Pretty Monsters versus The Bible
You know what’s silly? The
Bible! Nevertheless, this heavyweight
collection of stories continues to exert tremendous influence on our cultural
icons – Will Ferrell and Laura Bush, to name just two – despite the fact that it
was published back in olden days, before the Internet was invented, and even
before TV! Tonight we’ll pit this classic
collection of stories against a modern-day champion – Kelly Link’s short story
collection Pretty Monsters – and see
which one emerges victorious from a 3-round Ultimate Fighting Book Championship
cage match!!!
Round 1: Monsters
The two titans leap into the fray, overloading
our senses with supernatural stuff and fantastic flights of fancy, often in the
form of bizarro bogies.
In The Bible’s
corner we see some respectable standbys – giants and demons – and also some
uncommon cads like the egregious Gibborim, humongous baddies with six fingers
on each hand and six toes on each foul foot. Wicked!
Pretty Monsters answers
with its own lethal combination of creatures: werewolf, graverobber, pillowy
ghosts, backstabbing traitor, mad king, and one monster too nasty to name! We also get a glimpse of the
Specialist, a monster whose hat can make sounds like a rabbit, a squirrel, a
whale, your spouse’s hair, and more!
But watch out! The Bible still
has some tricks up its sleeve – check out the evil Lord Jehovah! He commands his faithful follower,
“Abraham! Kill your son! Do it now!” Then right before Abraham’s about to slice his son from ear
to ear, Jehovah goes, “Just kiddin’.”
Now the Lord transmogrifies Lot’s (un-named)
wife into a pillar of salt! A cold
move, no doubt -- but it could’ve been truly devastating, if The Bible had done the footwork of
making me care about the wronged wife.
Instead, since I haven’t been able to shamble in her shoes, the only
thing I feel is mild disapproval toward the grisly god.
Still when you combine this level of monstrous
madness with such unprecedented power, clearly, Lord Jehovah is not a monster
to be messed with.
Pretty Monsters counters
with a different move: it shoves its characters in my face and forces me
to care about them! Then, when
these characters are threatened, even though the thugs aren’t as powerful as
Lord Jehovah or as digitally advantaged as the Gibborim, the blows are just as brutal!
Here’s Jeremy Mars, from the Pretty Monsters story “Magic For
Beginners”; he doesn’t have to deal with any monsters at all! But I know this kid; so when he’s afraid his
parents are going to get divorced, or when he’s confused about his feelings for
two different girls, it’s a sock in the gut!
And I quickly
come to care for Halsa, even though she’s a little bitch who tries to take from
her little cousin the earrings that belonged to his dead mother – Pretty Monsters whisks me away to her
weird world, where I see, hear, taste, smell and feel the extenuating
circumstances that bring a girl to behave as she does. When she suffers, I feel it like a sock
in my solar plexus!
Our contenders are both looking strong. But things might get ugly in…
Round 2: Popularity
The Bible comes out swinging with savage
strength, powered by a popularity that’s persisted over a thousand years! The
Bible has accreted a kind of cult following, and it’s obviously feeling the
confidence that comes with all that popularity -- you can see that extra surge
of power behind each punishing blow!
Pretty Monsters, our
underdog, reels under the buzz-fed barrage, failing to land a single religion based
on one of its characters!
The Bible shows no mercy, pummeling its
opponent with big-budget movie adaptations, fannish cable channels in multiple
languages, and even a spin-off starring Kurt Cameron!
Pretty Monsters wobbles but stays on its feet; it lashes out with a desperate
accolade, a Hugo!
The Bible sneers and bats aside the
forgettable prize -- swaggering now, arrogant in its
unassailable stardom! It attacks Pretty Monsters with a vengeance, buttressed
by entire chains of bookstores
devoted to its puissant pages, an entourage riding on its coattails, lured by
lucre! Reinforced by writers who
build their entire careers on books that try to elucidate The Bible’s perplexing parables.
Now Pretty
Monsters is actually taunting The
Bible! “If someone had to write a whole nother book just to make sense of
you, you must not be that great!”
