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From reading Cabal I think I've come across a fifth determination for the true Gothic setting: the setting wants to eat you, wants you to become a part of it.

I noticed this trend in both Hell House and The Shining but wasn't able to articulate it until Cabal.

But first, a reminder of my other qualifications for the Gothic setting:

1. Isolation

2. The evil past

3. A decayed society

4. An empty society

(and now) 5. A devouring setting

"In 'Gothic' novels... the presence of the supernatural is of a piece with dislocated plots, frenzied passions, the use of chiaroscuro and underground passages and vaults containing guilty secrets and unbridled lusts.." (Manlove 161) Colin Manlove, "Introduction to Modern Fantasy"

Midian again fits all these qualifications. It's isolated:

"North of here the highways were few, the inhabitants fewer still. The rich prairie lands of the province steadily gave way to forest, marshland, and wilderness…But the territory beyond was unknown to him except as names on a map. Or more correctly, as an absence of names. There were great stretches of land here that were dotted only with small farming settlements…" (Barker 24)

It has a past, if not an evil one, which is the fun of Midian. This is a Gothic setting, if not an evil one. Here the Gothic setting is the refuge, the place for the outcasts to find solace, peace, and community.

It's described as an apparently empty society: "Midian revealed nothing of itself as he moved around its southeastern flank, except perhaps its emptiness." (Barker 27)

Within that, there's the true Midian, "not the empty town on the hill, not even the Necropolis above her, but this network of tunnels and chambers, which presumably spread beneath the entire cemetery." (Barker 99).  

And Midian, the society of Nightbreed, wants you. To enter its world, you must become part of it, the community, the culture. In short, you must change, you must alter, you must be devoured. All the inhabitants have been bitten, transformed. Even Lori becomes at the end of the book, choosing to follow Boone in his path to rebuild Midian. Unlike the Overlook or the Belasco house, which are also settings which want to devour their characters, to trap them forever, Midian (and the Nightbreed) seek to save their characters through their union, a nice twist on the Gothic setting. Not only is he flipping the tropes of the monsters as heroes, he's flipped the setting to match.

Hmmmm.

Works Cited

Barker, Clive. Cabal. New York, Pocket Books, 2001.

Colin Manlove, "Introduction to Modern Fantasy". Fantastic Literature, A Critical Reader. David Sandner. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2004. 156-166.

The Shining Example of Gothic Settings

I've talked a lot about the Gothic setting so far - seems to be the theme I've picked for the semester. Bear with me a little farther.

I've mentioned that the Gothic setting, as an element of horror, seems to have four requirements that I've noticed:

1. Isolation

2. The evil past

3. A decayed society

4. An empty society

So, how does the Overlook, the fictional hotel of The Shining fit into the Gothic setting traditions?

Well, it certainly has all the elements of isolation - it is both geographically by the wild Rocky Mountains (unlike its real-life inspiration, The Stanley Hotel of Estes, Colorado) secluded as well as isolated by the winter snow. It becomes a world into itself, from the basement boiler to the abandoned for the season guest rooms. Further, at the end of the book, Jack removes the last option of escape (that of the snow mobile).

                "She could see the highway clinging to the side of this cathedral spire, switching back on itself but always tending northwest, still climbing but at a more gentle angle. Further up, seemingly set directly into the slop itself, she saw the grimly clinging pines give way to a wide square of green lawn and standing in the middle of it, overlooking all this, the hotel. The Overlook." (King 91)

And, yes, the Overlook has an evil past. In fact, its whole history is revealed to be one of the grotesque, as Jack learns from the archive stacks in the basement. Or rather, the hotel as a character in search of a proper caretaker, leads him to learn. There's the decadent parties in the ballroom, the twisted perversions (sexual, of course) of past guests, suicide, and murder. The hotel has it all, as we find out especially in Danny's visit to room 217.

                "Her breasts swayed like ancient cracked punching bags. There was the minute sound of breaking ice shards. She was not breathing. She was a corpse, and dead long years." (King 327)

My definition of a decayed society is perhaps a bit difficult to find in this book, given that the hotel is isolated and does not have a town surrounding it, as I've found in Lovecraft and in Rosemary's Baby, but I would argue that the hotel is in of itself a functioning society during the on-season, and that the perversions of the past encompass the decay of the present as they bleed through.

