Horrorstor by Grady Hendrix

Char and I cross over from our normally audio-only Desire of Horror Podcast to produce this Youtube video. 

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2509184/episodes/19031864 

https://youtu.be/XR8TvC5gfso

We discuss the book Horrorstor by Grady Hendrix. The book provides a somewhat obvious but nonetheless useful capitalist critique around the concepts of the Professional Managerial Class or corporate speak; Consumer Culture, especially influencer advertisement techniques; and the toxic positivity of constant "self-maximization." An Ikea-like furniture store is built on the past site of a particularly ignominious prison, and the spirit of its warden and his prisoners emerge from within the vast, deliberately disorientating halls of the "Orsk" furniture store to haunt its circulating corridors, which are already haunted by the gaze of capital and consumption. The former prison was one of Jeremy Bentham's infamous "Panopticons." A Panopticon was a prison designed to require minimal guards because the prisoners always had the sense that they were being watched by the guards who were placed in a watch tower in the middle of the prison complex, so that they were able to see the maximal number of cells from their vantage point. The Panopticon serves as a fruitful metaphor throughout the novel as the horror of the ineluctable, internalized gaze of the Lacanian "Big Other," which for horror fans is something like the incubus always speaking from inside of the possessed's head.

Intention without intention

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:18

Hey Shar, how's it going?

SPEAKER_02 0:19

Good morning. How are you?

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Very good. Welcome to this very special episode of The Desire of Horror. But this one we are doing something a little different. We got a visual aspect to it as well. That's right. A little crossover with uh Kitchen Table Conversations, another podcast that I work on. And uh, you know, maybe someday uh Desire of Horror will be a YouTube plus uh plus a uh podcast thing, but for today we're just gonna kind of you know check it out and see how we like it.

SPEAKER_02 0:52

Maybe one day, we'll see.

SPEAKER_00 0:53

Yeah. Yeah. One day we'll see. And uh anyway, we uh have a really cool thing to do that's a little bit of a twist too. We're not doing a movie this time, we're doing a uh we're doing a book.

SPEAKER_02 1:05

We're doing a book. Yep Horror Star by Grady Hendricks, that we're gonna talk about today.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

Yeah. So um let's start with general impressions as we always do. I'll let you go ahead first.

SPEAKER_02 1:19

Um, I really enjoyed this book. I had heard about Gady Grady Hendrix for years, probably like for the last like three or four years, and just really hadn't got a chance to really review or read his stuff. Um so wanted to start with this one.

SPEAKER_03 1:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:36

Particularly because it is about a haunted IKEA-like store, right? Oris.

SPEAKER_00 1:43

I think they already are horror stores.

SPEAKER_02 1:47

You think like IKEA stores are already horror stores? Okay, well, that's fair.

SPEAKER_00 1:51

We're gonna get into that.

SPEAKER_02 1:52

Yeah, I love it, but anyway, so I am I love IKEA.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

I know it's well they just slightly changed the name. They do mention IKEA in here, but um as a competitor, as a competitor, orsk or whatever it's called, is like this cheap uh kind of like IKEA knockoff, as if IKEA wasn't cheap knockoff crap, anyways. Right, yeah, anyway, and so there's like a lot of funny, like I don't know, Nordic, Swedish or whatever writing.

SPEAKER_02 2:20

Yeah, yeah, just like IKEA, yeah. So yeah, that's what dro drew me to this um book. And uh it was great, it was okay, it wasn't the best, but you know, we're gonna talk about it.

SPEAKER_00 2:32

We're gonna talk about it.

SPEAKER_02 2:33

Um but it was good, it was enjoyable. What are your initial thoughts on the book?

SPEAKER_00 2:38

Yeah, I mean, I actually there were a lot of ideas uh in it, and I don't know if it is a complete um capitalist critique um like I'm used to, but um it is nonetheless. Uh, you know, somebody would say something like the movie Parasite is capitalist critique, for example.

SPEAKER_02 2:57

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 2:57

Um, to talk about things that are somewhat recent. There's obviously classic ones, but this one, um, you know, uh pretty relentless, and I always like that. Um, and you know, if it reaches an audience and allows people to kind of think about um the effects of consumer culture, of professional managerial class kind of aspirational talk, of like uh yeah, just you know, selling your soul to the uh company store uh kind of stuff, uh then yeah, then it then it then it's cool with me, you know. So um not scary, I don't think, but like no. You get you you said there's a couple scary things.

SPEAKER_02 3:38

There's like one kind of like, oh my gosh, this is getting a little bit scary part, but then it quickly goes away.

SPEAKER_00 3:47

Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 3:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:48

So, anyways, well, let's get into it. I mean, we start off um kind of in media res as we often do in horror movies. Yeah, our main character, Amy, is kind of like uh, I don't know, we're she's focused on her thoughts are focused in on from a third person, but not an omniscient narrator.

SPEAKER_03 4:07

Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 4:08

And so um she is, I don't know, her personality is like um kind of rough. Uh she's pretty unhappy.

SPEAKER_03 4:16

Very good.

