Reviewed by Michael Signorelli
9.6.07

Every generation harbors the bleak uncertainty that they may be the last—the ones who really drop the ball. And as the present endures into what was known as the future, assuming that the world must end, the Apocalypse grows ever nearer. As such, it’s a topic of perennial relevance and, as Justin Taylor proves with The Apocalypse Reader, a collection of thirty-four apocalyptic stories, more than just a sellable excuse for a book, but a justifiable impetus to showcase a number of exceptional writers.

In his introduction, Taylor maneuvers wisely and well around questions of timeliness. Is the Apocalypse more relevant now than in the past? What exactly necessitated the creation of this book now? He handles the former in paragraph one. The latter he addresses sidelong in the introduction: “This anthology is a celebration of the short story’s inexhaustible vitality, as well as an in-depth (though certainly not exhaustive) survey of its variety.” Then he lets the stories speak for themselves.

Fittingly, H.P. Lovecraft opens the collection. I sometimes fail to catch the sense of his horrified ecstasies, but he never fails to set the mood. A pleasant story by Rick Moody is followed by something evil from Stacey Levine in which perfect masochism mirrors perfect sadism. Shelley Jackson appears some pages later with “The Hook,” a love story between a desperate mother and a crane operator who incinerates corpses for a living. “Earth’s Holocaust” first published in 1844 by Nathaniel Hawthorne inserts the fable-like quality of Victorian language that suits the Apocalypse so well. And we meet our first fully drawn character, Daniel Markovich, in “The End” by Josip Novakovich. It’s understandable that, given the limited space and the enticements of planet-wide peril, so few recognizable humans feature in this collection. It’s more a symptom than a failing, and “The End” speaks to Taylor’s successful editorial balance.

And then it happens. The fulcrum on which this collection depends: “The Ash Gray Proclamation” by Dennis Cooper. To a large segment of the American population, this story may itself be a sign of the Apocalypse. Written like an improbable play (a performance of this would either cause riots or a three-mile-wide circle-jerk – both good starts to hell on earth), Cooper gives us Mackerel, a drug-hungry, 13-year-old necrophiliac with a god complex. He quickly takes up with cannibals, psychic terrorists, and an army of middle-aged pedophiles. By way of the droning indifference of expositional inserts and the dialogue’s crisp pace, Cooper turns the repetition of atrocities into a sort of chant. It concludes with the demise of an anti-Christ at the hands of a willing and cruel world. And though Cooper cannot be considered a “discovery”—he has written eight novels and is the publisher of his own imprint—his inclusion here is as provocative as any.

Having been propelled into a strange mind-space, the remaining stories felt more substantial, which, looking now from a reasonably calm perspective, remains true. The respective qualities of Kelly Link, H.G. Wells, Neil Gaiman, Michael Moorcock, Terese Svoboda, and Jeff Goldberg among others delivered Apocalypses of every sort: love, family, mankind, and the earth all nosedive into oblivion. In this latter half, Taylor pulls another gem from the morass of the public domain. “The Escape—A Tale of 1755” by Grace Aguilar, written in 1844, is “probably the most difficult story in this book to get through…it is even more heavy-handed than [“Earth’s Holocaust”] when it comes to moralizing and pedantry, but it is absolutely worth putting yourself through…there’s a kickass Apocalypse in it for you,” according to Taylor’s introduction. It culminates in grand mass death.

Even though the Apocalypse remains shrouded in our future, these thirty-four variations of tone, setting, severity, and realism offer a rich experience. How do we see ourselves in the end—literally, the end of the world—of us and everybody? It’s a wonder. And though these myriad imaginings offer a fair review of potential Apocalypse, Poe, before all others, yet remains at the forefront of terror, reaching into mythic depths to procure what may very well be the End:

Then—let us bow down, Charmion, before the excessive majesty of the great God!—then, there came a shouting and pervading sound, as if from the mouth itself of HIM; while the whole incumbent mass of ether in which we existed, burst at once into a species of intense flame, for whose surpassing brilliancy and all-fervid heat the angels in the high Heaven of pure knowledge have no name. Thus ended all.