Monthly Archives: June 2019

Not the Lottery: Six More Great American Gothic Short Stories by Shirley Jackson

Posted on by
Reply

Shirley Jackson’s controversial and unsettling story “The Lottery” is one of the finest examples of short fiction in American Literature, and arguably the greatest American Gothic story of all time. The much-anthologized 1948 tale, though, does not represent Jackson’s sole foray into such territory. Her macabre oeuvre contains dozens of winning selections, but the reader who picks these six pieces will be richly rewarded:

 

1. “The Story We Used to Tell” (collected in Dark Tales)

Jackson’s captivating take on a Gothic standard–the haunted portrait. This one has all the creepy atmosphere and sheer weirdness of The Haunting of Hill House (the story’s opening and closing paragraphs even echo the framing device in the novel), packed into eight pages.

 

2. “Home” (collected in Dark Tales)

This story shares with Jackson’s better-known narrative “The Summer People” the theme of country villagers who are strangely standoffish towards outsiders from the city. But “Home” is also a bona fide ghost story, as chilling as the cold rain drenching the shunned road the protagonist foolishly insists on taking.

 

3. “The Tooth” (collected in The Lottery and Other Stories)

Jackson starts with a mundane event–a trip to the dentist to deal with a bad toothache–and then steadily steers the narrative towards the surreal and supernatural. The devilish figure of James Harris, who pops up throughout the story collection, forms a perfect Gothic hero-villain here.

 

4. “The Bus” (collected in Dark Tales)

When a surly old lady gets dropped off at the wrong bus stop, her journey home turns into a (recurring) nightmare. Not since Robert Olmstead’s trip into Lovecraft Country (in “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”) has a bus ride delivered such unnerving results.

 

5. “The Dummy” (collected in The Lottery and Other Stories)

Jackson delves into the uncanny, as a ventriloquist’s eponymous prop forms “a grotesque wooden copy of the man.” The dark highlight of this story, though, is the disturbingly dysfunctional relationship dramatized in the climax: following the show, the drunken ventriloquist verbally abuses his female companion while pretending it’s his dummy sidekick who is mouthing the insults. Jackson’s gift for offbeat humor is also presented when an exasperated witness decides to intervene.

 

6. “The Possibility of Evil” (collected in Dark Tales)

If the American Gothic exposes the dark side of life in Anytown, U.S.A., then Jackson supplies a quintessential example of the subgenre here. A duplicitous septuagenarian has a habit of mailing nasty, gossipy, anonymous letters to her neighbors. From Miss Strangeworth’s warped moral viewpoint, such missives are necessary corrective measures, because “Even in a charming little town like this one, there was still so much evil in people.” An unsympathetic Jackson makes sure this busybody receives an ironic comeuppance in the terrific ending to the tale.

 

Picks and Stones

Posted on by
Reply

Let he or she who is without a “winning” slip cast the worst stone: it’s Lottery day in the Macabre Republic!

June 27th is the date of the eponymous annual ritual in Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” (first published 71 years ago today). The story (which I featured in a Mob Scene post last year) is an American Gothic shocker: “a chilling tale of conformity gone mad,” as newscaster Kent Brockman succinctly describes Jackson’s narrative during one notable episode of The Simpsons (season 3’s “Dog of Death”). Jackson stages a neo-pagan scapegoating ceremony, an unnerving public drawing that sanctions murder in the seeming interest of crop fertility (“lottery in June, corn be heavy soon”). Her story is an indisputable classic, as timely today as when it first appeared seven decades ago, and should be read every year on this date as a primer on the dark underside of the so-called greater good.

And if you are looking to dig a little deeper into the story and its background, check out these links and video below:

American Gothic/Gothic American

Posted on by
Reply

I’m excited to report that I have received my contributor copies for Flame Tree Press’s new anthology American Gothic Short Stories, which contains my story “Gothic American.” The anthology features fourteen original tales and a slew of classic reprints. These latter are what make this writing credit my proudest one to date. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I would see my name listed on the same Table of Contents page with so many of my literary idols–preeminent American Gothic authors such as Charles Brockden Brown, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Flannery O’Connor, and Shirley Jackson.

