Reviews of Old and New Stories. Mostly Old

Review of “The Gateway of the Monster” by William Hope Hodgson: Halloween Countdown

8) “The Gateway of the Monster” by William Hope Hodgson

Plot:

Upon his return, Carnacki, the occult detective, invites Dodgson (the narrator, whose name curiously resembles the author’s), along with their friends Arkright, Jessop, and Taylor, to dinner. They expect him to regale them with another tale of his strange adventures.

Once they’ve finished dinner, Carnacki launches into his tale, with no interruption from the small audience:

A man he’ll call Anderson asked him to investigate a haunting at his home. When Carnacki arrives, he finds that Anderson can’t come (what?) but that Peter, the butler, will answer his questions. Peter’s worked there for twenty years.

According to the story, one of Mr. Anderson’s ancestors was found strangled in the Grey Room with his wife and child at some indeterminate time in the past. Now, the door to the Grey Room slams loudly all night long, even though the butler knows he’s locked it. In the morning, the bedclothes are on the floor.

Carnacki wasn’t born yesterday. He asks Peter to unlock the room. The butler stands on the threshold, trembling in fear and begging Carnacki to conclude his business with all dispatch. Real danger lurks in this room after dark. Carnacki pooh-poohs the terrified man’s concerns and runs “baby ribbons” over doors, windows, mirrors, the fireplace, and the floor, “sealing” the ends. This will tell him if any material being enters the room and how it got in.

As they’re leaving, Carnacki places his card over the keyhole. No one gets in the easy way. Carnacki also seals the doors on the five rooms between his and the Grey Room.

It’s late now, and the two men turn in.

Before long, the slamming begins. Carnacki gets up to investigate, but finds he can’t get beyond his room, as if some force is holding him back.

In the morning, Peter arrives with coffee, surprised to see Carnacki among the living. The two examine the Grey Room. The seal on the door is broken, but Carnacki’s card over the keyhole remains in place. The bedclothes lie scattered on the floor. None of the baby ribbons has been disturbed.

Carnacki has everything removed from the room except the bed, then examines the room but finds nothing suspicious.

Hmmm… It’s time to get serious.

He goes into town for supplies.

Thoughts:

This was initially published, along with four other Carnacki stories, in The Idler in 1910, introducing the character of Carnacki the Ghost Finder. There is humor alongside horror and dabbling in the occult. Carnacki is adept at setting up protective pentagrams inside circles. The pentagrams and circles are not without their fumblings, however.

In this particular instance, he uses a cat as a canary in a coal mine. A dirty trick. May its ghost haunt him.

The storytelling lends an air of a guy talking to a bunch of guys after dinner, with a bit of alcohol involved. Carnacki entertains his buddies (and the reader) with tales of his adventures, but he is not above poking a little fun at himself. After all, this is supposed to be a good yarn. If Carnacki looks silly for a moment or two, that’s okay. He’ll emerge triumphant.

I enjoyed going along for this ride, though there are a couple of weak spots with respect to credibility. Why would Mr. Anderson ask for Carnacki’s help and then not be available? How could Peter stand twenty years of nightly door-slamming and little sleep without losing his marbles? The first sight of the monster is more strange than scary, and its explanation is a bit of a stretch.

All that aside, I liked this tale. It’s chilling, but doesn’t take itself too seriously.

This story can be read here:

This story can be read and listened to here: (55:30)

Bio: William Hope Hodgson (1877-1918) ran away to sea at a young age and spent nine years as a merchant marine. His experiences at sea affected his writing and poetry. His occult detective, Carnacki, through the force of science, often found rational explanations for odd phenomena—but not always. The short story “Voices in the Night” is regarded as one of his strongest. H. P. Lovecraft praised his novel The Borderlands—conditionally. Hodgson was killed in battle at Ypres in 1918.

Title: ”The Gateway of the Monster”
Author: William Hope Hodgson (1877-1918)
First published: The Idler, January 1910
Length: novelette
Series: Carnacki

Review of “A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family” by J Sheridan Le Fanu: Halloween Countdwon

7) “A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family” by J Sheridan Le Fanu

Plot:

Our hero, Fanny, is a young heiress whose mother pushes her into a marriage with a middle-aged Lord Glenfallen. He is quite besotted with her and conducts his courtship properly.