SPEAKER_00 4:16

She's in her kind of like early 20s. Yeah. Like what was it, 23, 24, 20? I think so.

SPEAKER_02 4:22

Yeah, early 20s.

SPEAKER_00 4:23

And um, you know, she comes from a town in northern Ohio that doesn't have a whole do you remember I don't remember the time.

SPEAKER_02 4:30

Uh Cuyahoga County.

SPEAKER_00 4:32

Cuyahoga County. At Cuyahoga County. I do know how to say it. I don't I don't know why.

SPEAKER_02 4:37

It's a mouthful, Cuyahoga County.

SPEAKER_00 4:39

Yeah, it's yeah, I don't know. I don't normally have trouble with it, but I didn't. So anyway, um, the um, you know, I guess the nearest biggest city would be something like Cleveland or maybe Akron or something like that.

SPEAKER_03 4:50

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 4:51

Up there. Um, but anyway, I mean, so right off the bat you get a kind of interesting possible critique going about how these big box stores, I think they're called, like affect smaller communities, and like you have a sort of a mixed um, I don't know, effect, which is like uh the positive part of it and um the negative part of it right up front. So obviously Amy isn't buying a lot of the Orsk bullshit lines and you know the whole Orsk lifestyle kind of a thing, corporate talk, power of positivity, toxic posity, whatever kind of stuff. She at least poses as somebody who kind of sees through a lot of that. So there's that that negativity bit. Um, but then in a lot of these uh small towns, as we know, with like Walmart for one thing, uh, but maybe even something like ProBass, that huge ass.

SPEAKER_02 5:50

Oh, like the fishing store, like the sporting good fishing store.

SPEAKER_00 5:54

Yeah, right. That get they get put into like kind of smaller, struggling, rust belt, you know, communities, and then you know, the pitch that's given to the communities that's gonna provide all these jobs and stuff.

SPEAKER_03 6:05

Right.

SPEAKER_00 6:06

And at least initially they kind of sunk all the ma and pa operations right off the bat. Right. But um, and then the jobs weren't really high paying it, but it wasn't like the ma and pa's able to offer their workers a whole lot either, right? Um, in terms of health care and that kind of stuff. So uh the other big industry, and that's gonna have a huge crossover here in a lot of these smaller towns, is prisons. So prisons often uh will pitch, like, especially now that we have so many private prisons, they will pitch this idea that hey, we got all these jobs. Of course, they're absolutely miserable jobs as prison guards and those kind of things, underpaid, dangerous work, right, uh, that kind of stuff. And so um, you get this mixed message right off the bat out of Amy's mouth. So she's got that kind of like critique, uh, but at the same time, it's the only way that she can see, at any rate, to get out of the trailer park that she lives in with her mom and uh her mom's boyfriend or something like that. So it also has that kind of opportunity as well.

SPEAKER_02 7:09

Yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely. And I think I not that I could I'm not anywhere near a small town, but I could see where there is that flip side, right? I I mean what would you what would you think would be the negative? Just because I I say positive, right?

SPEAKER_00 7:29

All the things I just named. I started with the negative. Sorry. So uh kind of I mean the thing is is like they get pretty well add-on. They get the these these things these uh stores get really uh good tax breaks, so they're often not paying a lot of taxes in the local economy. Uh that's a part of like attracting them to the smaller community.

SPEAKER_03 7:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 7:54

Um, and so they promise a lot of jobs and a lot of opportunities, but as we see in this um, you know, book.

SPEAKER_02 8:02

You mean opportunities as far as like moving up?

SPEAKER_00 8:05

Well, they promise that, but you know, yeah, that's not a that doesn't seem to be a real big thing for the folks here. Like they're not really moving up. I'm certainly another character that we're gonna be introduced to, uh Basil, he um also kind of a similar story. He's a you know uh a a mana a manager there, yeah, and he's got kind of dreams of of moving up, and this is the sort of thing they they overpromise and then under you know perform or or come through for the community sometimes.

SPEAKER_03 8:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:40

So that's that's what the critique kind of generally is. So they're not paying into the tax base, and the jobs that they're offering might not be the best sometimes. Um, and so you kind of wonder what they're adding to the local economy, but in this in the in the case of of Basil, you have another person, and so he's um African American from East Cleveland, they say. So they give him a kind of like story of like getting out of the you know poverty kind of a situation uh story, not too dissimilar from Amy, really.

SPEAKER_03 9:13

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 9:14

Um and so anyway, so he takes it all very seriously, though. So his attitude is like um, you know, he he's into all like the tests that they give at the store, and he's into following all the rules and promoting everybody's good attitudes. Uh, we I think we said before, he basically is that guy from the from that show we watched where Severance. Severance, thank you.

SPEAKER_03 9:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:39

Um I this came before he's Milchek. He came before Severance. Yeah, they gave Milchek almost the same story, if I recall correctly, coming out of a kind of difficult environment, promised you know, upward mobility in the whatever company is in Severance. I can't remember the name of it.

SPEAKER_02 9:54

I can't remember the name of it either.

