This Way

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The more I get to know myself—pleased to meet you, sir—the more I realize that my childhood was cobbled together from small but repeated exposures to my favorite things.  I knew Dark Shadows from watching a limited number of episodes and reading a limited number of cheap novels.  I knew Alice Cooper from just two of his albums.  And I knew Ray Bradbury from a couple collections of his short stories.  No doubt this is in part because we weren’t exactly affluent and I found my books, by chance, at Goodwill.  I had no way of collecting Bradbury’s oeuvre, and besides, I was trying to get to know Edgar Allan Poe as well.  I knew Bradbury as a short story writer, and that’s still how I primarily think of him.

I felt compelled to read Something Wicked This Way Comes recently.  Since I’m used to Bradbury the short story author, it felt overdrawn to me.  I know this is heresy.  Great horror writers point to this novel as highly influential and inspirational.  Maybe if it were read closer to when I was born, when it was published.  Too many long paragraphs, especially early on, contain almost abstract descriptions without clear actions, leaving me confused.  Once the story got underway it was quite good.  As someone who writes, I know the dilemma of trying to freeze poetry into prose, and to make a coherent story from thousands of separate impulses.  Believe me, I know.  These days such things are edited out and stories become as thin as Bradbury’s Skeleton Man.  I guess I’m just out of practice.

The plot is great, but it feels so 1950s.  So boy/male oriented.  So American.  I suppose I attended my fair share of carnivals as a kid.  We didn’t go often, and I never knew one to settle on the edge of our small town.  And although we were free to ride our bikes or run as far as we cared to, home was never that far away and, I knew, there were scary things in the ubiquitous woods.  Ray Bradbury’s short stories were likely the main source behind my own early attempts at fiction.  Even today I’ll be scribbling along and think, “this is kind of like Bradbury.”  But I always have his short work in mind.  There are some great parts in Something Wicked, and it does build the tension toward the end.  Still, when it’s said and done I’ll be thinking of Bradbury’s short stories and how they formed my own nostalgia, even if only in little fragments.

Doppelgängers

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Maybe this has happened to you.  Two names get stuck and mixed up in your mind until you consistently can’t tell them apart.  Jeff Bridges and Jeff Daniels are two very different actors.  About five years apart in age, they’re both white men, but they play very different roles from each other.  What’s worse, I’m a real fan of a Jeff Daniels movie or two (ahem), and one I watch every year.  When it’s over I inevitably think it was a Jeff Bridges movie.  I’d let this pass as aging gray matter but for one thing—I recently read a book on movies where the author made the same error.  So I tried to exegete it.  Why such a mistake?  They’re not exactly doppelgängers, after all.

Okay, so they’re about the same age.  They don’t look alike and their movie personae are very different.  I tend to think it’s the euphony of the names.  Jeff, followed by a two-syllable last name that ends in s.  As I was talking this through, I said “Both last names begin with a bilabial.”  My daughter corrected me, “D isn’t a bilabial,” she rightly pointed out.  Okay, well, they occur near each other in the alphabet—they’re both in the first four.  What I’m struggling with here is how at least three of us (I had this conversation with someone else years ago who also admitted to confusing the two), have this issue.  And it’s not just the Jeffs.

Back in seminary, the song “Bruce” got a lot of airplay.  By Rick Springfield, it was a lament that he was mistaken for Bruce Springsteen.  The two both play rock (duh) and they were both born in 1949.  Their last names begin with “Spring,” but “steen” and “field” are quite different.  Not to mention Rick and Bruce.  I sometimes think fame is just a mosh of pop culture that gets stuck in our heads and thoughts go around and around like a washing machine until those we don’t really pay attention to end up blending.  And also, famous white guys about the same age with somewhat similar names, have to put up with imperfect doppelgängers.  (Or is it doppelgängeren?)  Academia.edu seems to confuse me with the Steven Wiggins who is an Economics professor at Texas A & M. Or is it the Steve Wiggins, Agricultural Economist at the UK Overseas Development Institute? Since I can only guess from their photo, we seem about the same age.  None of us is famous, but that doesn’t prevent doppelgängers from finding you.

