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Hell was made up of dark, endless halls and was apparently an insane asylum.
The greatest fear human beings can suffer from without going insane is the fear of nothingness. Every pain and misery, however violent, is worth more to us than the idea of being wiped from our little plane of existence. This is why we're obsessed with life after death and certainly why I read stories about it. Now, I would lie to you if I said that I knew what exactly I was getting involved with after picking up John C. Foster's debut novel Dead Men, but it's about the closest fictional rendering to life after death to my own beliefs on the issue: the truth (if truth there is to find) lies somewhere between this Earth and what we call hell.
John Smith woke up from the electric chair in a place very similar to the one he just left, except that it's unclear how he actually got there and that people now call him John Smith. He doesn't know a whole lot about this new existence, except for one thing: he has a job to do. Kill the keeper of a great secret. This as straightforward of a task as it gets, except for the great distance separating them. So, John Smith embarks on a road trip across this corrupted, nightmarish America with the other damned. There's a whole new world ahead of John and his friends and it's eager to test them and turn them into soulless demons.
Dead Men's best asset is its unpredictable narration. The story is rather straightforward, yet it is spectacularly delivered. The majority of the scenes in Dead Men are long and borderline operatic confrontations that could almost stand on their own as short stories. It's both a lot of fun and sometimes frustrating as the storyline is somewhere in these giant nightmares John C. Foster paints on the page and it's not always easy to find. Dead Men is definitely a novel that requires a patient and spontaneous reader. Don't be in a hurry. Don't try and beat the game, it'll only drive you nuts. It's not a novel that requires active reading as it does the majority of the work for you.
She had two choices.
"You wanna fuck me?"
The first was very bad.
"C'mon babe. I know you wanna fuck me."
The second was unimaginable.
There is an obvious parallel to be traced between the work of John C. Foster and Jon Bassoff. The fans of one will enjoy the other without the shadow of a doubt. Both authors have a fondness for portraying a timeless, nightmare version of America. John C. Foster is undeniable influenced by Southern Gothic fiction and horror, but Dead Men is a tough cookie to categorize. I don't think it's either things. If I had to put a label on it, I would call it dark fantasy. A road novel of the underworld if you will. It is cleverly surfing the line with Bassoff's brand of Gothic horror, but it's not nihilistic enough to fall into that category.
Dead Men is a unique and challenging novel. I appreciate it more in hindsight than I did during my reading because of its ambitious and somewhat groundbreaking narration that went against every rational instinct I have as a reader in the moment. I guess it could've been a little shorter, but it's a daring and original release from Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing nonetheless. Dead Men is a novel that unfolds in front of you like a 5 hours long Jodorowskian surreal movie and the journey you'll decide to take into it is entirely your own.