Almost-supernatural almost-horror

kw: book reviews, fantasy, horror, hallucination

The best-written stories are often autobiographical. In the endpapers of American Morons {stories}, Glen Hirshberg confirms the origin of each story in an experience or conversation. The experiences were springboards, for the stories take wild tangents from the possible.

The title story, of the seven, is the most clearly rooted in an experience. Probably only the painful twist at the end is a creation. Of the seven, it only takes place outside Los Angeles County. The author is an Angeleno, writing of a Los Angeles I remember, having lived there three times, for as long as eleven years.

The stories can be thought of as a succession of hallucinations arising from overwhelming banality. Each has its unique setting and strange denouement. Or, given the banal milieu, they can be thought of as supernatural horror visiting the ordinary. Most clearly, "Flowers in Their Bridles, Hooves in the Air" progresses through a series of ever-more-unsettling scenes, as the narrator grows to realize he's no longer on the real Long Beach pier, or no longer in the era in which he entered.

Many of the stories end on a leading note, inconclusively, so that you wonder, "Will the ranger and the light house keeper wind up together, or apart...and what will become of the lighthouse?", or "Did the old ladies die of neglect, or something more sinister?" You get to finish the story in your own mind.

Being of weak mind and impatient nature, I found myself halfway through another story before I decided what to think of the one I'd just finished. Perhaps that's good exercise!