tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-86148539089441392112024-03-12T20:22:52.577-07:00Sally Bosco's Horror Reading BlogSally Boscohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12644800241021837062noreply@blogger.comBlogger21125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8614853908944139211.post-56945080408172503692010-04-14T08:47:00.000-07:002010-04-14T08:51:17.168-07:00Cabal by Clive Barker<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_I__Cu7x6I8k/S8Xj3ChYT4I/AAAAAAAAAHA/NopdZ9n7b4Q/s1600/Dominic+Harman.jpg"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 223px; height: 320px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_I__Cu7x6I8k/S8Xj3ChYT4I/AAAAAAAAAHA/NopdZ9n7b4Q/s320/Dominic+Harman.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5460020657965780866" border="0" /></a>
<br /> <meta name="Title" content=""> <meta name="Keywords" content=""> <meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"> <meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 2008"> <meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 2008"> <link rel="File-List" href="file://localhost/Users/Admin/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/msoclip/0clip_filelist.xml"> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:officedocumentsettings> <o:allowpng/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:drawinggridhorizontalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:drawinggridverticalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:displayhorizontaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:displayverticaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> <w:dontautofitconstrainedtables/> <w:dontvertalignintxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="276"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--> <style> <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-alt:"Times New Roman"; mso-font-charset:77; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:auto; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style> <!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} </style> <![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><o:p></o:p>Cabal is one of those stories that I know is great writing, but I just didn’t enjoy it.<span style=""> </span>Too much blood and guts for me. <span style=""> </span>It is mercifully short, however. There were some great plot twists, but also some faults in logic.<span style=""> </span>For example, the fact that Dr. Decker makes Boone believe that he (Boone) has committed a series of gristly murders that Decker has actually committed it pretty ingenious.<span style=""> </span>But when Boone is running away he coincidentally runs into Narcisse who directs him to Median where Decker is waiting for him.<span style=""> </span>How did Decker know that Boone was going to go to Median?<span style=""> </span>He didn’t send Narcisse (who is one of the Nightbreed and therefore good.)</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">Lori, Boone’s girlfriend, goes through such hellish nightmares trying to find him.<span style=""> </span>It wasn’t originally set up why the pair have such a bond other than the fact that they are both dysfunctional.<span style=""> </span>I really had to suspend belief to think that Lori wouldn’t have quit pursuing him long before she did.<span style=""> </span>It’s a point of irritation to me when people in books and films keep going and going even when injured beyond the point when they would still be functional.<span style=""> </span>Lori keeps going after she’s been slashed with a knife by Decker.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">When Lori’s friend Sheryl goes into the burned out restaurant to look for her date and gets killed, it reminded me of those films where the dumb girl goes into the basement to investigate the strange sound, in other words kind of an idiot plot.<span style=""> </span>We don’t feel sorry that she dies because she deserves it.<span style=""> </span>After that, it’s not very logical that Lori wouldn’t go to the police.<span style=""> </span>There’s a brutal killer on the loose.<span style=""> </span>Come on.<span style=""> </span>Then she finds the scary graveyard where Boone might be and enters, knowing that there’s a maniacal killer on the loose, with this excuse, “The mingled intoxication of blood loss and exhaustion had dulled all fear of this place.”<span style=""> </span>Right.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">Another thing that bothers me is that Barker seems to be making up his mythos as he goes along.<span style=""> </span>When Boone is bitten by Peloquin, it changes him into a kind of super-undead.<span style=""> </span>What is he at that point?<span style=""> </span>He isn’t Nightbreed, because they are beings who can’t stand the light and cower at the thought of being food for the monster.<span style=""> </span>When Lori finds the young, wounded animal, she turns out to be Babette, a Nightbreed child, yet nowhere else in the book is it referred to that the Nightbreed turn into animals.<span style=""> </span>Through the course of the story, Babette becomes a vehicle for sympathy for the Nightbreed.<span style=""> </span>We see her living in a refrigerator-sized underground room playing with crude toys she has made herself.<span style=""> </span>When the Nightbreed’s underground is being burned by vigilantes, we see Babette’s struggles to get out, making us feel compassion for her.<span style=""> </span>They are only a different kind of human, after all.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">Outside of these little annoyances, Barker does a great job in setting up his dark fantasy world then gives a no-holds-barred depiction of it in all its gristly details. Barker has a great command of language.<span style=""> </span>His descriptions of the brutality read like a stylized film.<span style=""> </span>Barker handles the multiple point of views brilliantly.<span style=""> </span>We see into the heads of the characters with great depth, giving us insight into them</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">The ending was less than satisfying.<span style=""> </span>I hadn’t realized that Cabal had ended and I continued reading into the next short story, thinking it was a continuation.<span style=""> </span>In looking back it seems as though he is setting it up for a sequel.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">In summary, Barker has an evocative style, but it doesn’t resonate with me.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Artwork is by cover artist Dominic Harman.</span>
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <!--EndFragment--> Sally Boscohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12644800241021837062noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8614853908944139211.post-15891968390078168042010-04-02T12:17:00.000-07:002010-04-02T12:23:35.003-07:00The Shining by Stephen King<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_I__Cu7x6I8k/S7ZD2VekFVI/AAAAAAAAAG4/M5EcTeLHZRk/s1600/the-shining-photo-386x500%5B1%5D.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 247px; FLOAT: right; HEIGHT: 320px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5455622599363269970" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_I__Cu7x6I8k/S7ZD2VekFVI/AAAAAAAAAG4/M5EcTeLHZRk/s320/the-shining-photo-386x500%5B1%5D.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family:arial;">In his preface to the new version of The Shining, Stephen King states that this novel was a “crossroads novel” for him. He decided to go deeper and admit Jack Torrence’s love for his father. It gave Jack more dimension and realism and therefore made him scarier. The fact that the killer would be driven by his childhood abuse is very disturbing and blurs the line between supernatural and psychotic. Is it the ghosts of the hotel that drive his killing spree or his own nature? </span><span style="font-family:arial;"><br /><div><br />I hadn’t read the book before or seen the film all the way through, so I didn’t know how it was going to end. I hadn’t been that much of a fan of King before reading this, but I have to admit, it is an amazing book for the way it sets up all of the problems in the beginning then keeps upping the stakes until the climax of the book when the Overlook blows up. The book pulled me in rather quickly and compelled me to spend many late nights reading through to the end.<br />How does he do it? </div><div><br />From the very opening page I noticed that King fleshes out even the minor characters in the story, case in point, Ullman, the manager. He will play a role later on in the story, but at the beginning, we don’t know that. Also in the very first chapter King establishes the fact that the former caretaker killed himself, his wife and child while spending a long, isolated winter at the Overlook. That sets up the expectation of trouble. Will Jack follow suit or can he somehow overcome the evil of the hotel? He spends pages and pages fleshing out Watson, the furnace caretaker. The fact that the Overlook could blow at any moment if the furnace isn’t maintained hangs over our heads as a point of tension. </div><div><br />Danny’s sensitivity to psychic phenomenon is also set up. Danny thinks about his father “doing the bad thing…until his brain would be quiet and leave him alone.” We know that Danny has an imaginary friend, Tony, who is a troublemaker. This also sets up expectations of impending trouble.<br />King eases us into the fact that Jack has an explosive temper and a drinking problem, but he loves his child more than anything and would do anything in the world for him. We are in a very deep character perspective in the Shining. The viewpoints characters change by chapter, and every time we are in a character’s head we experience the stream of consciousness of the character as though we were in the characters’ heads. We know the things that haunt them, the things they obsess about over and over and over again. </div><div><br />I have to ask myself if King is Jack Torrent. He seems so familiar with Jack’s demons of having an abusive childhood, tending toward violence, substance abuse and spousal abuse. How could anyone who hasn’t experienced these things write about them so convincingly? Or is he just a damned good writer? </div><div><br />Level of detail King uses ups the realism of the story. We can see the Overlook as though we were really there. We know the pattern of the carpet, what the sconces of the drapes look like. We know the exact layout of the caretaker’s apartment. All of the details of the concrete things make it much easier to believe the concrete details King provides of the unreal things, the topiary that comes to life, the woman-ghost in the bathtub, the midnight ghost revelers. </div><div> </div><div>I think the scariest part of the book is when they are in the caretaker’s apartment, wake up to the sound of mechanical grinding and realize that it’s the elevator. That would absolutely terrify me, mainly because I’d wonder what or who might be in the elevator. My imagination would carry me away and I’d go crazy with terror. </div><div><br />Kings endings are always his weak point. In his own words, “Keep that door closed as long as possible.” Once the monster is actually revealed, the ending is anticlimactic. Actually, I think that this is one of his better endings. Confrontation between Danny and demon-possessed Jack is spellbinding. Even though we know that Jack is being controlled by something beyond his control, we get to see that the humanity is still there within him. Jack breaks down for a moment when Danny appeals to his human side. I actually thought that Danny and his mom would be killed at the end and was surprised that they weren’t.</span></div>Sally Boscohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12644800241021837062noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8614853908944139211.post-35981501961872252632010-03-16T22:48:00.000-07:002010-03-16T22:50:37.869-07:00Dreams in the Witch House by H.P. Lovecraft<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_I__Cu7x6I8k/S6BtjdGIOTI/AAAAAAAAAGw/h5wsYRuNwRg/s1600-h/Witch_House_TOR.jpg"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 211px; height: 320px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_I__Cu7x6I8k/S6BtjdGIOTI/AAAAAAAAAGw/h5wsYRuNwRg/s320/Witch_House_TOR.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5449476004991482162" border="0" /></a>
<br /> <meta name="Title" content=""> <meta name="Keywords" content=""> <meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"> <meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 2008"> <meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 2008"> <link rel="File-List" href="file://localhost/Users/Admin/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/msoclip/0/clip_filelist.xml"> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:officedocumentsettings> <o:allowpng/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:drawinggridhorizontalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:drawinggridverticalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:displayhorizontaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:displayverticaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> <w:dontautofitconstrainedtables/> <w:dontvertalignintxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="276"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--> <style> <!-- /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style> <!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} </style> <![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">Lovecraft gets into some pretty advanced concepts in this story, such as using complex math to gain access to multi-dimensional worlds.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">This story uses the same mythos as that of “The Shadow Over Innsmouth,” but actually pre-dates that story by three years.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">Our narrator is named this time—Walter Gilman.<span style=""> </span>(Why the same name as the alien-infested hotel in Innsmouth?)</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">We are in the “legend-haunted city of Arkham.”<span style=""> </span>Gilman has taken a room in Witch House on purpose because he is fascinated by the history of Keziah Mason, who was on trial as a witch.<span style=""> </span>She had told the judge “of lines and curves that could be made to point out directions leading through walls of space to other spaces beyond.<span style=""> </span>The strange angles in Gilman’s room have a curious effect on him and lead him to become more and more obsessed with thoughts of travel to another dimension.<span style=""> </span>He does succeed, but at the cost of his sanity and his health.<span style=""> </span>Lovecraft has Gilman continually question his own sanity, probably because we know that insane people think that they are perfectly same; because Gilman is rational enough to question his own sanity, he is sane.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">He contacts the witch and her evil little familiar, Brown Jenkin, and from there, it is a slippery slope into oblivion.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">Lovecraft has his protagonist tell everyone around him about the supernatural goings-on: his fellow boarding house mates, his professors…and they all believe him and help him out as much as they can.<span style=""> </span>They don’t try to have him committed.<span style=""> </span>This is unheard of in more recent fiction.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">Gilman has dreams that result in objective reality, such as the little gizmo that is left behind after one of his nocturnal jaunts, his house mate looks through his keyhole and sees the blinding light that his emanating from Gilman’s night time bedroom.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">His descriptions of the other dimension are fascinating.<span style=""> </span>“…the tiles were cut in bizarre-angled shapes which struck him as less asymmetrical than based on some earthly symmetry whose laws we could not comprehend.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">We don’t know that much about Gilman, but Lovecraft does get into his head and tells us exactly what he is feeling: the obsession along with the blinding fear.<span style=""> </span>When he risks his life to avert the sacrifice of a baby by the witch and her cohorts, he proves to us that he is a worthwhile, likeable guy.<span style=""> </span>He kills the witch but is also killed himself by horrible means or something (presumably Brown Jenkin) burrowing completely through him.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">Lovecraft repeatedly refers to a magical book called the <i style="">Necronomicon</i>, which is completely fictional.<span style=""> </span>People have tried to find it or recreate it over the years, all for naught.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">I was very drawn in by this story and impressed by the advanced concepts of math having an effect on multi-dimensions.<span style=""> </span>He was way ahead of his time.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">Lovecraft didn’t care much for people.<span style=""> </span>I read a quote of his, "... all my tales are based on the fundamental premise that common human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance in the vast cosmos-at-large."<span style=""> </span>Despite this, in<i style=""> Dreams in the Witch House</i> Lovecraft draws us into his characters with his attention to detail and by the deep perspective of his characters.</p> <!--EndFragment--> Sally Boscohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12644800241021837062noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8614853908944139211.post-42777125183866159492010-03-15T22:50:00.000-07:002010-03-15T22:52:53.460-07:00Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_I__Cu7x6I8k/S58caSnyKzI/AAAAAAAAAGo/Ws-u06VVaCE/s1600-h/rosemarysbaby_horror.jpg"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 317px; height: 183px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_I__Cu7x6I8k/S58caSnyKzI/AAAAAAAAAGo/Ws-u06VVaCE/s320/rosemarysbaby_horror.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5449105312142469938" border="0" /></a>
