The Delinquent Academic Reviews #1: SUBSTACK FICTION SPECIAL Vol. I
The Claws of the N’longu by The Man Behind the Screen, Faust by Isaac Young, How The Fight Began by Clancy Steadwell, and The Tale of Faurëlar and of Dallàthraua by The Brothers Krynn
My Dad reading me Hairy Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy by Lynley Dodd, a New Zealand classic
Note: Given this is the first edition of this series, I have an extended preamble about the importance critical appraisal and Micropatronage for Substack fiction. If you can’t be fucked, do that scroll thing.
A New Series (kinda)
As I said I might do, I have decided to breakaway the review section of Notes from the Delinquent Underground, and leave those posts exclusively for updates and author notes.
In Notes from the Delinquent Underground, I reviewed fiction and non-fiction books, while sprinkling Substack post reviews around them. Here, that will continue, except every so often, like today, I’ll do a SUBSTACK FICTION SPECIAL.
Capitals are necessary.
A while ago I mused to a friend, “Like bro, Substack is great for essays and for heterodox scientists to share their work, but most of the fiction I come across … it’s pretty mediocre. Most of it is middle-aged men and women farting about in front of their laptops on the weekend.”
And, in all honesty, that thought hurt. I wanted to be able to say that Substack, not only in content, but in quality, has the artists to challenge the mainstream, the literary Macroculture.
But over the past few months, my opinion has changed. Perhaps because Substack has grown, or that I have discovered better authors; perhaps both. What is certain, as I hope you will see in these reviews, is that brilliant authors exist on this platform.
But if we want the wider artistic culture to change, we - as readers - need to support them.
Just over a month ago a wrote a piece called How to be a Micropatron (thank you
for promoting this concept). I described that for the Microculture to flourish - the fragmented collection of artists, rebelling against the corporate Woke tide of the Macroculture, the mainstream - we need to take responsibility. We, the little guy on the street, need to do our bit; we need to start funding the Microculture.We need to embody the life of the noble patron; where those abroad and those in our own community, can safely say, “they are living an examined life; indeed, they have grand artistic taste”.
We need to become Micropatrons.
Yet, patronage need not only be giving money. That is one way. The great patrons of centuries past relished every opportunity to share their collections with others; to sit at noble tables and discuss the latest works. You, like me, have experienced that wonderous feeling when connecting with a friend about a piece of art. To see on their face amazement, appreciation of beauty - mirroring your own - is to connect more deeply than any words can manage alone.
It is in this spirit that I share to you these short stories and novellas today, and will continue to do so in future posts.
As you will tell; parts of each review contain a personal reflection of some kind. Here is evidence the work connected memories and thoughts from my own life, and made an intellectual and emotional impact on me.
That’s my relatively simple measure of intrinsic personal value.
Finally; my reviews will lack a theme. They won’t be only fantasy or horror or science fiction. They’ll be plethora of different genres, different styles. Some will be deeply philosophical, and some will be ‘merely’ entertaining.
I hope you enjoy - and if you’re fellow artist like me:
Never, ever give up.
Ever.
The Delinquent Academic Reviews #1: SUBSTACK FICTION SPECIAL Vol 1
My Substack fiction picks for the month are THE CLAWS OF THE N’LONGU by
, FAUST by , HOW THE FIGHT BEGAN by , and THE TALE OF FAURËLAR AND OF DALLÀTHRAUA by .If you haven’t read them, give them a read first and if the work struck you emotionally and/or intellectually like it did me, I’d love to hear your thoughts about these great stories!
…
THE CLAWS OF THE N’LONGU by
Before THE CLAWS OF THE N’LONGU, I’d never even heard of primitive fantasy. Two nights of reading later and I was left like a child who’d realised that the box of sweets he’d found - yeah, he’d finished them all.
To describe The Man Behind The Screen’s short novella as sweet is closer to the mark than one would expect, when at the apex of the story, a terrifying demon gets manifested into reality after a dark ritual by a tribe of small humanoids, who have taken the protagonists and their expected antagonists captive inside an Amazonian-like jungle.
It’s sweet because one is left with warmth in their heart - something irritatingly rare in stories I watch and read these days. After an entertaining opening chapter introducing the personalities of the two protagonists - powerful, hairy, and competent (Neanderthal?) hunters called Black-paw and White-eye; they get ambushed by two humans, a gorgeous woman and an annoying man with a gun. By the end of third chapter, one would expect the division between these two groups of people to be the central plot device of the story; leading to rather obvious conclusions at its finish - colonialism guys, yeah it’s bad … like don’t do it and stuff.
