Steering

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I’ve always been self-critical.  Often when someone points out something I’ve done wrong I’ve already figured out that I’ve made the mistake and the reminder is painful.  I can’t help but think that my childhood made me this way.  In any case, since I haven’t ever found much success is writing, I figure I must need help with it.  Recently I’ve read books on various aspects of writing by Stephen King and H. P. Lovecraft (published posthumously).  I’ve read quite a few more over the years.  I recently saw Steering the Craft: A 21st-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story by Ursula K. Le Guin.  I confess that I haven’t read a ton of Le Guin’s fiction, but she is treated with a great deal of reverence in literary circles that I figured a bit of advice from a master couldn’t hurt.  Besides, it isn’t a long book.

Books about writing aren’t volumes that you fly through, though.  Steering the Craft has ten relatively short chapters and ten writing exercises, some in multiple parts.  As I read through I stopped and did each of the exercises.  I really didn’t want to cheat myself of the experience of learning from a departed sage.  The experience was refreshing.  As will surprise none of my regular readers, I’m in the midst of another writing project.  The thing about steering is that you’re constantly doing it.  And if the captain is someone who’s been through these waters, it’s best to listen.  At the same time—and Le Guin was very aware of this—hard and fast rules tend to be neither.  What spells success for one author becomes abject failure for another.  Some of us write because we must, whether anybody reads us or not.

But the exercises.  Exercise is good for your health.  Even writers with native talent need to stay in shape.  I’ve been doing creative writing, in one form or another, constantly, since at least the Nixon Administration.  Publication began in the academic realm when I was working on my doctorate.  I had my first fiction piece published in 2009.  Keen eyed readers will notice that is the same year I began this blog.  I’d been pretty much booted from academia by then, but I’d been writing in the meantime.  Essays, novels, short stories.  Then I tried a nonfiction book or two.  There is a great gulf between writing and publication.  An ocean, in fact.  And if you hope to cross an ocean, it is always helpful to learn how to steer.  I’m still trying to learn why my boat seems to be leaking, though.

Reading Unwritten

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There’s a style of writing—I’m not sure what it’s called—where an author keeps revealing new, and necessary information on nearly every page.  The effect on me, as a reader, is almost as if the book is backwards; too much wasn’t revealed up front and that kept me from understanding the story as it unfolded.  I confess that the fault is mine.  I’ve always appreciated a narrative that begins with much of what you need to know and then reveals unexpected things along the way.  This unwieldy preamble is to say that I had trouble getting into the otherwise delightful fantasy The Library of the Unwritten.  A. J. Hackwith is a solid writer, but since this is fantasy there’s some introduction to the unfamiliar world that readers like yours truly needs.  At least a bit more than is on offer here at first.

This is a fun book with a fun premise.  Books in Hell’s library are unwritten and restless.  If not watched, their characters come to life and the book goes missing.  The idea of the unfinished also applies to paintings and other creative endeavors.  At first I thought this was going to be like Jasper Fforde’s Tuesday Next novels (several of which are discussed on this blog; you’ll have to use the search function) but the character from a book quickly gets swallowed up in a larger story involving demons with backstories slowly revealed, as well as a librarian and a muse, also with baggage that we only see once the train has left the station.  About halfway through, the story really starts to move and becomes quite enjoyable.  I guess I need more orientation than some readers.

The novel unfolds into a potential battle between Heaven and Hell, but those aren’t the only realms in play.  There’s Earth, of course, as well as Valhalla, and some nameless realms where the gods have died out.  And it focuses on a library.  It’s this final aspect, I suspect, that leads many people to categorize this novel as an example of Dark Academia.  Indeed, that’s where I discovered the book, on a display table with that label.  Although written with a light hand, and often somewhat funny, there is a deeper meaning here, a narrative about the importance of books that faces the reality that some would rather destroy them than read them.  I’m sure there are some religious folk that would see this book as promoting satanism and darkness, but instead it emphasizes loyalty and goodness.  I’ll be pondering it a while.

