Something Wicked

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There comes a morning each year, pre-dawn, that it happens.  I crawl out of bed and things feel slightly chilly.  The furnace hasn’t been turned on yet, and ever sensitive to cold, I put on long sleeves and slippers to do my morning writing before the sun.  I start getting a powerful hankering to watch my autumn movies.  This year when that happened, in September, I finally watched Something Wicked this Way Comes.  Now, Disney isn’t a studio known for its horror films.  Over the years, however, they’ve produced some family-friendly efforts toward the scary end of the spectrum.  I tried to make the case in Holy Horror (and a list on IMDb agrees with me) that Pirates of the Caribbean falls into that gentle horror category.  I’ve read established writers on horror claim that The Watcher in the Woods was the movie that frightened them most.  I don’t think Something Wicked falls into that category, but I can say I liked it better than the novel.

And that’s saying something, because it was written by Ray Bradbury.  Bradbury’s stories were an integral part of my childhood.  In fact, much of my fiction writing is modeled on his work.  I didn’t really care for the novel Something Wicked this Way Comes, which I read last year.  The film is an improvement.  And it had a tortured way to the silver screen.  It began as a short story.  Bradbury himself adapted it into a screenplay anticipating a role for Gene Kelley.  This was in 1958.  When that didn’t pan out, he wrote it as a novel.  Filmmakers began to show an interest in the early seventies, but the movie didn’t come out until 1983, after Disney bought the rights and took over production.  The screenplay is mostly Bradbury and the soundtrack rips off Star Wars more than once.

Bradbury could get a little too nostalgic about boyhood.  His yesteryears seem far too innocent to me.  Although, having a few scenes where Jim shows curiosity about sex was a bit racy for Disney, I should think.  Jonathan Pryce does a fine job as Dark, and the mood isn’t bad for family-friendly fare.  I was never much of one for carnivals.  I can’t do rides and it’s easy to see through the games you can’t win and even if you do your prize is cheap.  Other entertainments always appealed to me more.  Still, the film sets a mood, and that’s generally what I’m after when the mornings begin to feel chilly and I’m looking off into another winter.

Starting October

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October’s a difficult month to quantify.  When it rolls around I get in the mood for certain books and movies, but I like to see and read new things.  I check lists to see what others recommend for what I hope is a similar mood.  A book that kept coming up was Roger Zelazny’s A Night in the Lonesome October.  Published thirty years ago, it’s not exactly new, but it was new to me.  It’s a humorous story, told by Snuff, a dog.  But not just any dog—he’s a player in a game that takes place when the full moon lines up with Halloween.  There’ll be spoilers hereafter.  The game involves two sides deciding the fate of the world, and each has the usual monsters lined up.  Dracula, the wolf man, Frankenstein’s monster and others are involved.  One side tries to awaken Lovecraft’s Old Gods and destroy the world while the other side tries to stop them.

Each chapter is a day in October and what the game is is only slowly revealed.  The antagonist for all of this is really the parson.  It turns out that he’s a minister for the Old Gods’ true believers.  Various monsters or players are killed and Sherlock Holmes is hanging about, trying to solve the mystery.  The story’s really a mash-up of several characters from yesteryear.  It’s not scary, nor is it particularly moody.  It’s a good example, however, of how religion and horror, even if it’s comedy horror, work together.  The Old Gods are an existential threat and require clergy to perform the correct rituals.  Roger Zelazny was fond of using characters from existing mythologies in telling sci-fi-ish stories, and this fits that writing mode.

This is an enjoyable story, but my October mood isn’t only a monster one.  Set in England, A Night in the Lonesome October doesn’t really have the leaves, pumpkins, and ghosts of my melancholy season.  Also, the humorous aspect is fine, but acts as a distraction from what I generally seek.  This is a magical time in northern climes.  Of course, I read a good deal of this while traveling to and from South Carolina, so getting the right mood was tricky when it’s beach weather and the flowers are still in bloom.  October means different things to different people, I know.  I’m still looking for the novel that manages to encapsulate my experience of it.  There’s something difficult to quantify about it, and that’s perhaps what I need to define.  

