Showing posts with label New York. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New York. Show all posts

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Edgar Allan Poe: An Obituary and a Eulogy

Copyright 2010 by Edgar Allan Poe


Edgar Allan Poe died on October 7, 1849, and an obituary by his mortal enemy and biographer Rufus Griswold appeared three weeks later, on October 20, on page four of the New-York Weekly Tribune. It was another chance for Poe’s foe to lambaste the author, and he did so, claiming that Poe “had few or no friends” and suggesting that he was deserving of none. “Few,” Griswold felt sure, would “be grieved by” Poe’s demise.

Even the author’s reputation as a man of letters was questionable, Griswold implied: “Literary art has lost one of its most brilliant but erratic stars.” Griswold, assuming the name of “Ludwig,” characterizes Poe as a dissolute alcoholic who lived a penurious and friendless existence at the expense, as often as not, of his benefactors. He was, “Ludwig” all but insists, little more than a freeloader:

His wants were supplied by the liberality of a few individuals. We remember that Col. Webb collected in a few moments fifty or sixty dollars for him at the Union Club; Mr. Lewis, of Brooklyn, sent a similar sum from one of the Courts, in which he was engaged when he saw the statement of the poet’s poverty; and others illustrated in the same manner the effect of such an appeal to the popular heart.
Poe came to the attention of the literati as a result of an accident, Griswold claims. He had entered a literary contest, and his story won not because it had any merit, but because it was the first among the many entries that showed any legibility, and the judges, in selecting it as the winner, might be done as quickly as possible with their responsibility:

Such matters are usually disposed of in a very off hand way: Committees to award literary prizes drink to the payer’s health, in good wines, over the unexamined MSS, which they submit to the discretion of publishers, with permission to use their names in such a way as to promote the publisher’s advantage[[.]] So it would have been in this case, but that one of the Committee, taking up a little book in such exquisite calligraphy as to seem like one of the finest issues of the press of Putnam, was tempted to read several pages, and being interested, he summoned the attention of the company to the half-dozen compositions in the volume. It was unanimously decided that the prizes should be paid to the first of geniuses who had written legibly. Not another MS. was unfolded. Immediately the ‘confidential envelop’ was opened, and the successful competitor was found to bear the scarcely known name of Poe.
Had it not been for the intervention of another benefactor, “the accomplished author” John P. Kennedy, who’d written Horseshoe Robinson, it seems unlikely, Griswold would have his readers believe, that Poe would ever have been likely to have earned himself the position of editor of The Southern Literary Messenger at even the “small salary” that Poe was paid:

The next day the publisher called to see Mr. Kennedy, and gave him an account of the author that excited his curiosity and sympathy, and caused him to request that he should be brought to his office. Accordingly he was introduced: the prize money had not yet been paid, and he was in the costume in which he had answered the advertisement of his good fortune. Thin, and pale even to ghastliness, his whole appearance indicated sickness and the utmost destitution. A tattered frock-coat concealed the absence of a shirt, and the ruins of boots disclosed more than the want of stockings[[.]] But the eyes of the young man were luminous with intelligence and feeling, and his voice, and conversation, and manners, all won upon the lawyer’s regard. Poe told his history, and his ambition, and it was determined that he should not want means for a suitable appearance in society, nor opportunity for a just display of his abilities in literature. Mr. Kennedy accompanied him to a clothing store, and purchased for him a respectable suit, with changes of linen, and sent him to a bath, from which he returned with the suddenly regained bearing of a gentleman.

The late Mr. Thomas W. White had then recently established The Southern Literary Messenger, at Richmond, and upon the warm recommendation of Mr. Kennedy, Poe was engaged, at a small salary — we believe of $500 a year — to be its editor.
In keeping with his image of Poe as a ne’er-do-well who lived off others, Griswold also characterizes Poe as something of a vagabond, mentioning his moves from Richmond to Philadelphia; from Philadelphia to New York; from New York back again to Richmond; and, finally, as it seemed, judging by his death in Baltimore, back again to New York.

In the years following the death of his “poor” wife, whom Poe had married “hurriedly” and “with characteristic recklessness of consequences,” at a time when he was as penniless as she, the author was able to make a meager living on the basis of “an income from his literary labors sufficient for his support.” However, Griswold suggests, Poe continued to keep an eye out for the chance to freeload, for, as “Ludwig,” or Griswold, points out, Poe “was understood by some of his correspondents” to be planning “to be married, most advantageously, to a lady of that city: a widow, to whom he had been previously engaged while a student in the University.”

As a man, Poe didn’t amount to much, either, Griswold’s death notice suggests: “He was at all times a dreamer,” who walked about not with his head so much in the clouds as “in heaven or hell,” communing with imaginary beings, the “creatures and the accidents of his brain”:

He walked the streets, in madness or melancholy, with lips moving in indistinct curses, or with eyes upturned in passionate prayers, (never for himself, for he felt, or professed to feel, that he was already damned), but for their happiness who at the moment were objects of his idolatry — or, with his glances introverted to a heart gnawed with anguish, and with a face shrouded in gloom, he would brave the wildest storms; and all night, with drenched garments and arms wildly beating the winds and rains, he would speak as if to spirits that at such times only could be evoked by him from the Aidenn close by whose portals his disturbed soul sought to forget the ills to which his constitution subjugated him — close by that Aidenn where were those he loved — the Aidenn which he might never see, but in fitful glimpses, as its gates opened to receive the less fiery and more happy natures whose destiny to sin did not involve the doom of death.