Measuring Books

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You know how some email servers stock your inbox with ads?  I almost never pay attention to them.  Then one for Books by the Foot showed up.  I had to click.  The basic idea is simple enough: you want to look smart so you fill your shelves with books by a company that sells them by the linear foot.  You can get color coordination, rainbows, old books, you name it.  Now this isn’t a free ad.  In fact, this is a rather sad state of affairs.  I’m sure their antique books have been vetted for any real treasures, but the fact that people want to buy books just for display evokes, well, melancholy.  I’m pleased that books retain their cachet as symbols of pride, but these are not books for reading.  I’m left with mixed feelings.  The website states that they have over 5 million books on hand.

At least they’re not selling ebooks.  I love books.  They are a wonderful symbol and I suspect they are among the most noble things that humans achieve.  I grew enamored of books as I entered my tweens.  I was terribly shy by that point.  We had moved to a new, and rough small town where I really didn’t know anybody.  Life, which hadn’t been exactly a picnic to that point, seemed to be getting scarier.  So I read.  And I never really stopped.  Ironically, during my professorial days I had less time to read entire books.  Those who’ve dabbled in higher education know that at even the hint of organizational skill you get bumped into administration, whether you want to or not.  And administration is busy work.  Yes, even professors have it too.  In any case, when I got bumped back down to being a mere adjunct, I started reading a lot again.

One time one of my bosses asked me how many books I had.  This was early in the pandemic when we were seeing inside each other’s houses for the first time, via Zoom.  My office is one of my main book repositories.  (Along with the attic and the living room.)  I answered truthfully that I’ve never counted.  I started using Goodreads in 2013 to keep track of the books I read.  In those early days I didn’t put everything in there (who hasn’t read a book they’re embarrassed to admit to once in a while?), but when I started the reading challenges in 2016 I did.  Mine has been a life defined by books.  Starting with the Good Book, and including many quite the opposite, I have earned books by the foot.  But I’m not selling.  Symbols have value beyond cash, at least in my mind.

Finding Vampires

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Parents always dread when their child will ask them the inevitable question: where do vampires come from?  A number of people have undertaken to answer that question, and Mark Collins Jenkins attempts it with aplomb.  Vampire Forensics: Uncovering the Origins of an Enduring Legend is quite a romp through the fields of the undead.  Ranging from the chewing dead through epidemics, Montague Summers, movies, Varney the vampire, the origin of the word “vampire,” where zombies come from, and practices of dealing with corpses, this study may not convince the reader that the mystery has been solved, but it will provide lots of information.  I’ve been pondering vampires lately, and this book ties many of these loose threads together well.  Jenkins has a talent for beginning a chapter on an apparently unrelated topic and then weaving it into the growing, ever expanding vampire tapestry.

I’ve read, many times, that vampires have ancient origins.  That really depends on how you define “vampire.”  This book explores those ancient roots, but unflinchingly points out that our modern idea of the walking dead drinking the blood of the living springs from the Balkan peninsula, largely in the eighteenth century.  This isn’t a strictly chronological study, and it isn’t limited to Europe and the lore that grew from that region between Asia Minor and Western Europe.  That doesn’t stop Jenkins from going back further in history.  It was a journey on which I learned much.  I also confess that I was nearly grossed out a time or two.  The vampire requires a stout constitution to study.  Interestingly, it seems that the word “vampire” might’ve derived from a word denoting “heretic.”  Religion and horror belong together, as I’ve said many times.

There’s always a danger with wide-ranging studies, since it’s not possible to turn a specialist’s eye toward all the cultures and historical periods under scrutiny.  Those who’ve tried it, such as James Frazer (of Golden Bough fame), come to be viewed with suspicion by later specialists.  (I discuss this in my little book on The Wicker Man, by the way.)  Jenkins does rely on Frazer a time or two.  Writing a general history on this subject almost necessitates that, however.  Even with the internet and “experts” being those who can gather the largest followings, academia has rightfully demonstrated that to get the real story you need to bury yourself with resources around a very small subject and be willing to live and breathe it for years.  Even then you might get it wrong.  But I digress.  This is a fine study of vampires and their possible origins.  It was a learning experience for me and I now have a better idea how to answer that dreaded question.

