The ever-inspired Brendan Connell’s masterful tales of misery and imagination don’t settle for being merely unsettling, and can never be taken for standard-issue uncanny and creepy. At the same time, he shines in his willingness to experiment with structure, language, theme and control over how he triggers his desired gut reactions. His pointillistic off-kiltered 36-city set Metrophilias abounds in tones from seeming poignancy to black humor, ricocheting in styles and lopsided storylines while reined in by a modus operandi of expressive scattershot minimalism. And in the decadence-drenched Unpleasant Tales, the inventive collection of 22 short and dark stories takes an unflinching and matter-of fact approach to a kaleidoscopic horror of depravity, with a bent toward themes of borderless obsession and perversity.
Now, in The Life of Polycrates and Other Stories for Antiquated Children, another showcase of Connell’s ‘Lovecraftsmanship’ emerges in which real figures and characters live off-kilter lives or exist amid the fringes of mythopoeic terrain. It’s a wide-ranging and wavering but nevertheless rewarding collection consisting of one novella and 10 short stories, previously published in journals and anthologies, as well as never before published material.
The titular tale is perhaps the biggest departure for Connell, chronicling, indeed, the life of Polycrates, tyrant of Samos c. 538 BC to 522 BC. Though he was fated through bloodlines to rule the Greek island, his father was murdered and the killers overthrew the dynasty. Biding his time while plotting his revenge, Polycrates began a charitable program to help the populace. With the people consequently by his side by the time he fought the patricide, he came to reign over Samos. Outwitting his scheming brothers, Polycrates ultimately grew too settled in his ways, facing the consequences when he ignored the wisdom of his soothsayers.
Though it lacks the surreal touches and disquieting foreboding of many of Connell’s works, the relatively leisurely pace of the 77-page "Life of Polycrates" draws you into a grab-bag of epistles, history, classical literature, Greek myth, and some more original fictional elements – where one starts and another begins is anyone’s guess, however. A sharp-eyed reader might also surmise – and he or she might also be wrong – that there are such allusions as a prose passage evocative of “Kubla Khan” (“The palace of Polycrates, the roof covered with quasi-translucent Pentelic stone tiles from Naxos, was splendidly decorated, the floors of certain chambers interlaid with precious stones and agate, others with extravagant mosaics…”). One might also speculate that a mischievous Mr. Connell channeled a little Johnny Cash when he described Polycrates’ ruthless brother Pantagnotus as one who once “stabbed a man in Magnesia just to watch him die.”
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