He seemed, except when some fitful pursuit subjected his will and engrossed his faculties, always to bear the memory of some controlling sorrow. The remarkable poem of The Raven was probably much more nearly than has been supposed, even by those who were very intimate with him, a reflexion and an echo of his own history.
The true man is mirrored by his works, Griswold says, and Poe’s works are dark and dreary, indeed:

Every genuine author in a greater or less degree leaves in his works, whatever their design, traces of his personal character: elements of his immortal being, in which the individual survives the person. While we read the pages of the Fall of the House of Usher, or of Mesmeric Revelations, we see in the solemn and stately gloom which invests one, and in the subtle metaphysical analysis of both, indications of the idiosyncrasies, — of what was most remarkable and peculiar — in the author’s intellectual nature. But we see here only the better phases of this nature, only the symbols of his juster action, for his harsh experience had deprived him of all faith in man or woman. He had made up his mind upon the numberless complexities of the social world, and the whole system with him was an imposture. This conviction gave a direction to his shrewd and naturally unamiable character. Still, though he regarded society as composed altogether of villains, the sharpness of his intellect was not of that kind which enabled him to cope with villainy, while it continually caused him by overshots to fail of the success of honesty.
A friend of Poe’s, George R. Graham, answers Griswold’s character assassination-disguised-as-an-obituary with a eulogy in which he praises Poe (“The Late Edgar Allan Poe,” Graham’s Magazine, March 1850, 36: 224-226). Adopting the device of writing his eulogy to Willis, a mutual friend of Poe and himself, Graham begins by taking unto himself the task of writing a “defence [sic] of his character” as it was “set down by Dr. Rufus W. Griswold.”

“I knew Mr. Poe well — far better than Mr. Griswold,” Graham writes, and he immediately describes Griswold’s portrait of Poe an “exceedingly ill-timed and unappreciative estimate of the character of our lost friend,” which is both “unfair and untrue.” Graham believes that Griswold demonizes Poe out of spite, or “spleen.” Griswold’s obituary is, in fact, Graham argues, an attempt to avenge himself and his friends upon Poe for Poe’s honest criticisms of their literary works:

Mr. Griswold does not feel the worth of the man he has undervalued; — he had no sympathies in common with him, and has allowed old prejudices and old enmities to steal, insensibly perhaps, into the coloring of his picture. They were for years totally uncongenial, if not enemies, and during that period Mr. Poe, in a scathing lecture upon [[“]]The Poets of America,[[”]] gave Mr. Griswold some raps over the knuckles of force sufficient to be remembered. He had, too, in the exercise of his functions as critic, put to death, summarily, the literary reputation of some of Mr. Griswold’s best friends; and their ghosts cried in vain for him to avenge them during Poe’s life-time.
What Griswold and his friends were incapable of achieving during Poe’s life, Griswold sought to gain after his death, by cowardly accusing Poe of charges against which Poe could not now defend himself. However, Graham suggests, even if Griswold had not had an axe to grind, Griswold would have not been “competent. . . to act as his judge — to dissect that subtle and singularly fine intellect — to probe the motives and weigh the actions of that proud heart” because not only did Griswold not “feel the worth of the man he has undervalued” but he also could not measure Poe’s worth, since Poe’s “whole nature — that distinctive presence of the departed which now stands impalpable, yet in strong outline before me, as I knew him and felt him to be — eludes the rude grasp of a mind so warped and uncongenial as Mr. Griswold’s.”

As a man, Griswold found Poe to have had close friends and to have been “always the same polished gentleman — the quiet, unobtrusive, thoughtful scholar — the devoted husband — frugal in his personal expenses — punctual and unwearied in his industry — and the soul of honor, in all his transactions. This, of course, was in his better days, and by them we judge the man. But even after his habits had changed, there was no literary man to whom I would more readily advance money for labor to be done.” As for his being a ne’er-do-well or a freeloader, Graham says, Poe was of such a rarified genius that his writings found only a small audience, (and literature is an enterprise that seldom pays well, in any case). He drank because he made little at doing what he loved so well:

The very natural question — “Why did he not work and thrive?” is easily answered. It will not be asked by the many who knew the precarious tenure by which literary men hold a mere living in this country. The avenues through which they can profitably reach the country are few, and crowded with aspirants for bread as well as fame. The unfortunate tendency to cheapen every literary work to the lowest point of beggarly flimsiness in price and profit, prevents even the well-disposed from extending any thing like an adequate support to even a part of the great throng which genius, talent, education, and even misfortune, force into the struggle. The character of Poe’s mind was of such an order, as not to be very widely in demand. The class of educated mind which he could readily and profitably address, was small — the channels through which he could do so at all, were few — and publishers all, or nearly all, contented with such pens as were already engaged, hesitated to incur the expense of his to an extent which would sufficiently remunerate him; hence, when he was fairly at sea, connected permanently with no publication, he suffered all the horrors of prospective destitution, with scarcely the ability of providing for immediate necessities; and at such moments, alas! the tempter often came, and, as you have truly said, “one glass” of wine made him a madman. Let the moralist who stands upon tufted carpet, and surveys his smoking board, the fruits of his individual toil or mercantile adventure, pause before he lets the anathema, trembling upon his lips, fall upon a man like Poe! who, wandering from publisher to publisher, with his fine, print-like manuscript, scrupulously clean and neatly rolled, finds no market for his brain — with despair at heart, misery ahead for himself and his loved ones, and gaunt famine dogging at his heels, thus sinks by the wayside, before the demon that watches his steps and whispers OBLIVION.
The solution might have been to sell out and write the hack work that a general audience more interested in entertainment than art seemed to crave, but Poe was too much a man of honor to do so, Graham declares: “Could he have stepped down and chronicled small beer, made himself the shifting toady of the hour, and with bow and cringe, hung upon the steps of greatness, sounding the glory of third-rate ability with a penny trumpet, he would have been feted alive, and perhaps, been praised when dead. But no! his views of the duty of the critic were stern, and he felt that in praising an unworthy writer, he committed dishonor.”

Rather than the idle, half-mad dreamer that Griswold had made Poe out to be, Poe was a man of genius, Graham states, whose thoughts occupied higher regions than those of men of more mundane interests:

He was a worshipper of INTELLECT — longing to grasp the power of mind that moves the stars — to bathe his soul in the dreams of seraphs. He was himself all ethereal, of a fine essence, that moved in an atmosphere of spirits — of spiritual beauty, overflowing and radiant — twin brother with the angels, feeling their flashing wings upon his heart, and almost clasping them in his embrace. Of them, and as an expectant archangel of that high order of intellect, stepping out of himself, as it were, and interpreting the time, he reveled in delicious luxury in a world beyond, with an audacity which we fear in madmen, but in genius worship as the inspiration of heaven.
It should be observed that contemporary critics hold a view of Poe that is much closer to Graham’s estimation of the author than to Griswold’s caricature of him.