Scary Things

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I recently set myself the challenge to come up with the scariest movies I’ve seen, up to 1979.  The date is the publication date (I think) of Stephen King’s Danse Macabre, which gave me the idea.  Book publication dates can be difficult to decipher; I have the Berkley Trade paperback edition, which is copyrighted 1981 and published in ’82.  So, let’s just say 1980.  Now, I would never challenge Mr. King, who is older, and wiser (not to mention much better known) than me.  And I suspect, if I understand writers at all, his views may have changed since then.  Several of the films he discusses are thrillers.  And, of course, each person’s viewing history is unique as their thumbprint.  So let’s give it a try.  First, I need to say there are different kinds of scary.  We all have our triggers, and I’m going for things that frightened me.

Photo by Stefano Pollio on Unsplash

Since we’re using 1980 as the cutoff, The Shining has to be on the list (of course King wrote the novel).  Like most of these movies, I saw it at home and the theatrical experience would’ve made an even bigger impact.  The Exorcist also has to be on this list as well.  For older fare, Eyes Without a Face certainly qualifies.  The Haunting, based on Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House is among those in this period but it isn’t terribly scary.  I watched a number of King’s movies—many of which I’d never seen—and found some frightening ones among them.  Night of the Hunter, which makes me add the original Cape Fear, should be included.  So is The Bad Seed.  Something all of these have in common, apart from perhaps The Exorcist, is that they derive their terror from psychology.  There may be some supernatural involved, but the mind is the truly scary part.

Growing up—and even in the present—I’m not really looking to be scared.  I have no trouble getting to that state all by myself, thank you.  The monster movies of childhood thrilled with the unusual, and the realm beyond the everyday.  The haunted house movie held its own frisson for a similar reason.  Of course, children are often not developed enough to understand the nuances of psychological horror.  The more I ponder it, the more it seems that “horror” is the wrong name for what I’m after.   We gain bragging rights by watching scary movies.  And I don’t count jump startles as truly frightening.  I’m more of an existential dread kind of guy.  But I do love monsters.  Even this little exercise made me realize how difficult ranking such movies can be.  Perhaps I should bow to the King.

Finding a Spot

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Sometimes you’re not born among your tribe.  I live where I’ve moved out of economic necessity, not where my family’s located.  My family’s not quite sure what to make of me anyway, so I seek my tribe.  At first it was among the United Methodists, but when I was in seminary they let me know what they really thought of me.  The Episcopalians seemed more welcoming to my academic aspirations and my doctorate led me to believe my tribe was those who studied ancient West Asian religions.  I wrote papers, led conference sections, knew people.  When I had to step out of academe, however, they tended to fall away.  (Ironically my most-read work, according to Academia.edu, is my dissertation, revised edition.  It has had over 8,000 views.)  I still have many scholar friends, but I’m clearly no longer part of the club.

That’s why I turned to horror (as a field of study).  I was seeking my tribe.  I wasn’t at all sure Holy Horror would get published.  I was encouraged when The Journal of Religion and Popular Culture published “Reading the Bible in Sleepy Hollow.”  Then I discovered other academics (still not part of the club) were studying religion and horror.  Ironically, it was people on the horror side, rather than the religion side, who made me feel most welcome.  In the meantime, I wrote some horror stories (still do) but the fiction publishing tribe seems to be at war against the rest of the world.  You can’t breach their bulwarks.  I’ve been trying for a decade and a half.  So I continue to write books that move more toward horror, and move away from religion.  Still, hard-core horror fans don’t really pay much attention to my books, still I try, but as an outsider.

