Mr. Breakfast, by Jonathan Carroll

Mr. Breakfast is, apparently, Jonathan Carroll's sixteenth novel, though the publisher calls it his twentieth. The discrepancy is likely caused by counting some short novellas, published stand-alone, as though they were novels. Whatever the case, this book has a curious history, in that it was published in Polish four years ago, and in Italian three years ago, before finally appearing now in the language in which it was written. Carroll has long had difficulties with his English-language publishers, both because of his original and unclassifiable style, and for the fact that marketing departments don't know how to sell him. His style is smooth and assured, better than that of many modern realist's, but the bulk of his novels are filled with fantastical happenings, which literary readers can't seem to abide. Which is to their loss, as well as ours, when publisher's can't sell enough of Carroll's books to want to keep publishing his new ones. Mr. Breakfast fits the usual mode of a Carroll novel. Graham Patterson is a failed comedian, at a turning point in his life. Through a magical tattoo he is able to venture to and return from other versions of his future life. Eventually he must choose the one he wants to live. Thereby Carroll touches on, but never deeply, ideas of reincarnation, fate, relationships, and how the past affects our choices and our lives. This novel seems to have been born of someone of age reflecting on their past, and the choices made, and the paths abandoned. It is less profound than it sounds, yet it still has a complete clarity, and Carroll's prose brings to the reader a page-turning response. With the exception of Carroll's magisterial first novel, The Land of Laughs, he has a problem with endings. Most are merely okay, and not quite as satisfying as one would expect from the rest of a novel. It's like being served, after a great restaurant meal, store-bought jello instead of specialty chocolate mousse. The ending of Mr. Breakfast evokes a similar response, but the reader's path to getting there is lovely and wonderful.

Pictures of Apocalypse, by Thomas Ligotti

Thomas Ligotti, as a prose writer, is one of the best post-Lovecraftian horror writers. He has also published a small number of poem cycles, and Pictures of Apocalypse is I think the fifth of these. It is illustrated (quite admirably) by Jonathan Dennison, and the book (with accessories) is very well-produced by Chiroptera Press. The volume consists of some twenty poems in the cycle, some very short, some long, with a prose introduction. But like his other poem-cycles, the form fails to show Ligotti at his best. There are occasional striking images ("The sky above was streaked with veins, / winding like rivers of color, sickly pale" from VI. "The Cult of Melancholy"), but despite Ligotti's talent for poetic prose, the poetic form itself seems to limit his ability to achieve the qualities found in his prose. There, his mesmeric style can grow into something more potent as he goes along. Here, though, with techniques like repetition (even with slight differences), it leads to unsatisfying things like "A Poetics of Existence" (IV), which is only eight lines long, and the first four are dull: "We had grown tired of the cycle: / beginning, middle, and end, / beginning middle, and end, / beginning, middle, and end." This early in the volume, the sentiment is prophetic for the rest. Ligotti's stories are essential reading; his poem cycles are not. Ligotti's devotees will enjoy this, but readers new to Ligotti should begin with the fiction.