What a shame. Here I sit without a massive house filled with a malevolent spirit to drive them to wanton lust.
“Hell House” by Richard Matheson is good in most respects. It is a haunted house story so there are some prerequisites that must be met. First, of course, the house itself. Belasco house fits the bill perfectly. Built by a wealthy recluse who spent his fortune and adulthood descending into studying debauchery and all forms of carnal sin. Second, we have to have the reason to be there. Enter the second wealthy person who now owns the property and wants it studied. Mr. Deutsch fills this role, though to be honest the motivation for the foray into “Hell House” is a bit muddy. Does Deutsch want to verify it is haunted or does he want the place cleansed of the evil spirit(s)? Third we have to have the haunting force (or hoax depending on the story). “Hell House” certainly does have a haunting force. Finally, we have to have our Scooby-gang who will reside within the house for some length of time. “Hell House” provides a plucky quartet who thinks they are up to the challenge.
The setting is wonderful. Matheson gives the reader the secluded manor devoid of life, light, or love. As is usually the case, the place is beyond large. It dwarfs the temporary inhabitants with a grand hall, a pornographic chapel, umpteen bedrooms, an industrial sized kitchen and theater. The scale spooks the reader as there is no way the place can be cozy or homey. Often Matheson describes the place as “museum like.” Museums can be pleasant (this one isn’t), but they certainly aren’t places you want to live.
The motivation to be in the house tends to be secondary in haunted house stories. In this case the cast of characters, except Edith, were all eager to get a shot at Hell House. Fischer finally admits he’s been dead for thirty years since the house beat him before. He seems reluctant, but he too realizes how important it is for him to face the place, or die trying. So, Deutsch’s role is minimal (and even less so as the reader discovers when they try to contact him).
The haunting force is one of the big twists in this book. Florence thinks she knows what it is. Barrett thinks he knows what it is. Edith doesn’t know and doesn’t care, she’s just there as baggage for Barrett, afraid to be alone. Fischer doesn’t know what the haunting force is and he doesn’t really want to know. Again, as with his motivation to return, he eventually comes around. Suffice it to say, the cast holds up their end of the tale.
So, the core elements of the tale are there, and are solid. Why am I not raving? What is it about this story that held it back from being over-the-top classic in my mind?
Sorry, it was the sex. Not just the sex, but the overt hot and cold flavors Matheson gave to Edith and Florence specifically. The classic “virginal” female character mold was once again reinforced with this story. It is laughable, unfair, and makes for painful reading. Edith and Florence aren't allowed to have healthy normal interest in or expressions of sexual desire. They fit the no-sex equals good girl, sex of any kind must be caused by the devil mold. Had Matheson engaged Barrett and Fischer with similar lust issues due to the haunting(s) it would not have bothered me.
Barrett would have been a perfect candidate too. Unable to perform sexually due to having polio as a child, Barrett is effectively incapable of sexual arousal or performance. Had Matheson teased and tormented him by providing an erection and coming at Florence or even forcefully coming onto Edith, the sexual aspects of the haunting events would have hit harder. Edith’s rape (or near rape) at the hands of her father would have hit her extra hard if Barrett, roughly her father’s age, had attacked her.
Instead the sexual elements of this story with Florence’s visions of “Daniel” and Edith coupling with her, of Edith coming onto Fischer multiple times, of breasts being revealed and mutilated, and nude strolls happening semi-regularly (but only to the women) seemed border-line exploitative. I write those words with pain. I don’t like to use the word exploitative as it implies a sense of crossing a line which implies the need for censorship. I violently oppose censorship. This story just seemed slanted in a very anti-female way.
The counter argument to this, of course, is that Belasco was lusting after the ladies. If Fischer’s brief history of the house from page 54 to page 61 would have only included wanton sexual depravity I would have gone along with the line of attack directed at Florence and Edith. But Fischer shares that along with the orgies and sexual depravity Belasco killed animals out of curiosity, drug addiction, loss of control, mutilation, murder, necrophilia, cannibalism, eating virgins by starving leopards, unnecessary surgery, swapping animal organs for human, and eventually death from disease, suicide or murder.
Some of these things appear to the foursome who battle Hell House, but the focus seems singularly on the breaking of the women sexually. It doesn’t ruin the story, but I was hoping for all the characters to face more private hells. Florence gives in entirely too easily to the whining of “Daniel” Belasco. She is the strongest of the characters in many ways, and for whining and pleading to be all that convinces her to let a spirit lie with her just seemed too convenient. Having pity sex with a ghost seemed out of character in the extreme.
Edith’s depravity is more believable. She is incredibly repressed due to childhood trauma and simple medical fact in the form of an impotent husband. Her slow walk down Belasco’s path is better written and hits the reader harder.
The attacks should have better reflected the history lesson Fischer gives and also the exhaustive alphabetized list of phenomenon catalogued on pages 45 and 46. Not everything needed to be in this story, mind you, but more of it could have been there.
Overall “Hell House” does a great job of drawing the reader in and the revelations as the story crescendos are worth the read. It was a nice twist that Matheson allows for multiple explanations and philosophies to exist in this universe. Again, don’t want to spoil the fun for those who haven’t read it. Is there a little too much separating of the characters so bad things can befall them? Yes, there is. There’s also a big focus paid to characters getting out of bed and slipping on shoes. If there was a literary device or some kind of symbolism going on there I missed it. All I could think of is “these people get in and out of bed a lot” and maybe there is some dim parallel to the roaring orgy days of Belasco’s heyday in Hell House there.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Do All Musicians Play to Keep the Void Away?
I specifically denied myself the pleasure of listening to the audio file of “The Music of Erich Zann” posted on our main page for class this week. I didn’t want to be tainted by hearing the interpretation of the “weirdness of his music” by someone else.
As usual this story is Lovecraft working his mojo on the reader by taking a perfectly normal setting and twisting it to the point where we recognize it but are now uneasy to have it described into our brains via the written word.
This may be one of the best settings and mood pieces Lovecraft ever wrote. It is a horror tale to be sure (after losing vampires and werewolves to other genres I cling fiercely to all our darlings now), but until the “big reveal” of Zann somehow trying to fiddle away eternity this story had elements of fantasy, fairy tale, and even romance.
This is not a knock, this is a huge strength. The fourth paragraph is really what did it for me:
“I have never seen another street as narrow and steep as the Rue d’ Auseil. It was almost a cliff, closed to all vehicles, consisting in several places of flights of steps, and ending at the top in a lofty ivied wall. Its paving was irregular, sometimes stone slabs, sometimes cobblestones, and sometimes bare earth with struggling greenish-grey vegetation. The houses were tall, peaked-roofed, incredibly old, and crazily leaning backward, forward, and sidewise. Occasionally an opposite pair, both leaning forward, almost met across the street like an arch; and certainly they kept most of the light from the ground below. There were a few overhead bridges from house to house across the street.”