“Gothic American” is one of my favorite pieces that I have written, largely because it deals with my favorite work of art: Grant Wood’s American Gothic. The house that inspired Wood and formed the backdrop for the now-iconic couple in the 1930 painting still stands in Eldon, Iowa, and has become an offbeat sort of tourist attraction (with visitors inevitably recreating the scene from the painting as they pose for photos). My story casts a darker shadow over such lighthearted mimicry. It also speculates: what if the American Gothic House (as this historic landmark is now called) actually was an American Gothic house?

The story went through countless drafts (and accumulated its fair share of rejections) over the years before I felt I finally got it right. I wanted “Gothic American” to allow multiple interpretations by readers, and believe the version published in American Gothic Short Stories has achieved the correct level of ambiguity (apropos of Wood’s vaguely-unsettling painting, whose meaning is so hard to pin down). I also believe the story has found the perfect home in Flame Tree Press’s anthology, and am thrilled to see it published there.

 

Chill Ride

Posted on by
Reply

The track record for recent adaptations of epic horror novels (e.g. The Passage, The Terror) has been spotty, which led me to approach the AMC TV-series version of Joe Hill’s NOS4A2 with some caution. After three episodes, though, the show has alleviated my concerns.

What I had feared most going in was that Zachary Quinto had been miscast as Yuletide ghoul Charlie Manx. I envisioned a variation on his role (as a snarky ghost) in the inaugural season of American Horror Story. Thankfully, I was dead wrong; thus far Quinto has been magnificent. His performance is at once understated and menacing. His old-age make-up is extraordinary (it reminds me of the aging of Barnabas Collins in Dark Shadows), transforming him into one creepy geezer. Most importantly, Quinto does not play the character as a mustache-twirling villain. The audience might see through the predatorial Manx’s delusions of being a rescuer of neglected children and deliverer of perennial holiday joy, but Quinto at least makes us believe that Manx actually believes his cause is an honorable one.

Some critics have complained that the series gets off to a slow start, but I appreciate the fact that NOS4A2 is taking its time to unspool its story thread. A sincere effort here is made to establish the main cast of characters as identifiable people. As a viewer, I can easily invest in protagonist Vic McQueen and the conflicts she is facing on levels both mundane (the family drama of her parents’ separation) and supernatural (her newfound powers as a Strong Creative, which set the uncannily talented Manx sniffing after her). In its deliberate pacing, NOS4A2 seems to parallel another AMC horror series, The Walking Dead; hopefully, the eventual payoff will prove just as emotionally powerful as that of a typical TWD story arc.

If there is one aspect of the series I am not enjoying, it is Vic’s interaction with her teenage peers. These characters–most of whom don’t originate from Hill’s novel–just aren’t that interesting, and come across as annoying (Willa) or bland (Drew). Such drastic deviations from the source text are precisely where adaptations start to lose me. I bristle at the hubris of screenwriters determined to alter the blueprint for a proven product.

NOS4A2 isn’t flawless, but has captivated me thus far. I’m eager to ride along with the Wraith, and look forward to when the scene finally shifts to Manx’s vampiric theme park, Christmasland (this sinister inscape will probably go a long way toward determining the success of this series as a horror vehicle).

One last note: perhaps the most delightful gift of all shipped from Christmasland is Joe Hill’s weekly email recaps of NOS4A2‘s episodes. Hill provides commentary on what just aired the night before, interviews those involved in the series, and offers deeper insight into his own novel (e.g. this past week, he discusses the three inspirations for his creation of Christmasland). Terrific stuff, adding another element of fun to watching the series. Be sure to sign up for the recap newsletter here.

 

 

Mob Scene: “The Lynching” by Claude McKay

Posted on by
Reply

Over the years, I have covered many examples of mob scenes–of instances of violent Othering and mass misbehavior–in film, television, and fiction. But as Claude McKay’s 1920 poem “The Lynching” (collected in Harlem Shadows) illustrates, the mob scene also has its place in American verse.

