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Elsa Carruthers
WPF January 2008 Term
Reading Journal:
Writing Horror by Edo Van Belkom
Although this book is seven years old, it had a lot of useful information on horror writing. The sections that I found the most helpful were the first, Part One: The Horror Genre, the second, Part Two: Writing Horror and chapters nine, twelve, and thirteen of Part Three: The Horror Marketplace.
In part one Belkom discusses the differences between horror and other speculative fiction and lists the basic subgenres of horror. The subgenre list is fairly complete and he took the time to give great examples of each. What I particularly like about this part is that he shows how horror fits in the speculative fiction family and that it is quite easy to blend and stretch genres by adding horror elements to a story such as subject, mood, and tension. An example of this is the movie Alien. Alien is most often classified as a science fiction movie but it also works as a modern horror. It works as a horror because of the many scenes in it that were written specifically to terrorize the viewer. She is trapped with a predatory alien or “monster” and it is obvious that only one of them will survive.
Part two of the book is the nuts and bolts, how-to section and the best part of this section is chapter six, How Does Horror Work. In this part Belkom gives a tutorial on how to write fiction that is suspenseful and frightening. He explains how to use rising tension and the power of suggestion rather than specific descriptions of a monster or “boogey man” to terrify readers. He says that readers tend to fill details on their own and often make the story more frightening for themselves that way.
Another thing he says is that it is a good idea when writing horror to use everyday settings and everyday characters because readers relate and identify with regular people and places and that makes it easier for them to suspend disbelief when the writer introduces horror and or supernatural elements into the story.
What I liked most about this book was that it is positive throughout. The message is that perseverance is really what gets a writer published. There is even a quote from Stephen King that I love.
“In a way, with those early (unpublished) novels, I felt like a guy who was plugging quarters in the machine with the big jackpot. And yanking it down. And at first they were coming up all wrong. Then with the book before Carrie, felt I got two bars and a lemon; then with Carrie, bars across the board – and the money poured out. But the thing is, I was never convinced I was going to run out of quarters to plug into the machine. My feeling was, I could stand there forever until it hit. There was never really any doubt in my mind. A couple of times I felt I was pursuing a fools dream, but those moments were rare.”
Elsa Carruthers
WPF January 2008 Term
Reading Journal:
Mr. Hands by Gary Braunbeck
Mr. Hands is a novel about a woman whose daughter is murdered and who suddenly finds herself with the power to seek vengeance against evil doers. Her daughter’s doll is somehow connected to a being or golem that does the mother’s bidding –with terrible consequences. It is a classic morality tale that is very well told and executed. It works mainly because the reader is immediately invested in the story that the narrator starts even in the prologue.
Chapter One is a page turner from the first line and I took an immediate like for RJ and his mother and immediate hate for his father. The conflict is incredible. I was so impressed by the way that so many story-lines were brought together in the book that I tried to do it myself in a short-story turned novella I’ve been tinkering on (not as easy as he makes it seem) Love this book! Passed onto my husband who is now one of Gary's biggest fans.
Elsa Carruthers
WPF January 2008 Term
Reading Journal:
Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z. Brite
This novel is about two homosexual serial killers that meet in New Orleans where they join together to hunt a young man named Tran. He is the perfect victim, he is beautiful and sensitive and though the ending was inevitable and a little disappointing because I did want it to turn out better, I felt compelled to read through to the last page.
Brite’s writing impressed me deeply. Her prose packs a wallop and demands attention. Her subject matter and frankness also impressed me. She was not afraid of writing intimately about the lifestyle – even some of its unsavory parts. I felt like an “insider” who had lived in the French Quarter all her life while reading Brite’s novel.
Brite’s sensitivity while describing the suffering of AIDS victims and the deep love two men can share was moving. I was particularly moved when I read about John’s infection and his suicide in front of his only two friends. But the parts that “got” to me were when Brite managed to lull me into thinking I was reading an erotic scene only to pull the rug from under me and change the whole scene into a gory bloodbath.
The effect was more than unsettling. I’m sure that was her point. To these men, Jay and Andrew, inflicting pain and suffering and ultimately committing murder is erotic. To them these acts of torture are expressions love and affection. And yet, both know, even comment on the fact that what there are really showing is not love at all. Or, if it is love, it is a very one sided kind of love –self love. The victims become objects to play with and the love that the killers attach to them is really just the love that they are giving to themselves.
