Unspeakable Horror!

By writing The Literary Six, Vince Liaguno has accomplished a rare and unusual feat: the creation of an excellent, scary slasher movie in the form of a novel.  When I first heard of Vince’s project, I wasn’t sure what a “slasher” book would look like.  I expected a novel with an excess of gratuitous violence.  What I didn’t expect was a novel that captures the essence of an entire body of storytelling.  Carol Clover, in Men, Women & Chainsaws, describes the patterns of slasher-movie storytelling as a kind of cinematic folklore similar to other kinds of folklore like urban legends and fairy tales.  Vince understands this “folklore” intimately and he draws upon this knowledge to create a unique hybrid that captures the experience of watching a slasher movie between the pages of a book.

The cinematic creation of the slasher-figure/monster as a relentless killing machine has a lot to do with the pop-culture phenomenon of the slasher genre, spawning all of the sequels and the iconic status of slashers like Jason and Michael Myers.  Vince does a wonderful job of capturing the “essence” of the cinematic slasher in the pages of his novel.  Vince’s slasher is a horrifying slasher indeed – an impressive literary creation that becomes more complex (I’ll go into this later in the entry) as the story goes along.  Vince’s slasher goes a step further with segments of narration that gives the reader a glimpse into the slasher’s twisted psychology (born in part from Christian fundamentalism).

I recently learned about the power of a claustrophobic setting by watching The Descent, which takes place in underground caves.  Vince does a wonderful job creating a different claustrophobic experience in his novel by setting the action on an island during a terrible snowstorm.  I think that sense of claustrophobia helps create the foundation for the suspension of disbelief that is necessary to create terror, horror, and the momentum that is necessary for a page-turner.

Wes Craven’s Scream attracted a lot of attention because of its intertextuality: a slasher movie that was aware of itself as participating in a larger body of slasher movies.  Vince’s novel contains a similar intertextuality, but Vince’s story does not contain the postmodern irony of the Craven films.  In other words, this novel is an homage to the slasher genre while simultaneously offering a genuine slasher movie experience.  

I have to warn you, this review/analysis contains spoilers!  At first, I wrestled with the idea of writing this because I didn’t want my blog to contains spoilers about the novel.  There are many surprises in the Literary Six that I don’t want to spoil.  However, I also realize that the only way I can effectively analyze the book is to bring in all of the integral aspects of the story.  So, please read the book before you finish reading my analysis.  

In many ways, The Literary Six is an updated version of a slasher movie.  It is one novelist’s response to the genre, and as much as it is an homage to the slasher, Vince also re-creates (and re-invigorates) many aspects of the genre.  For one thing, the sex-crazed teeny-boppers normally featured in a slasher movie are replaced by 40-something adults with lots of problems and life experiences.  In addition to Vince’s slasher, which is just as scary on the page as any other slasher on the screen, Vince uses other kinds of horror iconography to create a textured and layered homage to the genre.  A pivotal scene in the novel revolves around the hot tub, which is a wonderful setting for a slasher story (also a frequent setting for urban legends).  As soon as Sean enters the hot tub, the reader knows it’s going to be a blood bath (pun intended), and I think this also helps with the suspense.  

Most importantly, however (to me at least), is the way the story pivots around issues of homosexuality.  I would argue that The Literary Six is primarily a work of queer horror, even if at first glance the homosexuality might appear to be peripheral.  This is very significant because, as most of you know, homosexuality most often appears in slasher movies in the form of a minor character that gets murdered at the first opportunity (with the exception of the second Freddy movie, which is queer from start to finish).  

Last warning: here come the spoilers!  Read the book first – besides, my analysis probably won’t make sense until you read the book (how’s that for a little suggestive selling – click on the cover icon!).  

I believe that the slasher/monster in the story is born from the violent repression of the closet.  When we first encounter Jeremiah Payne, he is primarily a pawn for the revenge of the Literary Six.  Clearly, this is a malicious prank, to say the least.  Perry, a fully-out and experienced young gay man, seduces the innocent and repressed Jeremiah.  Initially, it might seem that this act of gay seduction is the impetus that leads Jeremiah down his road to madness (in other words, the act of gay sex precipitates the horror).  On the contrary, it is the sadistic, homophobic violence of his father that leads to Jeremiah’s madness.  The Literary Six take photos of Jeremiah and Perry having sex, and these photos are delivered to the boy’s father as an act of revenge – this is clearly a horrible trick that exploits the father’s homophobia for the purposes of revenge.  When the father sees the images of his son with another man, he beats Jeremiah with a baseball bat, and the boy ends up in a coma and extremely disfigured.  In a sense, Jeremiah inherits his father’s insanely violent homophobia – indeed, he has it beaten into him (sorry, no more puns).  Jeremiah’s internalized homophobia fuels his killing rampage.  Interesting that his first token is Perry’s underwear.  From the killer’s perspective, his rage seems to be primarily focused on Perry, which can be interpreted as perverse and twisted magnification of his desire for Perry.  

It is the pairing of homosexuality and homophobia (and the closet) that forms a destructive force in the novel.  If the damage caused by violent homophobia creates the slasher, it is also Sean’s internalized homophobia and closet-issues that create a majority of the mayhem with the love triangle between Perry, Sean, and Maggie.  Interestingly, there is also a straight love triangle (or would that be a love quadrangle) in the novel, but it is the triangle between Perry, Sean, and Maggie that the killer is the most intimately involved in.  

Like I mentioned before, the hot tub scene is a pivotal moment in the novel.  Like the sex act between Perry and Jeremiah when they were basically on stage for the camera, Perry and Sean’s vivid sexual encounter in the hot tub is also “on stage” – first for Maggie and then for the slasher (I got the sense the slasher was watching all along).  Sean’s callousness toward Maggie emerges in the scene after Sean and Perry are discovered by Maggie, and I think this demonstrates how the closet destroys people.  Basically, the closet erodes people’s character.  The slasher basically joins the love triangle (or quadrangle) when he massages Sean’s shoulders, and Sean at first believes the fingers belong to Perry (until he tastes them – yuck!).  

I believe the center of the novel is the relationship between Perry and Jeremiah.  After all, they are entwined together after the big denouement.  From this perspective, Jeremiah is the double of Perry.  Perry is out and bold and self-actualized as a gay man, while Jeremiah is beaten into a nightmare world of the closet, the inverse of Perry.  Perry is involved with Sean throughout the years, and Sean is also struggling with a version of the closet, although quite different than Jeremiah’s closet.  

It is interesting that Perry survives the ordeal, but he is crippled (also castrated in a metaphoric sense), and this conclusion reminds me of the end of Jane Eyre when Rochester is left blind and crippled as a punishment for his sins (he is a bigamist because he has his first wife locked up in the attic), and it is clear throughout the novel that Jeremiah is also serving up judgment and punishment.  Just like Rochester’s mad wife who escapes from the attic and destroys the mansion, Jeremiah also breaks free from the shadow world of repression to unleash mayhem.  Jeremiah is specifically associated with the “beneath” throughout the first part of the novel – underneath the ship and then in the depth of the wine cellar.  Clearly, Jeremiah has been repressed into the depth, emerging super-charged with fury and vengeance.  

I believe that the horror of The Literary Six is born from the shadow world of repression and the closet – specifically the violent currents of homophobia and self-hatred.  

Just like the ending of Dracula when Mina and Jonathan’s child collectively represents the legacy of all of the men who destroyed Dracula, Taylor’s child (in the womb during the struggle with the slasher) is born as a representation of the redemption of the Literary Six, perhaps representing the combined legacy of all who perished.  

What do you think?