Down From

Ursula Pflug Down From (2018)
Of all the writers assembled within Snuggly Books' Drowning in Beauty anthology, Ursula Pflug seemed like someone whose work I should seek out, and the novella length Down From does not disappoint. It's probably a story about depression, schizophrenic episodes, mania and delusion, but is told with the only solid ground being the ever-shifting universe of Sandrine and then Vienna, who seems to be her friend but may also be herself - it's hard to be certain in this world, or rather these worlds, because each time Sandrine comes down from the mountain, everything has changed to the point of her sometimes having to guess what her husband is called this time. So, to render a potentially lazy comparison, think the folksy cosmos of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe filtered through the later, more paranoid writings of Philip K. Dick, at least in so much as that it's left to the reader to decide what's really happening here, then whether what's really happening is what matters.

Otherwise, it's a story of loss, loneliness, and means of coping with the same found in places beyond everyday reality. It's a world viewed from within the existence of a crazy homeless lady who lives in the woods in a house she's made from whatever trash she's been able to find, but from the inside looking out at the rest of us, and seeing things we may not expect to see. Down From is probably not quite like anything I've read before, and actually exceeds the promise of Fires Halfway.

Drowning in Beauty: the Neo-Decadent Anthology

Justin Isis & Daniel Corrick (editors)

Drowning in Beauty: the Neo-Decadent Anthology (2018)
I'm not particularly well informed when it comes to the history of literature and the movements which have come and gone, excepting in relation to science-fiction or where writing has occasionally intersected with painting. I tentatively associate the Decadents with Symbolist art of the late nineteenth century, implying ornate, even florid prose following the logic of the mythic more than the crudely realistic, which at least squares with Huysmans' Against Nature, and possibly David Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus, plus a load of others which I've never read. Happily, these potential gaps in my knowledge don't seem to matter too much because the Neo-Decadents aren't in the revival business, at least not in the sense of certain sniggering twats with cogs and watch-springs glued to their top hats; and these Neo-Decadents are additionally defined by what they're against, much of which has me punching the air because up until now, I thought it was mostly just me. Crucially, for the sake of this review, amongst that which they reject we have writing which aspires to be something in another medium, writer's workshops, writing advice with all of its attendant careerist bullshit about character development, story arcs - basically all of the rote tedium which gets in the way of the actual writing, and which is usually only necessary if you can't actually fucking write and therefore have no business attempting to do so. Not everyone has a book in them, and maybe we should leave it to those who have.

The collection kicks off with an informative introduction and a couple of manifestos setting out the stall, much of which brought me great joy for reasons already stated, and which promises great things to come in the pages which follow; and for what may be the first time in publishing history - if you'll excuse the apparent hyperbole - great things do indeed come in the pages which follow. Drowning in Beauty seems to be loosely themed around varying notions of beauty, but without feeling as though anyone has been at work with a shoe horn, and even where the beauty is weird and upsetting from certain angles, its pleasure aesthetic is nevertheless communicated without recourse to any of the usual clichés - ironic contrast, or the sort of button pushing I'm sure you'll learn all about at the writers' workshop. These twelve authors work with different levels of realism, telling quite different kinds of story but with the same love of rich, expressive language where a single sentence may undertake more than one crudely descriptive task. It's ornate but never purely for the sake of design and even where that which is described may remain mysterious, the voices are clear, with nothing one could call impenetrable.

That said, I personally didn't quite connect with Avalon Brantley's Great Seizers' Ghost - more down to setting than the way it was told - but that was the only one. Initial skimming gave me cause to raise an eyebrow and roll an eye at all the transgressive weirdy music references in James Champagne's XYschaton, but upon reading the story I found it did the exact opposite of what I'd anticipated, justified what would have seemed clichéd under other circumstances, and was ultimately unlike anything I've read before - somehow deeply appalling and yet unmistakably descriptive of a form of beauty. Other highlights include Justin Isis' The Quest for Nail Art, Colby Smith's Somni Draconis, Brendan Connell's Molten Rage and Ursula Pflug's Fires Halfway, and I'll stop there rather than simply typing out the contents page because it's all good - great even, frequently startling and strange without having to pull silly faces, all of which makes Drowning in Beauty an absolute joy to have read, and a breath of fresh air the size of continental Europe after Conan fucking Doyle's droning train timetables. If you like to read, meaning actual writing, meaning anything you might read for reasons other than that it reminds you of something else and will probably do what you expect it to do, then you need the Neo-Decadents in your life.