Katrina’s Side

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Once a story is released, and its copyright expired, it’s free to be re-interpreted.  Although there are those that deny it, any reading is a form of interpretation.  I’ve been gathering information on Washington Irving’s “Legend of Sleepy Hollow” for some time now, and I’ve just finished reading Alyssa Palumbo’s The Spellbook of Katrina Van Tassel: A Story of Sleepy Hollow.  This novel is a feminist retelling from the point of view of the titular Katrina.  In the original she’s an under-developed character.  These days we’d say that Irving didn’t write women well.  In fact, she functions largely as an object in the story, the source of tension between Brom Bones and Ichabod Crane.  Palombo spins a tale from Katrina’s perspective on all this, and thus takes the story in some new directions.

The novel itself reads like a romance, overall.  Katrina really does fall in love with Ichabod, but Brom is unable to let go, and the rivalry becomes deadly.  As the title also implies, Katrina learns witchcraft as the yarn spins out.  From a cultural point of view, this telling is clearly influenced by both the Tim Burton film Sleepy Hollow and the Fox Television series by the same name.  Both of them give us the witchery and the idea that Crane would be a romantic catch.  In Irving’s vision, it’s difficult to see Crane as any kind of love interest, but the essence of creative retelling is to make the story fit a different mold.  Katrina’s story is seconded by that of her friend Charlotte Jansen, who, like Katrina, practices white magic.  The witchcraft here isn’t malevolent.  Indeed, it is one of the few ways of expressing female power in this time frame.

A good deal of the tale revolves around solving the mystery of what happened to Ichabod on that fateful Halloween when he asked for Katrina’s hand in marriage.  Sadly, writers have, historically, tended primarily to be only male.  There have been exceptions, even from the very beginning.  The first named writer in history was a woman—Enheduanna—but the circumstances of women’s lives, particularly after the agricultural revolution, came to be relegated to roles where the leisure time for writing, and even the opportunity for education to learn it, were rare.  Early on the modern novel was dominated by female writers.  More recently re-envisioned Sleepy Hollow tales have brought women’s role to the fore, and have taken the narrative in unexpected directions.  This feminist retelling of the classic story demonstrates what could have been, had Katrina received a bit more attention, not just as an object.  This is a lesson still to be learned.

Who Bites?

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Although I use them, I find genres too constraining.  When Parasite first came out in 2019 many people said it was a horror film.  Others called it a thriller.  A comedy.  A drama.  It has elements of all these things.  As the first non-American film to win an Academy Award for best picture, it was an irresistible draw.  When it would come to a streaming service I already pay for, that is.  And having watched it, I still don’t know how I’d classify it.  And if you haven’t seen it, how would I describe it?  The word that keeps coming back to me begins with the same first couple of syllables: a parable.  In case you’re even more out of touch than I am, here’s the skinny on it.

A South Korean film, it’s the story of a poor family (Kim) that, desperate to get out of their circumstances, finds a way to infiltrate a rich family’s (Park) home.  The Kims live in a semi-basement flat prone to bugs and flooding.  The family’s son gets hired as the Park’s substitute English tutor for their daughter.  He recommends his sister (putatively as someone his cousin knows) as an art tutor for the Park’s son.  The poor siblings then arrange to have their father (presented as a stranger) hired as the chauffeur, and finally the mother as the housemaid.  They live in poverty while working for the wealthy.  Then they discover the former housekeeper kept her own family in a secret basement.  The homeowners discover none of this, then a garden party goes all wrong.

Laugh out-loud funny in parts, it’s a poignant film that, for me, explores the plight of the clever poor.  The wealthy have so much that they can easily support a second family without even noticing any financial loss.  The only reason the Parks employ all the Kims, however, is that they don’t realize the Kims are actually a family.  By pretending to be unrelated they’re able to survive.  There’s a lot to say about this movie.  I can see why some people suggest it might be horror—that’s not the usual genre assigned, though.  It has a Jordan Peelesque nature to it.  The social criticism is fairly intense throughout from trying to syphon off a neighbor’s wifi to cheap solutions to kill the bugs in the apartment.  The Parks live in a walled, gated paradise while those down lower simply have to make do.  If you haven’t seen this one, please do.  You’ll be glad you did.  And please, remember to vote.

Jason’s Javelin

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This past weekend was my third this year spent recovering from vaccinations.  The shingles jabs were worse, but this time it was a double-duty flu shot and bivalent Covid vaccine.  That’s as good an excuse as any for admitting to watching Friday the 13th, Part II.  In general I’m not a fan of sequels, but I’d read quite a bit about this one and I was curious because I hadn’t realized before watching the first installment years ago that Jason wasn’t the original killer.  I’m also not a fan of slashers, and I know that many people who dislike horror think all horror consists of such movies.  (It doesn’t.)  But still, Jason is a household name as a movie monster and I was having trouble concentrating with all those vaccines swirling around inside.

