In the Midnight Museum
So last night I sat down and read through In the Midnight Museum by Gary Braunbeck. It was very good but fell short of excellent, partially because Braunbeck's typical motifs and his use of the same lose their potentcy through familiarity.

Martin Tyler is a 44 year-old janitor who, after struggling with a lifetime of depression and crushed expectations, plus the recent and extended deaths of his parents, decides to kill himself. He plans his death very well, even looking to check in to a hotel to eat his second dose of pills, but is knocked off schedule when he encounters a bizarre mechanical birdlike thing and himself at age six. He finds himself instead checking into a mental hospital annex, where medication, isolation, and revelation make things a whole lot weirder.

The key to Martin's weird perceptions seem be tied to a watercolor painting he bought from a street artist once. The artist is in fact one of a small handful of beings who constantly create and recreate the universe, to make it better and better moment by moment. Some of the most entertaining and gripping passages in Midnight Museum describe the hyperreal creations of "Bob" the artist, as stage-managed by Jerry, the artist's astral alter ego. Bob is about to die, but some entropic element of the universe, a cosmic Alzheimer's Disease of sorts named Gash, is looking to wreak havoc sufficient to end it all, before Bob's replacement can be born and come of age. It's up to Martin, whose long ago kindness to Bob is one of the few things the painter remembers, to save us all.

First he has to break out of the mental hospital, which he does easily enough, thanks to some snappy patter and a natural charisma. Martin is an excellent character; Braunbeck does well showing him as intelligent and capable but at the same time entirely overwhelmed; he bursts into tears over breakfast, his thoughts constantly flit back to his parents, and yet he isn't just a Central Casting sad sack depressive. The internal conflict and damage he suffered makes Martin's heroism during the external conflict that much more heroic.

Many of the other characters don't hold up nearly as well, unfortunately. They tend to be a bit too "witty", often spouting punchlines for which there were no windups. The dialogue would go down better were most of the characters not mental health professionals talking to a heavily-medicated man -- the typical patronizing engagements one experiences in bottom of the barrel mental health facilities were missing, for example. (Men with a tenuous grip on sanity understanding the true nature of the universe is one of Branbeck's recurring motifs; "One Brown Mouse" had this theme, but also had a more compelling doctor character.) Unfortunately, a number of characters in Braunbeck's stories tend to be wiseguys a bit more often than quite makes sense -- a la a goth chick complaining that the kids who did the "Columbine Boogie" a few years ago made it rough for her to be taken seriously in "Down in Darkest Dixie Where The Dead Don't Dance" -- it reads like a tick he can't quite get over for fear of making the story humorless without the verbiage.

Martin hightails it to the Midnight Museum and there experiences the dark opposite of the glories of Bob's creations; this stuff is fairly compelling too, description wise, but the plot and art of it all falls apart a bit. Like a number of Braunbeck's other stories ("Rose of Sharon", In Silent Graves), the protagonist has an encounter with a deformed newborn, and the final confrontation with Gash, who generates phantasms of Martin's late folks, hinges on a telegraphed plot point that was clichéd sufficiently to be old when it was used on episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Batman Beyond.

Partially, Braunbeck is writing from his own life. He's experienced the dying parents and the mental health issues, currently works as a janitor etc., so of course these themes come up and again. That alone isn't a problem unless you read a lot of his stuff. Then comparisons inevitably come to mind. Was the use of a first-person narrator in "Palimpsest Day", a story which also deals with the fall out of parental loss, a better choice than Midnight Museum's third person, for example? (Answer: Yes.) His use of the themes and motifs are definitely more controlled in more recent work, like Midnight Museum, but this reader hungers to see Braunbeck branch out a little more.

The problems I have the book would be non-existent to someone who hasn't already read a lot of Braunbeck, but this edition of the novella clearly isn't designed for new readers. Only 450 copies of the limited edition (and 26 lettereds) were made by Necessary Evil Press, and a $35.00 pricetag means that only collectors and people who already know the author will want the book, especially when newer readers can likely still find a mass market paperback of In Silent Graves for seven bucks. The other bit of material in the book, an intro by Ray Garton, adds nothing, not even a second signature to the limited. Presumably, if I already spent $35.00 on the book, I don't need to be told that I may like it. Introductions in general, if they're to be used at all, should be meatier. (Having a back cover blurb by Garton in addition to the intro was also just silly.)

Of course, one isn't paying $35.00 for the story, but for the object. The book itself is very fine. I like the end papers, the binding on the spine is nice and tight, the cover art and design are superior to much small press horror. I especially like the textures on the cover background, which makes it much more compelling than just plain brown with art on top. Little quirks like a color author's photo and a miniature version of the cover art placed on the spine show that a lot of thought went in to design. Were I a book collector, I probably would be interested in collecting the Necessary Evil Press novella series after having seen this title. My one complaint is that the running heads and other matter heading up chapters and the like (e.g., "Introduction -- Ray Garton") are rendered in a cheesy "Groovy Ghoulies" font. It's 2005, we're all grown-ups here. Let's get a decent font.

So, should one buy In The Midnight Museum? If one is a collector or interested in a well-done small press book, yes. Should one read In The Midnight Museum? Yes...once it becomes available in a cheaper format.