Fanny’s parents, though wealthy, are pretty cold to her. Lord Glenfallen is not old or ugly (though he could be younger and more handsome), but she figures living with him will be easier than living with her parents.

They marry with all the bells and whistles, and he takes her to one of his nearby estates, Cahergillagh. Fanny finds the surroundings lovely, but the house gloomy. When the old maid Martha shows her to her room, a black curtain falls across the doorway, making her take a few steps back. Nevertheless, she crosses the threshold again and sees a warm and cozy room with no black curtains. Feeling a little foolish, she tells this to Martha.

“The cross of Christ about us,” Martha says and turns pale.

While he’s showing her around the place and the grounds, the charming Lord Glenfallen turns grave and extracts a promise from Fanny to avoid certain areas of the house. “I do not urge this in jest or in caprice, but from a solemn conviction that danger and misery will be the certain consequences of your not observing what I prescribe.”

Whiffs of Bluebeard much?

The plot thickens. But wait! There’s more.

One day, Fanny runs up to her room to retrieve a bonnet and shawl, only to find her bedroom occupied.

Thoughts:

This story is part of the Purcell Papers, which purport to be the literary collection of the (fictional) late Father Francis Purcell (appeared 1838-1850).

LeFanu creates a heavy, gothic atmosphere. Early in the tale, Fanny’s older sister marries and moves away, leaving Fanny alone. Tragedy strikes, and the sister passes away. Fanny is isolated. Her parents treat her as if she were unimportant, even though she is an heiress.

When she is sixteen, her mother takes her to Dublin to shop her around. That she catches Lord Glenfallen’s eye delights her.

“You are not in love?” her mother asks Fanny. After receiving assurances that she is not, her mother tells her she is glad and launches into a horror story about some silly girl who married for love and came to a bad end.

The tale bears some resemblances to Jane Eyre, but it preceded that novel by some years. The ending, however, differs radically from that of Brontë’s book, and, to be blunt, Lord Glenfallen is no Mr. Rochester.

Fanny has little say in what happens through most of the story, but she does find her feet. Her new husband tells her to stay clear of certain parts of the house without giving her a reason, other than it’s for her safety. She doesn’t raise a fuss.

The vision of the falling black curtain also adds to the atmosphere. Not all the mysteries are explained, but several things are hinted at. (Why does Lord Glenfallen speak Dutch?)

I rather liked this tale. It was not gentle, but this was long before Disney arrived to clean up the blood.

This story was later reworked and expanded by Le Fanu as The Wyvern Mystery (1869).

This story can be read here:

This story can be listened to here: (1:35:52)

Bio: Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873) was an Irish writer of Huguenot descent. His early writings include a group of short stories, initially published anonymously in The Dublin University Magazine in the guise of the literary remains of one (fictional) Father Frances Purcell (The Purcell Papers 1838-1850). These range from the creepy (“Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter”) to the silly (“The Quare Gander”).

Le Fanu’s writings include many ghost stories and supernatural pieces. His works influenced such writers as M. R. James and may have inspired portions of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847). His vampire tale, “Carmilla” (1872), influenced Bram Stoker’s Dracula. “Carmilla” has been adapted for film several times with varying degrees of success.

In 1858, his wife died after what was described as a fit of hysteria. Le Fanu ceased writing for years and became a recluse, taking to his bed.

Title: “A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family”
Author: J Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873)
First published: Dublin University Magazine, October 1839
Length: short story

Review of “Fear” by Achmed Abdullah: Halloween Countdown

6) “Fear” by Achmed Abdullah

I would like to warn the reader that this story, published in 1919, sometimes uses language that would be, at best, insensitive and at worst offensive by today’s standards. It comes with white supremacist/darkest Africa undertones. However, if the two MCs are examples of the master race, we may as well let the dolphins run the show.

Plot:

Stuart McGregor and Farragut Hutchison are two young adventurers and world travelers in the early 20^th century. The reader is told that Hutchison disappeared into the African jungle ten years earlier, and the surviving McGregor is haunted by the last sight of him, walking away with “six giant, plumed, ochre-smear Bakoto” warriors.

In one earlier drunken adventure, Hutchison received an elaborate tattoo on his back in an effort to impress a young lady. It featured an eagle in profile, showing one eye that appears to wink when Hutchison moves or flexes his muscles.

