HoL Book Club | Part 1 (Front matter, back cover, dedication, flap copy)

Tags

book challenge, book club, books, gothic fiction, HoL, house of leaves, literature, mark z danielewski

After a lengthy hiatus, I have decided to make a return to blogging. What pulls me out of my prolonged absence is a cocktail of slightly unpleasant things that life has thrown at me this week. Thursday especially was a pretty nasty bastard, I’ll have you know.

Here are the ingredients, in case you should want to emulate my Poe-esque misery:

• Add two parts arctic ‘Beast of the East’, by standing out in the freezing cold for 50 minutes. You are not allowed a coat, and should stay there in the whipping rain until your marrow aches with pain, you can’t feel your ears and your nose is dripping like a broken tap.
• This, along with one parts of fatigue, will ferment to produce influenza-like symptoms quite nicely, with a pinch of voice loss to kick-start the whole thing. Fever, in the form of so many Shelobs will insert their pincer-like legs into your shoulders and neck, and if you are lucky, the small of your spine will also host a little succubus intent of riding the hell out of you indefinitely.
• By day 3, your voice has completely gone, or it alternates between a foghorn and the squeak of a teenage boy on the cusp of manhood. It is important that you are bedridden and mentally ‘crawling up the walls’ (a la The Yellow Wallpaper). This means you will do ANYTHING to combat the boredom within and without.
• Day 4 gifts the afflicted with an unbearable itch that pulsates like gamma rays from the INSIDE of ones forehead, just behind the eyes. I call this the ‘Clockwork Orange’ effect. It is okay to want to claw your eyes out, but to no avail. As a bonus, within the ears there is further movement that can only be described as something out of The Wasp Factory. Yes, wasps. Angry ones. In your head. Buzzing. Itching. And no way to itch it…
• Day 5 and you have to do something or you are going to go fairly insane… you are ill, you are missing World Book Day at school (the only time of year that is worth being a teacher at a school), everything you eat tastes like sawdust (oranges mostly). And if that is not enough, there is the grim approach of your 35th birthday, along with the thought of ‘what am I doing with my life?’ What is a girl to do?

So it is with all moments of productiveness, that are spurred on by desperation I find, that something comes to the rescue: The House of Leaves Book Club!

I thought to myself ‘why not?’ After all, it’s been 11 years since I entered that formidable htnirybal House on Ash Tree Lane, 11 years since I experienced quite literally the most powerful piece of fiction I have ever come across. I liked the fact that MZD planned this so close to his birthday, which is close to mine. I liked that it was a gargantuan project (once you fall into the house, there is no coming back out). In short, it felt like fate.

I’m never on time for book clubs, but this one started yesterday. Those taking part should be reading between the dates of 26th February and 3rd March the following:

• Front matter, back cover
• The dedication
• Flap copy

Now, since most people will have different editions (some coloured, some not) you will have to adjust what you read. Since I’ve gone through this monstrosity before and lived to tell the tale, for me it’ll be like entering the Overlook Hotel after Johnny went mental and the place was abandoned for years.

For those who have never read HoL but heard about it, the experience is a completely unique. There isn’t a novel like it, and I liken it to the mad genius of Brett Easton Ellis’ American Psycho, where the novel has a life, will and consciousness (rather a ‘lack of’ of its own).

Those of you who have ever watched Stranger Things, will appreciate how Danielewski takes and uses the many tropes of horror fiction and makes it a thing entirely its own. Where there is the ‘underverse’ in Stranger Things, there is the also the monstrous labyrinth in the house.

FIRST-TIMERS WARNING: This is no spoiler, but if you decide to do the read-along, then you will inevitably run into the CODES – these are secret messages embedded in the text/ footnotes/ margins etc. I shall be periodically posting my thoughts about these as I come across them. If you do not know what I mean by this, check out the official FB website, where the madness has already begun with people cross-referencing like mad between the pages: House of Leaves Book Club.

