Virtues of Fiction

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So, my first royalty statement for Sleepy Hollow as American Myth arrived.  It is my poorest selling book ever, not even notching up to Nightmares with the Bible, and that one was twice as expensive.  A couple things: I know that nonfiction books had a hard year last year.  Also, “academic” books tend to do better in the subsequent years after their initial release, for those of us with no name recognition.  In any case I’ve decided to try focusing on fiction.  The compulsion to write is deep-seated in me.  My nonfiction books are creative explorations of ideas neglected or never before brought together.  They’re also priced too high for the trade market.  I was pleased to see, recently, that The Wicker Man is now in over 400 libraries, according to WorldCat.  That makes it my second best-selling book, after Weathering the Psalms.  A Reassessment of Asherah has been viewed over 9000 times on Academia.edu.

So, fiction.  I write my fiction under a pseudonym.  I currently have one novel out for consideration and another very close to being ready.  I have several in the wings.  What strikes me as crazy about all of this is that I’m told (as I have been since high school) that my writing is quite good.  I’m not the one to assess this claim, since I’m far too close to it.  It does make me wonder, however, what it takes to earn a little cash at it.  My last royalty check for a new book was half of what they usually are.  Good thing inflation is under control and the economy booming.  So I hear.  I do believe that the most impactful books tend to be fiction.  People like a good story.  And they can last for many decades.  The nonfiction that stands the test of time is a very narrow shelf indeed.  At least compared to our fictional siblings.

For fiction you need to keep at it to improve.  I think of all the years I’ve poured into my last four nonfiction books.  The only real critique I’ve seen of Holy Horror was that it was “too well written.”  When’s the last time someone said such things about fiction?  Oh, I’ve got three nonfiction books underway as well.  One of them I’m quite excited about.  But then I take a look at this royalty slip sitting in front of me and wonder if I’ll ever learn.  I have to write.  I’ve done that since fifth grade as a means of coping.  Here I am at over half a century at it.  There’s no danger of giving it up now. But the form it may take, well, that’s up for grabs.

With Thorns

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I’ve seen T. Kingfisher’s books on the tables of various bookstores and I’ve noted them.  I wasn’t sure if they were horror since the tables have always had ambiguous labels, such as Books to Read at Night, or some such.  I was in a new independent bookstore a couple weeks back and A House with Good Bones was decisively shelved with horror and so I decided to give this new (to me) author a try.  I’m glad I did.  Kingfisher writes in the vein of humor and horror, like Grady Hendrix.  This is a fetching kind of horror writing, if it’s done well.  A House with Good Bones keeps the pages turning with winsome writing as things start to get more disturbing and dark.  Samantha Montgomery, an archaeoentymologist (an archaeologist who studies insects, or an insect scientist who’s into archaeology) waiting for a dig to resume, visits her mother in North Carolina.  She learns that her mother has been acting strange.  There could be some spoilers below.

Overall, the plot is a bit complex, so some aspects will be left out.  Even if there are spoilers, you’ll need to read the book to reconstruct it all.  Fair warning.  The house seems to be haunted, but Sam doesn’t believe in ghosts.  And the haunting is unconventional—it focuses on roses.  The roses were planted by Sam’s grandmother, a woman she and her mother lived with, but who was anything but nice.  She was, however, dedicated to her roses.  While staying with there as an adult, Sam tries to do some research.  She learns that her great-grandfather was a kind of local wizard, or warlock.  Her grandmother wasn’t well liked in the small community where she lived.  As things begin to get creepier, Sam is forced to realize that despite her scientific training, houses can be haunted.  Her dead grandmother shows up, made of roses.  With the aid of a local witch, they banish the grandmother.  Then more trouble comes.

The grandmother had warned Sam of “the children underground”—her version of the bogeyman—and when the house suddenly becomes half buried, Sam and her mother learn that the children underground are real.  The novel also has a vulture theme.  I’m not doing a good job summarizing, since the story is, as I said, complex.  But it’s very enjoyable to read.  Kingfisher is funny and then scary, and passes easily between the two.  I enjoyed this book quite a lot, and I’ll be coming back for more.  And I think I know, after reading her, why Kingfisher is sometimes placed on ambiguously labeled tables at bookstores.  I always appreciate writers who make up their own genres while telling a compelling story.

