Finding God in a Dog

Love is the Law, by Nick Mamatas, 2013 Dark Horse.

Grade: B

I first heard about this project from Mamatas's LJ (nihilistic_kid) - he presented it as (and I'm paraphrasing here), "Nancy Drew, but she has an orange mohawk, is into Aleister Crowley, and it's set in 1989." A while later keith418 intimated that this project would be inspired, in part, by his own posts on Thelema, magick, and politics. This, then, presented a unique opportunity to read a contemporary, fictional representation of ceremonial magick that wasn't set in a pure fantasy world and that doesn't just suck. Naturally, I had to snatch it up. This book is captivating, perhaps unsettling, and is bound to make others in the OTO more uncomfortable than it should.

Our protagonist is Dawn, the aforementioned punk rock Nancy Drew, and also the ultimate latchkey kid - her entire family has been consumed, one way or another, by various demons, leaving her basically on her own, save for her Bernstein, her mentor and initiator. The novel opens, however, with Bernstein dead of an apparent suicide that Dawn believes was actually murder. Her magical education and initiation not yet complete, she sets out to discover the identity of Bernstein's assassin. Dawn is a jarring character in many ways. Two come particularly to mind: her casual relationship to sex during the height of AIDS, and her vulnerability when faced with Bernstein's fellow initiates as they act out their designs. IMO she's all the more jarring because, in the final analysis, she's realistic, both as an eighties punk rock girl, and as an exemplar of how a neophyte, with her inner cop kept in check but still unaware of her deeper motives, should act.

The setting is Long Island in 1989, about which I know nothing; but Mamatas makes it disturbing, vibrant, dark, and horrifyingly alive, the way I remember - the way I felt - Chicago in 1989, albeit with less sprawl and more military contractors. East Germany is about to collapse, and with it the Warsaw Pact. Here Mamatas shines, as he captures the zeitgeist of that autumn, the vain hopes of the various socialist groups, and the inevitability of the neoconservative revolution to come. One wonders whether the socialists of that year wouldn't commit suicide if they knew not only of the events to come - that the "liberal hope" Barack Obama would gleefully oversee and defend a military and surveillance regime that Reagan only dreamed about - but of the deeper crisis of the 2010s, wherein the only ideas that truly challenge the Frankenstein's monster of neoliberal economics and neoconservative foreign policy come not from the left, but from the right (2) (3).

I do have some issues with the plot of this novel. It's convoluted, a bit screwy, and in some places just too convenient to be true. I can appreciate that Dawn is acting out of motives that she doesn't necessarily understand - this is a staple thesis of keith418's critiques of OTO leadership, after all. But often I find myself asking, "yeah, why doesn't she just say 'screw it' and head to Manhattan, or Brooklyn, and get on with her life as a Long Island expat?" Maybe this is the question we're supposed to ask. Maybe the answer is that Dawn is trapped - whether by the spirits of Long Island, or her mentor's spell, or the historical dialectic, or by her True Will to which she must submit - and that she therefore doesn't have free will, let alone free will to run off and live happily ever after.

I would probably loan this book to the smarter class of person who wanted to know "what's this Thelema all about, anyway." I would present it with a couple of caveats. Will as a magical force doesn't work quite the way it's presented here. Initiation, without going into detail, is somewhat more formalized now than it used to be. These caveats aside, it certainly makes a better beginner book than most of what's out there.

(Read other reviews of this book here and here)

One could accuse me of having been bribed for this review. Jeremy Robert Johnson asked on his FaceBook page whether he should pay for a book review on some website; I offered to write a book review for a copy of the book. Mr. Johnson agreed, and dropped off a copy of the book at my doorstep, complete with a personal note on the inside cover and a Garbage Pail Kid card. That's valuable stuff! But in spite of this, I read We Live Inside You with a critical eye. My verdict is that this book kicks ass.

We Live Inside You is a collection of short stories, with an appendix containing some of his early material. The more current stories are brilliant, human, and disturbing. Some highlights:

Consumerism: This is fitting follow-up to his short Priapism from Angel Dust Apocalypse. This time, the family has been in a horrible car accident, and the father tells his son, boldly, stridently, unflinchingly, to man up, stop whining about his mother's mangled corpse, and do what is needed to survive. One might think of the dad as the Ultimate Objectivist, his son his pupil, and this lecture the ultimate objectivist lesson.

When Susurrus Stirs is a great horror tale, Lovecraftian in the tradition of Lumley's The Big C. Our host has a parasite, and we follow the host as the parasite slowly becomes him, and then unleashes itself on others. This is the kind of story where Johnson shines. It is humorous, weird, and wonderful at conveying to the reader just how not okay the situation is.

Probably the best story in the collection is States of Glass. Our protagonist is a young wife who soon finds herself a young widow; and in her panic and fear, she finds herself insanely horny. It is bizarro literature for sure, but touching, deep, and human in a way that most bizarro literature is not. People experience death in unpredictable ways, and it's certainly not unrealistic that someone would react to the sudden death of a lover with powerful sexual urges. Our protagonist deals with her situation in a manner that strikes me as dignified and sweet.

What I really appreciate about Johnson is that he doesn't treat his characters as props and bit players, as many bizarro authors do. His stories are, in fact, character-centric, and he develops them wonderfully. Bizarro is fun, but a lot of it is popcorn and beer - empty calories. Johnson is steak and grilled asparagus - bizarro for grown-ups.

You can find Angel Dust Apocalypse and We Live Inside You on Bizarrocentral.com.