Shriek: An Afterword

I had the privilege of reading the book {and helping to edit it, in your incendiary way} in manuscript form on one of my trips to Morrow. By then, my own education in Stockton and Ambergris had reached its somewhat disappointing end, and I was torn between pursuing a career in art or diving into art history. I had done much advanced research and encountered much in the way of genius, but I remember even then being astounded by the brilliant audacity of my brother’s conclusions. At the same time, I was concerned that the book might be too good for its intended audience. Perhaps my brother was destined for obscurity. I admit to a sting of satisfaction in the thought, for nothing is more savage than sibling rivalry.

In any event, Duncan found a publisher in Morrow after only three months: Frankwrithe & Lewden, specialists in reference books, odd fictions, and histories. Frankwrithe & Lewden was an ancient publisher, rumored to have been established under the moniker “Writhelewd” during the last century of the Saphant Empire. Then, as the Empire collapsed into fragments not long after “Cinsorium” became “Ambergris,” they transplanted their operations to Morrow, their name mangled and transformed during the long trek upriver in flat-bottomed boats. Who better to publish Duncan’s esoteric work?

Frankwrithe & Lewden published fifteen thousand copies of On the Refraction of Light in a Prison. By barge, cart, and motored vehicle, the book infiltrated the southern half of the continent. Bookstores large and small stocked it. Traveling book dealers purchased copies for resale. Review copies were sent out with colorful advance blurbs from the dean of the Institute and the common man on the street {a badly-conceived F&L publicity stunt, soliciting random opinions from laypeople that resulted in blurbs like, “‘Not as good as a bottle of mead, but me and the missus quite enjoyed the bit about monk sex.’—John Tennant, plumber”}.

At first, nothing happened. A lull, a doldrums of no response, “as if,” Duncan told me later, “I had never written a book, never spent four years on the subject. In fact, it felt as if I, personally, had never existed at all.” Then, slowly, the book began to sell. It did not sell well, but it sold well enough: a steady drip from a faucet.

The critical response, although limited, did give Duncan hope, for it was, when and where it appeared, enthusiastic: “After an initial grounding in cold, hard fact, Shriek’s volume lofts itself into that rarefied air of unique scholarly discourse that distinguishes a good book from a bad book” {Edgar Rybern, Arts & History Review}. Or, this delicious morsel: “I never knew monks had such a difficult life. The overall sentiment expressed by this astonishing book is that monks, whether imprisoned or not, lead lives of quiet contemplation broken by transcendental bursts of epiphany” {the aforementioned James Lacond, Truff love him, with a rare appearance in the respectable Ambergris Today}.

The steady drip became stronger as the coffers of the various public and private libraries in the South, synchronized to the opinions of men and women remote from them {who might well have been penning their reviews from a lunatic asylum or between assignations at a brothel}, released a trickle of coins to reward words like “rarefied air,” “good,” and “astonishing.”

However, even the critics could not turn the trickle into a torrent. This task fell to the reigning head of the Truffidian religion, the Ambergris Antechamber himself, the truculent {and yet sublime} Henry Bonmot. How dear old Bonmot happened to peruse a copy of On the Refraction of Light in a Prison has never been determined to my satisfaction {but it makes me laugh to think of how he became introduced to us}. The rumor that Bonmot sought out blasphemous texts to create publicity for Truffidianism {because the rate of conversions had slowed} came from the schismatic Manziists, it was later proved. That Duncan sent Bonmot a copy to foment controversy demonstrates a lack of understanding about my brother’s character so profound I prefer not to comment on it.

The one remaining theory appears the most probable: Frankwrithe & Lewden conspired to place a copy on the priest’s nightstand, having first thoughtfully dog-eared those pages most likely to rescue him from his impending slumber. Ridiculous? Perhaps, but we must remember how sinister F&L has become in recent years. {Once upon a time, in a still-distant courtyard, I did ask Bonmot about it, but he couldn’t recall the particulars.}

Regardless, Bonmot read Duncan’s book—I imagine him sitting bolt upright in bed, ear hairs singed to a crisp by the words on the page—and immediately proclaimed it “to contain uncanny and certain blaspheme.” He banned it in such vehement language that his superiors later censured him for it, in part because “there now exists no greater invective to be used against such literature or arts as may sore deserve it.” {It was my good fortune that he turned to my explication of Chapter One of The Refraction of Light in a Prison, “The Mystical Passions,” which in its protestations of purity manages to list every depraved sexual act concocted by human beings over the past five thousand years. It was my theory, and Dad’s, that this was the monks’ method of having it both ways. It didn’t help that I included Dad’s mischievous footnote about the curious similarity between the form of certain Truff rituals and the acts depicted in the chapter.}

Luckily for Duncan, the darling {and daring!} Antechamber’s excellent imitation of a froth-mouthed dog during his proclamation so embarrassed the more practical administrative branch of the Truffidian Church—“them what pay the bills,” as an artist friend of mine once put it—that they neglected to impose a sentence or a penalty. Neither did the Truffidian Church exhort its members to “stone, pummel, or otherwise physically assault” Duncan, as occurred some years later to our soon-to-be editor Sirin, who had decided to champion a book on the “cleansing merits of interreligious romantic love.” {Sirin, alerted by a sympathetic typesetter, managed to change both the decree and the flyers created by it, causing the designated Truffidian Voice, the Antechamber standing by his side, to read a decree in front of the famous porcelain representation of the God Truff and all others in the Truffidian Cathedral that called for the Antechamber’s stoning, pummeling, and much worse. I teased Bonmot about this event many times.}

The ban led to the predictable upswing in sales, lofting the book into the “rarefied air” that distinguishes an almost-bestseller from a mediocre seller. {F&L took advantage of the ban to an uncanny degree, I must say, but it is not true that they had ten thousand copies of a new edition printed two nights before the announcement with “Banned by the Antechamber!” blaring across the cover in seventy-two-point bold Nicean Monk Face.}