"I have to make you the saddest man alive. A dead man caught in the body of a living one."

Es complicado escribir sobre Steve Erickson, independientemente de lo difícil que se me hace escribir sobre un autor que me interesa mucho, se hace raro porque es muy complejo describir la forma en que Erickson extrapola este mundo en el que vivimos al mundo de los sueños, porque terminada cualquiera de las novelas de las que he leído suyas, he tenido la sensación de que ha querido narrar todo un universo de acontecimientos bajo la premisa de un sueño. En el caso de las novela que me ocupa sus personajes aparecen y desaparecen entre las diferentes lineas temporales, presente, pasado y futuro, viajan en el tiempo en unos mundos que siempre andan derrumbándose, recorren mundos postapocalípticos, realidades distópicas o transformando el curso de la historia en historia alternativa, de alguna forma desafía los géneros marcados y llegado un punto no sabes si es ciencia ficción, realismo mágico o simplemente la historia de unos personajes reconvertidos en fantasmas cruzando mundos paralelos. Se le clasifica dentro de la literatura posmodernista porque estamos obsesionados en encasillarlo todo en compartimentos, pero este es un término en el cual Erickson no se siente cómodo y si buceamos en alguna entrevista suya, para nada le gusta que le encasillen en el posmodernismo y si nos fijamos bien, su esencia es clásica, sobre todo por la forma en que concibe las historias de amor: obsesivas, idealizadas y que perduran en la memoria del tiempo.

"You from the city? said the boatman. Which city? said Blaine after a moment. I've come from a lot of cities. I've come looking for a woman."

Podríamos considerar su estructura como circular porque el primer capítulo comienza en 3ª persona con Marc, y muy poco después nos adentramos en la historia de Banning Jainlight, su padre, contada en 1ª persona para finalmente concluir de nuevo con Marc, en una especie de bucle atemporal. Banning Jainlight nace en 1917 y se cría en una granja en Pensylvania y tiene la habilidad de visionar su tiempo a través de una ventana. Escapa de su familia muy jóven y se traslada Nueva York donde se convierte en escritor de historias pulp, más concretamente pornográficas. Las historias de Banning usan como modelo a Dania, una mujer misteriosa a la que ha idealizado y pronto llaman la atención del llamado Cliente X, que lo contrata para que siga escribiendo y enviarlas a Alemania donde están muy solicitadas. Pronto Banning se ve obligado a huir a Europa, donde el cliente X, se convierte en el cliente Z (Adolf Hitler), obsesionado porque siga escribiendo historias usando de modelo a Geli Raubal, su sobrina que se suicidó una década atrás en extrañas circunstancias. La historia de amor de Hitler con su sobrina es ya sobradamente conocida, pero Erickson la usa aquí como base para las historias que escribe Banning Jainlight porque sin que él lo sepa, a través de sus historias eróticas y bizarras, consigue cambiar el curso de la historia en la que está implicada Alemania en la 2ª Guerra Mundial. De pronto la novela se ha convertido en otra cosa, una especie de distopía o realidad alternativa muy a lo Philip K. Dick.

“I looked out my window onto the street, the same street, the same buildings I always see, the windows that stare back at my own; and it was different. The moment was a different moment, of a different now. What I saw from my window was the other Twentieth Century rolling on by my own, like the other branch of a river that's been forked by an island long and narrow and knifelike: the same river but flowing by different shorelines and banks.”

Condensar o intentar describir esta novela argumentalmente es casi una inutilidad porque realmente de lo que se trata es de dejarte embarcar en la mente de Banning Jainlight y seguirle, aunque su vida está repleta de saltos porque no está contada linealmente: memoria, recuerdos, sueños…, el lector nunca sabe realmente donde está en ese momento físicamente Banning, si es un sueño o es realidad puramente física. Hay una especie de angustia existencial por un mundo que se desmorona pero al mismo tiempo Erickson consigue recrear momentos atmosféricos a través de la sensualidad, del erotismo y de la búsqueda de una mujer obsesivamente. Porque en esta historia hay continúamente un hombre buscando, ansiando volver a revivir, a encontrar a una mujer idealizada, no sabemos si real o imaginada.

