Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts

Thursday, July 1, 2021

Ethical and Metaphysical Implications of Supernatural Villains

 Copyright 2021 by Gary L. Pullman

 
 Twisted Tales series. Source: Amazon

Like all other genres of fiction, the literature of horror, a type of fantasy, expresses philosophical implications about the way its characters view the world, even if their Weltanschauung is not altogether clear to them.


 Witches' Sabbath by Francisco Goya. Source: Wikipedia.

The existence of a supernatural antagonist, or villain, posits the existence of  supernatural, or spiritual, dimension of existence as well as a natural order of being, both a supernatural world and a natural world.

 God as Architect by anonymous. Source: Wikipedia

In a story in which such a dualistic metaphysics exists, a supernatural villain is, by origin or nature, as its powers or abilities confirm, linked to a realm that transcends the natural world. Such beings are beyond the universe, outside nature. Therefore, they are also beyond human ken, outside human knowledge and understanding. Supernatural entities are mysterious, which tends to heighten our fear of them; the unknown is always especially frightening when it appears to have a threatening aspect, as, of course, villains, human or otherwise, do.

 
 St. Francis Borgia Helping a Dying Impenitent by Francisco Goya. Source: Wikipedia

The question arises as to whether an audience whose members disbelieve in the existence of a supernatural order (and, therefore, of course, supernatural antagonists) can experience fear while watching a movie such as, say, The Exorcist, the villain of which is a demon (or, maybe, the devil himself), A Nightmare on Elm Street, which features a supernatural bogeyman, or Poltergeist, the antagonist of which is a not-so-friendly ghost. Of course, the same question also applies to any movie that posits the existence of a vampire, a werewolf, a witch, or any other supernatural villain.


 Source: Gallup.

As far as I know, no one has conducted a study, or even a poll, concerning this particular question, although, in 2005, Gallp conducted a few polls concerning whether or not Americans believe in various supernatural (and paranormal) beings, with the results well under half. (However, the poll seems flawed, since it includes "aliens," which, should they be discovered to exist, would be entirely natural beings, not supernatural entities, since "nature" constitutes the entire universe and everything in it, which is why we say that God, a supernatural being, for example, is transcendent to, or beyond, nature and, in fact, in many religious traditions, created the universe.)

Detail from The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch. Source: Wikipedia Commons 

However, based on a thoughtful thread of posts on Religious Forums, materialists (those who believe that the universe and all things in it are material and that spirits, souls, and the like do not exist except as imaginary or metaphorical constructs) are likely to experience a continuum of feelings, from a lack of fear altogether to terror, when they come across a villain the likes of the devil, Freddy Krueger, or a poltergeist, whether or they believe such villains exist--or can exist.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Source: ardhendude.blogspot.com

 For example, Mister Silver seems to employ the strategy of "a willing suspension of disbelief" suggested by the great English romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, accepting the existence of the supernatural in a horror story or movie simply for the sake of enjoying the fiction: "Through my materialism I can understand the difference between fantasy and reality enough for me to enjoy the fantasy for that which it is; merely fantasy created for the purpose of entertainment."

Zener cards. Source: Wikipedia

Jumi follows a tactic that is more prevalent among today's skeptical materialists: "You're in luck, materialism itself doesn't rule out strange phenomenon from existing. It just doesn't actively promote these ideas. The materialistic Soviet Union had multiple researchers study paranormal phenomena in hopes of finding something useful to further the materialist dialectic.

The problem with this approach, in general, is that it is often based on a confusion of the supernatural with the paranormal. Materialism, by definition, does rule out the supernatural. The universe is nature; therefore, anything that is held to transcend nature, to be "outside" the universe (e. g., God, angels, demons) or wields supernatural power (e. g., performs miracles or magic or otherwise defies natural [or, as we call them today, scientific laws]) would be supernatural and, therefore, in materialists' view, impossible, because nonexistent. However, paranormal phenomena are possible, perhaps, if, by "paranormal," we mean simply natural beings, properties, or powers of natural origin that ares imply not known or understood through science or reason. For example, if extra-sensory perception does exist, but it is simply inexplicable in terms of present-day science or reason, then it is possible; it may even be actual. Until it can be explained, however, it remains merely a possibility, but a possibility, nonetheless. Jumi's statement, therefore, seems to be related more to the possibility of paranormal phenomena, rather than to the possibility of supernatural facts and events.

In either case, either Coleridge's "willing suspension of disbelief" strategy or the more fashionable recognition of the possible existence of paranormal, but not supernatural, phenomena can allow materialists to enjoy, and even, perhaps, be scared by, the literature and drama of horror.


 

Tuesday, June 23, 2020

Eros by Ralph Waldo Emerson: Analysis and Commentary

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

 
The sense of the world is short,
Long and various the report,—
To love and be beloved;
Men and gods have not outlearned it,
And how oft soe'er they've turned it,
'Tis not to be improved.

Eros” is a love poem of sorts or, one might say, a meditation on love itself, since Eros is the Greek god of sexual, or erotic, love. The first two lines of the poem present a problem, as it were; the remaining lines provide the solution to that problem.