Loss and Beauty

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Losing someone close to you is never easy.  We of our species are closely interconnected, but family is where we feel the safest and, hopefully, most accepted.  There are many ways to deal with grief, but one of the more unusual is to take a job at the Met.  The Metropolitan Museum of Art is world famous, of course.  And Patrick Bringley, giving up a rat race job at the New Yorker (where he got to meet Stephen King, I might add), to become a guard at the Met, is the kind of thing to write a book about.  He frames it as a way of dealing with the loss of his older brother prematurely to cancer.  All the Beauty in the World gives you insight into a job open to just about anybody, but that has long hours and pay hardly comparable to the costs of living in New York City.  Giving up the rat race to spend your days looking at, and keeping people from physically interacting with, art doesn’t sound like a bad thing.

This memoir delves a little bit into spirituality, but not in any kind of religious way.  Then Bringley starts a family and after ten years decides to take his career in another direction.  I’m familiar with career pivots.  In my case, the choice was made for me and anybody who reads much of my writing (either fiction or non) knows that I’m trying to cope with it still.  In any case, museum work—I’ve applied for many such jobs, on the curator side, over the years—isn’t easy to find unless you’re willing to be a guard.  I know security guards.  It’s not a job that will make you rich, but it does give you access to riches.  Art is something we seldom take time to admire since, for most of us, museums are a weekend activity, and even then, only once in a while.

Museums begin with collectors.  Generally rich ones.  Those who can afford what the rest of us can only dream about.  They’re also altruistic places, for, as well as showing off, they give the rank and file access to what we tend to value even more than money.  The creative work of those we deem geniuses.  Bringley doesn’t just focus on the “Old Masters”—they are in here, but not alone—demonstrating that art can, and should, include the creative work of African-American quilters and woodworkers ivory carvers from Benin.  Museums are places that bring us together instead of separating us (that’s the job of politics, I guess).  And this book is a thoughtful way of dealing with loss.

Whose Smile?

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Amazon’s smile logo is a mask.  I use Amazon when I need something specific and I don’t have time to run around to six or seven stores to see if I can find it (I usually can’t).  This means that many of the items come from other vendors and Amazon takes a cut.  Taking a cut, by the way, may be the best way to make a living.  In any case, I seldom write reviews of such orders.  Most of them are books and generally they arrive in the condition in which they’re described.  I did, however, receive a non-book item which did not work.  I tried contacting the seller and their email didn’t work.  I decided to alert the world.  So I took some of my precious time and wrote a review on Amazon.  The prompt promised me that if I wrote seven reviews they’d tell me a joke.  What can I say?  I’m easy.

So I reviewed books, etc. until I reached seven reviews.  The next screen simply said “Awesome! Thank you for helping other shoppers!”  Is this meant to be a joke?  What about that Amazon smile?  I just gave them ten minutes of my time for a promised joke that never materialized.  Now I’m grumpy.  By the way, I started the review process with the most altruistic of motives; I don’t want anyone else to waste money on a product that doesn’t work, and you can’t contact the seller.  To make matters worse, it was a Christmas gift, so that by the time it was open and tried out, it was too late to return it.  Is this supposed to make me happy?  I was looking forward to at least a dad joke.  None at all.  This happened a few months after I fell for a scam, so I’m not feeling especially generous to the internet today.

It’s a little thing, a joke.  I’m not good at making them up myself (although I’ve been told now and again that I can be witty).  Ten minutes easy labor, feeding the beast and the best they can come up with is “Awesome!”?  An overused word at that!  Don’t promise me a joke if you don’t intend to deliver one.  Probably some AI trick, if you ask me.  They lure you in with promises and when it’s all over you’re left with nothing.  (Kind of like the product I bought as a gift).  In the end, the joke’s on me.

That House

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In this season of deportations, thinking about what it means to be a refugee couldn’t be more important.  The horror film His House makes you do just that.  Bol and Rial are fleeing war-torn South Sudan with their daughter.  After a mishap on the overcrowded boat from France to England, their daughter drowns.  Kept in a refugee camp for months, they are finally allotted a council house in poor repair and a meager income.  If they violate any of the rules, which include living anywhere else or trying to earn their own money, they will be deported.  Bol tries to assimilate quickly while Rial is more tied to her traditional ways.  Then the ghost of their daughter, and other dead from the war and the crossing, begin to haunt them.  All the while they face the threat of deportation.  Some spoilers follow.

