DieDieBooks’ Latest ‘Invocation of My Demon Brother’ Is An Astounding, Sad Queer Odyssey
I was recently interviewed by Jessie Schiewe of The LA Times. The subject of the piece is Evan Halleck of Long Beach, a The Mummy superfan who recently quit his job on a quest to collect as many VHS copies of Stephen Sommers’ horror epic as possible. It’s a fun piece, but it isn’t fluff—after all, it targets that collective need to be remembered for something. Those tapes will be Halleck’s legacy. Legacy is key, since among several competing ideals in Jarett Kobek’s masterful Invocation of My Demon Brother, the latest from press DieDieBooks, I was left with this crushing, urgent need to be remembered, no differently than subject Kenneth Anger.
Invocation of My Demon Brother (the book, not the film) is a swirling tapestry of queer arts culture in the 1960s. A lot of the references and asides were new to me, though assuredly, a friend of mine whose studies include queer history affirmatively responded when I asked if they knew who Kenneth Anger was. Sorry, Anger—I wasn’t familiar with your game.
That game is the titular Invocation of My Demon Brother, one of many short films helmed by the late Kenneth Anger during his haphazard filmmaking career. The book, principally detailing the odd tchotchkes of Anger’s life, his film, and the subsequent intersections with the Manson murders, is astounding. Kobek keeps things light, with a fiercely funny and matter-of-fact writing style that’s the equivalent of a cafeteria lunch—take it or leave it, but you’re getting it all. I filled up.
Invocation of My Demon Brother features a precise, shot-by-shot analysis of the titular film. It’s fascinating, but I was drawn toward the bookends: Anger’s life, and later, new interviews with composer Bobby Beausoleil. Beausoleil was later sentenced to life for the fatal stabbing of Gary Hinman. Both were underground, with wildly disparate assets poised to augment their creative careers. Beausoleil was more handsome and charismatic. Anger regularly affected his voice to appear deeper, despite a filmography awash in queer themes and occult iconography. “Pity the twink who turns 40.”
I wasn’t familiar with Invocation of My Demon Brother until Kobek’s book. It’s overwhelming (in a good way) for newcomers. Yet, for as light as Kobek keeps his style, he’s undoubtedly aware of the pangs of sadness innate to this story, almost tactile on the page. Anger, Beausoleil, and, yes, even Manson just wanted to be remembered. The latter two chose pimping and violence, tawdry shortcuts guaranteed to achieve infamy. And they did. Manson has been through the wash cycle, yet the story of his family endures as some kind of novelty when it’s really much simpler than that.
Anger chose art. Angry art, pun intentional. Experimental art. Conspiratorial art. Anger, at different points throughout, is feuding with one of the novel’s living subjects. Beausoleil, of course, but even Andy Warhol. Those were names I knew. Invocation of My Demon Brother was the first I’d heard of Anger. His desire to do something, to remain relevant long after the experimental scene migrated out of California, hurt more than a scooter to the shin.
And DieDieBooks, several numbered editions in, is all about legacy. The legacy of the scariest war movie ever made. The legacy of a horror giant having their biggest opportunity stolen from them. Stolen childhoods, too, and constrained identities. Through horror texts, the literal texts are, in their own way, a reclamation. And Invocation of My Demon Brother, intentional or not, reclaims a strange film and its even stranger creator. Kenneth Anger may not have been thrilled at the prospect, but with all his idiosyncrasies stripped away, Invocation of My Demon Brother arrives at a simple yet shattering truth. He was just a guy, no different than you or me.
You can purchase a copy of Jarett Kobek’s Invocation of My Demon Brother from DieDieBooks here.
-
Invocation of My Demon Brother
Categorized:Reviews
