I Am A Squeeb: The Early Writings of Pedestrian Colyer

It is often regarded within literary circles as a strange, even egotistical, thing to write criticisms of one’s own work. This belief is no doubt derived from some graven philosopher’s aphorism, and it should be noted that if authors were to review their work more often, especially publicly, ambiguities would be removed and thus tar the road of harmonisation within increasingly uncohesive societies. Simply put; if writers, certain Anglos in particular, were to homogenise their own works in such a way that every layman from both the less-intelligified classes and the more cerebrally adept could, with little neurological fatigue, elucidate the ethical, ontological and humanistic thematic – of course it is often herein where interpretations confluate, ideologies and experiences rear their less-than aesthetic portraiture and mist the already obscure path to authorial verity – society’s minorities and majorities would coalesce (with rapidity even) to yield a product that was of an agreeable temperament autonomous to an individual’s own character.

Thus, I write.

Negro Eclectics, Colyer’s first completed novel, remained unpublished until much later in his career. The 272-page novel, beginning with its politically incorrect title and epigraph (from Lovecraft’s The Rats in the Walls) offers as much an expansive critique of extremists in modern society. Beginning with Ethno-Nationalism, perhaps now more pertinent than ever, he picks apart the fallacies of the political outsiders but simultaneously diagnoses the causes of it, analysing the dislocations and voids within contemporary society. It is curious too that Eclectics is perhaps his most confessional work, and at parts, becomes less about the radical sub- and micro-cultures he is discussing and more of cross-section of himself, particularly the insecurity of masculinity and its interplay with new Reactionaries. It remains unknown as to whether Colyer himself was aware of the pseudo-confessions that littered his prose.

His second novel, and first published work, Empty Bowls offered something excitingly intimate. Colyer dissected the modern familial situation, examining the effects of globalism on the lives of a gay couple living in an unnamed South-East Asian country. Missing in Empty Bowls is the inadvertent stream-of-consciousness of Negro Eclectics, yet it is replaced by a very sincere empathy with its characters. The work, as focused as globalisation is extensive, yields an authentic realism that was unique amongst his oeuvre and the wider canon.  Its critics followed naturally with its release, many arguing of the simplification of the “post-2000s democratic vision”.

His third publication, The Fan is On, a collection of morbid and cerebral short stories signalled the end of what most Colyer academics would call his early prose. The thematic consistency coupled with prosaic irregularities earned the collection an infamy amongst critics and divided them quickly after its publication. Indeed, the prose varies so much that critics, particularly now after his passing, have called upon an aged Shakespearian argument on the nature of his authorship – question arising about the possibility of multiple ghost writers. His wife, Beatrix, has responded to these statements labelling them as “irrefutably and ridiculously stupid” and publishing an article on why they are “not even worth a response”. However, in this critics humble opinion the work is perhaps Colyer’s greatest. The sensuality of Impotent Pope and its subtle links to the later story Seaman and Semen provide some of his most luscious prose and quotable segments

“…the lilacs, tremoring with the beauty of an age and the whisps of eternity eddying about them, whispered, almost imperceptibly, the secret of the voluptuous meanings of both her and his own grace. The question was not, did he love? But rather, did he love her? For all the affirmation she provided within her superficial adages and all that he reciprocated within his sonnetry, something skimmed across his heart when he thought of live without her. A life of freedom, pain (oh how he had missed the sweets of sacrifice), disappointment but also that of uncertainty. A life so boring as his had been was now sweetened by that thought. Would the years be enough? Of course not. For what his heart had called him to do, and his head willed him on, was an undeniable sin which deserved only a baptism in an icy lake could forgive. He realised that he had hovered above her now for what must have been 20 minutes, with that call to reality he raised the pillow – he was strong, God Bless Testosterone, he muttered as she awoke.” (II, Seaman and Semen)

As eulogies go, this is no doubt the worst, it should however act as a primer to the advancement of criticism of one of the English languages greats. With a bibliography pages in length and an almost exhaustive potential for analysis, Pedestrian Colyer will no doubt solidify himself in the literary conscious for centuries to come.