<br /> <meta name="Title" content=""> <meta name="Keywords" content=""> <meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"> <meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 2008"> <meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 2008"> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:officedocumentsettings> <o:allowpng/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:drawinggridhorizontalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:drawinggridverticalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:displayhorizontaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:displayverticaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> <w:dontautofitconstrainedtables/> <w:dontvertalignintxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="276"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--> <style> <!-- /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p>This book amazes me, because it doesn’t get dated.<span style=""> </span>The same is true for the film version Directed by Roman Polanski.<span style=""> </span>I watch it once in awhile just because it’s so good. <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">The book got passed around my junior high class, because it had a cool “sex scene.”<span style=""> </span>It also had a whole lot more.<span style=""> </span>When I originally read this book (when I was still too young to see the movie), I remembered being terrified for Rosemary, hoping she’d be able to get away from all those crazy people (no don’t take those funny herbal drinks) and get to safety in order to have her baby in a secure place.<span style=""> </span>It was a surprise to me at the end that she was the mother of Satan’s child.<span style=""> </span>That line, “What have you done to his eyes,” will always haunt me.<span style=""> </span>I thought they were going to kidnap her baby for a human sacrifice, and for that reason, I kept rooting for Rosemary to wake up and escape from those people’s evil clutches.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">On this latest reading of the book, I find that it loses none of the appeal.<span style=""> </span>Levin is able to do that very rare thing of making you completely suspend belief.<span style=""> </span>In giving it a really close read, I could see the beauty of the book, how all of the pieces (that on first a first reading you might gloss over) fit together to bring us to the conclusion.<span style=""> </span>It’s an absolutely linear story with no narrative tricks, but flows so well, you can read it in one sitting (which I just did.)</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">The first hint that something is amiss is when Guy and Rosemary move the huge dresser to find that it’s hiding a closet behind it.<span style=""> </span>Rosemary asks why she would block the closet that has her vacuum cleaner.<span style=""> </span>At first Rosemary was the one who was enthusiastic about getting the apartment, so it makes me wonder at what point guy made a pact with the devil.<span style=""> </span>(Most probably when Roman pulls Guy off for a talk when the Castevets have invited them over for dinner.)<span style=""> </span>When Rosemary’s friend, Hutch tries to discourage them from renting there because of it penchant for weirdly brutal happenings, Guy poo poos it. At that point, we know that Guy is a selfish and manipulative jerk, but we don’t think he’s actually evil.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">Throughout the book we only know what Rosemary knows.<span style=""> </span>We are lulled into a false sense of security with everyday details.<span style=""> </span>Once Rosemary starts to realize that something is wrong, the book becomes impossible to put down.<span style=""> </span>At no time does anything overtly supernatural or dangerous take place.<span style=""> </span>Indeed, it could all be in Rosemary’s head.<span style=""> </span>We know it’s not, but nothing definite in the book happens to prove otherwise until almost to the ending.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">Rosemary has a passive obedient nature which could be said to characterize a woman from the early 1960’s.<span style=""> </span>She defers to the experts and does what everyone tells her to do.<span style=""> </span>When Dr. Sapirstein tells her to drink Minnie’s strange drink, she doesn’t question it.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">There was also a cold war paranoia that was very active at the time, and <i style="">Rosemary’s Baby </i>reflects that fact that you really can’t trust your next door neighbor.<span style=""> </span>He might be a commie or a Satanist.<span style=""> </span>When she feels that she’s been raped by some demon, (“This is really happening,”) the day after she doesn’t trust herself and brushes it off as a nightmare.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">There are certain points in the book in which you think Rosemary might have a change.<span style=""> </span>One is when her friends come to their apartment for a party and she agrees to get a second opinion about the pain.<span style=""> </span>The other in when the Castevets announce that they are taking a trip to Europe.<span style=""> </span>Levin gives us a little relief from the tension.<span style=""> </span>We kind of sigh at that point.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">Rosemary catches Guy in a couple of small lies and thinks he might be having an affair.<span style=""> </span>The things are subtle and don’t add up to a lot individually, but together, they let the reader know that Guy is working with the Castevets for some evil purpose, even if Rosemary has been too naïve to see it.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">After Rosemary has the baby, she at first is told that it’s dead but later goes through the fake closet to find it.<span style=""> </span>After the initial shock wears off, Rosemary softens up to the idea of the baby.<span style=""> </span>“Even if he was half Satan, wasn’t he half her as well?”<span style=""> </span>The book ends with her baby-talking to the new infant, which is really more chilling than having her run away in terror.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">Why this book works for me:</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">The characters are well defined and believable.<span style=""> </span>Is Guy in league with the devil, or is he just kind of a jerk?<span style=""> </span>At the beginning we’re not sure; later on, we know.<span style=""> </span>Are the Castevets well-meaning busybodies or are they truly evil?</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">The viewpoint is limited to Rosemary’s perceptions.<span style=""> </span>We have angst because we are literally in Rosemary’s shoes.<span style=""> </span>Isn’t horror all about limited viewpoint so we don’t see the monster behind the door?</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">The suspense rises as we become more and more sure that Rosemary is in real, not imagined, danger. The book gives us a growing sense of dread as Rosemary realizes that she can trust no one.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">Levin provides the day-to-day details of Rosemary’s life right down to what kind of haircut she gets and what kind of dish detergent she uses.<span style=""> </span>This immerses us in the fictive dream.<span style=""> </span>Still, Levin doesn’t over-do it with details; he manages to give us just the right amount.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">He keys into our deep-seated fears of evil and (particularly if you were brought up Catholic) the devil in a way that gets right down deep into our psyches.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">I ask myself why this book doesn’t get dated, even though it is a 60’s period piece.<span style=""> </span>I think it is that the characters act like real people and they are true to their personalities.<span style=""> </span>As Hemingway said, “Good writing is true writing.”<span style=""> </span>…even when it’s about the spawn of Satan.</p> <!--EndFragment--> Sally Boscohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12644800241021837062noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8614853908944139211.post-69747230702325689242010-03-09T19:15:00.000-08:002010-03-09T19:20:44.078-08:00The Shadow Over Innsmouth by H.P. Lovecraft<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_I__Cu7x6I8k/S5cPfGCLuiI/AAAAAAAAAGg/AcX_VskS4l4/s1600-h/cthulhu_by_darkf666.jpg"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 226px; height: 320px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_I__Cu7x6I8k/S5cPfGCLuiI/AAAAAAAAAGg/AcX_VskS4l4/s320/cthulhu_by_darkf666.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5446839301198035490" border="0" /></a>
<br /> <meta name="Title" content=""> <meta name="Keywords" content=""> <meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"> <meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 2008"> <meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 2008"> <link rel="File-List" href="file://localhost/Users/Admin/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/msoclip/0clip_filelist.xml"> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:officedocumentsettings> <o:allowpng/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:drawinggridhorizontalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:drawinggridverticalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:displayhorizontaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:displayverticaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> <w:dontautofitconstrainedtables/> <w:dontvertalignintxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="276"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--> <style> <!-- /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style> <!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} </style> <![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10pt;">This is my favorite of the Lovecraft stories we’ve read this tern.<span style=""> </span>Again, Lovecraft uses the device of the evil place, “that ill-rumored and evilly-shadowed seaport of death and blasphemous abnormality.<span style=""> </span>While he is out travelling, our young narrator becomes intrigued by stories about a town called Innsmouth.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10pt;">Lovecraft uses the word “queer” about 666 times in describing Innsmouth.<span style=""> </span>The town is queer, the odd-angled buildings are queer and lord knows the people are queer.<span style=""> </span>It was thought that the town founder, old Captain Marsh, made a pact with the devil.<span style=""> </span>The inhabitants have “queer narrow heads with flat noses and bulgy, stary eyes that never seem to shut, and their skin ain’t quite right.”<span style=""> </span>They seem to some kind of aliens, but not of the South Sea or Asian variety as they would like you to believe.<span style=""> </span>He also describes that strange jewelry they leave behind.<span style=""> </span>“…it was the queer otherworldly quality of the art which made me uneasy.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10pt;">Lovecraft does a splendid job of describing the utterly alien feel of the town, how all of the houses are boarded up but he can sense a strange life force behind the seemingly empty buildings.<span style=""> </span>He talks about the Masons and the “Esoteric Order of the Dragon.”<span style=""> </span>When the narrator is riding the bus into town he sees a stone church with a rectangle of blackness at the basement.<span style=""> </span>He gets a shiver as he sees the pastor pass back and forth with one of the alien tiaras on his head.<span style=""> </span>We feel the shudder, too.<span style=""> </span>I grew fascinated with his use of odd angled architecture to indicate that the narrator had passed over into another dimension, as though somehow that passage was dependent upon mathmatics.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10pt;">The narrator finds an old timer in town who tells him the true story of the town, including that fact that they kidnap people for human sacrifices to their god who lived under the sea. He plans to spend the day there and leave at eight o’clock at night, but the bus he is supposed to ride out of town becomes disabled.<span style=""> </span>He is forced to stay at the Gilman hotel in town, a grim, horrible, dangerous place.<span style=""> </span>As the sun sets, out narrator’s dread increases.<span style=""> </span>His door has no lock so he removes a lock from one of the internal doors and replaces it.<span style=""> </span>In the night he hears someone rattling the lock.<span style=""> </span>When they don’t succeed they go to his side door.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10pt;">In this scene Lovecraft instills a perfect sense of blood curdling dread in us.<span style=""> </span>We feel this man’s plight in no uncertain terms.<span style=""> </span>He builds the suspense gradually, along with the fact that we know that they collect human sacrifices, which gives the reader a definite sense of the creeps.<span style=""> </span>The descriptions are so good you feel as though you are there and wonder what you would do in his shoes.<span style=""> </span>“Then the lock of the connecting door to my room was tried softly.”<span style=""> </span>This subtle action is more creepy to me than all of the ghosts crashing into people’s rooms in <i style="">Hell House.”<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10pt;">The one thing that makes this not as scary is that we know from the beginning that the narrator lived and told the authorities about his experience.<span style=""> </span>I wonder why Lovecraft used the device of a frame story to tell this tale? I think that lessens some of the tension.<span style=""> </span>He may have dibe it to give credence to his story and make it seem like a real person giving an account.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10pt;">One thing that helps is that we know that the narrator is scared and that makes us more scared.<span style=""> </span>“A wave of almost abnormal horror swept over me.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10pt;">He does manage to get away from the evil monsters and goes to the authorities who actually do believe him.<span style=""> </span>This is unusual for the conventions we’re used to in horror stories.<span style=""> </span>We’re used to people keeping these kinds of things to themselves so no one thinks they are crazy.<span style=""> </span>If they did go to the authorities, they would never believe them.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10pt;">The twist ending is excellent, and you can see how Lovecraft set up the fact that the viewpoint character is actually one if them with the fact that the half-breed aliens don’t start to look really alien until later in life.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10pt;">To me this is an entirely successful story.<span style=""> </span>No wonder it spawned generation of admirers of the Cthulhu myth.</p> <!--EndFragment--> Sally Boscohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12644800241021837062noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8614853908944139211.post-21910470575370879522010-02-23T21:39:00.000-08:002010-02-23T22:01:21.128-08:00The Thing on the Doorstep by H.P. Lovecraft<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_I__Cu7x6I8k/S4S_ucmLLQI/AAAAAAAAAGY/j8nHj48vEyA/s1600-h/the+thing+on+the+doorstep.jpg"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 245px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_I__Cu7x6I8k/S4S_ucmLLQI/AAAAAAAAAGY/j8nHj48vEyA/s320/the+thing+on+the+doorstep.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5441685054441598210" border="0" /></a>
