Glimpses of Insanity - Reviewing And One Day We Will Die: Strange Stories Inspired by the Music of Neutral Milk Hotel

C'est le moment où un homme sain d'esprit qui cause avec un fou ne s'est pas encore aperçu que c'est un fou.

The above quote by Marcel Proust from À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs, the second installment of his In Search of Lost Time series, describes a moment you haven't yet realized that the person you are chatting with is, in fact, insane. It is this quote, oddly enough, that has always sprang to my mind, the feeling that surfaces from within me, when I listen to the American folk rock band Neutral Milk Hotel. It is the core of what this music's surface of pleasantness and harmony, conveyed by melodious, honeyed, smooth tunes, hiding outbursts of intense emotion and distorted, disrupted by glimpses of insanity, by cacophony, awakens in me. And it intrigues me, it haunts me, I can listen to them and be inspired to a different feeling every single time, but that basis of oddity, of weirdness remains.

Hence, editor Patrick Barb couldn't have chosen a more interesting, more bountiful band to base his anthology upon, and ever since I found out about this work, I spent my time wondering what this band inspired in others, what sentiments it provoked in them, so much so that it was possible to make a whole anthology of it. Having finally read it, I can safely say it was possibly the single most interesting read I had in the past year or two, as it was an answer to my guesswork. It is recommended to give (re-)listen to the songs as you read the correspondent short story, as it can open the doors to a better understanding of how "this" was born from "that".

Most of the 22 authors went for the atmosphere, the weirdly skewed fun house, folk festival, masquerade vibes where darker things are honeyed with joy and fun. Many elements reinforce this aura; the ferris wheel on fire (which makes a smashing book cover too), mechanical games and toys, carnivals and funerals and masquerades, slightly science fictional, post apocalyptic settings, paranormal elements, moving, absurdist plot lines that are not always easy to understand, and that are not always meant to be understood. At times the stories feature direct quotes from the songs, at times they merely echo the lyrics.

Sometimes you can imagine the corresponding song as some kind of background music or soundtrack to the short story, such as in Lillah Lawson's Untitled (inspired by Ghost) where a burnt-out young mother is running away from her life, or Brian Evenson's The Garden Head (inspired by Gardenhead/Leave Me Alone), while at other times you can draw a very literal connection between the two works, as in M. Lopes da Silva's The Polyamorous Heart of Death (inspired by Holland 1945) which revolves around a girl being killed in Holland in 1945 and reincarnated as a Spanish boy, or Camila Hamel's Twins (inspired by A Baby for Pree) where a mother who had to give her twin babies away at birth encounters them in a park years later, as adults. Then there were those stories I neither understood the context nor the connection to any song of, but, let me assure you, ALL short stories, even those in the last category, are written in amazingly high quality and superior prose.

My highlights were;

Helen Victoria Murray's Argyria (Progress Review) (inspired by Where You'll Find Me Now) in which the life and work of two photographers and lovers, both men, in the mid 19th century is told in short, retrospective reviews by an art historian who develops an obsession for them.

Joe Koch's The Clown King in Yellow (inspired by The Fool), creates an amazingly on the point atmosphere in the story of Jeremy who must go back home for a family funeral, which is to take place in the form of a masquerade.

I completely forgot what exactly happens in Not Even the Ghosts, Not Even the Birds by Tiffany Morris (inspired by The King of Carrot Flowers Part 1) except that it's about the end of the world, but I remember the writing is to die for! I already marked other books by her to read later.

Erin Brown's Mirrorboy (inspired by Avery Island/April 1st) is about Paul who is a golem made out of glass/mirrors and who works in a fun house, going on a date after work.

And finally Dale Light's Crungus and Loeb - An Unpublished Review (inspired by I Will Bury You in Time) is about the Holocaust as a theater performance that traumatizes even the audience.

On a last note, keeping in mind that The Diary of Anne Frank was one of the main inspirations behind one of the mere two albums Neutral Milk Hotel ever brought out, traces of that aspect are all around these short stories too, sometimes very subtle.

I'm thrilled to have discovered Patrick Barb as an author and as an editor this year. With And One Day We Will Die he curated a consummate work of art, in that each piece of writing it comprises inspires and moves, is obviously created with care and thought. And that's rare nowadays.