Poe’s Charleston

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The first thing that came to mind, apart from family, when I learned we were coming to Charleston, is Edgar Allan Poe.  I learned about Poe from my brother at a young age and he may be the earliest author I recognized.  Over the years I’ve visited his birthplace memorial in Boston, his college dorm room in Charlottesville, his house in Philadelphia, and his grave in Baltimore.  I did visit Richmond a quarter century ago, but I had a migraine that day and couldn’t think straight.  When I heard “Charleston,” I immediately recalled that Poe had been here.  He was stationed at Fort Moultrie on Sullivan’s Island, not far from where we’re staying.  As in many cities that Poe called home, he’s become a favorite son of Charleston.  I knew we wouldn’t be able to see all the haunts—I don’t think the larger family shares my fascination—but we got a start before the reunion began.

The first stop was the most tenuous.  Rumor has long had it that Annabel Lee, of Poe’s last complete poem, is buried in the cemetery of the Unitarian Church.  The cemetery is renowned for its flora, which are kept largely untrimmed to match original wishes.  It proved an atmospheric place even on a sunny day.  Then it was a trip to Fort Moultrie itself, where Poe would’ve wandered as a young man.  The thick walls and largely subterranean emplacement would’ve been impressive in the days before modern warfare.  In fact, with the large military presence here, war seems an accepted fact of life.  We didn’t have time to find the Edgar Allan Poe Library, but we were honored to eat in his presence at Poe’s Tavern.  This spot makes it into travel books not because Poe ate here, but because its decor is all Poe-themed.

This journey has been a voyage of discovery.  Our first night in Charleston I had probing dreams about my father.  They actually began a couple days before our flight.  Like Poe, my father had a problem with alcohol.  Like Poe, I never really knew him personally.  Although Joseph Campbell’s overblown, I believe he’s right that the hero’s journey is the search for the father.  Critics sometimes complain that they don’t understand my integration of Poe in my nonfiction books on horror films.  My only defense is that something deeply personal is going on.  This odyssey began over half a century ago, in my childhood, and coming here, I knew that I had to meet the man and claim my heritage.

Beautiful Vampire

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It’s been a quest years in the making.  I first found the Dark Shadows novels by Marilyn Ross at the Goodwill Store in Seneca, Pennsylvania.  The series had recently finished its television run and, as this was a used book bin, and limited in size, you could never tell what you might find.  My teenage self, fascinated by vampire lore, eagerly read those I could find.  I got rid of the volumes I had when I attended college and began to miss them when I was old enough to admit such things.  It took at least fifteen years to locate all of them, and now, for the first time in my life, I have read the entire series.  Barnabas, Quentin and the Vampire Beauty isn’t always easy to find.  I certainly hadn’t read it before.  Not that it’s high art—the campiness shows through the gothic setting from time-to-time—and yet it’s an accomplishment.

This particular story again shows some development from what had gone before.  The vampire beauty is a young woman tricked into having weight reduction surgery in Switzerland.  The surgery, naturally enough, transforms her into a vampire.  She needs help so she seeks out Barnabas Collins, which leads her to Collinwood.  From there a set of adventures head toward the typical climax of this series of books.  Nevertheless, W. E. D. Ross seems to have shown some improvement over the thirty-two novels in the series.  This story seems less similar to others in the series as a whole.  Quite a bit of effort is spent on trying to find a vampire cure, but for Adele Marriot rather that Barnabas Collins.

I have to wonder if Ross knew this would be the last Dark Shadows book he would write for the series.  He did write other gothic fiction, and even a novelization of the movie, House of Dark Shadows, but the initial series ends with a kind of knowing that we’ve reached the end of something.  Was he told by someone at Paperback Library, “Hey, we’re pulling the plug on the series” or did he simply run out of steam?  The daily television show ran for about 1225 episodes.  This original novel series had far fewer.  Still, the thrill of hunting all of them down, lining them on my shelf, and then reading them in order was a rare pleasure.  It was a recapturing of, perhaps even a completing of, part of my childhood.  It may have taken decades to accomplish, but an accomplishment is an accomplishment.

Banned Monk

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One of the strange things about gothic fiction is that, although often set on the continent, the early practitioners—inventors, if you will—were English.  Three names among them stand out in many treatments of the genre: Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe, and Matthew Lewis.  I’ve read the former two and have long supposed I should read the latter’s The Monk.  This 1796 novel made the author famous, but it is long.  And written in the often florid style of the age.  Still, there are plenty of swoons and thunder-plagued nights.  Set in Madrid with a cast of closely related characters, the novel has a twist ending that I did not see coming, which is pretty amazing considering that the book has been out for over two centuries.  (I may have read about the ending before, but had forgotten, if that was the case.)