The problem is that life is short, and it’s meaning is uncertain. “The sense of the world”its perception, the smell and the taste and the feeling and the sound and the sight of the worldis short,” the speaker laments, lasting, in most cases, far less than a century. In addition to the brevity of life, the meaning of existence is unclear, although the interpretation of its possible significance is as “long and various” as art, philosophy, and religion can make it.


To the problem of the shortness and uncertainty of life, the speaker offers a solution: “To love and be beloved,” he declares, is an adventure that has defied the learning of both 'men and gods,'” and represents something that, no matter how much it is studied, analyzed, or considered, is “not to be improved.”

The love of which the speaker speaks, as the title of the poem indicates, is physical, or sexual, loveerotic love. It is fitting that the remedy that the speaker suggestssensual loveis physical, just as the organs by which life itself is perceived are physical. Human beings know the world through their eyes, noses, skin, ears, and tongues. Likewise, through their bodies—or, more specifically, through their sexual organsthey may experience somethinglovethat is not only meaningful in itself but that has both physical and spiritual dimensions, thereby transcending the merely material world that is, in itself, all too short and uncertain. The same body that perceives a short and uncertain life in the material world within which it exists can, in becoming the vehicle for sex and love, give life a meaning that, derived from physical organs, is, nevertheless, spiritual in its essence, thereby providing a means of transcending the merely material, or animal, basis of existence and experience.



Tuesday, March 10, 2020

Religious and Scientific Accounts of Sex Demons

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman


In Eros and Evil, R. E. L. Masters theorizes that the accounts of sex with demons that women often provided during medieval witchcraft trials, frequently while they were undergoing torture, included sexual practices that, until fairly recently, were considered unnatural and perverse. Indeed, Masters further suggests, contemporary pornography provides a release by which many of today's sexually repressed readers find release for their own pent-up passions.


For writers who enjoy offering their readers a choice as to whether the supposedly supernatural events in their stories actually are supernatural or are really nothing more than unusual natural events, science offers some ideas as to how some apparently supernatural events may be explained in rational, natural, or scientific terms; at the same time, however, readers who believe that there may be a supernatural order of existence transcendent to this world (or universe) also have recourse to the supernatural explanation of the same events.


For example, sex demons appear in several films and in a few written works (poems, short stories, and novels) as well. Incubi (singular “incubus”) are male demons who have sex with human females (or who could do so, at least); succubi or succubae (singular “succubus”) are female demons who have sex with human males (or who could do so, at least).


In The Woman's Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects, Barbara G. Walker traces the origin of incubi to the feminization of the demonic among ancient Greeks, suggesting that incubi represent “men's fears of sexual inadequacy, since the demons were said to give [women] more pleasure than their husbands did” (241). Originally, incubi were “priests” who presided over the “womb chamber” with which each temple was equipped. By spending the night in this chamber, “people in search of enlightenment or healing could 'incubate' . . . in anticipation of a spiritual rebirth or vision.” When Christianity became the dominant religion in the Middle East and elsewhere, these priests were transformed into “incubi,” or “demons who seduced women” (260).


A well-known example of an incubus is the entity, who appears in The Entity.


A familiar instance of a succubus is the woman whom Jack Torrance (The Shining) sees in a suite of the Overlook Hotel. However, many other films and books include sex demons, especially those of the succubus type. (Hollie Horror lists many movies featuring sex demons of both varieties, complete with posters, plot summaries, and trailers.)


Mark Blanton's art often depicts incubi, in the form known to ancient Greeks as satyrs, engaged in activities with mortal women of a nature that, in today's parlance, would definitely be considered not safe for work (NSFW).


Lilith
The Greek myths of satyrs, he said, were examples of incubi. Such sex demons can be considered to be fallen angels who mate with mortal women. This view might have developed from an account of such a creature in The Epic of Gilgamesh and from the Biblical reference to “giants in the earth,” who were thought, by St. Augustine, to have been the offspring of incubi (the fallen “sons of God”) and mortal women (“the daughters of men”). Also, in Jewish folklore, Adam's first wife, Lilith, became a succubus after leaving Adam, and then had intercourse with the archangel Samael. “The daughters of Lilith,” Walker says, were “interpreted as demonic succubae.”


Thomas Aquinas and Augustine

St. Thomas Aquinas, however, disagrees with Augustine on this point, holding that such sex demons merely “assumed” bodies and used sperm that they had collected from men with whom they'd previously had intercourse as incubi to fertilize women to whom they appeared as succubi. (Yes, demon sex is complicated!)


Science offers a different explanation for such sex demons. Both the incubi and the succubi, according to the scientific view, might be caused by sleep paralysis, and, in men, nocturnal emissions may suggest the sexual component of the delusion.

