Erickson's prose is intimidating and beyond gorgeous. He makes the story accessible to his readers and he doesn't sacrifice clarity for ornamentation. When I read his work, I panic, because I can't write prose like that. Not yet anyway. I'm also comforted because his writing teaches me so much about language I'm choosing to use in my own work,so I feel like I have work to do with my own writing, and that his prose is something to learn from and aspire to. My prose can always improve. I love his balance between what is written and what doesn't have to be written. That's what lingers. I want to write the kind of prose that relies on substance and is considerate of the readers intellect. . I respect the elegance and the timelessness of his work and know I would rather be that kind of writer instead of just the flavor of the week, the month, the year, or even the decade. His work stands alone and speaks for itself, while other writers have to constantly remind their readers just how good THEY are in an endless circus of appearances, talks, and other stunts. They rely on their own hype and then they start to believe it. I want my work to communicate and connect as well as it possible can, and bloody hell, may I never ever believe my own hype. I just want to tell the story. My only loyalty is to the story.

First re-read - July 09 after finishing the book in March 08, needs another re-read to fully make sense, but this time the story of Banning Jainlight and Dania from split universes, one a pornographer for Client Z whose writings about Dania are seen by Z as being about the love of his life Geli and send history on a careening course, the other a Russian exile and dancer for whom men literally die for started cohering better; still a masterpiece of dark imagination with mesmeric writing that you cannot put down...

Aside from Gravity's Rainbow, this has one of the most resonant opening lines I've read. There's a fable-like quality to all of Steve Erickson's books - really elegant sentences that follow elliptical paths - that makes the kinds of connections only accessible in altered states. Although his other novels do this to a greater extent, the post-apocalyptic worlds, he creates have a really heavy sense of atmosphere that remind me of even sadder versions of Bellona in Stephen Donaldson's Dhalgren. If you've ever seen Lars Von Trier's The Element Of Crime, that's pretty much exactly what I imagined a Steve Erickson-imagined city to look like, but it's so dreamlike I've tried to watch it twice, and passed out both times. Still, someone one wrote to Erickson to say they'd read three chapters of his novel and now couldn't find their own bathroom, so it's quite fitting I guess.

A darkly mythic, genre-twisting tale about art's complicated relationship with identity, morality, and history - with Hitler's personal pornographer as the protag. In this case, "Hitler gets the girl!" is actually a valid spoiler. Or is it? The story unfolds in the creases between two 20th centuries - one where the Nazis won, and one where they didn't. And maybe a third, featuring herds of miniature silver buffalo and an ice machine that just keeps chunking out big blocks of ice, unattended, down through the ages. Weird but good.

Warren Ellis on THE TOURS OF THE BLACK CLOCK:

"On The Speaking Of Names: TOURS OF THE BLACK CLOCK, Steve Erickson"

https://warrenellis.ltd/books/on-the-...

I'm a fan of Erickson's Zeroville and enjoy him much more when he's referencing film a little more directly. Here we get windows and war and large Third Man silhouettes on the streets of Vienna, but I found myself nodding off. Also, the ripple effect of men's boners on history and the fabric of space and time really doesn't interest me. If I'd read Gravity's Rainbow, I'd get all pretentious and say 'Pynchon does it better.' Bummer.

Surreal. Fantastic. Only two Erickson novels still to read but I’m convinced he’s really written one really long book.

I can’t say I understood this novel entirely, but it offered-up a great analysis of the 20th (and 21st) century, which made dragged me through an emotional thicket. I feel that Erickson was ahead of his time, writing a novel that tortured me with its imagery and saddened me with its message.

I feel I want to re-read it again at some point to grasp it better (but that’s likely because I left too much time between reading-sessions on this one), despite being too scared to experience it again, like a good horror.

It’s too well-written to not be given 5 stars.

Impressively gripping for such a convoluted story. Also impressively including one of the most famous figures of the 20th Century while never referring to him by name. It got off to a slow start, but by the end I was being pulled along for the ride. My one peeve here is that he says "awhile" about eighty times in this book, while "for a while" would seem to be the more nature choice to me. So, yeah. I'll probably read another one of his books, but I must rest... awhile.

A twilight trip to an alternative version of the 20th Century Steve Erickson claims kinship with authors Philip K. Dick and Thomas Pynchon, and its easily to see why. Like those authors, he subtly twists the nature of reality and history until it resembles the inner (both philosophical and psychological) landscapes of his characters. This novel is about white-haired Marc and his mother, who live on a small island in the middle of a fog-shrouded river in the Pacific Northwest. They have an estranged relationship with each other, stemming from the fact that Marc doesn't know who his father is, and his mother will not speak to him about her past. One day, he comes home and finds her with a dead man at her feet. The image so disturbs him that he will not set foot on the island for about 20 years. He takes over the ferry that shuttles tourists back and forth. He finally goes back to the hotel where his mother lives, in search of a mysterious girl who has not stepped back onto the return ferry to the mainland, and runs into his mother. The ghost of the dead man is still at her feet, and he tells both mother and son of his strange history.

Banning Jainlight was the bastard son of a farmer and his Native American slave mistress in the earlier part of the century. He ends up burning down the farm, killing one of his half-brothers, and crippling both his father and his step-mother for the cruelty they inflicted on him. He runs away to New York City, and several years later, ends up in Vienna, Austria, where he writes pornography for a powerful client in the newly ascendant Nazi Regime. He bases his writings on the strange, surreal sexual encounters he has with a young woman who lives across the street from him. In his writings, he transforms her features and her name to resemble those of the client's -- who is, of course, Hitler -- long lost love. Bear in mind, that this is just a brief description of this novel.

Jainlight's story sparks off the no-less compelling story of Marc's mother, that moves from pre-Revolutionary Russia, sub-Saharan Africa, and Post-war New York City. Moving across dreams and reality, fantasy and history, this dense novel weaves together such unlikely themes as relationships between lovers and parents; the nature of good and evil; and the quest for identity. The images and instance in this novel are numerous and unforgettable: a woman who can kill men with the wild beauty of her dancing and menstruates flower petals; a city that's in the middle of a lagoon, and covered by blue tarps; a burial ceremony where the dead are hung upside-down on trees until they can speak their names; a herd of silver buffalo who run through the plains of Africa and North America. The writing is lovely and lyrical.

I read an interview with David Foster Wallace in which he says that this book is "really fucking good."

That's enough for me to consider reading it.

Surreal mindfuck about what it means to create art, and an alternate history of World War II. Hitler, naturally, is a significant character.