Shelves for the Banished

From The Banished Reader:

5/5 stars.

It took me a couple days to come to terms with my thoughts surrounding this book. I had wanted to read it for a few years following a case study I found while researching for an undergraduate paper; I was writing something about the importance of not sheltering children and young adults' access to serious topics in media and in schools to further emphasize the importance of supporting the development of children's mental health, or something of that nature (I wrote a few papers on this same subject, so I can't remember the specifics of the thesis). Anyhow, one of the sources I used for that paper was a case study wherein a teacher for a remedial summer high school english course had her students read this book. I was so touched and intrigued by the insight of the children in that study in their reactions to the book, that I had been on the lookout for it for nearly three years before getting a copy. And boy. Oh, boy. This book is devastating, and heartbreaking, and beautiful. It means so much and yet is executed so simply; its subject matter is so, so scary and complicated, and yet Quick's first-person narration through the eyes of Leonard is so heartbreakingly accurate to the young, confused innocence and violence of a teenager who has been hurt and let down time and time again... I couldn't put this book down. The moment Leonard's narration first mentions "the bad things" that had happened in his life, I knew I would either relate so heavily to him that the book would make me sick, or I would want to protect him with everything I had to the point of hating the world Quick conveyed. And the answer is that I felt both; but, alongside my hurt, and my rage for Leonard and for the injustices so many young people are forced to face and grapple with, I also found an insurmountable feeling of love. I want the best for Leonard Peacock. I want to be the kind of person that a struggling child might write "letters from the future" from. I want to be the positive change, even if small and fleeting, that can mean the most to someone in need. It is so, so hard growing up, even without the challenges riddled throughout the life of someone like Leonard Peacock-- and yet, everyone needs someone. This book hands us that on a silver platter, then bashes us in the head with it. It's fantastic. It hurts remarkably. This book will stick with me for years to come. Here's to you, Matthew Quick-- you've done it again. Thank you.

Here I am, 15% through the book. I know it's not far, but honestly, it's far enough. All I have to say is-- wow. Wow.

This book kinda sucks. Just an all-around drag. A bore, but not the pleasant boring drawl of a lecturer putting you to sleep. The harrowing, suffocating boredom of having to work a shift with that coworker that you hate, that makes you cringe so hard that it's not even entertaining to hate them anymore. Get me out of here. That's how this book feels.

For a book constantly boasting how readers say it's "not for the faint of heart," it's surprisingly underwhelming. I'm frankly disappointed, and yet this book keeps embarrassing itself so much within only 15% that I can't even be angry at myself for falling into its trap.

My reasoning falls into 3 categories: Let-Down, Cringe, and Excuses.

First things first - I was expecting something raunchy, something gruesome and disturbing. I'm not one of those people who shies away from Dead Dove content, far from it. I love that shit. Literature is a place to explore the dangerous, the taboo, the fucked up-ness of being a person. So, finding a book that pledged it was disgusting, disturbing, and medically horrifying? Sign me up. This book is... not that.

What was promised to be a horror novel that pushes the boundaries of what is too much horror, what toes the line between gratuitous and entertaining, this novel relies on one thing: shock value. And the biggest bummer for that tactic is this: if your audience is not shocked, then there is nothing left supporting the narrative.

Dead Inside relies entirely on the audience not being familiar with horror stories or even true crime stories involving necrophilia or cannibalism. The concept of a perverted security guard using his power to violate corpses is supposed to be mortifying, unbelievably despicable. Yet for a seasoned horror fan, it's nothing short of lame. Juvenile, almost. There is hardly any risk when our security guard goes into a morgue which he holds the key to, wherein there are no security cameras, where he can do whatever he pleases, lay on the floor afterwards, and go back to work-- in a tiny, unbusy hospital. It's boring, it's lame, who gives a shit if this weirdo gets his rocks off in weird ways; it's horrible to think of it happening in real life to the body of a loved one, certainly, but this is horror literature. Stephen King would have had worms crawling up the dude's dick and blossoming into a parasite that whispers in his ear until he castrates himself. Chandler Morrison just has our (I hate to even call him this) protagonist fuck a corpse. Cool, I guess.

