Really?

I flatter myself that up to this particular moment in world history, my blogs have been thoughtful, sober, and even-handed. Where I have encountered a book which did not really live up to my expectations (Psycho) or which I thought wasn't always quite up to snuff in the prose-writing or pacing departments (The Church of Dead Girls) I have elected to look past those flaws and concentrate on what I thought was effective. I fancied that like the reformed Scrooge, I should be quick to see virtue and slow to reprove fault. That I should be as good a man as the old city knew. Should give half-crowns to scampering Cockney kids and send enormous Christmas geese to the Crachit family so Tiny Tim could walk again. Should frolic among the isles of Barnes & Noble scattering pixie-dust upon row after row of books that whose contents would in most cases have better been utilized in toilet paper. Should settle rose-colored glasses firmly upon my nose as I gallop about the East End on my unicorn, singing "Let He Who Is Without Sin Cast The First Stone."

Then I started The Sculptor.

Suddenly the happy-go-lucky version Miles Watson, do-gooder and literary Freemason, screamed in agony. Falling to the floor, he writhed as his nervous system exploded into one immense threadwork of fiery pain. And when the spasms of pain wracking his body finally passed, he crawled to a mirror and, pulling it down to his own debased level, saw in the reflection not his own ruggedly handsome (ahem) face, but the hideously villainous visage of Mr. Hyde. And Mr. Hyde wasn't just the Mr. Hyde of Dr. Jekyll but a hybrid of that deformed goon and Jame "Buffalo Bill" Gumb from The Silence of the Lambs. In other words, a pissed-off psycho who throws shitty novels down a dry well and then tells them to put the lotion in the basket while sharpening his triple-edged bayonet.

This book sucked.

It sucked so badly, in fact, that trying to criticize any one point of it reminded me of a line I heard in a movie about Vietnam. The character played by Fred Ward is tired of listening to complaints from two of his men, played by Willem Defoe and Gregory Hines. He says: "Here we are in a sewer, surrounded by shit, and you two are complaining about every little turd!" There literally wasn't a single thing about this book that I liked, except one, and even that made me angry for petty personal reasons I will disclose later. But since I'm bound to carry out my assignment of reviewing this book, I will review it, in the manner of a Roman lanista "reviewing" a disobedient gladiator with a nine-headed iron whip.

On the macroscopic level, the book suffers from crap-itis of the prose. Gregory Funaro may be whatever you like -- diligent researcher, lover of Rennaissance art, all-around nice guy -- but to quote Harlan Ellison, he can't write for sour owl poop. Nearly everything he attempts to do from a purely aesthetic, stylistic standpoint fails. But unlike some bad prose-writers, who have a certain charisma to their writing, so that even when you know you are reading crapola you kind of nod and smile along with it as you would to a guilty-pleasure pop song, Funaro's prose is simply lifeless, unimaginative and boring. As Jenn Loring pointed out in her own merciless review, the author's descriptions are utterly unevocative. George Orwell would have had a field day wrenching examples of stale, hackneyed, or simply boring word choices from the pages of this novel. Likewise, his dialogue, to quote Harrison Ford, "has the cadence of the typewriter." It simply clanks along, looking like DIALOGUE and sounding, insomuch as it can be described, like ten pounds of panther shit in a five pound bucket. I realize that not every novelist chooses to use realistic-sounding dialogue -- indeed, many authors revel in stylized dialogue which bears no relation to how people really talk. But the operative word there is stylized. Possessing style. Funaro's dialogue is without style to a degree that would make the writer of a technical manual hang his head in teary-eyed shame. C3P0...no, Artoo-frickin'-deetoo spoke with greater humanity than the clanking cacophony that is Sam Markham. I honestly question whether he was really speaking, or just unwinding enormous amounts of paper-tape out of his gob like a fucking 19th century stock ticker.

Then we come to the characters. Let's shove aside the Sculptor himself. Another well-heeled genius serial killer blah blah blah bippitiy boppity boo. Howzabout Special Agent Markham? I think he's meant to impress the reader, particularly the female reader, with his combination of intellectual-physical prowess and square-jawed good looks and ooooooh, his tragic personal history. If so, how effing stupid does he think his female audience is? This man has all the depth of a bas-relief carving of Dudley Doorite and about as much charisma. Just a tired heroic cliche. Likewise, Dr. Hildebrandt is, save for her mixed-race ancestry, utterly unorginal, a FEMALE LEAD right out of Central Casting. Indeed, the decision to make her biracial came off to me as a gimmick rather than part of an organic process. The Koreans possess a very complex culture and, traditionally, some very definite views about racial identity; making Cathy half-Korean was a perfect way to introduce depth and flavor to this character. She might have possessed some insight into the Sculptor by way of understanding what it is like to exist in two worlds without belonging strictly to either -- like Spock in Star Trek, or Angel in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But it never really happened. The opportunity was wasted. As were so many others.

It has been pointed out that Funaro isn't exactly into the "off-screen killing." I could bash him for his lack of subtlety -- refer him, for example, to Red Dragon, which when it comes to gruesome detail is really an extended strip tease -- but my punching arm is getting tired. Suffice to say that writing good horror is a lot like playing poker. You've got to know when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em. Stephen King, in the Danse Macabre I love to quote so much, tells us that there are three kinds of scary entertainment: terror movies, horror movies and gross-outs. The last of these is the easiest to achieve. In The Sculptor Funaro, when you blow aside all the psycho-forensic-art-historical smoke, aims more or less for the gross out. That Gregg Olsen would mention this book in the same breath with The Silence of the Lambs is to me like comparing the fingerpaintings of a drunken Sumatran rat-monkey with the paintings of, well, Michaelangelo.

Coming back to the villain, I was embittered by the fact that Funaro chose a crazy artist who uses human beings as material for his works. For some years I've been toiling off-and-on with a short story called "Medium" in which the main character does just precisely this -- although unlike Funaro, most of what he does to his victims happens "off screen." Now, reading this travesty of a horror-thriller, I am reluctant even to bother trying to finish it. If some editor tells me that I'm ripping off The Sculptor, I'm liable to get stabby on his punk ass.

Now, because I really have to end this ranting at some point, I'd like to point out that the endings -- yes, endings -- of this novel are appallingly predictable and cliched. We have seen the last minute rescue of the damsel in distress and the missing body ruse a million Goddamned times. At least in Dragon the false ending is followed by one which is utterly decisive. In this case we get a hackneyed open-door finale right out of one of the later Friday the 13th films. Gee, I wonder if we'll see the Sculptor again? Well, actually, in my case, I won't, because I'd rather be hurled into a wood-chipper than go through the Funaro Treatment again.

I realize that by now I have probably offended the hell out of everyone who liked this book. If so, I crave your pardon. I realize that all literary taste is subjective; some of you disliked Red Dragon, which I would place at or near the top of the greatest novels I have ever read or hope to read. It probably would have been sufficient for me to say you say tomato I say tomato and call the whole thing off; but in this case I just couldn't keep my knife in its scabbard. I honestly thought this book a walking, talking case for a complete moratorium on the writing of serial-killer books for a period of ten to twelve years. A season of rest during which this increasingly played-out and exhausted subgenre could renew itself. And thus inflamed, I'm not the type to keep my mouth shut, though the good gods know many would be happier if I did.

In closing, I well and truly dislike potshotting other authors, and I think my previous blogs show that I'd rather be the reformed Scrooge or the philanthropic Dr. Jekyll than the "are there no workhouses, are there no prisons" Scrooge or Mr. Hyde. But sometimes I read a book whose mediocrity just pisses me off. And this one did.