SPEAKER_00 9:56

But um anyway, so and and you know, it's just but he's kind of stuck and he's kind of getting screwed over, uh, and you know, but like can't really see it. Um, obviously, for those who have followed Severance, there is a sort of turning point for Milchek.

SPEAKER_03 10:11

Right.

SPEAKER_00 10:11

Uh, and there's a little bit of a one for here for Basil, but he he really um sees this store as the way out, and that's the sort of ambiguity of the situation where like, you know, there are a lot of negatives, um, but um, you know, somebody a very few people really in the end have this kind of chance to get out of negative situations that they were in, whereas if the store wasn't there, supposedly, you know, there there wouldn't be any opportunity or whatever. So yeah. I don't know. Yeah. But um, so just going along with the summary, so you got Ruth Ann or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 10:52

Ruth Ann is an interesting character. Uh she's an older lady, and she doesn't have family, not any friends. She says that the the employees that she works with are all of her friends, and she lives at home with her dog, and that's pretty much it, right?

SPEAKER_00 11:08

Yeah, so this is her only deal.

SPEAKER_02 11:10

Yeah, this is the only option she has, she feels like. She feels like, right?

SPEAKER_00 11:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:15

And she got a good kitchen out of it at one point. She got a brand new kitchen.

SPEAKER_02 11:20

She got a brand new kitchen out of it, yeah. I I I like Ruth Ann. Um, I wasn't sure, like when the character was first mentioned in the story, I I wasn't really sure like how it was gonna pan out. And I she seemed like she might be like not a likable character, but I feel like she really she really is. I I think. Well, yeah, I mean, she reminds me of people that I work with. Um, she reminds me a little bit of myself. Not not not to the extent of like I have no like family or friends or anything, but more to the extent of someone who is an older person in the workforce and just kind of, you know, I've got you know 20 more years to work and I'm kind of just you know gonna lay low and just do my time until it's time for me to retire, you know. So I could definitely relate when you know she was speaking to Amy about that.

SPEAKER_00 12:16

What about the always just very prim, proper, polite kind of thing?

SPEAKER_02 12:20

I am not that.

SPEAKER_00 12:21

Oh, I didn't know that. All right, so um, how does this thing get going, Shar? What's where where's the act when does the action begin?

SPEAKER_02 12:30

So we meet up with Amy at the beginning of the story, we learn her kind of backstory or whatever, and there seems to have been like weird kind of subtle phenomena happening in the store. Um, I guess a couch gets soiled, um things become missing or like bad smells in general. Bad smells and poop smells in particular. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So uh also there's um this really thing that really happens that they talk about throughout the story where people who work there are getting weird text messages that say help. And that alone is just kind of creepy, right?

SPEAKER_03 13:06

Yeah, it's creepy.

SPEAKER_02 13:07

Um, but everybody just kind of ignores it, blows it off. Um, and then um we Basil, I call him Basil. Is his name Basil or Basil?

SPEAKER_00 13:18

I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 13:18

Uh it doesn't matter. Anyways, Basil decides that he wants to put an end to this. Yeah. Just shenanigans that are happening in the store. He thinks it's somebody breaking into the store in the middle of the night.

SPEAKER_00 13:29

And pooping on couches.

SPEAKER_02 13:30

And pooping on couches. And so he's gonna set up a sting operation.

SPEAKER_00 13:36

And he needs-Cause corporate's coming like the next day. Yeah, he's gotta figure out what's going on before they get there. Right. He can't look bad in front of corporate because he's trying very hard to move up in the orsk uh hierarchy.

SPEAKER_02 13:49

Yeah. So he wants to set up a sting operation. He tries to recruit other people, but they like have uh things, other things to do. So he ends up recruiting Ruth Ann and Amy, which is interesting because we also learn that Amy and Basil kind of have some uh rocky things going on in their work relationship where she feels like he's out to get her and trying to get her fired and and whatnot. Um, but he chooses her as one of the people that to do the sting operation with.

SPEAKER_00 14:24

Perhaps showing a little depth of character.

unknown 14:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:27

But also, as all things uh are, it was a little ambivalent just in the sense that it's kind of a crazy job. Because if there is somebody breaking in at night, you know, they're not the police.

SPEAKER_03 14:38

Right.

SPEAKER_00 14:38

And like I would not do it. You got two uh, I don't know, women with you to like confront whatever the heck's going on. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:46

And the only reason why Amy decides to do it is because we also find out she's late on rent. So she needs the extra cash. And she does not want to move back into that trailer, not want to be back in the trailer park with her mom and her mom's boyfriend. Um, so she basil offers cash like on the spot. If you if you stay the night, if you stay overnight at Orisk, help me figure out what's going on, right? I will give you cash the next day, and it just so happens to be enough to cover what she's missing in rent, I guess. So that's her motivation for staying. I would not stay, but I don't know. Yeah. What do you what would you do, Marty? Would you stay?

SPEAKER_00 15:24

I would say this is a matter for the police. It's like clear somebody's been breaking in, like, let's just deal with this.

SPEAKER_02 15:30

But he doesn't want corp corporate to know, right?

SPEAKER_00 15:33

Yeah. Corporate's gonna know if we call the police, because then there's who cares if they know, like that's not on him. Like it's not his fault.