That paragraph immediately brought a few vivid images to mind for me. First, Dr. Seuss and his illustrations of buildings that just shouldn’t be. The odd angles, the non-square corners, and everything just kind of blending together really popped. The second was Tim Burton and his production crew. I thought: what would Burton do with this paragraph? That was the fantasy/fairy tale take.
But Lovecraft being Lovecraft makes sure to sprinkle in the dark. Details such as “almost a cliff” (usually dangerous things those) and “struggling greenish-grey vegetation” (not attractive, kind of ominous) and “certainly they kept most of the light from the ground below” (so then it’s dark in and around these crazy houses) keep the reader off balance and worried. Interested yes, but worried to be sure. Plus, even with Dr. Seuss bouncing into my thoughts the quasi-rational part of me wondered how safe it could be to be in one of these houses? Are they falling apart? Were they designed like this? Did an earthquake or mudslide leave them like this and people have to live there anyway?
The final ratchet up that made it even better was that the narrator could never find the place again. Was it imagined? Is this narrator nuts and his memory is wrong? That just adds to the mystery and mystique of the setting.
In short, this was for me a very good hook. To be fair I know I’m not going to get a lot of satisfying characters or character development from Lovecraft so when he immerses me in his signature ability (setting) so well I truly enjoy his stories.
The other part of this story that absolutely sweeps the reader along is the reference to the music Erich Zann plays. Lovecraft makes his story timeless by never describing the music in specific terms. The narrator is “haunted by the weirdness.” He “often heard sounds which filled me with an indefinable dread.” Never does Lovecraft say Zann’s playing sounds like a dying swan or a locomotive hissing or anything definable. He leaves the specific sounds up to the reader’s ear. Some will hear shrill orchestral violin solos. Others will hear synthesized keyboard-like tones that might be heard in a planetarium from hell.
The key is that each reader hears something different, and that is why I didn’t listen to the audio file on the class home page. I have my own idea of what Zann’s playing sounded like. After I finish this posting I will listen and see if they got it right or wrong.
The further beauty of using musical notes to ratchet up tension and fear is that it is a non-visual sensory experience for the reader. So much of what we read is described to satisfy the eyes. Zann’s music doesn’t satisfy at all, and it hits the reader in the ears, not the eyes. It might even go deeper for actual musicians who have studied notes and played scales. For those readers this story might evoke the memories of sore fingers, frazzled minds and endless hours trying to get a song just right. Lucky for those readers they weren’t playing to keep existence at bay.
The final reveal that steals Zann from this world and that the narrator flees from never to find that wonderfully strange street is less terrifying and more a question. Who was Zann? Why did this expanse want him? Was the narrator in the right place at the right time or is there something special that saved him from the void? This is one of the stories of Lovecraft that could easily be fleshed out into a larger more expansive work, and imagine how the music would sound for that?
As usual this story is Lovecraft working his mojo on the reader by taking a perfectly normal setting and twisting it to the point where we recognize it but are now uneasy to have it described into our brains via the written word.
This may be one of the best settings and mood pieces Lovecraft ever wrote. It is a horror tale to be sure (after losing vampires and werewolves to other genres I cling fiercely to all our darlings now), but until the “big reveal” of Zann somehow trying to fiddle away eternity this story had elements of fantasy, fairy tale, and even romance.
This is not a knock, this is a huge strength. The fourth paragraph is really what did it for me:
“I have never seen another street as narrow and steep as the Rue d’ Auseil. It was almost a cliff, closed to all vehicles, consisting in several places of flights of steps, and ending at the top in a lofty ivied wall. Its paving was irregular, sometimes stone slabs, sometimes cobblestones, and sometimes bare earth with struggling greenish-grey vegetation. The houses were tall, peaked-roofed, incredibly old, and crazily leaning backward, forward, and sidewise. Occasionally an opposite pair, both leaning forward, almost met across the street like an arch; and certainly they kept most of the light from the ground below. There were a few overhead bridges from house to house across the street.”
That paragraph immediately brought a few vivid images to mind for me. First, Dr. Seuss and his illustrations of buildings that just shouldn’t be. The odd angles, the non-square corners, and everything just kind of blending together really popped. The second was Tim Burton and his production crew. I thought: what would Burton do with this paragraph? That was the fantasy/fairy tale take.
But Lovecraft being Lovecraft makes sure to sprinkle in the dark. Details such as “almost a cliff” (usually dangerous things those) and “struggling greenish-grey vegetation” (not attractive, kind of ominous) and “certainly they kept most of the light from the ground below” (so then it’s dark in and around these crazy houses) keep the reader off balance and worried. Interested yes, but worried to be sure. Plus, even with Dr. Seuss bouncing into my thoughts the quasi-rational part of me wondered how safe it could be to be in one of these houses? Are they falling apart? Were they designed like this? Did an earthquake or mudslide leave them like this and people have to live there anyway?
The final ratchet up that made it even better was that the narrator could never find the place again. Was it imagined? Is this narrator nuts and his memory is wrong? That just adds to the mystery and mystique of the setting.
In short, this was for me a very good hook. To be fair I know I’m not going to get a lot of satisfying characters or character development from Lovecraft so when he immerses me in his signature ability (setting) so well I truly enjoy his stories.
The other part of this story that absolutely sweeps the reader along is the reference to the music Erich Zann plays. Lovecraft makes his story timeless by never describing the music in specific terms. The narrator is “haunted by the weirdness.” He “often heard sounds which filled me with an indefinable dread.” Never does Lovecraft say Zann’s playing sounds like a dying swan or a locomotive hissing or anything definable. He leaves the specific sounds up to the reader’s ear. Some will hear shrill orchestral violin solos. Others will hear synthesized keyboard-like tones that might be heard in a planetarium from hell.
The key is that each reader hears something different, and that is why I didn’t listen to the audio file on the class home page. I have my own idea of what Zann’s playing sounded like. After I finish this posting I will listen and see if they got it right or wrong.
The further beauty of using musical notes to ratchet up tension and fear is that it is a non-visual sensory experience for the reader. So much of what we read is described to satisfy the eyes. Zann’s music doesn’t satisfy at all, and it hits the reader in the ears, not the eyes. It might even go deeper for actual musicians who have studied notes and played scales. For those readers this story might evoke the memories of sore fingers, frazzled minds and endless hours trying to get a song just right. Lucky for those readers they weren’t playing to keep existence at bay.
