YOU KNOW IT'S TRUE BY J.R. HAMANTASCHEN

11/5/2021

this is not horror fiction designed to reinforce; it is brutally surgical in its willingness to pare through rot and bullshit, often exposing things along the way that many would rather not examine too closely. The assaults on assumptions such as “family” or “relationships” are particularly acute, and often near-contemptuous in tone.

Regular readers of J.R. Hamantaschen will know that he rarely -if ever- backs down from confrontation. His work is pervaded by a quality not unique to horror fiction but often exemplified by it: a willingness to approach what other genres will not, to consider what wider culture regards as taboo or too sacred to be dissected. In previous collections -such as You Shall Never Know Security-, Hamantaschen established his manifesto; an oath that is made overt in titles that often scan as bordering between promises and veiled threats. Here is a writer who is not interested in coddling or comforting; in providing rehashes of conventional tropes or familiar cliches; his is not the horror of the familiar. Rather, he seeks to sincerely unsettle the reader not only by dint of the imagery and subject matter he conjures, but by assaulting fondly held assumptions and the cultural proscriptions that inform our worlds.

Rather than regurgitating mythic and traditional cautions regarding the purportedly sacred or beyond consideration, Hamantaschen is intent on subverting those very concepts; it is clear from reading his work that he has no time for the eye that refuses to look or the mind that refuses to consider, no matter how distressing or subversive the ultimate extrapolations. In that interest, his work often borders on the aggressive, by which I do not mean in terms of its subject (though each and every story in this latest collection certainly qualifies), rather by the manner of its approach:

Whilst You Shall Never Know Security established the writer's characteristic, sardonic style (every story he concocts maintains a certain subtext of gallows irony; a dry satirism that sometimes borders on the contemptuous), You Know It's True takes that quality and shrugs off all pretensions of politeness or self-restraint: Here, Hamantaschen's stories have the quality of a brutal, misanthropic sage; a teacher that provides revelation through blows and snarling condemnations, who holds its student's faces down in the blood and effluent of their lives and demands that they see.

Take, for example, the opening salvo: the gloriously entitled I Should Have Been a Pair of Ragged Claws/Scuttling Across The Floors of Silent Seas. Title aside (which is a piece of sublime, sardonic poetry), the story approaches subjects many, many other writers would not, and certainly not in the manner that Hamantaschen does: Here, cultural narratives of family life, mythologies of “childhood” and innocence are undone in the most intimate, brutal fashions. Everything from depression to self-harm, from psychopathy to suicide, form the nihilistic weave of this tale. Artefacts that would be icons of sympathy and identification in other tales become sources of profound ambiguity and posthumous atrocity, here: the family who would be sympathetic victims revealed as almost grotesque in their naivety of what festers at the cankered heart of their little dream-world, in their blithe ignorance of a child who is as alien in that realm as any extra-dimensional or inhuman cuckoo. Normality is not something to aspire to or protect, the subtext seems to growl; the dreams you live that are proscribed by systems designed to mulch you up and cannibalistically feed you to your kin are not things to treasure. Rather, in this story -and, indeed, throughout the collection-, such proscriptions become the sincere source of all horror; the sedative conditions that distract us from fractured reality, and ultimately lead to our slaughter. It's a jagged edge that Hamantaschen walks in this one, as, although there is notable and evident contempt for those caught up in these dreams of living, there is also a degree of affection; he does not demonise the “normal” in the manner that writers such as Barker often do. Rather, he describes it as something that is; a phenomena that's almost meteorological in nature, as beyond human control as it is a product and expression of collective humanity, in all of its banal fantasies. He does not hate these characters, nor does he enjoin the reader to hate them. Rather, he hates what the world has made of them, in a manner not dissimilar to the story's protgaonist, who, by his nature, stands as a conscious refutation of myths of childhood “innocence.”

Whilst it might be tempting to take the images of violence and brutality (much of it self-inflicted) and focus on them as expressions of the horror at the heart of this tale, such would be to do it a grand disservice: the point here is that such phenomena are almost banal compared to the monolithic horrors of which they are merely symptoms: suicide, murder; even the elaborate string of manipulation that ultimately results in the final brutality of the story are all incidental next to the contexts in which they occur: The real horror here, Hamantaschen implies, IS family, IS humanity, IS culture, in all of their vapid proscriptions, lazy and inefficient assumptions and the blindness to one another they necessarily consist of. The visceral deconstruction of the family unit here from within is an assault upon the very notion; a project which Hamantaschen takes to with a despairing glee that is as toothsome as it is potentially alienating.