Note: Both Griswold’s obituary and Graham’s eulogy may be read in their entireties at “A Poe Bookshelf: Books, Articles and Lectures on Edgar Allan Poe,” courtesy of The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore.


Saturday, June 21, 2008

"The Addams Family" Technique

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman
Cartoonist Charles Addams is the father of a truly bizarre family. “Dysfunctional” doesn’t begin to describe its dynamics. Headed by Gomez and Morticia, The Addams Family includes son Pugsley, daughter Wednesday, Uncle Fester, Grandmama, and the shaggy Cousin Itt. A disembodied hand, Thing, is a permanent houseguest. This unlikely cast of characters is waited upon hand and foot--in the case of Thing, literally--by a hulking butler named Lurch. They live on a weed-choked estate behind a wrought-iron fence in a Second Empire mansion, complete with a garden (of sorts). The cartoon appeared regularly in The New Yorker magazine. The one-panel strip was eventually translated into a television situation comedy (sitcom) of the same title starring John Astin (Gomez), Caroline Jones (Morticia), Ken Weatherwax (Pugsley), Lisa Loring (Wednesday), Jackie Cogan (Uncle Fester), Blossom Rock (Grandmama), Felix Silla (Cousin Itt), and Ted Cassidy (Lurch and Thing). The cartoon is also the basis of The Addams Family movie (1991) which starred Raul Julia (Gomez), Angelica Huston (Morticia), Jimmy Workman (Pugsley), Christina Ricci (Wednesday), Christopher Lloyd (Uncle Fester), Judith Malina (Grandmama), John Franklin (Cousin Itt), Carel Stricken (Lurch) and Christopher Hart (Thing). The screenplay for the motion picture is available at Movie Script Place. In addition to featuring the same characters and setting, the cartoon, sitcom, and movie all parodied the contemporary American nuclear family, inverting traditional family and American values. The Addamses found ordinary people and their interests either repulsive, puzzling, dull, or offensive, preferring their own bizarre, macabre, and peculiar pursuits. Gomez never stopped courting his wife. Morticia was fond of raising roses, from which, snipping the buds, she would retain the thorny stems, immersing them in ornate vases of water, and tend to her carnivorous plant. Wednesday (who is, as her name suggests, “full of woe”) delights in executing her Marie Antoinette doll by guillotine and enjoys electrocuting her brother in the family’s electric chair. Pugsley’s passion is wrecking his electric train by derailing the engine and cars or blowing it up with a well-placed stick of miniature dynamite. Uncle Fester likes to impress others with his trick of illuminating a light bulb simply by placing it in his mouth, and he often chases intruders with his blunderbuss. Grandmama, a witch, is forever trying new spells or potions. Vertically challenged Cousin Itt’s face--or, indeed, his entire head and body--is never seen, because his hair extends from his scalp to the floor. He rides around the mansion in his three-wheeled car and speaks in shrill gibberish that only the rest of the family can understand. A childhood friend of Gomez’s, Thing is a severed hand that pops out of cigar boxes, urns, and other containers throughout the house to deliver the mail and do other assorted odd jobs. The butler, Lurch, is a giant. He wears a tuxedo, maintains an expression and a posture that suggests that rigor mortis has set in a little early, and rumbles rather than speaks. A Frankenstein-like servant, Lurch, Morticia reminds Gomez, is part of many families and has the heart of an Addams. Much of the cartoon’s, sitcom’s, and movie’s humor derives from Lurch’s unfriendly demeanor and the chores he performs in his ungainly and deadpan manner. The Addams Family suggests that there is a fine line between horror and humor, as do such television shows as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Munsters, Bewitched, and I Dream of Jeannie. Literary critics have found humor--quite a bit of it, in fact--even in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The difference between whether an incident or a situation will be humorous of horrific depends, of course, upon its treatment. Typically, humor will look for opportunities to exaggerate or understate the significance of ordinary incidents and situations, will seek the absurdity in daily activities and the pompous or inappropriate behavior of characters who are out of their depth or in an environment foreign to them, and so forth, whereas horror will seek the bizarre, the uncanny, the eerie, the frightening, and the incongruous in such incidents and situations with an eye not to how and why these incidents and situations are amusing but as to why they are in some way menacing. It is menace that, ultimately, makes a situation horrific and dreadful. By applying The Addams Family technique to everyday situations and incidents and looking for the potential menace in them rather than for the potential humor in them, the horror writer can come up with plot material that might otherwise go unnoticed or unappreciated. The technique is simple, but effective: interpret commonplace incidents and situations from an out-of-kilter, offbeat, madcap point of view. Interpret figurative expressions literally and literal expressions figuratively. Imagine how the Addams family might interpret everyday events and occurrences or how they might understand the meaning of an innocuous phrase. For example, were the Addams family to have a dinner party, the catered refreshments might include finger sandwiches that were truly finger sandwiches--severed human digits laid side by side between two slices of bread and garnished with lettuce, tomatoes, onions, and the dressing of one’s choice. The whole meal, in fact, would be likely to comprise a feast fit for cannibals. Now, take the humor out of the situation, and replace it with horror. Make a few other adjustments, lending the storyline as much verisimilitude as possible within the conditions of the audience’s willing suspension of disbelief, and viola!, The Addams Family principle has provided a plot for a horror story such as the maestro Stephen King might have written. A bit of brainstorming--lovely word for horror writers!--may suggest other possibilities. The appetite among some Asians for dog flesh is well known. What better way to increase the stock of this delicacy in one’s freezer than to go to a large city park frequented by the owners of such pets and wait for one or more of them to walk their dogs past the perfect ambush site along the a woodland path? Another idea? (Simply insert a 100-watt bulb into one’s mouth, Uncle Fester style.) How about this one? A vampire king’s five-hundredth “birthday” (that is, the night that he was transformed into one of the living dead) is approaching, and his followers want to get him something special to commemorate the occasion. They discuss various possibilities: blood bags from the local blood bank, the chorus girls from a popular Broadway (or Las Vegas) show, kindergartners from a local preschool or daycare center. Finally, they decide on five hundred virgins. The only problem is that they’re hard-pressed to locate such a vast number of this commodity. The story resulting from this premise would be partly funny and partly fiendish, much like The Addams Family itself, showing, once again, that it is possible to mix humor with horror (and even a little social commentary), as long as, if the story is to be considered horror rather than humor, the menace outweighs the clowning.