Written as a Shakespearean sonnet, “The Lynching” jars with its deliberate dissonance between the elegant poetic form and the particularly ugly subject matter treated here. Evincing a Gothic sensibility, McKay’s lines record sadistic impulses (the victim of the titular crime has died “by the cruelest way of pain”) and present horrific images (hung and burned, a black man has been reduced to a “swinging char”). The poem, though, hits hardest in its sestet section: the last six lines describe the crowd of morbidly curious gawkers that has gathered the next day “to view / the ghastly body swaying in the sun.” McKay is unsparing in his indictment, as the foulness of the allegedly fairer sex is highlighted by the complete absence of “sorrow” in the “steely blue” eyes of the women who “thronged to look” at the corpse. The concluding couplet makes for a devastating clincher, marking a perversion of public celebration and foreboding a dark generational legacy to such scene: “And little lads, lynchers that were to be, / Danced round the dreadful thing in fiendish glee.”

McKay’s opening octave alludes strongly to the Crucifixion (ostensibly the quintessential example of execution-as-public-spectacle). But whereas Christ died to take away the sins of the world, “The Lynching” points in a more pessimistic direction. “The awful sin remained still unforgiven,” McKay writes, referencing an innocent man’s crime of possessing black skin in a racist white society. This line also resonates with Gothicism, though, suggesting a problematical impingement of the past, the continuously haunting impact of ignominious history.

The racial underpinnings of American Gothic is well- and long-established in literary criticism (cf. Leslie Fiedler’s oft-cited remark in Love and Death in the American Novel: “The proper subject for American gothic is the black man, from whose shadow we have not yet emerged”). Perhaps this aspect of the genre is sometimes seized too readily upon by academics, but a poem such as McKay’s “The Lynching” clearly requires no critical stretch to grasp its concerns with black-white relations and racial violence in this country.

[Note: for an excellent overview of this subject, see Hollis Robbins’s essay (which covers McKay’s poem) “The Literature of Lynching.”]

Lore Report: “Something Blue” (Episode 116)

Posted on by
Reply

 

“For thousands of years, cultures around the world have used fasting as a toll of religious devotion, mental focus, political protest, and as a folk remedy for illness and disease. Some view it as  the reset button for the human body, while others see it as a chance to elevate their consciousness. Whatever the goal, though, the means are always the same: the absence or reduction of food for a period of time. But history is filled with proof that desperate people will go to extraordinary lengths in order to find peace and relief. And in the process, some people have even died for it.”

 

Opening with the line “They mummified themselves” (in reference to the persistent ingestion of resin by Buddhist monks) and closing with “Even killers need to be efficient,” Episode 116 of Aaron Mahnke’s hit podcast Lore serves up a morbid smorgasbord for listeners.

“Something Blue” takes the questionable practice of therapeutic fasting as its subject. The episode deals mainly with the now-infamous “Starvation Doctor” Linda Hazzard (who had no real medical training). Running the (appropriately-named) Hazzard Institute in Seattle in the early-20th Century, Linda blurred the line between asceticism and sadism. She would prescribe “broth diets and marathon enemas,” and draw scalding hot baths for her patients. Her concept of “therapeutic massage” involved slapping people on the stomach and repeatedly shouting “eliminate!” at them. But Linda’s dubious efforts didn’t just turn “health care” into an ominous oxymoron. Making Annie Wilkes look like Florence Nightingale, Linda was actually a mass murderess in illness-fighting disguise. She would rob her gullible clientele of their savings and personal belongings while methodically stealing their most valuable possession of all: their very lives.

Mahnke’s narrative briefly steps away from Linda Hazzard’s story to note a couple of historical instances of fasting. We learn that such form of abstinence was an attempted defense against evil for the ancient Greeks (who believed that “demons could only enter a person’s body through the mouth”). Mahnke also remarks on Cotton Mather proposition of fasting as a possible “solution to Salem’s witchcraft panic.” These details are fascinating, and my only critique of this relatively short episode is that I wish Mahnke had incorporated more of them.

