Sixteen Further Screams For Halloween: Day 1 (Gnome Cave)

 ooooOOOOoooo!!! Here we are, once again, on the dawn of another October! Spooky season is upon us! The last embers of summer have burned away, there's a chill in the air, I need a sweater and a blanket, and so it is time to once again begin with our spooky marathon. When building the lineup this year, it was quite interesting. There were a few shoo-ins, a few recommendations, and then just a few choices which kind of fell into my lap. Like this getting announced a short while ago; the debut horror novel of one James Rolfe. I trust that the man needs no introduction, but let's just say his reputation precedes him. That's complimentary, by the way. I know that reviews of this book came out from the usual Youtubers orbiting Rolfe, but I did not pay them any heed. It's difficult to trust the Internet on him when he has, for lack of a better term, a cult of haters. Not every critic of his is acting in bad faith, but holy fuck are the ones who are fucking organized. In a mad way, that becomes sort of relevant for what this book is doing.

The main premise of the book, four friends coming back to an abandoned amusement park ride 30 years after they first rode it, called to mind images of Stephen King's It in my mind. The pain of nostalgia, and the repressed childhood trauma lurking along with some actual supernatural something or other. There might be a supernatural something or other lurking within the Gnome Cave, an actual dragon (and dragons are a very potent signifier when it comes to James Rolfe). There might not be. The horror of the book is nostalgia, that wistful desire for simpler times. When you were young and didn't have to worry about jobs or bills, when you had all your hair, when your mom and dad were still alive and loved you and swore to take care of you always. It's a very human desire, and one we all have. Let loose off of its chain, however, and it can be absolutely fucking lethal, a supernatural death drive taking hold and inducing madness. That is the terror behind Gnome Cave, and it's a terror that someone like James Rolfe is well-versed to capture. The man made his name by yelling at relics from those bygone carefree days of his youth, the original joke behind AVGN being "who gives a single fuck about old NES games 20 years after they came out?". That Mr. Rolfe underestimated the number of people who would answer "yes" to that is besides the point.

Maybe I'm reaching here, but fuck it, I'm on a roll and I have a vibes-based word count to fill about this book. Nostalgia as a death drive is a powerful thing within Rolfe's orbit, especially when one considers the cult of haters I mentioned above. AVGN, like Star Wars and The Simpsons and countless other things before it, has been running for so long that has become a dreaded thing. It has become... Not As Good As It Was When You Were Younger. Most well-adjusted nerds and nerds-adjacent folks can let that roll off their back. An alarming few cannot, and it absolutely breaks them and turns them into rampaging monsters. Dante, the supposed protagonist of the book, goes mad with his desire for nostalgia and to roll things back to the good old days, going so far as to murder all of his friends after luring them back in order to prop their bodies up on the ride and turn back the clock. Is James Rolfe making a connection between this and all the stuff I just said? Probably not. Am I doing it? You bet your sweet ass I am. Blind reverence to the past will hollow you out and kill you dead. Sometimes it's okay to leave those memories as they are, to move on, and grow up?

I mean, it's not like the book is perfect or anything. You can critique it fine. It's got all the weary wistfulness of middle age, but it's very short and written almost for a younger audience (Indeed, Amazon's recommended age group was 12-18.), but also full of lots of swearing and shit. Oh, who am I kidding, when you're 12 you swear like a sailor 'cause it makes you feel grown-up. There's a charming earnestness to some of the prose and metaphors peppered within, and I'm kind of here for it. When the murders happen, very quick, it's like "And then BLOOD splattered all over the wall!". I am charitably calling it a youthful exuberance. Others might call it "Jimmy Rolfe writing on the level of Goosebumps" or somesuch pejorative. I dunno. For 5 bucks, I had fun with it and was surprised that the terror at the end wasn't some supernatural spooky. Don't let the serpent eat your own tail and grow the fuck up and maybe don't kill your friends to get that nostalgia high. Good advice, James. I just joined you in the 40 club as well, so I'm definitely feeling it. 

With that out of the way, how about some spooky cinema?