The Skeptic's Dictionary offers a summary of sleep paralysis and how the condition might inspire a belief in one's having been visited by a sex demon (or, for that matter, extraterrestrials):

The condition is characterized by being unable to move or speak. It is often associated with a feeling that there is some sort of presence, a feeling which often arouses fear but is also accompanied by an inability to cry out. The paralysis may last only a few seconds. The experience may involve visual, auditory, or tactile hallucinations. The description of the symptoms of sleep paralysis is similar to the description many alien abductees give in recounting their abduction experiences. Sleep paralysis is thought by some to account for not only many alien abduction delusions, but also ghost sightings and delusions involving paranormal or supernatural experiences (e. g., incubus and succubus).

By allowing the possibility of a natural and a supernatural explanation for the same bizarre phenomenon and leaving it to their readers to decide on the explanation they prefer, horror writers can let their readers have their sex demon or their hallucination, as they see fit, and, at the same time, enrich the possibilities for their stories, resting assured that the sex demons (and their behavior) are both strange and horrific, whatever the explanation a reader adopts.


(By the way, Tzvetan Todorov offers an insightful discussion of these alternative sources of explanation, the scientific, or natural, and the supernatural, but uses the terms “uncanny” for phenomena that are explained scientifically and the term “marvelous for phenomena that are explained with recourse to the supernatural. Phenomena that cannot be resolved as either uncanny or marvelous, he says, remain “fantastic.”)

Sunday, March 8, 2020

A Literary Critic Offers Some Tips for Writing Powerful Horror Stories, Part II

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman


In Shock Value; How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror (2011), Jason Zinoman offers some insights concerning John Carpenter's 1978 film Halloween.


Jason Zinoman

The movie is an example of what I refer to as an invasion movie, which I define as the invasion of an idyllic community by a corrupting, external evil (think, as a prototype, The Garden of Eden): “Halloween begins,” Zinoman writes, “with a decidedly normal, safe environment, an idyllic middle-class suburb” (178). During the course of the movie, this “familiar” setting and its “ordinary” character “turns into something ambiguous, confusing, and repulsive,” as “middle-class suburbia is [shown to be] the home of unexplainable evil” (208). However, the suburbs is not the only familiar and ordinary environment in such movies; others include “the beach, the hospital, the bedroom, the prom, the highway,” and “right next door” (208).


At the beginning of the movie, the camera views the action from the perspective of “the predator,” as the audience sees what the invisible intruder sees, but the point of view then alternates back and forth, between “the predator” and the “victim” (180). To differentiate the audience from the killer, the director, John Carpenter, shows them the killer's “knife,” which “reminds us that our perspective,” as members of the audience, “is not the same as that of the killer” (180).


Zinoman provides a couple of theories as to why female characters are more often victimized (and killed) than are their male counterparts, including the greater perceived vulnerability of female characters and the established tradition of the presence of a damsel in distress.


The pleasures of horror are more masochistic than sadistic,” he claims (181), which may be another reason for the tendency of horror movies to feature female characters as their victims. By identifying with the film's victims, rather than with its predator, the audience vicariously becomes victims themselves; if they are males, it would seem (although Zinoman does not say this) that they are also, to some extent, feminized, seeing female surrogates of themselves as vulnerable, weak, ineffective, and helpless. However, viewers, male and female alike, presumably, would also learn, through the survival of the so-called Final Girl, that young women can also be survivors, provided that they possess the personality traits it takes to go toe-to-toe with a monster and win.

Zinoman seems more interested in the nature (or lack thereof) of modern monsters than he does in the implied feminization of male audience members. He contrasts monsters past with monsters present. The former, he suggests, was “a stand-in for some anxiety, political, social, or cultural,” but the latter represent something else entirely.


For example, Zinoman contends, “[Michael] Myers doesn't represent anything . . . Myers doesn't represent the cold calculus of scientific progress or a religious conception of evil” (181), the two sources, traditionally, that are used to explain the monstrous. In the past, the monster has usually been a freak of nature (giant ants or a hostile extraterrestrial life form) (or a freak of the scientific lab [Frankenstein's monster or Mr. Hyde] or a freak, as it were, of the supernatural [the devil or a vampire).


The “New Horror” that was spawned by the likes of Dan O'Bannon, John Carpenter, Wes Craven, Tobe Hooper, William Friedkin, and others, on the other hand, is the face of nothingness. Myers is “defined,” Zinoman says, by “the absence of meaning”; it is “by emptying out all the details from the character [that] Carpenter” creates a monster that contains nothing, a monster of the void, who acts without meaning, without purpose, and “has no motive” (182-183).

Although Zinoman often provides food for thought, he is, at times, a bit Emersonian in his tantalizing vagueness and fails to follow up on some of his intriguing insights, such as the effects of sadism as a perspective and, indeed, a technique of the cinema and his insight that the presence of female characters as victims may tend to feminize male members of the audience. Both ideas are stimulating and rich in possibilities, but they are largely undeveloped. Nevertheless, after Shock Value, readers won't be the same moviegoers they were before they encountered Zinoman's highly interesting and suggestive study of “New Horror.”

Saturday, March 7, 2020

A Literary Critic Offers Some Tips for Writing Powerful Horror Stories

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman


In Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror, Jason Zinoman offers some interesting, although rather dated, observations: the book was published in 2011. Many of his observations could serve as guidelines to apprentices who are interested in writing a horror novel (or movie).


