JT LINDROOS

Unconventional. That’s a good word to describe MONSTRUM!: A WIZARD’S TALE, its author and the subject matter. I don’t mean it simply in the sense that a book about lake monsters might be considered unconventional, since they are a dime-a-dozen. Among even that section of the shelf where you have your books on cryptozoology, phenomenology, ufology, demonology and other assorted ogies, this slim volume remains unconventional.

Tony “Doc” Shiels wrote this slight book. Its slightness, however, remains an illusion, a sleight of hand. It illuminates the topic of lake monsters — i.e., Nessie, Morgwar — from an angled perspective. It’s fishing for those inhabitants of the deep with wordplay, surrealism, alchemy and Guin-ness.

Conjurer, playwright or wrong, painter, trickster and beer enthusiast, among other assorted alignments, Shiels is a very specific kind of all-around djinneus.

In different terms, Shiels is to monster hunting what Captain Beefheart was to pop music.

Attempting to conjure up a sea monster may get you to raise your eyebrows. It’s a natural reaction from most anybody who doesn’t use botox. But there are precedents to this kind of madness, ranging from those attempting to make money off blurry photographs to those who go on to found the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Are they tapping into the Jungian pools, reflecting themselves on the canvas of the skies, and harnessing the subtle energies of the noosphere by the concentrated force of multiple minds strumming the shimmering strings that make up our multiverse?

So casting spells seems a mighty peculiar approach to a subject one may naturally think as either ridiculous or, at best, consider a zoological puzzle. There’s nothing wrong with a scientific approach to a mystery, but given the range of human experience and the limits of our scientific knowledge, perhaps we can assume there to be elements of the universe beyond our current understanding? And who’s to say that the approach of an artist is any less valid than that of a scientist — except a dogmatic scientist — especially when exploring the unknown.

There’s much more to the book than just sea monsters. It comes with a superlative introduction from Colin Wilson. It discusses the mystery of the Owlman of Cornwall and other unidentified flying objects, touches upon witches and the pooka, lexilinks James Joyce and shuffles in quotes from John Updike, Lewis Carroll and Luis Buñuel.

MONSTRUM! is an oddly interesting book, unique in its vision, occasionally hampered by its need to cover the “facts” and elaborate on the history of its subjects. It’s a highly entertaining read with writing that ranges from outrageously clever and insightful to curiously clunky and uninteresting.

But that’s part of the charm: dreamlike, littered with random patterns that occasionally align in that peculiarly perfect harmony, creating new pathways in your brain, connecting the two hemispheres through left-field leaps of logic, jogging loose the thin membrane that connects consciousness to the throb of your ticker, yet perplexing those not tuned to the exact frequency. It’s a direct cranial extract from the mind of a uniquely gifted artist/magician.

Rating this book in any normal fashion would be pointless, and while I’m at a loss to whom on or off earth I could recommend it, I’m delighted that it exists. I suspect there are other lunatics who will feel the same. —JT Lindroos

Originally published at Bookgasm (May 27, 2011)