                "But it wasn't really empty. Because here in the Overlook things just went on and on. Here in the Overlook all times were one. There was an endless night in August of 1945, with laughter and drinks and a chosen shining few going up and coming down in the elevator, drinking champagne and popping party favors in each other's faces. " (King 459-460)

And of course, the hotel is empty, of everyone except for Jack, Danny, and Wendy--oh, and the ghosts that the hotel brings to life to try and crack Jack, and the emptiness of the living is used to contrast the crowded nature of the ghosts, the inhabitants who have stayed on and on.

Throughout the book, the Overlook tightens the noose around the family, systematically intensifying each Gothic element of setting - they become more isolated, the past grows darker as they learn more, the society decays further, and the emptiness grows.

The importance of the Gothic setting cannot be overrated - for one small example, note that the titles of most of the chapters refer to locations within the Overlook. Oh yes, the importance of the setting becomes literal in The Shining--the hotel becomes the antagonist, becomes an important character in its own right. While you could perhaps change the setting for Rosemary's Baby and still have the same story, you cannot separate The Shining from the Overlook and have the story remain even remotely the same.

Works Cited

King, Stephen. The Shining. New York: Pocket Books, 2001.

The Sounds of Madness

So, is everyone sick of the Gothic? I certainly am. I also admit to a little bit (okay, a lot) of Lovecraft overload.

So, here's thoughts of "The Dreams in the Witch-House" and madness in general.

What really struck me about this story is the presence of sounds, possibly because I'm paying a lot of attention right now (due to my thesis protagonist) to ways of description other than the visual. Once I started "seeing" the sounds, I found them throughout this story, right from the very beginning with the stopped clock whose "ticking had come to seem like a thunder of artillery" (Lovecraft 318).

And of course, he describes sounds as he does the visual - by the absence (quite often) of concrete definition. "The darkness always teemed with unexplained sound - and yet he sometimes shook with fear lest the noises he heard should subside and allow him to hear certain other fainter noises which he suspected were lurking behind them" (Lovecraft 318).

I suspect that Lovecraft had a night like mine when he wrote this, where you're struggling to go to sleep and every sound becomes magnified and annoying - from the ticking of a clock to the screaming of a cat, to the snoring person beside you.

For Gilman, it’s the "creaking of his floor at certain hours of the night," and "hearing the read of shot feet" (Lovecraft 325). His "fever-sharpened ears" are "disturbed by the whining prayers" (Lovecraft 325).

And Gilman's nights only get worse. The sounds intensify, and the alternate universe becomes "vague shrieking and roaring," waxing "louder and louder" (Lovecraft 327). Things scratch in the night, poor Gilman's ears keep ringing.

Until finally, the noise increases into understanding, into an awful comprehension:

"Then his fevered, abnormal hearing caught the distant, windborne notes." (Lovecraft 342). "The screaming twilight abysses" open up to him.

The climax? "And mixed with the distant chant of the Sabbat and the whimpers of Brown Jenkin in the gulf below he thought he heard another and wilder whine from unknown depths. Joe Mazurewicz--the prayers against the Crawling Chaos now turning to an inexplicably triumphant shriek--worlds of sardonic actuality impinging on vortices of febrile dream--Ia! Shub-Niggurath!" (Lovecraft 344).

And then, poor Gilman goes deaf, which must be a relief at this point. As much trouble as I'm having sleeping, I admit to a bit of envy.

I hope tonight I don't start hearing the chanting, the sounds of incipient madness sneaking up on my like the ancients...

Works Cited

Lovecraft, H.P. "The Dreams in the Witch-House." Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre. New York,: Del Rey, 1982. 318-349.

Rosemary's Baby - Gothic Pregnancy

Yeah, you guessed it. Continuing with the Gothic motif...

It's kinda funny - I wasn't going to write about the gothic this time around. I read this book at the beginning of the term, and had sorta decided I might talk about the role of women in horror, but then found this stickie note that I'd left for my future self - and it said,

"Pregnancy as inherently alien - Aliens, Omen, children as the other, Children of the Corn. That within something blooms is especially terrifying for women - even if the bud turns out to be a rose. What if we are responsible for the rot in our womb?"

Which probably says more than I should willingly reveal about my thought processes. In a wonderful coincidence, two days later K.D. emailed me an article called "Rosemary's Baby, Gothic Pregnancy, and Fetal Subjects" by Karyn Valerius.

An very interesting read on Rosemary's Baby and the topic of abortion - highly recommend it.

