Robert Kloss

A startling sojourn into an undefined period in settler history, where the friction between the civilising dream and the potent presence of untamed wildness amplifies surreal juxtapositions. The author utilises prose for its sparseness, distilling only the necessary essence. This makes for an hypnotic, dreamlike reading experience, not so much stream of consciousness, but stream of unconsciousness. There is also a preciseness to word choice that reduces the meandering scaffolding which can show more result from more traditionally executed stream of consciousness works. I’ve used the word fragmentary in relation to Kloss’ style before, and it's hard to avoid this description. Where Kloss succeeds is in the propulsive integrity of narrative logic—where words are spare, suggestion and imaginative intelligence fulfil their parts. Beautifully rendered and compelling. show less

A beautifully spine-tingling piece of work that takes on the feel of a found object, an artefact delivered from an unspecified time. The spare use of language hints at the particular syntax indicative of a bygone age, but not so that it overbears. In fact, the theme of being barely there is consistent throughout, with fractured passages that hide as much as they tell. What they do tell is unsettling, what is left on the periphery deeply disquieting. Keeping the element of mystery high, Kloss show more has a brazen subtlety which is strongly suggestive. A spectral book that will stay with you.

A strong example of language used in service to the form of a piece. Impressive, and recommended. show less

The Desert Places, by Amber Sparks and Robert Kloss, illustrated with eery satisfaction by Matt Kish, is “… an incomplete history of what passes for evil …” It can be read as a fabulist sequel to the Biblical Book of Job. In that ancient story — part folk-tale, part radical theology, part traditional Wisdom Literature — the “perfect and upright” Job dares to challenge God about the problem of evil. Why do the innocent suffer? Like a claimant in a lawsuit, Job files his show more complaint directly against the tribal god Yahweh. A courtroom drama follows, during which Job argues his case. We hear interminable examination and cross examination of Yahweh’s priests and wise men, until, at chapter 38, the big guy Himself takes the stand. Yahweh delivers from “out of the whirlwind” his blistering, sublime, majestic rant. I have always thought it the Bible’s greatest poem.
Job is smacked down. He bows and back-pedals and blubbers about “things too wonderful for me,” and then, having admitted his ignorance, his insignificance, is awarded damages. Case closed.
What Sparks and Kloss have done in The Desert Places is materialize a sublime, powerful voice capable of answering back to God. Job was just a mortal and out of his league. This voice emerges from what we call evil … Evil personified … a power on level with what Western religion thinks of as the “good” God. But God, Himself, had to be young once, “a nervous god, still virgin to creation,” who invented physical reality in which a fundamental element was this “negative, a dark absence, a clump of cells crying to come together. … a pause in the flickering before consciousness.”
“What passes for evil” was born as the “Clumsy thumbprint of an awkward deity.” (Kindle loc. 49)
Lyrical, frightening, and redundantly grotesque, The Desert Places allows “what passes for evil” to talk freely, to describe its terrible arc through history. “Once I thought I could be the lonely void, the hollow pit in the stomach, the vapor left behind by man’s voyage through the clouds. Once but no more. I am the counter-weight of the world.” (loc. 272) By the end, the reader knows Evil as a character in a character-driven story. That ending is not predictable. show less

Like crawling inside a madman's head — a madman who knows that it is you and me who fought and continue to fight a great civil war. A civil war between north and south, the paid and the unpaid, icefields and the prairie, buffalo stampedes and alligator plagues, tradition and modernity, fathers and sons, life and death. In nightmare streams of incantation, oration, and recitations from a Bible you almost know, Kloss takes you on a journey down a stream of history — a current flowing with show more Mississippi mud, Nile floods, and the chill of the River Styx. show less