The final reveal that steals Zann from this world and that the narrator flees from never to find that wonderfully strange street is less terrifying and more a question. Who was Zann? Why did this expanse want him? Was the narrator in the right place at the right time or is there something special that saved him from the void? This is one of the stories of Lovecraft that could easily be fleshed out into a larger more expansive work, and imagine how the music would sound for that?
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Phantom or Master of Puppets?
“The Phantom of the Opera” by Gaston Leroux has many different layers to discuss. The Paris opera house itself comes to mind. Masks, both literal and figurative seem a prominent theme. The ever goofy French sensibility could be discussed as they are shown in the opera managers and the not-so-elite police force who are more amused by the happenings in the opera house than anything else, even with behind-the-scenes people hanging themselves and chandeliers crushing patrons.
But The Opera Ghost himself is what drew me into this story. Erik. The trap-door-lover. Leroux casts “poor Erik” as the villain in this tale, but after it is read you realize that Erik is the only character to have changed, the only character to have learned and grown. He is the only character to move through the story and be made better by it. So, is he the villain … or the hero?
The documentary style in which Leroux presents his story is well done, but it does fall apart stylistically. The reader starts with a prologue that is signed “Gaston Leroux.” This breaking down of the “fourth wall” (if I can use a theater term here) to insert the writer into his own fiction is excellent. I had to close the book and compare the names and when I saw they were the same I thought “neat, well done.”
But the documentary style falters in the middle. For example, in Chapter X “Forget the Name of the Man’s Voice,” is simply a chapter of prose fiction. There are no author’s notes to explain this was captured or reenacted or taken from letters about this event. Leroux has created fiction in the middle of his fiction, but he’s presented that fiction as documentary style fact. Confused? Don’t be, it is a minor flaw in the story, and one that would be almost impossible not to make. But after the opening I was looking forward to an old fashioned story told in interviews, letters, opera play bills, etc. The final action during which The Persian and Raoul follow Erik into the bowels of the opera house returns to the documentary style with the entire account being “The Persian’s Narrative.”
Overall the story has a nice forward momentum. The asides with Erik tormenting the opera managers and embarrassing Carlotta were solid subplots, and The Persian standing in for the reader to share the background on Erik so we know more about who we are dealing with and who is holding Christine Dae prisoner is solid technique.
However, the emotions of the love triangle are, to put it mildly, overwrought and annoying. Raoul and his petulant boy-man ravings are nearly laughable at times, and he really never does anything in this story. Christine returns to her father’s grave, Raoul follows … and accomplishes nothing. He goes to Christine’s dressing room, and accomplishes nothing. Without The Persian Raoul never would have been able to pursue Erik down into the ground under the opera house, and once he gets there he’s more of a burden than a help.
Christine isn’t much better. Her emotional response to everything frustrates the reader. The one thing Raoul has right, running off before the big performance (the one in which Erik steals Christine off the stage mid-performance), Christine ignores as it would be too cruel to Erik.
And then there is Erik. All trap-doors lead to Erik in this tale. He beguiles those who do not believe in him, teaches a mediocre singer to become a virtuoso performer, steals horses and francs with ease, and has a dark past The Persian can barely recount as it is too foul.
Yet Leroux is very crafty with Erik. He fills the role of villain quite nicely, and much of his activity is, to be sure, less than honorable. I’ve already mentioned the theft of horse and money. Add to that kidnapping and doing all the heavy lifting to prepare to blow up a crowded opera house and the reader can easily hate Erik.
But again, does Erik ever directly kill or harm anyone? Anyone at all? There are allusions to assumed bad things done to amuse the sultana in Erik’s past. The Persian and Raoul end up in “the torture chamber” from chapter XXII to XXIII. I’m not trying to white-wash Erik of all sin here, but how bad could the torture chamber have been when Raoul and The Persian choose voluntarily to re-enter the place after finding the barrels full of gunpowder?
My point is that, Erik may have done some terrible things in his long life of side-showing, architecture, and singing, but the reader is never allowed to see these terrible things directly. This is very smart on Leroux’s part. It allows the reader to pity Erik. Sure he’s kidnapped and manipulated a young woman and his version of love is closer to that of a child loving a toy than it is to adult love, but he’s really not a bad guy. And he’s had such a tough go of it, right?
Where Leroux overplays the pity is in Erik’s direct interaction with Christine. He is nearly indistinguishable from Raoul in that account. Erik grovels and begs and whips from anger to tears in the blink of an eye. He is a passionate artist, and this is supposed to give him free license to act like this, but all it does is annoy the reader. From Chapter XXII:
“Soon the moans that accompanied this sort of love’s litany increased and increased. I have never heard anything more despairing; and M. de chagny and I recognized that this terrible lamentation came from Erik himself. Christine seemed to be standing dumb with horror, without the strength to cry out, while the monster was on his knees before her.
Three times over, Erik fiercely bewailed his fate:
“You don’t love me! You don’t love me! You don’t love me!”
And then more gently:
“Why do you cry? You know it gives me pain to see you cry!”” (Leroux 216)
Oh, knock it off! The constant groveling and the figurative clutching of the pearls took me as a reader out of this story too often. As horror goes it has horror elements (a monster, the potential for bodily harm, mystery that is thought supernatural, and a past that is terrible and not ever quite forgotten).
But once the reader gets to the end and realizes that Erik may not be the monster The Persian makes him out to be, then the story evolves into one in which the monster has a heart, and a soul. Sure he could use some lessons in self control and even more lessons on how to win a lady, but it is refreshing to see a monster who isn’t really a monster at all.
Erik, the Opera Ghost, the trap-door-lover, is shunned from birth. His own mother never even kissed him. His great intellect and his natural artistic abilities to build and sing and use his voice carried him from side-show freak to the man behind the walls who controls everything. From his time in Persia, then Turkey, and France he was in control of his environment and the people who inhabited it were but puppets he manipulated. But when one of those puppets took an interest in him, and gave him that first kiss, he cut the strings on the world and died a happy man, not a monster.
But The Opera Ghost himself is what drew me into this story. Erik. The trap-door-lover. Leroux casts “poor Erik” as the villain in this tale, but after it is read you realize that Erik is the only character to have changed, the only character to have learned and grown. He is the only character to move through the story and be made better by it. So, is he the villain … or the hero?
