Castillo's book deals with Spanish authors of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It is not, however, intended as much for a reader interested in things Spanish because they are Spanish, as for one interested in the two issues of the title — the baroque and horror — and especially for one who follows the ongoing conversation on how our times are more or less baroque, given that horror is with us in plenitude. Just as curiosity and curiosities are at both ends of one of the most effective mechanisms of subjugation that have ever taken place in that fluid tragedy of power we call modernity, horrors and horror — in this case the origin would be in the little horrors, and the processed final product would be (The) Horror — might very well be the beginning and end of a parallel mechanism of disarming, dismembering, dispersal of any resistance. Castillo gives the reader the (in)famous “Body Worlds” exhibition of a few years ago as a disgusting and postmodern background to his study of horrors in Spanish baroque texts: I would have chosen Auschwitz, if only to purposefully incur the ire of any scholar who would turn his nose in the name of what's not done anymore in academia. Any (re)vitalizing powers of horror depend on horror not being the norm and the map.

The introduction explores the notions of curiosity, wonder, the monster, horror, and, finally, as an afterthought that could have been further explored, the macabre. Chapter 1 explores an interesting Spanish genre of the sixteenth century: the miscelánea. By comparing two specific misceláneas, Castillo sees a clear “gap” between the ideological solidities of the Renaissance and the “high baroque.” In this gap — related to “nonmeaningness” (60) — “minor strategies,” as Egginton calls them, flourish, and solitary monsters like Cervantes and Góngora write. Chapter 2 uses Egginton's idea of “the crypt” in relation to another genre (relaciones) and Cervantes's Novelas ejemplares. These texts are perfect examples of shattering boxes, bursting seams that contain–fail to contain their monsters. Chapter 4 is a witty study on how paranoia is cheap, effective, and contagious when provided the proper conduit: a passage to the repressed, evil past that always already threatens. An afterword exploring recent Spanish movies closes the book.

The book opens with, and is actually an expansion of, a famous quotation from Goya: “The sleep of reason produces monsters.” As Castillo writes on several occasions (xiii, 118), “the monsters come with the house.” The edifice of reason has monsters as maybe the very cement that holds the structure together. In chapter 3, for instance (a masterful negative dialectics of pornography devoted to María de Zayas), it becomes clear that it is the law itself that is the source of horror, so what is disturbing is that the cadavers are shown in order to say that they are to be hidden and silenced. That both things are said at the (impossible) same time is something familiar to readers of Castillo: anamorphosis is the way in which so many baroque painters tell two tales. My only critique of Castillo would be that I would have emphasized more the architectural model (a matter of cohabitation, of being there) over his anamorphosis (a visual effect, looking-at). Castillo, going in my direction, aptly applies his study to “the architecture of modernity” (xiii). It may very well be the baroque building or the baroque city, more than the baroque image, what proves to be key to explaining what happens, as opposed to what one sees. One may see or not, willingly or not, a painting, but cannot choose to not share space, even modern space, with a church. “Image is everything” is, I think, a hazy image of what is going on. And this book, wisely, does not concentrate on matters of optics. There are bodies at stake. This is a book about “the politics of fantasy and horror” (31) in relation to “our present moment of danger” (xii). A joy to read, it is beautifully researched, and permanently seeks complicity with the reader. Humor: how not to lose one's head.