SPEAKER_02 15:40

He's taking it very he's taking he's once again one of these people, and I know these types of people also they're doing too much. Uh-huh. They do too much, they go way and be uh uh above and beyond what their job scope is in hopes to like you know shoot up that corporate ladder.

SPEAKER_00 15:57

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 15:58

So I although I don't understand the motivation.

SPEAKER_00 16:01

The game plan just is not good. No, it's not it's not, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:05

So they stay overnight.

SPEAKER_00 16:08

Yeah, Scooby-Doo style. Yeah, they all discuss like splitting up and dumb stuff. Like, I don't know why the hell you would do that, but like the two women stay together and Basil goes off or Basil, whatever goes off in his own deal. It's just sort of like okay, these they're not good decisions are not being made right now.

SPEAKER_02 16:26

No, they're not.

SPEAKER_00 16:27

Um weird things continue continue, strange writing on the wall in the bathroom. Yes, stinky smells, yes, um, and then they discover two people making out.

SPEAKER_02 16:40

Yeah, they discover two other employees that were mentioned earlier in the book, uh, briefly, uh, Trinity and Matt. And these two are apparently, I guess, somewhat hooking up. I guess there was some making out going.

SPEAKER_00 16:55

Yeah, but they're but they were really there for no, I'm sorry, they were there for making out for sure.

SPEAKER_02 17:00

They were there for making out, but they were not.

SPEAKER_00 17:03

Right. Because like Matt is not doesn't really believe in ghosts, but like Trinity does, and it seems like Matt feels like it's a good way to make out if you tell Trinity that you'll help her.

SPEAKER_02 17:13

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 17:14

Like with her ghost stuff.

SPEAKER_02 17:15

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:16

All right.

SPEAKER_02 17:16

So they wanna get they wanna get into ghost hunting. Uh they feel like the store is haunted, uh, versus Basil who feels like not Matt, but thinks there's a ghost at Orisk versus Basil, who thinks it's just an intruder, right?

SPEAKER_00 17:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:33

So they've gotten this uh ghost hunting equipment um and they are going to try to figure out classic ghost hunting. They're gonna try to figure they're gonna try to find this ghost and try to talk to it is uh a section in this book that they say Trinity's gonna try to talk to the ghost.

SPEAKER_00 17:53

Well she has she goes she goes straight into the seance.

SPEAKER_02 17:55

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:56

Oh, but uh before the seance, they discover that the bad smell is a homeless person.

SPEAKER_02 18:02

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 18:03

Pooping on the couch because he doesn't have very good control of his bowels, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_02 18:07

Yeah, so he can't make it to the bathroom.

SPEAKER_00 18:11

He I don't know, I guess he was asleep on the couch and he just like happened or something.

SPEAKER_02 18:15

It's pretty gross.

SPEAKER_00 18:17

Yeah, well, I mean, and then what happens next is it's gross at the seance as well.

SPEAKER_02 18:22

Yeah, so they decided to have a seance.

SPEAKER_00 18:24

With the homeless person there still.

SPEAKER_02 18:25

Yeah, with the homeless person there. Was the homeless person part of the seance, right? Yeah, or he's the Well no, I know, but like they're all gathered around or whatever, and they decide to have a seance and as you do. As you do, and um Trinity is the first one to experience something where she has ectoplasm coming out. Massive mouth ectoplasm.

SPEAKER_00 18:51

Masses of mouths, snotty ectoplasm. Right, which is which is she was the seancer.

SPEAKER_02 18:57

She's the one trying to do the she's the one who is calling onto the spirits. And uh, I don't know how much you know about seances. Have you ever been in a seance?

SPEAKER_00 19:06

No.

SPEAKER_02 19:07

Me either.

SPEAKER_00 19:08

One thing I know is history of religions type deal. Like the uh yeah, like around the turn of the century, 19th century, it was like really possible po popular in like theosophical society, or I I'm saying that name wrong.

SPEAKER_02 19:21

Who were the sisters? The Knox sister?

SPEAKER_00 19:24

And I can't remember their name.

SPEAKER_02 19:25

There was a group of sisters who was very famous.

SPEAKER_00 19:28

Uh Madame Blavsky was another one.

SPEAKER_02 19:32

Yeah, they did seances um in kind of like high society. Right.

SPEAKER_00 19:37

And uh it was really popular for a while.

SPEAKER_02 19:40

Oh, yeah, it was really popular.

SPEAKER_00 19:41

Like a lot of the intellectuals of the time were into it too.

SPEAKER_02 19:44

Like, yeah, so they were doing um they were so in a seance, it is common for I don't know what the actual term is, but basically ectoplasm is a very important thing.

SPEAKER_00 19:58

No, that is the actual term.

SPEAKER_02 19:59

No, I mean, but like what is it? Are you in a trance? Like, is that what it is? Or are you possessed? Like, I don't know, I don't know what the term is. But basically, ectoplasm will start to uh come out of erupt the person's ears and nose and mouth and things like that, and uh it'll actually like like come into the air, like it'll like form kind of like these shapes or whatnot. Okay, I think I'm thinking of a movie where this happens and it was like forming something.