The documentary style in which Leroux presents his story is well done, but it does fall apart stylistically. The reader starts with a prologue that is signed “Gaston Leroux.” This breaking down of the “fourth wall” (if I can use a theater term here) to insert the writer into his own fiction is excellent. I had to close the book and compare the names and when I saw they were the same I thought “neat, well done.”
But the documentary style falters in the middle. For example, in Chapter X “Forget the Name of the Man’s Voice,” is simply a chapter of prose fiction. There are no author’s notes to explain this was captured or reenacted or taken from letters about this event. Leroux has created fiction in the middle of his fiction, but he’s presented that fiction as documentary style fact. Confused? Don’t be, it is a minor flaw in the story, and one that would be almost impossible not to make. But after the opening I was looking forward to an old fashioned story told in interviews, letters, opera play bills, etc. The final action during which The Persian and Raoul follow Erik into the bowels of the opera house returns to the documentary style with the entire account being “The Persian’s Narrative.”
Overall the story has a nice forward momentum. The asides with Erik tormenting the opera managers and embarrassing Carlotta were solid subplots, and The Persian standing in for the reader to share the background on Erik so we know more about who we are dealing with and who is holding Christine Dae prisoner is solid technique.
However, the emotions of the love triangle are, to put it mildly, overwrought and annoying. Raoul and his petulant boy-man ravings are nearly laughable at times, and he really never does anything in this story. Christine returns to her father’s grave, Raoul follows … and accomplishes nothing. He goes to Christine’s dressing room, and accomplishes nothing. Without The Persian Raoul never would have been able to pursue Erik down into the ground under the opera house, and once he gets there he’s more of a burden than a help.
Christine isn’t much better. Her emotional response to everything frustrates the reader. The one thing Raoul has right, running off before the big performance (the one in which Erik steals Christine off the stage mid-performance), Christine ignores as it would be too cruel to Erik.
And then there is Erik. All trap-doors lead to Erik in this tale. He beguiles those who do not believe in him, teaches a mediocre singer to become a virtuoso performer, steals horses and francs with ease, and has a dark past The Persian can barely recount as it is too foul.
Yet Leroux is very crafty with Erik. He fills the role of villain quite nicely, and much of his activity is, to be sure, less than honorable. I’ve already mentioned the theft of horse and money. Add to that kidnapping and doing all the heavy lifting to prepare to blow up a crowded opera house and the reader can easily hate Erik.
But again, does Erik ever directly kill or harm anyone? Anyone at all? There are allusions to assumed bad things done to amuse the sultana in Erik’s past. The Persian and Raoul end up in “the torture chamber” from chapter XXII to XXIII. I’m not trying to white-wash Erik of all sin here, but how bad could the torture chamber have been when Raoul and The Persian choose voluntarily to re-enter the place after finding the barrels full of gunpowder?
My point is that, Erik may have done some terrible things in his long life of side-showing, architecture, and singing, but the reader is never allowed to see these terrible things directly. This is very smart on Leroux’s part. It allows the reader to pity Erik. Sure he’s kidnapped and manipulated a young woman and his version of love is closer to that of a child loving a toy than it is to adult love, but he’s really not a bad guy. And he’s had such a tough go of it, right?
Where Leroux overplays the pity is in Erik’s direct interaction with Christine. He is nearly indistinguishable from Raoul in that account. Erik grovels and begs and whips from anger to tears in the blink of an eye. He is a passionate artist, and this is supposed to give him free license to act like this, but all it does is annoy the reader. From Chapter XXII:
“Soon the moans that accompanied this sort of love’s litany increased and increased. I have never heard anything more despairing; and M. de chagny and I recognized that this terrible lamentation came from Erik himself. Christine seemed to be standing dumb with horror, without the strength to cry out, while the monster was on his knees before her.
Three times over, Erik fiercely bewailed his fate:
“You don’t love me! You don’t love me! You don’t love me!”
And then more gently:
“Why do you cry? You know it gives me pain to see you cry!”” (Leroux 216)
Oh, knock it off! The constant groveling and the figurative clutching of the pearls took me as a reader out of this story too often. As horror goes it has horror elements (a monster, the potential for bodily harm, mystery that is thought supernatural, and a past that is terrible and not ever quite forgotten).
But once the reader gets to the end and realizes that Erik may not be the monster The Persian makes him out to be, then the story evolves into one in which the monster has a heart, and a soul. Sure he could use some lessons in self control and even more lessons on how to win a lady, but it is refreshing to see a monster who isn’t really a monster at all.
Erik, the Opera Ghost, the trap-door-lover, is shunned from birth. His own mother never even kissed him. His great intellect and his natural artistic abilities to build and sing and use his voice carried him from side-show freak to the man behind the walls who controls everything. From his time in Persia, then Turkey, and France he was in control of his environment and the people who inhabited it were but puppets he manipulated. But when one of those puppets took an interest in him, and gave him that first kiss, he cut the strings on the world and died a happy man, not a monster.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
The Madness of Art or How to Get Gratuitous Violence in your Art and get Praised for it
Joyce carol Oates provided the article/essay to “On Writing Horror” entitled “The Madness of Art” and engages in the discussion of genre and literary differences in stories.
Oates writes: “Perhaps, to transcend categories others have invented for us, we have to be both dead – long dead – and “classics.”” She continues: “In literature, the canonization of “classics” has resulted in the relative demotion of other writers and other kinds of writing; the elevation of “mainstream” and predominantly “realistic” writing has created a false topology in which numerous genres are perceived as inferior to, or at least significantly different from, the mainstream. If Edgar Allan Poe were alive and writing today, he would very likely not be accorded the acclaim given the putative “serious literary writer,” but would be taxonomized as a “horror writer.” Yet talent, not excluding genius, may flourish in any genre, provided it is not stigmatized by that deadly label “genre.””
I could not agree more with what Oates is saying here. Too long have writers been held prisoner by some unseen and constantly changing literary police who determine (pass judgment) what is acceptable for the masses to read and be proud of doing so and what is pulp. And pulp is a polite way to say trash or filth.
The hypocrisy is evident in films. Attach an “accepted” name like Scorsese or Spielberg to a movie and make it about gangsters or soldiers or businessmen and any amount of violence and gore is accepted. It’s artistic, it helps tell the story. Consider some of the scenes in “Goodfellas” or “Scarface” or “Saving Private Ryan.”
But put that violence in a “horror” movie like “The Thing” or “Day of the Dead” and critics, pundits and “experts” will laud the fare as “exploitative” or “grotesque.” Removing a face with a chainsaw is okay in a normal gangster movie, but doing the exact same thing and setting your movie in a backwoods Texas rural house and suddenly the rules change. Suddenly it becomes over the top. Why?