In a subsequent drunken escapade, our heroes (?) “insulted the fetish of the Bakotos” while the men of fighting age were away from the village. They did a “vulgar, intoxicated dance in front of the idol” and ground burning cigar ends into its “squat, repulsive features.” They then looted the village and fled before the warriors returned, all the while looking over their shoulders as they headed toward the coast and the protection of the Union Jack and the comfort of white-people faces, slang, curses, odors, and obscenities.

Dang. Can’t take you boys anywhere.

When McGregor and Hutchison aren’t paying attention, the Bakoto warriors overtake them. Reasonable men, the warriors want payment for the insult and theft. They demand an impossible choice, and Hutchison walks off into the jungle with them. McGregor swears the eagle tattoo winks at him. He is terrified and remains terrified.

Thoughts:

Author Abdullah sets a mood of dread and hidden danger on the first page of the story, describing the African jungle:

“The pall of sodden, stygian darkness all around; the night sounds of soft-winged, obscene things flapping lazily overhead or brushing against the furry trees that held the woolly heat of the tropical day like boiler pipes in a factory; the slimy, swishy things that glided and crawled and wiggled underfoot; the vibrant growl of a hunting lioness that began in a deep basso and peaked to a shrill, high-pitched, ridiculously inadequate treble; a spotted hyena’s vicious, bluffing bark; the chirp and whistle of innumerable monkeys; a warthog breaking through the undergrowth with a clumsy, clownish crash—and somewhere, very far away, the staccato thumping of a signal drum, and more faintly yet the answer from the next in line.”

Sometimes, the drumheads are made with human skin. Uh-huh.

In this brief tale, the author creates an atmosphere not of guilt or pangs of conscience but of fear. The guilty party does not regret his actions or choices. On the contrary, he says he would do the same thing again. He’s simply scared out of his wits, ten years later.

In short, the story is about jerks and karma with a bit of magic and a warning not to piss off gods you don’t understand, even in “darkest Africa.”

I was unfamiliar with the name “Bakoto,” but couldn’t find it anywhere. Perhaps it is an alternative spelling for a real people or, as I strongly suspect, a name the author conjured out of thin air.

I’m on the fence about this one. On the one hand, it shows a coward living in fear and getting his well-deserved comeuppance. On the other, the two main characters bring to mind the s-faced yahoos at the end of the bar who talk too loudly, harass the female barkeep, and remain astonished about why “that miserable bitch” eighty-sixed them. I found reading about them unpleasant, but that’s my take.

This story can be read here:

This story can be listened to here: (22:04)

Bio: Achmed Abdullah (legal name Alexander Nicholayevitch Romanoff) (1881-1945) is believed to have been born in Yalta, Crimea, of Russian and Afghan heritage, but was educated in Great Britain and served in the British military. He is now best known for his novelization of the 1924 film The Thief of Bagdad, but wrote widely for the pulps following WWI, publishing some one hundred short stories between 1915 and 1939. While little of his life story can be verified, he claimed to have been a spy for the British military and to have traveled widely in the Far East and Middle East.

Title: “Fear”
Author: Achmed Abdullah (legal name Alexander Nicholayevitch Romanoff) (1881-1945)
First published: Detective Story Magazine, February 4, 1919
Length: short story

Review of “The Door in the Wall” by H.G. Wells: Halloween Countdown

5) “The Door in the Wall” by H. G. Wells

Plot:

Redmond tells the reader he’s relating the story as Lionel Wallace told it to him. He and Wallace were in school together for a while, during which Wallace outperformed him in everything. Even now, Wallace, at 39, is a successful politician who has attained a Cabinet position.

When Wallace was five or six, he happened across a green door in a white wall that led him into a garden of wonders. He found two panthers that played with him. He did not fear them. He met a girl and two boys. Try as he might, he could never remember the games they played. A grave but kind woman showed him a book with moving pictures that depicted the story of his life.

He found himself outside the garden, back in the city he knew, crying inconsolably. When he tried to explain where he’d been, his father thrashed him for lying.

In adulthood, he’s seen the green door three times, but never walked through it. Each time, he was busy with some important matter and couldn’t take the time to investigate.

“Three times in one year the door has been offered me—the door that goes into peace, into delight, into a beauty beyond dreaming, a kindness no man on earth can know. And I have rejected it, Redmond, and it has gone—”

Thoughts:

This story strikes me more as fantasy than horror, though it has horror elements. It is primarily a sad story rather than a frightening one.