When Jay lets Andrew convince him into hunting Tran, even though he developed a respect and affection for Tran that didn’t allow him to kill Tran during their sexual encounter, for a flicker of a moment Jay had doubt. If Jay could have withstood Andrew’s power and charisma, he might have stopped killing. At this point I think that Brite missed an opportunity for a huge conflict. Jay and Andrew love each other and have joined each other in killing. Although he is the bigger monster of the two, Jay is submissive to Andrew. But what would have happened if Jay refused Andrew his wish of killing Tran? What if he said no to killing altogether?
Elsa Carruthers
WPF January 2008 term
Reading Journal:
Danse Macabre by Stephen King
Danse Macabre is a survey of thirty years of American horror genre film, television and literature to the 1970s. King divides horror into three areas or archetypes: The Werewolf, The Thing Without A Name, and The Vampire. By Werewolf, King means stories about an inner evil that changes a person. Stories like Psycho, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The Thing Without A Name refers to anything other and are tales of an outside evil. Aliens or Martians that turned hostile in response to our aggression, weird inventions or hybrids, accidents of birth due to medical intervention, machines that come alive are all examples.
Vampire tales are also stories about an outside evil but unlike works like Frankenstein the evil is unavoidable; predestined like the prime athlete’s unexplained heart attack. Frankenstein, and novels like it, center on evil that is conscious and man-made. Dr. Frankenstein created the monster. The evil in Dracula really can’t be explained. It is ancient, supernatural. Victims can be said to sinners but really they are in the wrong place at the wrong time. It is like hitting some awful lottery where all of the prizes get progressively worse.
King also asserts that symbolism is inherent to the horror genre. To quote him, “Begin by assuming that the tale of horror, no matter how primitive, is allegorical by its very nature; that it is symbolic. Assume that it is talking to us, like a patient on a psychoanalyst’s couch, about one thing while it means another. I am not saying that horror is consciously allegorical or symbolic; that is to suggest an artfulness that few writers of horror fiction or directors of horror films aspire to.” (p.43)
I tend agree with him. People ask him and all horror writers why they write horror. For me it is what I know. I read the comics, watched the movies, and read the stories. And still, it’s more than that. Horror allows me a way to say things I just can’t in any other genre. Sure other genres touch upon some of the subjects that I think about, subjects that scare me and others, but they don’t center on them. Other genres don’t focus on the macabre, the grotesque that is everywhere in our society. And by writing those stories I’m doing what Stephen King says all horror writers are doing. I’m talking about one thing all the while meaning something else.
Clive Barker has to be one of the most elegent horror writers of all time. He effortlessly weaves mysticsm and symbolism into a unified theme in a way that I've never seen before or since.
The first time a read a Clive Barker story, I was around thirteen. My brother and I were riding a Greyhound out of Barstow, CA to Las Vegas and he handed me one slim volume in the Book of Blood series. I took Michael's copy and read it straight through, and we talked about Barker for the rest of the trip, speculating about what kind of man he was, and what kind of stories he'd likely put out in the future. Michael and I shared a love of Punk, Rock, and Metal, weird and scary stories, comics, video games, and what my mother called, "those damn mind-cooking movies."
And he was always better than I was about predicting when something or someone was going to hit it big. (When the Red Hot Chili Peppers first came on the scene, we loved their music but I thought their name was too silly for them to get very far. Michael disagreed, and a few years later they were mega-stars.)
The memory makes me smile because I don't get to talk to him now. So I sat down with Cabal, thinking of my brother and remembering all those good times. It was almost like coming home. And the feeling intensified when I finally realized that the book is really a collection of short stories. The title story is the first and while predictable, still one of Barker's best. The setting is incredible-- he has Hawthorne's ability to make a place seem at once dreamy and realistic. Midian is so lovingly described that I want to belong there(just a little)
The characters are dynamic and with the exception of the psychiatrist, realistically unpredicable. Even the sheriff surprised me at the end of the story. Doc's character I didn't find as appealing because he was singulary focused and motivated. He had no paradoxes in his character, no irrational quirks that we all have. Still, I gained a lot from him; I realize now, what is wrong with my own villian, Yaakov. He is the Doc, in different clothes.
The fight that they had on the street while the town folk watch was the real climax of the book. Unfortunately, the fight happens about two-thirds of the way in and everything after that seems anti-climatic. I had a hard time keeping interest after that scene.
And as much as I loved this book and the characters, Ludlow's affair with the reporter didn't work. It didn't work plot-wise because it seemed arbitrary and character-wise it didn't work because Ludlow's character was devoted to his wife. A man like him takes a long time to fall in love and an even longer time falling out of love - if he ever does.
