I have almost no experience with the work of Clive Barker. I have seen a few movies based on his stories, and know his name. And that is it. A few days ago I was thumbing through my wife’s bookshelf and pulled Barker’s Weaveworld down and read the first few pages. I was stunned; both the prose and deep current of meaning were beautiful.
I haven’t read Weaveworld yet—it is an intimidating 700 pages—but I have read the opening few paragraphs a dozen or more times over the past few days. It captures the essence of how story relates to society, and how the story becomes an extension of the society that tells it. But Mr Barker writes it so much better…
“Nothing ever begins.
“There is no first moment; no single word or place from which this or any other story springs.
“The threads can always be traced back to some earlier tale, and to the tales that preceded that; though as the narrator’s voice recedes the connections will seem to grow more tenuous, for each age will want the tale told as if it were of its own making.
“Thus the pagan will be sanctified, the tragic become laughable; great lovers will stoop to sentiment, and demons dwindle to clockwork toys.
“Nothing is fixed. In and out a shuttle goes, fact and fiction, mind and matter woven into patterns that may have only this in common: that hidden among them is a filigree that will with time become a world.”
The problem with Clive Barker is that he was so good to begin with that there was almost nowhere to go but down. When the six volumes of "The Books of Blood" and his first novel, "The Damnation Game" appeared in the early to mid-80s, Barker was like a rookie baseball player who hit home runs in his first seven at-bats. He was just so good he knocked the entire genre on its ear. No one had ever seen anything like this before, and Barker had the impossible task of living up to it. And he couldn't. Nobody could have. And it's not so much that "Weaveworld" was a bad novel, it just wasn't what we wanted, or expected, from Barker. Mainly, it was fantasy rather than horror. Barker did go on to write some pretty good stuff, most notably "The Great and Secret Show" and "Everville", but if you're just getting to Barker I strongly urge you to start at the beginning.
ReplyDeleteMP. A very interesting analysis of Barker's work. I came into the horror genre after his fall from grace, and I was never really interested in reading him until I read the first few pages of WEAVEWORLD. I will put it on hold and find one of his early novels. Thank you for the information and the recommendation.
ReplyDeleteBen
MP. Clive Barker's mind does not revolve entirely around the trap of "horror" so many great authors start off but never intend to stay in. Now, a novel such as Weaveworld was really the training grounds, a nexus to Imajica, which is an amalgam of self-revelation littered with horrific imagery, wonderfully implemented themes of dark fantasy and the empathological enlightenment each of us dare seek in our own chaotic lives. Mr. Barker's imagination is not rooted in the mere act of "horrifying", but simply encountering the supernatural and in turn rediscovering the wonder of what it means to be a part of something other than the drab, rationed world of today. Weaveworld is an epic, but most certainly, the novel will curb your hunger for the monstrous, the erotic, the ethereal, the purposeful, and of course the ambivalent enmities prevalent in all of Barker's work. Romance, Horror, Children, Fantasy: Clive Barker truly covers all ground and continues to display a truly unique imaginative staple on whatever endeavor rears itself from his mind. There has been no "fall from grace", only an evolution in my opinion.
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