“Only God can guide us in the fog / and God seems to have deserted us” – Chase Berggrun, ‘RED’
Today’s the last chapter of Behind With Knife! Hey, we had fun. Brendan and I hoped you enjoyed. Thank you to anyone who has read. Thank you to Adrian Sobol for designing this super sick variant cover. Here’s chapter 24, here’s chapter 25. Here’s chapter 1, if you haven’t started yet.
We’ll have another serialized fiction project in 2027. The superstitious part of me hates typing that sentence, because The Mysterious Forces will now conspire to make it not happen, but that’s the plan.
Now: Happy Halloween, let’s talk horrors.
What I’ve Been Reading This Week:
Two books that are re-reads, for different reasons. One, to re-read with new knowledge. One, to re-read for pure joy. You know, what’s the point of being a horror writer if you can’t really celebrate the spooky season? I’ve read some great books this month, and there’s already more in the TBR pile. Let’s talk about The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle and R E D by Chase Berggrun.
The Ballad Of Black Tom by Victor LaValle: stories about Black people are never framed as “one man being pushed too far,” are they? There’s no Falling Down remake starring Idris Elba. The Joker of The Dark Knight and The Killing Joke likes to say that insanity is one bad day away or whatever, and if there’s a version of The Joker out there that’s even POC-coded, I haven’t come across it. No, even though racial minorities in the U.S. have to endure casual indignity after outright outrage after sideways glance1, but when they snap? It’s all, hey what’s he so angry about. The narrator in this novella, Charles Thomas Tester, begins the story as 20ish Charles Thomas Tester. Within 60 pages, he’s been asked to transport a book that could end the world from Harlem to Queens, he’s been hired to play an evening of music in Flatbush despite knowing four songs, he’s been mugged by cops, an old white man has spoken about awakening an Old God known euphemistically as The Sleeping King, and a cop has shot his dad with two full magazines of bullets. Black Tom was not born, Black Tom was made.
This novella was the first cosmic horror I seriously read2. It still feels like a good introduction to the genre. If Wednesday’s column got you curious, check this novella out. LaValle’s explanation in the back of how he wrote it in direct response to Lovecraft’s story “The Horror At Red Hook” is really instructive. Hey, if you just need a few good scares and some catharsis reading about what happens when USian racism collides with the Old Gods? Read this book.
R E D by Chase Berggrun: I think I’ve resolved to read this every October. It’s 59 pages, I love it, and Agent Dale Cooper says to give yourself a little present every single day, so on Tuesday of this week? R E D was my present to myself. A brief rehearsal of the premise: the book is an erasure of Dracula, done as the writer was beginning their own gender transition. It’s an interrogation of monstrousness, womanhood, Victorian sex and gender politics, and more. Something that clicked this time around is how much this reads like a novel-in-verse. I either didn’t know or had forgotten that Chase has studied with Matthew Rohrer, who also taught novel-in-verse writer Melissa Lozada-Oliva, and who is also the author of 48-page-chapbook-that-reads-like-a-novella They All Seemed Asleep. As someone who has written a novel-in-verse and is endlessly fascinated by the form, I enjoyed reading it with this in mind.
LINKS!
Something to listen to while you browse? It’s Halloween, we should do something scary. Spooky or scary? Hmmm. You know what, a band I genuinely think is good at making “music to write horror while listening to it” is Syncatto. Especially the latest record. Here’s “Hollow.”
LINKS!
- Over at Chicago Magazine, José Olivarez wrote a poem, “when we win,” to accompany Carlos Javier Ortiz’s scenes from the federal invasion of Chicago.
