Book Review : Eric LaRocca - You've Lost A Lot Of Blood (2022)
Of all the imaginary crimes available in literature, murder is my favorite. Because it's usually not a life choice like dealing dope or getting into human trafficking and whatnot. Becoming a murderer is something that happens to you and however evil the murderer is, his impulses are never 100% his responsibility. His actions are. But the need to kill is more tricky. Even when the murderer in question claims that killing is a form of art, like in Eric LaRocca's metafictional collection You’ve Lost A Lot Of Blood.
There's always more to it.
You’ve Lost A Lot Of Blood is a collection of the fictional writings of Martyr Black, a young man with serious homicidal thoughts who may or may not be a serial killer. There are journal entries, poems, but mostly a novella titled You’ve Lost A Lot Of Blood that tells the story of Tamsen and Presley, a brother and sister brought to a manor by a famous reclusive game designer to work on new, boundary-breaking titled called… You’ve Lost A Lot Of Blood. Everthing is in everything, like we say in Quebec.
War Against Human Frailty
As you might've figured by now, the phrase "you’ve lost a lot of blood" works as somewhat of a rosetta stone to understand this collection. Martyr Black write these passionate journal entries about the young men in his life, where he celebrates their beauty and innocence only to state that it's exactly why he needed to kill them. In a way he’s trying to preserve their vibrance and stop them from getting old and bitter? Because Martyr Black is very angry against the fatality of life. He’d love things to be eternal.
I know it sounds convoluted and I can’t explain it to you fully without spoiling the collection, but Martyr Black’s homicidal streak is a way for him to control his death anxiety. He is the giver and the taker of life. That shows in his journals and poems, but also in the novella where his two protagonists are fighting an uphill battle with somewhat of a new, more durable life form. There's a tragedian edge to it. They’re fighting for survival against something that’ll inevitable render them obsolete.
The phrase "you’ve lost a lot of blood" permeates three metafictional levels of Eric LaRocca's collection because it highlights a transient state between life and death where a person is helpless over their condition. It makes one all-powerful if they provoked this condition and it makes them completely powerless if it happens to them. I’m not a fan of "sexy" or "artsy" killers per se, but LaRocca went deep enough into the psychological underpinnings of Martyr Black to make him compelling.
The Casual Cruelty Of The Obscenely Well Educated
You've Lost A Lot Of Blood was my first foray into the new queer horror movement that's been taking over the literary business over the last couple years and I was absolutely charmed. Eric LaRocca is obviously influenced by Clive Barker and has developed a similar (not identical) creative paradigm where sophisticated people, East Coast Ivy League settings and art departments are a secret gateways to murder and mayhem. It has this distinct "secret society" or "secret history" feeling to it.
LaRocca is obviously a gifted storyteller who can navigate the complexity of the real and the imagined and the inside and the outside of someone's mind, but having that singular creative vision is even more important than that. He's got both. It's like Ari Aster, you know? You watch his films for horror that happen in context where people should usually feel safe. Well, you read Eric LaRocca for horror that happens in exclusive places you shouldn’t normally know anything about. This is powerful.
Well, for You've Lost A Lot Of Blood at least. LaRocca might be one of them shapeshifting beasts who can create new paradigms on the fly. I sense that you'll learn all about that in the upcoming months on the site.
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I had a killer time with You've Lost A Lot Of Blood (pun intended). It’s original, intense and multitasking if it makes sense. It's a compelling portrait of a fragmented mind inhabited by a violence it doesn't quite have control over. At least not to the level Martyr Black thinks he has control. It's a great starting point to Eric LaRocca's writing and the format might take some aback and the fully assumed creative paradigm might not be everyone’s cup of tea, I had a lot of fun with it and I think you would too.
