{"id":918,"date":"2014-11-04T11:26:01","date_gmt":"2014-11-04T19:26:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stefoff.com\/?p=918"},"modified":"2019-12-01T14:44:24","modified_gmt":"2019-12-01T22:44:24","slug":"what-im-reading-the-supernatural-enhancements","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/?p=918","title":{"rendered":"What I&#8217;m reading: The Supernatural Enhancements"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I hadn&#8217;t heard of Edgar Cantero&#8217;s\u00a0<em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/The-Supernatural-Enhancements-Edgar-Cantero\/dp\/0385538154\">The Supernatural Enhancements<\/a>,<\/em> which was released last August. I picked it up from the &#8220;New Releases&#8221; shelf at the library because the title and the Goreyesque cover art drew my eye. I was hooked when I read this back-jacket copy: &#8220;Cantero pays homage to Bram Stoker and H.P. Lovecraft and <em>The Shining,<\/em> but he&#8217;s no less enamored of <em>The X-Files,<\/em> fax machines [the novel is set in 1995], and punk girls with dreads.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>At 50 pages in (out of 353), I&#8217;m enjoying it but wondering if it will sustain my interest. On one level it looks like a modern variant of the haunted-house story; the title is from Edith Wharton&#8217;s phrase &#8220;a house with supernatural enhancements.&#8221; On another it&#8217;s a formal exercise: a clever&#8211;perhaps too clever?&#8211;mishmash of letters, diary entries, transcripts of security-camera footage, and so on. That mixed-media, semi-epistolary structure and the eerie-house setting recall Mark Z. Danielewski&#8217;s 2000 novel <em>House of Leaves,<\/em> which I loved, so I am going to keep on with this one, despite already being a bit tired of one of the two main characters. (The other one is growing on me, so they balance out.) And I&#8217;ve gotta say that, post-<em>Shining,<\/em> if you put a hedge maze next to a huge spooky building, something damned original better happen in that hedge maze. I&#8217;ll let you know.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I hadn&#8217;t heard of Edgar Cantero&#8217;s\u00a0The Supernatural Enhancements, which was released last August. I picked it up from the &#8220;New Releases&#8221; shelf at the library because the title and the Goreyesque cover art drew my eye. I was hooked when I read this back-jacket copy: &#8220;Cantero pays homage to Bram Stoker and H.P. Lovecraft and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,6,13],"tags":[42,46],"class_list":["post-918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-reading","category-reviews","tag-reading","tag-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=918"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":920,"href":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918\/revisions\/920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}