There is also the real madness of the ‘coding’ forums, which can still be found here: Mark Danielewski Forums (caution upon entry is advised… it can get rather too much in there with the info. Spoiler alert…)

So, I’m off to read the bits assigned and will come back to address the all important question that MZD will be posing, which is:

“How does “This is not for you” apply to the book, the reader, and Johnny Truant?”

Is anyone game to read along with me and throw some theories out there?

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Book Review | ‘The Woman in Black’ by Susan Hill

Tags

book review, daphne du maurier, Ghost story, gothic fiction, Haunting of Hill House, Hollywood, jane austen, Shirley Jackson, susan hill

The Woman in Black by Susan Hill

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

“I have sat here at my desk, day after day, night after night, a blank sheet of paper before me, unable to lift my pen, trembling and weeping too.”

This was one of those books that had come to my attention thanks to the Hollywood remake. The visuals in the trailer were fabulously dark and grotesque and held a sort of promise of the type of Gothic we just don’t get to see nowadays. But that was the movie, and I so desperately wanted to see it that I had to first hunt down the book. Which, as you know, is just the weird order in which I do things.

I finally managed to get a copy and settled down to be scared out of my wits by this ‘Jane Austen-esque ghost story‘, but to my disappointment found it very dry in description and wanting in the scare department. Maybe I had far too high an expectation of what is in reality, just a mediocre chilling tale about a vengeful spirit who haunts a remote backwater village.

The basic outline of the story goes like this: The story begins with Arthur Kipps, who begins to write about his terrible, real-life encounter with a ghost during his early days as an up and coming solicitor. He recounts how a business trip sent him to the remote  and forbidden Eel Marsh House to attend the funeral of the late Alice Drablow and complete the menial task of putting her legal papers in order. However, when Kipps asks about the Drablow estate, no one wants to speak about it. A mysterious woman dressed in black with a decaying countenance also seems to haunt him wherever he goes.

When he asks to be taken across the Nine Lives Causeway to the estate, no one is willing to take him, except one man. There in all its wild beauty and agonising splendor he encounters Eel Marsh House, a solitary Gothic mansion, standing alone, proud and teeming with terrible secrets. As he spends his days and nights there, hears the awful bumping sounds from the locked nursery room and witnesses the ghostly screams of a drowned child on the gurgling causeway, he realises he must leave quickly, or risk going mad.

“Whatever was about, whoever I had seen, and heard rocking, and who had passed me by just now, whoever had opened the locked door was not ‘real’. No. But what was ‘real’? At that moment I began to doubt my own reality.”

This had the opportunity to become a great ghost story. It’s just I’m really upset that Susan Hill sinks into the comfort of Victorian descriptions which make it too stuffy and constricting. Language-wise some areas are far too overly done while other parts could have benefited from more visual description.

I loved the idea of an isolated house that stood almost like a lighthouse in the middle of the deadly causeway. The house itself is very scary and the descriptions of it will stay with me for a long time. I almost half wish it existed, like Manderley in ‘Rebecca’ or the mansion in Shirley Jackson‘s ‘The Haunting of Hill House‘. The sounds across the causeway, and the idea that the death of a child is resurrected and replayed there every night in the swirling mists is also very disconcerting.

What I really wanted was a spotlight on the woman in black herself. She takes a back seat when she really shouldn’t. Even the house eclipses her.

I had some discussions with other people and their experience of the book compared to the movie and theatre versions and all have said the same thing: the original story is quite bland. I am hoping to see the stage version of this with a class of mine and hope it’s as good as they say it is! But one thing is for sure, it will be vastly different from the book, because every stage and film production that has been made in the past has taken liberties with the story and changed it dramatically to make it better. More proof that Hill was being a bit economical with her story?

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Book Review | ‘Shadow Dance’ by Angela Carter

Tags

angela carter, Annunciation, Bloody Chamber, book review, Evelyn, gothic fiction, literary fiction, Morris, Nights at the Circus, Passion of New Eve, shadow dance, violence

Shadow Dance by Angela Carter

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

“She was a beautiful girl, a white and golden girl, like moonlight on daisies, a month ago. So he stared at her shattered beauty… ‘She is a burning child, a fiery bud’ said Honeybuzzard, before he knifed her.'”