Utterly predictable, there are still a few jump startles that’ll catch a first viewing off-guard.  All I really knew about the film was Jason and Camp Crystal Lake and that generally teens get killed for having sex.  As many critics report, this kind of horror tends to have a “conservative” outlook—“sin” is brutally punished and the girl who refrains tends to be the last survivor.  That much you know just from doing your homework.  So as Jason hunts down the teens and dispatches them, along with a police officer and a crazy guy, you almost get bored.  There was one scene, however, that had unrecognized biblical roots.  Interestingly, I haven’t found anyone pointing that out.  When Jeff and Sandra go upstairs for sex, Jason takes a spear and thrusts them through, right in the act.

Analysts trace this scene to the movie Bay of Blood (which I’ve not seen), but in fact the inspiration comes from the Good Book.  In a genocidal mood in Numbers 25, Yahweh tells the Israelites to kill the Midianites among them.  Zimri is seen taking Cozbi into his tent, and Phinehas the priest grabs a javelin, rushes into Zimri’s tent and skewers the two of them in the act.  That scene stuck with my young mind as I read through the Bible, which is probably why it immediately came to mind while watching Part II.  Others may well have noticed this connection, but with the vaccine-induced lethargy I didn’t have the energy to go thumbing through my library to find it.  Besides, when I read things about movies I haven’t seen, they don’t often stay with me (which is one reason I give thorough descriptions of movies when I analyze them in my books).  This particular horror over, I know I don’t have to worry about the flu this year.

What Lurks

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One question that I get asked by those who don’t understand is “Why horror?”  The asker is generally someone that knows I’ve been “religious” all my life, or affiliated with religion—which people think means sweet and light—and who associates horror with bitter and dark.  I know Brandon R. Grafius has been asked such things too, because I’ve just read his Lurking under the Surface: Horror, Religion, and the Questions that Haunt Us.  Like me, Grafius has been writing books on the Bible and horror—I’ve reviewed a few on this blog.  As in my former life, he teaches in a seminary.  People find this juxtaposition jarring.  This little book is Grafius’ struggle with various aspects of this question.  He’s not anti-religion, but he’s drawn to horror.

For those of us familiar with Grafius’ other work, this offers a more detailed explanation of what one religion scholar finds compelling about horror.  Specifically, he shows how various films deal with similar issues to his Christian faith.  The book deals with that for about half its running time, and the other half discusses similar themes in horror.  You get the sense that Grafius has been at this for a long time.  Scooby-Doo seems to have been his childhood gateway to horror and it raised some deeper questions as he explored further along the line.  If you read this blog, or search it, you’ll find such things as Dark Shadows and The Twilight Zone in my background, but then, I’m a bit older.  The point is, being a religious kid doesn’t discount finding monsters fascinating.

As usual with books like this, I’ve come away with several films to watch.  And more angles of approach to that tricky question of “Why horror?”.  A recent post on a panel discussion titled “Religion and Horror” led to an online exchange about religion and fear.  Grafius deals with that here as well, but from a more distinctly Christian point of view.  Although he’s an academic, this book is written (and priced) for wider consumption.  I found it quite informative to hear the story of someone else who grew up with monsters and the Bible.  He had the sense, however, to start addressing this early in his academic career.  We each have different paths to walk and for some of us it will take a jarring experience to chase us back to our childhood monsters.  And being religious is no barrier to that, as this brief book demonstrates.

Grave Robbers

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My personal reconstruction of the Dark Shadows universe was made by connecting the books by Marilyn Ross that I could find with the episodes of the television show that I saw.  I’ve always been one to try to make a logical storyline out of such things so that I could connect them when they came at irregular intervals.  (I’m still a fan of linear storytelling.)  So it’s a bit of an eye-opener to read the series of pulps in order.  There are continuities and discontinuities.  Barnabas, Quentin and the Grave Robbers again has Quentin, in 1830, portrayed as a good guy.  When he was first introduced in the series some books back, he was a satanist and very nearly evil.  And this was in a more recent era.  You get the sense that Ross was responding to fan requests.

