Beatniks vs. Cthulhu. Abyssmal. I have a problem with quitting a book once I've started it, even though I should. This blessedly short novel is a Lovecraftian homage to (rather than a parody of) the "Beat" literature of the 40's and 50's as exemplified by Jack Kerouac. The premise of the book is that Cthulhu has risen and begun the conquest of 1960's America. For some reason the only people immune to the Call are the down-and-out members of society like junkies and Beatniks. Even against Cthulhu...

Confession: Just before I started reading this book I'd inwardly decided that this would be the last non-Lovecraft Cthulhu themed book I would read. Cthulhu has of late become a cute, and cuddly icon of ironic horror, and the original miasma of unknown dread the character was supposed to have has--for me--become totally lost amongst the internet memes, and cartoon depictions. Along comes MOVE UNDER GROUND.MOVE UNDER GROUND has very little, if any, of the kitsch and wink/nod that you'd expect fro...

Have you ever thought to yourself, "In a cosmic battle for the future of the world who would win; Jack Kerouac or Chthulu?" OK, you're right, it never even occurred to me either before I heard about Move Under Ground. Which is why it's just about the most preposterously cool premise I've heard for a book in a long time. So of course I had to read it.Move Under Ground has more going for it than just a good gimmick. Mamatas smoothly overlays the dark, secretive world of H.P. Lovecraft's with the h...

This made a strong first impression, with an uncannily convincing Kerouac simulacrum that makes for a really fresh narrative voice in a kind of well trodden space for weird horror. I spent a lot of the middle disliking but trying to rationalize some of the horror choices--it feels very capital-L Lovecraft rather than the more idiosyncratically and insularly Beat horror I had kind of envisioned, and it leans on a "squares=cultists or monsters, beats as immune/heroes" in a way I found quite trite

Stumbled across this rather randomly, and am just getting started on it, but I have to say I find its entire premise to be fascinating. Basically this book is written from the perspective of Jack Kerouac in the days immediately following the publication of On the Road, holed up in a Big Sur cabin, freaking out over incipient fame and and receiving ominous letters from Neal Cassidy up north in San Francisco. Pretty quickly things take a turn for the Lovecraftean, complete with tentacled shoggoths...

Spooktober read #3!I am ashamed to say that this has been on my shelves for so long that I actually can’t remember buying it. But to be fair, the timing for finally getting around to “Move Under Ground” couldn’t have been more perfect, as I just re-read “The Dharma Bums” (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... the manic-style Mr. Kerouac is so well-known for was still fresh in my mind, and I was excited to see how he would handle Cthulhu.As any Christopher Guest fan knows, you have to love som...

In the years from high school through grad studies, in my spare time, I immersed myself pretty thoroughly in both the extended Lovecraftian library and everything then in print by Kerouac, Burroughs, and company. That was, as they say, long ago and in another country and I haven't been back very often. I couldn't resist reading a novel, well-reviewed here and there, that promised to merge the two disparate orbits of pop literature, even though I generally dislike fiction that uses real people as...

A supernatural stream-of-consciousness journey-battle to keep America free and bountiful for the rich, with only a dubious band of intellectuals standing between Let Them Eat Cake Forever and the savage forces of primitivism.That is, ghost stories for ownership who fancy themselves literates.On the surface you have Jack Kerouac, the King of the Beat Generation, and his fellow writers tackling the rise of the Elder God Cthulhu from its dark slumber to devour and transform the world, starting with...

I may be the wrong person to review this book. I've never read any of the Beat writers who Nick Mamatas lovingly imitates and appropriates in this book, not even Kerouac's On the Road.I have, however, read plenty of Lovecraft, and other authors treading in Lovecraft's mythos. And, umm, I grew up in California. Albeit not in the 60s. So I kinda know what Mamatas is playing with here.Move Under Ground was Mamatas's debut novel, and it's quite a trippy read. It really is about Jack Kerouac, William...