<br /> <meta name="Title" content=""> <meta name="Keywords" content=""> <meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"> <meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 2008"> <meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 2008"> <link rel="File-List" href="file://localhost/Users/Admin/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/msoclip/0clip_filelist.xml"> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:officedocumentsettings> <o:allowpng/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:drawinggridhorizontalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:drawinggridverticalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:displayhorizontaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:displayverticaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> <w:dontautofitconstrainedtables/> <w:dontvertalignintxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="276"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--> <style> <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Arial; panose-1:2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style> <!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} </style> <![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;"><b style=""><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span></b><span style="font-family:Arial;">This story is about a man who has married a woman who in into the black arts and routinely steals his body.<span style=""> </span>Kind of a cool concept, really.<span style=""> </span>Lovecraft starts out with a great hook about “putting six bullets through the head of my best friend.”<span style=""> </span>This draws you into the story and makes you wonder why and how this could possibly be.<b style=""><o:p></o:p></b></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Arial;">Lovecraft shows a depth of characterization in this story, but does it through a lot of telling.<span style=""> </span>We know everything about Edward Derby because the narrator (Dan) tells us everything about him down to the smallest detail in paragraph after paragraph of description.<span style=""> </span>Obviously this telling wouldn’t go over very well today in a time when we are all very visual because we are so used to films.<span style=""> </span>It would be a stronger story if Lovecraft has written some scenes at the beginning to show Edward’s character traits.<span style=""> </span>He does so later in the story.<span style=""> </span>Even with this shortcoming, the narrative definitely works as is.<span style=""> </span>I found myself getting drawn into the story line of the strange woman who can steal people’s bodies.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Arial;">The plot is very original for that time period or for any other.<span style=""> </span>It took a few turns I didn’t expect.<span style=""> </span>I knew that Edward has killed Aesnath when he said, “I had to do it—I had to do it…” when being held in the sanitarium.<span style=""> </span>I hadn’t anticipated, that Aesnath had actually been possessed by the spirit of her father.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Arial;">When Dan went to the door that night and “saw the dwarfed, humped figure on the steps,” I thought that Aesnath had put Edward’s spirit into the body of a dwarf.<span style=""> </span>It’s a nice touch when Lovecraft reveals at the very end of the story that the mass of tissue Edward has been living in was indeed Aesnath’s corpse.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Arial;">Lovecraft sets up a definite reason for Aesnath’s wanting to take over Edward’s body when she tells us she believes that only men can attain the heights of magical ability.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Arial;">What’s odd and maybe inconsistent with human nature is that when Edward is trapped in Aesnath’s corpse, he wants Dan to kill his (Edward’s) body.<span style=""> </span>Wouldn’t most people have wanted to find a way to get the offending entity out of his or her own body in order to be able to get back in?<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Arial;">The way Lovecraft has Dan kill Edward at the end could have been done differently to increase the suspense.<span style=""> </span>Lovecraft throws this line into the middle of a paragraph:<span style=""> </span>“I went to the madhouse and shot him dead for Edward’s sake…”<span style=""> </span>Later he tells the details of the shooting.<span style=""> </span>It would have been much more suspenseful if we had seen Dan sneaking into the sanitarium with a gun hidden in his waist coat.<span style=""> </span>Then we’d wonder what he was going to do and if he would get away with it.<span style=""> </span>(Of course, he had also told us at the beginning that he shot Edward.)<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Arial;">I like the title because at first it doesn’t seem to relate to anything and I found myself wondering how Lovecraft was going to connect it to the story.<span style=""> </span>The meaning isn’t revealed until the end.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Arial;">What I can take away from this for my own writing is that Lovecraft draws us into the reality of the story with all of the details.<span style=""> </span>The characters and settings are all fully fleshed out, and we see definite reasons for all of the character’s actions.<span style=""> </span>At first Dan thinks that Edward is mad and belongs in an asylum.<span style=""> </span>Somehow when other people in the story question the veracity of the supernatural thing (whatever it is) that makes us as readers believe it all the more.<span style=""> </span>Later on as Dan is drawn into believing the truth of Edward’s story so are we drawn into it.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Arial;">Then there is the incredible richness an dark beauty of Lovecraft’s language that can chill you and enthrall you all at once.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span style="font-style: italic;">This drawing is taken from the Penguin Classics version of "The Thing on the Doorstep." I like it because the specter of death looks so lonely huddled under a sheet.</span>
<br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <!--EndFragment--> Sally Boscohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12644800241021837062noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8614853908944139211.post-43631288075037521772010-02-15T18:54:00.000-08:002010-02-15T19:09:12.834-08:00Hell House by Richard Matheson<span style="font-size:100%;"><a style="font-family: times new roman;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_I__Cu7x6I8k/S3oJMIFYe6I/AAAAAAAAAGQ/sht40SCAR6w/s1600-h/CD58A9FC74.jpg"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 176px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_I__Cu7x6I8k/S3oJMIFYe6I/AAAAAAAAAGQ/sht40SCAR6w/s320/CD58A9FC74.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5438669603936435106" border="0" /></a> </span> <meta name="Title" content=""> <meta name="Keywords" content=""> <meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"> <meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 2008"> <meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 2008"> <link style="font-family: times new roman;" rel="File-List" href="file://localhost/Users/Admin/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/msoclip/0clip_filelist.xml"> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:officedocumentsettings> <o:allowpng/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:drawinggridhorizontalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:drawinggridverticalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:displayhorizontaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:displayverticaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> <w:dontautofitconstrainedtables/> <w:dontvertalignintxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="276"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--> <style> <!-- /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style> <!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; font-family: times new roman;font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">I have to say I don’t get it.<span style=""> </span>Stephen King calls this book “the scariest haunted house book ever written.”<span style=""> </span>What did I miss?<span style=""> </span>It was a cold day, and I settled down in front of a nice fire hoping to be creeped out, and I was just bored.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; font-family: times new roman;font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">I think the book had shallow, undeveloped characters.<span style=""> </span>The ghosts were stock--cut-outs from a Hollywood special effects department. <span style=""> </span>The plot was predictable, there was nothing especially surprising.<span style=""> </span>It should have been scary when they had to stay in the house at first with no electricity, but it wasn’t.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; font-family: times new roman;font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">The core of the novel is about Dr. Lionel Barrett’s purely scientific take on hauntings versus Florence Tanner’s more spiritual approach.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; font-family: times new roman;font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Barrett is such a purely unlikeable jerk from the very beginning of the book, it’s hard to care about him at all.<span style=""> </span>He has a condescending outlook toward everyone, particularly his wife.<span style=""> </span>Edith, his wife, is just plain annoying.<span style=""> </span>Fischer is ineffectual as a psychic.<span style=""> </span>Florence is the most interesting character, but you know she has to get the axe because whe’s the one sexy woman in the story.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; font-family: times new roman;font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Matheson’s attempts to be daring with the sexual perversion that went on in the house during its heyday is kind of laughable.<span style=""> </span>Maybe it was a shocker in the seventies, but the titillating sexually oriented scenes now just seem campy, for example, Barrett’s wife, Edith, giving the buxom Florence a full body search, and the lesbian “sex scenes” are just plain dumb, not at all believable.
<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; font-family: times new roman;font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">The characters didn’t act realistically.<span style=""> </span>When Florence first sees Belasco’s son’s ghost in her room, she talks to it like it was her long-lost brother who had wandered in. She's not even startled.<span style=""> </span>After the house has tried to kill them, they’re sitting around eating sandwiches rather than getting the hell out of there.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; font-family: times new roman;font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">The book is hopelessly dated.<span style=""> </span>I sometimes try to put my finger on why some books seem that way when others hold up well over time.<span style=""> </span>(One book that has held up really well is <i style="">Rosemary’s Baby.</i>)<span style=""> </span>I think it is because the characters are affected and stereotypical.<span style=""> </span>Matheson doesn’t get into the minds of his characters and tell us what’s going on there.<span style=""> </span>The emotions aren’t genuine, they're a parody of sixties and seventies-era people.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; font-family: times new roman;font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">The ending is laughable.<span style=""> </span>Fischer, who didn’t do very much throughout the course of the novel, saves the day by, in essence, calling Belasco a short wimp.<span style=""> </span>At that point the ghost caves and gives up. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; font-family: times new roman;font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">I had the feeling that Matheson was making it up as he went along.<span style=""> </span>The last chapter has Fischer explaining the inconsistencies in the plot.<span style=""> </span>For example, why did Belasco allow Barrett to use the Reversor when he knew it would weaken him? <span style=""> </span>Because it would have been an admission to Barrett that he was right.<span style=""> </span>Pretty weak. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; font-family: times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">One thing that Matheson does well is his descriptions of the house.<span style=""> </span>He describes the house in great visual detail to the point that you can actually see the place.<span style=""> </span>Also the descriptions of the Belasco parties are very vivid and well thought-out.<span style=""> </span>The house functions as a separate character in the book.<span style=""> </span>Unfortunately it’s the only one Matheson has developed to any extent.</span></p> <!--EndFragment--> Sally Boscohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12644800241021837062noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8614853908944139211.post-69274485277096487692010-02-11T20:46:00.000-08:002010-02-11T21:07:40.521-08:00The Music of Erich Zahnn by H.P. Lovecraft<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_I__Cu7x6I8k/S3TiEStEC3I/AAAAAAAAAGI/8kFQi6RlsC0/s1600-h/zahnn.jpg"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 231px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_I__Cu7x6I8k/S3TiEStEC3I/AAAAAAAAAGI/8kFQi6RlsC0/s320/zahnn.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5437219213511232370" border="0" /></a>
<br /> <meta name="Title" content=""> <meta name="Keywords" content=""> <meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"> <meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 2008"> <meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 2008"> <link rel="File-List" href="file://localhost/Users/Admin/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/msoclip/0/clip_filelist.xml"> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:officedocumentsettings> <o:allowpng/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:drawinggridhorizontalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:drawinggridverticalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:displayhorizontaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:displayverticaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> <w:dontautofitconstrainedtables/> <w:dontvertalignintxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="276"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--> <style> <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Arial; panose-1:2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style> <!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} </style> <![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-family:Arial;">At the beginning of the story, we know that something supernatural has taken place.<span style=""> </span>We have a narrator who has lived in a house of the Rue de’Auseil, yet in trying to locate it again, he finds that no such street exists.<span style=""> </span>The narrator is not described and we don’t know much about his past.<span style=""> </span>Lovecraft seems to be fond of using narrators who stumble upon “the weird thing.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-family:Arial;">As in many of his other stories, he gives the setting an inherent evil.<span style=""> </span>“It was always shadowy along that river, as if the smoke of neighboring factories shut out the sun perpetually.<span style=""> </span>The river was odorous with evil stenches...” The houses “crazily leaning backward, forward and sidewise.”<span style=""> </span>The inhabitants are all very old.<span style=""> </span>The descriptions of the town and house are superb for setting a creepy mood.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-family:Arial;">He sets up the fact that the music he heard from Zahnn is other-wordly.<span style=""> </span>“…they held vibrations suggesting nothing on this globe of earth…”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-family:Arial;">Lovecraft’s descriptions of Zahnn are vivid and picturesque, especially during the night that he intrudes on Zahnn playing like a madman.<span style=""> </span>“Louder and louder, wilder and wilder, mounted the shrieking and whining of that desperate viol.<span style=""> </span>The player was dripping with perspiration and twisted like a monkey, always looking frantically at the curtained window… I could almost see shadowy satyrs and bacchanals dancing and whirling insanely through seething abysses of clouds and smoke and lightening.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-family:Arial;">When the narrator gets a look at the place where Zahnn has been glancing fearfully, where the lights of a town should be, he sees “only the blackness of space illimitable, unimagined space, alive with motion and music, having no semblance of anything on earth.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-family:Arial;">When the narrator brushes by Zahnn, he feels an “…ice cold, stiffened, unbreathing face whose glass eyes bulged uselessly into the void.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-family:Arial;">And of course, the explanation Zahnn had been writing about his horrible predicament blew out the window never to be seen again.<span style=""> </span>It’s kind of similar to “Pickman’s Model.”<span style=""> </span>The evidence is gone.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-family:Arial;">It kind of makes me feel let down at not knowing the reason.<span style=""> </span>I would suspect that Zahnn was holding off some kind of evil aliens who were repelled by the music Zahnn was playing.<span style=""> </span>When he finally died, they were able to come in and make the whole street disappear into another dimension.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-family:Arial;">In On Writing, Stephen King tells us to keep that door closed as long as possible, because when you reveal the monster, it completely loses its power.<span style=""> </span>Well, in this story Lovecraft keeps the door shut forever.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-family:Arial;">I feel ambivalent about open endings.<span style=""> </span>In one way I like them because they let us use our imagination.<span style=""> </span>In another way, I like to have things wrapped up.<span style=""> </span>It’s just too easy for an author to tell us, “This is what happened, and there was this horrible thing, but I have absolutely no idea what it was or what caused it.<span style=""> </span>Reader, fill in the blanks and do my work for me.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-family:Arial;">I think that this story has a great, original plot and it got me in the mood for creepiness, but it ultimately let me down.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <!--EndFragment--> Sally Boscohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12644800241021837062noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8614853908944139211.post-89573122275251875032010-02-05T11:40:00.000-08:002010-02-05T12:04:42.100-08:00The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_I__Cu7x6I8k/S2x5lagdJyI/AAAAAAAAAFQ/NSU20KDhITo/s1600-h/Phantom.jpg"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 226px; height: 320px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_I__Cu7x6I8k/S2x5lagdJyI/AAAAAAAAAFQ/NSU20KDhITo/s320/Phantom.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5434852534006916898" border="0" /></a><br /> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:officedocumentsettings> <o:allowpng/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:drawinggridhorizontalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:drawinggridverticalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:displayhorizontaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:displayverticaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> <w:dontautofitconstrainedtables/> <w:dontvertalignintxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="276"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--> <style> <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Times; panose-1:2 0 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style> <!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";} </style> <![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; font-family: arial;font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">While I was reading this novel, I tried in my mind to separate it from the Andrew Lloyd Webber play, but had a difficult time of it.<span style=""> </span>I kept thinking about how the play book really distilled down the plot and got rid of excess characters and scenes leaving only the most important parts.