My apologies to Mr. Joseph Nassise, my fellow Storytellers, and to the regular Storytellers Unplugged readers, for failing to provide last month’s essay. This time of year is always crazy for me at work, but I can’t blame it all on work. This time of year also depresses me, and sometimes the will to write is as slim as my time to do it. It’s the cold mostly, but the shortened days and the extra dark take a toll on my mood and creativity.
Some people assume being a horror writer qualifies me as a creature of the dark, but that isn’t necessarily so. While I do most of my writing at night, I still need daylight to charge my batteries.
Maybe my Far Seeing Eye just doesn’t work in the dark.
I’m not getting esoteric on you, no metaphysics or magic talk here. The Far Seeing Eye I’m talking about isn’t something I hang around my neck like a talisman, or keep buried in the back yard, digging it up every full moon so I can hoot and holler and shake my dick at it.
It’s nothing special, really. Nothing too amazing. It’s just what I use to peek into other worlds. I’ve had it all my life, and have been using it since earliest recollection.
Not getting esoteric, my ass, I hear you thinking (or, more accurately, can imagine you thinking).
Honestly, I’m not.
Would I bullshit a bullshiter?
Before we move on, I feel I should qualify that last remark with the assumption that you:
A) Are a writer.
B) Wish to be a writer.
C) Are an enthusiastic reader.
A) Are a writer.
B) Wish to be a writer.
C) Are an enthusiastic reader.
Thus, you qualify as a bullshiter.
What is a fiction writer (whatever the genre) if not an unabashed, practicing bullshiter? Are you a wannabe writer, perhaps? Then I’ll refer to you as a Bullshiter in Waiting. Do you fall into the avid reader camp (my favorite camp, I might add - may you all live long lives, breed copiously, and make many more like you)? Then you, sir or ma’am, are a willful participant in this snow job. You’re not only allowing us to bullshit you, you are begging for it. You are an equal partner in this game of pretend.
Okay, so maybe I would bullshit a bullshiter.
That’s just fine though. There’s not a thing in the world wrong with a little recreational (or in the writer’s case, entrepreneurial) bullshiting.
Does Stephen King honestly expect us to believe in his vision of a world whose population is wiped out by a super virus called Captain Trips? How about JRR Tolkien’s Middle Earth, an even more outrageous world?
Complete and utter bullshit.
In the coldest and shortest of winter days, when I’m working those eleven and twelve hour days I love to bitch about so much, when my co-workers and I may sometimes go a few weeks without a day off (I know, what a wimp, eh?), when my batteries are all but dead flat, I almost believe that. When my Far Seeing Eye can’t look beyond the next week’s mountain of delivery tickets, or I’ve just got a plain old case of the winter blues, I can almost write off such amazing works as Stephen King’s The Stand, JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter Books, or F. Paul Wilson’s Repairman Jack novels as ingenious works of bullshit. With lesser works, the bullshit line of thought is a little easier to manage, but with great (or even just really good) works of fiction, there is a resonance that defeats the old humbug of disbelief.
When the weather turns fine again though, when I am most energized and productive, in other words, when my Far Seeing Eye is able to blink away the cobwebs and take in the world, fully recharged and alert, I can see past the marketing label publishers and retailers put on such works.
Folks on the selling end of this business call it fiction. Others, very unfortunate others in my opinion, call it made up bullshit, and this while they sit with their slack faces all but glued to a damn TV screen. Most just call them stories, regardless of genre, and to be perfectly honest, genre has very little to do with it. Stories are fine. Stories I can deal with. Stories entertain, take you away, and help you escape from reality, if only temporarily.
To me they are more than stories. I see something else in them, maybe because, for part of the year at least, I make them my business.
I see truth in them. Small truths sometimes, and sometimes (with great, or even just really good ones) great truths.
I see other worlds in them.
The same way I see other worlds with my Far Seeing Eye, and record them as best I can in my own stories.