And it echoes some of the things I was thinking about - that Rosemary's Baby is really a perversion of the Jesus narrative - instead of the child conceived immaculately, we have the child by perverse rape, which turns out to be an anti-christ. A flipping of the tale, so to speak, and one that speaks to me as a woman. No I don't have children, and part of the reason why is that the thought of someone growing inside me just plain freaks me out.

In that, it follows in the Gothic tradition of taking something beautiful and turning it abhorrent. Although Rosemary doesn't seem to find the pregnancy too horrifying, we as the readers do, because we know that what she thinks as dreams is reality, that all her suppressed fears will come true.

As far as the other tropes of the Gothic tradition, we do have the Gothic setting - again, the Bramford meets most the requirements I outline in my last post - an decayed society, an evil past, and an empty setting - even if it doesn't have the traditional isolation. Rosemary could escape at any time, if she chose too, which she doesn't - by physically leaving, or by aborting.

The book doesn't have the other elements of the Gothic - that is, the anti-hero and sense of style. Rosemary is not a deeply flawed character, and the writing style is plain, although effective.

Other than that, I haven't got much for Rosemary. I found her to be a twit, and much too passive and accepting of her situation for my tastes. 

Works Cited

Levin, Ira. Rosemary's Babe. New York: New American Library, 2003.

Valerius, Karyn. "Rosemary's Baby, Gothic Pregnancy and Fetal Subjects." College Literature - 32.3, Summer 2005, pp. 116-135

Innsmouth and the Gothic Setting

I'm sure everyone is sick of me and the gothic tradition, but no, I'm not stopping. I refuse! 

One of the most important things that horror (as a genre separate from Gothic) uses from the Gothic tradition is the setting. The gothic setting is integral to horror, reflecting the wild beauty of fantasy and the nature of evil. Innsmouth is the location for "The Shadow over Innsmouth", meeting the four traditional elements of the Gothic setting: isolation, an evil past, a decayed society, and an empty one. 

But first, a bit of definition and background:

Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines "Gothic" (as it relates to literature) as:

"of or relating to a style of fiction characterized by the use of desolate or remote settings and macabre, mysterious, or violent incidents"

Gothic settings are ones which use the physical landscape to create a sense of gloom, mystery, and the supernatural. The gothic setting links "grotesque and fantastical scenery with a strong adventure element" (Moorcock, 53).

Lovecraft himself remarked on the importance of setting, that "atmosphere is the all important thing". (Lovecraft 105).

"The true weird tale has something more than secret murder, bloody bones, or a sheeted form clanking chains according to rule. A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint, expressed with a seriousness and portentousness becoming its subject, of that most terrible conception of the human brain--a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assault of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space." (Lovecraft, 105).

Innsmouth is geographically isolated--its physical location reflects the inhabitants' internal wish for privacy in which to commit their dark deeds. "The place always was badly cut off from the rest of the country by marshes and creeks..." (Lovecraft 266)

The history of the town is one fraught with unexplainable circumstances, and potentially evil events. "The epidemic and riots of 1846 were very sparsely treated..." (Lovecraft 268). The more the narrator learns of the past, the worse it gets. 

The decaying town reflects the nature of its history. 

"From the tangle of chimney-pots scarecely a wisp of smoke came, and the three tall steeples loomed stark and unpainted against the seaward horizon. One of tthem was crumbling down at the top, and in that and another there were only black gaping holes where clock-dials should have been. The vast huddle of sagging gambrel roofs and peaked gables conveyed with offensive clearness the idea of wormy decay..." (Lovecraft 272)

Finally, the place is apparently deserted, fulfilling the fourth criteria of the Gothic setting. It "was a town of wide extent and dense construction, yet one with a portentous dearth of visible life." (Lovecraft 273). "Fish Street was as deserted as Main." (Lovecraft 280).

Oh yes, this place fits the gothic tradition. And by doing so, it takes its place in the ranks of the creepy places we love to be scared by, along with Hell House and the Overlook.

Works Cited

Lovecraft, H.P. "The Shadow over Innsmouth" Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre. New York,: Del Rey, 1982. 2262-317.

Moorcock, Michael. Wizardry and Wild Romance, a Study of Epic Fantasy. Austin, Texas: Monkeybrain Books, 2004.

Lovecraft, H. P. "Introduction to Supernatural Horror in Literature." Fantastic Literature, A Critical Reader. David Sandner. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2004. 102-105.

The Thing on the Doorstep - H.P. Lovecraft

Lovecraft and Language

I'll admit to enjoying this one more than others - and I won't get started on the sexism in it, hopefully someone else will go that route and I'll be able to jump in on comments. What struck me in particular about this story, as does Lovecraft's work in general, is the superb construction and attention paid to style and language.