Since Sleepy Hollow as American Myth is in production, I’m working on my next projects.  I’ve been indulging in fiction again, where I’d really rather be, for a host of reasons, but unless I succeed as a double agent, I’ll remain unpublished.  My tribe, I think, would welcome more nonfiction like I’m writing.  These books haven’t been selling well, but they may eventually get referenced.  Now, many years after the fact, the ancient West Asian studies tribe cites my work and asks me to contribute more.  I’m afraid that island was abandoned years ago, former tribe-mates.  I was lonely and so I rowed across the ocean into horror territory.  If you’re looking for a tribe too, I’ll be glad to try to introduce you around.

Motorcycle Trip

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Among my introductory lectures to students was one that covered genre.  I recall saying something along the lines of “when you read something your expectations of genre influence how you understand it.”  Strangely, my own writing sometimes defies easy categorization, but I find it disorienting to read something without an idea of whether it’s fact or fiction or whatever.  I suspect I’m not alone in this.  When my wife suggested we read Robert M. Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance together, I wanted to know what it was we’d begun reading.  The BISAC code (the category on the back cover of a book) simply said “Philosophy.”  I took almost enough philosophy in college to minor in it, so I had a general idea of what philosophy might look like.  Then I remembered reading Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra and found myself back at the question of genre again.  Was this philosophy, autobiography, or a novel?  All of the above?

Now, I’ve known about this book from college days on.  It was in the college bookstore and I’m pretty sure it was assigned in some classes (not the ones I took).  What threw me was the autobiographical part.  Was this fiction?  The philosophy parts were pretty stout stuff.  And was Phaedrus real or imaginary?  Of course, you start getting some inklings that Phaedrus and the narrator are the same.  And that the latter isn’t a particularly good father.  The edition we read came with a helpful introduction that suggested that Phaedrus was the one with a correct outlook all along.  And an afterword that told how Chris died during a mugging when he was only 22.  There was pathos all over this tale.  Even when we finished I wasn’t quite sure what we read.  It’s sometimes classified as an autobiographical novel or philosophical fiction.

Rejected over 120 times, the book became a national bestseller when one editor took a chance on it.  (That is how publishing works.)  Perhaps the most poignant part of the book is the author.  What’s more, Pirsig wrote the book by getting up and writing at the same time slot that I use, so he could work a regular day after.  And he had been in a psychiatric hospital and had received electroshock therapy for schizophrenia.  Clearly a lot was happening behind the scenes for this most unusual tome.  Among the academic publishing crowd it’s common to hear that Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time was a book that many bought and never read.  I did find that one a bit rough going too, but I do wonder how many engage with the philosophy in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.  There’s heady stuff here to ponder.  And I’m glad for that one editor who thought differently from all his colleagues.

Perhaps More?

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Publishers use the term “deep backlist” to refer to titles that they published long ago.  That’s always the phrase that comes to mind when I browse my “to read” list.  That list was started, in its current online repository, a decade-and-a-half ago.  When I delve into the “deep backlist” of items I placed on the list years ago I sometimes can’t remember where I learned about them.  Such was the case with N. T. Morris’ debut novel, Elmwood.  Someone recommended it years ago and I finally came into possession of it.  A moody tale about a town haunted by a cult, it is a nice effort as a self-published horror novel.  If you read a lot of fiction you start to notice some of the signs with self-published work (and there are many good reasons to go that route).  Morris offers a well-designed and aesthetically pleasing book.  The story does end with some loose threads, however.  There may be spoilers below.

Aidan Crain finds the victim of what appears to be a serial killer.  His difficulty coping with it leads his wife Laura to suggest that they get away from it all in the little town of Elmwood.  They rent out a house she found online, but it turns out to be haunted.  The people of Elmwood aren’t terribly friendly to strangers, but since the goal is to get away from city life, the young couple doesn’t much mind.  Except the ghosts in the house are accompanied by a dark presence in the woods that keeps calling to Aidan.  One of the tricky bits for me was determining what were dream scenes and how they related to waking scenes.  This is often part of speculative fiction, but a solid editor would lead you in the right direction in such situations.

