Steve EricksonBesprekingen

A hearty digestible meal of a trippy as hell read. A dark, comforting, humane waltz across 20th century film history. This book was written for me.

It says something that one of the blurbs on this book is FROM Pynchon, rather than a comparison to his work. This is the real thing. Hilariously, there's also a terrible film adaptation of Zeroville starring James Franco which destroys the impeccable tone in the novel. Luckily it BOMBED.

Zeroville is an almost dreamlike meander through Hollywood... the neighbourhood, the business, the history, and the fantasy. Vikar, a sometimes violent, always film-obsessed, perhaps autistic young man with tattoos of Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift emblazoned on his shaved head is our guide.

We follow his journey beginning on the day that he arrives in LA in 1969 amid the background of hippies and surfers and the Manson murders through his becoming part of the studio system over the next decade and a half and watching him and his contemporaries navigate the turbulent years of Hollywood studios when everything was changing quickly.

This book is a veritable feast for any serious cinephile. It is overflowing with film references, Hollywood history, and thinly veiled characters. I absolutely love the movies but I don't consider myself anywhere near an expert and I enjoyed all the references and had fun figuring out who was who and what was what. I imagine that my many film savant friends would be in heaven with that part of it.

While the novel follows a standard timeline through the years, Erickson manages to make the sum of the parts feel diaphanous and perpetual much like the philosophy of Vikar in that "all the scenes of a movie are really happening at the same time. No scene really leads to the next, all scenes lead to each other. . . . 'Continuity' is one of the myths of film."

It wasn't my favourite Erickson novel but it still had that 'bit darker, bit deeper' quality which I can count on him for.

Stunning. Having just re-read this a decade on from the first time, I was blown away once again by the visceral reactions that I had to Erickson's prose. His writing is beautiful and sublime and thought-provoking in the very same moments that he is describing horrors and tragedies.

The novel is an intricate and tremendously woven story for which I think the reader must be prepared to be open to. The storytelling is beautiful and there are full pages which I could read over and over for their elegance. There's no reason not to enjoy this novel on its surface... But try to walk into this novel without expectations and allow it to wash over you.

Some guy wakes up nine years later and he's a completely different person? I can't.

I HAVE SEEN THE TERRIFYING FACE TO FACE. I DO NOT FLEE IN HORROR. BUT THOUGH I APPROACH WITH COURAGE, I KNOW VERY WELL IT IS NOT THE COURAGE OF FAITH.
-KIERKEGAARD

I'M A FOUNTAIN OF BLOOD IN THE SHAPE OF A GIRL.
-BJORK

In her off hours she writes her memoirs in a notebook, saying to herself, Well now Kristin, this is a little presumptuous, don't you think? To be writing your memoirs at age seventeen? But she concludes that, after all, the months since she left home have been interesting, and if she herself isn't worthy of a memoir, maybe they are.
- page 5

It is an amazing achievement to create one character, one thread of story that can take us away from ourselves, to ourselves. It is a wonder of the world to create one after the other as Erickson does here, life after interconnected life, each one a reconnection of our own selves to our own broken world. Not a single miss, not even with the characters introduced in the last chapters of the book. The writing is so beautiful, I think I highlighted half the book. And the story? (How's the story, right?) Have mercy. The story is perfect. And wrapped up in that perfect story? Memory and faith and death and chaos and God, and so many things in between, and still not a miss anywhere. I expect this will be my best book of the year. Right now I would just like to shout it from all the rooftops: You must read this!

It has to be some kind of sin that this was ever out of print. (And the people who wrote [b:1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die|452208|1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die|Peter Boxall|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320483996s/452208.jpg|814053] deserve a stern talking to for leaving this off.) And special thanks goes out to Karen for all the work she puts in championing good books for the rest of us; I might have left this on my TBR indefinitely without her recommendation.)

In any case, it is available now on both Kindle and Nook, and if you are a reader of dead trees do yourself a favor and track it down ASAP. (And if you have it, for the love of what is good in the world, drop whatever else you're doing and read it now. It's that good.)

