Starting October

Leave a comment

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.  

Monster Gods

4 Comments

“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.

Welcome to the Labyrinth

Leave a comment

Do anything long enough and you’ll produce a labyrinth.  I started this blog back in 2009 with the idea of perhaps continuing in the biblical studies/ancient Near East (actually west Asia) studies, where I began.  I always knew this would be a place to talk about books and movies and sometimes current events.  Often it would address American religion because, well, it’s so bizarre.  Over the years the blog has ranged pretty widely.  My interests are fairly diverse and I tend to get obsessed with a subject for some time and then move on.  I suspect that’s one reason followers are few.  People want the same thing—should I dedicate the site to horror films, religion, or social justice?  The weather?  Instead, it’s what catches my interest at the moment.  Thus the labyrinth.

On the rare occasion when someone actually comments on an older post this blog (there was a healthy chain about the Highgate Vampire some years back), I often have to ask myself, “Did I write about that?” “What did I say about it?”   The human mind is a labyrinth.  And life is too short to ever stop learning.  Even if it means that few will be interested in what you’re doing.  The few who’ve known me a long time and read this blog (I know who you are), might be surprised at the horror themes that have become pronounced.  These were, however, part of my childhood.  When I tried to get away from them, they pursued me.  Monsters are like that, of course.  They like to hide in labyrinths.

But labyrinths are contemplative spaces.  Contemporary spirituality has rediscovered labyrinths.  You walk them in intentional thought.  In the moment.  We might be able to forget for some time that the original labyrinth was built to house the minotaur.  And without Ariadne Theseus would’ve never survived.  When he left her on Naxos his actions spoke louder, much louder than his fight with the monster.  Labyrinths make you forget where you are.  One saved Danny Torrance.  And perhaps one might save your soul.  Those who make enough chairs, or write enough books, or design enough skyscrapers leave labyrinths behind.  Manhattan may be a grid, but it’s a labyrinth nevertheless.  It seems to be a part of every story.  The thing about labyrinths is that they have no one goal.  There is no single answer to this mystery.  When you begin making one you may not even realize it.  Until you stop to contemplate it.

Photo by Ashley Batz on Unsplash