Wow. What the heck did I just read?
Let me start of by saying that this was my favorite read in this class so far. I know there were sub-themes and some things probably represented other things... lots of it about religion. Whatever. This story was just straight up nasty. I think it's the first story in our Monster class that actually featured a monster.
Rawhead Rex was an amazing monster. Bad ass. Scary. Gory. All of it. I've never read anything from Barker before, but I'm gonna have to read some more of his stuff. I love that he gave us glimpses of the story from Rawhead's POV. I loved that he showed us, through that POV, the monster's fears and weaknesses. And Barker killed it with the descriptions of Rawhead through the other POVs. We didn't get it all at once, but certain things, like Rawhead's teeth, were brought up several times, each time cementing the image of his mouth.. impossibly big... getting bigger... with those two rows of teeth. Loved it. This is the kind of antagonist I want to put in my fantasy writing. A creation that the reader gets to know through internal POV, yet still fears the unknown (and even known) aspects of him when he's rampaging. I was very impressed with this monster, and doubly so how effective Barker was of engaging me with it.
Barker's in-your-face way of writing this story was interesting. Nothing was held back and anything was on the table. Chow down a kid? Check. Piss on a newly recruited follower as a baptism? Check. Jack off into a fire? Check. Rip of a dude's junk? Check. Thirst for newborn babies? Check. Rape women to create hybrid offspring? Check. Like this bad guy was B-A-D bad. But every now and then, you got to see inside his head, and Barker gave him connections to the reader. His loneliness at being buried alive. His fear of the stone from the altar. The way he learned from his surroundings... the petrol "blood" of the boxes, the realization that the bullets were hurting him and he had to run. He was as an arrogant god, yet we got to feel his fear. I thought this was all so very well done.
I want more stories like this. It was a master class in monster creation. Bravo, Mr. Barker!
On the down side, I did have a little trouble with the POV hopping. Don't get me wrong. I wanted the POVs we got (especially from Rawhead himself). But this was one area that I think Barker could have done a little cleaner. Just the inclusion of some kind of typed marker--three asterisks or something--would have made the overall reading smoother for me, because I'd go from one paragraph to another and be momentarily stunned or distracted, trying to figure out what the heck was going on. It got a little easier once I realized Barker was going to jump around from person to person, but I just would have liked a little more understanding earlier on what was happening, and better clues that it was happening. But what I DID learn from this was that, as a reader, I liked getting the different POVs, and that is something that was important to me, as my thesis is being written from five POVs. As I'm writing it now, each chapter is from a different POV. I thought that mixing POVs within a chapter wouldn't work. But Barker showed me that it can. I think what he did can be improved upon, as I noted earlier, but that doesn't mean it can't work as a method. And it makes me want to experiment with that technique in my thesis. For a short story read in a RiG, that's about as successful an assignment as you can get.
And it wasn't even the best part. I want to write a monster like Rawhead Rex. Something to be feared, and yet related to, at least on some scale. These kinds of examples are priceless.
I didn't like the POV switches in this story at all. I agree that it was nice to get the POV of rawhead himself, but there were too many characters for my liking. Not only that, but none of them were memorable to me besides rawhead himself. I can't even remember the name of the dad who bashed rawhead's skull in.
ReplyDeleteI also felt like rawhead was described too vaguely. I got a very different image of what I thought he looked like to what the comic creator made him look like to what the movies made him look like. I know that some of the details were repeated later, but I still felt like the character was left a little empty for me. He wasn't the crazy monster I wanted him to be, he was just like a large man with weird teeth.
I agree there were too many characters to keep track of, but to me, that is a different topic than the POVs. I think if the story was longer, and we would have had more time to get to know all the characters, it would have been okay. But since it was a short story, I do think there were too many characters. But I think even if there had only been one or two POVs, and we still had all those characters, there still would have been a problem there.
DeleteI also enjoyed the POV's that Barker used. I like how the victims were the main ones to get Rawhead's description out. His teeth, I kept thinking about a great white when it referenced rows. I love how Rawhead was in-your-face. Most average people would have put the story down. Then again, I don't think average people would pick anything by Barker up to begin with.
ReplyDeleteMy thesis features two POVs. While Barker did decent, I don't think I will dare to try and mix the POVs in one chapter. I haven't watched the film around it yet. Any good? (if you have. Since Maddy commented about it, I am curious.)
I haven't watched the film yet, but I want to.
DeleteThe in your face aspect of Rawhead was really appealing. And he seemed pretty driven once he saw a victim. Almost like the Terminator. However, we did see his fears, and he did run when he thought he had to. The Terminator only stopped when it was destroyed. But the terminator couldn't feel fear... it was a machine. For something living like Rawhead, he was relentless within reason. I liked that.
Yes, I agree. I totally love Rawhead. Since I was introduced to him through the graphic novel version, I was a little hesitant on how he was depicted. Even taking away the image that was provided for me by the artist, I was able to see a monster that was just kind of silly looking in my head. It grew on me over the story and I started to really like all the little quirks of the character. One of the things I've always been unsure about was saying things are as they are, and I'm very happy to have read someone who just out and says things in the matter of fact kind of way. I think my own writing is similar to this, or at least I have been told I have a matter of fact writing style, and since my ideas can get pretty dark, seeing something like Rawhead and reading what he does gave me a little confidence boost in where I can take my own writing.
ReplyDeleteBarker's writing style described as matter-of-fact really makes sense. It was like he laid all his cards on the table and said "deal with it." I like that style.
DeleteHi Shoe, I agree that the weakest part of this story was the POV element. I rally think Barker wanted to make this a long piece and it got cut down for publication. I am not sure he has ever talked about that. I so recall reading long ago in an issue of FANGORIA that the story was originally written as a treatment for a screenplay. The movie is terrible though. It would have taken a substantially larger budget to realize the look of the monster. This was definitely the closest we've gotten in this class to a real monster though.
ReplyDeleteYou raise a good point about the POV-hopping. I also had a tough time getting into the rhythm of the story before I came to expect a POV-shift between paragraphs. I definitely think the story could have used the added clarity of some kind of punctuation between POV’s, although I do wonder how much of that formatting is the author’s responsibility versus the publisher’s. I also wonder, since Books of Blood was initially published a number of years ago, what the conventions were around formatting at the time and whether people were more apt to expect shifting POV’s.
ReplyDeleteI’m looking forward to reading your thesis down the line and seeing how you incorporate your multiple POV’s. I’ve been toying with the idea of a secondary POV, but I can’t quite articulate to myself why it’s necessary for the story. I kind of figure that if I can’t give a good reason for having multiple POV’s, I shouldn’t create the complication for myself, but almost every one of my favorite novels is told from at least two (and often far more) perspectives. Reading this story also gave me a good sense of the value of having something horrific described from multiple perspectives—it allowed Barker to reiterate the important points while scattering in more varied detail than he might have been allowed otherwise. Ah, well. Something to ponder!
EDIT: After drafting this comment on the train and then rambling to my cousin for an hour, I think I've decided to split my thesis into two POV's after all. Thanks!