<span style=""> </span>But the intent of this blog is to review the actual novel by Leroux.<o:p></o:p></span> </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; font-family: arial;font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">The premise of the book is that Gaston Leroux turns himself into an inspector trying to gain some closure on the thirty-year-old case of the Opera Ghost’s alleged kidnapping of Christine Daeé.<span style=""> </span>He lists his sources at the beginning of the book, trying to give the inquiry as much credence as possible.<span style=""> </span>Leroux uses outside source material like the journals of the Persian, police interviews, letters and articles.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; font-family: arial;font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">I believe that his main point in doing this was to establish himself a reliable narrator to tell this fantastic story.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; font-family: arial;font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Leroux is taking a journalistic approach to the book, but this causes a viewpoint problem in parts, such as in Chapter 12 when we see Christine and Raul on the roof.<span style=""> </span>The narrator would actually have no way of seeing this.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; font-family: arial;font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Some of the characters are a little flat, particularly Raoul, who is portrayed as an anemic shadow of his older brother, Count Philippe de Chagny. He can’t even rescue Christine on his own, he has to have the help of the Persian. Leroux describes him well at the beginning, giving us all of his background, but doesn’t develop him much as the plot progresses.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; font-family: arial;font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Christine sometimes acts in ways that don’t make any sense, such as when she tells Raul she would never marry him (without any good reason), or when she goes back to Erik’s underground lair even when she know that he plans to hold her hostage.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; font-family: arial;font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Eric is a fully realized character with a complete back story.<span style=""> </span>Basically, he’s anguished by the dichotomy of his musical talent and the beauty of his voice against the ugliness of his appearance.<span style=""> </span>He was so ugly as a child his mother forced him to wear a mask.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; font-family: arial;font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Eric is a tortured soul who feels incredible anguish in his circumstances.<span style=""> </span>We can see this in his reaction to Christine’s revulsion of him. <span style=""> </span>Christine said, "Yes, if I lived to be a hundred, I should always hear the superhuman cry of grief and rage which he uttered when the terrible sight appeared before my eyes.”<span style=""> </span>And "He had let go of me at last and was dragging himself about on the floor, uttering terrible sobs…”<s><o:p></o:p></s></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; font-family: arial;font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">One of the things that struck me is that Erik has a definite character arc in this book.<span style=""> </span>He goes from being a child who was abused due to his looks, to a youth who was victimized in side shows, to a person who took charge of his destiny when he used his skills to gain favor with the Shah of Persia.<span style=""> </span>When he was forced to flee that country, he finally ended up in Paris as a contractor for the Paris Opera.<span style=""> </span>Once he had access to the cellars, he created his own dwelling there.<span style=""> </span>He becomes mad from that existence but then finds his love obsession with Christine.<span style=""> </span>He shares has extensive knowledge of music with her.<span style=""> </span>He wishes nothing more than to have an ordinary life and “take his wife out on Sundays.”<span style=""> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; font-family: arial;font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">When he finds that Christine doesn’t quite feel the same way about him, he at first wants to keep her as his prisoner. He threatens to blow up the whole of the Paris Opera if she won’t consent to marry him. When Raul and the Persian go in search of her and end up in Erik’s torture chamber, Erik at first wants to kill them, but he later releases them because he wants to please Christine.<span style=""> </span>Erik’s actions show great empathy when, even though he realizes that Christine doesn’t love him, he lets her go off with Raul, because her happiness is more important to him than his own.<span style=""> </span>Eric comes full circle to show compassion.<span style=""> </span>He’s not at all the monster everyone thinks he is. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; font-family: arial;font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Leroux seems to give Eric some supernatural powers.<span style=""> </span>But at the end of the book, he goes back and explains how all of the seemingly supernaturally feats were actually accomplished by Erik by the use of trap doors, hollow columns and ventriloquism.<span style=""> </span>For example, when the monthly sum to be given to the ghost was in one of the producer’s pockets then suddenly disappeared, Leroux later states that Eric reached his hand up through a trap door and pulled it out.<span style=""> </span>I thought the explanations were a bit cheesy and not very believable.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; font-family: arial;font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">The book makes a lot of symbolic use of mirrors.<span style=""> </span>The phantom comes to her through mirror, and he bids her to look into the mirror to see him inside of her.<span style=""> </span>His torture chamber is a room of mirrors.<span style=""> </span>Perhaps Eric is tortured by looking at himself.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">I have a vivid picture of what Garnier’s Paris Opera looks like, both from the play and from having visited the real opera house in Paris.<span style=""> </span>But in reading <i style="">Phanton,</i> I found that Leroux describes it very little until the characters are in the underground.<span style=""> </span>At that time he describes it in such detail that it begins to function as a separate character in the book. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">The plot, for its day, was original and entertaining, even shocking and scandalous.<span style=""> </span>I think <i style="">The Phantom of the Opera</i> stands the test of time for its true descriptions of the emotions felt by the characters, particularly Erik.<span style=""> </span>It tends to melodrama, but that can be inherent in a Gothic story such as this.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Artwork is by Lehanan. My interpretation is that this is the vision of the Phantom's inner, beautiful spirit.</span><br /></span></p> <!--EndFragment-->Sally Boscohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12644800241021837062noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8614853908944139211.post-41827048186334698412010-01-29T08:15:00.000-08:002010-01-29T08:39:59.390-08:00Pickman's Model by H.P. Lovecraft<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_I__Cu7x6I8k/S2MOlenlfdI/AAAAAAAAAFA/VulQ-B0o5us/s1600-h/Pickmans_Dan+Harding.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 243px; height: 320px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_I__Cu7x6I8k/S2MOlenlfdI/AAAAAAAAAFA/VulQ-B0o5us/s320/Pickmans_Dan+Harding.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5432201612575997394" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family: times new roman;font-family:arial;" >H.P. Lovecraft begins “Pickman’s Model,” with urgency and immediacy by having his narrator tell the story to a third party in such a way that we see his rising nervousness and unease. We don’t hear the other side of the conversation, just the voice of the narrator. Lovecraft sets up the “dis-ease” of the story by letting us know that Pickman has disappeared under odd circumstances. He goes on to talk about how Pickman is able to take his artwork beyond the ordinary into the realm of torment formerly seen only in Goya paintings, and as a result grew more strange and repellant by the day.</span><o:p style="font-family: arial;"></o:p></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">We know that the friend who is listening to the story is named Eliot, but we never know the narrator’s name.<span style=""> </span>It could be that Lovecraft did this to enable the reader to more easily put himself into that person’s place.<span style=""> </span>In general he is faceless; we don’t ever know his age or physical characteristics.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">The narrator establishes his own normalcy, how he tried to be a true friend to Pickman.<span style=""> </span>This identifies him as a reliable narrator. <span style=""> </span>We don’t question what he tells us.<span style=""> </span>He then goes into a flashback using the actual dialogue Pickman used when trying to bring him to the house he had recently purchased.<span style=""> </span>The house was old and forbidding and had an open well in the basement that dated back to the 1700’s, a perfect place for Pickman to tune out the world and work on his horrific artwork.<span style=""> </span>Pickman talks about “…something queer in the cellar,” about the ghosts of the witches, smugglers and pirates who used to live in the area.<span style=""> </span>At first Pickman speaks very lucidly.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">The narrator is eager to see the strange house and, when invited, rushes to the dicey section of town with Pickman as his guide.<span style=""> </span>At first it is all fun-spooky, but gradually he sees Pickman’s actual mental state as reflected in his ghastly paintings.<span style=""> </span>Dog creatures who seem to have developed from mortals bear an uncanny resemblance to Pickman.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">One of “those frightful pictures which turned colonial New England into a kind of annex to hell” gets the better of our narrator and he screams.<span style=""> </span>The canvasses grow more and more vile and disgusting until they are at the actual well.<span style=""> </span>“…these things repelled because of the utter humanity and callout cruelty they showed in Pickman.”<span style=""> </span>The artwork was so completely convincing he feels that Pickman has some kind of inside scoop on demons.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">I hadn’t read this story before, but when the narrator went to pull the photo from the side of the easel and Pickman is struck with fright, I immediately knew that there was a picture of an actual monster on the photo.<span style=""> </span>Pickman goes off to battle (the so-called) rats, but we know it is something much more sinister.<span style=""> </span>The artist goes to deal with his demon or whatever it is then ushers his friend home and that is the end of the evening.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">We return to the narrator telling the story to his friend.<span style=""> </span>He burns the photo, apparently because some things are too ghastly to exist in the world, even in photographs.<span style=""> </span>Lovecraft goes in for the big finish to tell his friend it was an actual photo.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Maybe it’s because we’re so used to twist endings, I could see it coming for a mile.<span style=""> </span>Probably when this story was written in the early 1900’s it would have been a shocker.<span style=""> </span>Still, Lovecraft does an expert job of setting the eerie mood of the story, and their descent into the various levels of the basement echoes Dante’s travel to the various circles of hell.<span style=""> </span>Their journey into the basement also mirrors Pickman’s descent into madness.<span style=""> </span>In On Writing Horror, “The Madness of Art,” Joyce Carol Oates suggests that Lovecraft was always primarily concerned with the story; characters were always secondary to him.<span style=""> </span>I can see that in one way, because we don’t know anything about the background of the narrator; we don’t even know his name.<span style=""> </span>We see really well into the present state of the artist, but we know nothing about his background or how he came to see these demons, other than a vague reference to his being descended from a relative who was killed as a witch during the Salem witch trials.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">I think this story falls flat for me because the narrator is never in any actual danger.<span style=""> </span>No ghoul follows him home; there is no risk of his losing his sanity over the incident.<span style=""> </span>The main thing I take from this as a writer is Lovecraft’s brilliant descriptions first of going into the decrepit and evil house then of the depraved paintings and Pickman’s apparent descent into madness.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">I’ve not read a lot of Lovecraft because his writing hasn’t appealed to me that much, so I look forward to getting a better sense of him through the rest of the readings in this course.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; font-family: arial;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Artwork is by Dan Harding.</span><br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <!--EndFragment-->Sally Boscohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12644800241021837062noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8614853908944139211.post-28709945554278693932009-10-25T11:55:00.000-07:002009-10-25T12:15:12.335-07:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_I__Cu7x6I8k/SuSjsI1UXCI/AAAAAAAAAE4/yPjMDDQn91g/s1600-h/girl2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 214px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_I__Cu7x6I8k/SuSjsI1UXCI/AAAAAAAAAE4/yPjMDDQn91g/s320/girl2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5396618232177384482" border="0" /></a><br />The reason classes like our horror reading class are good is that I never would have read this book on my own.<span style=""> </span>The subject matter would have put me off. <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">But I’m glad I did.<span style=""> </span>I started out knowing nothing about the book and didn’t even realize it was based on a true incident until I read the end matter from the author.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">Ketchum begins the book by setting up a question that makes us want to read more.<span style=""> </span>Who is Ruth and why does the author have such a hatred of her?<span style=""> </span>Why is it that he purposely never had children?<span style=""> </span>The mystery deepens when we meet Meg, the object of David’s juvenile affection and her little sister, Susan, who are living next door after their parents were killed in a terrible accident.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">We start out in a world of swimming holes, stay-at-home moms and endless languid summers spent getting into mischief with the other kids in the neighborhood.<span style=""> </span>Things turn gradually dark with David’s description of “The Game,” a sadistic sport in which his friend’s little sister ends up getting tied up naked.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">The author tips us off to what will happen when Meg tells David that she hates the fallout shelter her new family has in the basement.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">From there, Ketchum masterfully escalates the action of the story.<span style=""> </span>At first Ruth is just impatient and cross with Meg for apparently no reason, but her hatred of the girl turns cruller and cruller.<span style=""> </span>David watches, amazed, as her sons and other kids from the neighborhood join in the torture of Meg.<span style=""> </span>At first David is applauded at her treatment at the hands of his supposed friends with their mother Ruth giving adult supervision.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">David chronicles Ruth’s slow slide into insanity.<span style=""> </span>She gets sicker, paler, riddled with sores with a nagging cough.<span style=""> </span>Her house grows more and more dirty and decayed.<span style=""> </span>And the horrible tortures they inflict upon Meg become sicker and more lethal.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">The most disturbing part of this story is watching David’s initial infatuation with Meg turn into apathy then distain as his friends abuse her.<span style=""> </span>He fights his own sexual excitement at seeing her naked and tortured. While I was reading the book, I thought it was unrealistic that David wouldn’t have told some adult at the point that they started holding her captive in the basement.<span style=""> </span>Still, Ketchum convincing portrays David being gradually drawn into that “Lord of the Flies” mentality.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">When Ruth and the neighborhood kids’ treatment of Ruth becomes so deplorable that he wants to go tell someone, then he thinks he’ll be put away as an accomplice.<span style=""> </span>He tells himself it will all have to be over by the time school starts because then someone will miss her.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">The 1950’s is a perfect setting for a story in which people feel that what happens in a family’s home is their own business. Meg initially tries to tell a policeman of her plight, but he doesn’t listen.<span style=""> </span>This adds to David’s mistrust of adults and his feelings that he can’t tell anyone about Meg’s captivity and torture, and it isn’t until he fears for her life that he actually tries to help her escape, and then all he actually does is open the door and let her escape on her own (which fails), he doesn’t actually help her.