The novel intertwines two stories that revolve around Antonio, the eponymous monk.  A paragon of righteousness, he heads an abbey in Spain and all are in awe of his piety.  Until sex breaks through his vanity (so we are told; his piety was based on too high a self-regard).  Once seduced, he can no longer maintain his status as chaste, and this sets in motion a tragedy that will leave innocent people dead and lives ruined.  Lewis, it’s famously known, used the novel to critique excesses of the church.  Its power, the novel demonstrates, corrupts.  Still, at the end I was left feeling sorry for Antonio.  He was set up by the Devil and his chances of winning were quite slim from the beginning.

Although PG-13 by today’s standards, the novel scandalized English society when it came out.  The sex scenes were too explicit for the day, especially since they involved the clergy.  The story has quite a leisurely layout, and only after 200 pages (in the edition I read) does the supernatural enter the picture.  Once it does the pace begins to pick up.  The weird thing is, despite its length, this story works.  It’s considered a classic—although often dismissed because gothic literature generally is—it nevertheless delivers.  Antonio is shown to be subject to weakness, and while vain, not inherently evil.  He’s a victim of human vulnerability.  Readers in the late eighteenth century couldn’t see beyond the sex, but there is a tragic human story here.  Castles, abbeys, ghosts, and subterranean passages, murder and torture, it’s gothic through and through.  Although it took most of September to get through it, it feels like I accomplished something worthwhile.  And I finished just in time for Banned Book Week.

Ravens and Autumn

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In need of some diversion, and seeking some way to celebrate the equinox, we made our way to Mount Gretna.  With a population of less than 300 souls, Mount Gretna is remote and an area of natural beauty.  But that’s not why we’re here.  Each year the Mount Gretna Theatre—housed in an open-air playhouse—puts on an Edgar Allan Poe performance in the autumn.  I’m not sure if it’s always titled “Nevermore,” but it is this year.  And it’s a fine evening for an outdoor performance.  The show is a walking tour of seven Poe vignettes.  A guide starts the evening by telling us a murderer is on the loose and Dupin (for Poe invented the detective story genre) warns us to trust no one.  I’m thinking this will be a murder mystery, but the first vignette is adapted from “The Fall of the House of Usher.”  My favorite short story, I smile at the choice.

The next venue—we’re walking around the parameter of the playhouse now—is from “The Masque of the Red Death,” which has taken on new significance with Covid.  These, by the way, are single actor vignettes.  We’re then led to a saucy woman who performs “The Black Cat” with a subtle humor.  As she’s led away, a madman leads us to a corner of the building where he retells “The Telltale Heart,” and you begin to realize just how much Poe wrote about revenge and guilt and murder.  We’re then led to the only two-person vignette for a retelling of “A Cask of Amontillado.”  A haunted young man crying “Lenore” next recites “The Raven,” from which the evening takes its name.  The final vignette is the only unfamiliar one in the lot, based on Poe’s humorous—if politically incorrect—stories, “How to Write a Blackwood Article,” and “A Predicament.” (Set in Edinburgh, no less.)

It’s a beautiful September night in a delightful wooded setting.  The fact that it takes some effort to get here is part of the draw.  The actors clearly enjoy themselves and the stories are told in such a way that it doesn’t matter that we’ve read them all before.  Once back home, I learn that the playhouse is in a borough founded by the Chautauqua Society.  I think how times have changed and that it was quite a world that supported adult education institutes.  Chautauquas are found around at least the rural parts of the country.  Founded by a Methodist minister, Chautauqua was a wholesome competitor to Vaudeville, offering entertainment as well as education.  I feel I’ve been both educated and entertained as we climb back in the car in a Pennsylvania night on the eve of the autumnal equinox.

Rocks and Philosophs

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Porphyry is, apart from being a cool word, a kind of purplish stone that was prized for statue-making in antiquity.  It is also the name a Syrian philosopher gave himself in the third century of the Common Era.  Now, if you read widely about antiquity, as some of us have done, you’ll encounter the name Porphyry from time to time, but those of us who focused on older materials don’t pay him much mind.  I was reading about Porphyry recently, however, and did a little poking around to discover that he’d written a book called, in translation, Against the Christians.  Some historians speculate that Porphyry may have once been a Christian himself, but whether or not that’s true, he developed an antipathy to the sect.  I was curious about what his beef may have been only to discover that this book is lost.