Rial recognizes the ghosts come from an apeth, a kind of witch that demands repayment for the crossing.  Bol sees the ghosts too, but denies it.  They will not go back, he insists.  When the social workers come to inspect the house, after Bol asks for a different place, Rial tells them a witch is causing the problems, causing the Englishmen to roll their eyes.  When Rial tries to escape, an alternative reality back in Africa shows that when Bol was denied a place on the overcrowded refugee bus, he grabs a random girl—their “daughter”—to get a place on board as the soldiers begin shooting.  The girl’s mother is left behind, screaming for her child.  The apeth is demanding Bol’s life for that of the girl he used to gain his freedom.  Rial, realizing that Bol will die for trying to make their life better, attacks the apeth and lets go of the image of their daughter.

This is a sad and thoughtful kind of film.  We seldom stop to think that refugees, in culture shock already, are stripped of everything familiar and made to feel as if continuing to live is itself a special favor.  They have their own ghosts too.  The real horror here comes through seeing the world through the eyes of someone who has experienced a high level of trauma.  To do so while Trump’s storm troopers are once again separating families, killing people at will, and deporting refugees, is not an easy thing to do.  Horror can be an instructive genre, and although the threat here is supernatural, as it often is in folk-horror, the real fear is all too human.

Unsolved

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Strange as it may seem, the world of academic religious studies can have high drama.  On May 21, 1991, Ioan Petru Culianu, a professor of religion at the University of Chicago, was followed into a men’s room and shot through the head.  The murder was never solved.  Culianu was protégé and, many thought, successor to Mircea Eliade, perhaps the most famous religion professor of the last century.  Eliade was a Romanian American, and in his youth supported a fascist political movement, his connection with which he later covered up.  A bit of necessary background: the University of Chicago is a powerhouse school of religious studies.  Its graduates are nearly as influential as those of Harvard.  And Eliade trained many of them.  Including Bruce Lincoln.  Secrets, Lies, and Consequences is a fascinating book, even if it gets into the weeds.  You’ll learn a lot about early twentieth-century Romania if you read it.

Like many Chicago grads, Lincoln has had a distinguished career.  Even though I worked in different areas of religious studies than he does, I knew his name.  I read this book because it is full of intrigue, but also because, until I heard of it, I’d never known anything about Culianu or his unsolved murder.  A scholar’s scholar, Lincoln taught himself Romanian to be able to write this book.  (This is what I miss about being a professor, the freedom to undertake such Herculean tasks and have it be considered “normal” on-the-job behavior.)  The end result is a brief, complex, and wonderful book.  This isn’t a proper whodunit, though, and although Lincoln has some suspicions about what might’ve happened to Culianu, there is no smoking gun.  His murder took place while I was a doctoral student in Edinburgh, whence, as far as I could tell, the news never reached.

Eliade was a towering figure.  He wanted to put Romania on the intellectual map and he succeeded.  His work is still studied and analyzed.  He wrote novels as well as monographs, and some of his ideas have become standard fare in religious studies.  Few figures in the discipline cast a longer shadow.  I was in seminary when he died, but some of his works were recommended reading by that time.  This little book got me thinking about at least two big things: how some people become academic superstars, and how cancel culture sometimes brings them under the microscope.  Humans are raised in a culture and sometimes our young ideas, not fully formed, come to define our entire biological trajectory on this planet.  And sometimes we have regrets.  This is a fascinating study of one such case.

Luddism

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There are books you really want to read, and books you feel you should read.  There are authors who delight in telling you what’s going on, and there are authors whose writing obfuscates.  I’ve always preferred the former in both scenarios, but I felt I should read William Gibson’s Neuromancer.  I guess I’ve grown apart from science fiction.  (It’s not you, it’s me.)  Or at least some of it.  And I encounter too much jargony writing among academics.  I’m a simple guy with simple tastes.  Also, noir has never been my favorite.  Case, the protagonist, is difficult to like.  As a literary achievement there’s no doubt that Neuromancer is amazing.  And highly influential.  It’s the story of a thief/conman (Case) who’s hired for a mission that he doesn’t understand.  Along the way he falls in love (sort of), but, well, noir.  Dames.  The imaginative elements are pretty stunning, and some of them have come true.  AI being one of them.  And maybe that didn’t help sway me to liking it too much.  I’m no fan of AI.