SPEAKER_00 20:28

I mean, I've seen pictures like of like whatever they were calling actual ectoplasm, just like a pile of shit.

SPEAKER_02 20:34

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 20:35

Like white-looking crap.

SPEAKER_02 20:36

I was thinking of a movie where it was like coming out of somebody's mouth and the movie, the movies really went with it, yeah. Anyways, this happens to Trinity, right? Yeah, and while it's happening to Trinity, the ectoplasm is coming out of her face and going into the homeless man, Carl's face.

SPEAKER_00 20:53

He's Carl, that's right for him.

SPEAKER_02 20:54

His name is Carl. And then because of that, Carl then becomes possessed.

SPEAKER_00 20:59

Yep. And uh by the warden by the warden of a prison that had been in the exact spot. Uh so it's not ancient Indian burial ground this time. It's uh it was a swamp and then a prison.

SPEAKER_02 21:15

Ancient prison.

SPEAKER_00 21:16

Yeah, and I mean like all of a sudden the parallels be, you know, line up. Small town wanting to like improve its economy, putting in a prisons there now. Right. And then the AKEA gets put right over on top of the prison, or the orsk gets put on top of the prison. Right. And so now we're, I think, pretty clearly supposed to see uh the connection there, not just in trying to help the economy, but this uh this uh culture of discipline. Because the very first speech that Carl, uh, when he's possessed by the warden of this former prison that was built on the site, um, you know, gives his first speech. It's all about you guys are all in discipline, I'm gonna like you know, get you to be better. Busy worker bees. There's a lot of like bees analogies. So we're talking about like hive mind type stuff. Right. And of course, the hive mind of the corporate speak comes into, or the professional managerial class speak comes into like, I don't know, our minds and we start thinking, you know, obviously these might be a little hackneyed and a little overplayed, but like I don't care. I kind of like that. Like, you know, like if if you get people to like start to make these connections, however ham-fisted they may be, wonderful.

SPEAKER_02 22:29

Yeah. So yeah. No, it's great. It's a great, that's like, this is one of my favorite parts of this book, is is is when we get to this part, um, with the seance and and the ectoplasm and Carl being possessed and all of that. The warden speech is really good. Um, and then Carl slits his throat, yeah, which is bonkers. Like, and that's the part where I was saying that was kind of scary because it's just like you're the the the suspense is already being built from the seance and what's happening, and then it's just like whoa, we just completely, you know, turned left there with the slitting of the throat.

SPEAKER_00 23:12

Yeah, pretty left-hand turn.

SPEAKER_02 23:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:15

So I mean, now full on, it's a haunted house, you know. The uh I mean, we're supposed to be drawing those parallels anyways, just especially with the disorientation. They talk about which is an actual IKEA policy, but it's not just Ikea, it's a number of places. Yeah, it's casinos, yeah, getting getting lost, and like you can't, you don't really know where you are, so that you might, you know, wind up with some impulse buys and and those kinds of things. So, like the disorientated the disorientation of the haunted house, and then we find that this prison wasn't just any old prison, it was a panopticon, a Jeremy Bentham-style Panopticon.

SPEAKER_02 23:55

And so the Do you want to explain what that is?

SPEAKER_00 23:57

Sure, yeah. So, Pan is all Opticon is seeing, so it's like this idea of seeing everything, being able to see everything. And this has uh another kind of like slightly hackneyed history in the history of capitalist critique, uh, especially in the hands of Michel Foucault, where um it's discussed as this center kind of observation tower, and then the prison is like all around the different sides, so that you you need supposedly very few prison guards to keep watch.

SPEAKER_03 24:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:30

Because like the people in the um cells feel like they are being watched at all times.

SPEAKER_02 24:36

Right.

SPEAKER_00 24:37

But you know, kind of this haunted house thing again. This in in philosophy is called the gaze. So the idea that the other is watching, but in uh modern uh culture, uh consumer culture rather, and especially as Michel Foucault theorized it, that gaze is not from a prison guard that's outside of you, that gaze is now internalized, and it's uh an other inside of you kind of watching and judging you, which gives a lot of good context to a lot of the advertisements and consumer speak that are in here because as people walk around the store, they see like themselves in this kitchen, they imagine what it would be like to have that sofa, uh, you know, how it would change them, like lifestyle kind of influencer type. Um you know, it's in you though, you don't even need you know the watchtower. So it's like um now, you know, we got this really clear uh metaphor analogy between um not just the prison but the gaze, the panopticons, you know, sense that it would give you of always at least possibly being watched, and so always having to perform. Yeah, uh and and so then you know that's what you do when you're in a store. You imagine the performance, although this isn't generally conscious, but you you imagine, you know, performing in this thing, and uh, you know, and that's how desire is built and created um through this sense of being watched.

SPEAKER_02 26:10

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:11

And also you would imagine that that's also the sense of being in a haunted house.

SPEAKER_02 26:15

So right.

SPEAKER_00 26:17

And we even have a haunted house here in Ohio based on a prison in the north.

