How the Days of Love & Diphtheria by Robert Kloss (A Review by Kenny Mooney)
[Amye Archer / November 18th, 2011 / Reviews ]50 pgs, $10
Robert Kloss writes like he has a fever. Anyone familiar with his short fiction will know that his work has a kind of delusional quality to it, as though each line has been crafted through blinding sweats and waking dreams. In the 50 pages of How the Days of Love & Diphtheria (MLP Nephew, 2011), you will share his fever and his hallucinations as he takes you on a journey through an emotional, scarred wasteland, to the very end of everything.
To attempt to explain the plot would be pointless. That’s not to say that there isn’t one, there is, but to make it concrete would be doing the book an injustice. The story here works much like a David Lynch film – you know there is a plot, you know there is a story, but you don’t have all the parts, it doesn’t quite fit all together. Like a jigsaw with a few key missing pieces, you have to rearrange things in an attempt to make sense of it, and in so doing you create new patterns and ideas, and ultimately, re-create the story anew for yourself.
The comparison to Lynch goes further, for while his late films have primarily been concerned with shifting and dual personalities, so too here Kloss blurs the lines of his character’s identities. There is a cyclical nature to the story, people are consumed by the land, they are destroyed; they are then reborn and their fates continue to be intertwined.
“How the mother shook the boy awake, her bone hands and pale face in the gray light. The cat hissing from the boy’s feet. How the mother shook the boy by the shoulders and said, ‘Who are you?’ How she dragged him up the stairs by his ear and how the boy did not struggle. How she pressed his face to the cold glass of the kitchen window and how she said, ‘You look at that child out there, you look at my son out there and you tell me who you are!’ How the boy gazed along the shadows of the ruined yard, the glow of the moon and the barren fields. How the boy wept, ‘Mama, I don’t know.’”
The style here is almost Old Testament in quality; it’s like an ancient sermon. The continued use of “How” to begin sentences, gives the narrative a rhythm and pace that pushes you along. There is the danger with this kind of approach that is becomes repetitive, in a bad way, but here it doesn’t. Instead you are driven forwards, deeper into the piles of ash, the burning animals, the horror.
“The man gestured to the skies, Under the shadow of our aircraft, he said, a schoolyard of children became a river of tar.”
Love & Diphtheria is, in some senses, an Apocalypse story, the end of the world brought about by lies and betrayals, heartache and loss. Every so often Kloss employs the second person to address an unnamed other. The identity of this ‘other’ is open to many interpretations – vengeful spirits, an encroaching evil, the Four Horsemen, the pestilence of diphtheria that ravages the landscape, or even modern industry.
“How your factories glowed, how they moaned and blossomed. How this boy held the daughter in the dead and tufted lawn of the hillside. How they refused to believe what you built below.”
Framed in this context, the apocalyptic nature of the story, its symbolism, reinforces the Biblical style of the language, and what you are left with is a bizarre, violent, emotional re-imagining of the kinds of tales found in the Bible.
I would hate to give anyone the impression that this is an unrelentingly horror-filled piece of work. It isn’t. Not entirely. There are some beautiful, subtle moments, like when the boy in the story befriends a kitten – with all the violence subjected against people and animals (when was the last time you read about elevators full of bears “sizzling and frying in their own grease”?), it is welcome relief that there is this one survivor. This is the days of love as well as diphtheria, after all.
I challenge anyone to say they have read anything remotely like How the Days of Love & Diphtheria. If you’ll allow me to come over all Nietzschean for a moment, it is like staring into the proverbial abyss, and while you may wonder for a few moments about your monstrous nature as a result, it is nonetheless a very human thing, as is this book. Only through darkness do we learn about the light, and Love & Diphtheria takes you through some very dark moments, leading you ultimately to a new dawn and rebirth.
Robert Kloss is, in my humble opinion, one of the finest, most original and exciting writers around at the moment, and his first book should be read by anyone who loves fierce, imaginative fiction. With his first novel, Alligators of Abraham due from Mud Luscious in 2012, this is like a warm up. An appetizer.
Bon appétit.
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Kenny Mooney is a writer and musician from Glasgow, Scotland. He blogs at www.dragline.co.uk.
[...] My review of ‘How the Days of Love & Diphtheria’ by Robert Kloss, is now live at PANK. I’m really pleased I had the opportunity to share my thoughts about this book, as it was by far one of the best books I have read this year. Robert Kloss is one of my favourite writers at the moment, so to finally get to read something approaching a full length piece of work by him was great. Although I can’t wait until his novel, Alligators of Abraham, comes out next year – if you haven’t already, get yourself over to Mud Luscious and order yourself a copy. [...]