Now lost works in antiquity are the rule rather than the exception.  Literacy may not have been widespread, but those who could write did write, and often prolifically.  Human history was very well documented.  But tonnes of it went missing.  Wars have been part of that history and wars are notorious for destroying written records.  Also, much writing was on perishable materials that, well, perished.  That wasn’t the case with Against the Christians, however.  Porphyry’s work was purposefully destroyed.  By this point Christianity had taken over the Roman Empire.  Rather than accepting the challenge of a philosopher, officials censored and destroyed his work.  Ironically, all that survives are quotes from books of theologians who were trying to refute him.

This made me reflect on the book bans that are currently all the rage among some “Christian” politicians.  Such rearguard actions belie the confidence that imperial religions showcase.  A religion that’s afraid others might see the holes raises many questions, does it not?  It seems to come down to the idea that nothing has changed in two millennia, even though Jesus didn’t have a cellphone—not even one of those old flip-open kind—and much of what we know of nature was still many centuries in the future.  The fact is that we only try to silence those who disagree when we fear them.  Book bans pretend that they can hold the hands of the clock still and that all will remain as it was decades ago.  Learning, however, is a genie let out of the bottle.  Back in Porphyry’s day powerful bishops and emperors ordered his book banned and destroyed.  And we are all the poorer for it.

Closure of a Trilogy

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So the final part of Jessica Verday’s Hollow trilogy really moves into supernatural explanations of life after death.  At least for those destined to become shades.  Since we’re at the end here, I won’t worry about spoilers.  Also, the series has been out for over a decade now, so we’re fairly safe, I think.  (Young adults aren’t my demographic, I don’t imagine.)  To recap, Abbey is in love with Caspian, who is a shade.  Caspian isn’t seen by many people, but he does appear to Abbey.  Throughout the story she mourns the death of her best friend Kristen.  As the action builds, Revenants begin to appear in Sleepy Hollow.  Revenants are beings that assist people who are to become shades as they die.  This indicates to Abbey that she won’t live to graduate from high school.  She will, however, get to be with Caspian—“complete him”—in a form of life where few will see them but they will live on in a limited sense.

The universe here isn’t particularly Christian in background.  Revenants operate in pairs, one tending toward good, the other evil.  They are sent to do a specific job and when it’s over they move on.  As in the movie Dogma, however, one Revenant doesn’t want to move on.  He figures that if he fails to do his assigned task he’ll continue on as an immortal on earth.  At the end he reveals that he killed Kristen in Abbey’s place so a difficult decision’s in order.  To straighten out the mess that’s been made on some cosmic scale, Abbey can die, history will be altered, and Kristen will be the one who survived.  This will involve self-sacrifice, which kinda does bring us back into Christian territory.

This trilogy emerged following the obvious success of Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight saga.  Teen paranormal romances were in, and publishers hearkened to the demand.  It does reflect our times that writing for young readers has taken on an impressive quality.  This trilogy is a great example of how someone who recollects well what it was like to be a teen is able to transport many of us back to that stage of life.  The awkwardness.  The constantly making wrong decisions.  The bewilderment of falling in love.  And of course, if you throw in some ghosts and some light violence, you’ve got a winning combination.  I enjoyed getting to know these characters.  I knew, once I put volume one down that I would have to see how the rest of this story unfolded.  I’m glad I did.  I have a sense of closure, for this series at least.

More Young Fear

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Okay, so the second one has a cliff-hanger ending.  I should’ve seen that coming.  This installment of Jessica Verday’s The Hollow Trilogy moves the story pretty directly into the realm of the dead pervading the everyday world of Sleepy Hollow.  For young adult literature from the era of Twilight, it does raise issues that, although they were around when I was young, have become more prominent in the thinking of teens.  Overdoses, college choices, attempted rape (or at least threatened), seem like things our society might’ve either overcome or matured about.  Instead, we start putting these pressures on our young and wonder why society has a hard time coping.  Sometimes I wonder if we’ve made society too complex.  As an adult it’s become so complex that I’m never quite sure if I’m getting things done correctly, or if they might come back to haunt me later.