Or what about my own personal favourite from the collection; Nothing Goes Wrong From The Couch?; Here, Hamantaschen introduces a rare element of the -potentially- supernatural into a situation that could just as easily form the basis of a 1990s sitcom; two college friends, young professionals struggling to make a place and purpose for themselves, the girlfriend who upsets the delicate equilibrium, though here the hijinx are of disturbing kind rather than banally amusing. Once again, what would be the foci of horror in other stories -the monstrous, shape-shifting inverterbrate that invades their apartment and assaults the girlfriend in the shower- is a mere incidence; a cypher for allowing pre-existing tensions and conflicts to bubble to the surface. Its parasitic monstrosity notwithstanding, the entity is barely remarked upon, save in terms of how it affects the dynamics within the household; there is no effort or attempt to explain what it is or where it comes from, because that isn't what Hamantaschen is concerned with. What fascinates him is the horror of humanity; the pre-existing tensions and potential violences that are part and parcel of every human dynamic, be they platonic, professional and/or romantic in nature.

Here, the “monster” is incidental, and that is entirely the point: strange as it is, compellingly unpleasant as it is, it merely serves to bring those tensions to the surface and provide context for their expression: here, we have commentary on post-modern alienation (a gruesome death occurs in the same apartment complex as a result of the “monster's” interference, but the main cast barely even hear about it, and, when they do, don't know how to emotionally respond. Likewise, despite living in close quarters and even romantic entanglements, they are fundamentally aliented from one another, which allows deeper atrocities to occur), patriarchal objectification of women (despite being assaulted and almost murdered in her shower, the female lead is largely ignored and dismissed by the two male protagonists, despite her overt descent into depression and paranoia), the unspoken violence that is part and parcel of the protagonist's relationship, despite it's aesthetic bon homie. Whilst the “monster” manifests certain Freudian notions of the male gaze (that, interestingly, it precipitates and darkly satirises during the shower scene), it is an ambient demon; a creature that encapsulates and boils down certain misanthropic themes that pervade the story and are expressed through its characters and their relationships.

This is what Hamantaschen wants his audience to understand: the absurdities, the monsters, the seemingly supernatural forces, are not the sources or foci of horror here or, indeed, in the waking world that he perceives: horror derives from humanity; from the corrupt and cannibal systems of tradition we have allowed to sustain, regardless of their lack of fitness, and even from factors as inalienable as our own animal conditions; the evolutionary and biological influences that make us what we are.

Despite the brutally sagastic nature of these stories, Hamantaschen does not make the mistake of attempting to answer the problems her perceives: these are, after all, fundamentally human concerns that have plagued philosophy, science and numerous schools of thought since time out of mind. Rather, Hamantaschen presents himself -or rather, his narrators- as voyeurs to these horrors: there is a peculiarly uncomfortable quality as of being dropped invisibly into the lives of people we do not know, forced to witness what we, perhaps, should not be looking at, and certainly not finding ourselves stirred or fascinated by.

That sense of voyeuristic intrusion is enhanced by the nature of Hamantaschen's prose, which often takes an oddly relaxed, distanced perspective from the atrocities on display, as though we are witnessing them through a window or TV screen. That, in itself, cultivates a certain atmosphere; a sense of prurient fascination but also of helplessness; the audience have no more agency here than the characters on the page: what unfurls is inevitable, often as a result of manipulations and forces that cannot be defined, much less predicted or accounted for.

