“For him, god was another gun to aim.” – Teo Shannon, “Pecha Kucha: After Packing My Father’s Room”
We are barreling toward the end of Behind With Knife! Part four wraps today, the final section begins Monday! We did chapter 19 yesterday, and chapter 20 today. Really hope you’ve been enjoying it! If you have not read it, hey, no worries. Life is busy. The novel(la) is not going away. Simply keep coming back to the Lazy & Entitled Haunted Museum website. One of these days, the slasher will call to you.
What I’ve Been Reading This Week:
Two books that paired incredibly well together! I was pleasantly surprised. One is a short story collection that is honestly scarier than I thought short stories were allowed to be. Another is a debut collection of poems from a cherished friend, someone who is so incredibly smart about poetry that I am sometimes intimidated to talk to him (hey, watch for Tuesday’s The Line Break). Needless to say, it was an incredible reading week, and let’s get to it. Hey, real quick, though? Neither book this week is for the faint of heart. CWs for just about everything you can think of.
North American Lake Monsters by Nathan Ballingrud: After precisely one story, I thought, “okay, it’s latter-day Raymond Carver through a Lovecraftian lens,” which is exactly what the blurb on the cover says. These are horrific stories that, if I had to whittle it down to an easy formula, involves this: someone discovers a monster, then discovers something monstrous about themselves. This collection has a skinwalker, a beached lake monster, a vampire, walking dead, and other scary monsters; it also has child abuse and abandonment, men learning that they are cowards in heartbreaking ways, and women who recruit for neo-Nazis. In fact, one story could be described as “Car Crash While Hitchhiking” meets American History X with a dash of The Substance and Ghislaine Maxwell type beat thrown in. No, you still don’t have any clue what happens in that story.
It’s not really a secret that, of the five potential types of book for me to read (novel, poetry collection, story collection, anthology, or non-fiction), short story collections rank near the bottom of what I want to be reading. Every once in a while, though, a story collection will absolutely shatter what I think can be done with the genre, and it makes me love the form again. 99 Stories of God by Joy Williams, Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson, Aimee Bender and Chloe N. Clark’s work, George Saunders’ first two and Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah—these are books that absolutely shape how I write, books that I return to for inspiration. North American Lake Monsters is already near the top of that list, after one reading. Maybe I’m relatively new to cosmic horror, but I genuinely didn’t realize you could write stories like this.
One quick story: a year or two ago, we were visiting Massachusetts. My mom’s family is from Northampton—not enough that I, like, spent Thanksgivings there or whatever, but enough that it’s nice to go sometimes and listen to my mom’s stories. Since I’ve been there last, I’ve learned about Kelly Link and the bookstore she runs with her husband, Gavin. I’ve only ever read one Kelly Link book, which is an absolute travesty because I loved it and her whole vibe and I should read more. Anyway, I wanted to make a pilgrimage to Book Moon. Plus, my parents love bookstores. Book Moon was great! My kid got a pretty scientific book called The Big Book Of Butts. I saw a copy of North American Lake Monsters on display, and wanted it based on the title. But I looked around instead of grabbing it right away, and then I lost where it was. When I checked out, I asked the very nice worker if they happened to know where it was (sometimes bookstores have a list of where display books are, the one I worked at did). They did not know, but! Kelly, who had been very cool and very kind when I was like “ImabigfanofyourworkandawritertooandcamehereallthewayfromChicagototellyouthatyou’recoolandspendlike$50atyourstore,” chimes in from the back: “oh, I know where a copy is in the basement!” Before I could protest, she disappeared, reappeared, and handed me the book. Maybe that’s generic bookstore owner and small press publisher behavior. I had money to spend. Still, I was moved. Let it be known that Kelly Link is One Of The Good Ones.
a chronology of blood by Teo Shannon: The first thing you might notice about Teo Shannon’s stunning debut is its violent cover. It’s a closeup of Caravaggio’s The Sacrifice of Isaac, or maybe better described as a shirtless boy having his face mashed into the ground by someone wielding a knife. The image will come to life in these poems, rest assured. These poems deal with childhood sexual abuse, domestic violence, disowning family members, abusive relationships between gay men, and guess what? It doesn’t end on a happy or hopeful note. It ends with some pretty earned anger on the author’s part. Like in the Ballingrud, you don’t come away feeling rosy about people.
