Reading A Theme Park for the Depraved
Sometimes a book comes to us by serendipity.
Sometimes it will have an unknown author, the volume has none of the identifiers of an an academic or an in-the-know press. It may be trade-sized and perfect bound with no beguiling photo of the bemused author, but if we look closer, we may find a new voice awaits.
In the case of A Theme Park for the Depraved (2022), the reader confronts a genderless authorial name: JE Mershon. The volume’s back blurb provides us with setting and character clues and a sense of the world the book promises to guide us through—a realm of strippers, homeless people, and New Orleans.
Visiting a well-known city through a text can be a both a reader’s joy and an author’s undoing. Every city has its own street feel—an aspect some readers identify as a gift of Beat writing—a legacy still apparent in various literary types. Writing that is true to the feel of its setting, which resonates as authentic with local residents is a distinct reading pleasure, no matter the work’s genre. In Mershon’s work, the genre appears to be that of a crime drama, but there are strong elements of horror as well. Mershon structures the work in sections titled, “Thursday” or” Friday,” with individual chapters detailing the doings of a half-a-dozen characters.
What is striking in this work is the setting: it is a New Orleans not seen by most. Mershon’s tone is knowing, succinct and sardonic: “The motel was located on Airline drive, a stretch of road in the New Orleans suburb of Metairie which was treeless, trashy and punctuated with used car lots, seedy motels and bars” (11). Mershon fluidly interweaves residential knowledge and local geography with the activities of that chapter’s character. “She took the bus […]the trip wasn’t too bad, except for the block and a half […]women pedestrians were targets everywhere but this stretch of Airline drive was known to be a ho-stroll.” It is here that an experienced reader ought to feel a bit alert, if not a rush of pleasure, as Mershon’s language moves between various levels, register changes, gender positions and jargons. The street singer, Lionel, has a chapter that begins when he “…loads his pipe with a big piece of glass. It was good taking a night off from the street, but that white dude sure was creepy” (39). Mershon has an acute ability for blending elements into a cultural mixture that defines the book’s characters and is seductive both to initiates and common and ordinary to local citizens.
It is this fluidity of language which blends the horror elements into this novel, for the visions of the serial killer are as clearly written as those of the insider’s tip for restaurants visited by the characters. Mershon introduces a residence motel, the primary detective character, Camille, and then our first corpse: “the boy was propped up against the sofa facing his mother […] there was moisture on the plastic from his tears. He was wearing a pajama set printed with cartoon cars. There were what looked like multiple cigarette burns on his feet and legs” (26). The horror Mershon details here is the most ordinary kind, that of violence visited upon society’s most vulnerable.
Yet Mershon’s New Orleans setting is ever-present in the work. “Mid-summer in New Orleans is a peak season for crime. People are hot, broke, mean-tempered and desperate” (186). This is a side of the renowned city that few will bother to see, and characters few will meet as intimately as Mershon allows us to see. While this work will be a natural choice for readers of crime drama, and even for those of horror, those readers who love the city herself will get a flavorful experience as well.
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Su Zi is a poet-writer, Artist, equestrian. EIC Red Mare chapbook series. Zoeglossia Fellow 2023. Recent publications include the 2024 New Beats Anthology, Florida Bards Beat Anthology, Border Beats Anthology. Recent titles, spring 2024 : Danke (EthelZine Press), Flux (Between the Highways Press). Su Zi lives in Florida.
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