Word choice, structure, and form were paramount to Lovecraft. In my research for this entry, I stumbled across Lovecraft's writings in Writings in the United Amateur 1915-1922 (a collection of essays and critiques of short stories and poetry) and began to read, eventually being hit over the head with the following quote on language. 

"The only exact means whereby a poet may transmit his ideas to others is language, a thing both definite and intellectual. Granting that vague, chaotic, dissonant lines are the best form in which the tender suitor of the Muses may record his spiritual impressions for his own benefit and comprehension, it by no means follows that such lines are at all fitted to convey those impressions to minds other than his own. When language is used without appropriateness, harmony, or precision, it can mean but little save to the person who writes it. The soul of a poem lies not in words but in meaning; and if the author have any skill at all in recording thought through language, he will be able to refine the uncouth mass of spontaneous verbiage which first comes to him as representing his idea, but which in its original amorphous state may fail entirely to suggest the same idea to another brain. He will be able to preserve and perpetuate his idea in a style of language which the world may understand, and in a rhythm which may not offend the reader's sense of propriety with conspicuous harshness, breaks, or sudden transitions." (Lovecraft 38)

Lovecraft really cared about this! And, much like us, in our readings in the genre, paid attention to and learned from the work of his peers.

So, what makes Lovecraft's writings so unique? His attention to the "tricks" of language, "appropriateness, harmony, and precision" (Lovecraft 38).

Here's some specifics from The Thing on the Doorstep. 

"What lay beyond our joint love of shadows and marvels was, no doubt, the ancient, mouldering, and subtly fearsome town in which we lived--witch-cursed, legend-haunted Arkham, whose huddled, sagging gambrel roofs and crumbling Georgian balustrades brood out the centuries beside the darkly muttering Miskatonic." (Lovecraft 240)

What tricks is he using here? Parallel clause structure is the main one, besides the obsessively careful word choices. "Ancient"/"mouldering"/"subtly fearsome" are set against "witch-cursed"/"legend-haunted," and finally "huddled"/"sagging"/"crumbling". The word choices of "gambrel roofs" and "Georgian balustrades" combined with brood? Brilliant--both poetic in the "G" sounds as is the final "muttering Miskatonic". This sentence not only paints a picture of the town through the words, but also through the rhythm.

Or again, later on:

"He talked about terrible meetings in lonely places, of cyclopean ruins in the heart of the Maine woods beneath which vast staircases led down to abysses of nighted secrets, of complex angles that led through invisible walls to other regions of space and time, and of hideous exchanges of personality that permitted explorations in remote and forbidden places, on other worlds, and in different space-time continua." (Lovecraft 247)

Again, parallel construction within the clauses--the repetition three times using the "of" construction - "of cyclopean ruins"/"of complex angles"/"of hideous exchanges of personality". 

My final example:

"The face beside me was twisted almost unrecognizably for a moment, while through the whole body there passed a shivering motion--as if all the bones, organs, muscles, nerves, and glands were adjusting themselves to a radically different posture, set of stresses, and general personality." (Lovecraft 250)

We've all been taught not to use lists in our descriptions--so how does Lovecraft get away with it so wonderfully? Because he first lists the parts, using (for him) fairly specific general usage words (bones, organs, muscles, nerves, glands) and then he repeats the list so that you imagine each undergoing "radically different postures...". Each familiar thing twists in your mind into something quite horrific.

In his comments on The United Amateur praising Eleanor J. Barnhart's "The Shadow on the Trail" Lovecraft bequeaths his highest praise: " ...possesses every element of good fiction; a substantial and really interesting plot, a logical development from beginning to conclusion, an adequate amount of suspense, a climax which does not disappoint, and a praiseworthy degree of local colour. Besides all of which it is fluent in language and correct in syntax." (Lovecraft 70). 

As is Lovecraft's own work.

Works Cited

Lovecraft, H.P. "The Thing on the Doorstep." Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre. New York,: Del Rey, 1982. 239-261.

Lovecraft, H.P. Writings in the United Amateur 1915-1922. Project Gutenberg, 2009.  http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30637/30637-h/30637-h.htm

Setting and Horror

I think there seems to be two types of settings in horror - the Gothic, and the normal. Hell House, by Richard Matheson, falls in the first category.

(Side note here - I'm not as familiar with horror criticism as I possibly should be. Therefore, I might be repeating an idea others have more clearly articulated. If so, someone, pretty please, tell me, so I can go read their ideas!)

