A CT Classic--The Jaguar Hunter by Lucius Shepard--

Welcome to the jungle...

Recently I reread one of my favorite short story anthologies, The Jaguar Hunter by Lucius Shepard. I have to say that when I slowly and carefully pored my way once again through the 14 stories anthologized here, I noticed so much more about his superb and fantastic writing ability. He's probably not one of those guys you will find on the shelves of your local mall bookstore. But he is definitely worth seeking out.

Shepard has abilities on a variety of levels. First and foremost he is an idea guy, with a lot of interesting concepts. He explores his way down a lot of intellectual and philosophical alleys and often takes popular conceits and platitudes to exaggerated and shocking conclusions. In that way, he reminds me a bit like a Kurt Vonnegut but from a younger generation.

He has a wonderful descriptive ability, describing the backdrop of his stories with a lush thoroughness. Though many of his tales are set in Central America (where he spent time in his younger days), his stories take place in many locales that would be deemed exotic at least by the standards of the average American reader. And the descriptions are plausible, in all likelihood a potent combination of life experience and research. And though the stories are grounded in this realism, it is a tribute to this artistic abilities that he manages to take that realism, and mold it, and send it off onto surreal and otherworldly plane. In that respect he reminds me a bit of the great J.G.Ballard. In his stories it often seems that when things start heading south, when your existence is in a state of mortal peril, you realize that people haven't really changed that much over the millenia. Magic and ancient lore mix with world-weary jaded modernity, superstition and magic help to fill in the unintelligible spots, to make life bearable in a changing lonely uncertain and cruel polluted world.

In truth Shepard writes so fluently and with so much kinetic creativity I both awed and more than a little jealous. A few of the stories included in this collection are flat out masterpieces. One is the The Man Who Painted The Dragon Griaule, a captivating Medieval tale that has to be read to believed, a tour de force of descriptive power and a compelling look at the heights and depths of human nature. Another great one is the surreal semi futuristic novella Radiant Green Star, a coming of age and revenge tale set in a Vietnamese traveling circus. It was the last story in the collection and it was probably why I felt so strongly that something needed to be said in a post. Just when the book was nearly perfect I read the finale and I had to make my opinions public.

I could go on and on about these, stories, but I don't want to give it all away. One of my favorites here is Night of White Bhairab an East-West Supernatural showdown set in Nepal. When you read How The Wind Spoke at Madaket you will discover a chilling reason why Hurricanes have names, and a wonderfully written take on the consequences of unrestrained destruction of our environment. If like me, you have spent more than a few summers in Cape Cod, Mass, you will get a Lovecraftian tingle as you turn the pages. Black Coral is tremendous metaphor, comparing human communities to the intertwined community of a coral reef and having the narration in the form of a modern fairy tale. Just audacious!!

I'd like to end this post with a rather lengthy quote from the end of A Spanish Lesson, which I think sums up Lucius Shepard better than I am inadequately doing. A final observation is his passion and fierce unwillingness to tolerate ignorance. Despite the world weariness, there is hope and inspiration in his writing, the thing that helps people get up in the morning to do what they need to do. And He engages you and forces you to think. And his word ring as true today as they did then.

When the tragedies of others become for us diversions, and stories with which to enthrall our friends, interesting bits of data to toss out at cocktail parties, a means of presenting a pose of political concern , or whatever...when this happens we commit the gravest of sins, condemn ourselves to ignominy, and consign the world to a dangerous course. We begin to justify our casual overview of pain and suffering by portraying ourselves as do-gooders incapacitated by the inexorable forces of poverty, famine, and war. "What can I do?" we say. "I'm only one person, and these things are beyond my control. I care about, but there are no solutions."

Yet no matter how accurate this assessment, most of us are relying on it to be true, using it to mask our indulgence, our deep-seated lack of concern, our pathological self-involvement. In adopting this attitude we delimit the possibilities for action by letting events progress to a point at which, indeed, action becomes impossible, at which we can righteously say that nothing can be done. And so we are born, we breed, we are happy, we are sad, we deal with consequential problems of our own, we have cancer, or a car crash, and in the end our problems prove insignificant. Some will tell you that to feel guilt or remorse over the vast inaction of our society is utter foolishness; life, they insist, is patently unfair, and all anyone can do is to look out for his own interest. Perhaps they are right; perhaps we are so mired in our self-conceptions that we can change nothing. Perhaps this is the way of the world. But, for the sake of my soul and because I no longer wish to hide my sin behind a guise of mortal incapacity, I tell you it is not.

So do yourself a favor and get to know the writings of Lucius Shepard. I think that you will not be disappointed. If you are a fan of Harlan Ellison, Jonathan Lethem, or the short stories of T.C. Boyle, you can't go wrong here, or with his many other worthy books.