The reader understands from the beginning that Wallace is mourning something, and Redmond states that he is convinced his companion believes the story. Redmond says, “whether [Wallace] himself saw, or only thought he saw, whether he himself was the possessor of an inestimable privilege, or the victim of a fantastic dream, I cannot pretend to guess.”

The dreaminess of the garden contrasts with the stark realities of everyday life. Wallace must rush to appointments for academic exams or other obligations. He can’t stop for another trip to paradise. At one point, he tells Redmond, “You say, I have success—this vulgar, tawdry, irksome, envied thing. I have it.”

The reader can’t help but feel for Wallace. Redmond feels a bit of jealousy, too, for he recalls how Wallace outshone him almost effortlessly in school. The grass is always greener. The reason Wallace confides in Redmond isn’t clear.

While the ending of the story wasn’t a surprise, I still felt sorry for poor Wallace. Redmond leaves the end of the story open to some speculation as to whether the garden was “real” or all in Wallace’s mind. I can recommend this story, but because of the sadness involved, it may not be the best one for the kiddies.

This story can be read here:

This story can be listened to here: (53:25)

Bio: H(erbert) G(eorge) Wells (1866-1946) was a UK journalist, social critic, and author. He is now best known for his science fiction, including The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Dr. Moreau (1895), and The Invisible Man (1897). He also addressed such issues as history and the future, and wrote non-fantastic novels such as Kipps (1905), Tono-Bungay (1909), and Ann Veronica (1909), for which he was famous in his day.

Title: “The Door in the Wall”
Author: H. G. Wells (1866-1946)
First published: The Daily Chronicle, July 14, 1906
Length: short story

Review of “The Damned Thing” by Ambrose Bierce: Halloween Countdown

4)“The Damned Thing” by Ambrose Bierce

Plot:

The story opens with one man reading an old account book in a room with six other silent men. On the table under a sheet is a corpse; this is an inquest. They await the arrival of a single witness, William Harker, a journalist from the city, who was with the deceased, Hugh Morgan, when he died.

At last Harker comes in, having sent a dispatch of the same testimony he will give at the inquest, but as fiction. It’s too fantastic. Yet, he reads his manuscript under oath.

The coroner asks the jury if they have any questions for the witness. The foreman rises and says, “I should like to ask one question, Mr. Coroner. What asylum did this yer last witness escape from?”

Thoughts:

The author sets the mood in the first few paragraphs and carries the gallows humor throughout the work. The first chapter is titled, “One Does Not Always Eat What is on the Table.” Before long, the reader realizes they are reading about an inquest, and a dead person is on the table. Cute.

As the men sit in silence before Harker’s arrival, Bierce tells the reader, “From the blank darkness outside came in, through the aperture that served for a window, all the ever unfamiliar noises of night in the wilderness—the long nameless note of distant coyote; the stilly pulsing thrill of tireless insects in tree; strange cries night birds so different from those of the birds of the day; the drone of great blundering beetles, and all that mysterious chorus of small sounds that seem always to have been…”

The atmosphere is heavy and forboding. But there is also a rough humor. The jurors, at first curious when the coroner examines Morgan’s body, regret getting too close.

And not all is as it appears.

The person reading the book has some things in common with the other men around the table, but he is also not like them. He is the coroner. Harker, young and from the city, is an outsider and easy to dismiss.

This is a well-crafted, if not particularly pleasant, story. It is quite short and easily read in a single sitting. The author has set up a nice little mystery. I like the beginning more than the ending.

This story can be read here:

This story can be listened to here: (22:03)

Bio: Ambrose Bierce (1842- disappeared 1914) was an American journalist, writer, and Civil War veteran. Among his best-known works are “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”—familiar to high school students in the U.S.—and The Devil’s Dictionary, a collection of sardonic definitions of common words. He also wrote a memoir, What I Saw at Shiloh, an unsentimental (at least) account of that battle.

There has been much speculation about his death. He is said to have gone to join the forces of Pancho Villa to observe the Mexican Revolution and disappeared, but a small ocean of ink has been spilled about hows, wheres, and whens.

Title: “The Damned Thing”
Author: Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
First published: Town Topics, December 7, 1893
Length: short story

Review of “The Color Out of Space” by H. P. Lovecraft: Halloween Countdown

3) “The Color Out of Space” by H. P. Lovecraft

Plot:

Our unnamed hero has a job surveying land west of (fictional) Arkham, Massachusetts, for a new reservoir. The locals tell him the place is evil. While making his way through the dense, overgrown forest and deserted farms, he gets spooked. Nothing prepares him for what he’s been told is “blasted heath,” a five-acre area of dirt and ash where nothing grows.

