4. Grotesque

By Natsuo Kirino

 

3. 84, Charing Cross Road

By Helene Hanff

2. The King in Yellow

By Robert W. Chambers

Saw this hardcover edition while browsing Walden Pond Books in   Oakland.  We (the Purves-Brebner clan) were in the area to pick up a Christmas tree at Brent's near the Grand Lake Theatre and had also consumed some delicious Asian-inspired pastries at Bake Sum.

So yes, I saw The King in Yellow and got Olman to pick it up for me as a Xmas present.  I also found a used copy of The Tokyo Zodiac Murders, which happened to be on Olman's list.  Too bad for him though, finders keepers!
I first heard about The King in Yellow as a literary influence on True Detective S1, and it's been on my list ever since.  

Recently, I acquired a HP Lovecraft box set under purely consumeristic circumstances. I was taking advantage of Black Friday sales to do some early Xmas shopping and Indigo had a sale on Kpop albums, which is what my daughter is into collecting now.  Albums qualify for shipping, but I needed another $12 to reach the minimum amount for free shipping.  I saw that certain paperback box sets were half price so I got a HP Lovecraft box set for only $12.50 and as a minor horror buff, I've always been curious about his work.  Anyway, I was aware that author Robert Chambers was an early influence on Lovecraft, so I thought it was a nice coincidence when I saw this nice Pushkin Press edition from 2017 at Walden Books.

The King in Yellow was my first completed book in 2026 (not counting The Antifa Comic Book) and I was able to finish it within a few days.  It's really a collection of four short stories.  The original 1895 publication contained more stories but apparently it's just the first four that are thematically connected by a cursed play called 'The King in Yellow' which somehow ends up in the hands of various characters. When someone reads the second act, terrible things befall them, ie. they start losing touch with reality and become haunted by a ruined, mythical city called Carcosa, unwittingly serving a cult-like deity known only as Hastur, the Yellow King.  Apparently, the world of Carcosa was inspired by Ambrose Pierce. 

The first and probably best story was "The Repairer of Reputations".  The setting is a dystopic 1920s America that has become quite militaristic and Randian (before Ayn Rand and the military-industrial complex came about).  People of Jewish descent and other undesirable foreigners have been deported and a state has been established for African-Americans. The narrator, Hildred Castaigne, observes the official opening of a "Lethal Chambers" at a public park in Manhattan, for anyone who wants to painlessly end their life so as not be a burden on society.  We soon learn that our dear Hildred is not quite right in the head.  Not only had he suffered a head injury from a fall, he had also been committed for a period of time inside an asylum.  At some point he had also read "The King in Yellow" and often visits the creepy Repairer himself, a Yellow King devotee who happens to live above the store that's run by the father of his brother's fiancée.  I like the part when Hildred thought he was alone inside his shabby apartment admiring himself in mirror as he wore his golden crown but when his brother came upon him, he was really just wearing a cheap, dime-store trinket. The reader is basically plunged inside the unraveling mind of a man who's becoming more and more paranoid and deranged until he commits a terrible act.

As a Goodreads reviewer wrote: it is a bracing and imaginative bit of darkness on the page and, to me at least, quite wonderful. the style is so breezy, the pacing so brisk, the imagination so fertile and so oddly modern, the experience was pure pleasure. it is hard to believe that this story was written over a 100 years ago.

The next story, "The Mask", was ok and probably my least favourite as it was more melo-dramatic than creepy or chilling.  It takes place in Paris and involves a love triangle between young painter named Alec, a sculptor and would-be alchemist named Boris, and their love interest, Genevieve.  Boris has discovered or created a magical solution that can transform any organic object or living thing into lightly veined white marble.  It's unclear how the golden liquid came about, but it's strongly implied that it came from the same world that brought about "The King in Yellow".  Tragedy soon befalls the hapless trio. 

Next was "In the Court of the Dragon", also set in Paris, about a man pursued by a sinister church organist who is after his soul.  That pretty much sums up what is probably the shortest of the four stories and the least developed.

Last was "The Yellow Sign" and we're back in Manhattan (Greenwich Village) in "contemporary" times, ie. the 1890s. This time, an artist and his model are troubled by a sinister churchyard watchman who resembles a "plump white grave-worm".  Tessie keeps having the same recurring dream where she sees Scott lying inside a funeral casket being taken away by a horse-drawn carriage.  As their relationship develops, Tessie gives Scott "a clasp of black onyx, on which was inlaid a curious symbol or a letter in gold", which she happened to find one day near Battery Park.  Then soon after, Scott finds The King in Yellow in his collection, "a book bound in serpent skin, standing in a corner of the top shelf of the last bookcase." It is, inexplicably, "The King in Yellow", a book he has studiously avoided: "If I ever had had any curiosity to read it, the awful tragedy of young Castaigne, whom I knew, prevented me from exploring its wicked pages."

So we have come full circle, and our two young lovers are doomed towards a sad demise. This wiki site has a good plot summary.

