Zone One

Zone One

By Colson Whitehead

I've said this before and I'll say it again and again: The zombie genre is, by nature, limited. Films, television and books that are written within the genre appeal to a very specific sub-section of horror fans and rarely find purchase among a wider audience. Case in point, the relative failure of this past summer's film adaptation of World War Z. If Brad Pitt can't generate a wider audience for zombies, I doubt anyone can (though the failures of that film run far deeper, but that's another blog post for another day).

In fact, more often than not there is little effort made by creators of zombie lore to appeal to a wider audience. Why? With such a solid, rabid core following, why would an author or director bother to expand an audience in a genre that is notorious for being limited in scope and hopelessly bereft of innovation. The dead reanimate, infect the unsuspecting living, a motley crew of lucky people eke out a corner of survival where they wax philosophical on the nature of the apocalypse and what it all means. The fundamental themes of these stories tend to be hopelessness, desperation and the contrast between the living and the walking dead. I'm not slag gin on this formula. Obviously I'm part of the rabid core, but that's the essential alpha and omega of zombie stories. There are only so many avenues for the zombie to shuffle down and the widest ones also happen to be the most profitable.

But despite the rigidity of the genre, there is a certain degree of wiggle room and there have been a slew of Very Good Books written in the past few years that intersect the zombie genre with literary fiction. Here I'm thinking of Max Brooks's World War Z and Joan Frances Turner's novel Dust. But the best of the literary zombie lot (that I have read) is Colson Whitehead's Zone One.

Zone One refers to the southern tip of Manhattan Island. It is several months since the beginning of the zombie apocalypse and the remains of humanity are busy. A provisional government has sprung up in (of all places!) Buffalo and the world is in full clean up mode. The novel is told from the perspective of a nameless protagonist only known as Mark Spitz. Mark Spitz is part of a sweeper team that is charged with sweeping though Zone One building by building, room by room eliminating stragglers and making the city once again inhabitable. It's slow going, but things seem to be looking up for humanity.

The narrative is non-linear and tangential. Given that most of the survivors are suffering from what one psychologist refers to as post-apocalyptic stress disorder (PASD), the narrative structure fits the tone of the novel perfectly. It becomes a wonderful tool for keeping the reader in the dark about a lot of things until Whitehead is ready to reveal them. The reader only begins to get a full idea of the state of the world by the middle of the novel. And that idea is that survival is a great deal more boring that we all expected.

And that is really the over-arching theme of Zone One. Past the typical themes of hopelessness, isolation, and the psychological repercussions of mass death, Whitehead tackles a subject that few writers in the genre would dare to tackle: The sheer monotony of survival. The tedium of scavenging food and water, avoiding the walking dead and finding an adequate place to sleep the night. Unlike other novels in the genre Zone One is large swaths of tedium interspersed with First Night stories, a full reversal of the usual formula of viscera and victory.

Indeed mendacity is revered in Zone One and the novel break down the fetishization of the zombie apocalypse. In that respect Zone One is the very antithesis of the fanboy novel. Mark Spitz the very definition of an average man. There is literally nothing extraordinary about him except his complete lack of extraordinariness (the irony of his nickname is not lost). And that's the point. The survivors of the zombie apocalypse won't be the extraordinary. They will be the hopelessly average. The fact that the provisional government sets up shop in Buffalo, a cookie-cutter sort of American city devoid of character or flavor only accentuates that point (sorry people of Buffalo. I grew up in Toronto. Of course I was going to slag your fine city. It's my duty). Survival is not the stuff of action, adventure and romance. It is an oblivion of banality.

Beyond that, Whitehead uses his vast swaths of free time within the narrative to build a thought-provoking comparison between our modern world (of iPods, tablets and streaming videos) and that of a post-apocalyptic zombie wasteland. Whitehead constructs and then deconstructs (all too cleverly) the age old question of whether we are already zombies, asleep at the wheel of society. But Whitehead takes it a step further by applying modern business jargon and newspeak to the equation by introducing the notion of marketing and branding to the world of survival noting that we will all bring our particular strengths to the table in a post-apocalyptic world. It's just a matter of whether our strengths have any benefit. In this sense Zone One skirts precariously close to satire and the point is crystal clear. Whitehead has a lot to say about us as a society without zombies and he has full license to rant away now that he's done away with the vast majority of it. And the rants are fun to behold and satisfying in their hypothetical outrage.