Jason Zinoman

For instance, Zinoman, in discussing Rosemary's Baby, points out that the film is “about issues that people could relate to—the nervousness of entering the real estate market; struggling in a faltering, sexless marriage; and the yearning, desperate search for fame (11-12). In fact, he says, the movie is “about the perils of domesticity” (14).


In addition, Zinoman declares, Roman Polanski “made the movie strictly from Rosemary's perspective and maintained that it must always be possible for “all the supernatural elements on it to be a series of coincidences” (21), so that “the suspense hinges on finding out whether the bizarre things happening . . . are real or the product of delusion” (21).


Throughout Shock Value, Zinoman insists that the cause of the bizarre incidents is best left unexplained and emphasizes the unseen, offstage incident as preferable to the seen, onstage incident in maintaining suspense. In fact, “in addition to the virtue of the unknown, the setting of an indistinct mood, and . . . rooting the magical or supernatural in a palpable realism” are “powerful ideas” (63).


Initially, horror movies were viewed as providing the audience with a catharsis (76), which 'assumes the audience identifies with the victims,” but Alfred Hitchcock helped to revolutionize this accepted view of the nature of horror films when he put “the audience on side of the killer in Psycho and repeatedly in the position of the voyeur.”


This twist causes the audience to identify “with killers,” rather than with their victims. As a result, it has been argued, this shift in perspective no longer allowed a catharsis for viewers; instead, it allowed “audiences to express their repressed sinful thoughts through the monster” (77). The monster became a surrogate scapegoat upon whom viewers could project their own lusts for violence, blood, murder, and mayhem. The movies, once masochistic, became sadistic (77).


Due to his upbringing in a home in which a strict evangelical faith was practiced, Wes Craven was more sensitive to “the allure of self-sacrifice” than many other filmmakers, Zinoman suggests. Craven understood that churchgoers went to church “not merely” to escape “pain,” but also to heroically “confront it,” which provided them a sense of “triumph” over evil (77). A horror movie could provide the same sort of experience, vicariously, for “a secular audience looking for the pleasure of masochism” (77).


Zinoman cites several films that accomplish just this task. Writing of The Last House on the Left, he states:

In a godless world without redemption [this film] . . . includes no struggle with faith. instead, senseless evil inspires just more senseless evil, adding up to a nihilism that invites no happy endings (79).


Religion and horror are alike, the author suggests: both induce feelings of “awe” as people are “shocked by their own helplessness,” but religion and horror differ by how they handle people's experience of awe: “religion helps you cope with this feeling. Horror exploits it” (92)

From Zinoman's observations, we can derive these story-writing tips:

  • Make sure that the readers (or audience) can relate to the “issues” with which the story is concerned.
  • Tell the story (or film the movie) from the main character's point of view.
  • Maintain the possibility of both a natural and a supernatural explanation for the “bizarre” incidents that occur in the story.
  • If a story is intended to evoke readers' or viewers' masochistic interests, focus on the main character's point of view; if the story is meant to arouse readers' or viewers' sadistic impulses, focus on the monster's perspective.
  • After challenging the protagonist's faith, a religious story is apt to restore it through self-sacrifice that leads to redemption; a secular story is likely to end in nihilism, represented by anarchy and chaos.
  • Whether a story is religious or secular in nature, it should maintain the possibility of either a natural interpretation or a supernatural explanation.

Zinoman also has some intriguing insights concerning John Carpenter's Halloween, but we'll save them for a future post.


Tuesday, September 24, 2019

From Complacency to Narcissism

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman


For a while, Hollywood milked extraterrestrial creatures as its “other” of the day. Their appearance alone suggested that these alien creatures were not like us. They were huge, gelatinous blobs. They were strange mermen from beyond the stars (or from the bottom of a black lagoon.) They were macrocephlic humanoids with green skin or gray-skinned humanoids with phallic heads. They were crawling eyes. They absorbed prey; devoured prey; and, if their quarry were women, mated with prey.


Something unexpected might bring these otherworldly monsters to their knees. The Blob couldn't stand cold temperatures. The green, big-headed saucer men couldn't bear the bright beams of automobile headlights. Bullets take out the creature from the black lagoon. If there's a theme here, it seems to be that, despite appearances, these otherworldly creatures aren't so tough after all; ordinary, everyday things—cold, headlights, bullets—are too much for them to handle. Sure, such threats may look dangerous, but appearances can be deceiving.

Horror horrifies, until it isn't so horrible, after all, and what makes it not so horrible after all is everydayness. The ordinary deflates, destroys, and dispatches the horrific. We weren't really in much danger, after all. The “otherness” of the other turns out to be not so much different from us, after all; indeed, if anything, we prove more adaptable, more innovative, more powerful—in a word, superior.

That, if anything, was the theme of the movies of the fifties.

What about the themes of the tens—the 2010s?


According to one interpretation, Pathos (2009), set in a dystopian future world in which thought is prohibited and people depend upon artificial intelligence and virtual reality for not only their pleasure, but also their own personal experiences and identities, is a satire concerning consumerism taken to extremes.