Monday, June 16, 2008

Thinking of Seeing "The Happening"? Save Your Money

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman


Okay.

Someone has to say it.

(Actually, quite a few people--critics and moviegoers alike--have said it, and more are saying it every day.)

Still, I feel compelled to say it, too:

The Happening (2008) is horrible (and not in a good way).

Note to director Shyamalan (or is that Shambling?): The use of your middle name (“Night’) in lieu of your first name is not enough to make a movie scary. You need a plot. And characters. And a little atmosphere. And some scary scenes. And a worthwhile theme.

The Happening has none of these basic elements of the successful horror movie. Instead, it is a simple-minded, self-parodying example of how not to make a scary movie.

The movie begins with random acts of violence: in Central Park, people start clawing at themselves, and one young woman--a blonde, naturally--uses a screwdriver or something to poke a hole through the side of her neck and let a little blood out of her jugular vein; construction workers jump off the roof of a high-rise they’re building; individuals use a police officer’s revolver to shoot themselves (suicide by cop). Supposedly, it’s a terrorist attack on the Big Apple, but it’s really plants.

Psychic plants.

Or something worse (i. e., even stinkier).

The protagonist, a high school science teacher, escapes with his wife (she admits to two-timing him by having dessert with a coworker without clearing it with hubby ahead of time), the math teacher, and the math teacher’s cute-as-a-button-I’m-only-in-this-putrid-movie-to-help-wrench-your-heart little girl, after surmising that whatever the hell is going on is going on only in the northeastern corner of the United States. Ninety miles away, all is well.

Every time the plants conspire (telepathically?), the wind blows, and it’s kind of cool to watch the grass run and the trees writhe, but it’s not scary. What’s scary about the wind blowing, even hard, through a field of treetops? Not much.

At the end, after being trapped inside a woman’s house, the surviving science teacher, his almost-unfaithful, will-do-anything-for-dessert wife, and their math teacher’s daughter (the math teacher is one of the early victims of the plants’ attack) go outdoors to discover that the vegetation is no longer mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.

However, it’s France’s turn next, apparently.

Adjectives that come to mind in describing The Happening:

  • Amateurish
  • Banal
  • Boring
  • Clumsy
  • Derivative
  • Loser!
  • Stupid
  • Uninteresting
  • Unoriginal

--and those are the kinder ones.

Worst scene in the whole movie? The science teacher trying to apologize to a plant. (The fact that it turns out to be plastic was supposed to make this lame scene irresistibly funny instead of just plain stupid [but it didn't]). Discounting these problems, one might conclude, as Mark Twain did concerning "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses," what remains is "pure art."

About the only good thing about The Happening is that it's so bad that it may forestall future politically correct diatribes about how we're ruining the environment.

Not recommended, even for a matinee.

Saturday, February 2, 2008

Everyday Horrors: The Electric Chair

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

Thomas Edison, who gave us the incandescent light bulb, the phonograph, the motion-picture projector, and a host of other technological goodies, also gave us the electric chair--or did he?


According to “Electric Chair Wars,” Edison is credited, incorrectly, with inventing the electric chair. The dubious honor of having invented this execution device actually goes to a dentist, Alfred P. Southwick, who witnessed an intoxicated man get electrocuted during a visit to a power plant in Buffalo, New York.

Like many other serial killers, Southwick practiced on animals before trying his hand with people, convincing the city’s animal welfare organization that killing stray animals with electricity was more humane than drowning them. This attempt at persuasion having proved successful, the dentist and a legislator convinced the governor of the Empire State that electrocuting humans was a more humane way of destroying them than hanging.

The state had a new way of executing criminals, but it was yet to be decided whether alternating current (AC), championed by George Westinghouse, was deadlier that direct current (DC), endorsed by Thomas Edison. Southwick’s chair used the former, the brainstorm of Westinghouse employee Nicola Tesla. In 1890, the death sentence of William Kemmler offered the two rival inventors the opportunity to put their respective currents where their mouths were.

A showman of sorts, Edison staged the executions of domestic animals to convince the public that DC was a superior means of killing people (or domestic animals, at least) than AC. When Topsy, a circus elephant, objected to having been fed a lit cigarette and killed the drunkard who fed her this snack, she was labeled a “rogue elephant” and scheduled to be executed by hanging by her neck until she was dead, probably of strangulation. Edison saw his chance to offer what Ed Sullivan might have called “a really good show”: he would use AC to kill Topsy. Outfitted with copper-lined sandals and hooked to electrodes, she was given a lethal dose of the current and died a quick death, earning a belated memorial in 2003, in New York’s Coney Island Museum.

Edison was successful in getting the state’s Medico-Legal Society to urge the use of AC in New York’s electric chair. However, financed by Westinghouse, Kemmler’s attorney protested that the use of electricity to kill his client would be unconstitutional, representing, as it would, “cruel and unusual punishment.” Kemmler lost his appeal, and he was electrocuted, the chair employing AC. According to witnesses, a second jolt was required to kill the condemned man, and fire issued from his mouth.