Zone One is a thinking man's zombie novel. While it does have it's fair share of gore, it is expressed in matter of fact tones and is not intended to shock or terrify the reader, rather it is presented as the unfortunate reality of the world of Zone One. And while I am certain that I would catch a lot of flak for comparing this novel to Cormac McCarthy's The Road, there are obvious similarities that cannot be ignored. All of this makes Zone One the top of the heap among zombie novels and the first of its kind that I can confidently categorize as capital L, capital F Literary Fiction. If for no other reason that Zone One has the courage to drag zombies out of their traditional realm and placed under full literary examination. If you are only ever going to read one zombie novel, make it this one.

Frail

Frail

By Joan Frances Turner

Faithful readers of this blog will know that I am a sucker for all things zombie. I've been a fan of zombie lore since I was in junior high school and it has been a pet obsession for the past three decades with no apparent end in site. I don't profess to be an expert on the subject, but I can talk knowledgeably and one thing I love to talk about is what's wrong with the zombie sub-genre. Over the years, I have developed a singular pet peeve in relation to my obsession: that of the endgame in the zombie story arc. It's a dead end (pun intended). Once a writer goes all in with a zombie apocalypse, it is danced near impossible to write an ending that doesn't involve the demise of the human race or the defeat of the zombie hordes. Just look at the situation Robert Kirkman finds himself with The Walking Dead comic and television series. How is he supposed to find an end to that story that doesn't involve the eventual death of all his human characters?

Zombie lore has long been in need of a kick start. Something more nuanced. Something more creative than the simple local militia walking through the field armed with rifles picking off wayward corpses (and giving poorly scripted interviews with local newscasters: "They'll all messed up!"). I was waiting for someone to take zombie lore to another level.

To a certain extent, there is a generation of writers doing just that. Experimenting with the genre, chewing it up and spitting out all sorts of interesting variables to the venerable zombie story. One of my recent favorites is Bob Fingerman's excellent novel Pariah. Another is Joan Frances Turner's exquisite 2010 novel, Dust. At the time, I heaped a good amount of praise on Turner's take on the zombie sub-genre and how she was able to finally add something interesting to the typical war of attrition that all zombie apocalypse stories eventually devolve into. I made some pretty salient points, I must admit, but since I'm not nearly Gore Vidal-ish enough to quote myself, you'll have to suffice with Douglas Preston's decidedly succinct review: "Joan Frances Turner has done for zombies what Anne Rice did for vampires." It's not a perfect encapsulation of Dust or what it entails, but if you insist on not clicking on my review, it will have to do in a pinch. Turner made zombies both more terrifying and more human at the same time. Pretty nuanced, if you ask me.

So here we are in 2013 and Turner has released the much anticipated (at least by me) sequel to Dust: Frail. If you haven't read Dust, I would recommend you read it before attempting Frail as the story picks up at the end of the Dust narrative and Frail refers back to many of the characters and events in Dust without explaining them in the sort of detail that would make anything clear.Turner, I suspect, is assuming that you read the first novel before cracking Frail. Turner takes the zombie lore into the stratosphere in her first book, so jumping into the second will leave you utterly lost, so forewarned is forearmed.

Frail is the first person account of a human named Amy. Left for dead by her mother, Amy is one of the few humans left following the zombie apocalypse and the subsequent evolution of a second species of undead creatures (known in the novels as exes) who are neither human nor zombie but have appetites larger than both (metaphor for crass consumerism, anyone?). The exes are now the clear masters and humans (or frails) have been relegated to slavery and/or food. Amy has managed to stay away from both the zombies and the exes throughout the winter but after being attacked by a starving dog in a small Indiana town, she is rescued and befriended by Lisa, an ex with a heart of gold (who just so happens to be the sister of Jessie, the protagonist zombie from Dust). Amy and Lisa embark on an, at times, surreal journey into what is left of their world and in the process uncover many of the secrets kept hidden by the local Thanological Laboratory, which, in turn, reveals the truth about zombies and exes.

I want so badly to tell you that Frail picks up where Dust left off and fleshes out (pun intended) the intriguing mythology that Turner concocted in her first book. and to be fair, Frail has some legitimately terrifying and disturbing moments, some of which I will carry for years. But I must admit that much of the book is a slow, plodding melodrama between the trails and exes, much of which is shrouded in unnecessarily convoluted dialogue. The characters often talk over Amy's head about things she doesn't understand which, in turn leaves the reader in the same situation. I was literally lost for the fist two thirds of the novel because not a single character was able to make a direct statement about what the hell was going on. Because of this, the novel seems to tread water interminably.