Near it are the remains of a chimney, but the farmhouse and any outbuildings are gone.

The townsfolk tell him the “strange days” occurred in “the [18]eighties,” not all that long before. People don’t like to talk about them. But if our hero really wants to hear about it all, he can listen to old Ammi Pierce’s crazy tales.

When the surveyor locates Ammi, he finds not a lunatic, but an educated man. Ammi tells him it all started with “that great rock that fell out of the sky and bedded itself in the ground beside the well at the Nahum Gardner place.” Then there came “that white noontide cloud, that string of explosions in the air, and that pillar of smoke from the valley far in the wood.”

Professors from (fictional) Miskatonic University came to study it. Nahum Gardner tried to tell them it had shrunk by the time they got there, but they laughed. Rocks don’t shrink. They took the samples back to their lab. Their testing revealed little except for the odd spectrograph.

An electrical storm hit. Gardner claims that the stone “drew the lightning.” In the morning, the meteorite was gone.

In the fall, the Gardners’ fruits and vegetables looked good at harvest, but were inedible. Before long, the livestock grew ill. The meat was also inedible. Vegetation around the area turned odd colors and seemed to glow at times.

It was not natural.

Thoughts:

Lovecraft never defines the lethal agent in the story. Is it living? Does it act with intent? Or is it merely a mindless force doing its thing, heedless of the destruction and horror it causes?

One of the things Lovecraft does so well is to build tension throughout his stories. This is true of this one as well. If there are few surprises, the reader is still interested in the fate of the characters. Poor, innocent Nahum Gardner has done nothing wrong, nor have his wife or their sons.

This story is a taste of Lovecraft’s cosmic horror. The idea behind cosmic horror is that human beings are insignificant to most cosmic powers. Rather than nihilistic, there is some comfort in this. We can go on our merry way without stumbling across Nyarlathotep or Shub-Niggurath or worrying about what either thinks of us. And that’s a good thing. But if we poke too deeply into forbidden things—

Poor old Nahum just happened to be an outlier in the usual cosmic run-of-the-mill—no fault of his own.

This is probably more than you will ever want to know about cosmic horror: H. P. Lovecraft Wiki

The Internet Speculative Fiction Database lists this story as part of the Cthulhu Mythos series.

While the tale is long and Lovecraft is given to purple passages at times, this is a solid yarn. I enjoyed it.

This story can be read here:

This story can be listened to here: (1:27:20)

Bio: H.P. (Howard Phillips) Lovecraft (1890-1937) was an American writer of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. He is best known as the creator of the Cthulhu myths, involving “cosmic horror,” that is, horror that arises from forbidden knowledge. Those who seek such knowledge are often driven insane or die.

Lovecraft originally wanted to be a professional astronomer. He maintained a voluminous correspondence, particularly with other writers. Though his work is now revered as seminal in horror and dark fantasy, he died in poverty at the age of 46 of cancer of the small intestine at his birthplace, Providence, Rhode Island.

Lovecraft was an early contributor to Weird Tales magazine in the 1920s. Among his best-known works are “The Dunwich Horror,” “Dagon,” and “The Call of Cthulhu.”

Title: “The Color Out of Space”
Author: H.P. Lovecraft
First published: Amazing Stories, September 1927
Length: novelette

Review of “Circumstance” by Harriet Prescott Spofford: Halloween Countdown

Note: The story reviewed below deals with violent imagery and sublimated sexual violence as well as not so sublimated racism.

2) “Circumstance” by Harriet Prescott Spofford

Plot:

Walking home from visiting a sick neighbor, through a “wilderness untrod save by stealthy native of deadly panther tribes,” our heroine sees a winding sheet fluttering in the wind. She is in a meadow about to enter the woods. It’s nearing evening, and she faces a three-mile journey. What appears to be a corpse is outlined underneath the winding sheet. It waves “by the likeness of four wan hands.” A voice repeats three times, “The Lord have mercy on the people.”

But the woman is of sterner stuff than most. She thinks of her baby at home and forges on, hardly upset about such silly things as visions, signs, or ghosts.