According to “Both Sides of the Wall,” after receiving seventeen seconds’ worth of juice, “Kemmler's slumped body started to moan and wheeze,” prompting the attending physician to call for the second jolt, on the grounds that “This man is not dead!” Wanting to make sure they killed him this time around, the executioners let the current flow for 70 seconds (some claim 240 seconds), while smoke rose from his head and “the room was filled with the stench of human flesh.” In full, Kemmler spent eight minutes in the chair. In 1963, the use of the chair as a means of executing criminals was discontinued.



Legal challenges to the use of the electric chair have continued, intermittently, with a state judge ruling, on August 2, 1999, that “Old Sparky,” as the Sunshine State has nicknamed their chair, is not unconstitutional. There was some question as to whether it constituted cruel and unusual punishment after the “bloody execution of a 344-pound inmate,” Allan Lee (“Tiny”) Davis in July 1999, according to CNN. As the CNN article points out, citing the following instances, Allen’s case was “not the first time the mechanics of the chair raised questions”:

  • In 1997, flames shot from the head of death row inmate Pedro Medina during his execution.
  • In 1990, smoke poured from the hood of inmate Jessie Tafero as he was put to death.
According to the state’s website on the topic--yes, there really is one-- the executioner “is a private citizen who is paid $150 per execution.” The chair has three legs, rather than four, and was fashioned out of oak by prison inmates. Florida’s website offers trivia fun concerning its electrocutions, including these factoids:

  • Frank Johnson was the first inmate executed in Florida's electric chair on October 7, 1924.
  • On March 30, 1998, Judias "Judy" Buenoano became the first woman to die in Florida's electric chair.
  • 12.19 years is the average length of stay on Death Row prior to execution.
  • William Cruse, Jr. is the oldest death-row inmate in Florida, having been born in 1927, and Jerome Hunter, born in 1986, is the youngest.
  • The oldest inmate to be executed, to date, is Charlie Grifford, who was 72 at the time.



The chair’s most infamous client was Ted Bundy, who was zapped on January 24, 1989.

The Sunshine State’s website also offers visitors a virtual tour of the state’s prisons, during which one may “visit a Death Row cell.”

Electric chairs appear in several horror movies and novels, including Stephen King’s novel The Green Mile and the movie, of the same title, based on it, in which a wrongly convicted healer meets a particularly nasty demise; The Gingerbread Man, in which a gingerbread man, possessed by the soul of an electrocuted killer, seeks revenge against the girl who fried him; Alive, in which an electric chair survivor is invited to participate in sadistic experiments that pit him against another prisoner and an extraterrestrial of sorts; The Horror Show, in which an electric chair survivor seeks revenge against the cop who arrested him; Shocker, in which an electrocuted killer returns from the dead, able to take charge of the force that killed him; and a host of others.


“Everyday Horrors: The Electric Chair” is part of a series of “everyday horrors” that will be featured in Chillers and Thrillers: The Fiction of Fear. These “everyday horrors” continue, in many cases, to appear in horror fiction, literary, cinematographic, and otherwise.

Saturday, January 26, 2008

Everyday Horrors: Gargoyles

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

Designed as rainspouts, gargoyles are grotesque, often demonic, figures. Their name derives from a French word, gargouille, meaning “gullet,” an onomatopoeia word derived in mimicry of the gargling sound that water makes in the throat. Frequently, rain washed through the figures’ throats and is poured away from the sides of the buildings--usually, cathedrals--upon which they are mounted. There are also chimeras, which are the same as gargoyles except that they fulfill a purely decorative purpose and do not carry rainwater. Architectural and religious features since ancient times, gargoyles were used in Egypt, Greece, and Rome, although most people associate gargoyles with medieval cathedrals. Notre Dame is a famous example. In the United States, the Washington National Cathedral, in the nation’s capitol, is festooned with the grotesque figures, one of which is a likeness of Darth Vader. Princeton’s and several other Ivy League universities’ buildings also include gargoyles as part of their architecture.

Historians vary in their interpretation as to the meaning of these odd figures. Some believe that they were intended to ward off evil, whereas others think that they may have been intended to remind the faithful of the fate of the unrepentant sinner. After all, they were never carved inside the church. They were always perched outside, under eaves or ledges, exiled, as it were, from the fellowship of the faithful, much as Cain’s descendent, Grendel, was exiled from the fellowship of Danish warriors. The gargoyle was an outcast, a pariah. As such, gargoyles could have symbolized damned souls, pressed into labor by God, despite their wickedness, and made to serve the church in their ignominious role as waterspouts.

According to an article concerning “The Gargoyles of Princeton University,” still another theory as to the meaning of gargoyles considered them to be the representations of evil spirits that had been overthrown by the Christian church. They were said to have frozen in stone as they fled from the church. Princeton’s gargoyles, this article explains, symbolize a variety of ideas. One, a blindfolded reader holding an open book in his hands, represents “opening the eyes of those who seek understanding and casting aside the obstructions of prejudice.” However, the article’s author adds, tongue in cheek, “symbolism aside, this figure evokes sympathy from anyone who has ever picked up a book and not understood a word of it.” Another gargoyle, a monkey with a camera, is said to represent “academic endeavor”: he is “playing with technology beyond his understanding,” but the use of which he may learn. Other gargoyles and chimeras on the university’s campus also have an educational spirit, so to speak, and include a flute player, a chained dragon, a football runner, Benjamin Franklin, a dinosaur head, a monkey clown, a literate ape, a man with an open mouth, a goblin with a shell, the head of a football player, the head of a soldier, and a couple taking a joy ride in their automobile.

Like many of the Princeton gargoyles, those who inhabit the exterior surfaces of the Washington Cathedral tend to be humorous rather than somber in spirit. Many represent technological marvels, such as the computer, the astronaut, and robots. Others are depictions of stylized animals, usually of the domesticated rather than the wild variety, or objects from popular culture. One of the more popular of these figures is the one that represents the Star Wars villain, Darth Vader, who was chosen in a nationwide contest, in 1980, in which schoolchildren competed to select designs for the church’s west towers. (Other winners were a raccoon, a girl with pigtails and braces, and a big-tooth man with an umbrella.) The National Cathedral provides a self-guided tour for those who are interested in spotting their gargoyles; one is advised to bring binoculars. The buildings in many cities beside Washington, D. C., also feature gargoyles. The grotesque figures can be seen peering down from ledges, arches, eaves, and other exterior building locations in New York, Boston, Chicago, and elsewhere.

