Eros and Thanatos 2003
The Books of Angelhaunt
Art Prose, Volume I
Jason Stuart Ratcliff
Writers Club Press/ iUniverse
Lincoln
541 pp. $26.95 (US)
About a third of the way through Jason
Stuart Ratcliff’s The Books of Angelhaunt, he intones (yes, intones), “I’m trying to
install in you a sense of madness. The mad sense is a sense of mystery and the numinous. There are
distinct aspects to madness: one is fragmentation, another is paranoia, another is confusion.”
In parrot of this, I’ll
simply say there are three distinct aspects to this large collection of plotless rants: one is
fragmentation, another is paranoia, another is confusion. However, you should not mistake this
statement for a negative value judgment. While Angelhaunt, Volume I may be fragmented,
paranoiac, and occasionally confusing, it is as often (and sometimes simultaneously) scintillating,
poetic, and wittily surreal.
The collection, ostensibly,
is Ratcliff’s exploration of his schizophrenia “for all the creative treasures it holds.” “We
don’t want tales and stories,” he rails from the back cover. “Give us pure mind and self, and
everything terrible and holy within us.” Believe it or not, this is a fair advertisement for the
material that lies between the covers of this challenging and ambitious work. Its blend of sacred
and profane tailoring in a prosy-poetic suit reminded me more than a little of the poetry and essays
of the slightly deranged but brilliant French writer Antonin Artaud and of some of the more freeform
work of William Burroughs and Henry Miller. Sometimes confusing, always thought-provoking, and often
rewarding.
The first book “Cabeza de
Vaca” is the most successful, in large part because it has the most cohesive structure of the four
Angelhaunt texts. Taking his lead and name from the anthropo-social writings of the 16th century
Spanish explorer (whose travels in book form made it onto the aforementioned Henry Miller’s list
of 100 most influential books), the author weaves a fanciful documentation wherein de Vaca/Ratcliff
comments on the lifestyles of a series of surreal indigenous peoples, as well as taking part in
obscene rituals and interactions with a character known only as the Moroccan Negro. Despite the fact
that the author comes right out and says the year of the writing is 1534, the narrative actually
makes quantum jumps both temporally and rationally. (Better make that “irrationally.”) In
reality, this is case study madness based on Ratcliff’s modern-day observation (note the Clinton
ecstasy cult among others), but it is a pure and lovely madness, at turns fascinating and maddening,
often hypnotic. In “Cabeza de Vaca,” the author comes closest to featuring real and ongoing
characters, and as such it grabs the reader more successfully than the other three books.
Book two, “A Lone Brain
Locked in a Small Apartment” is divided into three parts and veers between first person anecdotes,
rants, raves, utter nonsense, and semi-prophetic ramblings. A kind of Anti-Whitman, Ratcliff unreels
a twisted song of himself where “plot is a limitation of freedom; logic likewise is a limitation
of freedom.” This may be true, but without a mild temperance of one or the other, prose can break
down into unreadability, as in this section:
“... inside
wishing ladder Jacob proper psychology medication
vindictive mistake wrong love twin Mexico all him
themselves hope improper unbroken treatment threading call me angel missing votive candles
prime fine trinket stabbed shot murdered zebra hat kiln debauchery justice
cried intelligible fermented yeast barley ...”
Granted, this is may be
automatic writing or some exceedingly complex riddle of words; however, we must care enough to
explore further, and nonsensical passages like this make it hard for even the staunch reader to want
to do so. Employing an experimental free-form technique in fiction is roughly tantamount to tossing
your readers onto the back of a crazed bronco: the timid will jump off instantly, while some of the
more adventurous will go along with the hard bucks and turns—that is until you start bucking
towards the cliff’s edge. At some point even the hardiest will dismount and let you buck over the
side and tumble away to literary obscurity. For the most part, Ratcliff turns from this utter edge
in time to keep from losing the reader—but not always.
The third installment, “Constellations:
a manifesto” is a bit uneven as well, containing much of esoteric value but dropping in and out of
the continuity parade, not always to great effect. A “dialogue” between The Penis and The Anus
is quite hilarious, and when Ratcliff pursues an issue to any length it is usually interesting, but
the lapses in even this kind of twisted logic leave one occasionally disgruntled and distant. This
rarefied style could conceivably achieve hyper-luminescence by applying the barest modicum of
editorial sense and continuity, but that may be asking too much given Ratcliff’s stern anti-sense
agenda.
The fourth book, “The
American Revelation Dictionary, Alpha to Acheron” has many of the same drawbacks and strengths as
the earlier books. This dictionary-style listing of words and “meanings” (read: abstract
ruminations often having little or nothing to do with Webster’s meaning) are frustrating and
fascinating. Ratcliff drops this hint as to the genesis of this semantic work:
acephalous: Yes well
the demons and the angels both gave him to understand what the words in that dictionary meant.
acequia: And his mind was
very delirious and disorganized?
acerate: Yes his mind was
very delirious and disorganized.
acerb: And he would sit
and read that dictionary for hours?
acerbate: Yes he would sit
and read that dictionary for hours.
acerbity: And this book is
what he read?
acerose: Yes, this book is
what he read.
There are a few slight
weaknesses in Ratcliff’s prose style, though nothing egregious. His occasional repetitive use of
simple auxiliary verbs and simple structures in adjacent sentences sometimes imbues Angelhaunt
with an almost adolescent tone. This works now and then, especially in the more “prophetic”
passages where the staccato sounds a bit like chant; also in some measure this tone imparts a kind
of endearing bewildered innocence to the narrator in his profane and surreal world. In other places,
however, it undermines the literary weight of the text. (I should also say that much of this work
leans more towards Dada than actual surrealism.)
The very bulk of Angelhaunt
(Volume I!!!) is its biggest drawback, and given the challenging nature of the work, one
wonders why JSR didn’t choose to edit it down to a more manageable size or simply cut out one or
two of the books (they aren’t especially dependent on each other). At an edited 200, 250 pages, I
might have been willing to dub this a work of prime literary significance; at 541 pages ($26.95
softcover!), it shows much flab, flaw, and excess. This is Ratcliff’s intent of course—to
reflect the truth of the diseased mind—and I can’t find it in my heart to upbraid him too
roundly. Better a mad, majestic dash at something grand than a mild considered assay into the
mainstream; but ... best to write the mad majestic attempt and edit it into something more
than vaguely coherent.
I will say that of the many
experimental works we receive for review, this one comes closer to literary success (within a hair’s
breadth) than most. More often than not Ratcliff’s style, approach, and ideas are weirdly
stimulating—on multiple levels. Sex, death, spirit, mind, and bodily fluids hold places of high
esteem in the Angelhaunt universe, and Ratcliff has a gift for rooting out the obscenity and
grandeur latent in each and all. We will watch his development with great excitement.
Those easily offended by
profane and obscene language or acts would be better off reading elsewhere, but those with hardier
intellectual/sensual constitutions should hunker down and dig in. Angelhaunt is a hearth of crazy
blazing neurons, and if you’re able to suspend belief in mainstream literary standards and
practices, this book might just knock your block clean off. Recommended.