The story tries to fit a lot in, leading me to think—rather uncharacteristically—that it needs to be longer.  The house was owned by a serial killer who’s part of the cult that killed the victim Aidan found many miles away.  The cult has been culling both locals and visitors for years and the police department appears to be complicit.  As do some local business owners.  The darkness in the woods, which is defined more or less as evil itself, seems to control the cult and it wants Aidan to join.  Some of the loose threads at the end suggest that Morris’ next novel will be a sequel to this one.  I can’t recall how I learned about Elmwood, but I’m glad to have finally read it.  It’s a good shot at becoming a horror writer from my personal deep backlist.

2024 in Books

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I’m trying to figure it out.  My annual last post is my book reflection for the fading year.  I keep track of my books on Goodreads, and I always join their reading challenge to keep myself honest.  What I can’t figure out is why I fell below 70 books this year.  (The official total is only 61.)  I set my goal below that, of course, because I’m no fan of setting targets impossibly high.  The only thing I can figure is that some of this year’s books took longer than usual to get through.  Maybe on average they were longer than my typical fare.  In any case, my favorites among the fiction I’ve read are these:

For standard horror I especially liked Thomas Tryon’s The Other, and Ivar Leon Menger’s What Mother Won’t Tell Me.  Interestingly, neither was speculative.  I do seem to have slipped in that category a bit.  Gothically speaking, Thierry Jonquet’s Mygale, Rebecca James’ The Woman in the Mirror, Alix E. Harrow’s The Once and Future Witches, and Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus were all memorable.  I started reading Dark Academia somewhat intentionally this year and I would argue that Sarah Moss’ The Ghost Wall fits since the professor’s up to no good in the woods.  Piranesi by Susanna Clarke also fits for a similar reason, only not in the woods.  I enjoyed both.  For literary fiction, edging back into horror, A Children’s Bible by Lydia Millet was very good.

My reading tends toward nonfiction (occupational hazard) and here there are categories also.  In the general category, Andrew Laties’ Son of Rebel Bookseller stayed with me.  Don Foster’s Author Unknown was enjoyable and eye-opening.  I also really enjoyed Mark Thomas McGee’s Fast and Furious.  For books on horror I read Stephen King’s Danse Macabre and his On Writing.  (I also read one of his novels.)  Both of these were quite good, I thought.  I also learned a lot from Olga Gershenson’s New Israeli Horror.

I see that I also read quite a lot of unusual nonfiction.  Most of it I quite enjoyed.  The most conventional of them was David Robson’s The Expectation Effect.  I’m fascinated by the power of the human mind, so Mitch Horowitz’s Uncertain Places and D. W. Pasulka’s Encounters gave me considerable pause early in the year.  Carlos Eire’s They Flew, a weighty tome, was well worth the time it took.  Among the reflective/spiritual nonfiction my favorite was Katherine May’s Wintering.

I very much enjoy my end of year reflection over the books I’ve read.  I don’t plan my reading for the year in any systematic way.  I will say that I received quite a few titles over the holidays that I’m looking forward to posting on these this coming year.  And I suspect a few new titles will appear along the way as well. I do hope to get past 61, in any case.  Read through 2025!

Writing Academic

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One of the things that Stephen King detests (or at least detested back in the seventies) was academic literary criticism.  Perhaps you’re more normal than King or I, but if you read such things you find yourself immediately sucked into a world where the writer seems determined to demonstrate their erudition by splicing together words that shouldn’t really sleep together and then throws theory at you until you fall off the cliff.  It can be a frustrating experience for the reader, even as the writer is granted tenure for it.  One of these days I’ll learn my lesson.  Buying books by academics is dicey prospect.  I’m drawn in by the ideas, and the early pages, then I’m soon in the deep end remembering that I never learned to swim.