Many of the gargoyles that decorate (?) the Cathedral of Notre Dame are animals. Others are human faces or heads. It may be that the gargoyles of Notre Dame and other Christian cathedrals were also tools of religious conversion. As “Historical Base for Gargoyles” points out, Pope Gregory encouraged St. Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo, in Africa, to establish the Catholic faith among the local pagan people by substituting Christian for pagan images and icons, allowing the converts to adjust to their newfound faith slowly as they transferred their devotion to their own religious objects and convictions to those of the church: “"Destroy the idol. Purify the temples with holy water. Set relics there, and let them become temples of the true God. So the people will have no need to change their place of concourse, and, where of old they were wont to sacrifice cattle to demons, thither let them continue to resort on the day of the saint to where the Church is dedicated, and slay their beasts, no longer as a sacrifice but for social meal in honor of Him whom they now worship.” In addition, the images and statues, including the gargoyles, were the visual means of communicating theological truths to the illiterate laity. Times have changed, however, and even the fiercest of these grotesque creatures no longer frightens. In fact, the Notre Dame gargoyles are now available as coloring book images!


“Everyday Horrors: Gargoyles” is the first in a series of “everyday horrors” that will be featured on Chillers and Thrillers: The Fiction of Fear. These “everyday horrors” continue, in many cases, to appear in horror fiction, literary, cinematographic, and otherwise.

Friday, January 4, 2008

The Horror of Time and Place

copyright 2007 by Gary L. Pullman



The setting of a story is the time, the place, and the cultural milieu in which the narrative's action occurs, and, as such, a setting indicates what a given author (and his or her loyal readers) finds frightening or horrifying. A horror story that's set in the slums of a big city, for example, is apt to feature a monster altogether different from a horror story that's set in a rural area of patchwork farmland or in a small town. What frightens Stephen King, in Bangor, Maine, may not frighten Dean Koontz, in Newport Beach, California. Similarly, what concerns a writer at an earlier age may not concern him or her at a later age, as is clear in the career of Koontz, whose earlier fiction was all about monsters and whose later, more "mature," fiction is more and more about serial killers. His antagonists may be more mundane, but, for the same reason, they're also more believable. Likewise, with Stephen King: his earlier fiction concerned supernatural or paranormal villains who invade or attack small towns. His later fiction is, increasingly, about the interrelationships among adults, as in Bag of Bones and Lisey’s Story, or about one character's development and transformation, as in Rose Madder or The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. Lately, both Koontz and King have introduced religious themes in their work as well, most clearly, perhaps in The Taking (Koontz) and Desperation (King). In some cases, at least, their stories’ settings have changed to reflect these changes in their themes. Both have become farther ranging in their fiction, both literally and figuratively, or thematically.

Often, a horror story's setting is isolated. It's isolated for several reasons. First, a remote location intensifies the horror and the fear. A distant, lonely setting frames the action because it separates what is presented in the story from the ordinary events of the larger, mundane world, thereby accentuating them. An isolated setting focuses the reader's attention on what is happening here and nowhere else. At the hands (or word processor) of a skilled writer, such a setting can become downright claustrophobic. Second, a remote setting makes the characters in the story entirely responsible for their own actions. What they do will save them or damn them. They have to gain the knowledge and have the wits, the pluck, and the determination to rescue themselves, to destroy the monster, and to set things right. No one else is going to help them. No one else is going to save them. The remote setting leaves it up to them, and them alone, to save the day. Third, a remote setting isolates the story's characters from the rest of humanity--from culture and history and science and technology and medicine and food and everything else that society and civilization have developed over years and centuries of cooperative interaction. The characters have no recourse to, and no support from, the infrastructure, so to speak, of shared attitudes, beliefs, ideas, and values upon which their society and human civilization itself depend. They're returned to the "state of nature" that so troubles Thomas Hobbes (and Thomas Jefferson).

Of course, some horror fiction takes place in big cities, such as New York, which are far from being far from the maddening crowd. Such settings allow horror writers to identify and to delineate the horrors of such environments, and the monsters that attack the characters in such stories may represent some of the real-life problems that residents of metro- and megalopolises face every day: drug trafficking and addiction, prostitution and the spread of venereal disease, smog, criminal assault, rape, murder, and so forth. A vampire loose in the Big Apple may want to suck the citizenry's confidence in themselves and their fellow men and women as much as he or she wants to suck their lifeblood--in fact, such trust may be their lifeblood.

Anyone who's ever lived in a small town knows how much the residents tend to be, on one hand, nosy enough to keep their neighbors under pretty much constant and continuous surveillance while, on the other hand, exercising an apathy about them that is, in some ways, deeper and more prevalent than the indifference that city slickers are said to display toward one another. It is only those who've never dwelled in Bug Tussle or who are truly naive who might mistake small town residents' superficial friendliness for genuine affection and concern. No (true) story brings home this message more clearly, perhaps, than that of Ed Gein, the man upon whom Psycho's Norman Bates, Texas Chainsaw Massacre's Leatherface, and Silence of the Lambs' Buffalo Bill are based. A dependent personality who was brainwashed by his mother, a religious fanatic, to believe that women are evil seductresses intent upon ruining the lives of men and securing the eternal damnation of their souls, Gein was lost when his mother died, leaving him to fend for himself on the isolated farm on which he lived near Plainfield, Wisconsin. Despite several occasions during which Gein acted more than a little odd (saying, for example, that a missing woman wasn't really missing but was "hanging out" at his house--gutted like a deer, as it turns out), Gein's neighbors showed no real interest in him, despite his having lived in Plainfield most of his life. A theme becomes clear in watching or reading biographies of the man who murdered women and robbed female corpses from their graves, wearing their flesh and body parts as masks and costumes: his monstrosity was due, in part, to the apathy of the community in which he lived. (Such indifference has become a theme of writers such as H. P. Lovecraft and Dean Koontz.)