- Last weekend, protesters took the fight to the Gary, IN airport, where people kidnapped by ICE are flown out of Chicago. Tiffany Walden at The Triibe has the story. So interesting, the on-the-ground stuff vs. the big picture stuff. I continue to believe in the whistle patrol as our best option at the moment, because even though Greg Bovino, the 21st century’s answer to Heinrich Himmler, was ordered to clock out of ICE raids at 6 p.m. and appear in court every day, as Mina Bloom reported in Block Club. Of course, an appeals court immediately blocked that (Melody Mercado and Mick Dumke reporting in Block Club), which, as the homie H Kapp-Klote points out, might actually strengthen the federal mandate for state-sponsored terrorism in the city. Meanwhile, Democratic Illinois 9th District congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh, Cook County Democratic committeeman Michael Rabbitt, and Alder Andre Vasquez’s Chief of Staff Catherine Sharp are being indicted on bullshit charges for the simple act of protesting ICE (Dave Byrnes at The Triibe reporting). THE COURTS ARE NOT GONNA HELP US. As Cat Sharp said at a community defense training, WE KEEP US SAFE.
- Speaking of politicians getting roughed up, Alder Jesse Fuentes was assaulted by ICE a few weeks ago. There’s a letter going around that is a message of support for Fuentes, signed by most alderpeople. Notice how I didn’t say all? That’s right, we have 13 fascists on the Chicago City Council! Tonia Hill at The Triibe has that story, as well as a follow-up with residents’ thoughts. Speaking of ICE being the aggressors, Alex V. Hernandez at Block Club has a story about an ICE agent telling a veteran “you’re dead, liberal” during an encounter in Little Village.
- ICE teargassed Irving Park during their annual Halloween parade, both Charles Thrush at Block Club reporting and Alex V. Hernandez at Block Club with a residents follow-up. Speaking of spooky stuff, Chicago Reader has a big cover story on the gravediggers at Rosehill Cemetery, written by Andrew Stojkovich. What does that have to do with ICE? Well, I bet Reader wasn’t planning on running that story a day after ICE used Rosehill Cemetery as a temporary base while attacking and kidnapping people in West Ridge (reporting by me, here, I was on the ground with my whistle on Wednesday). Over at Block Club, Francia Garcia Hernandez has a story about immigrants in Back Of The Yards trying to keep each other safe.
- Hey, here’s something you can do: go eat dinner in Little Village, or Pilsen, or Pullman, or Hermosa, or Belmont Cragin, as Ariel Parrella-Aureli reports in Block Club. The richer, whiter neighborhoods get a lot of coverage. Even my own neighborhood, which is pretty diverse as far as Chicago goes, is 38% white. One effect of this is, to me? Things are scary, it’s time to step up and do things you wouldn’t normally do, but I can easily pretend it’s business as usual around my kid. For people living in predominantly Latine neighborhoods, Midway Blitz has had a much more chilling effect. People aren’t going outside. Businesses are seeing sales drop. So if you can, head to a different neighborhood and spend some money. Oh, and if you’re looking for other stuff to maybe do? Grey Lucas and Charles Thrush at Block Club break down what’s needed for Mayor Johnson’s call for a general strike to happen. You feel like you’ll be working in 2028?
What’re you still doing here? The links are gonna be depressing for a while. My city is under occupation, by my own government. They kicked a gate in at my building. I don’t go outside without wearing a whistle. Go read Behind With Knife so I can say something good happened this year.
If you work in the service industry, may you clean up in tips this weekend. We all have monstrousness within us. We all exist on a spectrum of gender, not a rigidly defined binary. We are all spiritual beings. You can choose to interrogate and understand these things about yourself, or you can lash out at society. If you must lash out, do not be an ICE agent. Be a Charles Thomas Tester.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris
- in the dreaded Woke Times of 2012-2020, we called these “microaggressions,” but that word made white people so mad they made Donald Trump president twice and put known liar and simpleton Bari Weiss in charge of all news. Yes, I know she’s formally only in charge of CBS, but come on. Every mainstream outlet is Bari Weiss now. ↩︎
- reading a few Lovecraft stories and going “huh” without really knowing the genre doesn’t seem to count ↩︎