This is a very strange story about a ghastly nymphet called Ghislaine whose beauty verges on the grotesque even before her face gets slashed to pieces by the equally beautiful and androgynous villain Honeybuzzard. I am beginning to see a common theme in Carter’s particular stance on the nature of feminine beauty in that she loves to concoct her characters as a delirious mix of sexual depravity in virginal garbs.

‘Shadow Dance’ is a complex novel where the sexuality of characters are always suspect. The medusa-like Ghislaine (even her name is a monstrosity that smacks of the absinthe-odoured Lautrec ladies) is presented as an insatiable young woman who is forever scarred after a violent sexual attack cruelly orchestrated by two men; Morris, a nondescript antique-dealer who beneath the thin gloss is basically a failure in life and his flamboyant and dangerous sidekick Honeybuzzard.

“In the flickering blue light, Honey’s long, pale hair and high-held, androgynous face was hard and fine and inhuman; Medusa, marble, terrible… She gaped up, baffled, wondering, like the Virgin in Florentine pictures meeting the beautiful, terrible Angel of the Annunciation.” 

The two men are very unlikely friends and partners in crime, however the thing drawing the two together is the very thing that makes them incompatible: total incongruity of character. Morris is the total opposite of Honeybuzzard. Where he is all shy and retiring, Honeybuzzard is all knives and sharp corners. Like the title suggests, there is a very subtle shadow dance that occurs between these two men, they are both too much of one thing and not enough of another and it is through this need that they come into close proximity and tolerate each others intolerable acts. Even more subtle is the sexual tension between the two and the sense of how they can never truly enact the forbidden sexual desire for one another because they are, in a symbolic sense, each other.

Honeybuzzard and Ghislaine were the most interesting characters and I find Carter is at her best when creating the most outrageous personalities. She really does shine as she makes the most incredible habits credible. Ghislaine’s magnificent entrance at the beginning of the novel and Carters exquisite description of her will stay with me for a long while. It was nice to see the initial workings of ‘The Passion of New Eve‘ in this, her first novel; as I think Ghislaine and Honeybuzzard may have been test versions of the Tristesse and Evelyn to come.

Carter is also a master of jerking sympathy out of her readership for the most absurd of reasons. As poisonous as Ghislaine is, we cannot help feeling horror and shock at her attack by the hands of Morris, who was the one who planted the demonic seed of thought into the impressionable mind of Honeybuzzard. In roundabout ways we can decide for ourselves who was more or less to blame for the events of that night and how the aftermath affects not just the victim, but many other innocent bystanders who have no more than a fleeting acquaintance with the main people involved.

The most amazing thing about ‘Shadow Dance’ has to be the detailed descriptions of various degrees of depravity, whether this be in the state of a house or a relationship. Things are always a little bit tainted in Carter’s world and that’s what gives this a very gothic flavour. Everything is in a certain stage of its’ own undoing and even those who think they have finally captured a rag of relative happiness soon have it cruelly torn from them.

I adore authors who are not afraid to put their characters through their paces, who are brutal and precise if the story demands it. Carter cares very much for her characters, which is why she is so careless with them. They are not wrapped in cotton and protected by events, they live them out for us and brings us ‘the taste of pennies’ on our tongue. It’s always a pleasure to read Carter, for she belongs in the rare gallery of women writers such as du Maurier, Atwood and Morrison, who boldly go where no others have been and eke out new, savage pastures for readers to lose themselves in. They bring with them their own brand of femininity, one that tries to cleanse itself of the barbie-coloured optimism, and allows us to glance at the depths of our forbidden selves for a few therapeutic minutes – at the overwhelming burden of our dark ‘life-giving’ gifts and what this means in its terrifying totality.