As I noted regarding the last book in the series, the stories do seem to have grown more complex, and sophisticated over time.  The writing remains labored, but the story aspect improves.  Barnabas, Quentin and the Grave Robbers comes the closest to standard horror so far.  This is a dark story with problematic race issues thrown in.  The first two-thirds or so are set in England and are tied into the story by Barnabas Collins being there.  It is distanced from the usual moody setting of Collinwood where, despite all the haunting and troubles, you tend to think things turn out alright in the end.  Here the antagonist grave robbers kill people close to the heroine and the corpses sent to gruesome ends.  And there are zombies.

To flee the evil ringleader, Barnabas takes Paula Sullivan to Collinwood where Quentin is introduced to the story.  In 1830 he’s an unpredictable trickster, but good at heart.  He and Barnabas team up, as last time, to take on the grave robber when he moves, you guessed it, next door to Collinwood.  Then something unusual happens—Paula discovers zombies are afraid of crosses.  This leads to a strange episode of Barnabas—a vampire, remember—chasing a zombie with a cross.  In general religious imagery is scarce in these novels.  A vicar or two may be mentioned, but vampires aren’t menaced with crosses.  That does happen in one of the movies, but here it seems that because Barnabas is a good vampire he’s not bothered by a cross.  Or it could be a consistency issue.  Either way, this is a moody addition to the series, appropriate, as always, for autumnal reading.

Seasonal Viewing

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Any movie that begins with an excommunication ought to be good.  Especially with its list of stars you’d think To the Devil a Daughter might’ve turned out better.  Still, it is a good example of religion and horror mingling together.  I’ve never read any Dennis Wheatley novels, but reputedly he didn’t like this film adaptation of his book.  It certainly has a convoluted plot.  So an excommunicated priest has started a new religion that worships Ashtaroth.  He has to baptize a child, now 18 (three-times-six, don’t you see), with the blood of the demon so that she can become his (Ashtaroth’s) avatar.  This is apparently the eponymous daughter to the Devil.  She was baptized initially by her mother’s blood at her birth.

The girl’s father, who survived her birth—unlike his wife—has decided at the last moment to save his daughter.  He appears to be independently wealthy yet he talks an author of occult books into doing the saving for him.  The girl, it turns out, is a nun in this satanic religious order and is only too willing to do what she can to serve “our Lord.”  The way that all of this plays out is confusing and Byzantine, but it does raise a serious question: what if a child is reared in a bad religion?  (And there are some.)  Who has the right to decide if a religion is good or bad?  Children are easily indoctrinated and not too many question the faith in which they were raised.  Yes, we all think the religion we believe is the right one.  The problem is everyone else thinks the same thing.

One of the things this movie got right is that the “heretics” are portrayed as sincerely believing that their religion is for the improvement of the world.  Calling themselves Children of the Lord, they believe Ashtaroth is good.  And a good lord wants what is best for the world, right?  This is the dilemma of exclusive religions that teach only their own outlook can possibly be the correct one.  Otherwise you have to give adherents a choice and another religion may be more appealing.  Or worse, they may reason out that if you’re given a choice that means your own religion is also merely one of many.  Historically religions have gotten around this by valorizing true believers who never question anything.  To the Devil a Daughter isn’t a great movie.  It’s not even a very good one.  Nevertheless, it raises some questions that lie, of course, in the details.

Hallowed Tradition

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The more I learn about the movie industry the more complex I realize it is.  Take Trick ‘r Treat, for example.  It was released to some film festivals—and backed by a major studio—in 2007.  I wondered why I’d never really heard of it, and the reason seems to be that it never had a theatrical release.  Until this month.  It is now playing in theaters.  The thing is, it’s already available on streaming services because it gained a cult following when it was initially released fifteen years ago.  I came to know about it by wandering into one of those Halloween pop-up stores recently.  There were plenty of Sam costumes so I did a little research and discovered a Halloween movie I’d never seen.

I have to say, the first time watching it was confusing.  I didn’t realize it was four or five separate, but interlaced stories.  I kept waiting for a central plot to emerge, but it didn’t.  At the same time, I wasn’t aware that it was a comedy horror either.  I have no problem with comedy horror, of course.  I just like to know that before I get into it.  Once I’d figured these things out, I could see the draw.  It is fun and seasonal.  Clearly it’s holiday horror.  In fact several websites list it as being essential October viewing.  It’s certainly different from many Halloween movies in refusing to be taken seriously.  It’s like adults having fun instead of kids enjoying the holiday.