In any case, in the first novel of the set, The Hollow, the protagonist/narrator, Abbey, discovers that her boyfriend has been dead all along.  The Haunted, volume two, is about how she copes with that.  I read many years ago that certain narratives are something like preloaded in human brains.  Given even the most basic pieces, our minds fill in the blanks.  When girl meets boy and likes him, our thoughts go toward getting them together.  Of course, a story is all about the difficulties that threaten to prevent that from happening.  For most of us, we start to experience these things as teens and even as adults we remember it well.  These are intense emotions and society complicates them because just when we think we know what we want at high school age, college separates us and we start over again.  Thus college visits.  It’s even more complicated when your boyfriend is a shade/ghost.

How the material and spiritual relate is an unresolved issue.   Materialists have already decided by cutting the spiritual out altogether, but the rest of us, perhaps trusting our feelings more, wonder.  Although these books are more paranormal romances than philosophical musings, they nevertheless raise questions that even adults struggle with (or should).  We don’t have all the answers and we hope that our children might get further along this path than we did.  Young adult literature helps them do so.  Some choose to respond by banning books.  The rest of us know that literature can help to discuss difficult topics in a world we’ve made far too complicated, for young and old alike.

Used, Again

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It may be impolitic to admit it, but I have positive associations with Amazon.  This goes back to before they started using smily boxes.  Before Amazon, getting books often involved mail orders and checks and several weeks before delivery.  Now Bookshop.org does a similar service, and with more of a conscience, but Amazon showed everybody how.  I do have a complaint, however, with the internet giant.  They allow used book sellers to be the top place when ordering a book, since they sometimes have a lower-than-retail price.  I used to sell used books on Amazon, back when I had no full-time job.  I took great care to list books according to the accepted standards of book conditions.  I know I’ve written about this before, but two recent used book orders simply didn’t measure up.  So, herewith, a tutorial:

“Like new” means in mint condition.  You should not be able to tell the book was read.  Look for soft rather than sharp edges on the pages, slight curling of the cover (especially paperbacks) from repeated opening.  Hey sellers, if you have any of this, the proper category is either “fine” or “very good”—not “like new.”  I’m not really a collector (in that way), but if I order a book “like new” I expect that I won’t be able to tell it’s ever been read.  Normally I opt for “very good.”  This brings it down to a less expensive bracket and it implies things are in pretty good shape.  If your book has extensive writing or highlighting in it, it is not “very good,” but “good.”  If it does have minor markings you are required to list them.  I recently bought a “very good” book in which practically the whole first chapter was highlighted.  This isn’t easily missed, and it’s certainly not “very good.”

I get it, classifying books takes some discrimination.  The categories are there, however, to protect the buyer.  People do all sorts of weird stuff to their books.  The used book seller, on Amazon, is morally obligated to tell us about what’s going on.  And Amazon, please make clear when a book is “new” or not!  I recently bought a book that was listed as new but it had clearly been read at least once.  Be honest, people.  Book folk, in general, are good folk.  Reading is so important for a civil society.  Books are collectible items.  If you’re thinking of going into the biz, please remember that I’ve found books for a buck at library book sales in better condition than many “very good” books I found used online.  Just be honest—you’ll still sell the book, even if for a few pennies less.

Hidden Improvement

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I believe in improvement.  Even for a journeyman writer like W. E. D. (Marilyn) Ross.  At least in his Dark Shadows books.  For much of the series the plot is largely the same: a young woman is threatened and finds herself in Collinwood.  Often the threat comes in the form of a mysterious stranger.  The woman falls in love with Barnabas Collins, but in the end it doesn’t work out.  The bad guys are stopped, however, whether they’re supernatural or not.  In Barnabas, Quentin and the Hidden Tomb things have moved on somewhat.  The main female character, Ellen, a southern belle from just after the Civil War, doesn’t fall for Barnabas.  She is attracted to him, of course, but not really in love.  That’s a plus.  And Barnabas is temporarily cured of his vampirism in this story.  Quentin is, despite earlier story lines, really pretty good, if misunderstood.

This installment begins in the Hudson Valley where Ellen’s intended lives.  Unbeknownst to her, her fiancé has died and has been substituted with his identical twin vampire brother.  This northern family lost their fortune during the war and need the marriage to bring Ellen’s cash into the coffers/coffin.  Ellen is rescued by Barnabas, who is a family friend.  He takes her to Maine, figuring she’ll be safe there.  Unlike other women in the series, she has already fallen in love with someone other than Barnabas, so the tension is focused elsewhere.  The disguised enemies come, of course, but this story feels a bit less formulaic.