I didn’t read the novel to critique it.  Admittedly, I’m a Neo-Luddite.  I use tech, and even enjoy it sometimes, but I prefer print books, movies (on celluloid) in theaters, and music, if recorded, on vinyl.  Old fashioned.  I do like some of the convenience, however.  Who isn’t addicted to getting tedious things done quickly?  Well, some of them.  In any case, I found the Molly character intriguing.  I couldn’t help but think of Blade Runner the whole way through.  William Gibson claimed that his novel didn’t copy the gritty texture of the movie, and  I believe him.  I’ve written books after thoroughly researching a topic only to discover, too late, that someone else had largely done the same thing already.  It happens.

The plot itself is quite good. Still, there’s an ethical element involved.  I wonder how much AI optimism comes from guys who read such novels as teens.  I have trouble thinking of any way that generative “artificial intelligence” can end well.  It seems a misguided and oversold idea.  Now commercials tell us how much we need Al, and he appears in new devices, wanted or not.  He’s not welcome in my home.  I’m slowly getting used to the idea of having a phone near me most of the time.  I use it seldom, but when I do I’m glad for it.  I don’t watch movies or read books on it.  My favorite times are when it’s sitting there, being quiet.  Some of us are dinosaurs in a cyberpunk world that’s become reality.  And dinosaurs, well, we prefer the world before the electronic revolution.  Maybe even before the rise of the primates.

Trying to Write

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Realizations dawn slowly sometimes.  From childhood on I wanted to be a writer.  Teachers encouraged me because I seemed to have some talent, but in a small town they didn’t really know how to break through.  Besides, terrified of Hell, I was very Bible and church focused—not really conducive to the worldliness needed to be a writer.  The realization that recently dawned is that I’m competing with people who can put full-time into writing.  I’m trying to squeeze it into a couple hours before dawn every day because 9-2-5.  9-2-5.  9-2-5.  It’s exhausting.  I often read about writers, wondering how they get noticed.  Even the people I try to get to publish my fiction read stuff others likely have more time to write than I do.  Why do I keep at it?  Sometimes it’s just impossible to keep ideas inside.

I’ve got ideas.  Some of them would make fascinating movies.  I even had an editor of an online journal that published one of my stories say that.  I’ve got a cinematic imagination trapped in the aging body of a day-worker.  Oh, I’ve got a professional job, of course.  What I really want to do is “produce content.”  I know others in publishing with the same dream.  One of my colleagues has managed to break out and she’s now publishing novels that are getting noticed.  I’m still writing for academic presses because I know how to get published by them.  My fiction has been suffering from neglect.  To stay sharp you have to keep at it.  I’m a self-taught writer.  I’ve not taken a course in it my entire life, and it probably shows.  Not even Comp 101.

Fairness is a human construct and ideal.  Reality lies with Fortuna (cue Carl Orff).  I’m better off than most people in the long human struggle with equity, I realize.  For that I’m grateful.  I do have to wonder, however, if struggle isn’t essential to making us what we need to be.  The writers whose work endures often had to struggle to get noticed.  Many died in obscurity.  I wonder if they ever realized that they were leaving a legacy.  You see, writing is a strange blend of arrogance and self-doubt.  Many of us go through intensely self-critical times when even our published books seem to mock us from their shelves.  The realization, now fully day, that I will always have to struggle to do what I know I’m meant to do sheds light.  Even in the world of privilege, the struggle inside is real.

Seeing Seagulls

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It was a seventies thing.  Even though I lived in a small town, even I had heard about Jonathan Livingston Seagull.  At first I didn’t know it was a book.  (A similar thing happened to me in the nineties with a character named Harry Potter.)  It was probably in college that I learned this was a book I should read.  I did, and I followed it up with Illusions, also by Richard Bach.  Now, this was unorthodox stuff.  These novels consider what some would call superhumanities and others self-deification.  The two are related.  In any case, Jonathan Livingston Seagull is a story about a seagull that overcomes limitations.  An inspirational book.  The publisher had no great expectations for it but it ended up becoming a number-one bestseller without any real marketing support, largely through word of mouth.  You’d have had to have been living in a cave in the seventies not to have heard people mentioning Jonathan Livingston Seagull, whether bird or book.

