Room of Cloth by RH Grund
Is it safe to review?
i don’t know
of course its safe
this is such cringy bs
it might be safe
but you have to be careful
you have to do it right
What do I have to do?
for starters
don’t say the name of the book
room of cloth
seriously don’t
He can hear you when you do that
no he can’t
there’s no one
room of cloth
room of cloth
room of cloth
see?
nothing happens
you’ll see
What about ®θθM ºƒ ⊂⌊¤†Η?
yeah, that might work
seriously?
Alright, then, I’m going to give it a try.
Wish me luck.
good luck
for what?
you’ll be fine
idiot
There’s really no good way to start this review. The best I can do is a paradox. The best I can do is to start with the end of the book. The ultimate spoilers follow. Here is the ending of ®θθM ºƒ ⊂⌊¤†Η by RH Grund:
®θθM ºƒ ⊂⌊¤†Η— or at least the Kindle version, which the author was kind enough to provide me– ends with a preview of his next book, Simulacrum, due to come out within the next year or so. I’m starting with this fact because my reaction to this sample tells you more about the book before it than perhaps anything else could: I didn’t read it.
Or really, I couldn’t read it.
RH Grund:
“Where does the story begin? Where does the truth end?
That’s happened to basically all of our information landscape. That was one of the inspirations, this weird, liminal, not-true but not-false space of the internet. That was scary to me, that invoked a sort of dread that I thought would be interesting to explore in a book.
It kept getting deeper and deeper. That original premise just kept expanding in ways that I hadn’t anticipated at all. It touched on themes and ideas that were almost primeval. Fundamental to human experience.”
Upon reaching the end of ®θθM ºƒ ⊂⌊¤†Η, a debut horror-novel exploring the darkest knots of the human condition in the internet-age, I had to stop. I couldn’t keep going, I couldn’t pick up something else, not even for a moment. I read the book in two sittings: the first quarter-or-so at my kitchen table, in between other tasks, almost on a whim– something to do while I was waiting to do something else– but like the titular book/thoughtform, ®θθM ºƒ ⊂⌊¤†Η quickly took hold of me, and I read the other seventy-five percent over a breathless three hours in the library, while I was supposed to be doing something else. I finished the last page. I sent the author a message on twitter, congratulating him for creating something that indeed lives up to its dust-jacket quip of “A shocking debut”, in the best possible way.
And then I closed my laptop and I went to sit outside for a while in the sun. I mean it when I say that there is no higher compliment that I can give a book.
Let’s talk about what actually happens in this damn(ed) thing. Our would-be protagonist, Sebastian, is a cocaine-addicted late-twenties wreck, returning to the small town of Lorraine, Maryland, after a yearlong failed stint as a drug-dealer in his own right in Boston, Massachusetts.
At first, this latter bit felt more like flavor than anything else; the opening chapters of the book very much give that impression, actually, that the details and backstory are just sort of there to be there, trimmings and accents, and the like. Remember this. Everything is a lie. All of it is true.
“The lousy, little restroom with its piss-yellow walls and shit-caked toilets disappeared into smoke, and in its place was a room of red and black, the walls wheezing out hot, blood-drenched breath, undulating as though alive, enveloping him in heat. A room of flesh and bone. A room of cloth.
He fell to his knees. He spread his hands over the bloody floor and lifted them up as if he were at a church service. He laughed.”
The opening chapters of the story also very much give the impression of realistic fiction– surreal or unreal only insofar as the characters hallucinate it as such. Drugs are drugs are drugs, after all, Sebastian is from the start uncannily certain that he has stumbled across something that will bring about a great change in his life– a large portion of a manuscript referred to as (you guessed it) the “®θθM ºƒ ⊂⌊¤†Η”. We learn that Sebastian is not the original author of this text– in fact, there is no original author of this text, not in any meaningful sense. The “®θθM ºƒ ⊂⌊¤†Η” is something of a crowdsourced compilation of stories, feelings, and frights, collected, transcribed, or created by who-can-say how many people over the years.
“It was on him, the most vanished of the wasted, the most wayward of the lost. He wasn’t prone to self-reflection, but the thought fell on him now with devastating clarity. A drugged-up, psych-case dropout was responsible for protecting what was likely the most valuable thing to ever exist, the only thing worth a goddamn in this fucked-up, self-polluting, self-destructing wasteland. Who would have thought?”