Is it really fair, I wonder, to begin a book—the first one or two pages impossibly engaging—then start winging ponderous, theory-laden words at the reader?  Your publisher paid for an attractive, inviting design and the reader, lured like a child to a candy store, thinks this will be sweet.  Then the sugar coating wears off and you’re faced with another 253 pages of clawing at words you recognize, hoping to make some sense out of what seemed, and still is, an engaging idea.  This has happened to me multiple times.  I live between worlds.  Even when I was an academic, however, I eschewed theory-heavy language.  I had nothing to prove, other than the point of my article.  And to prove a point, it seemed to me, people have to understand what you’re trying to say.

Higher education is in crisis mode.  Among the various fields you can study, the humanities are under especial scrutiny.  Have you read a book by an English professor lately (present company excepted!)?  Although their title is “English” you can be left wondering what language it actually is that they’re writing.  And they are capable of plain speaking.  Those first two pages demonstrate that.  They are capable, but are they willing?  I begin to understand Mr. King’s reservations.  I’ve run into books even in the field in which I have a doctorate that I can’t understand.  I find myself tentatively cracking open the Oxford English Dictionary to see if perhaps I’ve misunderstood the connotations of that word for my entire life.  I don’t mind a challenging read now and again.  At the same time, I mourn the loss of something beautiful when I can’t make out what the author seems to be saying.  Perhaps such books should come with warning labels.  I suspect Stephen King would have a good turn of phrase for what such a label should say.

The Dark Season

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It was on Goodreads that I first saw The Gathering Dark.  Since I’ve been trying to read more short stories, I decided I should give it a go.  Subtitled An Anthology of Folk Horror, it sounded like important for a viewer of said folk horror.  Anthologies, both fiction and non, are uneven by nature.  And something that wasn’t clear at first is that this was a young adult collection.  I’ve read YA books before, of course.  Some of the most creative fiction of the last couple of decades has been for that demographic.  The feature I noticed most here was that the horror was mostly gentile, kind of like the horror in my fiction.  I never consider myself a YA author, however.  Occasionally my characters are teens or twenty-somethings, but for the most part they participate in the adult world, where something is wrong.

Youth is, of course, a fraught time.  We’re exploring relationships and trying to sort out the changes taking place in our bodies and our lives as we leave the larval stage.  There’s a kind of natural horror to it.  At the same time, “folk horror,” like horror itself, is a slippery term.  Some of the stories seem to be based on urban legends, and that is definitely the present-day source of folk horror.  When it’s found online it’s often called “creepy pasta.”  It can be the basis for horror stories, and I’ve seen a few movies that make use of it.  Folk horror tends to favor rural settings (true of all the stories here), and superstition, and isolation.  Often it involves pagan religion, but here only one story dwells in that territory.

Overall I found the collection interesting and well written.  A number of the stories did evoke the feelings of what it was like to be young and afraid.  I do wonder how the anthology came about.  There’s no introduction and, I know from my own publishing experience that anthologies are a hard sell to most publishers.  I’ve noticed Page Street books before.  They recently began accepting horror written for adults.  They already have a strong YA list, thus The Gathering Dark.  They’re also committed to diversity, and that clearly shows throughout this collection.  I think it’s important to read young adult literature now and again.  It is, literally, the literature of the future—this is what forms young people’s tastes.  This particular book was a national bestseller, and it earned some notice on Goodreads.  And that was enough to draw me in.

Echoes

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Among the first books I read that might be considered Dark Academia was P. D. James’ Death in Holy Orders.  That was so long ago that I don’t remember when, although the inscription tells me it was purchased in 2002.  There’s no mystery as to why.  There was buzz at Nashotah House when the novel came out.  It was about a murder at a conservative Anglican seminary with few students.  It seemed very much like Nashotah House to some there, so I read it.  Now, I’m not a fan of murder-mysteries.  I’ve read nothing else P. D. James wrote.  I had no idea who Adam Dalgliesh was.  The book was a New York Times bestseller.  Reviews were mixed, and among fans of Dark Academia it is scarcely noticed.  Still, Dark Academia is still in its toddlerhood.  Its boundaries aren’t clear and it overlaps with other genres, as most modern genres do.  There may be spoilers below.