Formally, the writing is relatively straightforward. Yes, there is music image metaphor, but there is no mystery about what’s happening or how the speaker feels. There’s a certain liberation that comes with this level of clarity. Yes, I am going to immortalize these traumatic experiences in verse, the writing says, but I will not grant these harms or the villains perpetrating them the privilege of being compared to the moon. The beauty comes in the way Teo sees the world. The way a person who has endured so much can distill it into this 86-page collection. The way a person who can endure so much can be so smart, so full of insight, and yet hold on to righteous anger. This book might be difficult, but it rules.
LINKS!
Something to listen to while you browse? You know, when Prince and David Bowie died, I had this overwhelming feeling that I didn’t appreciate them enough in their lifetime. Thinking about that feeling off and on for the last nine years, I’ve decided it’s kinda impossible to properly honor every important artist in their lifetime. That said, I felt like I appreciated D’Angelo enough. I had never gotten around to listening to all of Brown Sugar, but that was genuinely because I could not stop listening to Black Messiah and Voodoo. D’Angelo was in my regular rotation, often paired with Dijon or Marvin Gaye or Noname or Erykah Badu or even Outkast (I went Voodoo–>Aquemini today and it was a great pairing). Soul is a funny genre, because I love it and listen to it a lot and still feel like I am not listening to enough different acts. Anyway, let’s listen to some D’Angelo. Let’s do “Alright” off of Brown Sugar. What an absolutely towering talent. Hey, bonus link: check out Israel Daramola at Defector with a great obit.
- ICE came back to the north side: Federal agents detain a laborer working on gated apartment building in West Ridge by Corli Jay in The Triibe, but of course, the south and west sides still have it worse: ‘Chiraq Team 2’: Oak Park attorney catches glimpse of federal agents’ group chat during arrest by Dave Byrnes in The Triibe. As I’m typing this on Thursday, Shawn Mulchay from Chicago Reader is on Bluesky reporting that Little Village (“The Mexican Capital of the Midwest”) is getting teargassed, and ICE is pulling rifles on people. Hey, don’t forget to support Unraveled, they’ve been doing great work. Their stuff about ICE is mostly on Bluesky, but it’s necessary on-the-ground stuff. Also good to support ICIRR, if you’ve got money to throw around.
- Hey, No Kings was last Saturday! Shoutout to everyone who went. I did a two-hour ICE patrol in Rogers Park, because big crowds are something Casa de Corlew has decided to stay away from. The Triibe went to No Kings (Morgan Elise Johnson, Monroe Anderson and Wilder Rush reporting), as did South Side Weekly (Jim Daley), and Block Club (linking to Colin Boyle’s photos). If you were at No Kings in Chicago, maybe consider going to an ICE watch training? It’d be great if you wore a whistle, but you can also get in touch with neighborhood groups who are doing things like buying groceries for people afraid to leave their homes or canvassing business to put up NO ICE ALLOWED signs.
- Let’s make sure their fates are bankruptcy: Chicago-Area Companies Raked In Millions From Feds As Operation Midway Blitz Intensified by Manny Romas in Block Club. Micco Caporale reported on this in Chicago Reader a few weeks ago, too. Let’s make sure they, bare minimum, never sleep well again: Hackers Are Doxing Ice by Joseph Cox in 404. Let’s make sure they are defunded and abolished: Cook County Sheriff ‘Data Loophole’ Lets ICE Access Immigrant Info by Alma Campos in South Side Weekly
- Look For The Helpers: How Chicagoans Are Supporting Their Neighbors Amid ICE Raids by in Marium Asif, Jerrel Floyd, Sophia Kalakailo, and Jorge Iván Soto in Block Club, but these are City Bureau reporters. Weeks After Being Detained By ICE, Chicago Father Elects To Leave Country Voluntarily, by Jamie Nesbitt Golden in Block Club
- Where Do People Go After ICE Arrests Them? by Alma Campos in South Side Weekly, a Practical Guide for Families Facing ICE by Alma Campos in South Side Weekly, and The Aftermath of ICE by Jim Daley in South Side Weekly
Hey, it sucks in Chicago right now! Feels like it’s been more than a decade of the news being like “Chicago’s a warzone” and well-meaning people calling me to ask if I was okay, and it’s always been bullshit, until this past month. Anyway. What’re you still doing here? Go read Behind With Knife! Also, check out this incredible cool variant cover that Adrian Sobol designed for us! Who needs UK publishers when you have homies, right?
If you work in the service industry, may you clean up in tips this weekend. May you, like the characters in Nathan Ballingrud’s stories, discover something about yourself this weekend. Unlike Nathan Ballingrud’s characters, may it be that you possess true courage when it comes to fighting the very incomprehensible and very, very real monsters of our time.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris