Book Three, Chapter Three
“Confessions of a (Pornographer’s) Shroud”
This is a comparatively unassuming story, as far as The Books of Blood go. Barker’s not scaling any notable thematic or rhetorical heights here, nor is he pushing the envelope in terms of imagery. (There’s one really nasty moment in there, and it’ll test your stomach, shall we say, but one’s not a whole lot when you consider the source.) Even the protagonist is just sort of an everysquare. The monster is novel enough, but it’s not meant to blow your mind a la “In the Hills, the Cities” or anything like that.
No, the modest pleasures of this story are basically derived from the very fact that the pleasures are so modest. This is a revenge story, pure and simple–Kill Bill with ghosts–and if that’s the sort of thing you like, you’ll like Barker’s take on it. The real interest lies in where Barker’s potboiler deviates from the formula. Like I said, he’s not going nuts here, but there are flourishes now and then that are worth picking apart.
For example, our soon-to-be late protagonist Ronald Glass reacts with disgust bordering on the pathological when he discovers that he’s the unwitting house accountant for an enormous, illegal hardcore porn empire–it’s not just the notion that revolts him, but the fleshy, hairy, puckered bodies that constitute the goods. However, once the frame-up job hits the fan and his life is ruined because of it, he reacts unhesitatingly with wetworks-style violence. Perhaps Barker is getting at the way straight society is neurotic over sexuality but more or less at home with violence?
Once Glass is apprehended by his victims’ underworld cohorts, he’s tortured to death, but the torture scene itself is strangely glossed over, pretty much the opposite of what you’d expect from Barker. I think the depiction of torture is one of the most acutely horrifying tools at the disposal of an artist (the facts that I’m a horror buff and that Casino is my favorite Scorsese movie are not unconnected). So why does the god of splatterpunk steer clear of it? Is it because the shlubs who populate the story, even on the criminal side, are so workaday that they can’t bear the weight of typically Barkerian excess?
Then there’s the ghost-Glass’s first victim, whose crime is simply being a boor. This isn’t the first time Barker has implied that a failure to be interesting is a capital crime, and it won’t be the last; it’s interesting that the executioner here is also a drab little man, his spectral condition excepted of course.
The quest for vengeance culminates in yet another spectacularly gory assault on the sanctity of family. To be sure, the child involved makes out a whole lot better than does the one in “Rawhead Rex,” but years of therapy, if not institutionalization, are certainly in its future. This sort of behavior is (or was) generally taboo even in horror, but for Barker it appears the violation of taboo is an end in itself, even when the means are as straightforward as they are in “Confessions.”
It’s a fine little story, underlined with one last subtle embellishment–the parenthetical accusation that hangs over Glass, even in the title of the story that chronicles his attempt to avenge the besmirching of his good name. One last kick in the nuts of the too-ordinary guy. I get the sense that that’s the taboo Barker’s really gunning for.