Fear. Fear that these folks who are the “in” or accepted crowd will be found out to not be geniuses, but simply story tellers of tales in the real world. The difference between what is real or accepted and what is surreal or supernatural seems to be one of the sticking points. Again from Oates: “Speaking as a writer predisposed to reading and frequently to writing what I call “Gothic” work, I should say that this so-called genre fascinates me because it is so powerful a vehicle of truth-telling, and because there is no wilder region for the exercise of the pure imagination.”
Again, Oates and I are in agreement. What is fiction? Good fiction I mean? It is truly counterintuitive: it is seeking truth by exercising the imagination and creating fantasy. Truth is not only found in the domain of the canon, the literary, or the celebrated. Truth can be found everywhere.
My definition of literary removes all the pretense and bombastic garbage usually associated with the word. Literary works are genre works that found a popular following and remained relevant for more than a generation. That's it, that's all. With every definition there are exceptions, but most of the “literary” fiction out there is just a fancy way to try and remove the stink of its genre roots.
Don’t believe me? “Romeo and Juliet” is a romance. So is “Dracula” and all that Jane Eyre stuff. Charles Dickens “A Christmas Carol,” maybe the most often used story framework in history, is a ghost story that horror can claim as its own. Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” is a tale of horror. “Gulliver’s Travels” is a fantasy story. I could go on, but you see my point.
Only today do we have novels being published that garner no public following yet get credited as being “literary.” The modern canon makers are digging in to make a last stand to protect some higher calling, some literary bend to stories “they” like and accept.
But the modern reader is not cooperating. Good writing, good storytelling is universal. The subject matter is secondary. If a story captures the imagination, whether it’s about class warfare in Victorian England or trying to survive a zombie apocalypse, then it should be considered literary.
Once more from Oates: “Gothic fiction is the freedom of the imagination, the triumph of the unconscious. Its radical premise is that, out of utterly plausible and psychologically realistic situations, profound and intransigent truths will emerge. And it is entertaining; it is unashamed to be entertaining.”
And there is nothing wrong with that.
Oates writes: “Perhaps, to transcend categories others have invented for us, we have to be both dead – long dead – and “classics.”” She continues: “In literature, the canonization of “classics” has resulted in the relative demotion of other writers and other kinds of writing; the elevation of “mainstream” and predominantly “realistic” writing has created a false topology in which numerous genres are perceived as inferior to, or at least significantly different from, the mainstream. If Edgar Allan Poe were alive and writing today, he would very likely not be accorded the acclaim given the putative “serious literary writer,” but would be taxonomized as a “horror writer.” Yet talent, not excluding genius, may flourish in any genre, provided it is not stigmatized by that deadly label “genre.””
I could not agree more with what Oates is saying here. Too long have writers been held prisoner by some unseen and constantly changing literary police who determine (pass judgment) what is acceptable for the masses to read and be proud of doing so and what is pulp. And pulp is a polite way to say trash or filth.
The hypocrisy is evident in films. Attach an “accepted” name like Scorsese or Spielberg to a movie and make it about gangsters or soldiers or businessmen and any amount of violence and gore is accepted. It’s artistic, it helps tell the story. Consider some of the scenes in “Goodfellas” or “Scarface” or “Saving Private Ryan.”
But put that violence in a “horror” movie like “The Thing” or “Day of the Dead” and critics, pundits and “experts” will laud the fare as “exploitative” or “grotesque.” Removing a face with a chainsaw is okay in a normal gangster movie, but doing the exact same thing and setting your movie in a backwoods Texas rural house and suddenly the rules change. Suddenly it becomes over the top. Why?
Fear. Fear that these folks who are the “in” or accepted crowd will be found out to not be geniuses, but simply story tellers of tales in the real world. The difference between what is real or accepted and what is surreal or supernatural seems to be one of the sticking points. Again from Oates: “Speaking as a writer predisposed to reading and frequently to writing what I call “Gothic” work, I should say that this so-called genre fascinates me because it is so powerful a vehicle of truth-telling, and because there is no wilder region for the exercise of the pure imagination.”
Again, Oates and I are in agreement. What is fiction? Good fiction I mean? It is truly counterintuitive: it is seeking truth by exercising the imagination and creating fantasy. Truth is not only found in the domain of the canon, the literary, or the celebrated. Truth can be found everywhere.
My definition of literary removes all the pretense and bombastic garbage usually associated with the word. Literary works are genre works that found a popular following and remained relevant for more than a generation. That's it, that's all. With every definition there are exceptions, but most of the “literary” fiction out there is just a fancy way to try and remove the stink of its genre roots.
Don’t believe me? “Romeo and Juliet” is a romance. So is “Dracula” and all that Jane Eyre stuff. Charles Dickens “A Christmas Carol,” maybe the most often used story framework in history, is a ghost story that horror can claim as its own. Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” is a tale of horror. “Gulliver’s Travels” is a fantasy story. I could go on, but you see my point.
Only today do we have novels being published that garner no public following yet get credited as being “literary.” The modern canon makers are digging in to make a last stand to protect some higher calling, some literary bend to stories “they” like and accept.
But the modern reader is not cooperating. Good writing, good storytelling is universal. The subject matter is secondary. If a story captures the imagination, whether it’s about class warfare in Victorian England or trying to survive a zombie apocalypse, then it should be considered literary.
Once more from Oates: “Gothic fiction is the freedom of the imagination, the triumph of the unconscious. Its radical premise is that, out of utterly plausible and psychologically realistic situations, profound and intransigent truths will emerge. And it is entertaining; it is unashamed to be entertaining.”
And there is nothing wrong with that.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Must have been a great Flash on Pickman's Camera
Taking photos of monstrosities from the bowels of the earth would take a fair amount of skill to achieve without getting eaten yourself. Or did Pickman pay his models a sitting fee?
H. P. Lovecraft is one of the masters of, as he defined it, “stories of the weird.” These are stories that study the outer limits of what man understands of his existence. Lovecraft gave his readers aliens, monsters from other dimensions and in “Pickman’s Model” monsters from the bowels of the earth.
“Pickman’s Model” illustrates Lovecraft’s most outstanding attribute as a writer: tone and setting. Lovecraft was a master at setting a tone and providing a backdrop that was both ordinary and eerie to the reader. In "Pickman's Model" the narrator shares Pickman's description of the underground in the vicinity of his studio: "Look here, do you know the whole North End once had a set of tunnels that kept certain people in touch with each other's houses, and the burying ground, and the sea? Let them prosecute and persecute above ground - things went on every day that they couldn't reach, and voices laughed at night that they couldn't place."