In the woods, an animal attacks her, biting her arm and pinning her down. This is the so-called “Indian Devil.” Its claws get caught in her clothing. She screams, and the animal hesitates, then proceeds. She screams again, giving the animal pause.

Our hero notes this; she can’t scream all night. She sings. The first thing that comes to mind is lullabies, the sort of things she would sing to her baby, safe at home with her husband. She pictures them. The baby is fast asleep, and the husband is rocking the cradle with his foot. As long as she sings, the animal seems content to let her live.

When our hero runs out of lullabies, she begins to sing sea songs. She despairs of her only hope of her husband ever finding her, and turns to singing hymns she learned as a child. Worn out, going without sleep, and terrified, she undergoes something of a religious rapture and reconciles herself to the idea of dying.

Thoughts:

Aside from the vision(?) of the winding sheet, there are no supernatural elements in this odd little tale.

Outside of having teeth and claws, the attacking animal is never described. I’d never heard of anything called an Indian Devil, but I assumed that because the author spoke of panthers early in the story, a panther attacked our hero. A Google search returned the rather unhelpful answer “wolverine.” While they’re bad-tempered critters, I couldn’t remember hearing about one attacking a human. According to the Wolverine Recovery Strategy, there has never been a documented attack on a human by a wolverine, though, I imagine, like any animal, a cornered one will defend itself.

Some literary criticism of this story treats it as an allegory. For example, our hero, pinned down by the panther, is forced to sing for her life. The author was forced to write to support her siblings. This speaks to the limited opportunities for women in the 19^th century.

Maybe. Smart people with degrees that I don’t have make solid arguments about this stuff. What I found more interesting was that she saw a winding sheet—a harbinger of death—and shrugged it off. What choice did she have, really? Not like she could call an Uber. It was 1860-ish. Yet when she was facing what seemed like certain death, leaving her husband and baby behind, she turned to God. She sang hymns from her childhood, many of them dealing with death. She was already leaving the mundane world behind.

The imagery of the panther pinning her down by her arms is also sexual, ImseldomHO, and the violence surrounding it—our hero is seized and borne aloft into a tree—speak of rape—things no one discussed in the 19^th century. People can hardly speak of them in the 21^st. But that’s an argument for another day.

The author’s great-grandmother was said to have been attacked by a panther. I have been unable to find out anything more about this, however.

This is an interesting and intense story to read with several layers to read, however, it is not free from the prejudice of the times in which it was written. It is engaging to read—the reader feels for the main character and her increasing desperation—but it is also difficult to read because of what the author is saying without saying.

For a discussion:
Narrating Violation: Harriet Prescott Spofford’s “Circumstance”

This story can be read here:

This story can be listened to here: (35:43)

Bio: Harriet Prescott Spofford (1835-1921) was an American short story writer, novelist, and poet who was born in Maine and lived much of her life in Massachusetts. She initially turned to writing to support her invalid mother and younger siblings. Her first (serialized) novel was Sir Rohan’s Ghost, published in 1860. Her writing tends to show the commonplace, alongside the supernatural, and depict the New England dialect, with which she was familiar.

Works consulted:

The Circumstances of Harriet Spofford’s “Circumstance”
By Jacob Frechette and Jon C. Adams
Heath Anthology of American Literature:
Internet Speculative Fiction Database
Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
Wolverine Recovery Strategy:

Title: “Circumstance”
Author: Harriet Prescott Spofford (1835-1921)
First published: The Atlantic Monthly, May 1860
Length: short story

Review of “Berenice” by Edgar Allan Poe: Halloween Countdown

It’s that time of year again. Happy Halloween.

1) “Berenice” by Edgar Allan Poe

Plot:

Egaeus and his cousin Berenice have grown up together and live in an old family house. They are polar opposites. Egaeus tells the reader that Berenice is “agile, graceful, and overflowing with energy.” While he stays home and reads—or whatever—Berenice “ramble[s] on the hill-side.”

…until she gets sick. Egaeus describes her illness as a type of “epilepsy” that eats away at her. She becomes more withdrawn.

Egaeus’s illness takes a different turn. He finds himself concentrating on common objects almost to the point of obsession and trance. His passions are “of the mind” rather than of the heart, so that even when Berenice was her most beautiful, he never loved her. Yet he spoke to her of marriage (first cousins did such things back in the day).

Yeah, this is not going to end well.

