Guilty Tortures

I'm a reader with democratic tendencies. I like all levels of brow. I like fiction, non-fiction, poetry, genre literature, academic tomes, and racquetball advice books. So while I read my share of classics, I am always on the lookout for what is called a "guilty pleasure". For me this often takes the shape of a schlocky horror novel (this is also true of my taste in films). The trouble with guilty pleasures, is that one has to read so many guilty tortures to find a real guilty pleasure. Sometimes you have to just be satisfied with a few good pages out of a whole novel. So it is in the spirit of trying to find guilty pleasures that I will occasionally review a book that you may find questionable. Usually, these books will indeed turn out be letdowns, but we'll never know until we try them. And when you do find the one that is in fact a real pleasure, well, what a great feeling that is. Here then, is my first bwiwya guilty torture post, about a sci-fi/horror novel by Dean Koontz called Midnight:

Midnight sports a lot of Koontz's usual tropes. Among them are: the good-hearted protagonist that has experienced a loss, the angelic and unrealistically mature child, the unnecessary romance between main characters in the midst of mayhem, the remorseless mad scientist, the cute dog, and the easily predictable horror/sci-fi premise. Reading Koontz is too often like reading a screenplay for a March release Hollywood film--just very little complexity or surprises.

That said, this is far from the worst Koontz book I've read. There are at least two scenes that I thought employed effective visuals--one is a tense chase scene at the opening of the book, the other a curious close-call with one of the book's creatures--a sort of werewolf--that stares into a window of a house and idly taps a finger on the windowpane while our hero crouches against the wall and hopes he isn't noticed.

But there are way too many gaffes to give Midnight any sort of recommendation. Just listen to some of this writing. From page 104: "Harry stared at the apelike countenance, thought it was leaner and uglier and more fierce and infinitely stranger than the face of an ape." This sort of writing makes me crazy. Infinitely stranger than the face of an ape? That phrase has exactly zero meaning. Or from page 108, when a cry in the distance is described as "shrill yet guttural." Koontz does this kind of thing all the time--he was tall yet short, the sound was loud yet quiet. A good writer can give a description of the uncanny without resorting to nonsense.

I need to add something about a serious plot hole as well. The plot of this book has most of the citizens of a small town being changed to so-called "New People" in an experiment of which they are unwilling members. These New People are animalistic in that they live for essentially food and sexual pleasure only. Some of the New People embrace their wildness and go nuts. Others are worried and perplexed about losing their emotions. But none of those that loses their emotions ever ventures outside the community to seek help. Instead, the whole town gets turned over the course of a couple weeks with no one ever saying anything. If I thought my humanity had been stolen by a local mad scientist, I would hope some equally enterprising scientist elsewhere might be able to give it back to me. But what do I know? Also, no visitors ever notice anything weird about their relatives?

I saved the best for last though. The maudlin concluding scene of the novel is unbearable. The protagonist Sam is bitter at the beginning of the novel because he has had a near death experience and didn't like what he saw on the other side. What horrible thing comes after death that Sam saw, we wonder. Tessa, his love interest, brings Sam around to the life-affirming viewpoint that all Koontz characters are required to hold by the novel's end. The big reveal is that Sam was upset to see that there is an afterlife of some kind--you see, he hated living so much that he was mad that he would keep living. If that isn't the lamest plot point you've come across, then God help you.

Anyway, now Sam is on-board again with loving being alive, and he and Tessa return to his home where Sam hopes to make amends with his estranged teenage son. How does he do this? In a virtuoso display of unintentional satire, Koontz has Sam destroy his son's rock n' roll albums. I'm not even kidding.