Perhaps the most self-aware Halloween film, it constantly reinforces that you need to obey Samhain etiquette.  Those who are killed (and there are many) die for having violated the rules of the holiday.  I appreciate the fact that it insists that we do these things for a reason.  Wearing costumes, handing out candy, carving and lighting jack-o-lanterns, these all serve a purpose.  The movie suggests we need to do these things to stay safe from Sam.  Sam, of course, can’t be killed which means that a sequel may be in the works.  Trick ‘r Treat gets full marks for staying focused on the holiday.  Holiday horror has been a fascination of mine for some time and this movie has it in spades.  Even if it’s a little confusing at times, it’s a fun way to celebrate the season.  And this year you have your choice of seeing it in the theater or streaming it on your most convenient device.

The Panel

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More than one person pointed it out to me, so I guess I must be getting a (small) reputation.  During one of my campus editorial visits I stopped into the center for Religion and American Culture at that venerable institution known as IUPUI—Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis.  I was immediately impressed and, of course, since I’m no longer in academia I’ve realized that the impact of religion on culture is my real interest in it.  What was pointed out to me, however, was an episode of their “Religion and” series.  This one was held via Zoom and has been posted here, so if you, like me, work, or are just finding out about it, can still see it.  I encourage that behavior.  This particular panel was “Religion and Horror.”

As the word “panel” indicates, it was a moderated group discussion.  The panelists were Douglas E. Cowan of the University of Waterloo, Erika Engstrom of the University of Kentucky School of Journalism and Media, and W. Scott Poole of the College of Charleston.  The moderator was Melissa Borja of the University of Michigan.  What a great way to spend an October afternoon!  It is also good to know that I’m not the only one who’s noticed that religion and horror are similar and even address similar needs.  I’ve read books by Cowan and Poole and have even met the former a couple of times.  No longer a university employee, I largely work in insolation, so it’s great to hear conversation about the kinds of things in my head once in a while.  A number of refrains became obvious during this all-too-brief discussion.

We’ve been conditioned to think of religion as inherently good.  In general, we’ve also been conditioned to think of horror as inherently bad.  As with most black-and-white categories, both of these things get some key points wrong.  Religions, like everything else, have histories.  Those who study those histories learn that much of what’s passed along to believers is intended to make them into repeat, paying customers.  Try teaching in a seminary for a few years and then attempt to dispute that.  And, the panelists pointed out, horror is also a product, intended to sell.  This explains the endless parade of, for example, Halloween movies.  Just when you think you’ve purchased the last one you’ll ever need to buy there’s another.  There was so much squeezed into that one hour that I was glad I was taking notes.  But then, it was a recording—you can see it too, and I urge you to do so.

Monster Gods

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“I would go to Catholic Church and the saints made no sense.  But Frankenstein made sense, The Wolfman made sense, The Creature from the Black Lagoon made sense.  So I chose that as my religion.”  Famed writer/director Guillermo del Toro said these words.  They’re not exactly gospel but they do demonstrate the connection between religion and horror that is only now beginning to be explored.  Del Toro and I are of the same generation, and some of us in that time frame found meaning in the monsters we saw as kids.  They were coping techniques for living in an uncertain and difficult world.  A world with hellfire on Sundays and often hell for the rest of the week.  Fears of bullies and alcoholic fathers and lack of money.  Fears of an unknown infraction sending you to eternal torment, even if you didn’t know or mean it.

Image credit: Manuel Bartual, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license, via Wikimedia Commons

I didn’t choose horror as my religion.  I didn’t grow up Catholic like del Toro either.  I haven’t seen all of his movies, but he does evince a kind of religious devotion to his monsters.  Pan’s Labyrinth was distinctly disturbing.  Pacific Rim was intense.  Crimson Peak is one it’s about time I watched again.  The Shape of Water offered a lovable monster.  Many of these films don’t follow standard horror tropes.  They’re thoughtful, emotive, and often wrenching.  These are, of course, traits shared in common with religion.  I suspect my own attempts to articulate this would benefit from conversation with someone like del Toro.  There’s no doubt that monsters give me the sense of Rudolf Otto’s mysterium tremendum et fascinans.