Not once does Lovecraft come out and say "things aren't right" or "this is scary." But describing his setting by using "tunnels," "burying ground," and "voices laughed at night that they couldn't place" puts the reader on edge.
Nothing is ever exactly right in a Lovecraft tale, and the reader knows this from the surroundings described. Lovecraft could write a nursery rhyme and not change a single plot point and the story would still feel creepy and moody because of the way he would describe his setting.
“Pickman’s Model” also predates the modern era for the subject matter. People have always believed in good and evil, and depicted evil in many ways. Lovecraft was one of the early fiction writers to put these evils into a story via supernatural elements and have characters interact with them. Lovecraft was way ahead of his time in this regard. While everyone else seemed to be writing stories of class warfare and impossible love he was pushing the envelope of what was acceptable and delving strictly in dark things that should not be.
However, “Pickman’s Model” also suffers from the shortcomings of Lovecraft’s writing. The story is told in past tense, in first person, by a narrator that is recounting the terrible tale. This is fairly common for Lovecraft, and for a lot of work of his era. This narrator telling the story to a companion and the reader simultaneously deflates a great deal of the conflict. We know the narrator has made it though the peril. He or She is recounting past events. Much of the story’s immediacy and tension is lost due to this point of view choice.
Also, Lovecraft tended to recount dialogue from that same singular point of view. Modern readers are used to reading dialogue as it is spoken by the characters. Lovecraft’s dialogue generally is spoken by the narrator and He or She recounts all the character’s words in a stilted and abridged way. This doesn’t allow for tension to build, nor does it give the reader the present-tense experience that things are unfolding “live” or in “real time” for them. Again, this removes a lot of the tension the story might have had.
As a casual reader “Pickman’s Model” is effective. A reader may notice all the clues are there to know the ending. The word “Model” in the title of the story ends up being a pretty big clue. Anyone from, or aware of Boston will recognize that Lovecraft uses landmarks, neighborhoods and streets to great effect. This goes back to his outstanding ability to evoke reader response to setting and tone.
A critical reading of “Pickman’s Model” probably leads a person to conclude this isn’t Lovecraft’s best story. His strong points are there, but the story itself is pretty straightforward. The “twist” at the end is less surprising than it should be.
Overall “Pickman’s Model” is a solid example of an H. P. Lovecraft story. He is one of the pillars of the horror genre for showing readers that tales of the weird were acceptable and that the supernatural and horror are excellent breeding grounds for stories.
H. P. Lovecraft is one of the masters of, as he defined it, “stories of the weird.” These are stories that study the outer limits of what man understands of his existence. Lovecraft gave his readers aliens, monsters from other dimensions and in “Pickman’s Model” monsters from the bowels of the earth.
“Pickman’s Model” illustrates Lovecraft’s most outstanding attribute as a writer: tone and setting. Lovecraft was a master at setting a tone and providing a backdrop that was both ordinary and eerie to the reader. In "Pickman's Model" the narrator shares Pickman's description of the underground in the vicinity of his studio: "Look here, do you know the whole North End once had a set of tunnels that kept certain people in touch with each other's houses, and the burying ground, and the sea? Let them prosecute and persecute above ground - things went on every day that they couldn't reach, and voices laughed at night that they couldn't place."
Not once does Lovecraft come out and say "things aren't right" or "this is scary." But describing his setting by using "tunnels," "burying ground," and "voices laughed at night that they couldn't place" puts the reader on edge.
Nothing is ever exactly right in a Lovecraft tale, and the reader knows this from the surroundings described. Lovecraft could write a nursery rhyme and not change a single plot point and the story would still feel creepy and moody because of the way he would describe his setting.
“Pickman’s Model” also predates the modern era for the subject matter. People have always believed in good and evil, and depicted evil in many ways. Lovecraft was one of the early fiction writers to put these evils into a story via supernatural elements and have characters interact with them. Lovecraft was way ahead of his time in this regard. While everyone else seemed to be writing stories of class warfare and impossible love he was pushing the envelope of what was acceptable and delving strictly in dark things that should not be.
However, “Pickman’s Model” also suffers from the shortcomings of Lovecraft’s writing. The story is told in past tense, in first person, by a narrator that is recounting the terrible tale. This is fairly common for Lovecraft, and for a lot of work of his era. This narrator telling the story to a companion and the reader simultaneously deflates a great deal of the conflict. We know the narrator has made it though the peril. He or She is recounting past events. Much of the story’s immediacy and tension is lost due to this point of view choice.
Also, Lovecraft tended to recount dialogue from that same singular point of view. Modern readers are used to reading dialogue as it is spoken by the characters. Lovecraft’s dialogue generally is spoken by the narrator and He or She recounts all the character’s words in a stilted and abridged way. This doesn’t allow for tension to build, nor does it give the reader the present-tense experience that things are unfolding “live” or in “real time” for them. Again, this removes a lot of the tension the story might have had.
As a casual reader “Pickman’s Model” is effective. A reader may notice all the clues are there to know the ending. The word “Model” in the title of the story ends up being a pretty big clue. Anyone from, or aware of Boston will recognize that Lovecraft uses landmarks, neighborhoods and streets to great effect. This goes back to his outstanding ability to evoke reader response to setting and tone.
A critical reading of “Pickman’s Model” probably leads a person to conclude this isn’t Lovecraft’s best story. His strong points are there, but the story itself is pretty straightforward. The “twist” at the end is less surprising than it should be.
Overall “Pickman’s Model” is a solid example of an H. P. Lovecraft story. He is one of the pillars of the horror genre for showing readers that tales of the weird were acceptable and that the supernatural and horror are excellent breeding grounds for stories.
The Art of Fear
Define love. Pretty hard, right? Something the poets and the romantics have been trying to do for generations now. Most of the time people get vague: “you’ll know it when you feel it” or “you’ll just know.” Gee, thanks for the help.
But fear? Fear can be defined in concrete red and black reality. People might not be willing to share with you what it is they fear, but they know. Oh, they know.
Most people have a crazy irrational fear like needles or rats or heights. Mine personally is giant spiders. I know, or more accurately I hope, they don’t exist. But the idea still freezes my thoughts and prickles my skin.
The older we get most of us also have a very mundane fear. Mine is being a bad parent. It is something that is very real, and something we have to be aware of and work on every single day.
The key point is, more than love, fear is real. It is one of the core primitive feelings that bind us all together, and it is present in everything from driving to work, to raising children to writing all kinds of stories, not just horror.