Although existentialism suggests that human nature does not exist, but is, instead, created by each individual according to his or her exercise of free will, Loophole (2109) takes something of a Cartesian point of view, suggesting that to be human is to be violent. Instead of Descartes's dictum, “I think; therefore, I am,” Loophole implies, “I am violent; therefore, I am.” According to a film review, these philosophical implications also have religious significance:

Suddenly, mass hysteria takes hold across the major cities of America as people are tested and marked with or without.  In a matter of days, the beginning of a New World Order takes the stage and, quite unexpectedly, we find ourselves in the middle of a Biblical battle that has long been dormant.

For some, the progress of the plot may seem to evangelistic; others are likely to enjoy the movie's religious dimensions.

Two films don't nearly constitute a representative sample, of course, but these movies, alt least, suggest that at least some of the films of the 2010s turn inward for their subject matter, focusing on the eternal questions related to being human: what is human nature and how do human beings fit into the larger scheme of things?


Older sci fi-horror movies were concerned with departures from the status quo: could such deviations endanger the community or even the world? If we lost our place in the grand scheme of things, what would become of us, as individuals? The comforting answer lay in the very everydayness that the extraterrestrial threats threatened. The threats to the existing order were no match for customary, the habitual, the traditional, the routine of people's routine, day-to-day lives.

More recent sci fi-horror films, in part, at least, return to a questioning of the age-old problems of philosophy and religion: human identity, human nature, the human condition, the relationship of the self and other. The eternal quest is undertaken yet again, with the protagonist and the viewer at the center of things; human existence, if not existence-itself, is egocentric. Everything revolves around us; it's all about us. We have gone from complacency to narcissism in only seven decades.


Tuesday, January 11, 2011

William Peter Blatty’s "Dimiter": The Creator and His Creation, or the Mind Beyond Nature

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman



The flyleaf to William Peter Blatty’s novel Dimiter (2010) gives a succinct and intriguing synopsis of the narrative’s basic plot:
Dimiter opens in the world’s most oppressive and isolated totalitarian state: Albania in the 1970s. A prisoner suspected of being an enemy agent is held by state security. An unsettling presence, he maintains an eerie silence though subjected to almost unimaginable torture. He escapes--and on the way to freedom, completes a mysterious mission. The prisoner is [Paul] Dimiter, the American “agent from Hell.”

The scene shifts to Jerusalem, focusing on Hadassah Hospital and a cast of engaging, colorful characters: the brooding Christian Arab police detective, Peter Meral; Dr. Moses Mayo, a troubled but humorous neurologist; Samia, an attractive, sharp-tongued nurse; and assorted American and Israeli functionaries and hospital staff. All become enmeshed in a series of baffling, inexplicable deaths, until events explode in a surprising climax.
The flyleaf also suggests Blatty’s purpose, the novel’s theme being associated with “the sacred search for faith and the truth of the human condition.” Published by Tom Doherty Associates, a Christian house, the book is unlike others of its genre (Christian suspense thrillers) in that it not only contains some profanities, but it also examines faith itself in both a reverential and a skeptical, sometimes ironic, manner.


Blatty, of course, is also the author of The Exorcist, a novel that still excites interest among members of the clergy, philosophers, and theologians and lay readers alike, the latter of whom are perhaps more intrigued by a good, suspenseful, even horrific, story than they are by the finer points of faith and thought.

The author’s theme is reinforced by what, at first, seems but a curious habit: his inclusion of phrases that describe spiritual or psychological qualities within passages which, otherwise objective, are devoted to depicting terrain, flora, and other details of a material environment. Indeed, these subjective notations, so to speak, draw attention to themselves because of their very incongruity as subjective phrases amid objective descriptions.

One such description appears early in the novel, when Blatty is depicting a character’s hunt for a fugitive; I indicate the subjective phrases in bold font, which is not used in Blatty’s novel:
One of the dogs, a ferocious mastiff of enormous muscle and bulk, had been loosed toward a crackling sound in a wood and was later discovered lying still among gold and orange leaves on the forest floor in autumnal light as if fallen asleep and turned away from all yearning. Its neck had been broken. The leader of the force, a young smith named Rako Bey, felt a shadow pass over him at the sight, for he could not grasp the power of a human capable of killing the dog in this way. His breath a white fire on the darkening air, he scanned the wood with narrowed eyes, sifting hawthorn and hazel in search of his fate and seeing nothing but the cloud that is before men’s eyes. The sun was descending. The forest was haunted. Bare branches were icy threats, evil thoughts (14).
Many other passages of the novel also mix subjective descriptions of characters’ psychological or spiritual nature with objective depictions of material existence; the effect, which is surely intentional, is to suggest that, unseen within the materialistic world of nature, the spirit of God, as Creator, is discernable as the vital essence that infuses the world and gives it no only its material existence but also its sacred purpose and its spiritual and supernatural significance. Again, I indicate the subjective phrases in bold font, which is not used in Blatty’s novel:
Vlora’s eyes flicked up. An eerie whipping wind had arisen behind him, softly moaning and thumping at the windowpanes. Uneasy, feeling watched, the Interrogator swiveled his chair around and looked through the windows to the flickering north where thick black clouds were scudding toward the city from the mountains like the angry belief of fanatical hordes, and in a moment they would darken the Square below and its anonymous granite government buildings, the broad streets drearily leading nowhere, and the rain-slick statue of Lenin commanding the empty storefront windows crammed with the ghosts of a million longings, dust, and the dim recollection of hope (46).