As I’ve confessed numerous times regarding this series, these are guilty pleasure books from my childhood.  I don’t read them expecting belles lettres, but rather a rush of nostalgia.  They seldom fail to deliver on that front.  There are a limited number of them.  They hearken to a different time when the ability to crank out book after book (Ross published at least 24 novels the year this one appeared—that’s the rate of two per month) didn’t hurt your ability to find a publisher.  Some of his fiction, I’m told, is quite good.  Others, such as the Dark Shadows books, are of a different purpose.  They were meant to supplement the income on an unexpectedly successful soap opera that would go on to become a cultural icon.  It will be no surprise that Barnabas and Ellen prevail in the end.  The enemies are unmasked and, strangely for the series, the vampire is destroyed.  And the legend lives on.

Young Fear

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The amazing thing about people is that even when you’re aging you remember what it was like to be young.  I used to have to stop and consciously think of that if I wanted to realize it when talking to those older than myself.  Now that I’m no longer young I don’t need to have it explained.  I’m not afraid to read teen literature.  Those who write it well (John Green comes immediately to mind) make you feel like you did when you were a teen.  I read Jessica Verday’s The Hollow because of, well, the Hollow.  Sleepy Hollow, that is.  This is a young adult novel and even before I was half-way through I got the strong impression that to be satisfied with the story I’d need to read the entire trilogy.  This was a relief since I’ve read Sleepy Hollow novel series before where I had no real desire to press on beyond volume one.

The story isn’t a modern-day retelling of Washington Irving’s legend.  It is set pretty much in the present (although, I notice, tech changes so fast that it’s immediately clear that this was set a decade ago.  Has anyone considered how this constant change will affect literature?) where Abbey, the protagonist, is trying to come to terms with her best friend’s death.  Since her best friend was really her only friend (some of us know what that can be like), she finds solace among strangers.  Those strangers, it becomes clear late in the novel, are not what they seem to be.  Throughout the novel both quotes from and discusses Irving’s story—how could any tale set in Sleepy Hollow not do so?

In any case, this is a quick read despite its size.  Verday captures what it’s like to be a teenager.  My experience of teenage girls was always limited, but I have no reason to doubt that she represents that part accurately.  The funny thing about being an adult is that you learn that you don’t really know how to be one.  For me, dips into youth help to center me when this whole adult thing just doesn’t seem to make any sense.  I don’t want to give any spoilers for the story here, but I’ll likely move on to the second novel in the series before too long, and by the time you get to second in the series it’s okay to assume those reading about it won’t mind a bit more information.  At least that’s the way I think about it, having once been young.

Ending Worlds

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It takes a kind of talent to write a long novel where I don’t have any feelings for any of the characters.  I’ve studied writing enough to know that “Mary Sues”—characters who have no flaws—are to be avoided.  Yet, writing so that no characters over a span of about 300 years seem to be able to garner at least pity (and my therapist tells me I a very sympathetic person) is a feat.  All of which is to say I didn’t much enjoy the award-winning World’s End by T. C. Boyle.  This novel is set in the Hudson Valley, which is one of my current obsessions, and I thought the sense of place would draw me in.  Stories where everyone drinks all the time, and mostly they get high after that, and then wonder why tragic things happen when they drive, really aren’t for me.  I accept and admit that the onus is on me. (I freely confess to preferring speculative fiction.)

Successfully writing a novel that ties several families together over the generations is, however, an achievement of literary architecture.  It’s just that not all novels work for everyone.  There is a sense of maybe a little cosmic justice at the end, but it feels at times almost as if the side that’s being cheered on is the wealthy one.  Maybe it’s reflecting the way life works.  Or maybe I’m not a subtle enough of a reader to understand.  For whatever reason, it really didn’t speak to me.  It could also be that I need to reflect on it more.  Growing up poor with an alcoholic father and seeing firsthand the entrenched ways of the wealthy and how they effectively keep other people down, such tales tend to set me off.  None of this is to gainsay the artistry since it clearly condemns the land theft from American Indians and unrepentant wealth.  

