Steven Leech does not like history. Leech, a prolific writer whose novels, Untime, Poe’s Daughter, Pym’s Soul, and 2000 Years re-write history and pull together a vast universe of story threads into three distinct, yet thematically similar novels whose goal is to present an alternative history of America, and the world.
These novels are not part of a series, nor are they connected other than through my own imagination as a reader and reviewer. Leech’s novel Poe ‘s Daughter, Pym’s Soul concerns the writer and his various allegiances, dalliances, and rivalries as Poe seeks the muse, money, and peace. Leech ingeniously weaves African American magic into the narrative when he introduces Poe’s friend, Armistead, a slave, and disciple of sorts to Netta, a magic woman, an old world spirit shaker; a witch. Netta and Armistead provide Poe with unique insights into the slavery question, but no answers. Leech isn’t interested in answers, they are not as interesting as the questions and conflicts themselves which Poe witneses as the country builds towards the Civil War. In Poe’s Daughter, Poe rails, rants, drinks, goes on the wagon, suffers, and mourns, and suffers some more. He doesn’t ever seem happy, save when he is sparring with Delaware literary (forgotten) legend John Lofton. These sections are where Leech’s talent shines. He is most comfortable throwing muses as Poe and Lofton barb and bard over drinks and laudanum.
Leech is an accomplished writer, the narrative flows and the prose sparkles, and my only criticism of Poe’s Daughter, and for that matter any novel written about Poe, is the unshakable mantle of matching the scary and or psychologically interesting matter of as Poe’s fictions or verse. Leech avoids this trap by at least being as psychedelic as Poe, and uses Poe’s love of opium to effect. Leech is writing his own history of Poe, and weaves into the tale real bits of history, people, places, and things, but it is never harrowing or frightening, that is until Poe is plied with booze in the voting schemes, essentially similar to how the navy used to conscript sailors: get them drunk and sign them up and when they wake up on ship their lives are controlled by her majesty, or the country’s navy. Poe’s death is a drawn out affair, and the city mourns him. Netta the witch is kept from Poe, and Poe slips from this world in a delirium.
2000 Years is described as “an eschatological gothic romance,” an apocalyptic delirious sensual study of evil. The book opens with the voice of Renfeld, Draculas’ loyal mad henchman, who is mostly a passive character in literature, locked up in Seward’s cell waiting for the Master to arrive. Leech revives Renfeld and through the opening passage takes the reader down into a rabbit hole. Renfeld is really Vlad Dracul, son of the dragon, the anti-Christ, and brother of Jeshuah, Immanuel, the bright twin of light. Through Renfeld/Vlad’s eyes we see Jack the Ripper removing breasts and a liver, as well as the machinations of the Count, who has returned through Renfeld, undead, through time. And time doesn’t run as a line through this work, rather it loops and returns and shoots forth to return again. Leech gets a thrill from dissecting Christian myths and pairing them with Stoker’s immortal beast.
In 2000 Years, Leech’s gift for sensuality blooms. Lovers of food porn, and travel porn will delight in the descriptions of food, drink, the flesh, and the romance of Europe. Like in Poe’s Daughter, Leech uses poetry to knit together the fabric of his alternate universe. This instinct is perfectly postmodern and appropriate for the kind of novels Leech’s has written here, but likely the casual reader will find the mash-up to be disconcerting. Leech’s novels are not plot machines, but rather character studies, and philosophical studies masked as novels. He forgoes typical plot techniques that create page turners and uses sensual passages to push the story along. 2000 Years is despairing for its brokenness, and the format lends itself well to showing that even vampires can become mired in love’s distress. We feel Vlad’s heart fall apart for his dear Wanda, his dear victims, and even for his brother, the crucified Jeshuah. Dracula fans will find much to admire here, and vampire lovers will note the similar sensuality Leech brings to the fanged villains that Anne Rice so famously brought to the genre some thirty years ago.
Leech’s Untime is not for the faint of heart. It’s a dense read. Untime eschews the conventions of a novel altogether. It’s often compelling, but it’s like reading Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake, or more appropriately Burroughs’ Naked Lunch, for Leech creates his own language for Untime, a language rooted in dystopia. It’s difficult to describe, Leech’s world, for it is a mash-up of American Nazism and technological slavery, not unlike say David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, save for the technology of Untime has more in common with the serials of the 1950s and seedy Adult cinemas of the 1970s. The novel takes place in a reimagined world post WW-II where the government control is a fist around the city, and the seamier side of life thrives.
The rich life and death of the low-life culture is most apparent in the music of Leech’s prose. Never you mind the pop culture references woven through-out, which create a nostalgic feel for life after the war, Leech drops verbs, constricts sentences, and then in the next instant uses standardized English to keep the reader moving forward. “So after Panama got her fun like she never had before and never will again ‘less I come into town. I got my movie. Got it for you. Believe it or not. Downstairs. Down the elevator when you take it. Down there. Alex. A guy with a big moustache and a wise crack view of life. Came home through the lobby. Crestfallen. In this movie. Alex came from Staten Island. Where his croaker died. Sudden. On his last fix found the croaker’s funeral. The junkies cried. Not for the croaker. But because he died. Now time will begin again.” Perhaps it’s my imagination, but I can hear the rustle of the street in the language, the gravel house grind of someone who just wants to lose himself in a fix, a drunk, or a good fuck. To call Leech’s language here ebonics, or heaven forbid “jive” is to miss the point. Leech is creating a new language using memes and phonemes of our world to describe a world that doesn’t exist. It’s ballsy and interesting, sometimes brilliant, and sometimes just confusing.
Leech’s language mirrors the world itself, where characters can bi-locate, and the setting blurs as if the world is a film, a celluloid lie. In fact, Untime would make an interesting film-- animation, live action, and a loose sense of structure could be imposed upon the alien world, albeit a cultish yarn and warning about the slavery of consciousness. And in a sense Leech has crafted a book that is an altered consciousness, a sermon of the floating church. Like Poe’s Daughter, and 2000 Years, Leech writes around plot, instead juxtaposing philosophy with image, marrying sensuality to rhythm.
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