But The Man Behind The Screen continues, in his adventurous and imaginative style, by throwing in a delicious extension to the plot; another ambush, this time by a demon-worshipping tribe. The two protagonists and their expected antagonists, put aside their differences and escape their captors, in a thrilling and action filled final scene (indeed, every scene is thrilling and action filled!)
I loved it.
I could go on about vibrancy of the world he created, about the defined personalities of each character, about the metaphor of uniting against evil; but I’ll leave those details up to the reader to explore. Before I finish my review, I want to highlight something I thought I was brilliant.
Being a clinical psychologist in training, we are taught to be astute in assessing the intellectual differences between people and how this manifests in behaviour. So often, I read fiction that is quite obviously not real in this regard; a character would not say or do that, given the other information you’ve given me about his or her intelligence. For me, it’s much more believable for an intelligent character to do a stupid thing, than a stupid character to do an intelligent thing.
Now, in The Man Behind The Screen’s novella, Black-paw and White-eye are far from stupid; in fact, when it comes to devising hunting strategies they are clearly pragmatic and skilled … yet it is still in a way without language. I understood these two characters to be less evolved, and thus less intelligent, than modern homo-sapiens. They might be able to hunt and to fight and to kill as good as any human - even better, but they are yet to create civilisation … so yeah.
What this creates however is an interesting - yet tricky to write - interaction between these two characters, and the more intelligent, language-bound, homo-sapiens. I remember sitting up in bed, wondering if The Man Behind The Screen would get it right.
And he did.
The scenes involving dialogue on the side of the homo-sapiens, and grunts and unable to be unarticulated thoughts on the side of the hunters, matched perfectly onto what I thought a difference not only in culture would make, but in intelligence.
Here’s one section in particular where Black-paw, the main protagonist, gets rejected by the human woman:
A wide smile cut across Blackpaw’s lips! Crouching down, he pawed at the ground excitedly as he slowly approached. Little did he know how he appeared to the civilized strangers. While he stood considerably taller than both of them, his excitement and curiosity made him look somewhat like an overgrown child or a playful animal to their eyes. The blue man chuckled and said something to the woman, who did not appear nearly so confident as he but still managed a crooked smile all the same. That smile grew into a nervous but mirthful laugh as Blackpaw started to interact with the blue man, curiously inspecting that wrapping he wore. It really was just like the one he found on the corpse, though whole and absent the stains of blood. However, though the man took this in stride and laughed, when he moved to inspect that long, loose covering that hung about the woman’s legs, she yelped and scrambled away.
The blue man put himself between Blackpaw and her, saying something with those strange sounds. Once more, it was the tone that made their meaning clear. Somehow he’d committed a wrong, done something he shouldn’t have. Blackpaw frowned and slouched, scratching at his chin as he leered at the woman. She covered herself with her arms, though she didn’t have much that needed covering. Her body already bore a garment that covered most of it, though she did hide the cleavage of her bosom from him. Still, he found it strange that she would be so bothered by his curiosity for her garments and body. The women of his tribe had no such compunctions. If a man came to them and grabbed them up, they either accepted it or beat him back, just as the men would if the same happened to them.
What he was witnessing was an entirely alien notion to him, that of modesty, and he found it confusing. On the one hand, it frustrated him. He wanted to study her strange garments and see how she looked beneath them. She was beautiful and exotic to him, and the way the pink and white coverings shaped her caused him to feel lusty and curious. However, the very fact he couldn’t see made him want to see even more. She enticed him in a way that none of the women in his tribe ever had, yet he was stopped and scolded for doing what was perfectly natural. This upset him, and what started as annoyed grumbling soon grew into him slamming a fist into the dirt with an angry howl! That made both of them step back, and the blue man once more reached for the thunder club that now hung at his waist. Blackpaw quieted, holding out a hand in a peace gesture as he started to push himself to his feet again.
…
I have heard many an awkward story, when an attractive woman - usually a social worker or a psychologist - has to politely refuse the advances of a man intellectually disabled; he, confused at why his charm has been refuted, will behave in such a way that reflects his IQ … like a child. Though I am unsure whether The Man Behind The Screen intended one to read this much into this scene (and lean more on the cultural difference angle), it works nonetheless, especially for me, being one who knows his future will involve a lot of IQ testing.
Overall, the world The Man Behind the Screen creates is magical; he’s quite clearly an expert at writing thrilling action; and, as I have suggested, he seems to be an astute observer not just of cultural and sexual differences, but also of genetic and cognitive differences.
I recommend.
(He recently told me that this work is one of many that exist within this wonderful world, so go to his page to if you want to explore further!)
…
FAUST by
With my spiritually awakening in progress, this work hit me hard.
