"Imajica" by Clive Barker

Haven't written for a while. That doesn't mean I wasn't reading, I actually finished 2 books and am currently reading another 3. The times were stressful, new job, new apartment, GMAT, summer, beach, etc. I hope I finish the review of both books I finished today, or otherwise it might be next week , as the weekend should be filled with activities. The first book I finished was 'Imajica' by Clive Barker.

I read 'Imajica' for the first time when I was an undergrad student. I was immensely impressed by Barker's books 'Cabal', 'Weaveworld', and the lovely 'The Thief of Always', although I initially started reading Barker because I was searching the annals of horror literature since Lovecraft, and I wanted to read all of the major modern authors, just as I read all the books I could Lovecraft mentioned in his essay 'The supernatural in the history of literature'. I liked 'The Books of Blood' and 'The Damnation Game' but it was his fantasy novels that really impressed me and put Barker on the shelf of my favorite authors. I can credit primarily Barker, actually, for my primary reading interest during undergrad shifting from horror and 'hard' science fiction to a more fantasy selection, though I have been a fan of Tolkien, Le Guinn, and others since early high school. When I compare what has Barker done with his fantasy novels relative to his horror work, I cannot fail to notice that his fantasy (or as he calls it 'dark fantasy') work is way above in style and creativity, and this fact made me notice that in literature in general, the purely horror works are usually of much 'pulpier' quality than fantasy works.

I remembered, from undergrad, the vast worlds, the many fantastic creatures, the nomenclature, the unknown, the suspense, the seemingly limitless imagination that Barker has invested in this novel. This, if any, should be called his seminal work. Here he presents his worldview, his view of afterlife, God, spirituality, relationships, transcending the customary accepted ones in our modern society, and going well beyond and above them. One thing that struck me as particularly strong, and this goes also for my second reading of my favorite novel by Barker 'Cabal', is his hardly veiled descriptions, apologetics, and actual exaltation, in a sense, of homosexual, transsexual and transgender lifestyles.

This revelation was the biggest shock to me when I re-read 'Cabal' some years ago, being about 5-6 years out of undergrad, and for the first time after I read that Barker is openly homosexual and activist in the community. I saw all the names, relationships and symbols in 'Cabal' completely different. They were not arbitrary gems of a great imagination, but most of them were symbolic of the homosexual society, and the oppression against them, the ways they had to hide in order to survive and what they had to invent to keep sane. The Nightbreed in 'Cabal' are the LBGT community, driven into hiding because of the very thing they are, and mercilessly chased and destroyed by the evil 'townspeople' just for being different, being 'freaks'. In this sense much of the dialogue, person's names and actions become much more obvious and sequential. Boone is maybe Barker himself, sent by Baphometh to free the Nightbreed, that is the LGBT community from the oppression of the fundamentalists, who themselves have much bigger problems, represented by Decker.

But this review is about 'Imajica'. Here too, the themes of transcending sexuality in both substance, as in not having it limited to union of a male and female, but in many other varieties, and in structure, as in the sexual manuscript with outlandish sexual postures, in one the lovers consuming each others bodies, are greatly elaborated and presented in favorable light. Pie-oh-pah is a mystiv, thus Gentle is both heterosexual and bisexual at the same time. Taylor and Clem are very important, very positive and very openly gay characters. Judith has many fantasies of making love with other women. The other creatures that populate the Imajica, they all have their own ways of having sex, and elaborate customs and reasons around them, and Barker intentionally presents all this variety in its wonder and beauty, so to point out to the ordinary reader that the male-female union is not the only one, not even the only valid one, and far from being the best one. I think that the book cannot be understood without understanding the homosexual and transsexual apology interwoven with the main theme.

'Imajica' is also a stage for Barker to show his distaste for the 'One God - and a patriarchal one at that' paradigm. He describes the goddesses and the matriarchal rites and religion in much more positive light than Hapexamendios (only God knows how he came up with that name), who is irrational, infantile, cruel and selfish. Even the fact that Barker named Imajica's supreme deity is a kind of rebellion against the dogma of the real name of God being unutterable in most major religions. Some parts of the novel read as a straight defense and praise of Wicca, goddess-based religions and feminism, to a point that it gets boring. The supreme love of Gentle, a male, toward Pie-oh-pah, a hermaphrodite, putting it above any love he felt for a woman, which is emphasized over and over again, is also in line of Barker's defense of love as a thing in itself (not in Kantian sense though), independent of artificial limits the society has imposed upon it.

There are several faults with the novel. First, it starts way too slow. Nothing really happens for the first 250 pages. Second, didacticism, in a sense of Barker's convictions about sex, love, relationships, God, spirituality, etc., is very present, taking large chunks of the chapters, and can be annoying and superfluous at times. These two flaws I see as major ones, and with some trimming of the said content, the book could lose about 300-400 pages, and be much more readable than in its present state. Another flaw, as I see it, and which appears in many other Barker's books is his treatment of Magic, whether he calls it 'fates', 'ruptures', or something else. All magic in Barker's novels seems to come from the body od the operator, breath, spit, blood, sperm, feces, etc. This is a very modernistic view of magical operations, similar to postulates of 'Chaos Magick' and other modern currents, however he does not give a sufficient context neither in the traditional, medieval pantheon, or in the modernistic currents. Magic seems for Barker to be an afterthought, and ornament, something to 'make pretty' his primary discourses of sex, sexuality, relationships and emotions, primarily in gay homosexual contexts.

This is definitely the greatest book Barker has ever penned. It has its flaws, and is definitely not an easy-reading. There are multiple layers of meanings and most things become obvious only when looked through an LBGT prism. Barker is still described as a 'Horror Writer' but that is only accurate of the very beginning of his career. He has long ago abandoned hardcore horror and has instead craeted fantastic imaginary universes worthy of Lord Dunsany.