Review: Violent Faculties by Charlene Elsby

Rating: 8.5/10

Violent Faculties follows a philosophy professor influenced by Sade and Bataille. She is ejected by university administrators aiming to impose business strategies in the interest of profit over knowledge.

She designs a series of experiments to demonstrate the value of philosophy as a discipline, not because of its potential for financial benefit, but because of its relevance to life and death. The corpses proliferate as her experiments yield theoretical results and ethical conundrums.

She questions why it is wrong to kill humans, what is it about them that makes their lives sacred, and then attempts to find it in their bodies, their words, their thoughts, and their souls—seeking foundational truths with a knife in her home office.

Extreme horror get’s a bad wrap for, beyond the bodily fluids, being over-simplified, poorly written and lacking in plot and character. All gore no brains. I hear your generalisation, and, dear reader, I raise you “Violent Faculties,” by Charlene Elsby- the brainiest piece of extreme horror fiction, and in fact fiction in general, I’ve read in quite a while. Utterly unique in its format, tone and content, this one is twisted and repugnant. Its utter brilliance comes in its academic, often borderline insufferable voice, one that is maintained throughout the series of sick experiments conducted by the narrator. It is a quasi-epistolary format in that the reader is presented with a thesis, footnotes and all, one that would be very boring if not for all of the orifices involved. When you’re doing something badly, correction is needed, you don’t walk repeatedly into a door that isn’t automatic, you step back, have a think and then open the door. When I feel a slump brewing, I don’t want more of the same, in fact the one thing that I can rely upon to grab my clammy hand and drag me out of it is something different. “Violent Faculties,” by Charlene Elsby is just that. If you’re looking for a short, sharp and unique read that will make you question your moral fibre, this is the one.

We follow a former philosophy professor, whose department has fallen victim to budget cuts. Left with bitterness and a dangerous surplus of both time and academic strife, what better to dedicate her brilliant mind to than some truly deep philosophical questions? How much space does a human occupy? What is the link between rational thinking and the ability to express those thoughts? What holds a human being together? Of course the answer to these questions requires rigorous hands-on testing, and with a large empty basement, the time, and the moral detachment necessary to get properly stuck in, well, let the fun commence.

The body horror alone is grimace-worthy, but what elevates the more graphic passages from gorey to really quite unnerving is the persistence of the indifferent analysis. I am always honest, and honestly, I can foresee readers opening the book, seeing just how dense the writing is (it really is like a thesis) and putting it down again. I understand. But persist. It doesn’t take very long for you to move past discussions about William Ellery Leonard and Plato and his damn cave, and get to what I call “the good stuff.” The metaphysics of torture, dismemberment, and many horrors beyond that. The narrator explains the process of severing a tongue and pulling teeth in the same flat, droning manner that someone would explain taxes with. It is unwaveringly dry and clinical, and against all odds, it’s for that reason that it is utterly exhilarating and exceedingly revolting. 

I don’t mean to mislead you- it’s also hilarious. Not in a slapstick way of course (nobody is slipping on entrails or anything) but for a few reasons. 1) Its indulgent intellectual arrogance. If Sheldon Cooper were a murderous philosopher, his dissertation would read a little like this. 2) There’s an experiment in which the subject is an intolerable man named John. I derived a guilty but also very present sense of catharsis from his rather unfortunate fate. I believe the term is schadenfreude. 3) The aforementioned lack of concern (or humanity) with which our narrator recounts her atrocities. She reels them off in a way that is almost like a shopping list. Limbs, teeth, tongue. 

Now questioning both my morals and taste in books, I feel the need to consume everything Elsby has ever written, perhaps with a brief recovery period. Elsby’s “The Organization Is Here To Support You,” releases March 15th, and I for one, am excited to get my hands on that one. Brilliant, bold and beyond the pale, “Violent Faculties,” is everything that I wanted it to be and so much more.