Bound: South of Purgatory
Three Evil Ways to While Away an Evening
Blame Donald Ray Pollock’s The Devil All the Time. Because the very day I filed my review of his depth-charged novel, I received not one but three books in the mail of similar descent. I’m speaking of Demon Fish (Pantheon $26.95), The Fang Family (Ecco $23.99) and The Encyclopedia of Hell (Feral House $19.95). Had the evil trio not been offset by Grant Morrison’s Supergods, I’d likely be sporting horns and a tail right about now.
I’m joking, of course. While a few of the characters in Donald Ray’s Devil are indeed truly evil, I’ve never considered sharks to be any such thing. That leaves Demon Fish to be devilish in title only. As for the family Fang, well, the jury’s still out. But it’s easy to understand why their name had me jumping to an obvious conclusion. We’re programmed to see patterns (ask McLuhan). In Demon and Fang I saw an inferno.
Which is probably just where Martin Olson was sitting when tasked with translating The Encyclopedia of Hell. How he learned to speak demonic is anybody’s guess. What’s more puzzling is where Olson got the nerve to actually translate the text in the first place. After all, it is An Invasion Manual for Demons Concerning the Planet Earth and the Human Race Which Infests It. Hardly the kinda thing one wants to bring home to baby.
Maybe Olson’s a demon himself. Why else express the “magnanimity of Lord Satan’s evil”? And if the Dark Lord’s “Pure Hatred of Idiot Mankind” is truly pure, how the hell does Olson get away with working it over for us sundry humans?
The answer eludes me. But since this tome is compiled by (and designed for) an “Invasion Commission composed of Hell’s Most Notable Experts” (aka “Perpetually Warring Executives of Evil Who Forever Despise Each Other”), I’m thinkin’ that no answer is really required. If you wanna learn how the evil see us, this Encyclopedia is all you’ll need.
In Juliet Eilperin’s Demon Fish, however, it’s us humans who come off the most evil, rather than the sharks who share the Devil’s name. Eilperin, a national environmental reporter for The Washington Post, traces humankind’s history with the prehistoric critters and comes off proving that, other than the occasional attack or two, these beasts are really on the side of the angels.
Okay, so I exaggerate — some. Sharks are actually more submerged deity than winged angel, at least so far as the few remaining primitive peoples are concerned. Unfortunately, the West’s obsession with scaring the be-Jesus out of itself (cite Jaws) and the East’s taste for shark fin soup have rendered our sacred ex-friends something best dealt with dead. A certain Miamian named Mark the Shark hasn’t helped much either. But as all reasonable folks know, sharks are neither something to be feared nor feasted upon (let alone hunted for sport); they’re an intricate part of our oceans, and without them the balance will be no more.
As Kevin Wilson so ably describes, imbalance will never be a problem for The Family Fang. Why? Because they were never balanced in the first place.The saga of a happening-mad couple and their delightfully mad son and daughter, Wilson tilts reality until the grown kids can go home again, despite — or because of — one of literature’s most infamous conceits. It’s when Annie and Buster return to the fold though that things get really unreal. Or do they? After decades of chicanery, the Fangs have lost some credibility. Fortunately for us, they’ve lost none of their imagination.
Not to be confused with the same-named San Francisco family that shares their name (not that I know of anyway), though it’s likely more than a few of the Fang’s cousins can be found on that city’s free-wheeling streets, Wilson concocts a chronicle of our age and time which seems at once ageless and timeless. Then again, people have always been performers of one sort or another.
Taken in tandem, Demon, Fang and Hell might not make you Dante, but they’ll surely leave you suspended just south of purgatory. For some it will be splendidly animated, for others it will be essentially alarming, for most it will be a whole lotta both. That’s when things get really deliciously diabolical.
