From archive (archive)
Subject: Clive Barker's Mess
From: a710@mindlink.UUCP (Crawford Kilian)
Organization: MIND LINK! - British Columbia, Canada
Date: 10 Feb 90 17:37:56 GMT



Kilian, Barker Review


HORROR NOVEL IS HORRIBLE ALL RIGHT
by Crawford Kilian
THE GREAT AND SECRET SHOW, by Clive Barker.  Harper & Row, $24.95.
What am I going to tell my writing students?
They come to me learn to how to write commercial fiction, including horror
novels.
I tell them they need a believable premise, interesting characters with serious
motivations, an urgent sense of something priceless at stake, and tight
plotting.  That, I tell them, is what you
need to succeed in commercial fiction.
Along comes Clive Barker, a hugely successful British horror writer.  His new
novel, The Great and Secret Show, will surely sell as well as the earlier ones
like Weaveworld.
Its horrible, all right.  And its horrifying that such a mess should be
written, sold, published and read.
Enough trees have been killed to produce copies of this book, so I wont
compound the crime with a summary of the plot except to say its based on a mix
of scientific howlers and pure gibberish.  Barker just needs to give godlike
powers to a psychopath, and he doesnt care how he does it.
The psychopath wants to invade everyones dreams, and starts by taking over a
small California city   In the process he creates various nightmare creatures
out of peoples subconscious fears and sets them to attacking other people.
Both he and the supposed heroes of the story lack even the substance of
cardboard.  These are all cut from below-standard Styrofoam.  No one says
anything thoughtful or even plausible; perhaps in homage to Steven King,
however, they use a lot of four-
letter words.
Like an automatic doughnut machine, the book extrudes some kind of attempted
gross-out every few pages.  Just about every time the gross-out fails.  No
matter how many are assailed by the psychopaths creepy beasties, nothing like
horror ever emerges because its impossible to take the victims any more
seriously than the beasties.
Dimly visible through the silliness is some kind of intent by Clive Barker to
create a symbolic version of himself as invader of dreams and master of horror.
That may be an occupational hazard of megawriters who take their sales figures
as proof of their literary power.  But in this, as in his attempt to entertain
and frighten, Barker fails.
I still dont know what to tell my writing students.
This review appeared in the February 11 Vancouver Province.  Crawford Kilian is
a Province columnist and the author of 9 science-
fiction novels.