The charismatic yet dissembling Linda Hazzard, who managed to charm people into a state of starvation, is a quintessential hero-villainess from a Gothic tale. Her pseudo-sanitarium formed a locus classicus of entrapment, an ostensible prison that people had to be ransomed out of by loved ones rather than simply released. The image of emaciated patients wandering like the walking dead through the woods surrounding the institute could have been spliced from a horror film. Concluding with an account of supporting player Edgar Butterworth (a bison-bone collector turned undertaker, who entered into strategic alliance with Linda Hazard by disposing of the many bodies she provided), “Something Borrowed” undoubtedly has all the makings of a terrific American Gothic biopic.

 

This Dark Chest of Wonders (book review)

Posted on by
Reply

Commemorating the ruby anniversary of the disaster epic’s first publication, Andy Burns’s This Dark Chest of Wonders: 40 Years of Stephen King’s The Stand was released by Cemetery Dance back in 2018. My recent re-watch of the ABC miniseries adaptation of The Stand inspired me to catch up and dig down into this dark chest (whose title echoes King’s own dedication-page epithet for the 1978 novel).

Burns’s book is clearly a labor of love, which is not to say that it is marked by amateurish admiration. The author provides a wealth of information about King’s novel; his opening chapter details everything from King’s various sources of inspiration and the cultural context for The Stand‘s composition, to King’s struggles with Doubleday (who sought to abridge the hefty manuscript) and the subsequent reception of the novel (it was interesting to learn, considering the revered status of King’s novel amongst Constant Readers, that the 1978 edition’s “shelf life on the hardcover bestsellers list was relatively brief”). Burns incorporates copious quotes from King himself, drawn from previously-published interviews as well as from discussion of The Stand in nonfiction King books like Danse Macabre and On Writing. One quote I found particularly interesting was King’s revelation of the character in The Stand that he identifies most closely with (someone I never would have suspected).

This Dark Chest of Wonders is no mere monograph; Burns includes a panoply of commentators. Many chapters come in the form of interviews with pertinent personages. King experts such as Bev Vincent and Robin Furth make welcome appearances in these pages, and help shine a light on the character of the Dark Man, Randall Flagg.

A significant portion of the book covers the miniseries version of The Stand. There’s a lengthy (and proportionately enjoyable) interview with Mick Garris, in which the director takes the audience behind the scenes via extensive discussion of the casting and filming of the miniseries. Along the way, Garris gives us a precious anecdote–about how King himself was scared off the set during the filming of the climactic mob scene (Flagg’s staging of the public execution of Larry Underwood and Ralph Brentner).

In his introduction to the book, Burns promises to “unearth all that is contained within this dark chest of wonders that is Stephen King’s The Stand,” and this completist certainly isn’t kidding. By the time Burns turns to interviewing the narrator of the audiobook version and the illustrator of the comic book version, one starts to wonder if this dark chest is going to transform into a trove of the trivial. In retrospect, the book is best enjoyed in small (even random) samples rather than a straight binge. There is a noticeable repetition of information, and the same quotes get used in different chapters. Burns poses similar questions to his various interview subjects–most prominently, why they think King’s novel resonates four decades after its initial printing. The diverse responses to this prompt, though, leave little doubt that The Stand is still terribly relevant, and thus reinforce the reason for a book like Burns’s.

The hardcover edition of This Dark Chest of Wonders is arguably a worthwhile purchase only for hardcore collectors, but the more moderately priced Kindle e-book makes for a valuable addition to the library of any fan of King’s classic post-apocalyptic tale of the superflu and the supernatural.

 

Test of Time: The Stand Miniseries, 25 Years Later

Posted on by
Reply

It has been a quarter-century now since Captain Trips first spread across the small screen and infected viewers throughout America. I can remember what an exciting television event The Stand miniseries was, a large-scale adaptation of Stephen King’s epic novel that aired in four two-hour segments over the course of a week. I can also remember, though, having a mixed reaction to this adaptation at the time. After listening to King and director Mick Garris reminisce about the miniseries on the Post Mortem podcast last month (which I posted about here), I was inspired to go watch the miniseries again. This would be my first time returning to the material in 25 years; I was curious how The Stand stood up over time, and if my initial impressions would be changed.