Sebastian carries the book with him as he returns home, the most complete it has ever been, and he is determined to finish it. He has been chosen to finish it, and to receive his divine reward. In order to do so, though, he will need to find one of the previous authors, the generically-named “Bryan Stevens”. And from there, off we go.
Much like Ned Bauman’s The Teleportation Accident (among his other books, really), we spend most of the novel not entirely sure what genre we’re in; is the book real, or isn’t it? Does it matter if it’s real, or doesn’t it? Are we supposed to actually know, or aren’t we? Sebastian ranks among the highest royalty of unreliable narrators.
RH Grund:
“I don’t base characters off of anyone particular in my life, but I have seen people who have dealt with different degrees of substance abuse. I’ve seen how people will struggle with alcoholism, drug use. I’ve seen how people deal with depression. We all have an experience like that, where if it’s not us, it’s someone in our circle.
It just became clear: who would become interested in this idea, this infectious thing that masks itself as some kind of boon? It would be someone who was already addicted to things. He was already pursuing things like drugs and sex to try and make himself feel better, try and find that connection that he desperately wanted
There has to be a history there. What explains him? If he had a well-adjusted life, he wouldn’t be this way, right? So you explore the parents… you explore the abuse he was receiving… and that gives rise to the sister. ”
After Sebastian, we quickly meet that sister, Sarah, who takes him in despite near-decades now of misery and trouble with her brother’s addiction and explosive personality, not to mention the entire year without contact.
“Back again, what could’ve been the tenth time, the hundredth.”
“Her apartment stank with darkness. Only the light above the stove buzzed, spotted with the dark shapes of flies long dead.
…
A wound, she thought, forever stuck, unable to heal. A cut in the skin that lingered for years.”
It seems strange, for a moment, that Sarah is so willing to let Sebastian back into her life, as well as her home– an English teacher, much like our author, this is… perhaps unwise. But Sarah’s personality unfolds before us, and with each passing chapter, we see more and more clearly that she couldn’t really make any other choice.
This is who she is, and where she is, where she has been for nearly her entire adult life– trapped between a nauseous resentment of her brother, and an equally-nauseous self-hatred from the thought that maybe, perhaps, just possibly, everything wrong in his life is her fault.
“Something had to give, she knew that. She had to keep him here, keep him clean, whatever it took. She was responsible for him, the only person he had left now that their parents were gone. It wasn’t a responsibility she took lightly, and it certainly weighed on her, but she wasn’t going to let it go.”
Next in the cast of characters is Caesar, Sebastian’s former dealer/boss, in the way those things so often go.
“‘Seb! Fuckin’ Seb!’ He pulled Sebastian into a hug. ‘Been worried sick about you! The hell you been doing? Where you been?’
‘I was in Boston,’ Sebastian said. ‘With that bitch Billy Tripp.’
‘Billy? The fuck you with him for?’
‘Thought I could get in on this dope he was selling. But it was a dumb idea. The guy didn’t know what he was doing. It was a waste of time.’
‘I could’ve helped you if you needed money. You should’ve come to me.’
‘Yeah. More like I just had to get out of here. You know, my sister and all that.’
‘Well, next time, tell me when you’re gonna take off. Fucking disappeared on me. One day you’re here, next you’re gone– what the fuck, man?’
‘Yeah. Sorry about that.’
‘It’s good. Long as you’re safe. Come in, come in.’”
Caesar is an absolutely fascinating character, and in many ways, along with Sarah, forms the emotional core of the narrative. Caesar is gay, and highly sexually exploitative of the young men who come to live with and work for him, but we quickly get the sense that this is not at all who he wants to be, and much like Sarah, as his past crystallizes across the pages, we begin to see that really, there weren’t many other ways his story could turn out.
He is stern, but sensitive. Soft, but determined, when he cares about something.
Through some lenses, Caesar is the most “broken” character in this book– certainly, he’s one of the riskiest choices made by Grund– but through other ways of seeing, he is also among the strongest representations of hope.
He, too, is a paradox.
“…he held out his rosary.
Sarah looked at it. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Take it.’
‘But it was your grandmother’s.’
‘Si, and she’s probably dead by now for all I know. Been holding on to this thing for a long time. Thought I needed it, like it kept them with me or something. I don’t feel like that anymore. You know she named me? Cesar, like my grandpa. She named me, and she unnamed me. She said I was touched by the devil. And I was.’”