The art of fear is in every story. Some genres call it tension, or conflict, or some other more acceptable term. But deep down, it’s all fear, it’s all horror.
Pick up any novel, especially a good one. Any one will do. Does every story have a romantic story arc? Nope. Does every story have a mystery that has to be unraveled? Nope.
Does every story put their characters in some degree of peril? Oh yes. In these times of peril, whether it is as simple as the hero missing the last carriage to tell the girl he loves her or it’s jamming a broken piece of pallet in the mutated shark’s mouth to keep it from gnawing your face off the feeling evoked is fear.
Whether its fear of failure, or fear of horrible bloody painful death fear is a constant in good story telling. It is the beating heart of conflict. Stories that delve specifically into fear, horror stories, are often times derided as “genre fiction” or considered lesser. Why? Facing that fear, making it the central pillar of a story is more honest and worthy. Readers and writers of such stories know the stakes are higher, the peril is greater, and that heightens the experience.
When fear is utilized well it truly is art. Everyone can recognize that moment, that sick feeling of fear as it pours acid into our stomachs, dries our mouths, seizes our limbs and chills our bones. Oh, we know fear, and we embrace it.
But fear? Fear can be defined in concrete red and black reality. People might not be willing to share with you what it is they fear, but they know. Oh, they know.
Most people have a crazy irrational fear like needles or rats or heights. Mine personally is giant spiders. I know, or more accurately I hope, they don’t exist. But the idea still freezes my thoughts and prickles my skin.
The older we get most of us also have a very mundane fear. Mine is being a bad parent. It is something that is very real, and something we have to be aware of and work on every single day.
The key point is, more than love, fear is real. It is one of the core primitive feelings that bind us all together, and it is present in everything from driving to work, to raising children to writing all kinds of stories, not just horror.
The art of fear is in every story. Some genres call it tension, or conflict, or some other more acceptable term. But deep down, it’s all fear, it’s all horror.
Pick up any novel, especially a good one. Any one will do. Does every story have a romantic story arc? Nope. Does every story have a mystery that has to be unraveled? Nope.
Does every story put their characters in some degree of peril? Oh yes. In these times of peril, whether it is as simple as the hero missing the last carriage to tell the girl he loves her or it’s jamming a broken piece of pallet in the mutated shark’s mouth to keep it from gnawing your face off the feeling evoked is fear.
Whether its fear of failure, or fear of horrible bloody painful death fear is a constant in good story telling. It is the beating heart of conflict. Stories that delve specifically into fear, horror stories, are often times derided as “genre fiction” or considered lesser. Why? Facing that fear, making it the central pillar of a story is more honest and worthy. Readers and writers of such stories know the stakes are higher, the peril is greater, and that heightens the experience.
When fear is utilized well it truly is art. Everyone can recognize that moment, that sick feeling of fear as it pours acid into our stomachs, dries our mouths, seizes our limbs and chills our bones. Oh, we know fear, and we embrace it.
Monday, October 26, 2009
The Girl Next Door ... to a Coward
Not often has a story so viscerally affected me as “The Girl Next Door” did. For fiction to engage emotions and elicit a response, any response, is a good thing right? It is better to get some level of response than to bore the reader I will grant. But do you want the reader to so loathe your main character that they are rooting for something terrible to happen to them?
This novel is told from the point of view of an adult man remembering back to the most horrifying part of his troubled youth. As a pre-teen in a seemingly typical suburban setting he was given a glimpse of madness and evil. Right next door actual torture was taking place. What’s worse is the torture was of a supposed friend of our guide and narrator.
Meg is a beautiful girl who is orphaned by a car accident. Meg and her younger sister Susan, who is crippled and has to wear a harness of some kind, are sent to live with Ruth and Ruth’s sons. They all live next door to the narrator, David.
Pretty early on David lets the reader know Ruth is not right. Much of her erratic and odd behavior is not unlike Annie Wilkes, the not-so-gentle nurse, caretaker, and number one fan of Paul Sheldon in “Misery.” There are the long bouts of silence, the lack of hygiene, the hysterical anger and over reaction to trivialities. Also, Ruth obsesses on Meg, sees her as some kind of young hussy, not unlike the one who probably stole Ruth’s husband away. At least that’s how Ruth tells it, or, more accurately, how David the narrator tells the reader Ruth tells it.
I will continue to return to David the narrator’s point of view. I think it’s a key point in this story, and I wonder about his reliability.
Meg and Susan are interlopers into Ruth’s world of boys. At the most simple Ruth sees Meg as competition for the attention of the males in her life. At worst Ruth is a sadistic monster who goes mad with absolute power. Regardless, soon Meg goes from house guest to basement prisoner and is tortured daily over the summer of this story until she finally can’t take anymore and dies because of it.
As I said before, my response to this book was immediate and strong. I kept waiting for the narrator to get his ass in gear and do something, DO anything. He never really does. Even his attempt to help Meg escape keeps himself at arm’s length, safe in bed over the evening hours while Meg, after weeks of torture, malnourishment, and dehydration has to try and get away from her captors.
All this narrator has to do in this book is tell his parents. That’s it. Just open his mouth and tell them the new girl next door is being abused. David’s mother is no fan of Ruth’s to begin with. In fact, David’s mother is happy to see Meg take an interest in David through the painting she gives David. David’s father would have looked into it probably just as an excuse to escape the doldrums and tedium of going home to a failing marriage (again, if David the narrator can be trusted on the state of his own family).
He doesn’t open his mouth. He doesn’t get a weapon from his own home and try and break Meg and Susan free. He doesn’t spirit Susan away, which he very easily could have, and at least save her the blowback from all the torture heaped on Meg. He does nothing.
As a narrator the reader has to wonder about the validity of his point of view. True, the story he tells is damning to himself, but only slightly so. The horrors visited upon Meg I don’t doubt in the slightest. Ruth’s odd behavior I also believe. But it is the convenient way that David is present but doesn’t participate … much. It’s the convenient way that Meg welcomes him and talks to him as a conspirator when Ruth and the others aren’t around.
David gets to have both sides of this story. He gets the perverse pleasure of seeing Meg’s nude body. He gets to feel the power of not being the focus of the torture and humiliation. Then he gets to give Meg a modicum of aid and comfort between torture sessions to salve his conscious.
There is no way to verify or refute David’s point of view. By the end of the book Ruth is pushed down the stairs and dies rather conveniently. Her sons are carted away and wouldn’t talk to David again if they get to choose. Susan, David claims, maintains contact for a while, but she disappears into the history of this narrator.