Take, for example, House Katz; a thoroughly post-modern tale that makes reference to the effects of isolation, social upheaval and the exaggerated pressures of existing in a family unit as a result of pandemic-inspired quarantines. Once again, the horrors are pre-existing; the tensions that occur within the family either overtly drawn or remarked upon internally by the characters before anything abstruse or bizarre takes place. In this instance, the phenomena will be familiar to horror audiences in terms of its subject, but likely not in terms of its framing or significance:

Whilst going about the petty, picayue distractions of their lives, the eponymous Katz family find their apartment assaulted by swarms of cats that, in the vein of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, become murderous, turning on humanity and its confections in homicidal frenzy. Trapped in their apartment block, they try to secure it against the invasion, to find some safe space in which to ride out the phenomena, only to find that there are none; that their little kingdom has been undone in the space of an hour, and all they've struggled to build and maintain is for nothing.

The implications of the story are clear; once again, Hamantaschen doesn't concern himself or belabour the reader with trying to explain the phenomena or focus on the animals themselves. Rather, they become vehicles for a more profound, human commentary. In this instance, a distressingly cold dissection of the fragility of our structures of family and shelter. The murderous cats -and other animals- are, ultimately, akin to the pandemic itself; a natural phenomena that arises unexpectedly, without significant warning, and desolates everything from our social lives to our economic systems, imposing traumas and transformations that humanity is not collectively ready to cope with. It is a story of how unexpected, external influences, beyond any and all control, have the propensity to undo our assumptions of certainty and safety; how homes become prisons, how structures such as family provide no protection, despite what our fondly-held meta-narratives would insist.

That Hitchockian principle of trespassing beyond the picket-fences and peering through windows pervades the collection: if there is hypocrisy or pretence or abuse, Hamantaschen wants his readers to see it, wants them to understand it, and comprehend that they are not separate from it; we are all products and expressions of the same systems, these stories proclaim; as much victims as proponents of them, and the same innate capacities for violence, abuse and atrocity are bred in each and every one of us, not to mention the systems and circles we cultivate and call “life.”

The unflinching nature of the stories, their insistence on not looking away and actively commenting on the day to day states of incipient atrocity in which we all exist, combined with the sometimes-bordering-on-bolshy nature of the prose, might prove alienating for some. To reiterate: this is not horror fiction designed to reinforce; it is brutally surgical in its willingness to pare through rot and bullshit, often exposing things along the way that many would rather not examine too closely. The assaults on assumptions such as “family” or “relationships” are particularly acute, and often near-contemptuous in tone.

Take, for example, May As Well Blame It On The Heat; arguably one of the most subtly cynical stories in the entire collection, and one that assaults a particularly enshrined sacred cow: the imperative to have children.

As the title suggests, the protagonists of the story, Sunil and Nakia, find themselves in circumstances where they feel inclined to “try” for a child, but in a manner that is almost blasé; the imperative being the result of myriad, external and unspoken pressures, rather than any genuine consideration of what having a child would mean for them. What Hamantaschen makes clear from the outset is that: neither of them truly want a child, neither of them even sincerely consider the implications of it. Rather, it is something they feel compelled to do by narratives that have, thus far, failed to fulfil and which may, in short order, result in the falling apart of their little domestic kingdom. The viciousness of the commentary is subtle and subtextual; Hamantaschen describing through the characters what he perceives in wider humanity, i.e. that, in the cultural systems we have accrued, the notion of conception is treated in a commodified, incidental manner; as a lifestyle choice, rather than with the existential weight it deserves. Of course, in this instance, those unspoken, sublimated concerns result in a manifestation of something truly horrific, but which is also, by story's end, a bleak kind of blessing. That Hamantaschen dares to suggest that an apparent miscarriage might be welcome is, in itself, incendiary, but also uncomfortably, undeniably true. Once again, this is a horror that is part and parcel of our day to day experience as human beings, especially for women, upon whom the unspoken pressures in question are exaggerated to the Nth degree. That the story switches perspective from Sunil to Nakia and back again throughout, thereby providing insight into ubiquitous confusions from both the male and female perspective, serves to emphasise the quiet insanity of the status quo; that people are forced into these profound decisions with little in the way of appropriate consideration or preparation. In many respects, Sunil and Nakia have the quality of children themselves, despite being in their early forties; they do not understand what they are doing, any more than any prospective parent, despite the research they conduct, the received wisdom they assimilate, the myriad procrastinations they engage in to ensure the babe's health. They are sublimely out of control throughout the narrative, prey to pressures and factors that they have no say or influence over. For the most part, they don't even understand what informs their own decision-making; they merely concede to the pressures they viscerally experience without deeper examination. Theirs is a microcosm of the wider phenomena of deciding to have children; it begs the reader to consider their own experiences thereof, and to understand that, maybe, the decision was never theirs to begin with.