Religion and horror share a common ancestor.  Fear is an emotion that we apparently share with all sentient beings.  How we deal with it differs.  While a bunny will run away a rattlesnake will strike.  Horror is a way of dealing with fear.  So is religion.  We can’t avoid fear because, honestly, there’s much to be afraid of.  Many choose to believe their clergy, taught by people like me, and assume religion has all the answers.  Others, like del Toro, seek wisdom elsewhere.  When the credits roll at the end, you know it was all just a show.  When you walk out of the church, synagogue, or mosque, you know daily life awaits with its peaks and valleys.  Some may substitute one for the other, while others require the support of both.  And both, as odd as it may seem, can be addressed with conviction.  If you don’t believe me, just ask Guillermo del Toro.

No Words

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I read something scary recently.  And no, it was not a horror story.  I work in publishing and we have to keep abreast of developments, so I’ve had a glimpse of the future.  Publishers are now starting to look toward the time when information will no longer be conveyed by the written word.  A picture’s worth a thousand of them, after all.  This new future will convey information by video, or whatever the replacement of video will be.  Perhaps some are looking forward to the Matrix direct downloading model.  Perhaps the computer will be able to simulate the pleasures of reading a book, of browsing in a bookstore, of writing with pen on paper.  Something about the process and discipline of reading has made us what we are.

Star Wars, as others have noted, is set in a world with no paper.  You won’t find a scrap blowing in the wind, even on Tatooine.  Nobody is shown reading.  Plenty of action, but no wizard behind his big book of spells, no princess writing down her inmost thoughts.  Make a recording and plug it into your R2-unit.  Perhaps this is heresy, but compare this to Star Trek.  The episode “Court Martial” has Cogley (Elisha Cook, before he applied to become Rosemary’s landlord) saying to Kirk, “Books, young man, books. Thousands of them. If time wasn’t so important, I’d show you something. My library. Thousands of books.”  We always thought even the future would have plenty of reading material.  Now we’re being told the technology is passé. 

The constant emphasis on “data-driven analysis”—mostly in an effort to get more money—seems to mistake the downloading of knowledge for the pleasure of reading.  They’re not the same.  I love movies, as any regular reader will know.  Perhaps ironically, I write books about them.  The thing is, I watch them largely to write about them.  Knowledge downloading is getting the cart before the horse.  I’ve read even nonfiction books wrapped in awe.  An author’s way with words, the phrasing, the craft, the artistry.  These are pleasures.  Sure, images can show an interpretation but there are those of us who will always want to read the book before we see the movie.  Can you get the actors’ faces out of your head if you do it the other way around?  There are those who celebrate this sterile future.  And there are those of us who won’t even go there if we don’t have a book in hand to read, just in case.

Image credit:Bender, Albert M., artist; Federal Art Project, sponsor. Public domain.

When Autumn Starts

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Some books catch my attention and I’m not sure why.  Knowing myself, the title When Autumn Leaves, invoking my favorite time of year with its intriguing syntax, probably did it.  I’m always on the lookout for books that capture the spirit of autumn.  Although she’s quite well known as a lyricist, Amy S. Foster’s name wasn’t familiar to me.  The cover looked autumnal and I knew it was about witches.  It came out quite a few years ago, so my recollection of why I’d marked it then had faded by the time I finally got to it.  The title is a play on both autumn and leaves.  The main character of the ensemble cast is Autumn and knowing that changes leaves from those on a tree to a verb of action.  I’ll try not to put any spoilers here since there’s plenty to say without giving away the ending.

Autumn is a good witch.  Well, the book doesn’t out and say so directly.  Being magical realism there’s some room for interpretation.  She’s the matriarch of Avening, an island city off the west coast.  Those drawn to Avening tend to have some kind of magical powers, whether or not they know of them.  The story unveils the various women coming to be aware of their special talents, but generally they’re unsure what to do with or about them.  Autumn is the one to help them.  She’s been in Avening as long as anyone can remember, but, as the novel opens, she learns it’s her time to leave (thus the title).

Before she can go, however, Autumn has to select a replacement.  This is what introduces us to the various characters in the story.  We hear of the magical powers of some of the thirteen in quite a bit of detail, and others more incidentally.  Many of them don’t know they have these powers.  They know there’s something special about Avening and that they were drawn there, but they don’t know why.  So it’s a tale of female discovery.  Some of the vignettes are difficult to read, dealing with serious subjects, but they reflect realities in women’s lives.  It’s not really an autumnal story, spinning as it does through the wheel of the year, beginning with the winter solstice and ending up at Samhain.  It doesn’t dwell on Halloween, however.  It’s much more a character-driven story.  It creates a wondering image of Avening and what might happen if women were in charge.  And in that respect it’s very compelling indeed.