The corporal. . . . looked through a window at the rough stone cobbles outside the post where a gust-driven rain spattered back and forth in hesitant, indecisive sweeps like a wispy gray soul just arrived on the empty streets of some afterworld, lost and forlorn (118).

The presence of such subjective phrases among objective descriptions suggests the presence, in nature, of spirit, a theme that the novel expresses subtly, by both this technique of including the subjective, or spiritual, with the objective and material and Blatty’s allusions, through the testimony of peasants to authorities concerning various crimes or other events and the meditations, sermons, and thoughts of religious clerics (some genuine, others counterfeit). For example, in an interview with “Rako Bey, leader of the volunteer force to Quelleza, taken 10 October,” the atheistic inquisitor is offended by his respondent’s reference to “fate” and commands Bey to maintain “propriety”:
Q. And what led you to the house in the first place?
A. Nothing, sir. Grodd was related to the blind man who lived there, but then he is related to most of the village. Nothing led us there, Colonel. It was fate.
Q. Maintain propriety.
A. Sorry sir.
Q. Our fate is in our hands (18).
Later, the interrogator is equally offended by Ligeni Shirqi, during a deposition that is taken “at Quelleza” on “12 October” and, again, orders the respondent to “maintain the proprieties”:
Q. Your door was unlocked?
A. Yes, it was. I heard the knocking and I called out, “Come in, you are welcome.”
Q. You didn’t think it dangerous?
A. Danger is irrelevant. Things are different here. It’s not like below. Had he killed my own children, I had to make him welcome. “I live in the house,” goes the saying, “but the house belongs to the guest and to God.”
Q. There is no God.
A. No, not in the city, perhaps, Colonel Vlora, but right now we are in the mountains and our general impression here is that he exists.
Q. Do maintain the proprieties, Uncle.
A. Does that help?
Q. Only facing reality helps (24).

One might argue, without too much of a stretch, perhaps, that the mountains represent heaven, or faith in God, and that the city “below” represents hell, or unbelief. However, if Shirqi’s references to God are expressions of faith, they would seem to indicate that his faith is empty and mechanical, rather than authentic and zealous, for her tells his interrogator that such references are but “formulas of grace that we observe” (25).

Throughout the novel, Blatty juxtaposes evidence for faith with listeners’ (and speakers’) reactions to such evidence; usually, the reactions are skeptical or hostile, and behavior that seems truly to be inspired by genuine faith, such as Dimiter’s stoic resistance to his torture and the miracles that take place in Jerusalem and elsewhere, terrify, rather than edify, their witnesses. If God does exist, the characters of Dimiter seem to believe, he must be a Judge to be feared, rather than a loving Father to be adored.

However, officially, it is the contention of Colonel Vlora and his fellow atheistic authorities that “there is no God” and that human conduct is autonomous. It is perhaps because of their atheistic humanism that genuine religious faith, as seen in the stoic acceptance of his suffering on Dimiter’s part, terrify Vlora, causing him to insist that others “maintain the proprieties” of unbelief.

The miracles that occur in the instantaneous healings of several of the patients at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital also mystify and unsettle the skeptical Jew, Dr. Moses Mayo. The neurologist questions Samia, a nurse, concerning her claim to have witnessed a patient, Mrs. Lakhme, “recently crippled by a fractured hip,” walking--and looking far younger than her advanced age--but he is unable, even in the face of such testimony, to believe that such a miracle implies the existence of God:

Mayo’s gaze fixed dubiously on the crimson Star of David stitched onto her oversized starched white cap. His quest for unwavering faith in her accounts had been less than heroically advanced by the fact that he knew her to be a neurotic as well as a courageously innovative tester of the outermost limits of paranoia (83).
Ironically, the novel’s theme (the presence of God, the Creator, is implied by his creation) is perhaps best expressed by a Muslim cleric who, hoping to secure intelligence from Dimiter, poses as a Christian priest who, himself a prisoner, shares Dimiter’s cell and, ostensibly, his own alleged faith in God, preaching a sermon of sorts based upon the teleological argument:

“Before the Big Bang,” he started preaching to the cell, “the entire universe was a point of zero size and infinite weight. Then the point exploded, creating space and, with it, time and its twin, disorder. And yet for our cosmos to come into existence the force of that primordial outward explosion needed to match the force of gravity with the accuracy you would need for a bullet to hit a one-inch target on the opposite side of the observable universe thirteen billion light-years away” (49).
Although it would seem that the counterfeit priest’s argument from design should be convincing enough to unbiased minds, it is, ironically enough, received with the same lack of enthusiasm as is evidenced by Colonel Vlora or, for that matter, Dr. Mayo: “A fist lashed out from the darkness, striking the priest on his cheekbone with the crunching sound of gristle and flesh. ‘I told you I wanted to sleep!’ snarled an angry, deep male voice” (49).

