{"id":4544,"date":"2022-01-27T00:41:34","date_gmt":"2022-01-27T00:41:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=4544"},"modified":"2022-01-27T00:42:12","modified_gmt":"2022-01-27T00:42:12","slug":"devil-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2022\/01\/27\/devil-house\/","title":{"rendered":"Devil House"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Adverse Possession<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Devil House<\/span><\/i> is a parable about this appetite for truth and justice that asks where along the way we lost the stomach for mercy.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Review by Charlie Clark<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest,\u201d wrote Joan Didion. In his fourth novel, John Darnielle makes a case for this distinctly Californian take on property rights. But then there are at least two Californias, and the late Queen Joan of Sacramento speaks for only one of them: the endlessly expanding, self-mythologizing Californian dreamscape. Besides which you have Official California, where a place belongs to whoever has the proper paperwork.<\/span><\/p>

Devil House<\/span><\/i> is about this Californian civil war, with a ragtag band of teens straight from central (out)casting to play the partisans of the Dream State. It\u2019s Darnielle\u2019s second entry in a sparsely populated genre I might describe as anti-horror\u2014the spooky stuff is mostly misdirection. Insofar as there\u2019s a monster in this book, it\u2019s the California real estate market. Insofar as he\u2019s rooting for the teens against the monster, Darnielle is taking sides against \u201creality\u201d itself.<\/span><\/p>

The way Darnielle\u2019s story is told should put horror fans in mind of Paul Tremblay\u2019s <\/span>A Head Full of Ghosts <\/span><\/i>or, especially,<\/span> Mark Danielewski\u2019s <\/span>House of Leaves<\/span><\/i>. The primary narrator, Gage Chandler, is a true crime writer whose agent puts him onto an unsolved double murder with a connection to the occult. Chandler moves into the so-called \u201cDevil House\u201d to assemble the facts for his next book. Inside this frame, the novel consists of \u201cprimary sources\u201d alongside Chandler\u2019s commentary and reconstructions of events (and also a mysterious, thematically important but plot irrelevant, section of material set in a Gothic typeface).<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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What is the non-simple explanation, the true history of Devil House?\u00a0<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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L<\/p>

ike any crime novel, the majority of Chandler\u2019s story is concerned with what Devil House was and what happened there, but his reflections on the true crime genre cast doubt on any claim to objectivity, including his own. \u201cI haunt dreadful places and try to coax ghosts from the walls, and then I sell pictures of the ghosts for money,\u201d he says. As for his readers: \u201cNobody cares about the actual details of anything, they just want the feeling they get when the story punches their buttons.\u201d From the perspective of the true crime marketplace, the story of Devil House has a clear path of least resistance: \u201cThe simple explanation that would have scratched several itches was that a cabal of Satan-worshipping teens had sacrificed a couple of innocent victims to the devil for kicks.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

What, according to Chandler, is the non-simple explanation, the true history of Devil House? Once upon a time, there was a house in Milpitas, California. We are told that Milpitas has \u201cjust the right air for wondering whether a thing had happened this way, or that way, or some third way not yet imagined, or perhaps not at all.\u201d In a history of land use that could only happen in California, the house in Milpitas becomes a diner, then that diner becomes a newsstand, then that newsstand switches to selling hardcore pornography. When the porn store shuts down, a handful of teens become deeply attached to the unsecured former home of Monster Adult XL, which becomes part clubhouse, part art installation as they trash the store and its abandoned merchandise in the most creative way possible.<\/span><\/p>

One of the teens, with nowhere else to call home, ends up living in the store\u2014right about the time the landlord starts showing the place to prospective buyers. These incursions from the real world put the squatters on the defensive: \u201cpeople, even and maybe especially young people, feel a need to guard the things and places they hold dear from becoming polluted.\u201d The teens\u2019 redecorating of the abandoned store takes up the occult aesthetic that will earn the Devil House its name: \u201call the blind-alley symbols and slogans . . . A GENERATION OF VAMPIRES; SORCERER CULT; SET 4 SACRIFICE . . . A silver pentagram in spray paint . . . letters from a Satanic alphabet.\u201d Of course, all the devilry is just a psyop: \u201cI hope they see this and think: <\/span>Better just leave whoever did this shit alone<\/span><\/i>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

