GUEST POST: Mike Thorn talks Nemesis, Spontaneous Combustion & The Winding Sheet @MikeThornWrites
Excited to have Mike Thorn as a Guest today!
He's the author of the horror short story collection, Darkest Hours.
(Stay tuned for my review - I'm eager to dig into this!)
Check out his book below and then continue to see his awesome revisits to a favorite book, film and album released in 1990, the year he came into this world .
In the bleak landscape of Darkest Hours, people make decisions that lead them into extreme scenarios – sometimes bizarre, often horrific, always unexpected. Between this book’s covers you will find academics in distress; monsters
abused by people; people terrorized by demons; ghostly reminiscences; resurrected trauma; and occult filmmaking. Ranging from satirical to dreadful, these stories share a distinct voice: urgent, sardonic, brutal, but always empathetic.
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The Year I Was Born:
A Favorite Book, Film and Album
Released in 1990
For Where
the Reader Grows, I decided to go
back and revisit one favorite book, film and album released the year I was born
(1990).
BOOK:
Nemesis, by Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oates has written prolifically about
violence in its many ugly permutations—physical, systemic, emotional and
sexual. Her insight, empathy and inimitable prose style come together to form
an unmatched force in contemporary American literature. Her 1990 novel Nemesis, published under the pseudonym
Rosamond Smith, focuses on the violent exploitation of power within an academic
context. Dealing explicitly with rape and brutal psychological abuse, Nemesis addresses the ways in which
institutions and systems can let victims down in order to protect celebrated
oppressors. The plot might sound draining, and it is, but it’s a profound
social and individual examination of toxic masculine power gone unchecked.
Twenty-eight years later, it sadly comes across as more relevant and pressing
than ever. Oates isn’t always “easy” to read, but she matches the affective
power of the best horror writers and approaches her material with sensitivity
and grace. This is one of my favorite novels.
FILM:
Spontaneous Combustion, directed by
Tobe Hooper
Tobe Hooper is most famous for his horror films,
especially The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974),
‘Salem’s Lot (1979) and Poltergeist (1982). While Spontaneous Combustion partially meets
that genre’s criteria, it plays more like hyper-stylized melodrama than
anything else. It’s both a love story and a character study of a man (played by
the great Brad Dourif) who discovers he has developed intense and, yes, explosive aberrations because his
deceased parents were once used in an experiment involving atomic bombs. Hooper
visualizes the protagonist’s emotional experiences through expressive lighting
and camerawork, proving once again that he is above all an image-based
filmmaker who draws from genre for its excessive possibilities. Tragically, the
great Tobe Hooper passed away last year, but he left behind a strange and
mysterious and beautiful body of work. If you ask me, Spontaneous Combustion is one of his very best.
ALBUM:
The Winding Sheet, by Mark Lanegan
Bio:
Mike
Thorn is the author of the short fiction collection Darkest
Hours and he co-authors the horror-themed column “Devious Dialogues”
with Anya Stanley for Vague Visages.
He lives in Calgary.
Darkest Hours universal Amazon link: http://mybook.to/DHMT
Author website - mikethornwrites.com
Twitter - @MikeThornWrites
Goodreads - https://www.goodreads.com/
Twitter - @MikeThornWrites
Goodreads - https://www.goodreads.com/
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