The first thing I can recall about the 1994 miniseries is that the acting was a mixed bag, and a second viewing only confirms this. To be sure, there are some strong performances, led by the never-less-than excellent Gary Sinise, who is perfectly cast as King’s Texan everyman Stu Redman. Ray Walston shines as Glen Bateman, as does Bill Fagerbakke as the mentally-challenged (it’s surprising here in 2019 to see how often the miniseries resorts to the term “retarded”) Tom Cullen. Yet there are also some starkly subpar efforts here, which might be the product of lazy writing (the stereotypically nerdy mannerisms of Corin Nemec’s Harold Lauder) or just bad acting (the single-note conveyed by Shawnee Smith as shrill shrew Julie Lawry). The loudest raspberry, though, has to be directed at Laura San Giacomo, who is painfully unconvincing in the pivotal role of Nadine Cross (or perhaps I am too distracted by those caterpillar eyebrows of hers).

My recent re-watch also reestablished my ambivalence towards the settings in the miniseries. Some of these are particularly striking: such as the scenes set in New York, both amidst riotous upheaval and in post-apocalyptic sprawl (the book’s legendary Lincoln Tunnel walk-through is translated nicely here by Garris). At other, more jarring, times, however, I can’t help but feel like I am watching a film set. The scenes (and not just those rooted in character’s dreams) of Mother Abigail’s Nebraska home and surrounding cornfield are colorful and atmospheric but lack realism.

A quarterly-century later, I am still impressed by how skillfully the plot of King’s novel was adapted for the small screen (the fact that King himself scripted the miniseries no doubt is a major factor). I like how certain elements, such as Frannie Goldsmith’s pregnancy, unfold in a more understated manner and are only gradually revealed. The miniseries also makes crafted use of time jumps (aided by title cards updating the day and place), condensing the events of the novel and moving the action along sensibly. There is one sizable plot hole that I failed to spot back in 1994, but which stood out upon re-watch. It involves the scene when Randall Flagg and Nadine first arrive in Las Vegas. Nadine is practically catatonic (following her desert rape and impregnation by Flagg) as she is ushered upstairs to the would-be honeymoon suite. Later that very same afternoon, she taunts Flagg with alleged knowledge of discontent brewing among his minions; how, though, could Nadine know that “They’re saying that a simple retarded boy outwitted Randall Flagg. They’re saying Judge Farris got away from your man in Idaho. They’re asking questions about Dayna, too.”?

For a miniseries airing on 90’s broadcast TV, The Stand surely features some strong horror. Glimpses of moldering crucifixion victims are hard to forget, much like the scene of corpse clean-up inside a church. On the other hand, the archfiend Flagg (Jamey Sheridan, looking like Mel Gibson’s Lethal Weapon stunt double) proves grossly disappointing on screen, with his pointy demon teeth and lightning shooting from his fingertips. Garris’s direction also demonstrates an unfortunate over-reliance on “morphing” technology; the repeated emergence of Flagg’s monster face plays like a twisted version of Michael Jackson’s “Black or White” video. More hokey than horrifying, Flagg formed the glaring weakness of the miniseries for me back in 1994, and the representation definitely has not aged well.

Despite its various strong points, The Stand miniseries in the end is marred by a distinct cheesiness (the “Hand of God,” King’s blatant deus ex machina plot-resolver, does not translate well to the screen, and that closing montage of the heroic characters who died along the way seems like a ridiculous rip-off of the “In Memoriam” segment of the Oscars). In this post-Game-of-Thrones age, viewers are ready for a darker, grimmer adaptation of King’s novel, one infused with special fx that don’t prove oxymoronic. I can only hope that the miniseries remake forthcoming on CBS All Access evinces the same maturation that 2017’s theatrical release of It showed over its own television predecessor.

