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A Stain On Our Collective Conscience
Book: Milwaukee Noir
Editor: Tim Hennessy
Critic: Glenville Ashby, Ph.D
Milwaukee Noir is a compilation of frightening and distasteful tales. In this cesspool of misery, murder is the new normal that redefines the meaning of human existence. There are wrenching images of sadism and perturbing reminders that we are still enslaved by racial, religious and sexual bigotry.
Victims unleash vengeance not because they are personally violated, but because they have turned hatred unto themselves. Every retaliation is a fanning pronouncement on their own weakness, guilt and shame.
In Reed Farrel Coleman’s ‘Summerfest’ ‘76,’ anti-Semitism, racism and homophobia consume a pitiful figure, a figure that finds relevance in projecting his self-loathing unto others.
“…I should burn it down with him in it,” he screams at the man behind the counter, who in turn plots and carries out his murder. “I would have liked to kill him slowly,” the store clerk later ruminates, “so I could have savored the sound of his skull cracking. So I could have watched the blood and brains squeezing out of his eyeholes. But it was over in a flash, his limp body dangling from the stamp plate.”
A cold vengeful act that demonstrates that he’s beyond the pale, more heinous than his abuser ever was.
A daring political statement is penned in ‘Transit Complaint Box’ by Frank Wheeler Jr. Here, today’s zeitgeist has turned victims into perpetrators and law enforcement has become a vile and villainous profession. Streets turn into killing fields for every misfit and sociopath whose main defence is racism.
In this side of Milwaukee, sanity is turned on its head and liberal idealism is exposed for what it is – a political weapon to silence opponents. In ‘3rd Street Waltz,’ by Matthew J. Prigge, we drudge through inanity. There is no real future for folks except for Janet, a courtesan who towers over a bunch of sots and infelicitous characters.
And Valerie Laken’s ‘Runoff’ is a redemptive tale where humanity cranes for relevance amid the daring and self-destructive indulgences of children shuffling through life’s vagaries.
Lucy and friends meander through sewers, lifting the covers off manholes, hunting for booty in garages to satisfy her indulgences. But there is some redeeming about Lucy, an adolescent well-seasoned in the maze of foster homes. She is haunted by the image of “that thing in a cage, curled up, twisting its face towards her, searching left and right under its blindfold. It was a man.”
Her humanity cries out and she assumes the daring role of heroine determined to rescue him.
Jennifer Morales’ ‘Cousins’ delves into the convoluted, dizzying world of transgenderism. This is an emotionally exhaustive narrative. It is an incendiary, searing tale stamped with many indelible comments, two of which tower over all others.
“God didn’t give me a son, he gave me a daughter,” and “The army straightens out a lot of crooked lives, by God’s grace,” or “Jesus forgiving me my sins by His indulgent proxy.”
‘There’s A Riot Goin’ On,’ is a Derrick Harriell portrait of the inner city, a bubbling cauldron of racial oppression, hopelessness and frustration. Violence is invitingly intoxicating, an unlikely panacea for generational trauma.
Hound Terrell is infected by the ills visited on his father by the excess of law enforcement, seen more as an occupying force than a protective agency. Frustration bursts at its seams. “Chaos in the neighborhood had become nothing new. But a damn riot was, and it was something he had to see. He had to see a riot. He had to see a riot in the hood.”
Eventually rage consumes him, a victim of circumstances, a victim of his own fraught psyche.
I would be remiss if I fail to mention the equally fine writings of Christi Clancy, Mary Thorson, Nick Petrie, Larry Watson, James E. Causes and Shauna Singh Baldwin. Their brilliance stand uncontested.
In Milwaukee Noir, evil seeks ablution for its own sake. Try it must, all the while festering and consuming everything in its path. Even behind the veneer of genteelism, evil is persistently present, deadly as it ever was, whispering and taunting the weak and vulnerable, and even the strong. For as long as we live, we are at risk. Milwaukee Noir delivers that foreboding message.
Milwaukee Noir
Edited by Tim Hennessy
(C) 2019 Akashic Books
Available at Amazon
ISBN: 978-1-61775-701-3
Ratings: Highly recommended
Feedback: [email protected] or follow him on Twitter@glenvilleashby
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