<span style=""> </span>When one of the kids tells his mother, she expresses the belief that the girl probably deserved for being “loose,” and she felt she should stay out of another family’s business.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">I was somewhat surprised at the end to find out that this was based upon an actual incident.<span style=""> </span>I know that groups of people are capable of such cruelty, but David is set up to be a boy who is more sensitive then the norm and given that personality, I can’t believe he wouldn’t have told someone.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">I know that people definitely have the mob mentality potential, but as a woman it made me wonder if young boys truly have the capacity to be that bad.<span style=""> </span>Of course we know that some are that bed, but I think the book was especially disturbing because David was portrayed as a good kid.<span style=""> </span>He even had a huge crush on Meg at one time, yet he was able to objectify her to the point that he ceased to care about her pain.<span style=""> </span>He started taking pleasure in seeing her nude body and felt guilty about that, but somehow the fact of her being tortured and used degraded her in his eyes somehow.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">I think the explanation would have to be that the whole turn of events took on an unreality for David.<span style=""> </span>He felt like he wasn’t guilty because he was only watching, not taking part. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">“And I remember thinking <i>at least it’s not me.”<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">If I wanted to I could even join them.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">For the moment, thinking that, I had the power.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">Isn’t asserting power over others because you feel powerless yourself the basis for all abuse?<o:p></o:p></p> <!--EndFragment-->Sally Boscohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12644800241021837062noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8614853908944139211.post-21000270573805320992009-10-14T23:45:00.000-07:002009-10-14T23:50:25.739-07:00Writing lessons Stephen King gives us in Misery<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_I__Cu7x6I8k/StbFZcP7gII/AAAAAAAAAEw/F44F6hfG0AU/s1600-h/misery_l.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 193px; height: 258px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_I__Cu7x6I8k/StbFZcP7gII/AAAAAAAAAEw/F44F6hfG0AU/s320/misery_l.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5392714644693155970" border="0" /></a><br />In <span style="font-style: italic;">Misery</span>, Stephen King gives us endless lessons in good writing.<span style=""> </span>The book doesn’t begin with Paul Sheldon’s accident.<span style=""> </span>It starts with Paul in a hazy thrall of pain.<span style=""> </span>He fades in and out of consciousness, having some memories of a childhood picnic and seeing the water wash over some pilings.<span style=""> </span>He could be in Edgar Allen Poe’s, <i>The Pit and the Pendulum</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> for all we know.<span style=""> </span>We have no clue to his actual whereabouts until he has the experience of receiving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation from someone who has breath that is beyond foul.<span style=""> </span>The pilings come to symbolize the Novril he’s taking that wash over his pain, and the person with the horrible breath becomes his worst nightmare, Annie Wilkes.<span style=""> </span>This is a much more interesting opening than Paul’s accident would have been.<br /><br /></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">King’s descriptions of Annie are perfect.<span style=""> </span>After Paul complains to her about her purchase of Corrasable Bond paper and he tells her he may have to put off starting <i>Misery’s Return</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> for a few days.<span style=""> </span>“She rushed across the room at him, thick legs pumping, knees flexing, elbows chopping back and forth like…pistons.” “…she screamed, and brought her fist down on the bunched salt dome that had been Paul Sheldon’s left knee.”<span style=""> </span>“…lips pulled back in grinning rictus.”<span style=""> </span>The descriptions are wonderful, then King adds to it with a revelation about the depth of Annie’s insanity.<span style=""> </span>Annie tells him he can scream and no one will hear him.<span style=""> </span>No one stops by Annie’s house any more “because they all know what she did, even though they did find me innocent.”<span style=""> </span>Now we know that others have been the victims of her murderous insanity.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">King is a master of building suspense, such as when Paul picks the lock to his room and gets out into the living room only to have Annie return ahead of schedule, at the end when Paul’s only match almost fails to light, and at the end when we think Annie is dead, but we’re not quite sure.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">The biggest writing lesson is in Annie’s recollection of the serialized Saturday matinees she saw as a child.<span style=""> </span>One episode shows the Rocket Man going off the cliff in a car and she breathlessly awaits the next installment.<span style=""> </span>The next installment “doesn’t play fair.”<span style=""> </span>When the Rocket man opens a door and jumps out before the car goes over the cliff, young Annie gets hysterical that the author has cheated her.<span style=""> </span>She could go for an improbable but possible resolution, like someone in a falling plane pulling a parachute from under his seat.<span style=""> </span>(“Maybe it wasn’t realistic, but it was fair.”)<span style=""> </span>But she could not accept an out-and-out lie.<span style=""> </span>When Paul brings Misery back from the dead in a way that couldn’t have happened given the series of events of the last book, she makes him start it over again. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">Parallel to this are Paul’s childhood recollections of stories told at day-camp.<span style=""> </span>The councilor would start a story and each child would have to resolve the last one’s cliff hanger.<span style=""> </span>The councilor would say, “Can you?” to ask if the next kid would continue with the story. <span style=""> </span>Next the counselor would ask, “Did she?’ wanting to know if the last story had been plausible.<span style=""> </span>Paul thinks to himself that the reason he’s been a fabulously successful writer is that he can.<span style=""> </span>“…if you want me to take you away, to scare you or involve you or make you cry or grin, yeah, I can.<span style=""> </span>I can bring it to you and keep bringing it until you holler uncle.<span style=""> </span>I am able.<span style=""> </span>I CAN.”<span style=""> </span>Paul uses this ability as a survival tactic with Annie.<span style=""> </span>He becomes Scheherazade who weaves a thousand and one tall tales to stop from being killed.<span style=""> </span>In the end, Paul was Scheherazade to himself.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">Because <i>Misery</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> is told from Paul’s viewpoint only, King had to find a way for Paul to find out the extent of Annie’s lethal insanity in order to build suspense. King uses Annie’s scrapbook as a way to give the character knowledge of something he would have had no way of knowing.<span style=""> </span>We also later learn that Annie has set him up to find the scrapbook and is going to punish him for it.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">“<i>The gotta</i><span style="font-style: normal;">,” refers to that elusive element in a story that makes the reader want to find out what happens next.<span style=""> </span>“You don’t know exactly where to find </span><i>the gotta</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, but you always know when you did.”<span style=""> </span>It’s the thing that keeps you up all night, because you just can’t put the book down.<span style=""> </span>“I think I’ll stay up another fifteen minutes, honey.<span style=""> </span>I gotta find out how this chapter ends.”</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">Stephen King always, at some point in his stories, practices foreshadowing.<span style=""> </span>“One day not long before the thumbectomy…”<span style=""> </span>This increases the suspense, just like when Annie keeps referring to the upcoming surgery that results in Paul’s hobbleing.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">Repeated symbolic imagery is used to give meaning and coherence to the story:<span style=""> </span>the pilings that are washed over by water to represent the Novril taking away Paul’s pain, the rare African bird symbolizing Paul’s captivity, the grinning typewriter that gradually loses its teeth symbolizes Paul’s fear of having to go back to writing the <i>Misery </i><span style="font-style: normal;">books he so detested.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">With all of that said about Stephen King’s writing, I still feel that he is very long-winded. King has written several books in which the protagonist has a lot of time to think:<span style=""> </span><i>Gerald’s Game</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, </span><i>The Girl who Loved Tom Gordon</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> and </span><i>Misery</i><span style="font-style: normal;">.<span style=""> </span>In each book, King goes into the characters heads to an excruciating and tedious amount.<span style=""> </span>He takes stories that should have been novellas and drags them out with the character’s endless stream of consciousness.<span style=""> </span>To me they each took a fair amount of tenacity to finish.<span style=""> </span>I know that Stephen King is a master and I must be in the minority to feel this way.<span style=""> </span>Still, I think that most of his books would be better if they were cut down somewhat.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">I couldn’t help but think that King foreshadowed his own auto accident.<span style=""> </span>After he was run over by a car on one of his daily walks, he spent years recovering.<span style=""> </span>He described his body as being twisted much the same way Paul’s is and he talks about his sessions at the typewriter being agony.<span style=""> </span>The only thing that took the agony were the drugs that he became hooked on.<span style=""> </span>Reality somewhat mirrored fiction in that case and I’m sure the irony wasn’t lost on Stephen King.</p> <!--EndFragment-->Sally Boscohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12644800241021837062noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8614853908944139211.post-73235585579737659252009-10-06T14:00:00.000-07:002009-10-06T14:10:33.440-07:00Secundo House by Sally Bosco<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_I__Cu7x6I8k/SsuwKzE94aI/AAAAAAAAAEo/7E-wT0cnON0/s1600-h/house.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 292px; height: 201px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_I__Cu7x6I8k/SsuwKzE94aI/AAAAAAAAAEo/7E-wT0cnON0/s320/house.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5389595078635151778" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;"></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;">Nervous about the waning light, I slid the silver key into the lock and twisted it. I’d wanted to come here by myself first so I wouldn’t get all emotional in front of the real estate person, but maybe I’d made a mistake in venturing here alone.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;">About ten years ago, my father had turned our rambling farmhouse into a restaurant.<span style=""> </span>He made a go of it for a good long time until the economy turned bad and his health failed him.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;">Now I stood in the entranceway staring at the hostess station with its oak counter that my father had made.<span style=""> </span>The grains matched perfectly; dad would have had it no other way.<span style=""> The lemon scent of the wood polish he always used transported me right back in time. </span>I felt the tears rush to my eyes.<span style=""> </span>Now I was an orphan.<span style=""> </span>No brothers and sisters, no spouse.<span style=""> </span></span><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT;"><i>Get a grip, Laura.</i></span><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;">A sudden noise made me nearly turn around and run.<span style=""> </span>It was the grinding of the old water pump we used to have when I was a kid.<span style=""> </span>It whirred and labored to siphon fresh water from our well every time the retaining tank emptied.<span style=""> </span>But there was nobody here, and surely Dad had replaced that water pump years ago.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;">Struggling to superimpose the layout of our old house over the renovation, I stepped into what we used to call the music room, which Dad had turned into a small dining room.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;">I heard a creek like a footstep overhead and all of the memories flooded back into me of how I used to sit in that room, terrified as the light faded at four in the afternoon in the winter in Connecticut.<span style=""> </span>In was in fifth or sixth grade and my dad was starting up a new business in the next town over.<span style=""> </span>My mom helped him with his bookkeeping so I was often left alone in the old house until seven or eight at night.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;">I’d sit and watch </span><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT;"><i>The Twilight Zone</i></span><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;">, </span><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT;"><i>The Outer Limits</i></span><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;"> and </span><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT;"><i>Hitchcock Presents</i></span><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;">, trying to scare myself silly.<span style=""> </span>I’d read the </span><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT;"><i>Stranger than Science</i></span><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;"> books about invisible vampires sinking their teeth into innocent victims, houses that disappeared into alternate dimensions, but the worst of all was the case of the man who encountered his own doppelganger, which was an evil twin created by diabolical means.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;">After that, my biggest fear became getting off the school bus, coming home in the afternoon and finding myself already there.<span style=""> </span>At that point I’d know I was mad and life would no longer be worth living.<span style=""> </span>But one thing saved me:<span style=""> </span>my best friend, Tippy.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;">The light receded more quickly now as I moved into the next room, our old living room.<span style=""> </span>Beautifully carved wooden tables lay in the center of the room like abandoned ships afloat on a post-storm sea.<span style=""> </span>The chairs were piled up carelessly on the right side of the room.<span style=""> </span>A chill went through me as I thought about all of my nights alone, terrified of the unseen things in the attic.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;">To neutralize my mood I thought about Tippy, the tuxedo cat who had greeted me daily and joined me in my solo walks through the woods in the back of our house. He’d come to us in a unique way.<span style=""> </span>We had a boy cat who had shown up one day holding a perfect little copy of himself by the scruff of the neck.<span style=""> </span>We named the adorable cat Tippy and kept it as our own.<span style=""> </span>We wondered what had made him rescue the kitty?<span style=""> </span>A dysfunctional mommy cat?<span style=""> </span>A pending custody suit?<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;">There it was again.<span style=""> </span>The creaking footsteps from above.<span style=""> </span>I flipped the light switch next to the doorway.<span style=""> </span>Just my luck, the electricity had been disconnected.<span style=""> </span></span><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT;"><i>How did that water pump go on then?<o:p></o:p></i></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;">I walked up the stairs and looked around.<span style=""> </span>Nothing.<span style=""> </span>I was being silly, getting too caught up in my childhood memories.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT;"><i>Tap, tap, tap. </i></span><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;">I’d quickly finish my surveillance of the place and leave, go back to my nice, bright shiny room at the Marriott and forget about all this maudlin silliness.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;">My mood changed from fear to melancholy as I thought about my dad.<span style=""> </span>Exhausted from my flight, I sat on a chaise lounge at the side of the room.<span style=""> </span>Like the waves from a distant ocean, all of the stress drained from me and I realized how tired I was.<span style=""> </span>I’d rest for just a minute before I drove to the hotel.<span style=""> </span>Since the chaise felt especially comfortable, I leaned my head back and rested. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;">I awoke to a pitch black room, so black it felt like it was in my throat strangling me.<span style=""> </span>I sat bolt upright trying to get my bearings.<span style=""> </span>When I reached out to feel the tapestry texture of the couch, the memories flooded back.<span style=""> </span>I was at </span><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT;"><i>Secundo</i></span><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;">, our old house.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;">Barely able to discern outlines of the windows, I got up and bumped my shin against some table.<span style=""> </span></span><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT;"><i>Ouch.