The Great and Secret Show

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Jo-Beth and Howard meet supernatural investigator Harry D'Amour, who asks for their story. Tesla meets Grillo and tells him that the worshippers of the Iad Uroboros are still active and will try to summon them again. I have met and and talked with him briefly on 4 different occasions over the years, thought he was as special a guy as he is a writer, and admit I'd probably give him a slightly more favorable rating because of that.

The Great And Secret Show’ was followed by the 1994 sequel 'Everville', which carries on perfectly from the first novel. A third and final volume is planned, but as Clive Barker announced in a past interview, the third installment has proved to be a real struggle and is finding itself to be longer than the first two volumes put together! Hopefully one day the novel will find itself finally being released. Behind everything — all of life and non-life — is Quiddity: a metaphysical dream-sea, a sort of collective consciousness that is accessible only thrice in life. Those moments are just after birth, while lying after sex for the first time with one’s true love, and, finally, after death. To access it is nearly impossible, divine; it is the Art. If that sounds heady and über philosophical, especially a dark fantasy/horror novel, it is. And in a lesser author’s hands it would fall apart; this is Clive Barker, however, so 1989’s The Great and Secret Show is a masterwork. The synopsis makes it seem like this is a book of good versus evil. I knew I was in a bit of trouble when Part 1 proved that the "good" character, Fletcher, was a suicidal drug addict who really doesn't give a shit about anyone, let alone saving the world. It is only out of guilt that he goes after the evil character, Jaffe. What a pal! There really ARE no good guys in this story. The woman Tesla comes in about halfway and out of nowhere she's supposed to be the main good character, after having a 2 minute conversation with Fletcher before he dies. Sorry, not buying it! Ocr tesseract 4.1.1 Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 0.9745 Ocr_module_version 0.0.6 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA19861 Openlibrary_editionIn 1989, Clive Barker published the first book in what would become popularly known as ‘The Art Trilogy’: The Great and Secret Show. The trilogy is unfinished. The second book, Everville, was published in 1994 and delves even deeper into the lore and mythos of Quiddity and the Art. The third book is, according to a 2014 Facebook post, in the works, but it’s going to be “a big book” and Barker has a lot on his plate. The number of taboo subjects he covers is astounding. I am not easily offended and generally welcome a taboo topic in a story here or there - if I care about the characters it can add a little excitement or drama, sure! In this book it is completely without purpose so it comes across as crude and seems he is trying to offend as many people as possible.

I didn't like the story, the characters, the plot, the sub-plots, and was dumbfounded by the terribly inferior names he used in this book. Let's talk about the sexual taboos. A twin brother lusts after his twin sister. There's a scene with a woman and a dog (no reason!). Dudes getting random hardons all over the place. An elderly man (this one takes the cake for me) gets jerked off by insects and comes onto his own feces from which little monsters are born and go after people to kill them. WHAT?!?! The word cun* is frequently used as well. It's used in the context of a woman thinking about her own body! "I like my cun* and tight ass." Excuse me??? I guess there COULD be women who think of themselves that way, but I'm sure not one of them, and I find it impossible to relate to a character (the "good" woman character!) who does. And then it gets to the weird, horror part of the story, what with the impregnation and the children and the creepy love-at-first-sight. But even this is good, in a sense. Even this I can understand. Barker needs to provide the reader with more human characters—the story of the endless battle between the Jaff and Fletcher has grown thin. But as various humans become drawn into the conflict, the stakes increase. The bad guys become more real, and suddenly this becomes a battle for reality itself.The novel is about the conflict between two highly evolved men – Randolph Jaffe and Richard Fletcher – over the mystical dream sea called Quiddity. Jaffe hopes to tap into Quiddity's power while Fletcher wants to prevent it from being tainted. The conflict between the two men spills into the real world in a decades-long feud, distorting reality and affecting the entire human race. So to recap it's going to be hard going, you'll love some of it, you'll get pissed at some of it, you'll feel like taking a break at regular intervals and you might even question your will to finish the job, even your sanity but if you do finish, it will certainly hold some sort of reward and a sense of achievement will prevail. The Great and Secret Show reminds me of the only Tim Powers novel I’ve read, Last Call. And that, for anyone wanting a one-sentence review (contingent upon understanding the nature of my opinion of Last Call), is that. His earlier books are superior in all respects; better written, better ideas, better plot lines, better names of people & places. And addictive as HELL. The thing about Barker is his imagination is one of the most fecund of any writer in the world. What for some storytellers would be the premise of an entire book, film, or TV series, is, for Barker, just one small part of a macro-cosmic whole. The Great and Secret Show is divided into seven parts, and each feels unique. We move from a story of an insignificant but secretly corrupt man’s rise to demi-godhood through a discovery of the “secret world” around him, to a war between two evolved beings, to a tale of four virgins collectively assaulted by a force beyond their control, to the story of a quiet American town’s demise and lost dreams, to a Lovecraftian narrative of an impending confrontation with eldritch beings. Somehow, all are intimately connected.

with his visionary range, firmly establishing him as the reigning master of fabulist literature. Now, with The Great and Secret Show , he rises to awesome new heights.

Jaffe has a tedious job in a work office: its main task is to sort through all the unopened letters that for different reasons haven't been delivered. Every day, he has to go though hundreds of envelopes: love letters, postcards, the occasional dollar bill... until one day, in one of them, he catches a glimpse of something; a fragment of information which becomes to connect with other fragments, until, after a few months, Jaffe starts to realize that someone, out there, knows a truth which could change every idea we have about ourselves and out reality, and he's ready to do everything in his power to gain full access to it. Buddy Vance: He is a 54-year-old comedian once named “the funniest man in the world.” He has lived a self-destructive, hedonistic lifestyle and goes out for a jog one morning in an attempt to be healthier. During his jog, he is lured into Jaffe’s and Fletcher’s cave with the ghost-image of the League of Virgins. Jaffe steals a terata from his soul; he uses it to escape into the Grove and continue with his work. Buddy dies before Fletcher can retrieve anything from his soul. Jaffe sets up shop in Buddy’s house, using it in his attempt to control the Art. After his death, his house, widow, and mistress all play significant roles in the book’s plot. There are characters he goes on & on about their 'secret' desires. Like this one guy who collects, and is fascinated with, pornography. THIS is the sort of thing Clive wants to spend time thinking about? and develop into a memorable supporting character of his book? WOW. Barker is a prolific visual artist working in a variety of media, often illustrating his own books. His paintings have been seen first on the covers of his official fan club magazine, Dread, published by Fantaco in the early Nineties, as well on the covers of the collections of his plays, Incarnations (1995) and Forms of Heaven (1996), as well as on the second printing of the original UK publications of his Books of Blood series. There are times when Barker’s baddies are positively Lovecraftian. Behind the shadows, lying in wait, pulling the strings, exist the Iad Uroboros on another plane of existence. They are the stuff of nightmares’ nightmares and want only to slip into our dimension, drive us mad, and subjugate the empty shells of human beings who are left. If that doesn’t describe an Old One, I don’t know what does. Thankfully, there is a magical "ocean" called Quiddity lying between us and them.