Shatner’s Space

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We constantly underestimate the power of fiction.  It’s difficult to break into getting fiction published.  It wasn’t always that way.  When the pulps were still a thing often it took a thimble of talent and a handful of persistence.  Publishers were looking for content and those with typewriters were clacking away as fast as they could.  Ding!  Carriage return.  These days it’s harder.  This came to mind in thinking about William Shatner’s trip to space and his subsequent reaction.  As several news outlets said in anticipation of Shatner’s new book, the experience made him feel profoundly sad and not a little cold.  So much empty space and we still haven’t figured out how to travel fast enough to reach our nearest neighbors.  We don’t even know if we’ll like them when we meet them.

Others, in defense of space exploration, were quick to counter Shatner.  He’s not a real astronaut, after all, having spent nine decades earth-bound.  Or so they said.  But I think I understand, as a fellow land-lubber, where he’s coming from.  We’ve only really got one chance on this planet, being the only creatures evolved enough to type, to capture our thoughts—our essence—in words that can be preserved.  And wildlife statistics are showing an alarming decrease in other animals since the 1970s.  If we’re all that’s left and we can do no better than to elect fascists, well, stand me with Captain Kirk.  We look to the skies and see, well, empty space.  And besides, we need to get home because it’s supper time.

Image credit: NBC Television, public domain via Wikimedia Commons

The reason Shatner got a free ride to space was, of course, fiction.  Star Trek captured the imagination of my generation and those with actual science ability started to put that kind of future together.  Today we can talk to computers and they still mishear us, often with laughable results.  But if writers of fiction hadn’t been available the show would never have succeeded and what would a Canadian actor have had to do?  Maybe a crime drama or two?  And even those require writers.  It seems to me that we should be encouraging fiction writers with talent.  Believe me, I’ve read plenty who really haven’t got it (often in the self-published aisle) but I know firsthand how difficult it is to get fiction noticed.  It’s like, to borrow an image, being blasted off into a dark, cold, empty space and looking at the blue orb below and wanting to be home for supper.

Flavor of Childhood

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Giant, telepathic crabs whose molecular structure make them impervious to bullets, explosives, and fire, and that know how to use dynamite and who plan to take over the human world?  A group of scientists trapped on an irradiated Pacific island that is slowly sinking into the ocean?  This must be Attack of the Crab Monsters!  I was born during what is generally considered the dearth  period of the American horror industry.  Roger Corman, however, was working hard outside of the studio system to cater to that new demographic—teens with spending money.  Drive-in theaters were big and for about $100,000 you could shoot a double-feature and bring in ten times that much.  If you shoot quickly enough you can produce several of these in a year and not have to worry about the big studios.

It’s been fashionable to laugh Corman off, but he knows how to live the teenage dream.  Monster movies were part of the childhood of many of us during this “dearth.”  Yes, sophisticated frights were yet to come, but these creature features were full of creativity and escapism.  And so many unanswered questions.  How did those giant crabs chop all the radio wires to bits with those indelicate giant claws?  If they could smash through the outside wall of a house, why couldn’t they break through a light-weight door once inside?  And why, knowing that bullets and grenades can’t possibly hurt them, do scientists keep firing away?  What was that oil subplot all about anyway?  And how do you end a film with the lines “He gave his life,” followed up by “I know”?  This is stuff, like Strawberry Quik, I couldn’t get enough of as a kid.

No, this wasn’t intelligent horror—it was often laughable—but it made an impression.  As an adult I can’t recall which of these movies I’ve seen before and I suspect it would take a lifetime to watch all the films Corman directed or produced.  Along with his contemporary indie director/producer William Castle, Corman may be inordinately responsible for my tastes as an adult.  I’ve grown more sophisticated (I hope) in some ways, but I’m at a pay grade where free on Amazon Prime often decides a weekend’s entertainment.  Besides, these movies struggle to top out an hour’s running time.  You can still get a lot done in a day and still have time for a monster crab, giant leech, or wasp woman.  With enough radiation, and imagination, anything can happen.