On Self-Medication

(Preliminary note: I’m not much of a drinker, but no judgement is implied in this post. It’s simply not a habit that I’ve developed. My own life-coping strategies, which include the consumption of problematic volumes of coffee and books, are not above reproach. This discussion starts and ends with the stories, and the narrative function of the behaviours described in the stories.)

Self-medication describes any behaviour undertaken by an individual to alleviate mental distress (stress, anxiety, boredom, psychological trauma, mental illness, etc.). It is a type of coping strategy. This can describe behaviours as varied as meditation, exercise, recreational drug use, alcohol use, tobacco use, eating comfort food, and other forms of consumption.

Not all instances of these behaviours qualify as self-medication. People engage in these behaviours for other reasons as well. The aspect we are examining here is limited to those instances in which the behaviour is used to produce a specific effect. I think that Laird’s fiction provides numerous instances where the self-medication aspect is clearly present. In these instances, the behaviour (typically drinking or smoking) is not engaged in for pleasure, social acceptance, or to ease physical pain. The behaviour is instead used as an effective way of showing that a character is undergoing mental distress.

Consider this passage from “Old Virginia”, from which I’ve removed a few sentences:

Hatcher kept some scotch in the pantry. Doctor Riley poured—I didn't trust my own hands yet. He lighted cigarettes. (…)

I sucked my cigarette to the filter in a single drag, exhaled and gulped scotch. Held out my glass for another three fingers' worth.

Divorced from their context, the narrator’s actions are still easy to interpret. Whatever just happened, it has rattled his composure. He is sucking on the cigarette and gulping the scotch in order to restore some inner equilibrium. From personal experience or observation, we understand his actions, whether or not we have ever heard the words “self-medication” or “self-soothing”. Whatever our own habitual means of dealing with anxiety or stress, it is easy to empathize with the character.

Another illustrative passage, from “The Procession of the Black Sloth”, once again shortened:

Royce swallowed hard and wondered briefly if he was going to be sick. He chewed on his knuckle. (…)
He decided to fix a drink, but the scotch was gone and the last beer too; even the mini bottles of Christian Brothers he kept in the pantry, with the oatmeal, flour, and mouse traps.
Royce walked downstairs without recollection of forming the intent to leave his apartment. Full dark had come and the sodium lamps kicked on, masking the faces of the guests in shades of red and amber. He scooped several glasses of champagne from an unattended platter, retired to one of the small tables, and drank rapidly and with little pleasure.

Barron is obviously not the only writer to present us with characters in need of a drink. Fiction is full of such characters, horror fiction perhaps more so than any other genre. H.P. Lovecraft*, teetotaller though he was, did not refrain from using the technique on occasion:

Following me clumsily to the study, he asked for some whiskey to steady his nerves.
("The Thing on the Doorstep")

Here—have another drink—I need one anyhow!
(“Pickman’s Model”)

Lovecraft is more blunt. He explicitly draws the reader’s attention to the purpose of the action. Barron is more descriptive. The details he adds lends the actions more weight, and he leaves us to draw the inference ourselves.

Wallace waved him off, awkwardly poured a glass of milk with his left hand, sloshed in some rum from an emergency bottle in a counter drawer. He held his glass with trembling fingers, eyeballing the slimy bubbles before they slid into his mouth; poured another. (“Hallucigenia”)

Why is alcohol consumption so prevalent in Barron’s stories, and in fiction more generally? It may a narrative necessity more than a reflection of anything else. Drinking fits neatly in a story in a way that other coping strategies do not. Avoidance, for instance, seems far more common in life than in fiction. When confronted with stressful situations, characters do not seek distraction in television, or social media, or decide to take a nap, or a brisk walk, with nearly the same frequency as the readers do. These would divert the narrative flow; drinking and brooding channels it.

By reaching for a bottle, the character is being proactive, resourceful. The action may be short-sighted, but it keeps the character in the game, so to speak. Like smelling salts on a dazed boxer, it’s a way to keep the character in the fight until the concluding knock-out. The self-destructive aspect of the behaviour fits hand-in-glove with a certain type of doomed Barron protagonist. The impairment of the character’s judgement may also play a role. Self-preservation instincts compromised, the character agrees to go on, to meet with his (nearly always his) fate.

* Note: The references to H.P. Lovecraft’s work, here and elsewhere, are used for three reasons. One, if there is such a thing as a universally known “weird fiction” writer, it must be Lovecraft, for better or worse. I believe he’s a common point of reference for many Laird Barron readers. Two, I’m very familiar with his work. Three, his entire work is available online, and is therefore easy to search and reference.

On Chuckling

WARNING: This post contains nothing but SPOILERS.
Please read ALL Laird Barron stories before reporting back here.

Davis swore he had heard chuckling and whispering behind the steel door after curfew. (“Old Virginia”)

The chuckle is the most menacing form of laughter.

This is because, I believe, a chuckle is a private laugh.

It is a self-congratulatory laugh. It is produced when we recognize the amusing fact that we are the only ones who are in the know. One chuckles to oneself, and often at the expense of others, presumably out of earshot.

It is smug.