 

A.G. Exemplary? Considering the American Gothicism of George Washington Cable’s “Jean-Ah Poquelin”

Posted on by
Reply

The latest installment of a recurring feature exploring just how “American Gothic” are works of literature collected in anthologies bearing that titular label. Continuing to work through the contents of editor Charles L. Crow’s American Gothic: An Anthology 1787-1916:

 

“Jean-Ah Poquelin” by George Washington Cable

Cable’s tale (from his 1879 collection Old Creole Days) establishes its American Gothic credentials from the outset. Set in the New Orleans area at the turn of the Nineteenth Century, the narrative opens with a look at “an old colonial plantation-house half in ruin” that “stood aloof from civilization” behind a chained and padlocked gate. The surrounding property is marked by an alligator-filled marsh and “two lone forest-trees, dead cypresses, […] dotted with roosting vultures.” This decayed estate is a shunned place, largely because of its hermit-like inhabitant. The eponymous Jean Marie Poquelin, a former indigo planter and slave trader, is suspected of misdeed (either fratricide or secret imprisonment) involving his thirty-years-younger half-Brother Jacques, who disappeared seven years earlier while accompanying Jean on a slave-buying expedition to the Guinea coast. Thus, to the local Louisianan community, “the name of Jean Marie Poquelin became a symbol of witchery, devilish crime, and hideous nursery fiction.” The old man has been turned into a scapegoat, blamed for sundry adversities:

To the Creoles–to the incoming lower class of superstitious Germans, Irish, Sicilians, and others–he became an omen and embodiment of public and private ill-fortune. Upon him all the vagaries of their superstition gathered and grew. If a house caught fire, it was imputed to his machinations. Did a woman go off in a fit, he had bewitched her. Did a child stray off for an hour, the mother shivered with the apprehension that Jean Poquelin had offered him to strange gods. The house was the subject of every bad boy’s invention who loved to contrive ghostly lies. “As long as that house stands we shall have bad luck. Do you not see our pease and beans dying, our cabbages and lettuce going to seed and our gardens turning to dust, while every day you can see it raining in the woods? The rain will never pass old Poquelin’s house. He keeps a fetich. He has conjured the whole Fauborg St. Marie. And why, the old wretch? Simply because our playful and innocent children call after him as he passes.”

Perhaps most damning of all in the eyes of his contemporaries, old Jean has resisted the in-roads of modernization (he literally tries to prevent a new road being created across his land). A less-than-scrupulous “Building and Improvement Committee,” believing that the Poquelin property will make “a capital site for a market-house,” repeatedly attempts to get the owner to sell off. Hoping to gain leverage by proving that the “old villain” has his long-missing “brother locked up in that old house,” the Committee sends an investigator to break in. Upon encroaching, though, the investigator spies a “ghostly white” figure on the grounds. Accompanied by a “strange, sickening odor,” this mysterious figure suggests the walking dead. Naturally, the investigator is in dread at first, but after he realizes what he is witnessing, he henceforth becomes a surprising defender of old Jean’s reputation.

As if Cable’s tale wasn’t steeped in the American Gothic already, its climax features a mob scene. The stoked locals seize upon the idea of harassing Jean into submission with clamor: they decided to “shivaree him.” But the raucous rabble does an about face when it catches glimpse of a coffin, and the pale figure. The mystery is solved at last: “beyond the bier [of the deceased Jean], with eyes cast down and labored step, walked the living remains–all that was left–of little Jacques Poquelin, the long-hidden brother–a leper, as white as snow.”

In his headnote to the story, editor Charles Crow writes that “Cable has constructed a richly symbolic account of the legacy of slavery.” Indeed, “Jean-Ah Poquelin” suggests the rot and ruin resulting from the peculiar institution (Jacques presumably contracted leprosy in Africa while accompanying his brother on a slave-buying trip), but the narrative also forms a masterpiece of Gothic suspense. Cable’s tale can be seen to influence later writers like William Faulkner (the modernity-averse outcast in “A Rose for Emily”; the family member hidden in a decrepit mansion in Absalom, Absalom!) and Harper Lee (the vindicated boogeyman in To Kill a Mockingbird), but its own classic status cannot be overlooked. This is one of the most representative pieces encountered in Crow’s anthology to date.