Furthermore, Frail's characters are depressingly forgettable. It's funny that over the years critics have derided the zombie sub-genre as two-dimensional, that zombies make terrible villains due to their utter brainlessness. lack of character, motivation, no possibility of deconstruction. Zombie stories could only be as good as the human characters involved. So it is ironic that Dust, with it's cast of zombies,  has infinitely better characters and characterization than Frail which has no zombie characters whatsoever. I never got any sense of Amy as a character other than she was slowly losing her mind, and she was the protagonist. The rest of the characters were a formless mass of dialogue that ceased to make sense very quickly. Perhaps Turner has a knack for writing from the perspective of a zombie and human frailty (pun intended) is an art best left to others.

The confusion of this novel is all too much, butt does let up. Toward the end of the novel when much of the narrative fog begins to lift, Frail begins heaping on fresh piles of new confusion in anticipation of a third book in the series (no spoilers). So while Frail does (eventually) clear up a number of outstanding questions from Dust, it does so in such a meandering way that I fear many readers will give up (or cease to care) long before the reveals.

I know I did.

it's a shame, really, because deep within Frail's narrative curlicues and cardboard characters there lies a very compelling story but it will take a Herculean effort on my part to muster the enthusiasm to read the third book in this series.

Pariah

Pariah

By Bob Fingerman

What is it about the zombie genre that makes it such a tenacious sub-genre in our popular culture? Certainly it is not the nuanced characterization of the walking undead. From the opening scene of George Romero's 1968 genre-setting film Night of the Living Dead  to present, zombies, with very few exceptions, have been rather two-dimensional in scope. They are reanimated corpses who have a singular existential urge: to devour human flesh. Not the most rounded characters. And yet they seem to have more staying than vampires, wizards and werewolves which lend themselves to complex characterization.

So what gives?

The difference is the secondary characters. While other similar styles of horror focus the narrative on the specific creature (be it vampires, werewolves or what have you), what many people fail to understand about (most of) the zombie genre is that the zombies are actually inconsequential to the story being told. Zombie lore, at it's finest, is social satire. The writer or director uses the notion of a zombie apocalypse as a way in which to render society down to a microcosm of our complex social networks. Zombies focus the multitude of humanity's ills and places them under a microscope for the writer or director to examine in detail.

The zombie element is simply a clever and visually exciting backdrop to the real story: the human drama unfolding in the farm house or the shaping mall or the tenement building. When zombie lore strays from this nowhere-to-run motif it often falls flat on its face (note: this does not include anything that is written or filmed from the perspective of the zombie... that's genre deconstruction and worthy of its own discussion. See Dust). George Romero himself is guilty of straying in some of his more recent work, especially Day of the Dead.

All this is not to say that those working within the zombie genre are entirely reined in with respect to how they tell their story. There is still more than enough creative leeway within the genre to sustain it for years to come.

Case in point, Bob Fingerman's novel Pariah. The novel begins months into the apocalypse. The streets of New York are wall to wall zombies. A group of people living in a building in (or near) the Bronx have barricaded themselves inside their own building and are slowly starving to death and/or going crazy. As with so much zombie lore, each character represents a specific social stereotype that the author wants to throw into his own personal meting pot. What would happen if we put a misogynistic jock, an elderly Jewish couple, an artist, a woman who has recently lost her husband and infant daughter, the son of a mid-western Jesus freak and a middle aged black dude all together in a tiny space? What if they couldn't leave? How would that pan out?

This story could just as easily take place on a lonely spacecraft in deep space or a collapsed mine or an Antarctic base during the winter. Really, it would work in any local that offered no immediate escape. It would just be difficult to explain how an elderly Jewish couple ended up in Antarctica. That's where the zombies come in handy. It doesn't hurt that they are creepy and gory and scary as well.

This is what Fingerman understands so well. Rather than try to re-invent the wheel, Fingerman stayed true to the spirit of that old farmhouse in Romero's original film. Pariah is very much about humans trying and failing to co-exist in times of extreme duress.

But if that was all there was to Pariah, why would it merit such a lofty discussion on the nature of zombie lore? Thankfully, Pariah brings more to the table than simply another retelling of the same rat-in-a-cage trope. Fingerman, in what can only be described as a moment of undead clarity, introduces the concept of zombie immunity. What if specific individuals, for whatever reason, repelled the walking undead? What if certain people were simply unappetizing to zombies and could walk among them entirely unmolested? How would that work?

Pariah isn't a perfect novel. I found that Fingerman threw far too many pop culture references into his dialogue and internal monologue. While I fully understand the pervasive nature of books, music, films and the like, I don't think that people living under these conditions would reference SCTV or Dumb and Dumber that often. A lot of the pop culture references felt shoehorned into the narrative as a way for Fingerman to sound off about his own views rather than develop his characters. Unless, of course, he was insinuating that the sum of our culture doesn't amount to anything more than what we know about The Addams Family. In that case, this book is even more depressing than I initially thought.

