\u201cLast Week\u2019s Apocalypse\u201d, by Douglas Lain (Night Shade Press)<\/p>\n
Review by Kent Manthie<\/p>\n
The short story is a remarkable form of writing. A whole world is constructed in only a few pages. Everything has to be clear, concise, et cetera, to get the point across quickly and also have an interesting plot, message, device(s) or some kind of set-up. An old form, as old as writing, the short story nevertheless is an ever-evolving genre, the only rule of which is to be \u201cshort\u201d, in other words, not a whole novel. One can be more experimental in a short story. When you only have several pages to get an idea across you can do a lot of things you couldn\u2019t do in a novel; a perfect vehicle for allegories, fables and parables.
\n Author Douglas Lain is the latest in a long line of writers who\u2019ve constructed some great realities in the space of only ten, twelve pages or so; volumes of short stories have come out of the minds of people like O. Henry, Oscar Wilde, Kurt Vonnegut and Charles Bukowski. \u201cLast Week\u2019s Apocalypse\u201d, a new collection of stories by Douglas Lain, is packed with brilliant, bright, surrealistic adventures that are somewhere between science fiction and surrealism.
\n Douglas Lain, a married man with four children, lives in Portland, OR, where he basks in the warm glow of a West Coast sylvan existence on the north side of Plasticland. He has an inventive style that stands out from many other contemporaries, oftentimes blurring the lines, slipping in and out of focus, so to speak and breaking in at times to talk to the reader directly. Lain takes off on flights of fancy, doing his utmost to be confusing, twisting norms around, confounding \u201creality\u201d, whatever the hell that is.
\n On the other hand, there are other things about his stories that combine that crazy, off-beat sensibility with everyday, banalities that, far from seeming clich\u00e9d or stale, make one pine for that kind of consistency in a relationship, for instance. The women in his stories are, for the most part, strong, intelligent beings that would make great girlfriends in real life; the girlfriends of the protagonists are perfect partners for their men, equals and partners that have a real love for each other, a real bond too. He seems to come at his fictional relationships from a vantage of someone who himself has a great relationship with a woman, in Lain\u2019s case it\u2019s his wife.
\n A masterwork of strangeness is the longish \u201cThe \u201984 Regress\u201d, about a guy who, along with his girlfriend, as a result of withdrawing from their medications start to find their whole world around them regressing back to 1984. It is a kind of Zen comparison between things going on now and back in Reagan\u2019s heyday; almost as if to say, \u201chey wait a minute, this \u2018future\u2019 thing hasn\u2019t turned out at all like we were led to believe as kids in the 70s and 80s; everything is basically the same \u2013 it\u2019s too recognizable \u2013 WHAT HAPPENED?! Where are the talking houses and the flying cars?\u201d
\n \u201cShopping at the End of the World\u201d is a really cool allegorical rant against the mind-altering, quiet cacophony of advertising; it\u2019s where Philip K. Dick\u2019s influence rubs off most. One of Lain\u2019s big literary heroes, the late great Dick has left a canon of mind-bending Sci-Fi; a cool, smoky nihilism unmatched in the genre.
\n \u201cThe Sea Monkey Conspiracy\u201d is a look into the world of psychological clinical trials: strange tests, weird questions, probing eyes, cold hands, et cetera. \u201cThe Dead Celebrity\u201d is a kind of a story about sycophants who bother people who are not even that famous to begin with just to feel important themselves, wanting to be noticed by the world, wanting to escape from the world and what can happen if you try to achieve both.
\n One of my favorites, though, was \u201cThe Headline Trick\u201d, an interesting, cautionary tale of greed and the inventive way one family made and lost a fortune; with interesting sideswipes; a loopy metaphor of greed, Americans and means & ends.
\n I could go on, ranting about story after story, but take these as a peek into a world that is open to all comers, but not necessarily accepting of them all. The discordant, manic, sometimes dystrophic, multi-hued world views that are on display here make up what is so appealing about these short stories; figments of the mind of Douglas Lain. (http:\/\/www.douglaslain.com or http:\/\/www.nightshadebooks.com) \u2013 KM.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cLast Week\u2019s Apocalypse\u201d, by Douglas Lain (Night Shade Press) Review by Kent Manthie The short story is a remarkable form of writing. A whole world is constructed in only a few pages. Everything has to be clear, concise, et cetera, to get the point across quickly and also have an interesting plot, message, device(s) or some kind of set-up. An […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[246],"class_list":["post-81","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive","tag-last-weeks-apocalypse-book-review"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":652,"url":"https:\/\/reviewermag.com\/press\/2006\/04\/09\/last-weeks-apocalype\/","url_meta":{"origin":81,"position":0},"title":"LAST WEEK'S APOCALYPE","author":"admin","date":"April 9, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Another review coming up: LAST WEEK'S APOCALYPSE by Doug Lain. A copy was recently sent in here by the author. Collections of short stories like this are perfect reading material for our fast-paced ADD-prone society and times. Currently enjoying \"The Dead Celebrity,\" 2004. Strange and surreal stuff. 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