I got a hankering to read it again but alas, it was one of the books destroyed in the flood.  I went to a local bookstore and was disappointed to see that it was out in a new edition—larger, and, of course, more expensive.  Longing eventually overcame reluctance and I bit the bullet.  I’m glad I did.  The story is still as empowering as I remembered it, but the fourth part, the new one, strikes me as very necessary.  In it, rumors of the disappeared Jonathan Livingston Seagull have turned him into a god.  A god, moreover, whose followers are more interested in the orthodoxy of ritual than what he taught.  This was published before Trump’s first election, but it accurately describes what “Christianity” has become under his two-pronged reign of terror.

The idea of Christianity itself has become deified to the point that Jesus—what he did and taught—have become completely irrelevant.  Now, you don’t have to walk all the way with Richard Bach (I read the two books after Illusions as well, The Bridge Across Forever and One), but this book has a message that still rings true after all these years.  The book is over half-a-century old now and I am glad that it’s having a small resurgence.  The message, when the book ended at part three, was perhaps a little lighter.  We still, however, have to learn to overcome limitations.  And there’s a fair amount of wisdom in this little book.  Even though it was a seventies thing, it remains a good thing.

Blushing Brides

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Death does strange things.  But first I have a confession to make: I had never seen The Princess Bride before recently.  Since it is a favorite film of many people and since Rob Reiner had been murdered earlier that week, my wife wanted to see it again (for her).  Given the timing, she must have seen it shortly before I proposed to her, or maybe shortly afterwards.  Perhaps I owe a debt of gratitude to the movie.  I entered into it not knowing anything about the story or even the genre.  Rob Reiner was eclectic in his tastes, directing everything from comedy to horror, Spinal Tap to Misery.  As for Princess Bride, it felt like a light fantasy, generally comedic but with no laugh out loud parts.  It’s a sweet story with intriguing characters.  And a cast of big names.  I have to assume that since I may have been the last person on the planet to see it that the plot is already known.

The fact that it is based on a book makes me want to read it, but I understand it is quite long.  One of the debates that constantly seesaws in discussions of pop culture is whether it’s better to read the book or see the movie first.  Typically I fall on the book side (but you already guessed that).  I think that might’ve enhanced my experience here.  I do try to enter movies fresh, without reading about them in advance or watching trailers.  But then again, I tend to watch horror films as a kind of default.  In The Princess Bride, things turn out alright.  Definitely better than they ended up in Game of Thrones.  Fantasy is a genre that I sometimes read, but the sword and sandal scene isn’t my favorite.  The comedic aspect, however, makes Princess Bride work.

I also wonder if the initial impact had something to do with the cultural moment.  1987 stands out in my mind as a year of cultural significance.  It was a formative year in my life: I went to Israel that summer to work on an archaeological dig.  Pop culture was also in an odd place.  In my mind this mostly tracks with music of that year.  U2’s Joshua Tree came out early, and I recall a number of albums I purchased that were formative to me as a twenty-five-year old.  The one that most spoke to me, as a dark fantasy was Bruce Springsteen’s Tunnel of Love, which I still listen to every October.  I saw a lot of movies that year, but Princess Bride wasn’t one of them.  I feel like I have, in a small measure, temporarily caught up.

Dark Library

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Although it’s booming, I’m not a romance reader.  Not in the modern sense, anyway.  I’m a big fan of the Romantic Movement, which gave us the gothic novel, but the distant descendant of the latter is dark academia.  And dark academia is what brought me to Rachel Moore’s The Library of Shadows.  That, and ghosts.  I’d read somewhere that this novel (probably classified as young adult as well) brought dark academia and ghosts together and indeed it does.  I’m finding dark academia to be quite liberating.  I may no longer be a card-carrying member of Club Academe, but that setting is never far from my mind.  Enough about me.  Here’s the story: Este is a student at Radcliffe Prep, reputed to be the third most haunted school in the country.  She doesn’t come from money, however, since her father, a former Radcliffe Prep student, died prematurely and her mother has gone in search of anything that might remind her of him.

Este, unlike her wealthy cohort, isn’t sure how she fits in.  She doesn’t believe in ghosts.  Until she falls in love with one.  (This isn’t really a spoiler since it’s on the back cover copy and you can infer as much from the cover art.)  The story revolves around how to resolve that tension.  I’m sorry to admit that I’m not sure if “fades” are a traditional kind of ghost or if they were invented for this story, but they are behind the somewhat-horror elements to the tale.  Moore lays out the rules for her ghosts: they can’t walk through walls (so they can be locked out of a room), they tend to be not seen in natural light, but artificial light brings them into view, if they want to be seen.  And those that inhabit the library at Radcliffe, have bodies that can affect the physical world, but they can’t connect with anything living.  The fades are much worse: they kill mortals.