At first, this sounds what in fanfic circles is apparently known as "crack": an idea, a pairing, a crossover so absolutely ludicrous it's too weird and too much fun NOT to read. Like Winnie the Pooh fighting vampires in Sunnydale, or Mohammad on The Cosby Show.But actually, it makes sense, in a somewhat twisted sort of way. The story is narrated by Jack Kerouac in something that... well, it's been a while since I read On The Road (in Swedish), so I really can't say whether Mamatas apes Kerouac o...

Read and enjoyed Move Under Ground by Nick Mamatas last week. It really got me thinking on the old chestnut of writing about historical events and persons--do you write in such a way that someone with zero knowledge of the subject matter going into the novel will be able to follow--at the risk of being overly expository--or do you just plunge in and write for yourself and others who are intimate with the material? The way I write is to (attempt to) juggle the two, including tidbits the aficionad...

After the publication of 'On the Road', Jack Kerouac is hiding out in a cabin in Big Sur on the edge of the pacific when he starts getting letters from his old road buddy Neal Cassady. Something is seriously sick at the heart of America and only the beats and the poets and the bums can see it. Mugwumps, beetlemen, squid handed girls and murderous cultists are on the streets and the only way to avoid them is to move underground. Oh, and somewhere out in the dark waters the dead city of R'lyeh is

"What if H.P. Lovecraft's cosmic demons showed up in a Jack Kerouac novel": this could be a gimmicky lark like the Sherlock-Holmes-versus-Dracula kind of thing various people have done, or it could be the kind of dense historical fantasy that Tim Powers is good at, but Mamatas is on to something different. For one thing, he writes the whole thing as Kerouac, not just mimicking his style but with a real feeling for his character and for the things he cared about. But he's also got a good reason f...

What if R'lyeh rose off the coast of california and jack kerouac, william burroghs and neal cassady had to defeat the great old ones, after crossing the country from San Francisco to New York?Frankly, the idea is better than the book. The book is fun, and Mamatas does a fair job with some of his impersonations, although at the end, he never really captures keroauc. Then again, maybe he does, it has been many years since I last read On The Road... maybe the problem is that Keroauc's gifts don't r...

It's a really spot-on imitation of Jack Kerouac's style and a pretty well-researched portrayal of Keruoac, Neal Cassady, and William Burroughs, as well as an interesting look at the Cthulhu mythos. However, as an actual plot, waaaaay too much gets resolved by random magic and coincidence and deus ex machina--a point that gets explicitly addressed by the narrator (Jack Kerouac) but not actually resolved in a satisfactory way.In the end, it feels a bit too dreamlike and consequence-free for me to

*insert gif of Triple H tapping out here*I don’t know... two of my fave literary things: beats and Cthulhu - but I can’t follow this for the life of me. Shout out to the writer’s awesome rendition of beat style though! Guy kills it.

[3.5 stars]Everyone's somewhat familiar with Jack Kerouac's story: spent a lot of time On the Road with Neal Cassady, flipping off society and leaving a trail of Jazz, sex, abandoned kids, and burnt rubber across the American highway system (and part of Mexico), then doing all of that some more while also practicing Casual White Man Buddhism in the Pacific Northwest. Then of course, fighting against the literal incarnation of Ginsberg's Moloch that is the Dark Dreamer himself, Cthulhu.Our memori...

Mamatas kick-started his career with this rollicking road-trip adventure clashing the Beats with the Cthulhu Mythos. Far from foreign bodies, as he shows, these two entities share dark links, both navigating existential voids and the lure of enlightenment on broadly individualist terms. Among the book's most confident chapters are in the beginning, where Jack is in Big Sur mode but seamlessly interwoven into his ecstatic Western Buddhist stream-of-consciousness are intimated the horrors that awa...

This one is difficult for me to evaluate--it's a book that executes well on its premise but just isn't for me. It imagines a Lovecraftian end-of-the-world scenario as perceived by Jack Kerouac and the other Beat writers; it follows Kerouac and William Burroughs as they traverse America in pursuit of Neal Cassidy, who may be somehow responsible for the whole mess. Wonderful idea, but I've never done well with Beat literature. As a result, this was a real struggle for me to get through. If you're

Abandoned. It’s just not for me.