Axl Barnes' Strangled Epitaphs

Review of Curtis Lawson's The Envious Nothing

I  remember having high expectations for Curtis Lawson's The Envious Nothing. They were surpassed
and pulverized. This is a rare treat for horror fans as Lawson expertly integrates elements of body horror, psychological horror, folk, and supernatural horror in a style firmly rooted in Lovecraftian cosmic horror.  In his earlier volume, Black Pantheons, Lawson claims that "Cosmicism is a literary philosophy that suggests we live in a vast, indifferent universe, devoid of any cosmic father figure. If you take it a bit further it is the view that the universe and any higher intelligence within it, is actually malevolent in nature." That early volume features many stories of trickster demons and other supernatural entities bent on torturing humans both physically and mentally. 

In Devil's Night and The Envious Nothing, Lawson departs gradually from that initial characterization of cosmicism and offers a more complex picture of human nature and its relationship with the supernatural. There's a certain moral ambiguity that permeates some of these stories. In "Orphan" or "The Rye-Mother" the main characters are misfits who want to find a place to belong, a place outside the confines of the ordinary world, and beings from beyond the natural order offer their help. In addition, evil becomes more diffuse, so much so it turns into nothing, but it's a dynamic and dangerous Nothing. Lawson doesn't go as far as B.R, Yeager in Negative Space, to strip these otherworldly forces of any human characteristics. Nothingness is described as envious, hungry, vengeful, although those properties are immense and grotesque in comparison to their human counterparts. Lawson here echoes ancient creation myths from the Sumero-Babylonian to the Norse traditions.  The goddess Tiamat is famously described as a primordial abyss, beyond space and time, life and death, both life-giving and vengeful and destructive. By introducing Nothingness as a malevolent force Lawson takes us to the limit of our conceptual scheme, to the realm of paradox, the point where ancient mythology merges with modern physics. If Nothing is envious isn't it Something? Isn't envy a property or a predicate that requires a subject, a substance to have it? How can something be envious while outside space and time? Don't emotions have duration, a certain feel to them? Lawson's power as a horror writer lies in being able to weave imaginative, evocative stories around these perennial cognitive cramps and conceptual dead-ends, and to vividly express that which cannot be told.

I enjoyed all stories in this volume as the author not only spins original tales but uses a variety of literary techniques and forms to deliver them. The reader is never bored and kept on his toes. Stories like "Elvis and Isolde" are so well-crafted that you probably need a strong cup of coffee before delving into them.  The stories that will remain tattooed on my brain are "The Happiest Place on Earth" (it reads like a mix of Stephen King's The Mist and The Girl who Loved Tom Gordon, steeped in deep, thick melancholy), "Secretes of the Forbidden Kata," The Rye Mother" (I have a soft spot for amoral elitist characters and the imagery is stunning) and "The Truth about Vampires," (this one's aggressive weirdness and demented depravity reminded me of Nicole Cushing's "Mr. Suicide") As a small lament, I think some of these stories deserved a larger canvass, maybe a novella or even novel treatment. For instance, "Monsters have no Place in the World to Come," a story about the Hitler Youth, could easily grow into a novel in the vein of Lord of the Flies set against the desolate background of a ruined Berlin. All in all, I warmly recommend this darkly beautiful and challenging book!