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THE MENSTRUATING MALL
by
Carlton Mellick III
If you were disappointed to find that Nathaniel West’s DAY OF THE LOCUST did not contain any giant grasshoppers, or that THE CATCHER IN THE RYE had nothing whatsoever to do with playing baseball in a grain silo, you will be thrilled to discover author Carlton Mellick III, whose books (THE BABY JESUS BUTT PLUG, THE OCEAN OF LARD) never fail to make good on the surreal, often revolting promises of their titles. A cross between George Romero’s DAWN OF THE DEAD and Agatha Christie’s AND THEN THERE WERE NONE, THE MENSTRUATING MALL concerns a group of walking American stereotypes (the Jesus-freak, the wanabee-gangsta, the valley girl) who find they can’t seem to bring themselves to leave their local shopping center--a mall that has begun, as advertised, to bleed. Once these losers are left alone with each other, they begin to die at the hands of a mysterious killer, who claims to be punishing them for their conformity to type. They embark on an increasingly desperate quest for new identities, encompassing nonsensical dress codes and randomized vandalism as these cookie-cutter-characters scramble to get a third dimension, pronto. The story itself isn’t very long, in fact it’s really more of a short story--or, if you like, a kind of picture book for perverts. Food Fortunata's crude drawings, which have little to do with the plot, are the sort of thing you'd expect to find in a defaced middle-school textbook. Mellick's prose is similarly lowgrade stuff, as though he wants us to think that a ten-year-old came up with it.
Indeed, this book raises a question common to both fans and detractors of the outsider art scene: Do Mellick and Fortunata's primitivisms represent a choice, or just the limits of their abilities? In the case of Fortunata, I'd say the latter, in a big way. But in the case of Mellick, there is a sense of misbehavior to his style, like a kid who lets his parents down to piss them off. His plot is also well-served by its brevity, buzzing by too fast for its conceits to collapse on themselves. Whereas an author like Harlan Ellison can prop up his bizarre ideas with powerhouse prose, Mellick keeps the whole thing afloat by rushing you through as fast as possible. It's the fictional equivalent of jalopy-hawking, but either way, it's a successful sale.
Just ask me again in a month if the car still starts. |