Isaac Young, who’s Substack I had quite clearly yet to appreciate, writes a meditative, philosophical fable; a re-imagining of Goethe’s classic, Faust. The protagonist, a young artist, suffers a weakness of will inside a bar, giving in to the delicious words of Satan; he accepts powers not of artistic creativity or of genius, but of mastery over the minds of a blood-sucking population.
Ten years ago there might not have been much different with the protagonist and myself. I had talent; indeed I had spark; yet I did very little to work at my craft. My mind laboured under my own victimology - “why won’t anyone see my genius?” And, of course, I drunk alcohol and did drugs heavily. Luckily, I matured and unlike Faust, I refused the Devil’s bargain.
The bargain in Young’s Faust may seem humourous upon first glance. The artist draws rubbish post-modern pictures, and is adored for it. He becomes rich, he becomes famous, he goes to galleries and he is loved. Everything he wanted comes true and for a while he regrets not one bit the bargain he made with the Devil.
Yet this is not a work of comedy, at least to me. It isn’t funny. For years, I had known that whatever the artistic industrial complex pushed had no soul. Even if it wasn’t explicitly deconstructionist, those talentless beings who had ‘created’ it, had been so brainwashed over so many years that the best their work could aspire to was corporate advertisement. They couldn’t even do propaganda. Who in their right mind with any modicum of artistic sensibility and moral decency, could look at what has happened to Star Wars and Lord of the Rings and say, oh yeah, that’s like persuaded me to not be such a misogynistic racist homophobic white male not coloured piece of plastic?
When I was a kid I would look to popular art with inspiration. I aspired to be Aragon, to be Luke. If I was to aspire to become a male character in the Acolyte, well here’s one word that would describe me:
BETA
But … I already thought all of this; this is nothing new. So why then should I judge this short story so highly?
Because it made me consider the possibility that what we see at galleries, hear on Spotify, and see in Hollywood, is not simply the work of ignorance, but of malevolence. A Faustian pact made society large; the Devil’s hands not only working in Young’s nondescript bar, but in the upper echelons of cultural power.
Finally, Young’s protagonist is confronted with a scene that invokes regret. His work is shown at a famous gallery. Horrified at what ‘art’ has become - an obese woman covered in duct-tape, artists defacing their own defacement with splotches of colour, and of course, the isolated toilet, only whole when someone is taking a dump - the protagonist comes across his own work:
Then we got to my piece. I painted it in a drunken haze, not really caring about it. The whole thing was a stupid joke. I put a stick figure up on a cross. Its face was a banal shrug, clumsily ill proportioned. The limbs were too long, and the hands were just garbled scribbles. Below, a teasing roman pierced the man’s side with a dildo.
This one had drawn the attention of the masses. From the edge of the room, I heard exclamations of laughter. I knew they were genuinely enjoying the piece. Here, there was no audience for pretense or outrage. There were no exclamations of “Abstract! Nuanced! Thought Provoking!”. Those words weren’t needed for this crowd. Here, there was only a sweetly delight, a malicious and playful masturbation. Someone said a joke, and there was an uproar of gut-belching laughter.
All at once, the mask slid off these people, and I recoiled as I saw their true faces. It was neither the smugness nor the narcissism nor the cruelty that horrified me so. In that room, I saw a gleeful appreciation for hell and all its sickening pleasures. These people wanted nothing more than to burn and to take everyone they could with them. Upon their faces, I saw every malformed picture I had ever drawn. They were no longer people. They were things pretending to be people.
And worse than that, I knew I was no different.
Being one who was raised very secular, my knowledge of any faith limited - beside from that of science of course, there was probably much I missed and failed to appreciate in this story. Certainly, it is one I will return as my spiritual and mythological journey continues.
This story hit hard, giving oxygen to the fire burning within, of questions left unanswered by our soulless world.
I recommend.
…
HOW THE FIGHT BEGAN by
I said this only a month ago:
Literary fiction, once the bastion of creative risk-taking in writing, is now a competition between Yale and Columbia LinkedIn bios to see who can fit in the most sham-trauma in under 100,000 words.
Combine that with the above demolition of postmodernism in FAUST by Isaac Young, and one might reasonably think I hypocritical for reviewing literary fiction. Of course, one key difference between Clancy Steadwell, and what the literary Macroculture pushes us, is:
Postmodern.
Here’s Wikipedia defining the two types:
Modernist literature sees fragmentation and extreme subjectivity as an existential crisis, or Freudian internal conflict, a problem that must be solved, and the artist is often cited as the one to solve it. Postmodernists, however, often demonstrate that this chaos is insurmountable; the artist is impotent, and the only recourse against "ruin" is to play within the chaos.