SPEAKER_02 26:22

No, it is a prison, not based on a prison. It is a prison.

SPEAKER_00 26:25

Well, based, uh, it's it was uh I don't know why I said based, but it's like it is, but it's a um it's a haunted house now too. Yeah, but they give tours of it, haunted, haunted, you know, prison tours. But it's actually where Shawshank Regen Redemption was filmed.

SPEAKER_02 26:38

The Mansfield prison.

SPEAKER_00 26:39

Yeah, another um warden who's like over the top, disciplinarian, almost a caricature.

SPEAKER_03 26:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:48

Yeah. Yeah. Like Mark Mark Hamill in um the The Walk by Stephen King. Yeah. The movie.

SPEAKER_02 26:53

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 26:56

But anyway. I'm sorry, yes, let's let's go on. So after the uh after the after the seas, this thing happens, uh, you wanna proceed with what happens after that, or I don't remember what happens after that.

SPEAKER_02 27:10

You're probably gonna have to cut this out.

SPEAKER_00 27:12

Okay. So anyway, that's that's fine. That's fine. Sorry.

unknown 27:17

I don't remember.

SPEAKER_02 27:18

Like I it's spotty for me. Yeah, that's good.

SPEAKER_00 27:20

So all right, so um after um Carl kills himself, and the a prison basically comes to some sort of interdimensional interposition with the store. So it's like kind of flickering back and forth between the store and with the uh prison. And so, anyways, the idea here is that um it's interdimensional, let's say, something like that. And so they're gradually getting sucked into this other dimension, and and and Basil, Basil still doesn't quite believe, you know, what's um going on. He still thinks like, oh, this is just some secret back room and all this other kind of stuff. And then meanwhile, people are being confronted with like you know some of their worst nightmares. Do you want to speak on any of those?

SPEAKER_02 28:07

Or um, well, I know that uh Ruth Ann, she in the in one part of this book, towards the beginning, she tells kind of a story of when she was a child, how she would um have to sleep with socks tied around her eyes so that she wouldn't see the creepy crawlies.

SPEAKER_00 28:28

And uh not described very well, but yeah, just like kind of abstract.

SPEAKER_02 28:33

I guess type of thing. And uh so yeah, this warden creates these creepy crawlies, and so she has to like hide in a very tight, is it a closet or like a yeah?

SPEAKER_00 28:45

Well, it's like a very small, like yeah, it's not even a closet, it's like between the wall closet. That's right.

SPEAKER_02 28:51

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 28:52

So it's so that so that they can't see her. Yeah. I mean, and this is like kind of reminiscent of a sort of Dante uh style. Uh the punishment, you know, fits some kind of fear or behavior that you played out uh and repeated throughout your life, and now that you're in hell, you just continually repeat it uh over and over again. So this thing comes back, return of the repressed, if you will, something like that.

SPEAKER_02 29:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:20

But what about Amy? What's what's her deal? Do you remember?

SPEAKER_02 29:23

Amy gets put in, I don't remember the name of it. It's the chair Tranquility Chair. Tranquility chair, right.

SPEAKER_00 29:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:30

She gets put in that, strapped in by the warden, and uh he makes her feel nothing. She she gets squeezed really, really tight to the point where she can like feel nothing. Yeah, she's just numb to everything, numb to the world, and she enjoys it for a little bit, right?

SPEAKER_00 29:48

Um well, as long as she's in it, she needs to be rescued from it because she's she's totally down.

SPEAKER_03 29:53

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 29:54

I mean, almost like a heroine oblivion sort of metaphor, like just like anesthetize yourself. So again, the uh I don't know if the punishment fits the crime is quite the way to think of it, but like it's related to you know her bad attitude and like her just like kind of like being uh opposed and uh vivid to everything, yeah. And then so like she just gets to sink into this total uh I you could say despair, but um, you know, the the the line between tranquility and despair is pretty thin at this point. So that it's almost like you know, her uh despair gives way to tranquility, this all this darkness that we you know of no feeling and no, you know, right, you know, no uh striving or pain or anything like that. Right. So just total oblivion, basically.

SPEAKER_03 30:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:48

And then he gives some more speeches about, you know, the hive and how he's gonna discipline people. We find out that he uh had when he was running the prison, he actually flooded uh the prisoners when they were in the basement because there's some water running by and they all drowned and died. Um and so it's you know, pretty some pretty serious stuff.

SPEAKER_02 31:10

Um what happens to Trinity?

SPEAKER_00 31:13

Yeah, she um it's it's unclear, but I she runs away or something. So there's they just disappear. Like they don't even know.

SPEAKER_02 31:20

I know Matt, yeah. Matt definitely just like is just gone.

SPEAKER_00 31:23

She did run away though. Like, yeah, Trinity ran away. We don't know what happened to her. I'm not sure that we find out. And then Matt tries to run after her.

SPEAKER_02 31:30

That's right, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:31

Yeah, and and and then, you know, we lose both of them.