</i></span><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;"><span style=""> </span>I rubbed it and put my hand against the wall for support.<span style=""> </span>I felt a light switch and flipped it on out of habit, knowing full well there was no electricity.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;">But the lights came on.<span style=""> </span>When I looked around I started to hyperventilate.<span style=""> </span>I saw a small television with knobs, a forest green couch that was fringed at the bottom.<span style=""> </span>The scent of a Swanson turkey TV dinner wafted in from the kitchen.<span style=""> </span>The house of my childhood.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;">I was dreaming of course.<span style=""> </span>Was I a little girl again?<span style=""> </span>I looked down at my hands and saw long painted nails.<span style=""> </span>No, definitely not little girl hands.<span style=""> </span>It was time to wake up, so I pinched myself.<span style=""> </span>Nothing happened.<span style=""> </span>I went in the bathroom and gazed in the mirror expecting to see something weird, but I saw a middle aged woman dressed in a black velour travel outfit from Talbot’s.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;">Then I rummaged through my purse, saw my iPhone, my red Mac lipstick, my business cards.<span style=""> </span>This was all too real.<span style=""> </span>I walked into the kitchen as though in a dream and saw Formica countertops, the cantilevered table my dad had built that jutted out of the wall.<span style=""> </span>In our old dining room, I ran my hand over the mahogany table my dad had built that folded down into a coffee table or up into a full dining room table.<span style=""> </span>I felt the smooth surface that my dad had so lovingly sanded and varnished.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;">I climbed the stairs to my old bedroom and saw my Chapman Chipmunks pennant on the wall, the stack of books I was reading at the time, the top of which was Ray Bradbury’s, </span><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT;"><i>Farenheight 451</i></span><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;">.<span style=""> </span>I remembered devouring that book.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT;"><i>Tap, tap. </i></span><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;"><span style=""> </span>I stood, frozen, terrified like the twelve-year-old girl who’d been left alone after school.<span style=""> </span>It was coming from the attic.<span style=""> </span>Could it be my dad?<span style=""> </span>Was he caught in a nether world he couldn’t get out of?<span style=""> </span>I needed to go and comfort him, tell him that it’s all right to go on to the next world, to reassure him that I love him and I’ll sell the restaurant to someone who will lovingly restore it and make it a living business again.<span style=""> </span>Or could there be someone hiding up there?<span style=""> </span>I hadn’t looked up there when I came in.<span style=""> </span>This wasn’t a dream after all.<span style=""> </span>I should just go.<span style=""> </span>I gathered up my purse and made for the front door.<span style=""> </span>But when I turned the handle, it was jammed.<span style=""> </span>I tugged, twisted banged on it, but it wouldn’t open.<span style=""> </span>I tried to open the windows but nothing.<span style=""> </span>They were all stuck.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;">Again I heard the noise in the attic.<span style=""> </span>I couldn’t get out, so I’d have to face it.<span style=""> </span>I went out to the kitchen and pulled a knife from the drawer, to make sure I’d have ample protection, just in case.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;">I climbed up the stairs and noticed the window made of glass blocks that repeated the outside image in an abstract pattern I’d been so fascinated with as a girl, past the bedrooms and up the narrow staircase to the attic.<span style=""> </span>I paused at the door and heard something within, a rattling around.<span style=""> </span>Something breathing.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;">Gathering up all my nerve, I flung the door open and saw a figure hiding in the darkness.<span style=""> </span>I gasped thinking it was some kind of misshapen gnome.<span style=""> </span>My fight or flight instinct nearly took over until I heard a soft meow.<span style=""> </span>A little girl with black bobbed hair dressed in a blue turtleneck sweater and black pants clutched a little tuxedo cat.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;">My paralyzing fear turned into tenderness at seeing the scared little girl.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;">“Laura,” I said.<span style=""> </span>“Laura, don’t be scared.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;">She burst into tears as she tried to make herself smaller and hide behind a stack of boxes.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;">“Laura, it’s going to be okay.<span style=""> </span>You’re going to grow up and things will be just fine.”<span style=""> </span>Realizing I was still brandishing the knife, I let it fall to the ground.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;">I knew what I had to do then.<span style=""> </span>I had to leave.<span style=""> </span>Had to get back to my own life.<span style=""> </span>I bent to hug the little girl, but she scampered away.<span style=""> </span>I walked down the stairs, past the bedrooms with their shag carpeting, past the television with its knobs.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;">I twisted the handle to the outside door and miraculously it opened.<span style=""> </span>I knew it would, so I bolted out of there, nearly tripping over my own feet, got back into my car, and started the motor. <span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;">As I drove out, I saw a tuxedo cat holding a smaller cat by the scruff of its neck.<span style=""> </span>I slammed on the brakes and backed up to take a closer look.<span style=""> </span>But when I glanced again, it was gone.</span></p> <!--EndFragment-->Sally Boscohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12644800241021837062noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8614853908944139211.post-32077524995358114172009-09-21T22:46:00.000-07:002009-09-21T22:52:13.386-07:00“The Brood” by David Cronenberg compared to “Rosemary’s Baby” by Roman Polanski<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_I__Cu7x6I8k/SrhmAuS1P_I/AAAAAAAAAEg/CeDVjuCmy98/s1600-h/rosemary1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 258px; height: 320px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_I__Cu7x6I8k/SrhmAuS1P_I/AAAAAAAAAEg/CeDVjuCmy98/s320/rosemary1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5384165517134479346" border="0" /></a><br />Writing prompt:<span style=""> </span>Barbara Creed describes the use of the "abject" maternal body in Cronenberg's film, <i>The Brood</i><span style="font-style: normal;">.<span style=""> </span>Beyond the examples she cites, have you seen other films that use the female body or womb imagery in similar "abject" ways?</span> <p class="MsoNormal">The film that comes to mind in comparison to Cronenberg’s <i>The Brood</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, is Roman Polanski’s </span><i>Rosemary’s Baby.<span style=""> </span></i><span style="font-style: normal;">I think that Polanski does it much more successfully, however.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Nola was influenced by Dr. Raglan’s book, <i>The Shape of Rage</i><span style="font-style: normal;">.<span style=""> </span>She was perhaps convinced by him to give form to her anger in the end result of producing a monstrous brood, but it is ultimately her decision to create the brood and in the end, she is the one who controls who will be the victims of her little monsters.<span style=""> </span>In the shocking scene in which we look under her cloak to see the bloody sac she rips open with her teeth, we watch her lovingly lick the blood off of her creation, thus showing her maternal love.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Rosemary’s body is used in the worst way possible, to give birth to the son of Satan, and it is definitely not her choice.<span style=""> </span><i>Rosemary’s Baby</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> has the shocking final scene in which Rosemary forces her way into the adjoining apartment by the use of a knife and insists upon looking at her stolen child.<span style=""> </span>She exclaims, “His eyes, what have you done to his eyes.”<span style=""> </span>We see the horror on her face.<span style=""> </span>Polanski wisely refuses to show the actual child’s eyes, knowing that anything the audience can imagine is much worse and more personally terrifying than anything that could be portrayed on the screen.<span style=""> </span>In the end, Rosemary’s maternal instincts get the better of her, and she can’t help but want to become a mother to the little tyke.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">In <i>The Artist as Monster, the Cinema of David Cronenberg</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, William Beard states,</span><span style=""> </span>“… in the scene at the end of the film where she gives birth to one of them (the children of her rage), the film finally enters completely into the world of the visceral transgressive body – and returns also to the theme of the power and horror of the abject female body.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Nola has, on purpose, created little monsters to do her bidding.<span style=""> </span>She has reverted to an animal-like state that causes her body to break all of the rules of nature and create it’s own monsters.<span style=""> </span>Rosemary has unknowingly created a child of Satan.<span style=""> </span>At the end of both films we see what the female body is capable of producing.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The men in the films react differently.<span style=""> </span>In <i>Rosemary’s Baby, </i><span style="font-style: normal;">Rosemary’s husband, Guy is the one who sells his soul to the devil, or more accurately sells Rosemary’s womb to the devil, in return for fame, fortune and a comfortable life.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">In <i>The Brood, </i><span style="font-style: normal;">Nola’s husband, Frank, is a passive bystander.<span style=""> </span>His only desire is to protect his daughter, Candace, from the monster he fears his wife has become.<span style=""> </span>In the end he isn’t able to protect her. We have some sympathy for Frank because the woman he married turned into a psycho, yet we grow impatient with his continual ineffectual behavior.<span style=""> </span>When Juliana (Nola’s mother) is murdered by an unseen monster, Frank assures Candace that the monster is gone and she’s perfectly safe.<span style=""> </span>Yet we as the audience realize that he’s being naïve in this assumption.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">As far as the filmmaking goes, Roman Polanski’s interpretation of Ira Levin’s <i>Rosemary’s Baby</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> is timeless.<span style=""> </span>We see that it’s clearly a period piece from the 60’s, but the horror we experience through Rosemary’s limited viewpoint is raw and real.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Chronenberg’s rendition of <i>The Brood</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> has a dated look and feel to it.<span style=""> </span>Much of the acting and dialogue is melodramatic and screams 70’s but in a bad way.<span style=""> </span>We’re never drawn into that world.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Both films confirm my belief that there’s nothing worse than a weird kid.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Works Cited:</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i>The Brood</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> by David Cronenberg</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i>Rosemary’s Baby</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> by Roman Polanski</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i>The Artist as Monster, the Cinema of David Cronenberg</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> by William Beard</span></p> <!--EndFragment-->Sally Boscohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12644800241021837062noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8614853908944139211.post-44580979704173935432009-09-09T05:38:00.000-07:002009-09-09T05:46:41.817-07:00How Robert Bloch manipulates chronological time and point-of-view in Psycho.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_I__Cu7x6I8k/SqejhooeaKI/AAAAAAAAAEY/pj3cvzu2zSI/s1600-h/Psycho+art.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 208px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_I__Cu7x6I8k/SqejhooeaKI/AAAAAAAAAEY/pj3cvzu2zSI/s320/Psycho+art.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5379448078155540642" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-style: normal;"></span> <p class="MsoNormal">In <i>Psycho</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, Robert Bloch effective uses time overlaps and flashbacks to tell his story.<span style=""> </span>If he moved time forward only in a linear fashion, we’d miss out on much of the suspense that’s created when we have the limited viewpoint of one character.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Throughout the story, the point-of-view changes only at chapter breaks.<span style=""> </span>Though we may have the same point-of-view character for several chapters running, Block never switches viewpoint in the middle of a chapter.<span style=""> </span>This effectively keeps us in these characters’ worlds to the point that the reader gets emotionally involved with them.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Chapter one starts with Norman Bates showing background on his life and relationship with his mother.<span style=""> </span>He hears a car driving up.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">At the beginning of the second chapter, time rewinds to show us Mary lost on a dark road.<span style=""> </span>The story moves into a flashback of Mary’s life the day she stole the money from her employer. Mr. Lowery.<span style=""> </span>Inside of that flashback is another flashback telling about her youth with its missed opportunities to go to college or marry, and how she met Sam Loomis on a cruise.<span style=""> </span>It wasn’t the “wild, surging thing” it had been when she met her former lover, but Sam offered her a possible future.<span style=""> </span>He did have considerable debts, though.<span style=""> </span>The story then returns to the Mary being lost on a dark road pulling up to the Bates Motel with Norman opening her car door.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The third chapter stays in Mary’s point-of-view as she meets Norman, checks in, goes up to the house for dinner with Norman.<span style=""> </span>Their conversation reveals more about their respective personalities.<span style=""> </span>Mary goes back to her room and decides to take a shower, but her peaceful night is cut short when she sees a figure standing on the other side of the shower curtain with a knife.<span style=""> </span>At that point Bloch violates viewpoint when he says, “It was the knife that, a moment later, cut off her scream.<span style=""> </span>And her head.”<span style=""> </span>Presumably, she would have been dead at that point and wouldn’t have known that her head was being cut off.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">In chapter four, we switch to Norman’s viewpoint.<span style=""> </span>The timeframe again rewinds. He’s outside of his office trembling.<span style=""> </span>Norman has a few drinks and looks through his peephole into Mary’s room as she’s preparing to take a shower.<span style=""> </span>Norman semi-passes out and seems to see his mother standing over him.<span style=""> </span>She leaves, he sleeps then startles awake, realizing that the shower is still going.<span style=""> </span>He goes into Mary’s room, rips back the shower curtain and realizes that his mother has used her keys.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Norman is to some extent an unreliable narrator.<span style=""> </span><i>He</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> has actually killed Mary; he blacked out when he took on the personality of his mother and performed the despicable deed himself.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">At the beginning of chapter five, we are back in Norman’s point-of-view.<span style=""> </span>He’s walking back to the house, a bloody mess, even thou he has supposedly only looked at Mary’s dead body on the bathroom floor.<span style=""> </span>After finding his mother gone, gets rid of the body.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">In chapter six, time has jumped forward one week.<span style=""> </span>Sam Loomis is in the back room of his hardware store listening to opera and wondering what he actually knows about Mary, when he hears a knock at the door.<span style=""> </span>At first he thinks the woman standing there is Mary, but he soon realizes that it’s her sister, Lila.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Form here, time moves forward at a regular rate, until chapter fifteen.<span style=""> </span>At the end of chapter fourteen, Sheriff Chambers has revived Sam after he’s been clobbered by Norman, and they both hear a scream from the old house.<span style=""> </span>At the beginning of chapter fifteen, time rewinds and we see Lila going up the steps to the old house looking for clues to her sister’s death.<span style=""> </span>At the end of the chapter, Lila stumbles upon Norman’s mother’s mummified body and screams.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">At the beginning of chapter sixteen, time jumps forward to give us the resolution of how all of the cars and bodies were found.<span style=""> </span>We also get a psychological evaluation of Norman.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The last chapter is the only one we see from Norman’s mother’s point of view, once he has melded all his personalities into one, that of his mother.