Major Pynchon comparison novel.

[Mark Thibodeau]

It does indeed look interesting, but would somebody for the love of
Godzilla please explain to me what the deal is with the goetic demon lord
PAIMON making appearances in so many pop culture contexts in recent years?!

I mean, before the release of the film Hereditary, you'd pretty much have
to be dipping pretty darn deep into the well of Western esoterica even just
to have seen or heard the name! But now, starting with Ari Aster's
aforementioned foundations-shattering horror masterpiece, that sock-puppet
camel jockey's* Punchinello puss is popping up all over the place.

Cases in point? There's HEREDITARY, of course, where he plays a massively
important, one could almost say starring role.

He also turns out to be the main baddie in the underseen 'female cop alone
overnight in a soon-to-be decommissioned precinct building' movie, LAST
SHIFT.  Which I recommend as a Halloween watch. It's not sophisticated in
the way Aster's films are... but heck, that's okay sometimes, right? The
interesting thing about this is the fact that Last Shift came out in
2014... a full four years before Hereditary. So his recent flurry of
appearances can't solely be laid at the feet of the popularity of
Hereditary.

Paimon is also mentioned as a potential possessor of a main character in
the 4th episode of the excellent HULU horror anthology series MONSTERLAND
(2020). It's not much, but considering the character's former cultural
obscurity... it's actually a lot!

There's at least one more mention that I recall taking place, in either a
recent Brazilian or Spanish horror film (there have been quite a few decent
ones to come out lately), and that I'm trying to remember the title. I
should have taken a note at the time, because I remember being struck by
yet another Paimon mention in a horror flick (Was it TERRIFIED? or THE
NIGHTSHIFTER?) and I thought the topic had the potential to be a decent
little blog article for a horror website, and I'd like to maybe have
written that article.

And now we've got Keenan's novel, wherein "we encounter Rehberg, 'a
theologian and a soldier of fortune' in Africa, where he meets with Pierre
Melville. Together they create the joint identity of Paimon to publish
strange science fiction." The text even contains "a whole novella by Paimon
about climate change" for Pete's sake! Is this not enough to set your
Pynchonian Spidey Sense a-tingle (not necessarily the novel stuff, but
everything else mentioned above)? Like... are we witnessing in real time an
example of conscious cultural creation? Is Paimon/Paymon destined to become
some kind of archetype, belief paradigm, or short-hand for something else?
Something we're not quite sure about yet?

Anyhoo, forgive my NP ramblings. The book actually sounds worth picking up,
by I'll wait for the trade paperback.

Cheers!
yer old pal Jerky

*Not racist as he is literally riding on a camel in most images of him,
plus I don't think the denizens of the Netherworld have a "race" per se.

On Sat, Aug 7, 2021 at 11:38 AM Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Looks fun.
>
> On Sat, Aug 7, 2021 at 6:52 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/aug/07/monument-maker-by-david-keenan-review-an-experimental-compendium?utm_term=Autofeed&CMP=twt_gu&utm_medium&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1628339122
> > --
> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> >
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>