When I started reading Live Girls, by Ray Garton, I thought, Oh no, not another vampire story! But Garton's novel was a quick, tight, and engrossing read. His ideas weren't necessarily new, all vampires have the potential of becoming sexual vampires, but his characters were so sympathetic that I just had to read on to find out what he'd put them through.
The story centers around a vampire den in the middle of New York. The den is a sex shop called Live Girls. One of the main characters, Davey, wanders into the shop after his live-in girlfriend ruthlessly dumps him, and leaves him for another man. Quickly, he becomes obsessed with the beautiful vampire, Anya. He starts out as a weak, ready-made victim. He follows her around, almost begging her to notice him. I winced at times when Davey showed no self-respect. Surprisingly, he becomes a tough man of his word. I won't spoil anything by telling the ending - but it was satisfying watching Davey transform himself.
I can't get over how Simmons was able to maintain a feeling of isolation, desperation, and paranoia, over hundreds of pages. It worked great; I felt the characters' discomfort and fear. It rang true to me; when I was stationed in Bosnia, many of us behaved in the same ways despite the availability of television, phones, mail, games, a gym, and radios. Soon most of us bickered and fought. I know that I developed an irrational conviction that everyone was after my promotion after another soldier discovered that a rival of mine had been secretly taping my conversations. I also smiled to myself when I got to the part about the spoiled food, supplied by a cheat that placed the lowest bid. God, some things really don't change.
But what really got me was how, over time, years of religious dogma and social conditioning was eroded, then abandoned. Soon, the sailors had talismans and made offerings to the monster. They resort to cannibalism. Civilization as they had defined it, and how it defined them, had disappeared.
What is so interesting to me is comparing our audience reaction to The Terror to what a reaction an 1800s audience might have had. In the present, we can read this novel and define the monster as the landscape or the creature, or the conditions, or even all of them combined. But I think that had this novel really been written in the 1800s, the audience would have defined monstrosity in a different way. While they certainly would have seen the horrors of the conditions and the monster, as well as the landscape, I believe it would have been secondary to the loss of civilization. Whereas we are able to rationalize some of the baser things they did, an audience of that time, I'm guessing from what I've gathered through readings, probably would have seen the same actions as a complete and totally irreversible loss of humanity.
I'm curious. What do you think?
Danse Macabre was a great read because he kept that conversational tone that he uses in his novels and I wasn't really expecting him to do that. I expected him to "put on his academic cap" and write in a serious style. I'm so glad he didn't.
That said, I don't think that his t-shirt and jeans approach always worked for me because some of his credibility eroded a little every time he made a personal attack against another writer.
Attack the work - yeah, all for it. Point out flaws, look for holes, crappy sentences, loose characterization. I'm all over that. God knows there are writers that I love to hate. But still, don't get personal! Each time King slammed someone, I found myself asking, "Damn, why is he doing that? Isn't enough to say what was wrong with the piece and move on?" And then I asked myself, "Well, can I really trust him when he says a work is good?"
I couldn't get over the fact that art is so subjective, and yet he makes absolute statements. I can't count the number of times I've picked a book, read a chapter and put it down thinking that it was total drek, only to see it on the New York Times Best Seller List a short time later. Or going to a music shop and finding a beloved album in the $3 bin.
I guess part of the issue for me is that, (I don't why except that I somehow thought "more" of him), I expected an impartial review. I wanted him to be a reporter - just the facts, and nothing but. I didn't want to read about how he knows so-and-so will never be a good writer and how we would be better off if we never heard from so-and-so again. That seemed petty and beneath King. I do realize that if he had remained neutral, he would have lost some of that "just between us" feel, but I just can't help feeling disappointed.
Yes, I know that he did the same thing in On Writing. Sigh. I'll dust him off and put him back on his pedestal. Hmmm. Maybe if I care this much, I'm totally in love with him. Shush! Don't tell my husband.
Here goes again:
Oh, there are so many things I loved about this novel!
First, there's the plotting. It's air-tight. And it accomplishes so much! Everything that happens and everything each character does, says or thinks, serves a purpose - it's either propelling the story, building tension, putting in back-story or building characterization. Some passages even do double duty, such as when Regan comes down-stairs during the dinner party and urinates on the carpet. That scene ratcheted up the tension while adding a touch of foreshadowing and even giving a bit of back-story. Plus, Regan having a potty accident is just the right combination of bizarre and mundane to ground us in the story. It's the perfect amount of verisimilitude.