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I wonder if Bloch consciously set out to manipulate time in Psycho or if he set out to tell the story in a way that came naturally to him.<span style=""> </span>I think the latter is true.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Works Cited:</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Bloch, Robert. <i>Psycho</i><span style="font-style: normal;">. New York: Tor Horror, 1959. Print</span></p>Sally Boscohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12644800241021837062noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8614853908944139211.post-22330367551004864742009-08-25T11:30:00.000-07:002009-08-25T21:04:16.820-07:00Reading Comments for The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_I__Cu7x6I8k/SpQyjaEcj9I/AAAAAAAAAEQ/F42i1dpckPc/s1600-h/nar.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 259px; height: 259px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_I__Cu7x6I8k/SpQyjaEcj9I/AAAAAAAAAEQ/F42i1dpckPc/s320/nar.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5373975839234625490" border="0" /></a><br /><br /> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:documentproperties> <o:template>Normal</o:Template> <o:revision>0</o:Revision> <o:totaltime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:pages>1</o:Pages> <o:words>684</o:Words> <o:characters>3900</o:Characters> <o:lines>32</o:Lines> <o:paragraphs>7</o:Paragraphs> <o:characterswithspaces>4789</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:version>11.518</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:officedocumentsettings> <o:allowpng/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:donotshowrevisions/> <w:donotprintrevisions/> <w:displayhorizontaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:displayverticaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:usemarginsfordrawinggridorigin/> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--> <style> <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"Times New Roman"; panose-1:0 2 2 6 3 5 4 5 2 3; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:50331648 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";} table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-parent:""; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style> <!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Like <i>Jekyll and Hyde</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, </span><i>The Picture of Dorian Gray</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> differed from what I expected based on movie versions I had seen.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Like many of the books written during this time period, the viewpoint wanders considerably.<span style=""> </span>The story starts in the viewpoint of the painter, Basil Hallward.<span style=""> </span>It changes to the viewpoint of a friend of Basil’s, Lord Henry, and finally we see the story through the eyes of Dorian Gray.<span style=""> </span>After that, Wilde head-hops and changes point of view, sometimes within a paragraph.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Film versions tend to take the viewpoint of the main character and lessen the male-centric orientation, as did the film versions of <i>Jekyll and Hyde</i><span style="font-style: normal;">.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">As far as gender issues go, we know that Oscar Wilde was gay and we are now aware that his perspective colors the story. Obviously, readers of the time didn’t pick up on the homoerotic overtones in this book, because if they had it surely would have been banned.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Granted, the gentlemen of that time were rather foppish, perfuming their handkerchiefs, burying their face in lilacs and exhaustively reading poetry.<span style=""> </span>In the text they call it “Dandyism.”<span style=""> </span>But the men in this book are so completely absorbed in each other, one wonders.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Basil’s first description of Dorian is that of an infatuated schoolgirl.<span style=""> </span>“Every day.<span style=""> </span>I couldn’t be happy if I didn’t see him every day.<span style=""> </span>He is absolutely necessary to me.”<span style=""> </span>And “Now and then he is absolutely thoughtless.<span style=""> </span>He seems to take delight in giving me pain.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Basil tries to prevent Lord Henry from even meeting Dorian, then when he cannot prevent it, Dorian’s strong reaction to Lord Henry cuts Basil to the quick.<span style=""> </span>Dorian says to Lord Henry, “ ‘…let our friendship be a caprice,’ he murmured, flushing at his own boldness.”<span style=""> </span>And “For days after I met you, something seemed to throb in my veins.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">This book is also about the self-denial imposed by modern society.<span style=""> </span>Lord Henry says, “The mutilation of the savage has its tragic survival in the self-denial that mars our lives.”<span style=""> </span>The nature of this self-denial is never spelled out.<span style=""> </span>It would seem that there is little that these privileged males have to deny themselves.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Lord Henry constantly derides women, most of all, his wife.<span style=""> </span>When Dorian becomes infatuated with a woman, both Basil and Lord Henry are dismayed and try to talk him out of it.<span style=""> </span>Sibyl Vane is more of an icon of idealized beauty to Dorian than she is a real woman, and once she shows her imperfections (in giving a bad acting job in front of his friends, due to her love for him) he discards her like a used doll.<span style=""> </span>She has ruined his illusion of her.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">After that he goes back to the company of men.<span style=""> </span>“…entertaining the fashionable young men of his own rank who were his chief companions.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Basil asks, “Why is your friendship so fatal to young men?”<span style=""> </span>He gives a laundry list of young men whom Dorian has defiled.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Then there’s the matter of Dr. Alan Campbell whom Dorian blackmails into helping him dispose of Basil’s body.<span style=""> </span>What is in the mysterious letter about Campbell that Dorian threatens to expose?<span style=""> </span>We never know the specifics.<span style=""> </span>One can only guess.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Ultimately, Dorian is a narcissist.<span style=""> </span>He is self-centered, not only in not wanting to age.<span style=""> </span>That’s the least of it.<span style=""> </span>His entire life is an attempt to amuse himself.<span style=""> </span>He has little use for anything that bores him or isn’t directly about him, and he is only interested in Sibyl when he can show off her talent.<span style=""> </span>Dorian never thinks about doing anything for anyone other than himself.<span style=""> </span>In the end, his narcissism does him in.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">I also think it’s interesting to see, in the Norton Critical Edition, the differences between his first serialized draft and his final published version.<span style=""> </span>He made small changes within the text, but he mainly dropped in whole chapters (and at one point added five), in order to extend the text and add depth to his characters.<span style=""> </span>Some of it seems gratuitous and would never be accepted today, such as Wilde’s extensive descriptions of the interests Dorian immersed himself in to forget about Sibyl’s death, and some extensive cocktail party scenes that serve little else than displaying Wilde’s ability to inject wit.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">The ornate style Wilde uses perfectly defines the era in which Dorian lives.<span style=""> </span>He writes about privileged classes who have a lot of time on their hands to pursue the arts, read poetry, have extended discussions about philosophy.<span style=""> </span>His flowery, overly descriptive language completely drew me into the spirit of the period.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Also, as noted in <i>Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture at the Fin de Siecle</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, societies tend to become more decadent toward the end of each century.<span style=""> </span></span><i>The Picture of Dorian Gray</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> was published in 1891, so the depiction of the self-indulgent lifestyle as reflected in Oscar Wilde’s use of language is true to the period.<span style=""> </span></span></p> <!--EndFragment--><br /><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style=""></span></span><!--EndFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">Works Cited:</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Showalter, Elaine. <i>Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture at the Fin de Siecle.</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> New York: Viking, 1990. Print.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Wilde, Oscar. <i>The Picture of Dorian Gray, a Norton Critical Edition. </i><span style="font-style: normal;">New York: WW Norton & Company, 2007. Print</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal">Painting: <span style="font-style: italic;">Narcissus</span> by Waterhouse<br /><span style="font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <!--EndFragment-->Sally Boscohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12644800241021837062noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8614853908944139211.post-45182995450334772742009-08-24T21:54:00.000-07:002009-08-25T20:56:35.096-07:00My Very Image by Sally Bosco - An homage to Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_I__Cu7x6I8k/SpNxthQFmbI/AAAAAAAAAD4/weJgj-sdZkY/s1600-h/Circe+Invidiosa.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 193px; height: 320px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_I__Cu7x6I8k/SpNxthQFmbI/AAAAAAAAAD4/weJgj-sdZkY/s320/Circe+Invidiosa.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5373763807217031602" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;color:black;" ></span><span style=";font-family:TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT;color:black;" ><i><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span><o:p></o:p></i></span><span style=";font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;color:black;" > <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style=";font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;color:black;" >On a steaming August day, I hurry to the International Mall past the outdoor shops of the Baystreet entrance.<span style=""> </span>On my left, people spill out of the </span><span style=";font-family:TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT;color:black;" ><i>Cheesecake Factory</i></span><span style=";font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;color:black;" > waiting for a hallowed reservation.<span style=""> </span>On my right, posers loll in the fake café society of the </span><span style=";font-family:TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT;color:black;" ><i>Blue Martini</i></span><span style=";font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;color:black;" >.<span style=""> </span>My goal is the promising refuge of the air-conditioned food court.<span style=""> </span>I enter and feel the heavenly burst of mock arctic.<span style=""> </span></span><span style=";font-family:TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT;color:black;" ><i>Haagen-Dazs</i></span><span style=";font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;color:black;" > and </span><span style=";font-family:TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT;color:black;" ><i>Sbarro</i></span><span style=";font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;color:black;" > oddly flank a </span><span style=";font-family:TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT;color:black;" ><i>Fit 2 Run</i></span><span style=";font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;color:black;" > store.<o:p></o:p> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style=";font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;color:black;" >Shoppers dressed in sparkly </span><span style=";font-family:TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT;color:black;" ><i>Custo Barcelona</i></span><span style=";font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;color:black;" > tank tops and </span><span style=";font-family:TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT;color:black;" ><i>Banana Republic</i></span><span style=";font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;color:black;" > shorts walk by trancelike with a look of single-minded determination to consume at all costs.<span style=""> </span>I feel strangely trippy the way I do in dreams at times, as though I can’t quite get my mind to work.<span style=""> </span>Yet, I know this is no dream.<span style=""> </span>I am on a mission to meet my friend to help her purchase some kicks for her upcoming cruise.<o:p></o:p> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style=";font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;color:black;" >I notice the </span><span style=";font-family:TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT;color:black;" ><i>Cinnabon</i></span><span style=";font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;color:black;" > shop looming in front of me like a portal to the gates of hades.<span style=""> </span>The scent of buttery cinnamon reels me in.<span style=""> </span>Fog rolls out from in front of the counter as the cheerful, brightly dressed attendant beckons me.<span style=""> </span>“Would you like to try some </span><span style=";font-family:TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT;color:black;" ><i>Cinnabon </i></span><span style=";font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;color:black;" >sticks today?<span style=""> </span>Or maybe some Classic Bites?”<span style=""> </span>Suddenly it seems like the most important thing in the world for me is to indulge in one of the cloying calorie-bombs.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style=";font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;color:black;" >“I’d like the Classic. Warm dough, filled with your legendary Makara Cinnamon, topped with freshly made cream cheese frosting,” I say as cheerfully as possible.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style=";font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;color:black;" >“Please, have a seat in our waiting area.” The attendant waves her hand toward some molded orange booths. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style=";font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;color:black;" >I grin to myself as I snatch some extra napkins and make my way into the small eating area.<span style=""> </span>Sun visors, purses and backpacks look out of place hanging on yellow plastic hooks on the walls.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style=";font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;color:black;" >As I walk into the eating area, I notice people with ravenous looks on their faces, their hands outstretched to the waitress zombie-like wanting more and more of the deadly treats.<span style=""> </span>It is obvious that the people around me have transformed their bodies into amorphous Jabba The Hutt shapes in order to better absorb the sugary delights.<span style=""> </span>All have credit cards laid out in front of them like passports to hell:<span style=""> </span>American Express, Mastercard, Visa and Discovery, all instruments of their death wishes.<span style=""> </span>It is obvious that most of them have murdered their souls in pursuit of junk food.<o:p></o:p> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style=";font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;color:black;" >After a few minutes the waitress walks up to me with a steaming object the size of a small animal on a cardboard tray.<span style=""> </span>But I look up and notice that something is wrong with her face.<span style=""> </span>It leers at me, skeletal with empty eye sockets as it extends the deadly offering to me.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style=";font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;color:black;" >Just as I am about to imbibe, I realize I need to escape that infernal place.<span style=""> </span>“Sale for the next ten minutes at the </span><span style=";font-family:TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT;color:black;" ><i>Ann Taylor Shop</i></span><span style=";font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;color:black;" >,” a loudspeaker blares.<o:p></o:p> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style=";font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;color:black;" >I sprint down the mall barely in control of my movements.<span style=""> </span>Everything is off-kilter.<span style=""> </span>The storefronts are tilted and the people look distorted.<span style=""> </span>Some have tiny heads on huge bodies.<span style=""> </span>Some are elongated like poles or are short and squat like fireplugs.<span style=""> </span>The fountains that usually spout pretty turquoise streams, spew noxious-smelling green bile.<o:p></o:p> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style=";font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;color:black;" >I know that my friend is waiting for me at the Ann Taylor Shop.<span style=""> </span>That’s when my iPhone beeps and I pull it out of my purse, only to see this eerie text:<span style=""> </span>“I’m dying to shop at the Gucci Store.<span style=""> </span>Meet me there.”<o:p></o:p> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style=";font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;color:black;" >“Dying I’m dying I’m dying,” echoes over and over in my brain while I pass leering refugees from a Diane Arbus photo.<span style=""> </span>The trees in the mall are sticklike and devoid of life, the artificial flowers wilted.