But that's a minor inconvenience to an otherwise thought-provoking addition to the zombie oeuvre. I'm not one for spoilers so I'm just going to urge those who enjoy all things zombie to read Pariah. I'll admit that if you aren't a fan of the genre I don't think this will be the novel to turn you on to zombies, but if you, like me, crave all things living dead, this is a can't miss novel. It maintains all of the standard features that drew you into the zombie sub-genre to begin with, stays true to the mythology established by George Romero and throws just enough monkey wrench into the cogs to leave you asking more questions that it answers. Pariah is certainly a next step sort of work and, in time, should be considered canon for the keepers of zombie lore.

Them Or Us

Them Or Us

By David Moody

Enough about having kids. Let's talk zombies! (Some mild spoilers ahead. Nothing serious though).

I'm not sure whether David Moody began writing Them Or Us that he expressly attempted to write a book bleaker and more hopeless than The Road by Cormac McCarthy. If this was his aim, he has succeeded. While he may not have McCarthy's gift of poignant prose (who does?), Moody sure does have the ability to suck every ounce of hope out of a book in a right hurry. While this isn't necessarily a bad thing in the zombie genre, it takes a strong will to muscle through this series. Casual zombie fans, beware, this is heavy-duty nerd territory.

Them Or Us is the third in the Hater Series (for the others in the series see Hater and Dog Blood), and the bleakest of the lot of them. Considering that each novel ends on a low note, that's saying something. What started out as a kick-ass spin on the traditional zombie tradition (Hater) quickly descends into chaos (Dog Blood) and finally a dissertation on the apocalyptic end game.

The Hater series follows the life of Danny McCoyne, a mild-mannered municipal government employee who , along with a substantial portion of the British population, seem to randomly develop something called: The Hate. It is a disease (or whatever) of unknown origin that compels those afflicted to kill those unaffected in the most violent and cruel ways possible. the result is an all-out disintegration of modern society in a matter of weeks. The world descends into utter and complete chaos. It's an interesting spin on the traditional zombie tradition in that it gives the "zombies" a form of sentience and therefore allows the protagonist to be a "zombie" himself without having to resort to pages and pages of: "uhhhnnngh.... nnnnnggggghhhh!"

While the first novel left me elated and keen to read the rest of the series, both Dog Blood and (especially) Them or Us left me asking "What was the point?" Once it becomes established that non-Haters have lost the war and those with the Hate are in control of the world, it's like reading a zombie novel for zombies by zombies about being a zombie in a zombie world. Where am I supposed to place my allegiances? Now, I'm  pretty sure that exactly the reaction Moody was going for since there is never any explanation as to what the Hate is or where it comes from. In Moody's world, things happen far too fast for anyone to stop and consider the scientific origins of human devolution. But by the end of the series when there is obviously nothing left (not even hope) one must ask: "No, seriously... what WAS the point?"

Well, obviously, the metaphor.

Most zombie culture tends to focus on the initial rise of the undead and the chaotic first hours and days of the apocalypse as a metaphor for our own wicked ways. David Moody (as well as Joan Frances Turner in her excellent novel, Dust) is far more interested in how things play out once the apocalypse is upon us and in its denouement. With the added bonus of sentient zombies, we get an all-out war that includes the dropping of several nuclear warheads on the already scarred English landscape. Them or Us follows the final days of Danny McCoyne as he tries to maneuver himself through a politicized zombie world where non-zombies (almost) cease to exist and the rest seem to be out to destroy each other as best they can. As with so much other zombie canon, it's an unsubtle metaphor for our own over-comsuption. And while I love me a good metaphor, I don't want to be bludgeoned with it.

But even the bleakest of all zombie culture (or Cormac McCarthy novels) seem to leave an ounce of hope at the end. something the reader or viewer can take with them, an open-ended conclusion to which we can all ascribe a semblance of hope. Not here, my friends. If you are looking for a pick-me-up novel to wash away the doldrums or a nice light summer read, steer clear, my friends. But ifs you are in the mood for all out human disintegration on virtually every level (familial, societal, emotional and biological) then David Moody is your man.

Not to put too much of an academic spin on this, but I got the impression that Moody took Richard Dawkins book The Selfish Gene to it's illogical extreme and posited what would happen if we became that selfish gene and lives our lives for there express purpose of eliminating all other competition (while simultaneously NOT procreating). I wonder whether Moody has read about E.O. Wilson's controversial new Theory of Social Evolution that supposes that human altruism is an evolutionary necessity rather than simply the notion of procreating and protecting our own. Okay, it's not the best metaphor, but anytime I can through Dawkins and Wilson into a post about zombies, I have to take my chances.

