Spider Hacksaw’s A Midsummer’s Nightmare is based on “a true nightmare,” chronicling a group of friends who face their own mortality one fateful evening on a dark mountain road. The events they encounter that night threaten their lives and force them to examine and face their worst childhood nightmares and the parallels of reality. Its unusual dedication to Edgar Allen Poe epitomizes the artistry of the book and immediately draws parallels between Poe’s exploration of the human mind and the exploration presented by Hacksaw.
Hacksaw has an impressive mastery of words and deep appreciation for the artistry of the English language, compelling the reader as much with his words as with the plot of his story. The underlying theme of the dark side of the human mind is evident through its many allusions to such works as Carl Jung’s Man and His Symbols, Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, and the film Monster. The parallels to such works as Metamorphosis, stream of consciousness writing, mixture of both the poetry of the English language and swearing, eccentric intellectualism, raw sexuality, and focus on the prison of the mind make it certain to be an instant classic among the comparative literature set.
The intertextuality, temporal distortion, paranoia, and black humor make this postmodern work one of the few true literary works in recent memory. A Midsummer’s Nightmare takes you on a compelling journey through the “Ubiquitous Umbra” and the “dark abyss,” as Hacksaw’s life mission of exorcising the particular demons that torment him, writing A Midsummer’s Nightmare first as a poem, then a screenplay, and, finally, a book, all based on a recurring nightmare that he had as a young boy. Hacksaw aptly describes his imagination as “overactive,” using writing as a tool to dispel the paranoia and delusion that plague him. In A Midsummer’s Nightmare, Spider Hacksaw invites you on a journey of words that is equally surreal, haunting, and riveting.