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Book Review | ‘Florence and Giles’ by John Harding

Tags

book review, edgar allan poe, florence and giles, gothic fiction, henry james, john harding, literature, peter ackroyd, poe a life cut short, the turn of the screw

Florence and Giles by John Harding

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This was my Hallowe’en read for the year, and I did get rather excited at the prospect of a ‘Poe’ meets ‘The Turn of the Screw‘, but it really wasn’t to be. While the concept is firmly rooted in the Gothic tradition (thanks to it being almost a re-write of the illustrious, aforementioned title by Henry James) it really does lack in the ‘scare factor’ that it so promises on the back cover.

This is the story of Florence and Giles, two orphaned children living with their estranged uncle in a vast, sprawling estate known as Blithe House. However, the name of the house is grossly misleading as nothing about the place is ‘blithe’. It is a cold, forbidding mansion with ancient turrets and a dark history. Florence is our precocious little narrator, and guides us through the ghostly happenings of the place and the strange people who live there.

Besides her quiet, rather innocent brother (who needs protecting most of the time) there is her uncle, a pedantic odd sort of man who much to Florence’s annoyance, forbids her to read. Despite her uncle’s stern request Florence does read and her midnight sojourns to the crumbling library were the most enjoyable parts of the book. A bit of a childhood fantasy come true for me! Another endearing aspect to Florence’s personality is her affection for Shakespeare, which she admires so much that she adopts his ‘word-forgery’. As a result she develops her own take on English, splicing words together to make them seem more dramatic. In some aspects she is uncannily like her uncle, and as the novel progresses is further strengthened to suggest a far closer blood-bond.

However when it comes to the accidental death of the old governess, and the appointment of the new one, I find things get a bit tedious. I could clearly see that the new governess was supposed to be a very scary witch-like character, possibly even a revenant, and Harding almost DID pull it off in a particularly hair-raising sequence, but it was never followed up after that.

Instead there is a ‘twist’, in that we realise that our narrator may not be as reliable as we first thought. For me, the turn of events served to kill the story rather than improve it.

It is a good novel for gothic fiction fans, but those looking fora bit more ‘oomph’ needn’t bother. If you want something like Poe, read Poe. There are really no substitutes for them in my opinion, but having said that I do commend Harding for having a go at it.

If you are interested in Edgar Allen Poe, please read my review on Poe: A Life Cut Short by Peter Ackroyd.

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Book Review | ‘The Doll and Other Stories’ by Daphne Du Maurier

Tags

anime, Beginners, book review, daphne du maurier, Fiction, gothic fiction, japanese, locus solus, Manderley, raymond carver, raymond roussel, rebecca, science fiction, the monk

The Doll Short Stories by Daphne du Maurier

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Here is an early showcase of Du Mauriers’ literary prowess and her interest for certain themes that she would develop later into full length novels. In this little medley of tales one can spot a prototype of ‘Manderley’ house as well as recurrences of the blood-red azaleas that have become synonymous with it (the haunted setting of her most acclaimed novel ‘Rebecca’).

Overall, the stories centre on the varying degrees of sexual degeneration and the disintegration of relationships. These are explored from different angles, be it through the eyes of a prostitute or an emotionally disturbed violinist. I got a sense that as a young writer, Du Maurier understood the value of subtlety, as even her most extreme story mostly hinges on the power of suggestion. As in the fashion of the great gothic novels like ‘The Monk’ nothing is openly described but more or less alluded to.

Surprisingly, most of these were written during the authors younger years when I suppose her sexual curiosity was at its’ peak. But even then she approached her material with a maturity far beyond her years. This was raw talent trying to find its ultimate shape and form on some very sharp and often risqué ideas.

One particular story (and I can’t review without mentioning it) stands out as the most shocking. Nearly all her stories probe the dark recesses of the human psyche in one way or another, but this one tale really had me bewildered with its’ brazen pornographic twist. ‘The Doll’ is a story I can only describe as lurid and bold. It is dripping with sexual immorality and during its’ time must have caused quite a stir, as the immorality stems from a woman. The story is accessed through a fragment of letters discovered washed up on the shore. While the author is unknown, the account is legible enough to be understood, which turns out to be a strange confessional of an ex-lover who reveals one woman’s dark secret and her sickening fetish for a life-like, mechanical doll called Julio.