Moore’s story is a romance and a fantasy, but it is fun to read.  As a first book it has the freshness that somehow fades when writers become too jaded with the system.  (As someone who has tried repeatedly to get fiction published, believe me, I know.)  I suspect those looking for serious adult fiction might find it on the light side, but romance does have its attractions.  Since this is for younger readers there’s nothing too explicit here.  Just a story that keeps you interested as the pages turn.  And if romance has ghosts, and fits dark academia, I wouldn’t rule out reading more.

Interiors

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I first started reading Stephen Graham Jones after hearing him do a reading on YouTube.  I’ve always had a great deal of respect for Native Americans and his style was so sincere and down to earth that I was immediately drawn in.  Jones is now a well-established horror writer.  I’ve read a couple of his books and I have a couple more on my shelf, waiting.  Mapping the Interior is an early novella that has recently been repackaged and re-released.  You get the sense that even established authors have to prove themselves and then people will go back and read what they wrote before becoming somewhat famous.  In any case, it’s a haunting story about loss, growing up, and belonging.  At least that’s the way I read it.

Junior, the narrator, lives with his mother and younger brother in a modular house, off the reservation.  They are just barely getting by, Junior’s father having died and leaving them to live on one modest income.  But then Junior, who sleepwalks, sees his dead father in their house.  He becomes convinced that his father is victimizing his younger brother, Dino, who has a disability, in order to gain a body again.  Meanwhile, the kids at school all pick on Dino and the next door neighbor doesn’t like having Indians living so close.  He has mean dogs and an attitude.  Tension grows throughout the story as Junior has second thoughts about his father, whose death was never really explained to him.  There are some frightening scenes in this short book.  And a kind of matter-of-fact sadness.

Jones is a compelling writer.  He reminds us that American Indians know very well that they were wronged, but also have little or no recourse to justice.  The characters here keep on keeping on because that’s all you can do.  The end of the story does have a twist that is wrenching, especially after reading all that Junior has done to help his brother.  I read a fair amount about and by indigenous writers—the kinds of things many of those in power would like to ban and deny.  The experience of those whose heritage includes being colonized or/and enslaved is very important to know and to hear.  These are people who’ve been victimized and their stories need to be told.  I’m glad to have discovered this particular book, even as I’m awaiting the time to take on his longer, more recent work.  His is a voice worth listening to.

Can’t Read?

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Andrew Laties has lived a remarkable life.  He runs Book & Puppet, a local bookstore in Easton, Pennsylvania.  He’s run other bookstores before this one, but now that he’s in the Lehigh Valley he started the Easton Book Festival.  I’ve blogged about his previous books here and here.  In addition to running a bookstore and book festival, he’s also a musician and puppeteer.  In the current climate of book banning, things aren’t exactly easy for those who live literature.  My wife and I just finished reading his latest book You’re Telling My Kids They Can’t Read this Book?  These are the thoughts of a book seller about book banning.  Beyond the many other hats he wears, Andrew is also an activist.  It makes me tired just thinking about all of this.

I remember when the US government promoted reading.  I grew up when we were concerned about Russia and the arms race.  I was alive for (but don’t remember) the Cuban Missile Crisis.  The response, from both parties, was that Americans needed to be educated.  And that meant reading.  Reading is fundamental, so the saying went.  Since 2016, and especially 2024, we’ve taken a 180.  Book banning is in vogue although anyone who reads knows it doesn’t work.  Still, those who sell books can either sit back and worry or choose to do something about it.  Andrew is one of those who is doing something.  Reading is the way we improve human lives.  Daily I read about how some people are preferring books “written” by AI—which has never been and never can be human.  And right-wingers around the country are carrying out their war on books.

Andrew and I talk about publishing whenever I visit Book & Puppet.  His first book got picked up by Seven Stories Press, but he, like the rest of us who have jobs for a living, hasn’t found sympathetic agents or publishers, as he describes in this book.  That hasn’t stopped him from writing or from achieving remarkable things.  I was fortunate enough to be involved in the first Easton Book Festival, and a few after that.  It is wonderful to walk around a town where book events are going on all over the place.  Like much that is good, the event took a hit during Covid, but it still goes on.  And it does so because of something that reader and writers have: vision.  Part memoir and part a call to action, You’re Telling My Kids They Can’t Read this Book? deserves to be widely read.

