The Last Horror Novel in the History of the World by Brian Allen Carr

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    WELCOME TO THE LAST HORROR NOVEL:
    AN INTRODUCTION BY TOM WILLIAMS
     
     
     
    The Mexico/Texas border—near which Brian Allen Carr has lived most of his writing life—is easily demarcated on a map. The Rio Grande separates the nation and the state (though, as its ad agencies would like us to remember, Texas is “a whole other country”), yet it can be an easily traversed border, and the influences that flow back and forth cannot be overlooked, as it’s easy to wander through the streets of, say, Nuevo Laredo and think things look much like a typical US city, or stumble upon a section of McAllen and think it would fit right into Mexico. In all, if borders are meant to designate two different sides, the Rio Grande is doing a pretty lousy job.
    To be true, the border that exists between fiction deemed as literary and that deemed as genre is far better policed and regulated than that between Mexico and Texas. I would go so far as to venture to say that the natives on each side are far more hostile toward one another, and that as soon as one has crossed over, she need not attempt to return. Further, unlike the somewhat naturally occurring Rio Grande as border, the divide between literary and genre is entirely manmade and likely as unnecessary as, a Texan might say, tits on a teacup.
    Yet there it lies, forcing literary writers to gripe about vampire teen detective novels (while whispering about their “guilty pleasures” of fantasy, sci-fi, thriller, or English cozy) and ginning up the defensiveness of genre writers who know that pointing to their sales only confirms that something must be wrong on that side of the border, if so many people want to buy those quote unquote books.
    And then there is Brian Allen Carr. Like the Texan that he is, who daily breathes  air scented by both cultures while digging into a hybrid cuisine, he moves easily across borders. None of the jabs the natives of literary and genre fiction might fling at him can penetrate his defense. His sentences soar, his action entices. His sharks scare more than Spielberg’s, while his characterizations help you know every-damn-body in the book as well as a best friend. And in this ineffable novella—part-apocalypse narrative, part-fable, part-prayer—he rains down terror so indescribable you have to read it for yourself while breaking your heart when his characters share their secrets.
    In this fantastic (in both senses of the word) fiction, Brian Allen Carr reminds us that borders are not to be feared but forded, crisscrossed and zigzagged until no border remains and a new frontier results. What we need after The Last Horror Novel in the History of the World is a modifier to describe his accomplishment. Carresque? Carrvian? I’m going with Carrful. Because that’s where I want to be with Brian Allen Carr: riding in the backseat with his indelible prose, unerring comedy, mad scientist plot, and social worker heart while he howls behind the wheel, foot on the accelerator,  ninety-miles an hour, headed for the abyss.

 

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
      
     
       
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
      
     
       
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Scrape, Texas—far from fame or infamy—appeared on maps, was passed through by travelers. A blink of crummy buildings, wooden households—the harsh-hearted look of them, like a thing that’s born old.

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
      
     
       
     
     
     
     
     
     

    When we stood on the rooftop of Blue Parson’s tree house, we could see, in the navy, swollen night sky, the orange glow of better towns to be from, could hear the highways to them hissing with car traffic and train horns cooing from their age-rusted tracks. We knew the direction, you just didn’t see us walking. The salt smell of the bayside was the church of our childhood, and we would not play the role of heretic just because