Setting is often an integral part of horror - the fantastic, the macabre, the twisted castles, haunted houses, lonely wildernesses. But then, there's another category of horror in which the setting is normal, it is the characters themselves who bring the horror, the fear.

Gothic settings are ones which use the physical landscape to create a sense of gloom, mystery, and the supernatural. The gothic setting links "grotesque and fantastical scenery with a strong adventure element" (Moorcock, 53).

Hell House is a bounded world, uniting (much like The Island of Dr. Moreau) both science and the fantastic in a world from which the characters visit, are stuck, and then, at the end, return. The horror is explainable through science, a common motif. And, it’s a Gothic setting. This is a house of the fantastic, of the over-blown, with twists and turns, much like Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, or Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast series. 

So, why is the haunted house a prevalent feature of both the Gothic literature tradition and horror in general?

I frankly don't know. Is it perhaps because the haunted house was once a home, and thus resonates with us all? Is it that sometimes the most terrifying thing that can happen is that the place you're supposed to be safest in turns out to be the most deadly location of all? Or is it that the haunted house subgenre generally traps its characters inside - there is no escape? 

The twisted setting of Hell House forces each character to confront their inner selves.

The Belasco mansion, originally built to house and glorify himself and his family, becomes through his twisted urge to study humanity, the most deadly place for his son - or at least that's Florence's interpretation. Fischer knows better - he knows there's no escape from the deadly mansion. In Edith, the twisted nature of the house, the labyrinth, is used to reflect her sexuality.

Barret alone uses the scientific purpose of the house - reflecting his conviction that all is explainable.

I find it interesting that both Hell House and The Shining follow in the path of The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. Matheson takes almost exactly the same idea and turns it more visceral/physical, while Jackson remained more psychological. Stephen King focuses more on character. So, we have three different versions of the same story, each focused on a bounded setting, yet completely different.

Can the haunted house motif be unbounded? Anyone know of a haunted house work in which the characters were free to exit and enter?

(Does horror have to have at least one element of the Gothic - either setting, anti-hero, or sense of style? Hmm - perhaps a longer idea than today's comments.)

Works Cited

Moorcock, Michael. Wizardry and Wild Romance, a Study of Epic Fantasy. Austin, Texas: Monkeybrain Books, 2004.

Matheson, Richard. I Am Legend, Hell House. New York: Quality Paperback Book Club, 2006.

I wish I'd liked this story better, I really do. For some reason though, I just feel terribly sick of Lovecraft at the moment, with his nebulous horror and general peculiarness of everything (and I don't care if that's a word or not).

This story, is, though, one of the more subtle of his I've read. Its creepy, but not obvert about it. The mad musician playing his strange music to keep away the vile creatures of the night is much less in your face than most of Lovecraft's madnesses. 

As a writer, I liked the attention he pays to sound, an often under-utilized sense. Although, once again, Lovecraft doesn't describe so much as he omits, yet again leaving the reader to fill in his or her own sounds.

"It would be useless to describe the playing of Erich Zann on that dreadful night. It was more horrible than anything I had ever overheard..." (Lovecraft 69)

"...his face grew suddenly distorted with an expression wholly beyond analysis..." (Lovecraft 66)

Does this story fit the Gothic tradition? Absolutely. It has the required twisty setting, the somewhat anti-hero protagonist, and the attention to style. I'd additionally say that this, much like Clive Barker's Cabal, falls under the category of dark fantasy as opposed to horror. That is, the horror elements are not as prevalent as the fantasy.

I'm really not going to get started on the whole dark fantasy as opposed to horror thing yet - I'm saving it for my discussion of Cabal, which I think is a prime example of dark fantasy. Suffice it to say, I argue that this story is not horror by the strict definition.

So, what am I using as the definition of Horror? I'll go with John Clute's entry in The Darkening Garden, A Short Lexicon of Horror, in which he contrasts horror and fantasy as following:

(Clute 89)

By Clute's model, this story fits fantasy more than strict horror. It starts off with a wrongness, followed by a thinning (in which the world intrudes), recognition, and then, at the end (the most important to me) a return to normality - the world is once again safe, as opposed to an aftermath.

Anyone want to argue in the other direction?

Works Cited

Clute, John. The Darkening Garden, A Short Lexicon of Horror. Seattle: Payseur and Schmidt, 2006.

Lovecraft, H.P. "The Music of Erich Zann." Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre. New York,: Del Rey, 1982. 64-71.

