Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z. Brite & Deirdre C. Amthor

Author:Poppy Z. Brite & Deirdre C. Amthor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Touchstone

8

Back at the motel, Luke scrolled a piece of paper into his typewriter, stared at it for a while, then centered the carriage and began to type. He worked at a tiny table barely large enough to hold a bottle, a glass, and the Smith-Corona electric; the ice bucket and the accumulating stack of pages had to go on the dresser behind him. He soaked up cheap whiskey as he worked, pouring himself a half-inch every hour or so, occasionally wetting his lips with its amber burn, chasing a vague buzz but never quite getting drunk. The pages came slowly. The constant ache somewhere deep in his core was kept at bay.

This book was the story of his and Tran’s collapse in flames, of course, mutated and tortured until only the raw nerves of it were recognizable. Luke knew these wounds were too fresh to write about, but it wasn’t as if he could return to them in times of tranquility; he had no more hope of tranquility in this life. Too much of the story was told in second person accusatory, more paean than plot, more character assassination than character development. He was pretty sure it sucked, and he doubted he would ever finish it. Still the pages piled up on the dresser. He could not abandon this spiritual autopsy any more than he could shut up Lush Rimbaud.

His radio persona had been conceived in the glory days of early junk use. Lush Rimbaud was a name he gave his heroin-induced self, a brain of utter clarity tethered to a body like an exquisite vessel brimming with pleasure, spiked with fury, a personality composed of liquids that could not mix.

He was twenty-five then, and had just published his first novel, Faith in Poison. The book was a distillation of his adolescence in small-town Georgia, his abortive Baptist upbringing, his escape. For some reason, seeing his own name on the cover had compelled him to invent an alias. Rimbaud was for the mad boy poet who had scrawled scatological letters to Paul Verlaine in Paris cafés. Blood and shit were among his greatest passions. At nineteen he’d tormented Verlaine into shooting him, but escaped with a flesh wound, drank up every franc he ever made, later ran off to Africa, lost a leg, and died of a fever at thirty-seven. The title of Luke’s novel came from Rimbaud’s poem “Drunken Morning.” We have faith in poison. We will give our lives completely, every day …

The book was universally revered or reviled. The praise was lavish and slightly shell-shocked, as if Lucas Ransom had begun by massaging the reader’s brain stem, then delivered a quick sharp blow to the back of the neck. The disparagement was similar, but with an aggrieved tone, as if the novel had deeply and personally offended the revilers. Luke was pleased by both reactions. He had no use for middle ground.

It was 1986 in San Francisco and he was riding high on infamy, maintaining a medium-strength

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