To determine what is considered horrible to people, consider the time and the place in which horror stories are set. The theme, often, will offer a clue as to what the people of such times, in such places, feared. There's a reason that King Kong, a gigantic gorilla discovered on an uncharted island that time forgot, terrifies New Yorkers, just as there's a reason that, of all the places on the planet that he could have attacked, Godzilla chose to assault Tokyo, Japan with his radioactive breath. There's a reason, too, that Freddy Kreuger attacks adolescent boys and girls in their sleep and that babysitters are often beset by stalkers. Likewise, scientific laboratories scared Mary Shelley and H. G. Wells, who lived during a time when scientists increasingly began to think that, through applied science--technology, in other words--they could become as gods, ruling the universe. High schools are places of horror for the ostracized and ignored, as Carrie shows us, and, yes, the hills have eyes.

Paranormal vs. Supernatural: What’s the Diff?

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

Sometimes, in demonstrating how to brainstorm about an essay topic, selecting horror movies, I ask students to name the titles of as many such movies as spring to mind (seldom a difficult feat for them, as the genre remains quite popular among young adults). Then, I ask them to identify the monster, or threat--the antagonist, to use the proper terminology--that appears in each of the films they have named. Again, this is usually a quick and easy task. Finally, I ask them to group the films’ adversaries into one of three possible categories: natural, paranormal, or supernatural. This is where the fun begins.

It’s a simple enough matter, usually, to identify the threats which fall under the “natural” label, especially after I supply my students with the scientific definition of “nature”: everything that exists as either matter or energy (which are, of course, the same thing, in different forms--in other words, the universe itself. The supernatural is anything which falls outside, or is beyond, the universe: God, angels, demons, and the like, if they exist. Mad scientists, mutant cannibals (and just plain cannibals), serial killers, and such are examples of natural threats. So far, so simple.

What about borderline creatures, though? Are vampires, werewolves, and zombies, for example, natural or supernatural? And what about Freddy Krueger? In fact, what does the word “paranormal” mean, anyway? If the universe is nature and anything outside or beyond the universe is supernatural, where does the paranormal fit into the scheme of things?

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word “paranormal,” formed of the prefix “para,” meaning alongside, and “normal,” meaning “conforming to common standards, usual,” was coined in 1920. The American Heritage Dictionary defines “paranormal” to mean “beyond the range of normal experience or scientific explanation.” In other words, the paranormal is not supernatural--it is not outside or beyond the universe; it is natural, but, at the present, at least, inexplicable, which is to say that science cannot yet explain its nature. The same dictionary offers, as examples of paranormal phenomena, telepathy and “a medium’s paranormal powers.”

Wikipedia offers a few other examples of such phenomena or of paranormal sciences, including the percentages of the American population which, according to a Gallup poll, believes in each phenomenon, shown here in parentheses: psychic or spiritual healing (54), extrasensory perception (ESP) (50), ghosts (42), demons (41), extraterrestrials (33), clairvoyance and prophecy (32), communication with the dead (28), astrology (28), witchcraft (26), reincarnation (25), and channeling (15); 36 percent believe in telepathy.

As can be seen from this list, which includes demons, ghosts, and witches along with psychics and extraterrestrials, there is a confusion as to which phenomena and which individuals belong to the paranormal and which belong to the supernatural categories. This confusion, I believe, results from the scientism of our age, which makes it fashionable for people who fancy themselves intelligent and educated to dismiss whatever cannot be explained scientifically or, if such phenomena cannot be entirely rejected, to classify them as as-yet inexplicable natural phenomena. That way, the existence of a supernatural realm need not be admitted or even entertained. Scientists tend to be materialists, believing that the real consists only of the twofold unity of matter and energy, not dualists who believe that there is both the material (matter and energy) and the spiritual, or supernatural. If so, everything that was once regarded as having been supernatural will be regarded (if it cannot be dismissed) as paranormal and, maybe, if and when it is explained by science, as natural. Indeed, Sigmund Freud sought to explain even God as but a natural--and in Freud’s opinion, an obsolete--phenomenon.

Meanwhile, among skeptics, there is an ongoing campaign to eliminate the paranormal by explaining them as products of ignorance, misunderstanding, or deceit. Ridicule is also a tactic that skeptics sometimes employ in this campaign. For example, The Skeptics’ Dictionary contends that the perception of some “events” as being of a paranormal nature may be attributed to “ignorance or magical thinking.” The dictionary is equally suspicious of each individual phenomenon or “paranormal science” as well. Concerning psychics’ alleged ability to discern future events, for example, The Skeptic’s Dictionary quotes Jay Leno (“How come you never see a headline like 'Psychic Wins Lottery'?”), following with a number of similar observations:

Psychics don't rely on psychics to warn them of impending disasters. Psychics don't predict their own deaths or diseases. They go to the dentist like the rest of us. They're as surprised and disturbed as the rest of us when they have to call a plumber or an electrician to fix some defect at home. Their planes are delayed without their being able to anticipate the delays. If they want to know something about Abraham Lincoln, they go to the library; they don't try to talk to Abe's spirit. In short, psychics live by the known laws of nature except when they are playing the psychic game with people.
In An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural, James Randi, a magician who exercises a skeptical attitude toward all things alleged to be paranormal or supernatural, takes issue with the notion of such phenomena as well, often employing the same arguments and rhetorical strategies as The Skeptic’s Dictionary.

In short, the difference between the paranormal and the supernatural lies in whether one is a materialist, believing in only the existence of matter and energy, or a dualist, believing in the existence of both matter and energy and spirit. If one maintains a belief in the reality of the spiritual, he or she will classify such entities as angels, demons, ghosts, gods, vampires, and other threats of a spiritual nature as supernatural, rather than paranormal, phenomena. He or she may also include witches (because, although they are human, they are empowered by the devil, who is himself a supernatural entity) and other natural threats that are energized, so to speak, by a power that transcends nature and is, as such, outside or beyond the universe. Otherwise, one is likely to reject the supernatural as a category altogether, identifying every inexplicable phenomenon as paranormal, whether it is dark matter or a teenage werewolf. Indeed, some scientists dedicate at least part of their time to debunking allegedly paranormal phenomena, explaining what natural conditions or processes may explain them, as the author of The Serpent and the Rainbow explains the creation of zombies by voodoo priests.