As for myself, I will be off reading the sequel, [b:Our Ecstatic Days|184924|Our Ecstatic Days|Steve Erickson|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348296065s/184924.jpg|178737], and all of the rest of Mr. Erickson's works.

The best book I've read in at least a year - Erickson is becoming a favorite author, and this masterpiece is a treasure hunt of movies to watch and characters to discover with the smoky logic of a secret, ultimate dream.

Tough to think of a place to start here. I had come to this because I was kind of fascinated by Erickson's short story (which I guess is now a novel?) Zeroville, and this was the only book of his I ever seemed to find (and it had a glowing blurb from William Gibson, which, that's certainly something).

I finished this book and didn't feel that I enjoyed it. This reviewer: http://quarterlyconversation.com/arc-dx-by-steven-erickson-review and I seem to be mostly on the same page - I almost want to email this person and track them down to talk this out further, because the Lynch connection seems even stronger in light of the Twin Peaks material that's come out between then and now (watch the third season and read this book and tell me they're not on the same wavelength).

Anyhow, that's me digressing. The point in that review I wanted to get to here is this idea of Erickson "breaking the piano", hammering on these metaphors to the point that you kind of lose any sense of what the characters are doing. Twin Peaks is always interesting to me because you have these very human, down-to-earth stories overlapping and bouncing off of the activities of this weird, higher-dimensional battle that the show never really explains all that well. Here, what you do get of that human element (and I'm not saying it's not there, because it certainly is) is wrapped up in layer upon layer of all this other stuff (which, to be clear, is nowhere near as weird as that other stuff is in Twin Peaks, it's just that it feels impenetrable).

Overall, I came away from this feeling like Erickson's a really great writer, but he's just not for me, and that's fine.

Don't know what to make of this... Expected science fiction, but got the narrators view on life in general, and women in particular in detail. Trying to decide if it was very profound, or a waste of time...

The first 1/3 of this book is intriguing: the twin towers mysteriously rematerialize in the badlands of a mid-apocalyptic 2020 America with Elvis Presley's stillborn twin brother inside. He then jumps off the roof through a time portal into an alternative 1960s, undoing all sorts of historical events like a reverse Forrest Gump.

The remaining 2/3 of the book: *jerk-off hand motion*

This book has literally everything I like and I still didn't like it. Very Forrest Gump-y.

This is a compact book. The contents seem effortlessly written, and read like watching water flowing. There's no hardship in reading this book, apart from the contents; I won't go into details that may spoil this for you, but it's big, and I actually felt as though two books had finished by the time I was 11% into it.

The author's use of language is commendable, as it's easy to read and digest, while the characters and their inner thoughts are less palatable (to me, at least), but are so interesting, that I kept wanting more and more of the book. After half of it, interest waned, but picked up again after circa 70%.

I'll recommend this to all; it's a two-punch book, first for the use of language which I've seldom seen, and second, for the contents; the plot twists, turns, churns and is truly imaginative. Shan't say more. Go read.

Feels like Erickson jumped the shark here. The idea is 9/11 turning point, divided America, other potential turning points e.g. no Elvis. But whereas in his other novels the pop culture works in the service of the story, here it is the other way around. It's basically an excuse for the author to foist all his favorite songs on us. There's an enormous amount of wanky musing on modern music clogging up a fairly standard magic-realist Big Idea, and quite a lot of annoying "author as character" nonsense too.

Let's say I'm faithlessness made flesh, the modern age's leap of faith stopped dead in its tracks, fucking around with apocalypse and chaos only because in some broken part of me, among any wreckage of honor or altruism or commitment of compassion, or the bits and pieces of moral vanity, I really believed the abyss was always just the playground of my imagination, and I was its bully.