Thoughts:

This horror story has no supernatural elements. One of the oddest things is that the reader never hears Berenice speak, either when she’s a happy young thing running over the hills, or a sickly young woman. She remains silent—no laughter and no tears. The reader has no idea what she thinks of her bookish cousin.

The bookish cousin, however, is quite frank about the lovely Berenice. He thinks of her “not as the living and breathing Berenice, but as the Berenice of a dream—not as a being of the earth, earthy, but as the abstraction of such a being—not as an object of love, but the theme of the most abstruse although desultory speculation.”

That’s cold.

The story starts slowly, but the end is a surprise and a bit gory. I did not see it coming. At about twenty minutes in length, it would make a good dramatic reading on a dark and stormy night. According to lore, the present edition is a toned-down version of the original, which ruffled some feathers when it was first published.

This story can be read here:

This story can be listened to here: (21:41)

Bio: Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) was the son of two actors. After his father deserted the family and his mother died of tuberculosis, two-year-old Edgar was taken in by the wealthy Allan family. He briefly studied at the University of Virginia and West Point. His most well-known works include “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Black Cat,” and “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” The last is sometimes cited as the first detective story. The work that made him a household name in his day was the poem “The Raven.”

The circumstances of his death are still unclear. He was found in a tavern, appearing drunk, wearing someone else’s clothes, and died some days later in Washington University Hospital. According to the Poe Museum, twenty-six different theories regarding the cause of his demise have been published. Poe was a known tippler and, while alcohol poisoning is a perennial favorite cause of death, other plausible causes as disparate as rabies and cooping, a 19^th-century form of voter fraud, are often cited.

Title: “Berenice”
Author: Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
First published: March 1835, Southern Literary Messenger
Length: short story

Review of “Parable of the Sower” by Octavia E. Butler

Note: The novel is set in a dystopian world where the social order has broken down. Violence, including murder, is common. It discusses rape and depicts acts of attempted rape and cannibalism. While the author does not glorify any of this, it can be hard to read.

Plot:

Fifteen-year-old Lauren Olamina lives with her Baptist preacher father, stepmother, and younger brothers in a walled community near Los Angeles in the 2020s. Many people grow their own food.

Things have changed. The walls keep out not only the wild dogs that attack humans but the thieves and drug addicts that loot and burn. A new drug, referred to as “pyro” or “’ro” makes addicts enjoy watching fire.

Lauren was born with hyperempathy, a condition that makes her feel the physical and emotional pain she witnesses in another person, even if she inflicted that pain. Her father sees this as a handicap and tries to talk her out of it. She doesn’t really feel that pain.

But she does.

Lauren thinks. She wonders. She begins to see things as they are. She writes:

All that you touch
You change.

All that you change
Changes you.

The only lasting truth
is change.

God
Is Change.

She knows a time will come to leave the walled enclave. She doesn’t foresee how the departure comes, or the devastating loss. But she dreams of humanity leaving Earth for another planet.

Thoughts:

Written in the 1990s, this book looks about thirty years into the future, when the fabric of society has broken down. Fire and police services exist but are unreliable and as likely to rob citizens as to assist them, provided they show up. There is a President Donner. He loosens labor protections, giving rise to old-fashioned company towns and debt-servitude. (“St. Peter doncha call me…”)

And yet, the space program still exists. Go figure.

The work has a dark but not a hopeless outlook. Everyone involved has lost someone dear to them, as well as their home. Because few cars exist, people walk along the freeways, migrating north in search of a better life. The reader sympathizes with Lauren and those she meets along the way, knowing that so much good stuff is going to hit the fan before they get where they’re going. Do they know where they’re going? Crossing the border into Oregon is not like crossing into a foreign country.

Lauren might not have a grand plan, but she understands change is inevitable and constant. Her design it to control that change.

This book is the first of a planned six-volume series which Butler did not live to complete. The second volume, The Parable of the Talents, was published in 1998. Butler began work on the third.

I liked this book, though not without reservations. I’d like to read the second book, though I imagine it will have little in common with this one.

But it really is time for a cheerier read.

Bio: Octavia E. Butler (1947-2006) was an African-American science fiction and speculative fiction writer who grew up in poverty. Her most notable works include the time-traveling novel Kindred and the Xenogenesis Trilogy. Among her awards are Hugo Awards for Best Short Story and Best Novelette, and Nebula Awards for Best Novelette and Best Novel. She is the only science fiction writer to win a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Grant.