Based upon my recent reading of Tzvetan Todorov's The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to the Fantastic, I add the following addendum to this essay.

According to Todorov:

The fantastic. . . lasts only as long as a certain hesitation [in deciding] whether or not what they [the reader and the protagonist] perceive derives from "reality" as it exists in the common opinion. . . . If he [the reader] decides that the laws of reality remain intact and permit an explanation of the phenomena described, we can say that the work belongs to the another genre [than the fantastic]: the uncanny. If, on the contrary, he decides that new laws of nature must be entertained to account for the phenomena, we enter the genre of the marvelous (The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, 41).
Todorov further differentiates these two categories by characterizing the uncanny as “the supernatural explained” and the marvelous as “the supernatural accepted” (41-42).

Interestingly, the prejudice against even the possibility of the supernatural’s existence which is implicit in the designation of natural versus paranormal phenomena, which excludes any consideration of the supernatural, suggests that there are no marvelous phenomena; instead, there can be only the uncanny. Consequently, for those who subscribe to this view, the fantastic itself no longer exists in this scheme, for the fantastic depends, as Todorov points out, upon the tension of indecision concerning to which category an incident belongs, the natural or the supernatural. The paranormal is understood, by those who posit it, in lieu of the supernatural, as the natural as yet unexplained.

And now, back to a fate worse than death: grading students’ papers.

My Cup of Blood

Anyone who becomes an aficionado of anything tends, eventually, to develop criteria for elements or features of the person, place, or thing of whom or which he or she has become enamored. Horror fiction--admittedly not everyone’s cuppa blood--is no different (okay, maybe it’s a little different): it, too, appeals to different fans, each for reasons of his or her own. Of course, in general, book reviews, the flyleaves of novels, and movie trailers suggest what many, maybe even most, readers of a particular type of fiction enjoy, but, right here, right now, I’m talking more specifically--one might say, even more eccentrically. In other words, I’m talking what I happen to like, without assuming (assuming makes an “ass” of “u” and “me”) that you also like the same. It’s entirely possible that you will; on the other hand, it’s entirely likely that you won’t.

Anyway, this is what I happen to like in horror fiction:

Small-town settings in which I get to know the townspeople, both the good, the bad, and the ugly. For this reason alone, I’m a sucker for most of Stephen King’s novels. Most of them, from 'Salem's Lot to Under the Dome, are set in small towns that are peopled by the good, the bad, and the ugly. Part of the appeal here, granted, is the sense of community that such settings entail.

Isolated settings, such as caves, desert wastelands, islands, mountaintops, space, swamps, where characters are cut off from civilization and culture and must survive and thrive or die on their own, without assistance, by their wits and other personal resources. Many are the examples of such novels and screenplays, but Alien, The Shining, The Descent, Desperation, and The Island of Dr. Moreau, are some of the ones that come readily to mind.

Total institutions as settings. Camps, hospitals, military installations, nursing homes, prisons, resorts, spaceships, and other worlds unto themselves are examples of such settings, and Sleepaway Camp, Coma, The Green Mile, and Aliens are some of the novels or films that take place in such settings.

Anecdotal scenes--in other words, short scenes that showcase a character--usually, an unusual, even eccentric, character. Both Dean Koontz and the dynamic duo, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, excel at this, so I keep reading their series (although Koontz’s canine companions frequently--indeed, almost always--annoy, as does his relentless optimism).

Atmosphere, mood, and tone. Here, King is king, but so is Bentley Little. In the use of description to terrorize and horrify, both are masters of the craft.

A bit of erotica (okay, okay, sex--are you satisfied?), often of the unusual variety. Sex sells, and, yes, sex whets my reader’s appetite. Bentley Little is the go-to guy for this spicy ingredient, although Koontz has done a bit of seasoning with this spice, too, in such novels as Lightning and Demon Seed (and, some say, Hung).

Believable characters. Stephen King, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, and Dan Simmons are great at creating characters that stick to readers’ ribs.

Innovation. Bram Stoker demonstrates it, especially in his short story “Dracula’s Guest,” as does H. P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Shirley Jackson, and a host of other, mostly classical, horror novelists and short story writers. For an example, check out my post on Stoker’s story, which is a real stoker, to be sure. Stephen King shows innovation, too, in ‘Salem’s Lot, The Shining, It, and other novels. One might even argue that Dean Koontz’s something-for-everyone, cross-genre writing is innovative; he seems to have been one of the first, if not the first, to pen such tales.

Technique. Check out Frank Peretti’s use of maps and his allusions to the senses in Monster; my post on this very topic is worth a look, if I do say so myself, which, of course, I do. Opening chapters that accomplish a multitude of narrative purposes (not usually all at once, but successively) are attractive, too, and Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child are as good as anyone, and better than many, at this art.

A connective universe--a mythos, if you will, such as both H. P. Lovecraft and Stephen King, and, to a lesser extent, Dean Koontz, Bentley Little, and even Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child have created through the use of recurring settings, characters, themes, and other elements of fiction.

A lack of pretentiousness. Dean Koontz has it, as do Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, Bentley Little, and (to some extent, although he has become condescending and self-indulgent of late, Stephen King); unfortunately, both Dan Simmons and Robert McCammon have become too self-important in their later works, Simmons almost to the point of becoming unreadable. Come on, people, you’re writing about monsters--you should be humble.

Longevity. Writers who have been around for a while usually get better, Stephen King, Dan Simmons, and Robert McCammon excepted.

Pacing. Neither too fast nor too slow. Dean Koontz is good, maybe the best, here, of contemporary horror writers.


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