The Door to Lost Pages
© 2011 by Claude Lalumière
dedication
For Paul Di Filippo, friend and fellow dreamer, who let me steal the title of his collection
Lost Pages.
For Elise Moser, who was there at the birth of the Lost Pages series, offering invaluable support and criticism, and stuck it out through many incarnations and revisions.
For David Pringle, publisher and editor extraordinaire of
Interzone
from 1982 to 2004. The fiction and authors published during David Pringle’s groundbreaking tenure on
Interzone
had a profound impact on my imagination. That body of literature was an essential landmark in my journey as a writer. In addition, David was the first editor to publish my fiction (“Bestial Acts,” in 2002, which would eventually become chapter 1 of
The Door to Lost Pages
); he also published “Dregs” (chapter 3 of this book) and “A Place Where Nothing Ever Happens” (which appears in my collection
Objects of Worship
). Appearing three times in my favourite run of any fiction magazine ever was a dream come true.
For Miss, Yoda, Golem, Goblin, Kirby, and Konrad; their bestial acts taught me to be a better animal.
- Introduction: His Back Pages, by Paul Di Filippo
- Prologue: Fuel for the Dark Dreams of Yamesh-Lot
- 1. Bestial Acts
- 2. Let Evil Beware!
- 3. Dregs
- 4. Dark Tendrils
- 5. Lost Girls
- Coda: The Lost and Found of Years
- Acknowledgements
- About the Author
- Back Cover
by Paul Di Filippo
When I read and reread the erotic, wise, comic, tragic, passionate, surprising fabulations contained—barely contained!—between the covers of this book, I invariably hear a ghostly accompaniment, that lyrical, endearing croak-warble-whine famous throughout our postmodern world: Bob Dylan, a young Bob Dylan, only twenty-three years old at the time in 1964, singing “My Back Pages,” with its famous refrain: “Ah, but I was so much older then / I’m younger than that now.”
The stories that comprise this novella—all con-nected, distally or centrally, to a mystical, mythical (mythical?) used-book store called Lost Pages—embody that oxymoronic, Zen nugget of self-observation by Dylan.
Pretence and pretentiousness, self-consciousness and self-importance, “seriousness,” and “maturity,” judgmentalism and dogmatism—these so-called “adult” qualities are not the true mark of wisdom or experience in the deep ways of the world. They are instead too often the overreaching, desperately grasping strategies of adolescents and young adults who have forgotten the clear knowledge of pure childhood, but also have not yet attained the hard-won, never-guaranteed insights of older years, which in many ways resemble that selfsame childlike cosmic certitude.
In
The Door to Lost Pages
, Claude Lalumière is intent on showing us that access to one’s own heart and soul—and to the coterminous joys of the universe—involves putting down preconceptions and prejudices inherited and inculcated as we age, and returning to the primal source of all wisdom.
The primal source of all wisdom. Symbolized by a shabby, tatty, musty retail establishment named Lost Pages? The omphalos of the multiverse hiding behind the flaking paint of an innocuous storefront? Secrets of true happiness contained in yellowing pages of pulpy or hermetical texts?
Why not? You see, that’s the kind of hidebound thinking you have to discard, if you ever want admission to the elect fraternity of
homo ludens
.
In “Bestial Acts,” our introduction to this milieu, we witness a kind of lineage transmission, as the current elderly owner of Lost Pages passes on his mantle to Lucas, who has in his own autodidactic way outfitted himself for his new role. Lucas in turn takes the orphaned-by-choice girl Aydee under his wing. Together, they will serve the community of their like-minded peers, of whatever age and race and condition.
We see one of these fellow travelers next in “Let Evil Beware!” Only a child to the world’s eyes, Billy is in reality one of the props on which the safety of our world depends.
In “Dregs,” our protagonist stubbornly and fearfully resists for a long time the offered transfor-mations that will enhance his native qualities of open-mindedness and curiosity, until a purchase from Lost Pages sets him straight. Or does it? Lalumière never fails to acknowledge that resistance to enlightenment and the potential for backsliding are always possible in the less-than-perfect human realm.
“Dark Tendrils” is one of the few instances where such a failure happens, as missteps are taken and warnings unheeded. It’s the necessary black obverse to the ultimately triumphant sense of redemption.
In “Lost Girls,” even the wise ones—Aydee in particular—are shown to be utilizing less than their full potential, needing a kickstart to the next plateau in the ceaseless quest for nirvana on Earth.
And finally, “The Lost and Found of Years” puts a classy metatextual spin on the whole package, as author meets creation.
But to say that all these stories embody a similar worldview or set of lessons is not to proclaim them programmatic or tendentious or preachy. Far from it! This fine little book is not some New Age self-help manual: it’s involving fiction of the most intimate and passionate stripe!
Claude Lalumière is an adept of prose. His sentences are sprightly and always surprising. His sense of structure is admirable. He plays deftly with horror tropes, fantasy tropes, SF tropes. One minute he’s channelling Lord Dunsany, the next Charles de Lint, John Crowley, or Jeff VanderMeer—peers, but possessed of different voices from Lalumière’s own unique tones. He braids clues and motifs into a shimmering tapestry. (Just count the sly occurrences of “green, blue, and brown,” the colours of a mythical deity.) His characters stalk or dance across the pages, fully alive and palpable.
Additionally, in a smallish but important way, Claude Lalumière is not only a universal author but a regional writer. His native Canada, specifically the city of Montreal, is as much a player in these stories as the people, even when not specifically named. There’s some numinous element of these tales that acts as a counterbalance to the hegemony of US fantasy trilogies. We are hearing a voice literally from beyond the lands we (we American readers) know.
I have the honour of being one of the dedicatees of this volume (and even of being namechecked in a story!). It’s an honour that causes me to smile with great happiness, to resolve to be worthy of such a dedication, to live up to the ideals on exhibit herein.
I’m still searching for ways to be younger, for the door to Lost Pages myself!
Fuel for the Dark Dreams of Yamesh-Lot