"Pickman's Model" - H.P. Lovecraft

To veer, temporarily, away from my obsession with the Gothic as a definition of horror, I'd like to talk (briefly) about openings. (Fear not, I will return to the Gothic anon.)

This 2^nd person tale starts by setting up questions that immediately draw the reader in. Over the first three paragraphs, the "you" wonders the following: What's happened in the last year to the narrator? And, perhaps most importantly, what happened to Pickman? The answers to these questions propel you through the narrative.

And once again, Lovecraft is at his best with what I like to call (no idea what the real term is, anyone?) "negative writing". That is to say, he describes horror best by being vague, by using negative descriptions, rather than positive, to allow the horror to come to live in "your" own imagination. Combined with the second person viewpoint, this works quite effectively in this story.

For example, "It wasn't the scaly claws, nor the mould-caked body nor the half-hooved feet - none of these, although any one of them might well have driven an excitable man to madness. It was the technique, Eliot - the cursed, the impious, the unnatural technique!" (Lovecraft 42)

Note that not once is the technique ever really described. Lovecraft has described a painting by the absence of what it really looks like and how it is really formed, leaving the "you" to imagine the most grotesque possible.

To further my point: "There was a study called "Subway Accident," in which a flock of the vile things were clambering up from some unknown catacomb through a crack in the floor.....Then there were any number of cellar views, with monsters creeping in through holes and rifts in the masonry and grinning as they squatted behind barrels..." (Lovecraft 40)

Look at word choice - The catacombs are "unknown". "Flocks" describe how many there are - and how many is in a flock? What does your brain see? Would it have worked had he said "twenty"? I don't think so - twenty is a defined amount, and by being precise about NOT defining, he's leaving his horror unbounded. "There were ANY number" - that is to say, some, undefined, however many your imagination would care to create. 

Now, let us move back to my interminable harping on the Gothic. Does this follow the gothic tradition? Well, yes, it has all three of the elements of the tradition, the strong settings, strong sense of style, and the deeply flawed protagonist.

The setting of the twisted artist's studio, the stylistic attention to detail and form (seen here in the rare use of the second person point of view to bring the story closer to "you", and then, the character of the narrator, who isn't such a nice person in and of himself - look at his fascination with the "evil" paintings, and then, at the end, he leaves poor Pickman deranged and in the grip of some fantastic, horror.

Oh yes, although Lovecraft himself preferred the term "weird" stories to "gothic" - he's still fulfilling the conventions of the genre. (Not that horror has to be gothic - please note. I'm not sure Rosemary's Baby fulfills gothic conventions, for example.)

Works Cited

Lovecraft, H.P. "Pickman's Model." Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre. New York,: Del Rey, 1982. 33-44.

"The Madness of Art" - Joyce Carol Oates

I like what she has to say about the vision of time transcending horror from pulp literature, from the basement, to "classics". "Perhaps to transcend categories others have invented for us, we have to be both dead - long dead - and "classics."". (Oates 5)

And I wonder if the more critically acclaimed experimental nature of the visual arts has to do, not with the time spent in creation, but time in observance. A book is a commitment, often of days. A film is merely an afternoon, and a painting can be taken in (if not adequately analyzed) in a matter of minutes.

If this is so, is the current explosion in the net of experimental genre fiction, especially in flash format, an attempt to shorten the observational time and allow for more respected attempts to break form and boundaries? Note to self: must see if Jeff VanderMeer has posted anything on this subject.

A couple of other notes on this article - the importance of the gothic tradition to literary horror.

"The surreal is as integral a part of our lives as the "real"" (Oates 5)

"The Gothic work resembles the tragic in that it is willing to confront mankind's - and nature's - darkest secrets." (Oates 6) In that sense, the Gothic tradition covers both horror classics in which nature goes awry (Lovecraft) and in which science is the instigator (Island of Dr. Moreau).

"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."  (Oates 6)

Also, horror (and the gothic tradition) as "the lure of the grotesque, the skyll beneath the smiling face" (Oates 6)

Also, I give fair warning. I'll probably harp on the Gothic tradition this term. Its part of an ongoing paper I've been working on for the last year (mostly off, rather than on) in hopes of publication/presentation. We shall see. In the meantime, please pardon if I drone on the subject.

Works Cited

Joyce Carol Oates. "The Madness of Art." On Writing Horror, Revised Edition. Mort Castle. Cincinati, Ohio: Writer's Digest Books, 2007. 4-6.