“The words would sing their song. The room of cloth seemed to exist outside all this, but also inside–far away, but also deep within. It was its own special space, independent and removed. It didn’t play by the same rules, didn’t have to accommodate those who failed to understand it. It simply was and would be.”
It’s worth pausing a moment here to reflect on voice. Grund’s writing is incredibly well-grounded in his characters, always a perfect match– but at the same time, he demonstrates the ability to pull back from a close third-person into a gorgeous semi-omniscient that absolutely dominates the page. It’s a rare skill, and a real treat to drink up. He’s a writer with a great deal of insight and curiosity.
Grund, simply put, is a writer with an enormous amount to say— but what’s not so simple about him or his work is that for all he has to say, he isn’t going to tell you any of it directly. Grund speaks through tone and tension. There are sections fo this that feel immense and heavy, despite reading with all the lightness of easy poetry. There are sections of this that read like mud, like you have to force yourself to take each desperate, miserable step forward, dragging your feet towards what you know is coming, what can’t not happen next– but they feel like nothing at all.
A paradox.
RH Grund:
“What is scary about the internet? Why do these stories exist?– why do memes exist? There’s something about the internet that is almost a garbage dump of human society, where the things that privately, we all feel, those intrusive thoughts or those deeply gothic senses of guilt or resentment…anger… those things we can’t publicly air… in a healthy society, we find ways to sublimate, find ways to process those feelings. But now that we have the internet, we don’t need to do any kind of sublimation.
Those dark thoughts get dumped into the internet. It’s the unconscious of society. And we live in a much more alienated age than we ever have; as interconnected as the internet makes us, it also has this tendency to pull us away from the person-to-person, blood and bone connections. So if you’re someone who is socially awkward, or maybe depressed or anxious, if you don’t have the tools to navigate your social life, if you’re not as extroverted as you need to be or as competent as you wish you were, you go online. That’s your refuge.
At first blush, it seems like a good thing because someone who would not be able to discuss something in person is able to have a more therapeutic experience online, get that social interaction. But what if that person stays online? Never translates that social experience to real life? Then the internet becomes like a crutch. This comfort that it provides turns into echo chambers, that turns into more extreme political polarization, that turns into more antisocial tendencies.”
“Every artifacted video and pixelated photo led him deeper into a realm of acknowledgement, desire, and mystery. The allure of the blue light, the ecstasy of the next lurid image– eventually, not even dope could compete. And then there was the biggest dragon of them all, an elusive white whale with a serpentine shadow that left a trail of rumors and dead ends in its wake. He searched for clues everywhere, finding in each lifeless, years-old forum thread and bastardized, half-legible testimonial a breadcrumb. He asked questions. He sent messages. His pursuit never slackened– his dedication never faltered– and eventually, he now longer went outside at all, no longer prowled the streets, no longer peddled product or collected cash. One night, in a frustrated fury, he toppled furniture and shattered glass. He broke windows and cratered walls. But no matter the damage he caused, he found no relief. He collapsed in the center of the carnage, weeping, begging for his mother, his father, Sarah, Caesar, any one. And then the computer chimed.”
“Maybe you started in a place where you were relatively on the edge, but you could have been rehabilitated. Now you spend all your time online, you’re deeper and deeper, submerging yourself in this dark space that isn’t quite real life… it’s not going to bring you true happiness. It’s a facade.
You’re being tricked. Your biology is being hijacked by whatever promise or illusory happiness the internet provides in the moment. It’s just another form of addiction– pornography, gambling, drugs. All of these different things are salves that are created to, on the surface, help the alienated, the downtrodden of our society– which has almost by design put them into that state, but which hasn’t then given them the tools necessary to really nourish themselves in a genuinely healthy, psychologically stable way.”
What makes ®θθM ºƒ ⊂⌊¤†Η more than just some anti-internet treatise, though (despite Grund’s own self-admitted aversion to technology) is that it is interested in what the internet exposes, rather than fixating on the fact that it happens to be the internet exposing it.
The character of Caesar was abused by his grandmother, as well as so many others, for his homosexuality, and that had nothing to do with the internet– and yet the rot and misery inside of him manages to find its way, somehow, into the “®θθM ºƒ ⊂⌊¤†Η”.
“…maybe that was just the old fear talking. The feeling he got every time he walked into that fucking office, every time he looked into those pitch-black eyes. He’d get so scared, so choked up. He’d lay awake in bed, sometimes with the bottle, shivering like he did when he was a kid, laying in the backseat of Roger’s truck, hoping the monster was too tired to open the door, too tired to turn those ice-blue eyes upon him.”
