the bewildered Ben’s surreal journey brings him face-to-face with homicidal maniacs wearing dog-faces, talking crab, a giantess snacking on human flesh, and other odd nightmarish creatures. Styled like a fantasy role-play or video games, the path leads Ben to terrifying mini-adventures, while the eventual quest is to meet ‘The Producer’. Scattered throughout Ben’s fever dream of a mission are the brief trips down the memory lane, parceling out information about this middle-aged dad’s past.

The strength of The Hike is that it couldn’t pigeon-holed into a particular genre. Hence the utterly unpredictable and vividly imaginative craziness Drew conjures keeps us on our toes. It’s a part horror, I mean who couldn’t feel for a dad grappling with the prospect of never seeing his lovely family again.  It’s a dark campfire folktale, filled with compendium of eerie, magical creatures. It’s a love letter to fans of old video-games. Then there’s a snarky, sentient crab and a domineering yet endearing giantess named Fermona bestowing healthy dose of humor to the proceedings. Amidst all this The Hike also deals with thoughtful themes and meaningful life lessons, largely questioning humans’ control over shaping up his/her own destiny. Eventually, I liked the novel’s ‘what-the-heck?’ kind of twists.

Drew Margary, a popular columnist for Deadspin and correspondent for publications such as GQ (I went through some of his hilarious and engaging columns after reading the novel), in interviews has remarked that this bizarre tale has some autobiographical elements. Ben’s insights about marriage and parenting are pretty much taken from Drew’s life experience (like Ben he is married with three kids). The touch of loneliness Ben wants to escape during the business travel is also something drawn from Margary’s personal feelings. The author has cleverly and imaginatively amplified the nightmares he might have had during those lonely business trips (a mix of grotesque body horror and traditional fairy-tale creatures). Of course, it’s not an easy task. Despite unfolding the tale in series of weird vignettes, Margary deftly balances between delivering the emotional punch and sumptuously detailing the madcap adventures.

From Lewis Caroll, Tolkien, Dante to C.S. Lewis and Twilight Zone, the sources of inspiration are obvious (furthermore Margary cites Ruth Manning-Sanders’ short fictions/compilation of worlds with make-believe beasts as a chief influence). Yet the author’s energetic style of writing, punctuated with crunchy descriptions and undercurrents of emotional honesty gives off a distinct sheen. There are also some problems with the episodic nature of writing since at some point the surreality beings to dominate the emotionality. We know that, however harrowing and insane the situation is, Ben would somehow emerge unscathed and move on to the next one. Particularly towards the later-half (the episodes chronicling the face-off with Voris and the stretch accounting crab’s life), I began to wonder where it’s all gonna lead. It’s a rather niggling issue, which I felt was overturned by the intriguing ending. The metaphor of ‘Path’ is very obvious from the start, yet the timeless themes discussed here (family life, parental fears, ageing, etc) takes the novel beyond the genre trappings of fantasy/horror. Overall, The Hike takes us on a fascinating gonzo adventure that’s nerve-wracking as well as heart-felt.

 

The Changeling – A Mesmerizing Fairy Tale on the Horrors of Parenthood and Internet

“There are no secrets anymore. Vampires can’t come into your house unless you invite them. Posting online is like leaving your front door open and telling any creature of the night it can enter.”

Insanity, madness, and horror have always thrived beneath the surface of our normalized societies. But it’s the 21^st century life that’s increasingly making us aware of the hallucinatory or illusory facade concealing the real horror show around us. From childhood, adulthood, marriage, parenting, and old age, we are achingly acknowledging the existential pain, which was somehow hidden by our deep self-delusional notions. While this vividly reveals the entire horrific stuff going inside us and around us, it also makes life infinitely complex and unbelievably rich. We all might be living a tedious routine life, just existing on a purely mechanical level, yet the little revelatory moments gathers around and eventually makes us see not simply the horrific or repulsive things, but also the sense of wonder that drives life. There might be horror and darkness all around us, but I think we must stay optimistic and keep on shining the light of life upon it. Good literature and cinema can really put us on a fast-track to become aware of how things truly are: from addressing the madness of the world to its opulent beauty. But more than ultra-realistic narratives, it is the realm of speculative genre fiction I feel gets to the bottom of this contemporary reality. Sometimes myths and supernatural forces can adequately address the reality of our globalized societies. It’s what Victor Lavalle’s recent novel The Changeling (published June 2017) best does. It’s a dark fairy tale, rooted in ages-old folklore and myth, which actually takes a subtly profound look at racism, fatherhood, paternal anxieties, marriage, and most importantly the dark crevices of internet universe. The book’s veneer of magic plunges us into chaos as well as the grace of life.