The errant effects and disputed origins of the drugs would have been more central; however such causal chains were lost amidst the shrieking of the John Zorn playing overhead. Mr. E stepped back into an alcove, nearly door-stopping an Asian woman explaining her theory of Brakhage to her snoring Nordic boyfriend. Oops, he muttered, but only to his soul. One day, he droned, I'll write a perfect novel, one which captures the amniotic insanity of cinema and how we are nascent suicides forever reaching out in the dark, afraid of the admission cost for our ugly demeanors. A novel like that At The Drive-In song about eating their young. Oh, of course, I'll have to situate punk somewhere in this birth of tragedy, Apollo on our doorsteps with an evil eye. That's heavy, dude, he mused. Maybe I should prime the pump by spraying out a novel about memory-geishas and milk carton children: that would be a hoot.

The trek of a reading adult is often a lonely and opaque one, only in the sense, that the course is personal and peers can only shrug and smile, but the path continues. I can say that if I could ever pen a piece of literary achievement, it would be Zeroville.

A sort of Pynchon derivative that, while not painfully bad, can pretty much be passed over. Erickson traces a circuitous pathway through some of the late twentieth century's worst and weirdest moments using an emotionally damaged Northern California girl called Kristen as a conduit. The problem is that much of the reference points here are too obvious, the book's surrealism feels forced, and Erickson's not much of a prose stylist. There's a good deal of fin-de-siecle paranoia here, but Erickson lacks the chops to pull it off: it's more "X-Files" than "Gravity's Rainbow". And there are parts of "The Sea Came in at Midnight" that deal with some pretty grotesque sexual violence. One wonders if the author was going for "dark" or "transgressive" ended up falling short, somewhere between "exploitative" and "deeply unpleasant" instead. At its best, "The Sea Came In at Midnight" can be spacily, creepily sensual, and the book seems to get some forward motion going: Erickson keeps you reading just to see what'll happen to these people he's created. And I suppose some of the imagery here is pleasantly dreamlike. But there are much better novels out there for you to read. This registers -- or rather, doesn't register, maybe -- as pretty forgettable.

HOLY. CATS. How do you describe a book that's about the sudden reappearance of the Twin Towers, unblemished and whole, in the Badlands of South Dakota 20 years after 9/11? How do I even begin to talk about a story that centers around Jesse Presley, the stillborn twin of Elvis, who wakes up on the 93rd floor of one of the towers only to escape and move through a world where one of the greatest entertainers of all time never existed? How can one possibly write coherently about a novel that follows two siblings as they drive across a country torn asunder, towards two towers that seem to sing, each person who stands in their shadows hearing a different song? Answer: you can't. Solution: read this. Read this unique, bonkers book. You'll be thinking about it long after you finish the last page. I know I will.

I devoured this book in 24 hours...
This was too good to be true and completely impossible to put down.
Let me start out by saying, if you are a fan of Kathe Koja, you should really check out Steve Erickson, and vice versa. You will thank me later, trust me!
They have a similar writing style, which I believe is referred to a "stream of consciousness". Erickson and Koja also have a secretive way of writing a GRITTY original story that begins to crawl around your brain like a venomous predator snake.
Please don't expect all your lose ends to be tied up into a pretty bow, also don't expect a superior plotline that has a start middle and end. No, perhaps there isn't an actual POINT to this book, this is more of a STYLE, a breath of fresh air, a glance at an illuminated world, you feel like you are submerging yourself in a dark tunnel and spit out into another planet.
THE IMAGERY!! The original characters that you just want to meet, and pick through their personal items and read their diaries and know them inside and out.
This is the sort of book that drops you flat on your back in the middle of a strange human's life and atmosphere... you feel naiive and perhaps a bit vulnerable and exposed to unknown elements. After you venture out a little bit and begin to feel comfortable, you are kicked right back into your NORMAL monotonous world.
Ok, the Joke is over, Lemme back in Erickson... :(

Steve Erickson, I am so angry with you.
This novel has completely turned my views around on what good writing is supposed to be. I want to go back and remove stars from some other titles just to show how strong this 5 star title is. How inconsiderate! How dare you drench this novel in such rich language, coupled with magical imagery, unforgettable characters, and a tale of heart wrenching unrequited love.
I will be recommending this to all my friends with a WARNING: Nothing you read will ever amount to this tale ever again. You will yearn for more, you will want to write nasty letters to the author advising him that he has raised the bar far too high.
Don't come into this expecting not to work... there is a beautiful story here underneath vivid magical imagery. All the feels.... overwhelmed.