House of Catherine

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A blend of horror and dark academia.  That’s how I’d classify Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas.  For some time I’ve been pondering the connection between the two genres, and this novel is one of slow-building dread.  I’ll attempt to avoid spoilers, but I will say there’s a somewhat optimistic ending to the tale.  The eponymous Catherine House is a three-year college.  Well, not exactly a college.  It is a highly selective school that works with something called plasm.  Only the most select of those admitted are permitted to work in the department that handles plasm.  The others pursue different academic fields.  When they’re done, they’ll be connected for life and will succeed because of the many Catherine graduates who’ve shared their intensive program and reached positions of power.  The novel follows Ines, a girl who had a rough upbringing and who isn’t sure how she ended up at such a school in the first place.

The tip off to the unsavory part of the House is the secrecy.  Students cannot leave campus for their three years.  Their families are not permitted to be in touch and the students are encouraged to forget about their past lives.  Their thought process is influenced by plasm pins.  They are given a freedom many college students would crave—alcohol is freely available and sex is encouraged.  They also have a very rigorous course of studies.  Students do fail out.  Ines, finding close friends for the first time in her life, has trouble believing that she belongs here.  She’s not bright enough to work with plasm, but her boyfriend is.  And then Ines discovers a dark secret.  One that forces her to a very difficult decision.

The dark academia aspect is more pronounced than the horror one.  In fact, the horror is more by implication than by direct narration.  We’ve got an academic setting where something has clearly gone wrong.  We don’t ever really learn what plasm is, but it becomes the ultimate concern, to borrow language from Paul Tillich, for those who research and work with it.  It seems to have supernatural attributes.  Catherine House explores what it means to be young and learning about relationships, and love, and the harder lessons life gives.  At first Catherine House seems like a noble academy, but soon suspicions begin to build into a quiet horror.  An existential variety of horror more than the kind induced by monsters or people that are purely evil.  The characters are likable but flawed.  It’s the system, however, that introduces the darkness at the House.

Weird Films

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I’ve read Gary D. Rhodes before and found him informative and enjoyable.  Although I hope his recent offering Weirdumentary moves beyond its ideal readership, I suspect I’m among that class.  I was alive and somewhat aware of cinema during the period under discussion—the 1970s—and I even saw a few of these films in the theater, as well as watching some of the television offerings.  I think Rhodes is correct in pointing out that this genre was a product of its era.  And what a strange time the seventies were!  I grew up watching the series In Search of…, which is discussed at some length here.  But before I get more into it, I should explain that a “weirdumentary” is a pseudo-documentary that has characteristic features such as dramatic recreations, questionable authenticity of at least part of what it covers, and often a famous personality as a host.

The book is handsomely illustrated with pictures that will offer a nostalgic rerun of the seventies for some of us.  It divides the material into eight sections:  the proto-weird, ancient aliens, UFOs, the Bermuda Triangle, the paranormal, mysterious monsters, speculative histories, and prophecies.  The proto-weird are this kind of documentary from before 1970, and the rest of the categories sometimes bleed into one another.  Not to detract from this excellent book (it’s often quite witty), my mysterious mind thinks a straightforward chronological treatment might’ve worked better.  “Paranormal,” for example, could cover quite a few of these topics.  Still, the organization of a book can be a personal thing and this layout, with “prophecies” at the end, works well.  A number of speculative religious films make the list, including In Search of Noah’s Ark and Late Great Planet Earth, both of which made it to my small-town theater, and drew me in back in the day.

I also admit to having spent some of my summer earnings to see Mysterious Monsters.  And maybe Chariots of the Gods—although I can’t remember for sure.  I certainly read the book.  Rhodes begins by explaining how 2001: A Space Odyssey set up viewer expectations for such films as these.  I definitely saw that one when I was young.  So the ideal readership here would seem to be those born in the sixties who were old enough to see these movies (and television programs) when they were making their initial rounds in the next decade.  Kids suggestible enough to believe the pseudo-science of many of these offerings, who would grow up to look back on them nostalgically.  Written with a light touch, but true appreciation of the subject, this book was a great way to relive one of the strange segments of my early life.