Reading Log 1.2--Thomas M. Disch, The Businessman

The second book I read for January was Thomas M. Disch's "The Businessman." It is the first in a series of four books referred to as "Supernatural Minnesota." The book is composed of a series of mostly short chapters, it begins rapidly and only gets more charged as it progresses. It was not only a fascinating book, but a lot of fun. In fact I can confidently rank it with books like "The Man Who was Thursday," "The Crying of Lot 49," and other books that seemed crammed with invention, page after page. It is a tribute to the book, that even at a superficial level it can still generate exciting suggestions. One being the recurring parallels I noted between it and David Lynch's television series Twin Peaks. These were a few similarities I noticed:

1. Both have a red room.

2. Both have (emerald?) rings.

3. The chief villain in both is named Bob.

4. Both center around a murder.

5. Both have spiritual beings center stage (demons and tulpas).

6. Casinos play a significant thematic role in both.

7. Both juxtapose a joyful innocence with terror.

8. Both juxtapose disparate emotions (humor, terror, pathos, the surreal, etc).

The writing is very strong as well. There were many passages of great power, I'd like to quote to that affected me most.

The Red Room

There was another world off at an angle from the world she'd known till now, that world six feet above her full of its cars and houses. Sometimes this other world seemed to be inside her, but when she would reverse her attention inward and try to approach the threshold to that dimly sensed world within, it would go out of focus or fade, though never disappear entirely. It was always there, as real as the furniture one stumbles over in a dark room. 

Her first clear view of it came in a flash. She saw, across the threshold, a field of pure geometry and color, like a painting that was simultaneously flat on the ground and covering every wall. It bore a general resemblance to a red gingham tablecloth, except that it wavered and the bands of red were just as bright, in their way, as the patches of white, which in fact weren't really white but some other indefinable color. It seemed incredibly beautiful and important, but before she could grasp why, it was gone.

The Demon/Halfling

Only ten feet away the heron stopped in its tracks to cock it's head sideways and give Jack a long, level stare. Jack made one last adjustment for focus, then snapped the shutter. At that moment of alignment between the eye of the heron, the lens of the camera, and Jack's perfect and entire concentration, the halfling slipped across the diaphonus psychic barrier between bird and boy and took possession of his physical being.

At first the halfling's control was less than complete. Jack resisted the halfling's will along whatever channels of volition remained to him. He attempted to scream; the halfling constricted the muscles of his throat, and the scream became a dry little cough. He fought the halfling for control of his legs and fell sideways on the dewy grass, alarming the heron, which, regaining its autonomy in the instant Jack lost his, took to the air with a yawp of fear.

The heron's flight was the last image to reach Jack through his own eyes. One by one the halfling sealed off the avenues of sense. Jack felt himself plunged into the black well of his unconscious. Struggle was useless. The waters closed over him, and his mind drifted in a confusion amounting to terror, in a featureless void, a mote of uncomprehending consciousness in an ocean without surface or shore.