2. Number Two. Let's talk Cringe Factor.

This narrator is unbearable. Unbearable. He sounds like the stereotype of a discord edgelord who is narrating this book with the sole purpose of scaring off the normies. He relishes in saying gross things, being gross, all while acting as if he is so much more sophisticated than he is.

It doesn't help that the book is narrated in first person. This goes back to how I described the experience of reading Dead Inside to be equivalent to working a shift with a coworker that is very much not your friend who disrespects you the same way a friend would tease. It's just plain oblivious. Our necrophiliac incel narrator is the epitome of the Riverdale meme where Jughead says "I'm weird. I'm a weirdo. I don't fit in. And I don't want to fit in." Like, Christ man, we get it, you don't shower and your hair is greasy and people don't want to be around you not because you're "weird", but because you're inconsiderate and unhygienic and put 0 effort into anything whatsoever. Having to listen to the narrator's commentary on how he's aware how disturbing his own actions are, how he knows the ordinary person would see him as a freak, it's just so lame. That's the only word I have for it, really. Just completely and utterly lame. This novel reads with the same tone as a Reddit incel jerk-off posting about Elliot Rodger. It's just pathetic, but there's no pity there. It's entirely self-induced patheticness that the narrator excuses as being "unique."

It's fine to have characters in books that are frustrating, irritating, that make you just want to smack them upside the head for yapping too long. But it's never a good sign when the person I want most desperately to shut the fuck up is the narrator. It's not good writing if my method of making the narrator quit talking is closing the book and contemplating whether or not it's even worth finishing. Extraordinarily poor quality character. But it's not intentional - we are supposed to find this character disturbing, threatening, and eerily fucked up. We're supposed to wonder why he got this way, and what it will take to break him. We are supposed to hate him, and relish in his demise. I feel nothing but exasperation from this man. The simplest way to resolve my hatred for him is to close the book and put it away. I don't give a fuck what happens to him. I don't think he even deserves my attention, and he's the narrator. This is bad.

3. And finally. Excuses.

This complaint is a short, but prudent one. The writing quality is mediocre at best. One of the biggest rules of any creative work, but particularly writing, art, and filmmaking, is that your audience is smarter than you think. Leave things open for interpretation. Leave opportunity for ponderance, and analysis. Show, don't tell.

Dead Inside is all tell, with nothing to show. Our narrator is a loser, but Morrison doesn't let us own it. Instead, excuses are made; the most infuriating example of this is after our narrator has finished fornicating with a poor, lifeless victim. The section goes:

"... but my lovers are all equipped with the best birth control the world can offer. As in, dead reproductive systems. I know that goes without saying, but I like to say it." (p. 21)

If it goes without saying, then don't say it. The segment would have been entirely fine without that last remark; if anything, it would have been better, and bolstered the narrator's character as a whole! And this is only one of the outright examples I have of this characterization.

The bitter, dark humor of our narrator would have been brilliantly given if the quote ended at "dead reproductive systems." We would have been left with the pure objectification and lack of emotion our narrator possesses, how he sees dead bodies purely as anatomical tools for his own peak control and pleasure, his own performance. We as the audience would have been victims of him as well, subjected to listen to the gross things he says and does and entirely unable to resist it-- pure puppets for his sick fantasies, just like the corpses he violates. It would have illustrated an actual level of mystique and unsettling nature to the relationship between narrator and narrated and audience. The novel's ongoing themes of fetish and object, the definitions of violation, it all would have been so interesting if only the narrator didn't say something so juvenilely self-aware every five seconds, like he's vying for our attention and approval. Look!!, Morrison makes our narrator constantly wave his hands in our face like a child, Look!! Isn't that fucked up!! Look at how fucked up I can be! Tell me I'm gross, tell me I'm weird!! Look at how gross that is, right!! That's scary, right??

No. It's annoying, and it gets old before it even got a chance to start.

Again, I'm 25 pages into a 191 page book. It's mid as fuck. I hope it turns around, but I don't think it will-- I can see from only 15% where this story is going, I bet I can plot out most if not the entire rest of the book. I think the concept is one spooky "what-if" that goes no deeper than that. Honestly, I'm really disappointed. I wanted to be disturbed. I don't have much motivation to keep reading this book except the pervasive nagging of my soul to finish most books I pick up. Plus, I want to know if I'm wrong about how dog this has so far turned out to be.