The other major difference between Steadwell and Macroculture literary fiction, is that he’s a man.
A great article, written by
(I am intrigued about his new book, VICTIM), highlights the reasons why men today are reluctant to both read, and especially to write, literary fiction. The internal world of men can be ugly. I would never look back on my past and say there hasn’t been extended periods of ugliness in my life. There’s been plenty of indulgence, of laziness, and embarrassing jealously. Of aggression and violence. To those gate-keepers of literary institutions these internal truths are either cringe-worthy or to some on the more ludicrous end of the scale, racist, homophobic, or [enter your slander of choice, moral arbiter].Though I gave up reading literary fiction some time ago (do Donna Tartt and Kazu Ishiguro count?), what I see in popular culture is a portrayal of men as either weak, evil, or as allies to some political mission; without a noble redemption arc that stirs the hearts of young men and boys. Sadly, they are presented as irredeemable; their blood flows with unenviable sin. And instead of the modernist mission to resolve one’s internal alienation - that is confronting every boy and young man today - they are told this mission is futile. They have been raised as postmodernists; to revel in the utter chaos of their lives; to share nonsensical memes and date multiple people, even if it makes them unhappy; in fact, especially if it makes them unhappy.
But Clancy Steadwell resists.
How The Fight Began is a brilliant expose of a certain kind of narcissism: Self-indulgent manipulation by the way of fragility. It is all the more troubling given it is coming from a man - more precisely a boy who never matures - than a woman. Steadwell lulls us into feeling sympathy for his protagonist, Marc; sharing scenes throughout his life all referring to fights where he ends up breaking down in tears.
Along the way, however, one begins to wonder if Marc is just a pussy. In my own life, I’m not afraid to say, I’ve been in many fights (in my younger, more immature days), and lost most of them primarily due to my size, but I never cried.
So, why is he crying so much?
Steadwell concludes, by returning to the opening scene, a kafuffle in a beerhall, where the question is first asked: How did the fight begin? He resolves this question with the expose of the protagonist’s latent narcissism, though Steadwell never explicitly states what actually happened … it’s quite brilliant. After having a cigarette outside with a friend, Marc comes inside and is confronted by the table of friends where the incident occurred:
“Hey Marc, you okay?” his friend Charlie asked as Marc grabbed the large boot-shaped glass from the table and stepped toward the bar.
“Oh yeah, I’m fine,” he said, turning his back on them as quickly as he could. He could hear Jorge telling them about the cigarette he tried and they, in turn, telling Jorge what he had missed.
Marc brought the boot to the bar and caught the eye of the bartender with blissful ease.
“How much is it for das boot?” he asked, reaching for his wallet.
“For the boot? Oh, no, hon—your friends paid for that,” she told him. “Do you want anything else?”
“They did? Oh, okay…well, no thanks then,” he said, leaving the boot-glass on the bar and turning to go.
“Wait!” the bartender said. He turned back. “The boot, you know—part of the birthday special is that you get to keep das boot.”
“Oh really?” he said, something like a smile trudging its way across his face.
“Yes!” She handed it to him. “Happy birthday, by the way!”
“Thanks,” he said, taking it.
He sighed and looked across the biergarten at his friends, smiling and laughing, and didn’t think they needed to be bothered with him anymore that night, nor did he himself need to be bothered with facing his own embarrassment.
Marc left the bar and walked home alone, the glass boot tucked under his jacketed arm, how the fight began less relevant than ever as the world revolved slowly around him.
Part of the beauty is the ambiguity of the conclusion. My analysis is based upon the assumption that the boy realised as a baby, that if he cries, he will get what he wants. Over this course of his life, this is reinforced (if he cries he gets to go home from school, etc.), until, we get to the beerhall … and he’s still acting like that baby.
However, there is an earlier scene with Marc’s father that makes me question this interpretation, where the boy is picked up after a school fight, after crying, even though he wasn’t involved:
“I was just upset. I’ve never seen a fight before. I was just…scared, I guess. I felt like it was my fault for some reason.”
“Marcus, what is it I always say?” his father said as they got in the car. “The world does not revolve around you.”
“The world does not revolve around me,” Marc repeated.
As he buckled himself into the backseat, Marc thought about who the world must revolve around. Was there one world, revolving around one person? Was the world ambivalent, did it revolve on its own? Or could it be he had his own world, and his world revolved around him, and everyone else’s world revolved around themselves as well?
And although he was done crying, he felt even more upset than he had before.
One could argue that Steadwell is concluding the superiority of the internal world; never can it be resolved, rather than the expose of this certain type of person.
