I don’t normally do this. This isn’t a “review” sort of blog, because whenever I get around to reviewing something, be it a game, book, film or album, a horde of people have already said what I came to say in more astute words. That, and I tend to feel the need to “justify” any entry on this site that isn’t about video games and their narratives, but if diversity is the spice of life, then we’re good to go.
I’m always up for local flavour, and Tobin Elliot’s 2013 novella The Wrong, published by Burning Effigy Press, tickled my fancy in all the right places. It’s one of those stories that’s difficult to really pin down in concrete language, because the plot concerns itself with the strange and the amorphous, that hazy barrier between what is, and what may be undefinable. That’s all a bit of an artsy way of saying that this story kicks you right in the uncanny valley.
I don’t know how familiar Tobin is with Freud’s theory of the Uncanny, that exploration of the things that are ‘not quite right’. My best friend gets set off by dolls; you know, those Victorian dolls whose faces imitate humanity – but not quite. Vsauce tackled the subject by summing up that the uncanny valley disturbs us because it entraps us in a place between safety and danger. Our brains don’t know how to react.
But whether or not Tobin is a Freud-maven, The Wrong is quite right (You know I had to say it at least once) at capturing the feel of the Uncanny. The protagonist exists in a state of constant unease, unsure of his surroundings and his own sanity even when he’s doing something as mundane as sitting down to a McDonald’s discount meal.
Long story short, things in poor Robert’s world…you see, they change. Elevator buttons will be perfectly bland one moment, and covered in some sort of sub-sentient moss the next. A toilet seat will be normal one moment and suddenly feel like flesh the next.
I’ve always thought that the most effective horror was that in which the protagonist is as utterly helpless as any other character in the narrative: it’s the ‘Lovecraft principle’, wherein the powers at work are scary precisely because they are so far beyond the narrator that we may never understand them.
And, indeed, it is never found out whether Robert was catching glimpses of some sick alternate dimension overlapping our own, or quite simply going insane. I found myself swaying back and forth as I read the story, and I think that’s the perfect head-space for me to have been in for the duration: in order to make a story that earnestly appreciates the creep-factor of the Uncanny, the reader has to be just as discombobulated as the bewildered narrator.
I have to be honest, I just finished the novella about five minutes before starting this review, so certain elements of it may not have sunk in yet. Of those, I’m not sure how I feel about the ending; I won’t spoil it but I will say that it feels like a logical choice for how this character should end up. And I’m normally a huge fan of bombast: I love energetic music, I love epic setpieces in video games…though I felt like the wild blast of visceral madness in the final pages may have been a bit “much” for a story whose strongest moments rely on teasing the reader in its subtleties, screwing with your expectations with a deft hand. Or, you can look at the story as one steady incline into madness, in which case it’s an ideal climax.
In any case, go check it out. Tobin’s got a knack for writing in a way that slices through the bullshit of day-to-day life with a dry wit, no small helping of worldly cynicism and a refreshing energy. And go to his website tobinelliot.com and read his collected Writing Tips, because you want to and will be better off for it.
Incidentally, this is the shortest time between writing and publishing that this blog has ever seen, with the body of this review being jotted down just last night. (Normally, my articles are written, then mollycoddled for a few days to a week, then outfitted with a safety helmet and off they go…)
And that spontaneity doesn’t feel Wrong. You could say it feels just right.