The Bible just laughs, beyond any hurt
that its opponent can dish out; it continues to rain punishment on our underdog, fueled by fans who
can recite long passages by heart, who set the story to music. The uber-geekiest meet regularly to
debate finer points of The Book -- some of them base their whole lives on The Bible, in the same way that some Star Wars fans follow the Jedi code!
Pretty Monsters is on the ropes! Just when it looks like it can’t keep
its feet another instant -- Ding, ding!!
Saved by the
bell, Pretty Monsters retreats to its
corner. Just having stayed
in the fight this long says a lot about this little book -- it’s a trooper, for
sure. A precious moment of rest,
and now it’s time for the final round…
Round 3: Pure Entertainment!
Pretty Monsters, plainly hurting, puts on a brave
face as it trots back out into the ring.
The Bible insults the underdog
by turning its back to its opponent, talking to the crowd, as if the fight is
over. After blowing a kiss to an
adoring disciple, The Bible turns to
its foe and begins walloping it with whimsically funny names! One of The Bible’s characters is named Ham, for God’s sake – and
no, it’s not a nickname!! Stunned
by this jocular jab, Pretty Monsters
tries to block The Bible’s blows, but
they’re coming hard and fast: Hoham, Jeroham, Abraham, and a whole tribe of
Hamites! Now The Bible unleashes a barrage of funny, non-Ham names: “There was a
certain man of Ephraim whose name was Elkanah the grandson of Elihu, son of
Tohu, son of Zuph, an Ephrathite!”
Oo, that’s gotta
hurt!
Pretty Monsters lands a few blows with Onion, Zilla,
and Dodo; but snoozers like Karl, Maureen, and Bryan Jones miss their
mark. And The Bible isn’t letting up! Ahimelech, Agag, Adoni-bezek! This is a slaughter!
Now, seemingly toying with Pretty Monsters, The Bible blatantly panders to its heterosexual-male core audience
by parading entire generations of heroic bigamists across its pages! Oh, this is
a sad sight for Pretty Monsters’
fans, if there are any!
But what’s
this? A fire has ignited in Pretty Monster’s eyes! It’s angry! Holy shit, this fight isn’t over!
Pretty Monsters lashes out with a lethal onslaught
of gut-busting guffaws and sidesplitting belly laughs, one after the
other!
Even sentences
taken out of context evoke hilarity.
“Two florists had misspelled Bethany’s name on the ugly wreaths,
BERTHANY and also BETHONY, just like tribe members did when they were voting
each other out on the television show Survivor,
which had always been Bethany’s favorite thing about Survivor.”
Even the
characters’ T-shirts wield taut one-liners: I’M SO GOTH I SHIT TINY
VAMPIRES.
Where is all
this coming from?! We're only on
page 7!!
The Bible strikes back with its most brutally
funny name yet: Dorcas! But to no
avail! Pretty Monsters swats away The
Bible’s hokey handles and clouts the Good Book with character-based comedy!
A know-it-all
teenage girl who’s a fan of personality quizzes and self-help books gives
relationship advice to her unappreciative friend. Boof!
A conceited
young soccer stud with dreams of going pro gets quarantined in a Costa Rican
warehouse, where he confuses the girl he has a crush on. Pam!
The lucid
language and dead-on dialogue is making even strange situations breathtakingly believable,
immaculately immediate, wildly and entirely entertaining!!
The Bible is weakening! It staggers back into the corner, trying
in vain to shield itself from Pretty
Monsters’ unpredictable plot twists and quirky characters! A gorgeous grandmother/Scrabble savant
bops The Bible in the belly,
hard! Oh my God, Book Fans, I have
never seen a comeback like this!
In desperation, The Bible squeaks out, “Rhoda,” but it’s
too little, too late! Pretty Monsters winds up and delivers a knockout
– a stunning story that none of us will ever forget!! This fight is over!!
What an upset!!
The fans pour
into the ring as the ref announces the new Ultimate Fighting Book
Champion: PRETTY MONSTERS!!