Sarah’s mother was horrendously abused by her father, all throughout her childhood, and no one (for a while) did a damn thing about it, and that had nothing to do with the internet– but there it is, in the “®θθM ºƒ ⊂⌊¤†Η”, regardless.
“…the cancer had never really gone away. After eating their mother, it had waited patiently. Now, the cells were growing again, reasserting themselves, spreading their grotesque mass wherever they could.”
Sebastian’s life has been defined in many ways by his own explosive violence, his fear of himself, his confusion around himself, and it was the internet that led him to the book, to the “®θθM ºƒ ⊂⌊¤†Η” and what awaited him within… but he knows full well that what he finds in that room is older than any of the chat forums which exposed him to it… older than any of the people on those forums.
Older than anything– it’s a truer thing about the world than just something someone made up… and yet, we are the source of it, the rot, the bile, the rust.
“He fell over, cried out, saw red, blood, guts, tissue, flesh, fat, fire, bone, metal, rust, concrete, cement, brick, steel, corrosion, acid, dying, barren land rotting away like bleached bones picked clean by vultures, rotting underneath a white, burning sun, a sun that was too big, too hot, too close. Everything simmering, melting, cooking, boiling. People. Animals. Mountains. Oceans. Everything drying out. Not a cold, frozen planet, but one that was on fire, literally burning, flying through the cosmos, annihilating everything in its path.”
“Maybe at first it was just words, what people whispered to one another in the dark. And then they wrote the words down. Maybe they painted pictures. Maybe if you go to some of those really old cave paintings, you’ll see it…
You see it, and it stays with you, and you take it out of the cave, and you take it back to the rest of the world. Sooner or later, you open your mouth, and it comes out. No one keeps secrets. Especially not anymore. Now everyone knows where you are all the time. They know what you’re eating, what you’re drinking, what you’re watching…”
The internet is the vehicle of exposure, but it is not the monster itself.
The “®θθM ºƒ ⊂⌊¤†Η” travels from host to host in unbound paper sheets, or on compact disks, or simply through word of mouth– or indeed through smell, its rotting stench coloring the world of every character who even just brushes up against the edges of it.
And yet…
When I finished ®θθM ºƒ ⊂⌊¤†Η and put it away, even though I didn’t have the spirit in me to read anything else, or even to start writing this review for a good few weeks afterwards, I wasn’t feeling broken or defeated. I was feeling something else entirely.
“The graves, especially before dawn, smelled of sweet dew and rich soil. But this new smell, so intensely, undeniably dead, seemed incapable of any life at all. Even the scavengers avoided it. No buzzards picked at that blackened meat. No wolves approached that profane carcass. Yet there was an appeal, like a call from deep inside. The body recognized something in that smell. An end. A release.
Everyone knows it. They’ve known it since the cave.”
A paradox.
“Liberated and weightless… at peace. Quiet. Removed from it all.”
®θθM ºƒ ⊂⌊¤†Η is a paradox. It is a debut novel. It reads like a crowning masterpiece. It is self-published. It is crafted and honed and edited to a standard that a lot of what you’ll see in brick-and-mortar bookstores doesn’t even approach. It’s $4.99 on Kindle. I’d pay $19.99 for it, easy. There’s practically nothing on the cover. There’s too much inside it for any single review to make complete sense. RH Grund is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. RH Grund has written one of the most deeply terrifying books I have ever read.
RH Grund:
“I’ve always liked going into dark places. I think that’s where the most authentic and truthful visions of what it means to be human are found. We too often marginalize that and we push it away, but we have to confront it.”
®θθM ºƒ ⊂⌊¤†Η exposes the shard of a monster that exists inside each and every one of us. ®θθM ºƒ ⊂⌊¤†Η is a way of keeping those monsters from breaking free.
®θθM ºƒ ⊂⌊¤†Η
is a book that knows when you read it
®θθM ºƒ ⊂⌊¤†Η
is a video that knows when you watch it
®θθM ºƒ ⊂⌊¤†Η
is a thought that kills the thinker
®θθM ºƒ ⊂⌊¤†Η
is the food that tastes you back
®θθM ºƒ ⊂⌊¤†Η
is the sound that hears you
®θθM ºƒ ⊂⌊¤†Η
is where He is waiting for you
Room of Cloth is five stars out of five.
Write back to me with your thoughts at [email protected].