Someone get the Thorazine. Mr. Knight’s cheese has finally slid off his cracker.
Okay, I don’t honestly expect you to believe I was seeing through the eyes of the Bogeyman when I wrote him into my novel Feral, or that a girl named Angel is living in small town Idaho, inspiring death and madness by her mere existence (Broken Angel). No sir, no ma’am. No more than I expect you to believe I saw the ghost of my murdered neighbor come out of my open closet door one night when I was five, maybe six years old. I don’t believe any of it either.
It’s all bullshit.
The cry of bullshit does nothing, however, to erase the memory of Sue Ellen, my slain neighbor, moving toward me as I lay in my bed, frozen in real and honest terror. To this day, my heart beats a little faster when I think of her eyes, closed at first, then open and turned to me. Silvery-white eyes, eyes like smoke, staring out of a face caught in an expression somewhere between anger and confusion.
I am almost certain I did not see the ghost of my dead neighbor that night, but I did see something.
At least, part of me saw something.
The same part of me still sees impossible things, and compels me to write them down on occasion, to share them.
Perhaps it’s the same Far Seeing Eye that showed Brian Keene a New York City ruled by zombies (a New York City that is maybe very close to our own, real, version), the same eye that stared back through worlds and time to show Douglas Clegg the true origin of the Vampire. The same eye that lets F. Paul Wilson see very clearly a man who may very well exist in our own world, a man called Jack, whose business is to stay out of sight, or the same eye that opened on In-World, Mid-World, End-World, and the Dark Tower itself for Stephen King.
Perhaps I’m still only bullshiting you.
It’s something to consider, at the very least. Something for you to ponder.
That eye has a name, a simple and familiar one, and if you can discover that name, you will know whether I’m telling you the truth (as I see it at least), yanking your chain, or maybe just going starkers.
The possibility that I’m just another internet nut flapping my gums is something else you might consider, if only for the potential entertainment value.
Since you’ve come this far with me, and assuming you are willing to take me at least a little seriously and follow me a bit farther, you will need to ponder the following as well.
The Far Seeing Eye is not enough. It’s all good and well to peek into other worlds, whether they are right next door to our own, or so far away that the view makes you dizzy.
To visit them, you need a door.
Brian Knight
8 Comments, Comment or Ping
Janet Berliner
=Someone get the Thorazine. Mr. Knight’s cheese has finally slid off his cracker.=
A memorable line. May I quote and/or paraphrase it?
–Janet
Feb 23rd, 2006
Brian
Certainly, Janet
It’s not original to me, though. Like most of my best lines, I stole it.
Feb 23rd, 2006
Mark Rainey
Good essay, Brian. My view into other worlds has gotten a bit fuzzy these days, though; I’m definitely needing new bifocals.
–M
Feb 23rd, 2006
David Niall Wilson
And the award for useing bullpuckey more times in one essay than anyone ever goes to (lol). The cheese sliding off the cracker WAS good..
DNW
Feb 23rd, 2006
Teresa
So the Thorazine, it’s some sort of ’spread’ that keeps the cheese on a cracker?
Feb 23rd, 2006
James Goodman
That was great even if it was a lot of bullshit.
Before we move on, I feel I should qualify that last remark with the assumption that you:
A) Are a writer.
B) Wish to be a writer.
C) Are an enthusiastic reader.
Isn’t C) kind of a pre-qualification for A) or B) for that matter?
Feb 23rd, 2006
Brian
Thanks Mark. Be sure to take care of that peeper buddy
You should have seen it before the edit, David
So the Thorazine, it’s some sort of ’spread’ that keeps the cheese on a cracker?
Something to that effect, Teresa
LOL! Thanks James.
Yes, you can assume that being A or B would naturaly make you a C, but being a C doesn’t by default make you an A or B.
Shit, this is like algebra. Hope I got that right!
Feb 24th, 2006
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