SPEAKER_02 31:34

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:35

Um, Basil, I mean, his thing is just like um he um I don't know, he tries to like discipline the uh prisoners himself in a way. They they show up and he's like, Yeah, yeah. He gives them some kind of marching orders or whatever, and they don't listen to him. Uh and so like he kind of like really prisoner ghosts show up. Prisoner ghosts show up or whatever. So he's trying his you know managerial stuff there, but it's like kind of interesting, yeah. It doesn't really work, and so he just kind of uh realizes that he's just gotta get out of there. He's not, he's not, he's not gonna save this one from corporate. Corporate's gonna find out, basically.

SPEAKER_02 32:14

Yeah, yeah. And so yeah And then he rescues Amy from the tranquility chair, which is interesting, like a kind of uh I won't say turn of event. No, we're gonna get up to the turn of events because after Basil rescues Amy from the tr uh tranquility chair, the warden floods the orsk, right?

SPEAKER_00 32:38

Yeah, just like um he did previously.

SPEAKER_02 32:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:41

Like he just wants to like keep them all there. They they're just like they'll never be well. So he's just gotta like keep pushing. Uh I don't know why he doesn't just give up, but he believes in discipline. He believes in discipline.

SPEAKER_02 32:56

He's the he's a ghost warden, so he's got all the time in the world. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:00

So yeah, and so Amy ends up though saving Basil at this point, right? So Basil saves her from the chair, she saves him from the flood. Yeah. Which I thought I like that juxtaposition of them, you know, saving each other or whatnot.

SPEAKER_00 33:15

Um and then Ruth Ann rips her eyeballs out and dies.

SPEAKER_02 33:20

Right and dies.

SPEAKER_00 33:21

Because she says, like, if the creepy corallies, if she can't see the creepy corralis, they can't see her.

SPEAKER_02 33:27

So yeah. R.I.P. Ruth Ann.

SPEAKER_00 33:30

I know, so pretty rough stuff there. I mean, I don't know. And perhaps again over the top, sort of ham-fisted maybe metaphor for things, but like Is it though?

SPEAKER_02 33:40

I mean, this is a haunted house.

unknown 33:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:43

I mean, in Potter Guy, somebody rips off their face. So, like, you know, haunted house shit.

SPEAKER_00 33:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 33:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:51

I don't know why. Yeah, just interesting this one, like who just who get who lives. Because basically, only um Basil and um Amy live. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:01

Yeah, they're the only two that make it out alive. Um, and then, of course, you know, corporate wants to uh sweep it under the rug, hush-hush, hush it up. And they offered it.

SPEAKER_00 34:13

But it just appears to be some kind of flood uh because it was like, you know, based on uh a swamp beforehand. So it's just like it just looks like it's a flood that just came in.

SPEAKER_02 34:25

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:26

All right, yeah. And then um what's uh what's what's next for this store after Orisk?

SPEAKER_02 34:33

Oh, so after Orisk, um the they they try to, I think they try to keep it going for a little bit, but after a while they tear it down. Amy and Basil do not work there anymore. Uh they're offered corporate jobs to kind of hush them up. Amy doesn't take it. Basil, she thinks he takes it, right? Uh he didn't decline it uh last time we speak to Basil, and Amy just kind of gets into a really deep dark depression. She has to move back to the trailer park three years. She has to move back to the trailer park with her mom and her mom's boyfriend, and she's kind of given up all hope. But she gets news that Orsk has now been torn down and a planet baby has been built in the same spot. They are they are babies, an IKEA for babies, basically.

SPEAKER_00 35:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:24

Um but she decides to apply. Um and then when she starts her first day, she gets the job, she sees Basil there. And he also works there.

SPEAKER_00 35:36

And she has a mouthful. Like, I thought you were supposed to be with corporate, you sell out.

SPEAKER_02 35:41

And Basil tells her that he just could not um go through with it. Felt too guilty about what happened. And uh she when she gets that job, she she already has it in her mind and makes a plan that she is going in there with a mission. She is going to find out what happened with Trinity and Matt and and and just try to figure it all out, try to go find them. And little does she know, Basil has that same mission too. So they kind of get into that other dimension again.

SPEAKER_00 36:13

Yeah, the book ends with them kind of uh grappling hooks and whatnot.

SPEAKER_02 36:16

Yeah, coming together and uh coming up with a plan, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 36:20

Yeah, and you were telling me that this is being made into a movie, is that right? Or let's do it.

SPEAKER_02 36:24

It's being made into a movie. I'm I'm excited. Um it reads more like a movie than it does a really great novel, right? Uh-huh. So I could definitely see this being a movie. I could definitely see it even being like an eight-part series on Netflix or something like that. I think that would be awesome.

SPEAKER_03 36:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:43

Um, and it sets it up for a sequel. Like, this book is really, it's just good. I just like it. I I like it. I do like it. I think I've come to that decision that I really do like it.

SPEAKER_00 36:53

Cool.

