Author: William Browning Spencer
Publisher: Permanent Press
Binding: Paperback
Publication Date: March 2000
To all who have wondered if their boss has a copy of the Necronomicon secreted away in their office this is the book for you!
Over the course of 16 years, 4 novels and 2 story collections William Browning Spencer has been quietly carving out his own bit of territory. His voice is singularly unique combining a vivid imagination and an always odd and sometimes bizarre sense of humor.
In Resume With Monsters William Browning Spencer (yes, that’s his name and no he isn’t a Romantic Poet) asks the audacious question that cube monkeys everywhere had been asking themselves ‘Is there a connection, or more specifically an unholy alliance between corporations and Cthulu?’ The gloriously demented answer is YES! Cube monkeys of the world rejoice, their secrets are finally exposed (but remember to only rejoice at a pre-approved scheduled time that is off company property, please see your supervisor to have your leg chains unlocked)
Philip Kenan was employed at a major corporation (Micromeg), where he worked with his then girlfriend, Amelia. He successfully staved off an attempt from Yog-Soggoth and others to enter into this dimension. She leaves him to move to Texas for a fresh start. He follows her there to continue to protect her from un-knowable evils. When she starts working for another large corporation (Pelidyne) he once more has to face down the enemy and save her from a fate worse then death.
Philip is also writing his own never ending Cthulu mythos novel that serves as a humorous send up of Lovecraft’s writing. On the surface Philip represents the everyman; workers of dead end jobs who feel like their souls are being sucked dry because this isn’t how they expected to live their lives: working over time, begging for a raise, sacrificing evenings and weekends in a competition with no real winner. It is in its very existence a passionless life and no one wants to live that way, yet we continue to do so. More importantly the presence of this novel in a novel forces the reader to weigh the possibility that Philip is becoming so obsessed with his writings that he is projecting the horrors in it onto the “real” world. Does you boss want you to stay late tonight because there is extra work to do or because he wants to steal your brain and inhabit your body with an unthinking force. Spencer maintains this balance until the end of the novel.
Throughout the book the one incident that gets alluded to the most is what exactly happened at MicroMeg. We know that there was an invasion and that Philip saved Amelia, other then that no one wants to talk about the incident. Spencer gives this story the full treatment in the section of the book entitled The Doom that Came to MicroMeg, with a fun twist. In the “present” the Elder Gods score a victory against Philip trapping his body in the present and sending his soul back in time to just before the invasion of Yog-Soggoth. He is fully cognizant of what’s going on and he also knows what’s going to happen, but he is helpless to do anything to stop it. This dichotomy presents a striking narrative that bustles with energy and also tension and helplessness. Philip fights to get back to the “present” to continue his quest to save Amelia and manages some small successes. He gets back into his body only to be forced back out of it again thus moving the Micromeg portion of the story ahead in a jump cut manner. It’s the highlight of the book and even coming out it one isn’t too sure of Philips sanity, which could be the greatest trick that Spencer pulls.
Resume With Monsters is a gleefully demented book with sharp observations on corporate culture. Anyone who has worked for a larger company will find a lot of enjoyment here though it certainly isn’t a prerequisite. It also takes the Cthulu mythos into an under utilized territory that plays more for laughs then thrills and scares all the while mirroring in many ways the typical quest that a Lovecraftian protagonist undertook.
