Indeed. Denying truth as it applied to me was a game I played for about 15 years. Demonization of that which could have shown my own nature to me was just second nature. I remember watching Requiem for a Dream and just ranting about how much I hated it, how terrible it was, what a piece of shit the whole movie was. It was really was just being one who protested too much.
Edited to answer your question: Your work does and doesn't, and of course that is just my personal reaction. My favorites of your works are Alabaster and Daughter of Hounds. There are characters like Soldier who pinged my "Look away!" meter before I became more or less sober, but the whole of the books were not necessarily a look at self-destruction and addiction. I focused on Emmy's and Dancy's youth and bravery in the face of evil, which may be a distillation of my approach to the world when I was an addict. Those books satisfied my desperate search for signs that the good in the world could prevail, as I looked at my life in very black and white terms. I could lose myself in the plots without too much self-consciousness of the destruction and waste I was inflicting on myself. Murder of Angels and Silk were different for me. In those works I could feel the hot shame of who I was, and shame is powerful in how it distorts my thinking.
I was sober when I read The Red Tree and I didn't feel the need to look away. But when I was in the hole, there was a sickening draw to your works that I cannot wholly explain, and there really is no accounting for the ways people whose brains are chemically fucked justify themselves. It's different now, but when I first read Candles for Elizabeth and Silk I was drawn to your writing despite my discomfort, but in other books there was also enough of a speculative, other-worldly nature that I could take the self-destruction and see it through a filter. I will say that I have not re-read those books, but like Burroughs and Lydia Lunch and Jim Carroll and Algren, I may give them another look now that I can see myself better. Give me another two years in therapy and all of this may make sense.
Oh man, I recall reading reading Hubert Selby right about the time I was truly becoming a secret addict and not-so-secret drunk, when I was in my teens, and to this day I am very shaky about ever trying to read him again. Again, analyzing the chemically confused brain and the walls addicts build or don't build may be an example of denial being a profitless game, but there you go. Seeing myself and my motivations for many years was something I avoided.
no subject
Indeed. Denying truth as it applied to me was a game I played for about 15 years. Demonization of that which could have shown my own nature to me was just second nature. I remember watching Requiem for a Dream and just ranting about how much I hated it, how terrible it was, what a piece of shit the whole movie was. It was really was just being one who protested too much.
Edited to answer your question: Your work does and doesn't, and of course that is just my personal reaction. My favorites of your works are Alabaster and Daughter of Hounds. There are characters like Soldier who pinged my "Look away!" meter before I became more or less sober, but the whole of the books were not necessarily a look at self-destruction and addiction. I focused on Emmy's and Dancy's youth and bravery in the face of evil, which may be a distillation of my approach to the world when I was an addict. Those books satisfied my desperate search for signs that the good in the world could prevail, as I looked at my life in very black and white terms. I could lose myself in the plots without too much self-consciousness of the destruction and waste I was inflicting on myself. Murder of Angels and Silk were different for me. In those works I could feel the hot shame of who I was, and shame is powerful in how it distorts my thinking.
I was sober when I read The Red Tree and I didn't feel the need to look away. But when I was in the hole, there was a sickening draw to your works that I cannot wholly explain, and there really is no accounting for the ways people whose brains are chemically fucked justify themselves. It's different now, but when I first read Candles for Elizabeth and Silk I was drawn to your writing despite my discomfort, but in other books there was also enough of a speculative, other-worldly nature that I could take the self-destruction and see it through a filter. I will say that I have not re-read those books, but like Burroughs and Lydia Lunch and Jim Carroll and Algren, I may give them another look now that I can see myself better. Give me another two years in therapy and all of this may make sense.
Oh man, I recall reading reading Hubert Selby right about the time I was truly becoming a secret addict and not-so-secret drunk, when I was in my teens, and to this day I am very shaky about ever trying to read him again. Again, analyzing the chemically confused brain and the walls addicts build or don't build may be an example of denial being a profitless game, but there you go. Seeing myself and my motivations for many years was something I avoided.