Title: Parable of the Sower
Author: Octavia E. Butler (1947-2006)
First published: 1993
Length: novel
Series: Parable of the Sower/Earthseed #1

Review of “Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets” by Svetlana Alexievich

A note: This collection of oral histories relates various accounts of violence and social upheaval, including wartime atrocities, antisemitism, suicide, including the suicide of a teenager, and murder. It is a difficult read and most definitely not one for the kiddies.

The Stuff:

Author Svetlana Alexievich divided her collection of oral histories into two broad groups. The first group deals with narratives from 1991 to 2001, and the second from 2002 to 2012. These are prefaced by a helpful timeline of Russian history beginning with Josef Stalin’s 1953 death and ending in 2016, and an introductory “Remarks from an Accomplice.” The last is unsigned, but I feel safe in assuming the author wrote it.

The “Remarks” discusses several recurring themes in the oral histories. Alexievich mentions that she asked everyone she met what “freedom” meant. “Fathers and children had very different answers. Those who were born in the USSR and those born after its collapse do not share a common experience—it’s like they were from different planets.” (p. 5)

Occasional nostalgia for the Soviet Union appears, not because times were so much better then but because the present time is so uncertain.

One elderly man recalls seeing a Bolshevik for the first time (pre-Russian Revolution): “[he told us] everyone would live like brothers and sisters, everyone would be equal. How can you not fall in love with a dream like that? Poor people, people who had nothing, believed the Bolsheviks. They won the support of the youth. We walked through the streets crying, ‘Melt down the church bells! Turn them into tractors!’” (p. 172)

The author herself, however, holds no such soft spot for Communism. “Perhaps it was communism’s only achievement. Seventy-plus years in the Marxist-Leninist laboratory gave rise to a new man: homo sovieticus. Some see him as a tragic figure, others see him as a sovok.” In a footnote, the author explains: “Sovok is a widely used pejorative term for one who adheres to Soviet values, attitudes, and behaviors. The word can also refer to the Soviet Union itself. It is a pun on the word for ‘dustpan.’” (p. 3)

The stories are universally of loss, despair, confusion, and isolation. A mother receives her police deputy daughter’s remains from the war in Chechnya with the official notice that her daughter died by suicide. The mother defies the instructions not to open the coffin, as within is a mess. She finds not a “mess,” but the gunshot wound on the opposite side of the head the authorities described. What else have they lied or misinformed her about?

Yet, at times the writing is beautiful, if stark. One interviewee, resettled as a child from Poland into Siberia, told the author:

My older sister Vladya recalled how surprised I was when I learned that goats don’t talk like we do, I was confused, I thought they were our equals. We shared a world, it seemed indivisible. I still don’t feel the difference between us, I still don’t feel the distinction between man and animal. I talk to them…they understand me…such colorful beetles, as if they’d been painted. My toys. In spring, we’d go out into the sunshine together, crawling through the grass in search of food. Warming ourselves. In winter, we’d go dormant like the trees, hibernating from hunger. I had my own school, humans weren’t my only teachers. I can hear the trees and the grass too. (p. 226)

And this chilling warning: “There is nothing more terrifying than an idealist.” (p. 295)

Thoughts:

At times, I wondered if the author had, well, embellished certain points. Some stories are just breathtakingly terrifying. A few interviewees confess. People who had been tortured in the most grisly ways, or lost loved ones in the prison system, return home and, after glasnost and perestroika, see the neighbors who had tortured them. Is there an Emily Post column about the proper etiquette in such situations?

I accept that the author edited the interviews. No one, I believe, takes the interviews written here as word-for-word transcripts. Some editing is necessary for clarity, to perhaps trim down repetition or filter out bad grammar or correct mistakes.

Some discussion is here.

Secondhand Time won the 2015 Nobel Prize for Literature. It is also a New York Times Bestseller, and #72 on the New York Times Best One Hundred Books of the 21^st Century list.

While the stories are important for the historical record, they are very depressing, with no reprieve. No one offers a solution. Few believe there is a solution. The best one can hope for is to cultivate one’s garden. Let the world go to hell, because it is.

After finishing this book, I think I’ll retire to the woods with a shotgun and a bit of vodka:

But seriously, it’s time for a cheerier read.

Title: Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets: An Oral History
Author: Svetlana Alexievich
First published: 2012
Length: nonfiction book