Title: House of Pain
Author/Artist: Pan Pantziarka
Publisher: Creation Books
Media: Book
Reviewer: Kerri Sharp
'She gives the thermometer a shake and then sticks it under my tongue before I can say anymore. I let her take my pulse; I've got no fucking use for it'.
The 'I' of the story has no name. She's a whore whose distrust and hatred of everything we're supposed to aspire to or achieve begins with self loathing and the loathing of her punters. This is the starting point for a study in how low you can go and still be alive and able to glean some twisted pleasure from your disgusting existence. The 'House of Pain' is a study of self-imposed fascism and do it yourself nihilism: like a distorted microcosm of lottery culture Britain.
Imagine waking up in a hospital whose doctors think Auschwitz is a testament to medical science; who demand your complicity in their 'experiments' because they're God's new chosen representatives now that the Church has gone out of fashion. That's just for starters. Then enter the twisted sisters of the House of Pain. They're going to debase you to within an inch of your life and you're not going to even try to escape because you're loving the process of purification even though you're crawling on your belly through a cess pit of your own making. Like Jesus - the ultimate pornographic icon; his dying, tortured body displayed in a suspended animation of sexualised torture but never allowed release - so the central character here is dying for our sins.
Pan Pantziarka has written a difficult and honest book. Partly an exorcism of his own personal tragedy, and partly an opportunity to heat up a cauldron of taboos, the result is a full blown attack on institutionalised belief systems and the twin states of numbness: mediocrity and denial.
To say 'The House of Pain' explores extreme states of consciousness is too glib. It's more like the night before your execution: hating everything and yourself and still finding a sense of wonder and hope with the light of the new day. And that's the twisted trick that keeps you going; the trick that says it's going to be all right, but rarely is. This is more than the under belly of sexual imagination. It's like Hieronymous Bosch crawled into your darkest erotic nightmare.
But just when you think the great void is the only thing left, there's still the ultimate mission to fulfil: to kill God and all the other belief systems which proclaim salvation. And that can't be a bad thing can it?
When the narrator says: 'When life is goodness, when the world is sweetness; then just remind yourself: it means nothing', that doesn't mean she doesn't want you to get up and fight. The 'House of Pain' is a pissing, shitting, wanking adventure through the senses. Come and have a read if you think you're hard enough.