<o:p></o:p> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style=";font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;color:black;" >I notice the Gucci Store looming in front of me like a portal to the gates of hades. The scent of posh perfume reels me in.<span style=""> </span>Fog rolls out from in front of the counter as the cheerful, brightly dressed attendant beckons me.<span style=""> </span>“Would you like to try on some tapered slacks today?<span style=""> </span>Perhaps a leather jacket?”<span style=""> </span>Suddenly it seems like the most important thing in the world for me to indulge in one of their ridiculously priced creations.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style=";font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;color:black;" >“I’d like a Classic Gucci bag in the flora print that Gucci has made famous around the globe,” I say as cheerfully as possible.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style=";font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;color:black;" >“Please, have a seat in our waiting area.” The attendant waves her hand toward some plush leather chairs. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style=";font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;color:black;" >I grin to myself as I snatch some perfume and make my way into the luxurious waiting area.<span style=""> </span>Hats, purses and overnight bags look out of place hanging on yellow plastic hooks on the walls.<o:p></o:p> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style=";font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;color:black;" >As I walk into the waiting area, I notice people with ravenous looks on their faces, their hands outstretched to the clerk zombie-like wanting more and more of the deadly clothing.<span style=""> </span>It is obvious that the people around me are thin as wraiths, their ribs and collar bones poking out from under their clothing, bony mannequins in the theater of decay.<span style=""> </span>All have credit cards laid out in front of them like passports to hell:<span style=""> </span>American Express, Mastercard, Visa and Discovery, all instruments of their death wishes.<span style=""> </span>It is obvious that most of them have murdered their souls in pursuit of fashion.<span style=""> </span>My friend is among them, dressed in a perky Ann Taylor sundress with gold Gucci sandals.<span style=""> </span>But her face looms gaunt and skeletal above her designer threads.<span style=""> </span>I see that she is too far gone to help.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style=";font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;color:black;" >After a few minutes the clerk walks up to me with a luscious object the size of a football covered in a floral pattern.<span style=""> </span>But I look up and notice that something is wrong with her face.<span style=""> </span>It leers at me, skeletal with empty eye sockets as it extends the deadly offering to me.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style=";font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;color:black;" >As I listen to the hip-Eurostyle muzak that is intended to make me purchase more items than I require, the memory of the </span><span style=";font-family:TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT;color:black;" ><i>Cinnabon</i></span><span style=";font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;color:black;" > shop floods into my mind, I think that I must be in some kind of trance to have been brought from one form of death to another, the second of which seems even more sinister than the first. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style=";font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;color:black;" >I quietly slide out of the store, firmly resolved to do business with neither of them.<span style=""> </span>Fate has something else in mind for me, however, because now all of the shops contain skeletal figures that beckon me in.<span style=""> </span>Deciding that there is no escaping, I take up the position I will serve out for all of eternity, ironically as a counter person at </span><span style=";font-family:TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT;color:black;" ><i>Forever 21</i></span><span style=";font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;color:black;" >.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style=";font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT;color:black;" >#<span style=""> </span>#<span style=""> </span>#</span><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;">Painting is <span style="font-style: italic;">Circe Invidiosa </span>by John William Waterhouse.<span style="font-family:monospace;"></span><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color:black;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>Sally Boscohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12644800241021837062noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8614853908944139211.post-3045289654135339372009-08-10T20:59:00.000-07:002009-08-10T21:18:52.800-07:00The Influence of the Doppelganger in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_I__Cu7x6I8k/SoDwhv7iwPI/AAAAAAAAADw/KABSOOfI3SI/s1600-h/DrJ.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 277px; height: 320px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_I__Cu7x6I8k/SoDwhv7iwPI/AAAAAAAAADw/KABSOOfI3SI/s320/DrJ.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5368555218418188530" border="0" /></a><br />It’s well known in German literature that meeting the doppelganger portends a person’s imminent death. Meeting his doppelganger was definitely not a good thing for Dr. Jekyll.<br /><br />Our first foreshadowing of the etheric double in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde</span> (written by Robert Louis Stevenson in 1886) is seen in the characters of Mr. Utterson and Mr. Enfield. While Mr. Utterson, an attorney, was “a man of a rugged countenance, that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse.” Mr. Enfield on the other hand, is a well-known man about town. It is Mr. Enfield is the first one who sees Mr. Hyde’s “odd doorway.” Enfield reflects more of the shadowy side of life as seen in Mr. Hyde, while Mr. Utterson reflects the outgoing personality of Dr. Jekyll.<br /><br />When we switch to the story as seen through Dr. Jekyll’s eyes, he talks about his dual nature: One side wanting to be a sober citizen, the other wanting to give itself over to a “gaiety of disposition.” These two sides of his personality continually struggle. He creates a formula that at first makes him feel very happy and reckless, but “tenfold more wicked.”<br /><br />This infers that Jekyll feels that the split has come as a result of repression of his true nature due to social conventions rather than from some evil beast within him that must escape. The more Dr. Jekyll tries to repress his true nature, the more Mr. Hyde becomes violent.<br /><br />As Webber states in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Doppenganger, Double Visions in German Literature</span>, even though Jekyll and Hyde never actually meet each other, there is a scene in which Jekyll sees his reflection as Hyde in the mirror and is startled. “I stole through the corridors, a stranger in my own house; and coming to my room, I saw for the first time the appearance of Edward Hyde.”<br /><br />The concoction also, for some reason, makes him short. “The evil side of my nature, to which I had now transferred the stamping efficacy, was less robust and less developed than the good which I had just deposed.” Because that side of his life was so much less developed than the serious part, “Edward Hyde was so much smaller, slighter, and younger than Henry Jekyll.” But evil had left an imprint of deformity and decay.<br /><br />“In my eyes it bore a livelier image of the spirit, it seemed more express and single, than the imperfect and divided countenance I had been hitherto accustomed to call mine.”<br /><br />In this case, it’s the repression of the Victorian era that has caused Dr. Jekyll to manufacture his own doppelganger in order to express the uncontrolled side of his personality. Unfortunately in those times, that was punishable by death.<br /><br />Works Cited:<br /><br />Stevenson, Robert Louis. <span style="font-style: italic;">The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde</span><br /><br />Webber, Andrew J, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Doppenganger, Double Visions in German Literature</span>. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996Sally Boscohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12644800241021837062noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8614853908944139211.post-6664651089035199092009-08-10T20:56:00.001-07:002009-08-10T20:59:06.883-07:00Was Dr. Jekyll gay or just a repressed Victorian?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_I__Cu7x6I8k/SoDsJ_apKwI/AAAAAAAAADo/1P5YcLH10Lw/s1600-h/DrJ2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 296px; height: 320px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_I__Cu7x6I8k/SoDsJ_apKwI/AAAAAAAAADo/1P5YcLH10Lw/s320/DrJ2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5368550412211792642" border="0" /></a><br />I think that Showalter’s assertion that <span style="font-style: italic;">The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde</span> is actually a tale of latent homosexuality is interesting and quite possibly true. It definitely made me read the story differently. I looked into Stevenson’s life and found that he was rather a sickly man with a domineering wife. Since he was famous from his serialization of Treasure Island, it was true that he had the admiration of a great number of men. He also was reported to have feminine sensibilities. Around that time male homosexuality was finding favor in the more artsy circles, such as that of Oscar Wilde. It was also very much punishable by imprisonment. And it’s true that when you go back and read the story with that in mind, there are all kinds of gay inferences.<br /><br />I somehow don’t think Stevenson said to himself, “I think I’ll write this story and hide all kinds of homosexual references in it so that people will analyze it for hundreds of years to come thereby giving me literary immortality.” Rather, I think that he may have had those tendencies secretly embedded in his personality, and when he decided to write a thriller, it came out of his subconscious. I’d venture to guess that if a critic of the times had suggested it, he’d have been horrified.<br /><br />In reading this book, after having seen movie adaptations of it, I was surprised to find that there are actually no women at all in the book. Yes, all of the characters in the book are men, but I can see the “men’s club mentality,” that upper class males had their sanctuaries, furnished with leather clad club chairs, where they could drink brandy, smoke cigars and be free of female influence. This can be seen in many books from the era such as in that of Jules Verne or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Also, women in Victorian times were not allowed to freely roam the streets or go out by themselves, so their inclusion in the book might have limited the action.<br /><br />But I think the story is more than that. It reflects the Victorian sensibility that you’d better be careful if you let out the hedonistic side of your personality, because if you do, surely all hell will break loose and you’ll be ruined and possibly die.<br /><br />Dr. J states, “Even at that time, I had not yet conquered my aversion to the dryness of a life of study. I would still be merrily disposed at times; and as my pleasures were (to say the least) undignified, and I was not only well known and highly considered, but growing toward the elderly man, this incoherency of my life was daily growing more unwelcome.”<br /><br />He creates Mr. Hyde initially as a way of blowing off steam, of escaping the confines of Victorian society. “I was the first that could thus plod in the public eye with a load of genial respectability, and in a moment, like a schoolboy, strip off these lendings and spring headlong into the sea of liberty.”<br /><br />Since, in those times, reckless pleasure had to be punished, it all goes horribly wrong. Dr. Jekyll starts losing control of the transformations as Mr. Hyde takes a stronger hold over him. Then Hyde kills a man of high position. Dr. Jekyll vows to be rid of his evil side, and for a while, he fills his life with altruistic acts. But after a time, the evil side creeps back, and he transforms into Mr. Hyde without the special potion.<br /><br />It begins to take more and more of the antidote to turn him back into Dr. Jekyll. As though in fear of his own death, Mr. Hyde starts playing diabolical tricks on Dr. Jekyll: destroying his papers and artwork, scrawling rude things in his books. Then the antidote stops working, and Dr. Jekyll kills himself. Again, the lesson is that no good can possibly come of an uncontrolled life of self-indulgent pleasure.<br /><br />Also, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde </span>was published at the same time that the public was whipped up into a frenzy of terror about the Jack the Ripper murders. Stevenson tells us that the shadowy beast isn’t some unknown creature that roams the streets; rather, it comes from inside of us.<br /><br /><br />Works Cited:<br /><br />Showalter, Elaine. <span style="font-style: italic;">Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture at the Fin de Siecle.</span> New York: Viking, 1990. Print.<br /><br />Stevenson, Robert Louis. <span style="font-style: italic;">The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde</span>Sally Boscohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12644800241021837062noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8614853908944139211.post-88144080350497086212009-08-06T14:35:00.000-07:002009-08-06T14:40:55.974-07:00Comparison of “The Sandman,” by E.T.A. Hoffmann to “Dread” by Clive BarkerWhen comparing Clive Barker's “Dread” to E.T.A. Hoffmann’s “The Sandman,” the first stylistic element that strikes me is that the through-plot of “The Sandman” is not as direct as that of “Dread.” When I was reading “The Sandman,” at times I had to go back and figure out what had happened, because the time frame isn’t exactly linear. “The Sandman” begins with two letters written by the protagonist, Nathaniel. One is to his friend, Lothaire that details a series of dark forebodings he has had going back to his childhood when he was told of a horrible entity called the Sandman. The next one is from Clara, telling Nathaniel that he sent the letter to her by mistake. The last one is from Nathaniel to Lothaire apologizing for his mistake. This seems like clumsy construction to me. The letters were a stylistic device used at the time, but I think the plot would have been better served in being told in a linear fashion.<br /><br />“Dread” is constructed with a dramatic structure that is more fulfilling to people in western society, because we’re used to our television shows, movies and plays being composed of the three-act structure with rising conflict, climax and resolution.<br /><br />Both stories deal with the philosophy of fear. In “Dread” an omniscient narrator begins the story with a few paragraphs about how we relish our misery. Stephen, a philosophy student, gets a bad feeling from the enigmatic Quaid, but at the same, he is fascinated by the man’s obsession with “ the things we fear… the dark behind the door.” “There is no delight the equal of “Dread.” As long as it’s someone else’s,” the narrator tells us. In “The Sandman” Nathaniel goes into detail about his childhood fears of the mythical Sandman. As a child, he refused to believe his mother when she told him that there is no Sandman, it’s just a tale to make children go to bed. But he wants to torture himself, so he pursues the question until he gets the response he wants from the nanny, who tells him the Sandman is an evil man who throws sand in children’s eyes in order to make them bleed, then steals their eyes to feed his own children. At that point, he’s satisfied and is able to pursue that horror into adulthood.<br /><br />Both have a shift in viewpoint. In “The Sandman,” the story starts out in Nathaniel’s viewpoint by way of the letters. It then shifts to his friend Lothaire’s viewpoint, and he becomes the narrator. The story goes from Lothair’s perspective to a third person point of view. The viewpoint then switches to Nathaniel when we experience his obsession for Olympia.<br /><br />In “Dread,” we start out with the narrator, switch to Stephen’s third person point of view. When we find out that Stephen is imprisoned and stretched out on a rack, the point of view momentarily switches to that of Quaid, and we see the infared photos and experience Quaid’s reaction to them.<br /><br />Everything that happens in “Dread” is realistic; there is nothing supernatural involved. In “The Sandman,” I think it’s questionable. Coppelius could have had Nathaniel mesmerized into believing in his evil sorcery. On the other hand, it could truly be black magic.<br /><br />In “The Sandman,” Nathaniel is sure that Coppelius is evil. Everyone else is trying to convince him that he’s not, that the evil is in Nathaniel’s head, then we find out it isn’t. The evil is real. In “Dread,” Stephen has a gut feeling that Quaid is dangerous, but tries to convince himself otherwise.<br /><br />The plot of “The Sandman” would have to be altered to be palatable to a 2009 audience. Even given the fact that the story is set in Germany in the 1800’s, it’s difficult for us to believe that anyone could be fooled into thinking that a wooden automaton is a real girl, even if we were hypnotized.<br /><br />Both stories give us an immediate feeling of foreboding. We know that something creepy is going to happen from the first paragraph. They both end tragically. Nathaniel is dead and Stephen is out of his mind.Sally Boscohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12644800241021837062noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8614853908944139211.post-7890336641118517122009-07-29T21:00:00.001-07:002009-07-29T21:00:42.606-07:00Welcome to my horror reading blog!I hope to be adding posts soon.Sally Boscohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12644800241021837062noreply@blogger.com1