Still, two Official Californians end up dead. And this is where Chandler\u2019s story has to fight the hardest to escape the real world\u2019s gravitational pull, the facticity equally insisted upon by the state and the true crime regime. It\u2019s one thing to pop true crime\u2019s epistemic bubble (\u201cIt\u2019s weird, he said, how many things you might swear to, right? When it was actually different from what you remember, when you don\u2019t really know at all.\u201d). It\u2019s another thing to dispose of the mutilated human bodies. But then again, this is California: if you can\u2019t beat them, outnarrate them.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Does God, like Darnielle\u2019s unreliable narrator, ever spin the facts in our favor?<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The narrative Chandler lands on is about castles and lost ages. Put enough time between the facts and the telling, and the story can rewrite itself completely. Take it from the historical King Arthur: \u201cto <\/span>you<\/span><\/i>, he doesn\u2019t look like what you mean by <\/span>king<\/span><\/i>, and his castle doesn\u2019t look like a castle. . . . It looks, he said, like a dirt mound somebody piled up in a real hurry overnight to protect a very small group of people from attack.\u201d The difference between some teens squatting in an abandoned porn store and the Knights of the Round is all just a matter of perspective: \u201ca castle in which one finds shelter, be it the meanest dwelling in all the land, is home and hearth to those it guards from harm; and that the right of those within its walls remains, to defend themselves from the intruder.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

This is just one layer of a many-layered fiction, one strand in Darnielle\u2019s meditation on truth and narration: \u201cWhat happens when somebody tells a story that has real people in it? What happens to the story; what happens to the teller; what happens to the people?\u201d For those familiar with Darnielle\u2019s work as the songwriter for the Mountain Goats, the many resonances between this novel and his songs will add another layer of complexity. Because Chandler and Darnielle seem to have so many subjects and sensibilities in common, it\u2019s hard not to read Gage\u2019s character as an extended exercise in self-criticism: \u201cI thought Gage had spent too long trying to save people he couldn\u2019t save and that the effort had clouded his vision in one way but maybe clarified it in another.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

I\u2019m an evangelist for Darnielle\u2019s music and his other books, and this novel will be no exception. It\u2019s a devious, challenging text for a non-Californian who prides himself on his membership in the reality-based community. My antipathy toward rent-seeking grifters and true-crime ghouls doesn\u2019t extend to excusing homicide. When Chandler says, \u201c[T]he idea that people might need to be protected from the facts of a case, it runs counter to what we\u2019re taught,\u201d I think, \u201cYes, and for good reason.\u201d But when he says, \u201c[I]t matters which story you tell, it matters whose story you tell,\u201d I nod along to that too.<\/span><\/p>

Free market, true crime: both are aspirations to a certain kind of objectivity, a certain God\u2019s eye view. At the bottom of everything, there are The Facts\u2014indifferent to the point of cruelty\u2014and these forces are only too happy to dig up every infirmity or inquiry they contain. But is this really how God (\u201cHe who is our \u03b8\u03b5\u03b1\u03c4\u1f75\u03c2 or beholder,\u201d according to Gregory of Nyssa) sees us? Or does God, like Darnielle\u2019s unreliable narrator, ever spin the facts in our favor? Should we?<\/span><\/p>

One thing about the real world\u2014it doesn\u2019t need our help. The market will clear. Our sin will find us out. And yet, grace makes us nervous. We scrutinize the worthiness of the objects of our charity. We hold each other accountable. <\/span>Devil House<\/span><\/i> is a parable about this appetite for truth and justice that asks where along the way we lost the stomach for mercy.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Charlie Clark<\/strong>\u00a0is a writer\u00a0and retractor<\/a>. He lives in New Hampshire.<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Devil House <\/strong>was published by Macmillan on January 25, 2022. You can purchase a copy of your own on their website here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Devil House is a parable about the appetite for truth and justice that asks where along the way we lost the stomach for 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