All this is not to say I didn't enjoy the series. I did. Very much. Especially the first book (WOW!). But the series certainly had its flaws. There were all sorts of points where I questioned Danny McCoyne's judgment. Why would a sentient zombie who has lost his entire family, nearly died in a nuclear blast, currently riddled with cancer while being used by political factions on all sides agree to help another sentiment zombie leader after the literary equivalent of "C'mon.... just do it! I'll be your friend!" But of course, I don't have the Hate so I cannot comment on how those that do have it make their judgments. But all that is worth overlooking since Moody is exploring territory that few zombies writers (George Romero included) have not: The End of Times via Zombie. If you are a fan of the dystopian apocalyptic genre, this is certainly not a series that you can overlook.

Casual fans should stick to Max Brooks.

Zombie haters? There's always Twilight.

Shout Out

One of my favorite blogs to visit is The Boston Bibliophile. I've taken more than one recommendation from her and she is still batting 1.000.

Dust

Dust

By Joan Frances Turner

(Warning: Nerdiness ahead...)

The modern-day zombie mythology has evolved from George Romero's 1968 film Night of the Living Dead. Since then, countless writers, directors and producers have expanded on Romero's original idea, exploding the mythology in all sorts of direction from the purely canonical work of Max Brooks (World War Z), Robert Kirkman (The Walking Dead) and Romero himself to the deconstructionist, first... um... zombie accounts by Marc Price (Colin) and Andrew Parkman (I, Zombie) to the non-traditional accounts that break significantly from Romero's original mythos that include the work of Francis Laurence (I Am Legend) and David Moody (Hater). For a genre that has often been derided for its limitations, creators and proponents of the zombie-verse have reinvented themselves in all sorts of new and interesting ways.

Then along comes Joan Frances Turner, a graduate of Harvard Law School and obviously a zombie aficionado. In her first novel, Dust, Turner has taken a large bite out of the zombie genre, chewed it up and spit it out. Dust is a highly disturbing and powerful novel set in the heartland of the zombie-verse (the American Midwest) and follows the wanderings of Jessie, a former 14 year-old vegetarian who, upon perishing in a family car accident, has dug herself up from the grave and roams the Indiana countryside with her gang of the walking undead.

Dust is not for the faint of heart. At once compassionate and brutally honest, it is also gory beyond compare. Turner pulls no punches in her description of the brutal, painful life (unlife?) of a zombie. The undead deal with memories of their past life, wrestle with the all-consuming hunger that dogs them incessantly all while trying to survive in a world where continued existence is at once never-ending and seemingly without purpose.

She supposes the existence of an entire zombie culture complete with a method of telepathic communication, social hierarchies and various groups of competing zombies including those who consume human flesh and those that don't. Although even George Romero has hinted at a more profound version of the zombie in Day of the Dead, it is Turner that has added a complexity to the otherwise one-dimensional shuffling ghouls we have come to expect since the days of Johnny and Barbara (and Turner does a wonderful job of sneaking cheeky references to zombie films into the narrative. Don't think I didn't enjoy that!).

If that was Turner's only aim in writing Dust, it would have been more than enough to have added significant meat to the genre's aching bones. But Turner takes things a whole lot further. What starts out as a from-the-zombie's-perspective style deconstruction of the personal and social wonderfully devolves into uncharted waters as a third player is introduced. No longer is the world divided among the living and the dead. In a terrifying twist, the genre is split wide open. Here's why...

While most of those responsible for creating and perpetuating the zombie genre have concentrated on the early days of the apocalypse (Dawn of the Dead) or perhaps take up the story in the midst of the hordes (The Walking Dead, Diary of the Dead) very few, if any, writers tackle the endgame... the end of the zombies. Perhaps it is because zombies themselves have always signified an end of sorts or perhaps it is because humans would most likely not be around to witness the end of zombies. Either way, the end of the zombie invasion has never truly been discussed before Turner. By creating a third mutation, Turner has opened up the concept of total consumption and Dust becomes not only a superior novel but also a philosophical tract on the topics of death, starvation and annihilation. A veritable necrological compendium of misery.

I have been waiting a long time for someone to treat the zombie genre with the literary care that Turner exhibits here. While I take nothing away from the work of Max Brooks and David Moody, both of whom I enjoy, it is Joan Frances Turner that has raised the bar on why a zombie book can be and elevated the genre from mere sideshow anomaly to a seriousness it has always deserved.