The King in Yellow collection was an enjoyable read.  I did not expect it to be so readable.  TBH, I expected it to be less accessible and weirder, because after all, The King in Yellow is supposedly a classic example of weird fiction.  The stories were macabre in tone, full of creeping dread and gothic romanticism, with characters who are often artists or decadents, inhabitants of the demi-monde.  But the supernatural or occult references were very subtle and minimal.  This was not a bad thing, just not what I expected.  Still, very glad I read this.
 

1. The Antifa Comic Book (Revised & Expanded)

By Gord Hill

In mid-November, Olman and I visited the Expozine Fair. It used to be conveniently held in the Plateau inside a church basement but in recent years it's been taking place further north, like the Villeray area.  

This year's fair was really crowded - at least during that Saturday afternoon.  I was hoping to look at some D&Q publications but their tables were packed making it hard to stop and browse due to the steady motion of moving people.  There wasn't anything that stood out for me as I circumnavigated the crowded space.  

I finally found refuge at the Anarchist Bookshop section as they had arranged their tables into a C-shape, so that I could actually take my time in their little area, which was thankfully empty of people for some precious minutes.

This was how I came upon The Antifa Comic Book.  I didn't buy it right then and there though it was the only item I ended up purchasing at the fair.  The guy manning the table was friendly and handed me a flyer for a left wing book sale happening the following month near Metro Pie-IX. I didn't stay long at the Expozine fair as it was impossible to browse at your own pace without being jostled, or having to side-step someone, or wait your turn to do anything. I ended up leaving and met Olman near an Asian import shop in St-Hubert Plaza that was going out of business. We had tacos at a Mexican deli mart down the street.

The Antifa Comic Book was first published in 2018, and the copy I got was the 2025 revised and expanded edition containing new material that depicted events such as the 2021 U.S. Capitol attack, the 2022 convoy protests in Ottawa, even the 2017 mosque shooting in Quebec.  You could also tell which entries were new by how the graphics had been illustrated. The newer pages (like the one on the right) were drawn with thinner black lines and printed with less saturated colours compared to the older pages (like the one on the left). 

There was an odd entry that didn't seem to fit with the previous content in the Canadian section. It went from a brief history of fascist movements in Canada (from 1930-1990), the A.R.A Toronto (Anti-Racist Action), and then the following page portrayed the 2011 Norway Attacks -- when a far-right extremist set off a car bomb in Oslo, then traveled to a Labour Party youth camp on the island of Utøya and went on a shooting spree killing dozens of people, mostly teenagers, simply for being "privileged" progressives.  Then the pages went back to the USA.  So the Norway section was an add-on and should've followed after Sweden.  Pragmatically, it was probably simpler to append the new pages rather than insert them between older sections, even though content-wise, it didn't make sense geographically.

In any case, I'm really glad I picked up The Antifa Comic Book.  Many reviewers, like this one, agreed how timely a book like this is during these turbulent times.  It was a fascinating read and very informative, covering key historical moments, like the birth of anti-fascist movements in Nazi Germany, continuing into the Spanish Civil War, even touching on the Second World War’s British Blackshirts and Anarchy in the U.K. and ending on Trump's presidency and Elon Musk taking over Twitter. It also gave an overview of the rise of nationalist right-wing groups on a global scale and how they use propaganda and technology to spread their ideas.

Even though I was already aware of how easily democratic freedoms and rights can be taken away, how important anti-fascist movements are and how history is always repeating itself, the book really helped give me a clearer overview by portraying key historical events and how it led to our somewhat frightening world situation today. 

Back in September, a certain so-called US president issued a statement defining “Antifa” (which hardly exists as a formal organization) as a domestic terrorist organization.  Hmm, I wonder why.  So much crazy shit has gone down since then, it's been overwhelming and fatiguing.  Minneapolis had been under seige by ICE since December and barely a week had passed in 2026 when a number of American citizens got shot and killed by ICE agents, most notably a mother.  And now so-called POTUS is obsessed with buying Greenland. Greenland! It just never ends, and there are no limits to what the wrong people in power can and will do.

Other things I learned from The Antifa Comic Book:

• It was Mussolini who granted state sovereignty to Vatican City. I had always assumed this as done centuries ago, but turns out this was done as recently as the mid-20th century.
• This I already knew, but the book confirmed that it's always the privileged and wealthy (monarchists, industrialists, aristocrats, high-ranking military and police officers, church officials, nationalists) who tend to fund and/or establish fascist movements.  Today, the list includes tech oligarchs and corporate billionaires, like Ronald Lauder (CEO of cosmetics giant Estée Lauder) who gave DT the idea of acquiring Greenland as he has vested interest in Arctic expansion and access to resources.
• I did find one small factual error. The July 24 mass stabbing in England that resulted in the deaths of three little girls did not happen at a school, but at a dance studio that was having a Taylor Swift theme day.  I could see how "school" was a quicker way to summarize the incident as it involved elementary school aged girls, but it wasn't accurate.

I'm certainly now interested in checking out The Anti-Capitalist Resistance Comic Book by Gord Hill.  The question I have though is, can I be anti-capitalist and also still love shopping?