Poppy Z. Brite's "Exquisite Corpse" is a huge oriental rug woven with threads of infinite colour and texture. You find yourself pacing along it's seams endlessly, aching to be let in. Every character, each descriptive sensory, is amplified against your skin. The imagery in this novel is tainted bright mental energy. As smooth as sleep, or perhaps the darkness that enfolds it. Every word, every slight movement churned inside my stomach like some exquisite drug lulling me to sleep by kneading my muscles, and then parting them like butter, with stain-less steel blades, reveling in the "weeping crimson mouths."
This novel makes her last two seem incredibly romantic, almost distant....almost. She writes an almost altered reality. The characters reflect in my own opinion, Poppy Z. Brite the person. Not the Author, not the dancer, not the caretaker of mice, but the human being with the same wants and passions as the rest of us. I felt as though I peered inside her soul and touched my toe to the liquid consciousness of her thoughts.
For example, one of her characters, "Lucas Ransom", a writer, and I quote indirectly from memory, says, "....hated every critic who missed the point...." Isn't this what many of us consider a glimpse into the mind of a HUMAN Poppy Z. Brite. Not the immortal writer.
There are also delicate characters such as one named "Birdy". This character took a strikingly familiar description related to Poppy's second book, "Drawing Blood". The character in "Drawing Blood" was "Trevor McGee," an artist. I'm guessing but I think he appeared in "Exquisite Corpse" as a mercy to Poppy's readers. A familiar face to embrace in the whirl wind of this AIDS and death riddled book. Something that would lead me to believe are the following lines:
Could this character have been a mix of "Skeletal Sammy" and "Trevor McGee"? Who is to know?
There was also the appearance of "Zach" from "Drawing Blood" as the slut of the French Quarter. So I guess...
All I can say is, "Poppy, when is novel number four dance into print? My guts can't wait to feel it."
Brite, Poppy Z.
EXQUISITE CORPSE
Simon & Schuster, 240 pp.
$21.00 Aug. 1996
ISBN 0-684-82254-7
2 July 1996
CHOKING GRIP OF A KILLER
Mary Loudon is both enthralled and sickened by the graphic
detail of a homosexual murder spree
If you feel nauseous reading the above, then pity me and my sandwich. But not too much. For while EXQUISITE CORPSE is the first novel I have ever read that made me feel physically sick, it is also one which held my attention utterly rapt until its ghastly end. The subject matter is foul but the narrative is arresting nonetheless, its strength the result of Brite's shocking, vivid prose; of the colour and texture of her beautiful writing; of her wit, her intelligence and the complexity of even her most heinous characters.
Lots of people would hate this book, would think it unpleasant, offensive, vile. Is it? Well, yes, of course it is. Violence is. But while Brite's descriptions of sexual murder are gruesome beyond belief, her attempt to explore what might drive a man to it, over and over again, is disturbing, intriguing and may or may not be close to some sort of truth.
I confess that I wondered what I might have felt had this novel been
written by a man. It should not make any difference, but I think it
probably did. I suspect that if it had been, I might have found EXQUISITE
CORPSE alarming for a whole host of other reasons, and I wonder whether
this is sexist of me. Perhaps it is, but perhaps I was also seeking
comfort in the fact that this tale of lurid homosexual destructive fantasy
was indeed merely fantasy, written as it was by a woman. If that is the
case, then it is a testimony to the seductive power of Brite's writing;
for however shocking it is, EXQUISITE CORPSE is a book to devour. But not
while you are eating.
Come October, when this novel hits, the entire genre of the damned is going to receive an energizing transfusion. Brite takes the vampiric themes of estrangement and love of the dark and perfectly grafts them onto an underground punk subculture, casting a spell in wet lace and smudged eyeliner. These mutated vampires prefer their blood tinged with liqour, junk and Crucifix blotter acid. Her New Orleans-set tale takes us out of the decaying mansions and into the streets, bars, and herbal shops. Beautifully written in syringe-sharp language, this novel has the reader smelling the hot, spicy clove cigarettes and tasting the green flowing magic of sticky-sweet Chartreuse.
LOST SOULS plugs into the longing of suburban youth to escape mediocrity. Misguided and obsessed with death, these kids cultivate a uniform vampirish look by which they recognize kindred spirits. Traditional families no longer work for any of them: fortunately, they find the freedom to form new tribes and make up their own minds as to what constitutes evil. The fringe has always been the vampire's natural habitat, and as long as culture has a sharp cutting edge, vampires will be close by the wound, licking up the blood."
Copyright (c) 1992 by Starlog Communications International, Inc.