"I got tired of being men´s dreams. I got tired of being Paul’s, I got tired o being Joaquin´s. I was tired of being yours when I didn´t even know I was yours. I never meant to be anyone´s dream does it have to be my dream too? It was your dream.”

Steve Erickson está continuamente deconstruyendo los límites físicos, sexuales, históricos, temporales de este mundo, desmitifica cánones establecidos, deconstruye la historia y nos recuerda que ese pasado puede ser el presente. Al igual que Banning Jainlight es capaz de visionar la historia alternativa a través de una ventana, el estilo atmosférico y casi hipnótico de Erickson nos transporta a esos otros mundos como si el mismo lector fuera el voyeur obsesionado por reconstruir estas lineas temporales. Y al igual que en Dias Entre Estaciones de nuevo tenemos la simbologia del color azul, y de Wyndeaux y su estación de tren, esa ciudad que parece suspendida en el tiempo. ¡¡Erickson es lo más!!!

“We arrive at the Wyndeaux train station the morning of the next day. Wyndeaux is a medieval city as blue as the one we left sinking in the italian lagoon..."

https://kansasbooks.blogspot.com/2021...

3.5 stars

this summer i get to write about this book for 40 glorious pages.

i have no idea exactly what i'm gonna say yet but in effect it will amount to:
steve erickson i <3 you.

There is no proper way to describe this book...yet I know that the tale of bending time and realism and Hitler and the black clock ticking away with the woman who dances and men fall - well, it will stick with me quite a while.

The first book chronologically where Erickson really brings all his imaginative ideas into a satisfying unity, albeit one where elements like characters and definable boundaries of reality and fantasy bleed together in fascinating way.
A tour de force that is in desperate need of rediscovery.

An abstract time-skipping pseudo-WWII-revisionist-pulp-horror novel, with Nazis, ghosts, sex, gangsters, clubs, giant gingers, murderers, detectives, revolutionaries, train-hoppers, and Hitler, among many other passing elements of all types.
It intertwines much of the darker elements of the 20th century, rewriting them to reassess them to maybe put into context that things can always be worse and, maybe, somewhere, sometime, that alternate chain of events has or is taking place simultaneously with our own perception of time and concept of history.
Erickson creates an atmosphere thick enough to dip your finger into, and, even when you can’t even quite keep up with his nonlinear narrative, you’re perpetually engrossed by its strange momentum and often leisurely bursts of extreme violence and shocking imagery, all the while never being deprived of a slick sense of slight humor and pulpy energy.

It’s hard to know where to start with a review of this one because rather than being a dark book that trods along a path with chapters as mile markers, it was more of a dark, swirling, psychedelic maelstrom of violence. Each time I opened it to dive in it was more like entering a dream state.
Time to toss out the things it reminded me of in a list: Phillip K Dick & High tower, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Dhalgren, Gravity’s Rainbow, Slaughterhouse Five, Burroughs (to some extent), The Tunnel. Also I’m sure a ton of sci-fi and magical/fantasy influences/resemblances that I couldn’t say because I don’t read a ton of sci-fi.
A lot of the book was left open ended, or I just didn’t get it, but I definitely enjoyed the journey. A book about violence, power, and fascism. A book that blurred lines between fiction and dreams and the real world. A guy who wrote pulp porn for Hitler in a world where the war dragged on another 25+ years (or which ended in a German victory in the 70s, I can’t tell). We watched Hitler age into something old, pathetic and unrecognizable, not even worth the effort to put him out of his misery. I also don’t know who the captain was, who the girl in blue was, and what Marc’s story really meant, but I’ll read some other interpretations and ponder it.
Definitely a good read, a startling and disturbing piece of art. I will be sure to check out some other Steve Erickson books.

This is pretty boring I might give up on it soon

Parallax pulp from an alternate 20th century, where time bends and the thinnest rays of light escape. The novel takes a phenol bath merging creator and creature, subject and object in a kind of Pygmalion ouroboros. Formally inventive, porous and twisty- sometimes overblown, the narrative voice often felt schematic- a design for a brilliant novel.