Alternatively, we have It's Always Time To Go; a story that assaults myths of childhood innocence by simultaneously presenting an ostensible “child” character who is far from it and also suggesting a Lovecraftian metaphysics against which childhood itself is no talisman or defence. Placing an adult male consciousness behind the eyes of a child, allowing those two elements to mingle and pollute one another, is one of the subtly darker concepts within the collection, the later revelations that said “child” provides shuddering in their metaphysical import; themselves a commentary on the invisibly, ineffably hostile reality Hamantaschen perceives humanity operating in. What should be an instance of joyous growth and social development becomes one of revelatory horror and, ultimately, atrocity whose description is shudderingly bizarre. We, as the reader, are given little in the way of insight into what forces have visited the boys in the night; only that it came as a result of the child-who-is-not-a-child, pursuing him in a manner not dissimilar to the Cenobites pursuing Frank Cotton in Clive Barker's Hellraiser.

Everything from notions of family to delusions of memory, myths of childhood to distorted nostalgia, are fodder for assault in this collection: Hamantaschen's consistent credo appears to be: Nothing is sacred, and that which is packaged as such is either a dream or a lie. No matter who comes to this collection, there will be an image, a situation, a theme, a concept, that chimes unpleasantly; something sacred to them as individuals that is critiqued or unzipped. In that regard, many will find the collection difficult to read in its totality, especially in concert with Hamantaschen's uniquely aggressive prose.

In Short Bloom, Long Fading, Hamantaschen presents the portrait of a world that has acclimated to a particular atrocity; one that occurs so regularly, it has been subsumed into wider culture, even becoming the subject of weather reports and children's games: suspicious holes spontaneously blossom throughout humanity's settlements; holes that contain creatures which, if made contact with, prove grotesquely fatal to their prey. In part, the story is concerned with how readily we assimilate the awful and atrocious into our cultures; how we merely accept certain evils because they are purported to be part and parcel of the world we live in. However, the story also takes a turn into the intimate, exploring the development of relationships, specifically between childhood friends who become adults together, the dynamic of their relationship changing in response to that turbulence along the way. The ubiquitious personal detatchment and alienation that is an underlying -or overt- element of every story becomes pronounced here, but so too does a commentary on the objectifying nature of the male gaze: from afar, the protagonist regards his former childhood friend with disturbed romanticism, making her an icon of passions and affections that she does not court or want and that have no basis in reality. Whilst the language he uses to describe his relationship to the woman is generally benign and romantic, it is also profoundly disturbing, given the intensity of its fascination, the degree of its poetry. The final sequence is perhaps one of the most shocking in the book, as it involves a necrophiliac rape that is also, for the protagonist, a moment of profound revelation; a personal transcendence that he describes in luridly metaphysical language. That co-mingling of seemingly disparate or contrary elements -the carnal and the metaphysical, the base and the transcendent- is another means by which Hamantaschen upsets expectation and places the reader in a state of suggestible uncertainty.

In truth, there is so much in this collection that warrants dissection and discussion, a simple review can barely scratch the surface. There are brief notes after each story, explaining their context and conception in some detail. Whilst these are engaging and entertaining, the stories themselves are consistent, thematically and stylistically strong enough to sustain without them. There is a certain gallows joy to be had in slowly unearthing the thematic consistencies and commentaries Hamantaschen makes without any direct input or explanation; these are stories that demand a degree of dissection and engagement in order to fully appreciate or understand. That itself may put off more casual readers or those who seek something lighter and more distractionary from their horror fiction.

However, for those of us that -perhaps masochistically- ache for the deeper cuts, there's little more willing and able to exercise its sadism on us.

Twelve Stories of Truly Dark FictionAcclaimed throughout the underground horror world and having come seemingly out of nowhere, J.R. Hamantaschen built a reputation based solely on the quality of his stories. He returns to the short story genre and finishes what he started with his last collection of horror fiction, containing some of his most innovative, unsettling, and uncompromising tales.