It’s this last point from which the novel really takes its strength—ownership of the land.  As mortal creatures we have a strange idea that we can own something that will outlast us.  In the novel’s resolution that ownership shifts, unbeknownst to the wealthy, back to the original owners through an illegitimate child.  There may be some social commentary intended here and this makes the story less of a justification of white ownership.  I guess many of us are very sensitive to fascist characters since the Trump administration.  Perhaps had I read the novel in the late eighties, when it was first published, this would’ve seemed less troubling because we would’ve thought then that such a thing could never happen.  But three centuries is a long time and we simply can’t tell, although World’s End suggests justice might be served in the long term.

Literary Criticism

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One of the drawbacks to being an editor becomes apparent with much reading.  Some people have writing skills.  Others don’t.  That’s no reflection on intelligence, insight, or even brilliance.  Good writing is part talent and part hard work.  The drawback is when someone thinks they’ve got what it takes, but they don’t.  I’m a gentle guy.  I don’t like to hurt feelings and yet I have a job to do.  You see, good writing involves a few things—writing for your readership, being aware of what that readership likes, and giving new information without being all technical about it.  I’ve read academics who write very high-level monographs, sprinkled with “wells” and “you sees,” which come off like a guy my age trying to impress a twenty-year old by being groovy.  Just admit you’re writing for other scholars and get down to it.

Then there’s the verbless sentence.  You know what I mean—a literary rim-shot, usually at the end of a paragraph, to heighten the drama.  Solid technique.  This only works, however, if you don’t overuse it.  I’ve read books where nearly every paragraph ends with such rim-shots.  Then the author started writing one-liner paragraphs.  This isn’t a Saturday Night Live cold opening.  The writing has to have a certain amount of gravitas.  Especially if you’re wanting to publish with a university press.  I realize that the dream of many academics is to write for a wider readership, but honesty is still a virtue.  When I wrote Weathering the Psalms I pitched it as for general readers.  Ha!  Not even specialized readers have found it that engaging.  It was a book for specialists.  I see that now.

Don’t get me wrong—I read plenty of good writing.  Some of it’s even beautiful.  Editors, however, have to read an awful lot to be able to pick out the gems.  I remember my volunteer experience on the archaeological dig at Tel Dor.  At the pottery reading sessions, a specialist would quickly sort through a box of four-thousand year-old fragments and say within seconds if there was anything interesting (“indicative” was the term she used) or not.  She did this by reading pottery like an editor reads proposals and manuscripts.  You get to a point when you can just tell.  Writing well can be learned.  Some people have an innate talent for it.  Being a gentle guy, it’s hard to be honest sometimes.  I have to keep reminding myself, however, that it’s still a virtue.

Outgrowing Fear

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A friend, during a time of trouble, quoted from Charlie Mackesy’s The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse.  I immediately ordered a copy.  The word “magic” gets thrown around a lot, but this book holds real magic.  It is perhaps the wisest book I’ve ever read.  Do yourself a favor—if you haven’t read it, find it in a library, or order it from Bookshop.org or Amazon.  Visit a local bookstore, and if they don’t have it, ask them to order it.  If people read books like this we’d never need to worry about things.  And if everyone read it and took it to heart, we’d never need to worry about anything again.  There’s much to be said about believing in yourself and believing in the power of love.  At the end of the day they speak for themselves.

The book is for any age reader.  Handwritten and illustrated, it’s written at the level of a children’s book that takes less than an hour to read.  Its message feels almost radical, however.  That having been said, the young adult generation, I’m given to believe, grew up with the kind of outlook Mackesy offers.  The book struck me particularly relevant and necessary, something for those of us in the over forty crowd.  I understand the tendency to grow more conservative as we age and I believe it’s because we’re afraid.  Ironically, the book addresses the issue of fear, pondering how life might improve if we could get beyond being afraid of things.

The artwork is beautiful and the words are inspired.  This is an eminently quotable book.  Mackesy has been an artist by trade.  We can learn so much from such humble artists, if we’re willing to listen to them.  Kindness, love, and simplicity are gifts we often wish not to accept.  It’s very easy to hate and selfishness comes naturally to people.  And when we get together we tend to complicate things.  Once in a while we should set aside the complexities of life and make time for a simple story that reminds us of what’s really important.  Of course, those of us who read are prone to thinking of ways the world could be a better place.  Being open to love instead of hate, trust instead of fear, and hope instead of dread doesn’t come naturally.  That’s why it’s so helpful to have books to remind us of this.  Especially when such a book won’t even require an hour of your time.  I’ll be coming back to it time and again.