All that pop!
Each chapter of My Best Friend’s Exorcism has a title stolen from a pop, rock, romantic or drama song. The main characters sing to the radio of Phil Collins, but put their own words on it, really “stupid”. We all did it in our teens, in this hot period of relentless creativity and eternal experiment. Grady Hendrix will make you feel like a shit who can do anything, and certainly feels everything. And it learns well.
The girls from this horror movie would get along with the heroine of Lady Bird , the older kids from Stranger Things , they would surely get along in the woods with Lumberjanes . The foreground one comes from a poor family, the other one, the title best friend, from a rich and painfully conservative one. Together, they try to create a safe space for each other where you can breathe and laugh freely. Their protection, magical artifacts and weapons against vampires are cassettes with amateur compilations, vile beer, makeup and hairspray. And sometimes even the childhood sweetheart of ET
If you’ve read We Sold Souls , you know that Hendrix can write not only about music, but also music in a way. The same will happen in this book, VHS movies and pop culture of the 80s in general will be added to the songs. For the Polish audience it is often very niche and not very well known, after all, Hendrix talks about growing up in the American countryside, when he himself probably grasped everything that was going on. on TV and, for a moment, it tore a small town out of the gray.
The loneliness of a teenager
In one of the interviews about his latest book, The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires, Hendrix stated that in My Best Friend’s Exorcism, he abused adults terribly. In fact, parents are interested in children mainly so that they do not bring shame. As long as there’s no problem, they’re cool. If something bad starts to happen to them, it is probably their fault and they need to be punished somehow. Mothers and fathers focus on sweeping everything under the rug, even if someone has hurt their teenager. Who needs circuses and gossip?
Hendrix’s diagnosis of the condition of a good suburban family is devastating. The kids are completely alone with their problems. They often try to solve them in bizarre ways. Are possession and exorcism (the title one in the original language version) just a shit out of your head? Or maybe on the contrary – the devil really decided to take someone’s soul away? And how does this relate to American religiosity?
Between Scream and Lynch
After basking in nostalgia with the smell of cheap cosmetics and gasoline (American kids live in their cars), Hendrix moves to a strongly physiological climate, and finally an Exorcist . Along the way, he will treat the viewer to a crazy comedy about deeply religious strongmen. The book, which began “by custom”, gradually gravitates towards the grotesque mixed with terror. Weaving disproportionately strong scenes into the narrative about ordinary life has also been seen in We have sold souls, so it can be considered as another typical procedure for this author. Hendrix says he’s fascinated by how suddenly play can turn into a life-threatening situation. Most often it happens to children who cannot predict all the consequences of their actions. But it is not always we ourselves who make it become scary.
Polish edition
As you know, Vesper focuses on well-published, good and original books. Grady Hendrix fits this style perfectly. We sold souls gained a specific metal frame in “our” version. My Best Friend’s Exorcism is also polished to the last page, the cover resembles a VHS cassette, we still have fragments of the school chronicle or golden thoughts, and even psychological tests. It turned out beautifully, nostalgia is good even before you take off the foil.
When it comes to Maciej Machała’s translation, you can get a bit of a fuss. Several times he annotates his decisions with footnotes that are basically not needed by a recipient who does not know the original. From time to time there are traces of English, but they are unlikely to be visible to every reader – sometimes they beat me out of the rhythm. Despite these remarks, I think that he did a good job, he came across an American text full of expressions and references to pop culture specific to this culture.
My Best Friend’s Exorcism was written two years before Hendrix’s Polish debut, We’ve Sold Souls . Hopefully Vesper will release his other books, going back in time or jumping to the present with The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires . This is a kind of sequel to a novel about teenagers, this time about their parents. Apparently not everyone was totally hopeless.