In a very complex plot (mystery writers like to show off in that way) a rich seminarian at St. Anselm’s, dies by suicide that was strange but not really suspicious.  His wealthy stepfather receives an anonymous letter suggesting foul play and super-sleuth Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard is brought in. After the suicide, an old housekeeper dies of an apparent heart attack.  But then an Archdeacon is murdered in the chapel (here was the frisson at Nashotah House).  Since there were visitors on the isolated campus at the time, and the Archdeacon was not liked by most people there, it becomes a whodunit with conflicting motives, one of which is to see the seminary closed.  It owns artifacts worth millions, and, it seems, someone stands to inherit.  Dalgliesh and his team pick through all the clues and, of course, figure out the guilty party.

Even at the end the motivation seems odd.  There is a kind of Dead Poets Society letter of confession about preserving the arts.  The murderer is a professor of Greek.  These elements definitely cast the book into the realm of Dark Academia.  Still, it’s primarily a detective novel, and I suspect that’s why many fans of Dark Academia haven’t yet come upon it.  I do recall, upon first reading it, that it felt real enough.  I was living in a setting not unlike that of the novel and small seminaries do have big secrets.  This time through I was less impressed.  Super-sleuths are just too smart, which means their writers have to be exceptionally clever.  The setting suggests something wrong in the educational world, however, and that is true enough.

Feeling Gothic

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Gothic is an odd movie.  I first saw it while in seminary and have come back to it now and again.  I had been thinking of Frankenstein, so I decided to refresh my memory.  A pastiche of opium-fueled images and hedonism it nevertheless brings some religion into the horror.  In case you aren’t familiar with this Ken Russell piece, it’s a movie version of the stay of the Shelleys with Lord Byron, his physician John Polidori, and Mary’s stepsister Claire, in the summer of 1816.  During that visit, the basic ideas for Frankenstein emerged, and Polidori wrote an early vampire story that later inspired Dracula.  The religion comes in the form of Polidori’s Catholicism and his fear of condemnation for being a homosexual.  At one point, when the friends are about to read ghost stories, Percy Shelley says they’re more fun than any Bible.

Of course, in actual life Shelley and Byron were atheists, but the movie portrays the five raising some kind of entity during a seance.  They then spend the remainder of that stormy night trying to drive the entity back into their minds from the physical reality they gave it.  It’s a weird movie with lots of incongruous shots and some gross-out moments.  Ken Russell was known for his flamboyant style, and this movie is a good example of that.  It’s not great but it is moody and I come back to it when I want something, well, gothic.  The year 1816 was called “the year without a summer,” because of the volcanic winter caused by an eruption of Mount Tambora, and some have speculated that the bad weather of that year may have led to the creation of Frankenstein.

Every time I watch it, I wonder what the appeal is.  There’s a lot of God and Devil talk, and Byron was a fascinating character.  Julian Sands’ overacting in every scene makes me wonder what Shelley was like in real life.  I’ve occasionally read about his relationship with Byron and each seems to have had at least a supporting role in the iconic pair of monsters, Frankenstein and Dracula.  The two would be forever associated with the Universal release of movies named after them in 1931.  Gothic never made it big—I only found out about it because a seminary friend invited me over to watch it on VHS one weekend.  Still, it made enough of an impression to bring me back when the mood is right.  Even if it’s strange.

Philosophical Thoughts

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Please don’t read too much into this!  I read a lot of professors who spend their careers trying to understand a previous scholar’s thoughts.  I suspect this happens quite a lot in philosophy, but it fits pretty well in religious studies also.  And I wonder, what of those intellectuals where were grappling with pure ideas?  Did they know they’d become adjectival?  In other words, did Immanuel Kant know that he was Kantian?  Or was he just writing stuff, trying to explain how he understood being in the world?  Now scholars dedicate themselves to understanding Kant.  Or in more recent times, Derrida, Lacan, and Bakhtin, or whoever’s the flavor of the day.  The ones who were too busy being Derrida, Lacan, and Bakhtin to figure out what someone else was saying about things just wrote.

