#calamity-bean
Finished The Only Good Indians (Stephen Graham Jones); brutal, but an intriguing and memorable read! Reading it back to back with Mexican Gothic made for an interesting experience, too, in terms of sort of absentmindedly comparing the themes of the cyclical violence of colonialism and the way each book communicates horror. Not feeling articulate enough to properly explain this, but: Mexican Gothic is lush in its depictions and in describing the intense emotional reactions of the protagonist to the strange things she encountered. In this way, mundane things that are not inherently horrifying — mushrooms, houses, wallpaper — are made to seem disturbing. The Only Good Indians, in contrast, has a more minimal writing style, and even gore and violence — horrifying things — are often presented in a very matter-of-fact and emotionally distanced sort of way, as though breaking a person’s jaw open to pull their teeth out were something absolutely mundane.
Not sure I’m making sense here, but I think what I’m trying to posit is: horror in general can often be derived from dissonance, from wrongness, a mismatch between how a thing should be and how it is. Both of these writing styles, while different, are effective in disturbing the reader partly because of the dissonance between what is being described and how it is or is not reflected in the emotion of the characters and narration.
Not sure if other readers of these books would agree or if it would hold up on closer analysis, so forgive me for rambling out half-baked thoughts. Next book up is… Hm. Either Entangled Life or Piranesi, depending on whether I’m feeling fic or nonfic, I guess. We’ll see!
Sandor Clegane as I envision him in ASoIaF — which is to say, probably way prettier than he has any right to be.
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