And of course Meg can’t say anything because she’s dead, and David might as well have been the one holding her head under scalding water or putting cigarettes out on her body or raping her.
This story works in that the reader is put in an uncomfortable position. The reader is aware of what is happening, is a witness to these events, but is helpless. David makes himself out to be helpless, but he’s not helpless. He’s selfish. He fears getting in trouble for his part in these events. His unwillingness to step up and take responsibility, a responsibility he most certainly has earned, doomed a person, a supposed friend, to weeks of torture and eventually premature death.
David’s cowardice prolonged this entire series of events. How scarred is Susan by his inaction? Might Ruth’s other kids have been influenced for the better by someone stepping in sooner rather than later? This story is premised on the fact that most people would sit idly by and let this happen. I don’t believe that for a second.
David’s initial reticence to turn Ruth in, or to go to his parents was believable. But this story escalates the violence towards Meg to such a degree that no one would stand by and let this happen, even to someone they didn’t care about. Unless that person was the ultimate coward.
David cares more for his own skin, his own reputation, for himself than anything else. I don’t feel sorry for his inability to maintain a marriage. I don’t feel sorry for the constant guilt he carries around. One of his most self-serving statements occurs near the end of the novel. On page 295: “And I had some small sense of what it must have felt like for Meg all these weeks, all alone down here.”
That statement alone spun me into a quiet rage. David’s point of view, this near pleading with the reader to believe him when he says he couldn’t do anything, that nobody would believe him, that “back then” things were different for kids is just rationalization and garbage.
The coward dies a thousand deaths. When David finally dies and he gets to see Meg again, he better hope she isn’t holding the door open to a basement bomb shelter.
This novel is told from the point of view of an adult man remembering back to the most horrifying part of his troubled youth. As a pre-teen in a seemingly typical suburban setting he was given a glimpse of madness and evil. Right next door actual torture was taking place. What’s worse is the torture was of a supposed friend of our guide and narrator.
Meg is a beautiful girl who is orphaned by a car accident. Meg and her younger sister Susan, who is crippled and has to wear a harness of some kind, are sent to live with Ruth and Ruth’s sons. They all live next door to the narrator, David.
Pretty early on David lets the reader know Ruth is not right. Much of her erratic and odd behavior is not unlike Annie Wilkes, the not-so-gentle nurse, caretaker, and number one fan of Paul Sheldon in “Misery.” There are the long bouts of silence, the lack of hygiene, the hysterical anger and over reaction to trivialities. Also, Ruth obsesses on Meg, sees her as some kind of young hussy, not unlike the one who probably stole Ruth’s husband away. At least that’s how Ruth tells it, or, more accurately, how David the narrator tells the reader Ruth tells it.
I will continue to return to David the narrator’s point of view. I think it’s a key point in this story, and I wonder about his reliability.
Meg and Susan are interlopers into Ruth’s world of boys. At the most simple Ruth sees Meg as competition for the attention of the males in her life. At worst Ruth is a sadistic monster who goes mad with absolute power. Regardless, soon Meg goes from house guest to basement prisoner and is tortured daily over the summer of this story until she finally can’t take anymore and dies because of it.
As I said before, my response to this book was immediate and strong. I kept waiting for the narrator to get his ass in gear and do something, DO anything. He never really does. Even his attempt to help Meg escape keeps himself at arm’s length, safe in bed over the evening hours while Meg, after weeks of torture, malnourishment, and dehydration has to try and get away from her captors.
All this narrator has to do in this book is tell his parents. That’s it. Just open his mouth and tell them the new girl next door is being abused. David’s mother is no fan of Ruth’s to begin with. In fact, David’s mother is happy to see Meg take an interest in David through the painting she gives David. David’s father would have looked into it probably just as an excuse to escape the doldrums and tedium of going home to a failing marriage (again, if David the narrator can be trusted on the state of his own family).
He doesn’t open his mouth. He doesn’t get a weapon from his own home and try and break Meg and Susan free. He doesn’t spirit Susan away, which he very easily could have, and at least save her the blowback from all the torture heaped on Meg. He does nothing.
As a narrator the reader has to wonder about the validity of his point of view. True, the story he tells is damning to himself, but only slightly so. The horrors visited upon Meg I don’t doubt in the slightest. Ruth’s odd behavior I also believe. But it is the convenient way that David is present but doesn’t participate … much. It’s the convenient way that Meg welcomes him and talks to him as a conspirator when Ruth and the others aren’t around.
David gets to have both sides of this story. He gets the perverse pleasure of seeing Meg’s nude body. He gets to feel the power of not being the focus of the torture and humiliation. Then he gets to give Meg a modicum of aid and comfort between torture sessions to salve his conscious.
There is no way to verify or refute David’s point of view. By the end of the book Ruth is pushed down the stairs and dies rather conveniently. Her sons are carted away and wouldn’t talk to David again if they get to choose. Susan, David claims, maintains contact for a while, but she disappears into the history of this narrator.
And of course Meg can’t say anything because she’s dead, and David might as well have been the one holding her head under scalding water or putting cigarettes out on her body or raping her.
This story works in that the reader is put in an uncomfortable position. The reader is aware of what is happening, is a witness to these events, but is helpless. David makes himself out to be helpless, but he’s not helpless. He’s selfish. He fears getting in trouble for his part in these events. His unwillingness to step up and take responsibility, a responsibility he most certainly has earned, doomed a person, a supposed friend, to weeks of torture and eventually premature death.
David’s cowardice prolonged this entire series of events. How scarred is Susan by his inaction? Might Ruth’s other kids have been influenced for the better by someone stepping in sooner rather than later? This story is premised on the fact that most people would sit idly by and let this happen. I don’t believe that for a second.
David’s initial reticence to turn Ruth in, or to go to his parents was believable. But this story escalates the violence towards Meg to such a degree that no one would stand by and let this happen, even to someone they didn’t care about. Unless that person was the ultimate coward.
David cares more for his own skin, his own reputation, for himself than anything else. I don’t feel sorry for his inability to maintain a marriage. I don’t feel sorry for the constant guilt he carries around. One of his most self-serving statements occurs near the end of the novel. On page 295: “And I had some small sense of what it must have felt like for Meg all these weeks, all alone down here.”
That statement alone spun me into a quiet rage. David’s point of view, this near pleading with the reader to believe him when he says he couldn’t do anything, that nobody would believe him, that “back then” things were different for kids is just rationalization and garbage.
The coward dies a thousand deaths. When David finally dies and he gets to see Meg again, he better hope she isn’t holding the door open to a basement bomb shelter.
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