Back-story is woven into the chapters so subtly that it's almost undetectable. The best example is when Father Damien is visiting his mother and walking up to her apartment reminds him of being a seventh grader, walking his girl, only to run into his mother as she's digging through the dumpster. Awesome!
Second, the characterization. Everyone read "true" to me, especially Damien. Blatty gets every ethnicity and social class right, even down to what they'd probably wear. And that's just not that easy! I also love the internal dialogues. Reading them, I really felt like I was in their heads- another grounding technique. If we don't believe that the events are really happening; we at least believe that the character thinks they are.
Third, style. Blatty's style, (I define style as the combination of a writer's word choice, sentence structure, and writing techniques) reminded me of Shirley Jackson's writing. Like hers, his writing is lean. It's direct without being too sparse. To me, it's elegant.
I don't know how I've overlooked this book for so long, but I'm glad I read it.
An idea that did stay with me was how Wells structured his novel to best deliver his message versus the way that Ayn Rand structured Atlas Shrugged, which at times, worked against her message. The novels are similar enough in theme that I think they are worth comparing. Both Rand and Wells wrote about class struggle, individualism vs. collectivism, and intellectualism. Rand even touches on Darwinism in her book.
Usually art is from the point of view of the elite, and takes a look at our society from the top down. Rand did just that with her characters, Dagney, Galt, Wyatt, Francisco, and Reardon. What Wells did was reverse the view so that we could look up, and ask questions about things that we take for granted.
Wells set his book on an uncharted island as an allegorical representation of our society while Rand uses a fictional United States. One cultural assumption that both were concerned with is the idea that the educated and/or wealthy and powerful always know what is best for everyone else. And that they have, by virtue of them being rich or powerful, the right to impose their ideas on the masses.
This assumption is so pervasive that we are still governed by it. Wells himself believed that the average citizen was incapable of understanding global issues, and that even the right to voting should be offered to a select group. Rand believed in a fierce meriticrosy, one in which people can climb to the top if they have enough gumption.
Wells' choice of an isolated island setting was brilliant. It created a feeling of desperation while allowing the reader to become deeply involved with the characters. On the island, the creatures represent the lowest level of the social hierarchy but couldn't express themselves, so Prendick speaks for them. As he learns what has happened to them, Prendick describes the horrors, even spelling out the lasting consequences. This is very effective - the reader is immediately on the side of the creatures. In a sympathetic mindset, we ask ourselves if Dr. Moreau had any right to conduct the experiments and then, why it is that his world view is automatically assumed to be the correct one. Another question we ask is: what is Moreau's responsibility toward the creatures?
Here Wells really scores. If Dr. Moreau equals Imperialism run wild, then we immediately see the evil of imperialism. And Wells accomplished this without a long-winded, boring lecture because all of the heavy, moral lifting was done by Prendick's character when he exposed Moreau's true nature.
Rand tries to do this as well, depicting the ills of socialism through board meetings and riots in the streets, but it doesn't quite work. Her novel is full of long, awkward speeches that are designed to make the reader understand and accept her points. We never really relate to her main characters Dagney and John Galt because they are too idealized- too unsympathetic. So when Dagney is working herself to death to save a railroad that is vital to US economy, while her leftist brother undermines her every effort, I don't care.
Aside from her characterization issues, one problem is her setting. Because Rand wanted to comment on the effects of socialism on a national level, she picked the entire United States as her setting and even has sections set in Chile, and overseas. Thus, her work couldn't replicate the same immediacy and intimacy as Island. Not a bad thing, just different.
But another problem is her choice of length. Where Island is a short, quick, hard jab in a face, Atlas is a long, exhausting fight to the death. Rand would have done better to break Atlas up into a trilogy.
All of this isn't to say that Wells was necessarily a better writer writer than Rand. Each had different strengths. In fact, Rand was much more adept at zooming in and out of sections of her story without losing narrative tension. What I can say is that it appears that Wells understood his weaknesses better than Rand did hers, and that Wells understood that the way he presented his arguments had a great impact on how his audience received it.
Many scholars have commented on the sensuality in Dracula and the possibility of the bites and exchange of blood as being a euphemism for sex. I tend to agree, and that was my frame of mind as I finished the novel.
I studied Jonathan's encounter with Dracula's wives. When Dracula comes to stop them from feeding on Jonathan, he rebukes them. And the blonde says in reply, "You yourself never loved; you never love!" What an odd thing to say at that moment but even odder was Dracula's response. Instead belting her or something worse, he studies Jonathan's face and whispers, "Yes, I too can love; you yourselves can tell it from the past. Is it not so? . . ." Well, here I thought that she was complaining about his lack of physical support for them. They're hungry and maybe a little lonely. But, Dracula goes on and after he's done speaking, gives them something to eat. " . . . Well, now I promise you that when I'm done with him, you shall kiss him at your will . . ."