SPEAKER_02 36:53

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:54

Um I'll just um so there's advertisements throughout, and they're all very, they're parodies of commercials you've seen before. And they progressively get more and more horrific as the book goes on. So I I just I was gonna read uh the final three, I think. I don't know if they're the final ones, but they're very, very funny to me. I mean, again, like totally over-the-top capitalist critique, but nonetheless, it's still somewhat enjoyable. I don't know how to say these faux Swedish words or whatever, but this one is like jodlop or something. A slow and steady step and an attentive, erect posture are firmly encouraged when you wear this crippling iron cap. Give your skull and neck the weight they need to bow into a permanent attitude of submission. Jodlop features a bell that will let everyone know you've arrived.

SPEAKER_02 37:52

And so that's great.

SPEAKER_00 37:54

Obviously, this sort of like submission to corporate culture.

SPEAKER_02 38:00

It's very Saul-like. Looks like something that would be in the Saul movies.

SPEAKER_00 38:04

Mm-hmm. Alright, here is another one. Using the power of centrifug, oh, I forgot the name. Litobod.

SPEAKER_03 38:13

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 38:13

Something like that. Alright, using the power of centrifugal force to cause blackouts and unconsciousness, litobod is a ceaseless rotational machine that harnesses the primal forces of nature and turns them against your body. If you're lucky, you'll simply experience vomit and permanent brain damage.

SPEAKER_03 38:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:34

Litabod. So uh maybe a reference to sort of like virtual reality, kind of like cutting us off from the world, maybe something like that. Um and also controlling us. Um yeah, okay. Uh, and then, you know what, there was one more, but let me see if I can find it.

SPEAKER_02 38:56

There it is. Is that it?

SPEAKER_00 38:57

Um, yeah, maybe this is ingalut. Um, submit to panic, fear, and helplessness of drowning with the hope of death in a distant dream. This elegantly designed ingalut hydrotherapy bath allows the user to suffer this stress again and again until the cure is complete. Yeah, so we see here this like waterboarding or something. Mm-hmm. This idea of panic and fear and helplessness will, you know, push you into some sort of submissive uh position, and then that that is being touted as a kind of cure.

SPEAKER_03 39:34

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:35

So, yeah, some pretty um, I don't know, over-the-top kind of things, but you know, nonetheless, um I don't know, kind of fun at the same time. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 39:47

This book was a hoot. And the the the package that it comes in, it looks like an IKEA catalog. Um, it's set up like an IKEA catalog. Uh it's very creative.

SPEAKER_00 39:59

They're not making fun of IKEA.

SPEAKER_02 40:01

No, they're not making it.

SPEAKER_00 40:01

And any resemblance to Ikea is not their deal. They are there, it's a totally fictitious store called Orsk. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, I don't know if you uh enjoy this kind of uh spoof, this kind of parody of um, I don't know, toxic positivity, professional managerial class, um, kind of like corporate uh speak takeover kind of thing.

SPEAKER_03 40:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:30

Um, you know, I don't know. For me, it's pretty um unambivalent. Uh, but you're saying that you're you're kind of like, you know, you see both the good and the bad kind of a thing.

SPEAKER_02 40:41

Yeah, absolutely. Uh, you know, it's it's not how do I say this? I don't wanna I don't I I I just want to give it its props. It's good. It's not like a Stephen King horror. You know what I'm saying? It's not a Stephen King novel by any means, but it's its own separate thing, and it's as enjoyable for me. Um but yeah, I I don't know. I liked it. I liked it.

SPEAKER_00 41:06

Yeah, I I think that the um capitalist critique was a little bit ambivalent because like you do there were people being helped in some way by this store economically to get out of their environment, and then my feelings of towards the book were also uh somewhat ambivalent. Um I don't know. It's um uh yeah, it's it was just a simplified version, which I think is good of uh yeah, of you know, critiquing this, and maybe people will read this and feel like but I was surprised, for example, even with Parasite, there were a lot of people that just thought it was funny and like didn't see oh wow, really?

SPEAKER_01 41:47

And didn't see that it was saying that movie was not subtle at all. I don't this isn't subtle.

SPEAKER_00 41:53

Okay, yeah, that's yeah, that's uh I think that too. It's not I mean it would be shocking if somebody read this and didn't think that it was uh some kind of uh yeah capitalist critique. So uh ideology critique, whatever. So yeah. Um anyway, yeah, a lot of fun. Thanks for reading the book with me, Shar.

SPEAKER_02 42:12

Yeah, I enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_00 42:13

Yeah, and we'll we'll do some more books uh in the future. We're thinking of at least of uh another book that plays on ambivalence uh and ambiguity, which is Turn of the Screw, Henry James, my favorite, I think the greatest horror novel ever written. So Wow for sure, and it's short, it's a novella. Yeah, so yeah, I mean I I think everything else comes from there in some kind of way.

SPEAKER_03 42:35

So interesting.

SPEAKER_00 42:37

Well, if it's good horror because it involves unreadability, so that's and that's kind of like uh and and it and and it plays a lot with desire, as this one does too. Yeah, uh mimetic desire, especially. So um, you know, we are the desire of the horror of this of horror, so we like to think about the nature of human desire and uh you know what horror can tell us about it, right? So yeah, anyways, all right. Well, um with that we will sign off and uh want to say your closing generally now?

SPEAKER_02 43:10

Yeah, um, have a great week and take care of each other.