Apollo Kagwa, the protagonist of The Changeling, would remind us of Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby and Stephen King’s The Shining; the literary characters whose desperation to be good parent literally set them in a path towards insanity. The novel starts in 1968 New York (“This fairy tale begins in 1968 during a garbage strike” – the novel’s opening line), detailing the courtship between Parole officer Brian West and receptionist Lillian Kagwa, a Ugandan immigrant. They eventually get married in 1976 and Apollo, named after the Sun of God, is born in 1977. But when Apollo was 4 years old, the father West disappears from his life. Apollo suffers from nightmares after his father’s disappearance. One day, a box adorned with the word ‘Improbabilia’ is delivered to the boy. Inside the box, Apollo finds mementos of his parents’ time spent together and a single children’s book, Maurice Sendak’s “Outside Over There”. The box is obviously left by his father. Later the name on the box becomes the name of Apollo’s used-book business.        

In his 30s, Apollo Kagwa falls in love with and marries Emma Valentine, a librarian from Virginia. He seals his bond with her by cutting a red string bracelet she wears around her wrist which she hopes will realize her three wishes. Before cutting the string, Apollo says: “With me, all three of your wishes will come true.” Their yearning to be a parent comes true with the birth of baby Brian West. Apollo fancies himself to be the cool ‘new dad’ who does the dishes, laundry, and takes tons of pictures of his child and posts online for instant likes. While, Apollo wears fatherhood with enthusiasm, Emma seems overly tired and they become estranged from each other. She claims to receive disturbing texts and photos about the boy, but claims it is immediately vanishes before she shows to any one. However, Emma’s two wishes – having a good husband and strong child – were realized. Six months after the birth of baby Brian and before Apollo learns what Emma’s third wish is, the unbelievably horrific thing happens. Apollo’s life would never be the same. The brutal violent act takes Apollo on a journey into the undiscovered and magical corners of New York City.

Author Victor LaValle

 

The Changeling adroitly mixes folklore with the travails of modern existence. Goblins, Rapunzel, the myth of Askeladden play as much an important tale as do the Facebook, mobile apps, etc. LaValle depicts both the mythical monsters as well as the identity-masking trolls inhabiting the realm of social media (I don’t remember reading a fairy tale where the threat of police violence looks imminent). The scenarios often literally unfold in subterranean spaces – subway, basement, caves, tunnels, etc – to constantly keep us on the edge. At its best, LaValle’s prose is as simple, raw and powerful as the works of Haruki Murakami and Neil Gaiman. The early portions of the novel have one of the honest and realistic accounts of the new-age parenthood. LaValle says in an interview: “The people who raised us are often just human beings trying their best. That’s not a young person’s understanding, necessarily. It’s not something I understood when I was young, I was just angry at my father. It wasn’t until I was in my 40s and really thought things through, and had a kid by that point, I could see that all these things I dismissed as complete failures of character, I could see small versions of them in myself, whether it was impatience or the desire to escape.” There’s due reference to Atticus Finch of Lee Harper’s To Kill a Mocking Bird to indicate how boasting the image of benevolent parent is futile and illusory, since parents too are vulnerable individuals like us; they can try but can’t always protect their children from cruelty of the world. In fact, Apollo’s magical journey is about understanding his frailties and culpable behavior as a parent.

“A bad fairy tale has some simple goddamn moral. A good fairy tale tells the truth”, says a character in the novel. LaValle weaves an improbable tale to get to the truth about our contemporary society. Without delving into didactic mode, he likens the social media to the myth of vampires and witches, and emphatically conveys the ultimate emptiness of these technologies. Apollo’s baby photo-sharing obsession is duly perceived as a mixture of selfishness and vanity, not as certified sign of good-parenting. The Changeling ultimately might be a fairy tale that pushes towards ‘happily ever after’ ending, but these profoundly developed characters provide us immense space to understand the prejudices and false assumptions that broods over our society. It asks us to question the old wisdom and conformist standards relentlessly thrown upon us. Riddled with irony, fury, deep compassion, and psychological insights, LaValle’s prose breaks the myths about our post-privacy, post-truth world. Altogether, The Changeling is a poignant novel that flawlessly blends the gritty reality and magical charms. 

Victor LaValle on Changelings, Literary Horror, and Racist Book Reviewers