Wow! We all know that kissing isn't the only thing they want to do with him, so is she complaining that he isn't putting out? And it's almost as if he's defensive and says, "Hey, you three know I had it going on for a while." It seems his pride is hurt more than a little as well - over the long haul, he's unable to satisfy his women.
This got me thinking about the story in Kings 1:1 about one of King David's wives in his old age. He marries her because he is old and wants a bed companion to keep him warm and that's all she is. Avishag is young and beautiful but David is too old to consummate the marriage, so after his death she's stuck, unable to marry anyone else because she was once married to the king of Israel and to have relations with another man would have been a defilement. Gee, we don't want any man upstaging the king, do we?
Anyway, Dracula had the habit of finding young women, seducing them, then casting them aside. These poor women found themselves in the same predicament as Avishag. They're bitter and in a sense, they did defile themselves with Jonathan. I guess we'll never know for sure, but could it be that of all of the women Dracula could choose, he picked Mina out of revenge? Like he was taking Jonathan's woman in retaliation for Jonathan having taken his?
I studied her picture, feeling a mixture of revulsion and greedy interest. The skin on her grotesquely enlarged chest (really, she has a gallon of silicone in there) was stretched to the max, making her barely covered breasts gleam like two wet beach balls.
As I read I kept thinking about that woman. Every time I came upon a portion describing Elizabeth's beauty or the monster's hideousness, I thought of her. She popped into my mind and became the monster to me, desperately chasing acceptance. In my imagination, I could see her, lying on a gurney, waiting to be fixed and it occurred to me that what Shelley was really doing was ranting.
What I took out reading Frankentstein was Shelley's disappointment in our inability to relate to one another, heart to heart, instead of physically. And as a consequence of that inability, we have a terrible need to have everyone conform, as the boom of cosmetic procedures, shape wear, make up, body enhancing, etc. proves.
Until recently, most of the burden of being attractive was placed on women - certainly in Shelley's day, beauty was the only way a woman could really move up in society. So if one could exceed expectations, wonderful. If not, conform or else. And if you don't have the money or the will to conform, society has a way of making you pay.
Frankenstein created an ugly person, whom he had to have known in advance would be ugly. Why in the hell didn't he accept his creation and own up to the responsibility he took on? Because, no one wants to have an ugly child, do they?
Throughout the narrative we are shown repeatedly how foreign, how alien, this creature truly is. And furthermore, the Cthulhu cult and it's adherents are inhuman, we are told. To illustrate this, unfortunately, Lovecraft uses one humanity's basest fears, xenophobia, as a tool to demonstrate Cthulhu's "alien-ness." By describing all of the worshipers as "reveling, and orgiastic," and attaching to them the label of "other," Lovecraft seems to have said, "You see. The followers of The Cult of Cthulhu aren't to be understood or related to; they aren't even human." Lovecraft does this by tagging them in turns as mulatto, negro, mongrel. Terms with which no white person, (the intended audience), of the time would ever, in his or her worst nightmares, wish to be associated.
In fact, it seems that every person who accidentally comes into a knowledge of Cthulhu is white or European, while willing worshipers are are other races. The whites and Europeans of course die, their souls untainted with the evil of Cthulhuism. The others live on , engaging in the most horrific forms of worship and ensuring that they will never get into heaven, even if they wanted to. Lovecraft even suggests that their adherence to the cult is of direct result of their "inferior" races.
And the descriptions that Lovecraft attaches to the "others" are particularly loathsome. Esquimaux are "degenerate" and "diabolist," the prisoners are "men of a very low, mixed-blooded, and mentally aderrant type", and the Negroes "gave a coloring of voodooism to the heterogeneous cult." And on and on until we come to understand that such a great writer as Lovecraft had a terrible shortcoming - one which I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy, especially an artist, - the inability to relate to others.
As an aside, I did enjoy reading this very much. I particularly enjoyed it because I see it with new eyes and I can also see where some of my contemporary heroes might have gotten their ideas. If I ever get the chance, I will ask Stephen King if he was thinking of this story when he wrote Duma Key.
My love for speculative fiction, but especially horror, started by watching The Twilight Zone, Tales from the Dark Side, Tales from the Crypt, Night Gallery, The Ray Bradbury Theater and The Outer Limits,as kid. Then I graduated to comic books. How did you all come to the dark side?
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