And then my entire preamble for Steadwell would fall away …
But my intuition lead me firmly in one direction. Whether or not I missed the mark, it was wonderfully written, in a minimal fractal style that I’ve come to love (though the minimalism is not extreme). His other stories, many of which I’d happily review (I was going to review Bus Kids - I might do that next time; absolutely loved it), are great too.
I recommend.
THE TALE OF FAURËLAR AND OF DALLÀTHRAUA by
The Tale of Faurëlar and of Dallàthraua, a lovely little fantasy story, follows the adventures of the Elf Faurëlar and him overcoming the jealous challenges of the Wilder-Elf Chieftain, in two sequences: First, his ascent of a mountain, to capture a feather from a giant majestic eagle and leaf from their spiritual tree; and second, to take up arms against the raiding Ursidon. It is a clear and powerful challenge to the postmodernism oozing out of the excesses of our indulgent world.
Before I delve into metaphor and meaning, I was immediately struck with the poetic style (though combined with not knowing the lore of Pangea - the world, this did at times get confusing - I had to reread certain paragraphs). When compared to the ‘functional prose’ of contemporary fiction, even contemporary fantasy, this was a delicious treat. It was no surprise then, to discover
writes epic poems.Though limited my knowledge is of the fantasy genre and its splintering subgenres, this work felt like it is was being told by a bard around a fire with a few good and hearty brews inside a noble hall. In the moment tension - action scenes and thrilling sequences - are secondary to the messages and metaphors; the design of inspiring the men and women listening. The actions of Faurëlar and his beautiful wife Dallàthraua, are to be embodied by generations to come.
But should they be?
At first, one can confidently say, “aye, they should!” Faurëlar’s lonely trek up the mountain, taming of a Dread-Eagle and riding down upon its wings in a heroic and awesome climax, was done to render honour back upon his people who had wronged the Wilder-Elves. One could argue, the stronger character was his woman, Dallàthraua, who resisted the advances of the Wilder-Elf men while Faurëlar was gone. She tricks them, so they’d have to wait for eternity (a brilliant detail):
Most made advances, and yet faithful Dallàthraua would remain, saying to them that when she no longer had thread to weave in her loom she would wed one of them. Gleeful, they were to set to waiting, little knowing that in the night she often undid the tapestry and shroud she had begun at their behest. Thus, she was destined to never finish them so long as Faurëlar remained absent.
Yet, Faurëlar is not a flawless being. This makes him relatable. He is both cunning and ruthless is his treatment of the raiding Ursidon. Tricking them into engorging on food and trick, he waits until their slumber is at its height in the darkness of night, before he lets upon them his hounds and his arrows. As a plot twist, I loved it; the darkness of one’s heart enjoys when the protagonist bends or breaks their apparent values to win. It is delicious. The question then, is this trickery evidence of tragedy?
Beforehand, Faurëlar is proven as noble, humble, and strong; values those listening around the fire are sure to be inspired by and thus embody. But should his treachery also be embodied? Is it a reference to the harshness of reality? The ways of the world are such that to win one must be willing to crush his foes? Or is The Brother’s Krynn offering us a warning; that even those deep in spirit and with adamantine characters, can still steep to the lows of deception, of winning in cunning (and cowardly?) ways?
These questions never sink too deep under the waters of my consciousness. Like an underwater volcano it lies, barely dormant, ready to explode; just like my anger, that in worse years, got the better of me.
Maybe these questions will never be answered.
I recommend.
I had some other authors and works that I planned to review, however, given the length, they can wait for next time - I would prefer to spend time reflecting and writing in depth, rather than writing short and superficial reviews.
I thoroughly enjoyed doing this, and will continue to post reviews of Substack fiction. Despite the difficulties for fiction inherent within Substack (we need to fix that ‘Top in Fiction’ issue, where posts quite obviously not fiction, rise to the top), my optimism for the growth of fiction on Substack, after reading and reviewing these works, is as great as it has ever been.
And of course,
Thank you all for reading.
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Chur, and have a good day and night,
The Delinquent Academic
Thank you for the high praise! I confess, I’ve always struggled to write short stories. It’s not my preferred format. I’m glad my story made an impact!
Sincerest gratitude for taking the time to both read and give a detailed and thoughtful review of The Claws of the N'longu. It's wonderful and exciting to know that not only did it land in terms of the pure entertainment value, but that it also hit a strong intellectual note for you as well. I can safely say that, given the goal was to basically write a Robert E. Howard inspired action story with primitive warrior men and dinosaurs, deeper intellectual meaning wasn't something I was consciously trying to hit on