Image credit: Portrait of Immanuel Kant by Johann Gottlieb Becker, 1768, public domain via Wikimedia Commons

I often wonder about how higher education has shifted the way we do scholarship.  It’s not really a place to test out ideas that the world can evaluate, but more a place where specialists can discuss possibilities and what someone else might’ve thought of something.  I guess that’s why I tend to think of my last four books as being non-academic.  I’m not using the tired formula of reacting against what some theorist has said about my subject.  I’m simply observing and drawing inferences.  Maybe it’s because I wasn’t raised in an academic environment.  I remember reading Nietzsche for the first time.  How he didn’t footnote.  How he didn’t argue against what some prominent others had said.  He simply wrote.  And he did so brilliantly.

Perhaps it’s yet another example of having been born early enough.  Tech has made it remarkably easy (for those without families to feed) to become writers.  No agent or editor required.  And things like Book-Tok can make those who publish outside the Big Five famous.  What would Kant have done?  That’s a nice Kantian question.  In fact, the whole reason I began this post was that I’d run across James C. Taylor’s A New Porcine History of Philosophy and Religion on my shelves.  Just seeing it reminded me of the Kantian pig refusing to lie to an axe-wielding maniac.  That got me to thinking of Kant and what it must’ve been like to see him being Kantian.  I’m no expert.  I took a lot of courses in philosophy and religion back in the day, but I have a book about philosophical/religious pigs on my shelf.  Somehow I suspect Kant wouldn’t have appreciated his page in this book, even though it gave me philosophical thoughts to start the day.

Lovecraftian Advice

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It seemed natural enough to follow up Stephen King’s On Writing with H. P. Lovecraft’s famous essay “Supernatural Horror in Literature.”  This piece, widely quoted, is available online but it is lengthy and I wanted the convenience of not reading it on a screen.  What can I say?  I like to turn pages.  I found a print copy, along with two other, shorter Lovecraft essays in Supernatural Horror in Literature & Other Literary Essays.  This was published by Wildside Press, which added a brief introduction by the speculative writer Darrell Schweitzer.  The text of the main essay was obviously computer-read—a couple reading errors remain—but it is clear enough to read.  Like Poe before him, and King following, Lovecraft put down some of his thoughts on the craft of writing.  Interestingly, Lovecraft is seldom considered as a producer of belles-lettres, but he is world famous as a horror writer now.

The essay itself is worth reading.  Mostly it is a summary of what Lovecraft felt was worthy weird fiction.  I tend to agree with much of what he says here, as would be evident were anyone to read my own fiction writing.  I can’t say that I learned this at Lovecraft’s knee.  I only discovered who he was when I was teaching at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh.  I did not have literary friends growing up; my reading tastes were determined by myself, largely based on what was available at Goodwill any given week.  Nobody I knew read Lovecraft and although his books may have been in that bin, he wasn’t really someone I’d have known to keep an eye out for.  As a child I didn’t think of myself as a horror reader.  I liked monsters, and vampires were among the most immediately recognizable.  My brother, if I recall, got me started on Poe.

When I began writing fiction, probably around twelve or thirteen, it was weird fiction.  One of my other influences was Ray Bradbury.  I agree with Lovecraft that, to be interesting, fiction often requires a speculative element.  I do read realism, of course, but I really enjoy tales with a bit of supernatural.  It’s useful to read Lovecraft’s ideas about influential writers.  I’ve got my homework cut out for me.  I can certainly recommend this edition for anyone who wants to read this lengthy essay in print form.  The one thing that struck me as weird was the cover design.  It features a woman wearing a strapless dress in a cemetery.  Lovecraft famously didn’t really have women as one of his main themes, and his women characters are among his most inaccurately drawn.  Still, it’s best not to judge a book by its cover.