It is not Blatty’s mere use of personifications to indicate the presence of a Mind beyond nature and of a Creator transcendent to his creation that startles the reader, but the way that the author’s subjective descriptions appear in these passages of his novel, as if they are natural, normal, and expected parts of an otherwise objective depiction of a materialistic universe. One might expect such descriptions in the pantheistic or polytheistic writings of ancient storytellers, but they are more than surprising in the pages of a modern novelist’s novel; they are startling and astonishing, testifying of the omniscient narrator’s own apparent faith. For him, as, perhaps, for Blatty himself, there seems to be little doubt, despite all his characters’ doubts, that “the search for faith and the truths of the human condition” with which the novel is concerned will end triumphantly.

Friday, June 11, 2010

The Vanishing: Why Theme Matters

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman


A horror novel does not hang entirely upon the explanation of the horror, perhaps, but a good amount of readers’ satisfaction (or lack thereof) does hinge upon a satisfactory account of the horrific incidents or events that transpire during the course of the story. By satisfactory, I mean satisfying, and, by satisfying, I mean that the explanation is both feasible and integral to the action for which it is the account. It is not simply tacked on, as if it were an afterthought, to bring the narrative to a convenient conclusion. It is not a deus ex machina.

As both critics and readers have pointed out, Bentley Little’s novels too often end in such a manner, without rhyme or reason. This has happened, followed by that, for two or three hundred pages, for little enough (if any) reason, and that is, too often, enough for Little. The story is the important thing, and he has entertained his readers; a theme is of no real importance. Such seems to be the point of view of writers such as Little and, indeed, his unofficial mentor, Stephen King (who labels Little “the poet laureate of horror”).

Theme, however, does matter to most readers, writers, and critics. (One suspects that it matters to King, too, if not to his unofficial protégé, because King’s novels and short stories typically do suggest relatively important lessons.) Perhaps themes matter less to Little because fiction that doesn’t challenge or enlarge one’s understanding or tolerance or perspective or sympathy is much easier to write than fiction that does do so.

Unfortunately, although Little’s fiction frequently entertains, it seldom edifies. He often raises some important issues and, more importantly, perhaps, questions, but, because he is seldom, if ever, concerned with such matters as unity and cohesion and the logic of his plot is rarely rigorous, these issues and questions go largely unaddressed. The Vanishing is no exception.

After tantalizing readers with his insightful suggestion that perverse sexuality implies the decadence of human nature out of which such distorted impulses arise, while implying, at the same time, that religious faith (perhaps because it is mired in the same perverted nature), fails to remedy such impulses or to redeem the souls from which they arise, Little ignores these lines of development. Although horror stories frequently depend upon misdirection, which is generally effected through situational irony, such bait-and-switch tactics are usually narrative, seldom thematic, having to do with action rather than the meaning of the story as a whole. Instead of following his own suggested train of thought--that the perverted nature of human beings cannot be rectified through religious redemption or salvation (because, it may be, their very faith is also tainted by their sinful nature), Little turns his could-have been, should-have-been theological story into an ecological one, with the monstrous, Yeti-like creatures who menace the humans (with whom they also fornicate to preserve their corrupt stock), seeking, native American-like, to defend their territory, from encroaching civilization and its pollution of the environment:

“. . . Something Phillip Emmons said last night stuck with me: ‘They slaughtered invaders in order to preserve and defend the vanishing wilderness in which they lived. It was a protective measure.’ When I was doing my research at the library this morning, I looked at everything through that lens, and I have to admit, it made a kind of weird sense. What if whoever--or whatever--is left of this dying breed is trying to fight back, retake the land that was stolen from them, come out from whatever small corner of the wilderness they’ve been pushed into and strike against the now dominant species that stole their spot on the food chain: us?”

He looked at her skeptically. “So we’re involved in some kind of ecological horror story?’

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the forest grew back the day--the day--after the last stand of old growth trees was cut down.”

“Not only that,” she added. “Besides their money, what do Lew and Stephen Stewart and all those other men have in common? Oil, gas, construction, development, real estate. They all make money off the land, through its exploitation or the theft of its natural resources. Sure some of them give back and do good and try top help others, but that’s only because deep inside they feel guilty and know they’ve done wrong.”

“So what are you saying? That they’re killing their own families and committing suicide in order to stop themselves from drilling for oil or building more homes? That’s pretty ridiculous.”

[Readers will doubtlessly agree with this sentiment, at least.]

“. . . When cities expand and encroach on wilderness areas, the animals that live there are either removed or exterminated, forced to coexist or, as is usually the case, pushed even farther out into whatever open country remains. Why should this be any different? Besides, the defense and pursuit of land has caused even more wars than religion.”

“So we’re at war?”

