Time Adjusters is a Multi-Layered Must-Read: Haunted Houses, Time Warps, a duck, and a Baboon

by April Kittinger

The stories in Bill Ectric's book, Time Adjusters,  work on more than one level. Each story is a lot of fun to read, sometimes scary, sometimes funny, sometimes weirdly intriguing. The characters and dialogue seem real. On another level, Ectric demonstrates a familiarity with various literary concepts, without ever boring the reader with his knowledge. For example, he makes reference to the "deconstruction" method of writer/philosopher Jacques Derrida, but he doesn't dwell on it; rather, he uses it in a story about a haunted house with books flying off shelves . . . but I don't want to say too much. In another story, Bill features a college student who puts a cut-up message on a website. "Cut-up" is a style of writing where sentences are cut up and re-arranged to make new sentences. As Bill says on his website, cut-ups might be fun to do, but reading a cut-up poem by another person can be very tedious, indeed. It usually makes no sense. So Bill doesn't write the story as a cut-up. He writes it as a regular, straight-forward story wherein some gangsters read the boy's cut-up message and mistake the meaning - they think the student has found out about a murder they committed, so they set out to kill the boy! A couple of the stories have spiritual overtones. One tale ends with the Buddhist concept of finding a "middle path" in life. Another shows how a child deals with religious persecution by the governement. One story even mentions a grade-school favorite of mine - A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L'Engle (although I would not recommend this book for young children, especially the bizarre tale of The House and the Baboon).

Left: Sinister Bill Right: Friendly Bill

Club Web                                                 by Bill Ectric                                  Dedicated to William S. Burroughs A vampire game rave club, The Club Web Crowd chatters up a staircase, painted harlequins or corpselike the Queen’s wonders discussed on drama slowly from the drug effects Boy on two days leave, shook his head, you folks be fools. He who winks trouble picture gallery And effective blood human seduced and go out into the curious crowd wise wicked entice consent a glass of sherry Master of Ceremony greeted with a high shrill need. No sex scene so dreamily erotic Perfect, these remarks, he took him and opened a path but to the hungry soul voice one knows special, indeed beautiful the night Into the office now, men looked back here, eyes cause trouble. Go for a walk with me The stone side-path and rich rooms connect sweet honeycomb, there are attractions circling around everything Behind an arm and better wait who fools with wicked He stranger-invited her, on all levels the fire began To the move he by by the out he he forward he but he he he loathes… The townspeople surge onto the marble walk, look down, satisfied it was not their soul, Another wide-eyed pretty trickles sherry red.

The one story in Time Adjusters that is not so straightforward is a short poem called Club Web. Bill told me that his own mother read Club Web and said she had "no idea what it was about and probably didn't want to know." I asked Bill to discuss Club Web, the only poem in the book. I mean, I like this poem and I think I understand most of it, but it IS a "cut-up" poem, and there is a certain sinister vagueness . . . APRIL KITTINGER: It's kind of Goth isn't it? Reminds me of Interview With a Vampire. BILL ECTRIC: Yeah, it's kinda goth. APRIL: How did you write it? BILL: Club Web is a cut-up poem, hence the dedication to William S. Burroughs. I literally took two or three sentences from five different books – totally unrelated books – and mixed them up on a web site called the Grazulis Cut-Up Machine. After I mixed up the words, I began manipulating them into new sentences. Soon, a story suggested itself, partly in the new sentences and partly in my mind. With this story in mind, I made the words fit my purpose.

APRIL: It seems to take place in a rave club, but also a vampire role-playing club. BILL: Right. That's what it is. Maybe they are not real vampires, but maybe a real vampire walks among them. Or, maybe it is an analogy for a sexual predator. It can be both, of course.

The Phantom of the Opera was not a vampire, but Bill's poem "Club Web" reminds me of this poster. >>>

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