Beautiful Woman Without Mercy; And, the King of Scarecrows: Two Novels

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The two short novels in this volume, like fables in tone, are books of the dead recounting a journey from death to rebirth, a Jungian journey through a subconscious world peopled by archetypes. Beautiful Woman extends the Keats poem but keeps its mystery. A road atlas is supplied for the freak show in Scarecrow, but the protagonist never has his feet on the ground.
There is a special humor in Steven Culbert's fictional world, as there was in Kafka's, born of relentless human striving. However, Kenji Mott and the Scarecrow inhabit a more volatile, poetic dimension, and a less nightmarish one, because the right continuation is not eternally frustrated but magically found by subconscious mediation and a correct understanding of how the eternal dwells in us. The dreamlike unfolding of these stories is not a dark journey, but a lighthearted one, because an explosive sense of possibility, a joyous hope, has replaced the ache of expectation with which so many make their way. Here scenarios of suicide and phantasmal habitation are pleasant reading.
In Kenji Mott and the Scarecrow we recognize humble observers, people who have always been at peace with Fate no matter how hard they must struggle to stay alive. They are on the way to being old and wise, people for whom life is ever bountiful, and places aren't the same when the sun comes up ; people already wise enough to share their wealth of experience. In these pages, they have--prodigally.