“Aren’t we?” (337-338)
The reference to religion at the end of the novel is entirely too late and too weak to ennoble Little’s ecological theme, however widespread and wholesale his characters may consider the rape of the land and the consequent suffering of its furry denizens. In writing The Vanishing, Little could have given his readers a novel worth reading, akin to King’s Desperation. Instead, “the poet laureate of horror” delivers a mangled tale worthier of M. Night Shyamalan than Little’s own unofficial mentor.

It’s a shame to see talent as great as Little’s go to waste.

Sunday, May 30, 2010

Religious Fundamentalism Is Not the Answer in "The Vanishing"

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman


In a previous post, I addressed Bentley Little’s thematic use of aberrant sexuality in The Vanishing, observing that he employs it in this novel for the same purpose as he does in his others: it expresses and represents the degenerate nature of the men and women who engage in it. I concluded that, in Little’s fiction, sexual debauchery suggests that men and women, separated not only from God and nature, but also from any sense of moral decency or even decorum, are haunted, or even possessed, by an idolatrous sensuality and a demonic sexual deviance and that, regardless of the shapes and appearances of the monsters in Little’s novels, sexual perversion--or, rather, what it symbolizes--the moral degeneracy that issues from the godlessness and idolatry of modern, secular society--is the true demon about which he writes, the nature of the human beast, unclothed by cultural pretenses and rhetorical rationalizations.

However, Little has no evangelical mission. He seeks not to proselytize. He wishes to make no converts to traditional Christian faith, in either its Roman Catholic or its Protestant versions. Indeed, Little appears to have serious misgivings about Christian faith as it is interpreted and practiced by both Roman Catholics and Protestants. His omniscient narrator makes this clear in such comments as these:

. . . “Reverend Charles asked about you the other day.”

“Really?” he said noncommittally.

“He knows you’re a writer and thought you might help us out with our letter-writing campaign. The school board refused to allow science teachers in the district to talk about creationism or intelligent design. We’re trying to get that changed.”

“Mom. . .”

“Don’t worry. I told him you wouldn’t be interested.”

“Yeah, you’re right. They should be teaching religion at school and leave the controversial stuff like science for the parents to teach their kids at home.”

“Don’t you start blasphemin’ with me.”

. . . His mom had always been religious, but she’d never been nutty. He wasn’t sure that was still true. . . .

. . . Disbelief in evolution was no longer just a fringe viewpoint. An antiintellectual [sic], anti-science attitude no seemed to hold sway over vast sections of the country (17-18).

After characterizing Christians as irrational, if not insane, Little suggests that their holy book is unsatisfactory as a guide to anthropology, using myths to explain away, rather than to explain, mysteries of nature:

It was a graveyard unlike any they had ever seen, not least for the fact that the graves had been big enough to accommodate giants. . . . and footprints led away from the pit through the muddy soil, monstrous footprints that were not only four times the size of an ordinary man’s but resembled those of neither animal nor human.

. . . And how had the one giant come back to life and emerged from the grave?

“There were giants in the earth in those days,” Morgan James said, quoting the Bible as if that explained everything.

Of course, it explained nothing . . . (129).

Next, the author implies that Christians are stubborn and prefer to attribute impossibilities to God rather than to accept the possibility that bizarre phenomena may contradict their faith in the order and intelligibility of the universe and the rule of an omnipotent and omniscient creator, behavior that an agnostic character sees as fanatical:

. . . in this new land they were encountering phenomena no civilized man had ever seen. But the religious among them took this to mean that God Himself was intervening on their journey, performing miracles, scourging the land of evil, and for the rest of their trip they had prayed and proselytized to the point where [sic] Alf Thomas raised his hands to the sky and yelled, “God, if you’re up there, strike these” men “mute so I don’t have to listen to their. . . voices any more.! Do. . . it. . . right. . . now!” When nothing happened, he turned to Emily Smith and her group of fanatics and said, “See? Either God is dead or He doesn’t exist. Now shut the hell up!”

But of course they didn’t (131).

Many other passages depict Christians in an unfavorable light, such as this one, that implies believers’ trust is both absurd and inadvisable, if not, indeed potentially fatal:

So they parted ways after happening upon the well-worn tracks of the Mormon Trail and connecting with another wagon train a few miles up the route. The religious contingent headed west on the California Trail, claiming God would protect them from the winter, though they had been warned by fellow seekers that Donner Pass was inaccessible. The remainder headed northwest along the Oregon Trail. . . (134).
If aberrant sex marks humanity as morally degenerate, their faith (or fundamentalism, mistaken for faith), as Little characterizes it (as irrational, unscientific, fanatical, absurd, and potentially fatal--the Donner party was caught in a blizzard and, when some died of exposure or starvation, the others cannibalized them), depicts them as hopelessly dependent upon a vain and foolish tradition that, far from having any survival value, is not only fantastic and incredible but is also likely to get them killed.

What answer, if any, to the problem of the human predicament, as involving moral degenerates whose faith is absurd and impotent, does Little’s fiction suggest? I’ll save the answer to this question for my next post concerning The Vanishing.

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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