An overt chuckle is menacing simply because we are social animals. When we hear it, we naturally infer that we are missing something. If the situation were truly funny, we would be sharing a laugh. Instead, a chuckle implies that we are missing a crucial piece of information which we have either failed to obtain or which has been withheld from us.

It implies that we are the joke.

A person may chuckle in our presence but immediately apologize and let us in on the joke. That is rude but forgivable. It is the person who chuckles openly and unapologetically that causes concern. They are either entirely lacking in self-restraint, or so little threatened by us that concealing their amusement at our expense is unnecessary.

"My men," I said. It was difficult to talk, my throat was rusty and bruised. "With Mother. Except the brute. You killed him. Mother won't take meat unless it's alive. Shame on you, Roger." She chuckled evilly.  

("Old Virginia") 

Poor Roger knows to expect the worse from Old Virginia.

A chuckle becomes much more worrisome when we are not sure just who … or what … is doing the chuckling. There are few things as terrifying as a chuckle which floats out of the darkness in which we thought ourselves alone.

"Hey." The voice floated from the thicker shadows of the alley. It was a husky voice, its sex muted by the acoustics of the asphalt and concrete. "Hey, mister."

 

Wallace dragged on his cigarette and peered into the darkness. The muscles in his neck and shoulders bunched. His hand shook. He opened his mouth to answer that odd, muffled voice and could not speak. His throat was too tight. What did it remind him of? Something bad, something tickling the periphery of his consciousness, a warning. A certain quality of the voice, its inflection and cadence, harkened recollections of hunting for tigers in the high grass in India, of chopping like Pizarro through the Peruvian jungles on the trail of jaguars—of being hunted.  

"Mister." The voice was close now. "I can see you. Please. Prease." The last word emerged in a patently affected accent, a mockery of the Asian dialect. A low, wheezy chuckle accompanied this. "Prease, mistuh. You put a hotel in my rice paddy, mistuh." ("Hallucigenia")

What’s most troubling about the chuckle in Laird Barron’s stories is that it is frequently deployed maliciously by the chuckler. Wallace has it right. He is being hunted, and he is being chuckled at because fear changes how he is going to taste. He is being seasoned.

"Mother wants to meet you. Such a vital existence you have pursued! Not often does She entertain provender as seasoned as yourself...”  

(“Old Virginia”)

Fear sweat is distinctive, any predator knows that. This pungent musk superseded the powerful cologne and stale odor of whiskey leaching from his pores.  

(“Shiva, Open Your Eye”)

Butler chortled from a spider-cocoon in the green limbs, "Now you're seasoned for his palette. Best run, Pinkerton. You've been in the sauce. Chewed up and shat out. And if you live, in twenty years you'll be another walking Mouth." He faded into the woodwork. (“Bulldozer”)

My weakness is the life essence of primates who take a swim in the Great Dark and return, brimming with eldritch vitality. (Xs for Eyes)

(The chortle is a particularly loud chuckle, it should be mentioned.)

The ogres (the shape-shifting, man-eating giants of folklore) in Barron’s stories are apex predators. They hunt humans, and they have very particular tastes. With the benefit of hindsight, we can see the pattern start to emerge in the earliest stories. There is something about the brain which has been through an emotionally taxing experience that lends it a flavour which they find delightful. The more such experiences the better.

(They also eat children, yes, but I suspect that they do so primarily because of its impact on the witnesses and survivors. You can season an entire community with one little bite.)

Now, however, you are in on the joke. While the protagonists sweat, you can withstand any amount of chuckling with equanimity. You may even enjoy a chuckle at their expense.

On Continuity and Fictional Universes

Does Laird Barron's work consist of a single fictional universe?

(Warning: spoilers)




I think the answer to that is a qualified "no". A more interesting question, and one which every future blog post will attempt to answer, is:

To what extent does LB's work consist of a single fictional universe?

There are sets of stories which are explicitly set in the same continuity: the events described in one story are referenced in the other as having taken place (e.g. The Croning references the events of "The Men From Porlock").

There are sets of stories which seem to be set in the same continuity. They share characters, (fictional) locations, creatures, items, etc, and the presentation of those elements is reasonably consistent, given the unreliability of narrators, the omission of details, and other story exigencies.

Complicating things slightly, we are explicitly introduced to parallel dimensions in several stories ("Parallax", X's for Eyes) which share elements with other stories. The implication is that different presentations of the same elements may still be part of the same meta-continuity.

There are stories with few overt ties to other stories. They may (currently) share their fictional universe with no other stories by Laird.

My hypothesis from the outset is that LB puts the needs of the story above continuity concerns. The meta-narrative that parallel worlds exist, and that the divergence between them can be very small, provides cover for any unintended continuity snarls. I think that the shared elements are featured because they serve a storytelling purpose (to increase verisimilitude, to produce a thrill of recognition in the reader, etc.), and not because Laird is attempting to produce one (or many) entirely self-consistent canon(s) of stories.

I don't think that it will be possible to unambiguously determine which sets of stories share the same fictional universes, which share the same meta-universe(s), and which are entirely out of continuity with the others. That does not mean however that it can not be meaningfully attempted.