Tours of the Black Clock kertoo pienen alkupohjustuksen jälkeen Banning Jainlightista. Hän syntyy vuonna 1917 perheeseen, johon ei oikein istu. Punapäinen Banning on jättiläinen mieheksi ja päätyy vauhdikkaiden käänteiden jälkeen New Yorkiin.

1930-luvun New Yorkissa Jainlight elättää itsensä ensin sekatyömiehenä, mutta päätyy sitten lehtikioskin myyjäksi, gangsterin juoksupojaksi ja lopulta kirjoittamaan tarinoita. Pian Jainlight erikoistuu pornografiaan ja löytää kiinnostuneita asiakkaita Euroopasta. Asiakkaina on saksalaisia suurmiehiä, joista ei käytetä nimiä: puhutaan vain asiakas X:stä ja asiakas Z:sta, joiden erikoistunutta pornografista makua Jainlight ruokkii.

Jainlightin kirjoittamat seksifantasiat eivät ole aivan merkityksettömiä: ne kiehtovat lukijoidensa mielikuvitusta niin, että historian kulku muuttuu. Saksalaiset toteavatkin operaatio Barbarossan huonoksi ideaksi ja mielenkiinto suuntautuukin länteen. Maailma muuttuu.

Tours of the Black Clock on omituinen kirja. Se kertoo 1900-luvusta ja pahuudesta, ja kun puhutaan 1900-luvusta ja pahuudesta, tiedätte varmasti, kuka Jainlightin asiakas on. Tarina vaeltelee vuosikymmeniltä toiselle, kuvaa elämää Wienissä ennen ja jälkeen natsien. Steve Erickson on uskollinen tyylilleen; kyllä tästä tekijänsä tuntee. Kiehtova, omituinen kirja, joka haastaa lukijaansa. (22.4.2014)

The general idea of the plot is good. In the hands of Paul Auster or Haruki Murakami, it would have been brilliant.

I discovered Steve Erickson thanks to a review of Zeroville in Rain Taxi. Zeroville was a minor revelation; I wanted to foist it upon every novel-reading person I came across for the next couple months. I found an author new to me with a substantial back catalog worth seeking out. A couple years later I bought Tours of the Black Clock at Myopic Bookstore in Chicago. If you ever find yourself in the middle of the country, check it out. It's a good used bookstore, and just down the street from Quimby's (if I remember correctly). I was in Chicago to see Throbbing Gristle, and this book seems to have that same dark, creepy, mind-bending quality that is found in the best Throbbing Gristle songs. Hitler, pornography, bloody icky death. Once upon a time I worked in a record store in downtown Minneapolis, and I accidentally made a little girl cry by playing Hamburger Lady. The weekend I bought this book (probably about 4 years ago), Myopic was flooded; a whole section of the store closed off because of possible water damage. This is pretty fitting for a Steve Erickson novel--there is a flood in this book, and rising waters play an even bigger part in a couple of the others. Anyway, if you already like Steve Erickson, read this book. If not, start somewhere else--Zeroville or Days Between Stations or Sea Came In At Midnight.

I'm a reader, not a writer. As such I have enjoyed Goodreads immensely, although I don't interact much. I love reading the reviews that my friends write, and I spend too much time every week reading the reviews of complete strangers. As a lifelong reader, I am bummed that Goodreads was bought by Amazon. They are a company with more than a few questionable practices, and in my opinion they have changed the book world for the worse. I think it's understandable that people are worried that any changes Amazon makes to Goodreads will benefit Amazon and won't improve the experience for the average user.

I don't think anyone is going to read this non-review but if you do, I urge you to check out books from your local libraries. Keep an eye out in laundry rooms, truck-stops, and stoops for free books. Borrow books from family and friends. Buy books at used bookstores, garage sales, estate sales, library sales, thrift stores, junk stores. If you must buy a new book, buy it from a locally-owned, independent bookstore. If you don't know where the nearest one is, this seems like a good resource for finding out: http://www.indiebound.org/.

Also, I don't believe in e-readers. I believe in printed matter. Fuck Kindle.