The Yattering and Jack by Clive Barker

There are days I feel exactly like Jack Polo, the protagonist of this piece. We’ve all had those days where nothing goes right: the key doesn’t work, the blinds won’t close properly, the cat explodes all over the living room. After reading Clive Barker’s short story, I can now imagine the worse every time I lock myself out of a hotel room.  But is it really the worse, or did he give me the ability to see things are sometimes just out of my control?

The story is about a minor demon called Yattering who is sent to harass the mild-mannered son of a woman who reneged on a contract with Beelzebub. That contract, for whatever reason, was to result in the woman’s soul being turned over to Hell. Instead, she confessed her sins at death and ascended to Heaven. Jack is to be payment for this broken contract. To get his soul, the minor demon must cause him to go crazy.

I’m now convinced my ex-wife is a Yattering.

But Jack is privy to the plan and never allows himself to lose his temper or allow his thoughts to settle too long on the fact he’s being pursued. In fact, he has a plan to win the day.

Barker is known for his dark works of fiction, including The Hellbound Heart mentioned in an earlier blog post, as well as Imajica and The Great and Secret Show. But The Yattering and Jack is one of his rare jaunts into lighter, more comedic fare.

Where the book stumbles the most is the almost blasé way in which Barker reveals that Jack is in on the secret. The first third of the story is told from the POV of the demon, and so much times passes that I stop suspecting I might get it from Polo’s point of view. Then suddenly I get insight into Polo in an abrupt, head-hopping transitional paragraph. I say abrupt because Barker’s style is so fluid that anything can happen at any moment, and the reader needs to be prepared. Reading Barker is an act of conscientious reading, in which the text should be studied. He is not a lazy Saturday evening read.

There’s nothing spectacular about this story, though it was featured as an episode of Tales from the Darkside. Because we spend so much time with the Yattering at the beginning, it’s hard to see any kind of character arc from our protagonist. We have to assume that he’s been playing the game a long time, and he finally gets a chance at a final showdown. The biggest arc is for the antagonist, who, in a fit of rage, goes a little mad and makes a couple of clumsy mistakes the way he’d hoped Jack would.

The ending was only mildly satisfying, and leaves open the possibility that perhaps Jack didn’t win. Looking back, the reader may wonder if all the events had been foreseen by the Yattering’s masters and they got exactly what they wanted. It’s a classic case of short-story comeuppance that can be satisfying and infuriating in equal measure.

Clive Barker was a force in the 80s, and has given us plenty of classics. But I can’t shake the feeling that this is just an adaptation of some folktale or fairy tale he’d heard as a kid.