I don’t write that many ‘personal’ reviews, and yet, in trying to consider Shout Kill Revel Repeat, Scott R Jones’s debut collection, I see no other way to do it. In fact, everything I want to say about the collection feels like it should have some sort of prefatory remark like that. An odd sensation.
I do not believe that I am of Jones’s ilk, for starters. He is a complex, Canadian esoteric, with touches of the cyber-visionary thrown in; I am a slow Yorkshire pragmatist, as visionary as most house bricks. Most things which start with cyber- give me a slight headache. And our paths only really converge when the stars are distinctly wobbly, maybe after a few too many bourbons on my part. Where they do converge – possibly – is in our interest in what lies under the Lovecraftian skin, and a dislike of literary pomposity (I’m guessing that last one).
Which leads straight into my suspicion that Jones isn’t a Lovecraftian or a Mythosian writer, in the common manner. His style varies between ecstatic and bleak; his themes are alchemical, focused on transcendence, and on transhumanism at its most insane or theological (both may apply at once) levels. Even theosophical levels, sans Blavatsky. That HPL may have seeded the word-planet with some of Jones’s jumping-off points does not make Jones a Lovecraftian, nor does his use of bits of lumber that HPL left behind. That latter aspect may make him a Mythosian writer, but even then I’m not always sure. The first work I read of his, When The Stars Are Right: Towards An Authentic R’lyehian Spirituality, always seemed more about Jones’s search for gnostic revelation than about Lovecraft’s stuff.
He does utilise the lumber, though, and uses it better in Shout Kill Revel Repeat (Journalstone, 2019) than most. He has the ability to transcend the trap of Lovecraftian tropes, and finds his own way, whether you like it or not. Take two of the more striking stories in the collection – ‘The Amnesiac’s Lament’ and ‘Shout Kill Revel Repeat itself’. You’ll find few stories in the field which are both more Lovecraftian and less Lovecraftian at the same time. Rich in Voorish Domes, hexentechs, Resonators and Hoffman-Price* technology, Jones travels forward into his own unique creation and also back to Arthur Machen (touches of voor=before, the past times):
“Then beyond the woods there were other hills round in a great ring, but I had never seen any of them; it all looked black, and everything had a voor over it. It was all so still and silent, and the sky was heavy and grey and sad, like a wicked voorish dome in Deep Dendo.” (‘The White People’, Machen, 1904)
These two tales have enough Mythos in them to sink a cthulhu, yet they couldn’t have been written by old Providence. The prose is more fluent, more alive; the life within the prose takes them in a deeper, vaster direction, shredding and reforming any source material. Jones’s indifferent cosmos is more cosmic at an emotional level than most writers achieve, and with a certain wry quality. I might call them dark parodies, almost.
Pondering on the other stories herein, outside of these powerful ‘Mythosian anchors’, I peeked at the comments and reviews of others, out of curiosity, and was interested to see that I disagree with many on what are the strongest pieces. Let me say that there isn’t a weak tale in the entire book, but even though Jones is good at reality, better than many writers, it seems at times to constrain him. Using him to write ‘traditional’ horror tales feels like using a massive Pacific locomotive to pull a bizarre, but fascinating, pram.
Thus stories like ‘Chrysanthemum’, ‘Worse than Demons’, ‘Cougar Annie’s’ and ‘The Transition of Toby Twitch’ are fine speculative/horror tales, well written – you will enjoy them, and they should be here – but they don’t necessarily let the engine get up full steam. Where he shines most brightly (or darkly) again is when he cuts loose into innovative strangeness, as with ‘Turbulence’, and with the outstanding ‘I Cannot Begin to Tell You’ (a story which maybe owes more to The Twilight Zone, in the best possible sense, than it does to HPL). Interestingly, it is in this latter tale that Jones also catches small touches of normal life at the same time, and leaves us with the powerful symbology of ‘the empty stroller’.
Also included are enjoyable homages to Ramsey Campbell’s Mythosian body (in a literary sense, I hope), Gla’aki and a disturbing Elon Musk – sorry, Aldo Tusk – who is on his own quest to do some transcending to others, regardless of what they think.
I spoke of ilk at the beginning, and one thing I take away from this collection is that, unlike me, Jones prefers transcendence to humanity (that should get me in trouble) or his faith in humanity has waned to a dire level. Ultimately, his humans – and his transhumans – have no time for people dreaming of being people. In such a way, he cleaves to core elements of cosmic horror as a field in itself. His characters have dreams, ambitions and experiences which tear open what Jones sees as lies, limitations and camouflage – but what is left after the tearing is no longer human in any sense we could understand. He offers transformation, on a purely personal or a globe-shattering scale, but few small redemptions (‘Wonder and Glory Remembered’ may come closest to that).
And so whilst I greatly admire his work and rejoice in reading it, I suspect that we are philosophically very different fish. I have written and published Mythosian tales, some of which may have worked, but I tend to lack Jones’s transcendental fire. Cosmic horror for me most days is a Turkish child trapped in earthquake rubble and quite forgotten, on a planet circling an insensate fusion reactor which hangs in the untravelled void…
Unless it’s all lies, of course. Most writing is. If I’d written this review at any other time, it too might be a very different fish as well, but hey, that’s the way out I am tonight.
IN SHORT: Jones is a terrific writer. And Shout Kill Revel Repeat is highly recommended. If you are a Lovecraftian/Mythosian enthusiast, you have to have a copy. If you are not, then Jones gives you a terrific weird/horror fiction collection to enjoy for what it is. Also of more interest to conspiracy fans than Fox News.
Shout Kill Revel Repeat is available directly from Journalstone
https://journalstone.com/bookstore/shout-kill-revel-repeat/
Or from Amazon:
We interviewed Scott R Jones four years ago (FOUR!) here, though the excellent Martian Migraine Press has now gone on indefinite publishing hiatus: http://greydogtales.com/blog/cthulhu-on-mars-an-interview-with-scott-r-jones/
*I’ve no doubt that Hoffman Price technology is named after E. Hoffmann Price, the Weird Tales writer who collaborated with HPL. Personally, I’d go for E T A Hoffman, the German romantic fantasist, and Robert M Price, the Lovecraftian author and theological scholar who has some odd ideas about people. Just to be annoying and set the mi-go among the pigeons.