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DEATH SWAMP
($21.50 ppd from Toby Craig / 116 Natures Way / Huntsville, TX 77340 USA. Web:
www.ithinkican.com)
Review by Scott Hsu-Storaker
The swish of a beaded curtain, a shadow moving across a screen, the whisper of waves on a distant beach. These are some of the impressions I was left with after reading Toby Craig's
Death Swamp for the third time and I choose them for a reason, which I will get to in a little bit. I first read through this book with the intention of trying to make sense of it in the way I would with any other book. That is, I tried to read it as a linear narrative. You know, a story with a beginning, middle and end; an introduction, plot, climax and denouement like we learned in school. But the book confounded me at every turn – it just doesn't make sense that way. In fact, some pages felt like they were bound within the book in the entirely wrong order, feeling like a puzzle that needs to be pieced back together.
For the sake of completeness, though, I will give a short plot summary, but to get into too much detail would remove some of the power that this book holds over the new reader. A young boy travels through a dreamscape populated by manifestations of his many fears and anxieties, not the least of which seems to me to be the fear of growing up. He is accompanied by a guide, dubious at best, which takes the form of a cuddly bear. Craig suggests that the bear is something more than what is plainly visible, though, by drawing the bear in clean black outlines while placing a light gray wash behind or within the bear that belies something more sinister. It is this odd ghostlike, pointy-eared aura that follows him throughout much of the story, until a decisive moment near the end. The two travel through the dreamscape, exploring the back alleys of the unconscious mind, drifting through other people's dreams, and even taking on the identities of other personas by hiding behind floating masks. The story has a resolution that has something to do with a hooded figure in a tower and an odd sort of amalgamation of characters. Most of the story is rendered in subtle gray tones with crisp black lines on top that create a unique impression of the world being perfectly clear and absolutely unfocussed all at the same time. But, I won't go into many more plot details because I am truly convinced that the plot is not really the point here. At one point in the story, a teacher/mystic/guide that, for lack of a better name, I will call The Rabbit Weaver gives a bit of advice to the young boy. He says "It is about finding your way. The art is about the journey, not the end." It's almost as if Craig were talking to himself, reminding himself of his purpose and, hence, laying a clue for the readers to do the same. There's no need, really, to tell how the story ends. There is something deeper and less obvious at work here than just the twists and turns of the plot.
The second time that I read through the book I tried reading the story with an analytical mind. I'm no Psychology 101 student, mind you, but a story about exploring the recesses of the unconscious mind is ripe for being analyzed in an academic fashion. Craig even sets the reader up to think that this is the case by interspersing the narrative with intermittent pages that resemble encyclopedia entries describing the meaning of various symbols used throughout the book. Again, as with my first time through the book, I was confounded at making sense of it in a traditional way. The pastiche of ideas did not, for me at least, hold together in a logical, formal, academic way. Maybe the psych grad students out there can tell me what's up, but I left feeling at the end of this that Craig was really just throwing up red herrings in an effort to get us to keep the conscious, analytical parts of our minds busy working on solving the puzzle while gently, inexorably pushing the subtler imagery to the backs of our brains.
Which brings me to where I started this review and where I ended after I read the book through for the third time. I find myself again and again calling up images from the pages of the book, most of them just partially visible – some even have sound and movement associated with them. The one that comes to mind the most often for me is a picture of a glass blower, his face covered with a cloth that is being blown back by the heat blast from a furnace. The book, to me, has become an impressionistic exploration through the mind of the artist and his characters. This, I think, is where he was trying to take us, even if he may not realize it himself. This story works best when recalled after a few days, when the devious little images come slowly bubbling to the surface. It's kind of like a nightmare half-remembered. The sequence of events may drift away, but the chill and dread still hold you in their grip.
This book is a hard read, granted, but once you fall deep into it, you will come out with something that will stick with you. Don't say I didn't warn you when I say that you may not be able to push this book aside from your memory even long after you've tucked it away on your shelf.
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