A Novel with a capital N, that makes the medium great. I started it reluctantly and after the first page I couldn't stop reading.

I still don't know why. Maybe because there is no sentence to skip, the tone and rhythm is very engaging, the scenes are never too long or too short... or maybe that catching the musical/cultural references is rewarding. There was something (and cannot be the plot) that kept me reading and wishing to come back to the book as soon as I had a minute.

(I received a copy for review via NetGalley, and can only say a big thanks for such a great reading)

This was a very strange book. I mean the Twin Towers showing up out in the middle of nowhere is strange enough and then everyone hearing a different song coming from it. Yeah, weird.

Then the story goes astray and we are brought into a conversation with Jack and Bobby Kennedy which is pretty much almost present day. They are talking about Adlai Stevenson and how successful he will be, even Nixon is in on the conversation, as well as LBJ.

Tne Jesse Presley part I definitely didn't get. I'm still not sure how he got from the roof of the tower onto the ground. He couldn't sing like his brother, I'm a whole lot lost on that part.

Actually I'm a whole lot lost on most of the book. For me it seems like something more on the level of The Twilight Zone.

Thanks to Blue Rider Press for approving my request and to Net Galley for providing me with a free e-galley in exchange for an honest review.

So twenty years after their destruction, the Twin Towers are discovered standing in the middle of nowhere South Dakota. Inside, Elvis Presley's still-born brother Jesse rouses himself in confusion, remembering instead that Elvis was the still-born child. A woman is president. California is a dustbowl. Flags of "Disunion" dot the land from Arizona to Texas and border patrols abound. But there's "a rumored thoroughfare unmarked on any map, a secret highway called the 'shadowbahn' that cuts through the heart of the country from one end to the other with impunity." So Erickson's surreal alternate history begins.

What ISN'T this book about? A lot of it a little too feasible given the current political and environmental mess.

Six-word review: Reflecting the light, windows become mirrors.

Extended review:

When I face writing a review of a book that mystified me, it's less like a challenge and more like a dare. How much of an idiot am I going to look like this time? 40 percent? 80 percent? I guess I'll have to take the chance, consoling myself with the facts that so far my admissions of bewilderment haven't been fatal and that I haven't even always been the only one.

But first I'm going to revisit what happens when you take a paper Möbius strip and cut it right down the center line. Do you get one long Möbius strip? Two strips linked together like a chain? No, you get a double-length strip with two twists in it.

How is that relevant? It isn't.

Recalling Days Between Stations just a few days after finishing it is like recalling a dream, or a hallucination, or a dream of a hallucination. In my notes I called it enigmatic and mesmerizing. It's not that the sentences aren't perfectly clear, well formed, linear, and grammatical or the descriptions aren't vivid and fine. But the images seem to relate to one another like successive frescoes painted on a plaster wall, the shadows of one showing through another so that you aren't sure which is the subject and which is the ghost.

Parts of it, indeed, seem to take place in the halting, haunting imagery of a silent movie of the 1920s. I see the characters, one in particular, rendered in sepia, with shadowed eyes and a desperate, hopeless beauty, ripe for a rescue that never comes.

There's a story, all right--at its barest, a love triangle. But the story seems no more essential to the novel--essential in its literal sense, being of the basic nature or essence of it--than the subject matter is essential to an abstract painting configured to display color, texture, dynamic range, and emotional expression.

Since finishing this novel, I've read a 200-page explication of the Heart Sutra by Red Pine. Unenlightened though I am, I'm better able to tell you what happens there in the heart of Zen than I can give you with assurance an account of the narrative of Days Between Stations. It's not just the sand, the water, the ice, the twins, the identities, the transmogrifying, the flickering silent films, the lost bicycle racers, or the lost children.

