A Maybe Joke - Reviewing Chandler Morrison's "Dead Inside"

If you haven't read Chandler Morrison's Dead Inside and are sensitive about spoilers, it's maybe not the best idea to read my post before you've read this book, as I'm discussing things which might be considered spoilers. I just don't think knowing these would considerably reduce the enjoyment you can get out of it, as the beauty is inside the book, not in the description of its plot.

We're following a necrophile and a cannibal nearly falling in love. It sounds almost like a joke, and maybe it indeed is a joke on the author's part, albeit a morbid one.

It is rare that the namelessness of a main character has a meaning, a significance above and beyond giving them a sense of mystery or objectivity. In Chandler Morrison’s Dead Inside it is only later into the book that the namelessness of the lead character, a part-time security guard in a hospital, starts gradually making sense and unveils its true purpose, a meaningful one, which sheds light on every action and every reaction he generates: he doesn’t want to be seen, noticed, to exist even. Though it is a feeling surely everybody can understand to a certain extent, particularly the reader who grabbed this book, I’m not stating this so you’d think that the author uses that to create a sense of companionship or for the reader to be able to relate, to understand this listless figure. I'm stating it so you can see why someone would want to involve in sex with someone who can't see or notice them.

I was recently discussing another Morrison book, #thighgap, with someone. Although this person found it very readable, she couldn’t connect or understand any of the characters, thus decided she doesn’t like the book. We should indeed be glad that it isn’t Morrison’s point that the reader understands or roots for his characters, like she expects to do. And I told her this about #thighgap's heroine Helen (the name of the female leads in both books, huh), but it applies here too: It’s the point of the book to be non-relatable. I don’t think Morrison wants me to identify with a woman who eats dead babies in her spare time. But it is worth taking a look behind his extreme characters who, even though not relatable, are certainly interesting and, yes, fun to contemplate.

It’s as though she’s looking into me, like she can see me for the perverse freak that I am, but instead of turning away in disgust, she seems almost captivated.

It sounds almost like a joke, and maybe it indeed is: A necrophile and a cannibal meet and are instantaneously fascinated by each other, believing to have found a kindred weirdo, the antidote to oneself. Although nearly romantic by its promise of unapologetic acceptance, the plot of Dead Inside soon goes extreme (what else?) ways and ends in a gory mess.

Anyone who doesn’t hold any religious beliefs about the whereabouts of the bodies of deceased persons should at least be open to the fact that when a person dies, they cease to exist legally. This, in turn opens the door to reflections of the legitimacy of legal crimes involving dead bodies such as desecration, necrophilia or even cannibalism. And you could see these as victimless crimes since there is no legal entity, no pain, no trauma inflicted. This is a strain of thought I was first presented to in my youth through the songs of the German punk band Die Ärzte, who have more than a few songs about unconventional love. (Just as an aside - there's also a hilarious Ministry reference which made me chuckle, Al Jourgensen just so perfectly fits into this book.) Dead Inside gives even further food for thought, for instance by presenting victims of consensual violence who die a happy death, prompting its main character to wonder about how fucked up people can get, even more than himself. Of course, you can always counterargue about these things, I’m not trying to make a point in my review. It is just refreshing to see a subject, so widely accepted as perverted or disgusting or abhorrent on the basis of nothing but certain moral opinions, being rattled and furthered to the point of ridicule, by an author questioning openly and honestly to the point of agitation, almost political in nature.

Almost political in nature is also main character’s (MC) sexual life – although he acknowledges the root of his sexual preference stemming from the fact that dead bodies are safe and can’t hurt you, they won’t lie and cheat and reject you, he also takes a certain kind of pride in the deviancy of that preference. His is almost an act of anti-mainstream rebellion, a protest against conventional sex, against the obsession with ever younger, firmer, more beautiful bodies. His revulsion towards respiration, sigh, warmth, wetness or even blood circulation might seem amusing, almost comical at first, but on a second thought it is consistent with his sexual orientation.

That’s how it’s always been. It’s all I want. It’s what I crave.

Helen, on the other hand, likes to eat dead babies and as an obstetrician at the maternity ward she is right at the source to her object of desire. In contrast to MC she actually longs to be “normal” but at the same time she is much more able to share her darkness with someone else. She’s a true romantic at heart who yearns for someone to understand her, with the only problem being MC not really wanting that kind of intimacy, let alone with someone who lives.

MC and Helen are bound to be doomed and despite the short intermezzo encompassing their unity and Helen’s efforts, it is clear from the very first page that there are no rose gardens in their future. So if you’re looking for a Bonnie and Clyde or Mickey and Mallory kind of romance – fucked up people finding fucked up lovers to together fuck up strangers – this is not where you will find it. The "crimes" these two commit are indeed victimless, I dare say. They like to have fun with already dead bodies and never hurt a living thing. Well, until one of them does.

This book is above all about an isolation, an alienation and a resulting unconformity so deep, it is bound to be hellish. It is a callous slap in the face of normality and inside that slap even the act of fucking or eating turns into a rebellion in the hands of Morrison. Stunning.