Decadence as Distraction: Richard Kadrey Discusses the Grim Warnings Hiding in The Grand Dark
In the Weimar-inspired city of Lower Proszawa, the metropolis at the center of Richard Kadrey’s new novel The Grand Dark—one of this blog’s pick for the best fantasy novels of 2019 so far—decadence reigns supreme. Parties, drugs, sex, and theater extravaganzas keep its citizens busy. People are having such a good time that they can ignore the fact that Higher Proszawa, the once glittering district of the wealthy, is a smoldering wasteland. The Iron Dandies—grotesquely wounded veterans of the Great War who conceal their ruined faces behind iron masks—are kept at arm’s length from polite society. That there may be a new war on the horizon only incites the people of Lower Proszawa to party harder.
The Grand Dark
Hardcover $26.99
The Grand Dark
Hardcover $26.99
Largo, 21-year-old bike messenger, epitomizes the Lower Proszawa zeitgeist: his drug addiction keeps him free of unpleasant thoughts, and his beautiful girlfriend keeps him pleasantly occupied. When he’s promoted at his job, things seem to be looking up. Instead, the darkness comes for Largo, and he is forced to make a life-altering choice. War is coming, but for Largo, the true battle may lie within.
Largo, 21-year-old bike messenger, epitomizes the Lower Proszawa zeitgeist: his drug addiction keeps him free of unpleasant thoughts, and his beautiful girlfriend keeps him pleasantly occupied. When he’s promoted at his job, things seem to be looking up. Instead, the darkness comes for Largo, and he is forced to make a life-altering choice. War is coming, but for Largo, the true battle may lie within.
Richard Kadrey, author of the acclaimed Sandman Slim urban fantasy series, stretches himself with this new novel, which he describe as a work that was years in the making. In Lower Proszawa, he set out to create an alternate world of strange automata and genetically-engineered creatures, while simultaneously recalling the heady days of the Weimar Republic prior to the stock market crash in the 1930s and the rise of fascism. The result is an atmospheric milieu where the characters of Largo, his girlfriend Remy, and the cast of artists, spies, revolutionaries, intelligent automata, and strange genetically-engineer pets spring to cinematic life.
In The Grand Dark, Kadrey, “wanted to get the Weimar spirit going, without making it a Weimar pastiche.” While hewas influenced by various sources of the period, including Franz Kafka and Bertolt Brecht, he was perhaps equally influenced by the contemporary, rapid-fire dialogue of Elmore Leonard.
While the idea had been germinating for years, Kadrey notes that he could not help but be affected during the writing process by the realities of contemporary America. “If I’d written this book in a different era it might have been a different book, but I couldn’t ignore the way America is right now, and the way the world around me is going,” says Kadrey. “It feels like a sinister period that could get a lot more sinister.”
Sandman Slim (Sandman Slim Series #1)
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Sandman Slim (Sandman Slim Series #1)
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The fulcrum of the novel, The Grand Dark itself, is a theatre where the most lurid and monstrous stories are brought to graphic realization by a cast of human-size puppets. The illusions provided by the theatre run parallel with the illusions that Lower Proszawans engage in to lull themselves into submission to an increasingly fascist regime.
The fulcrum of the novel, The Grand Dark itself, is a theatre where the most lurid and monstrous stories are brought to graphic realization by a cast of human-size puppets. The illusions provided by the theatre run parallel with the illusions that Lower Proszawans engage in to lull themselves into submission to an increasingly fascist regime.
Kadrey comments, “When you look at Geobbels’s control over popular media, the fascist government was creating art for the masses that reinforced their fascist point of view. They would do huge movies, radio shows, really popular stuff. I couldn’t let go of that—the idea of creating a whole pop culture world that was very deliberately set to keep you pacified, keep you happy with the government.”
In much the same way, Kadrey points out, there are elements in contemporary American pop culture that act as a soporific, keeping audiences passive in the face of current events. The effects may not always be deliberate, he notes, but the result is the same.
At the start of the novel, Largo embodies this apathy to political realities. “Most people just want to get by—they don’t want to take a side,” says Kadrey. “They want to put their head down, have lunch, go to movies, get laid—that’s it. Largo doesn’t want to deal with the larger questions—like most people.”
The character of Largo is ultimately the heart of the novel: his growth and development are the focus. Part of what made The Grand Dark a challenge to write at first, says Kadrey, was uncovering the layers of his character. Largo’s traumatic past has made him strong, but also left him with persistent fear. That combination, says Kadrey, “was a hard balance to get right. Once I found that balance, the book really took off.”
At the start of the book, “Largo is a 21-year-old kid and everything’s kind of okay,” Kadrey says. This is to stand him in contrast to what happens later, as the story progresses and the net of secrets, government corruption, and betrayal closes around him. By the end, “[Largo is] forced to grow into something much more than he ever imagined himself to be.”