It's memory and perception. It's sensory experience and mental constructs. It's being. It's time.

Here's something that happened to me while I was reading the novel:

When I paused one night on about page 176, I forgot to move my bookmark and left it at the arbitrary future spot where I'd parked it while reading. So the next night I picked up at page 208. I didn't realize that I'd skipped 32 pages because I was no more disoriented than usual, no more puzzled over continuity and logic. Finally after about 18 pages I turned back to look for something--and realized that there was a whole chunk I hadn't read at all. So I returned to the beginning of the section I'd skipped and read forward from there. When, presently, I came back through the 18 pages I'd read ahead of sequence, including the passage about the lost bicyclists, there was of course literal déjà vu, so fitting for this of all books.

I would like to call this a fantasy, but the term has become so degraded through the popularity of genre fiction featuring wizards and dragons that it seems discourteously inept to apply it here. Comparisons are wanting, but there is a similarity of feeling to the novels of Haruki Murakami. I was also persistently reminded of Camus's The Fall, maybe especially because of the laugh. And the circling back to view the same moment from different vantage points, as if through different windows in different structures and different moving vehicles. Something like eternity, as explained by Joseph Campbell, being not foreverness but a timeless present.

I never encountered an explanation of the title, but by the end I hazarded a weak theory, having to do with Michel's journey by train from Paris: an idea of years and lives taking place between days, and the suspicion that all the stations he passes through are Wyndeaux.½

I wasn't sure what to expect when I ventured into this web that Erickson created… but Wow! I am pleasantly surprised! I thoroughly enjoyed this and desire more from this author!
I was brought here after reading a review that stated if I enjoyed Kathe Koja's writing, that I would probably enjoy Erickson, they were absolutely right! But mind you: they are both unique to their own style and really shouldn't be compared. Honestly, I normally wouldn’t have reached for a novel of this genre, had it not been referenced to a similar style of Koja, because she is one of my favorite authors ever!
So that all being said, don't expect this story to be spoon fed to you, you will actually have to work for it, and you MUST pay attention to all the intricate details.
I am not here to spill the beans on what the plot is, you must find it out yourself!
I really enjoyed how this story flowed from one character to another, so effortlessly. It almost seemed like you walked hand and hand with an individual- exploring their world and their point of view. You begin to start caring about them and are so curious to find out more. But! -- then they are introduced to a new character, and then you are abruptly forced to venture down a new path with the new character, while you remain longing after the previous character who left you behind. Until you are so burning with curiosity to learn about this new character, BUT! - Then we meet a new person who intertwines with our original character …. And so the cycle seems to repeat every time we meet someone new, we then explore their world and their backstory and point of view.

All this continuously happens while in the background the author is spinning a web that somehow connect all the characters with each other by the end.
I can see how some did not "get" this story. You didn't take your time to absorb it and think. I bet my review doesn’t even make sense to you… that is why you should read it! I bet you are burning with curiosity, as I was, and still am!
It is like Easton Ellis crossed paths with Kathe Koja and produced an abstract story in which you must work to interpret the outcome in order to feel satisfied.
It was heart wrenching at times, but not overly depressing where you absorb any negativity.
It makes you feel a bit frantic and nerve wrecking and at times even a bit emotional, all while forever burning with curiosity and the desire to dig into these character’s brains.
I plan to read a bunch more from this author, his style is so original and different from the norm!

If you’ve ever lived in or near the canyons of the Hollywood Hills; if you’ve ever faced foreclosure or known someone who has; if you’ve felt the rush of hope when Obama got elected, only to feel let down by what has actually happened; if you’ve agonized over the assassination of Martin Luther King; if you’ve struggled against racism and injustice in whatever way you can; if you’ve felt the panic of having no money, lost or roaming in a foreign country; if you’re interested in the concept of an American identity; then… I think you will love this book. The last paragraph is a beautiful lyrical crescendo. (Brian)

I'm with the LA Times on this one. Most of the time it was excellent but then about half way through there were a few bits that felt like they were taken from another book entirely.