Now forgive me, but I didn’t know they actually HAD sex dolls back in the late 1800’s, especially ones that functioned. There is something very creepy about the thought of a cultured woman, carrying around this portable boyfriend in her trunk. The idea has a faint science-fictiony feel to it as I am reminded of the Japanese anime ‘Ghost-in-the-Shell: Innocence’, where the plot revolves around a load of ‘gynoids’ (robotic geishas) that suddenly go homicidal. Nothing like that happens here of course, but throughout the anime deep psychological questions were asked about why the dolls were created, and what they really represented outside their obvious functions. Because of this, I actually found myself attempting to relate with the doll as opposed to the other two characters, which as you can imagine made things more disturbing! Another book I should mention(and have not read yet) is ‘Locus Solus’ by Raymond Roussel, a surrealist take on the absurdities of scientific experimentation and the book which inspired a big part of the anime in question.

But I digress. As I read ’The Doll’, I got the feeling that this was evidence of Du Maurier playing in the sandbox of her ideas. There is an experimental quality to each story, but recurring characters like Maisie the prostitute shows she definitely had something in mind. It is also here that one can see early sketches of her now infamous Rebecca. If you like this book I recommend Raymond Carvers ‘Beginners’ for further reading, which is far sharper and more modern.

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Book Review | ‘The Angel’s Game’ by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Tags

Barcelona, book review, carlos ruiz zafon, edgar allan poe, gothic fiction, House of Usher, Jorge Luis Borges, Library of Babel, Shadow of the Wind, the angel's game

The Angel’s Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“I stepped into the bookshop and breathed in that perfume of paper and magic that strangely no one had ever thought of bottling.”

From the forbidden vaults of ‘Monk’ Lewis to the forgotten labyrinths of Borgian verse emerges ‘The Angel’s Game’, a sinister tale set in 1930’s Barcelona; a city both blessed and damned by the genius of its literary talent. Loosely following on from ‘Shadow of the Wind’, Zafon revisits old haunts like the antique book-dealer Sempere, Barcelo the publisher and the dangerously alluring ‘Cemetery of Forgotten Books’.

At the heart of this story is David Martin, a young man struggling to make ends meet as a crime-reporter by day and a writer of erotic gothic thrillers by night. With a little help from literary patron Pedro Vidal he soon strikes success with his pulp series ‘City of the Damned’. Martin then decides to become a full-time writer, yet living life by the pen means to have a ‘room of one’s own’, and in Martin’s case this means moving to an abandoned tower in the heart of the city. Driven by his growing fame and his literary aspirations, Martin soon begins to lose track of reality. An impending sense of doom begins to creep upon him as the macabre creations that populate his stories begin to show up in real life.

Meanwhile, a letter from enigmatic publisher Andreas Corelli begins a diabolical cycle of events that seem to involve Martin on a level beyond the physical realm, as he comes with an offer that Martin cannot refuse. Andreas Corelli, with his expensive stationary curiously embossed with angels and his devilish charm, wants Martin to write a book to surpass all books; a tome ‘with the power to change hearts and minds’. In return Martin will earn a fortune, and possibly more. But as he begins his undertaking, the shadows of the haunted tower stalk him and they begin to reveal a terrible history that was played out years ago within the walls of the mansion.

I love Zafon’s Barcelona. I say ‘his’, because it is so very different from any other version I have had the pleasure of reading. As a lover of old-fashioned Gothic, I revelled in the sepia-tinted landscapes and decayed, baroque buildings that evoked the bittersweet, naphthalene aroma of nostalgia. Another thing I cannot resist is a book about the terrible power and beauty of books; and that is exactly what rests at the heart of ‘The Angel’s Game’. As in ‘Shadow of the Wind’, Zafon yet again represents Barcelona as a city preoccupied with urban myths which in this novel, veers towards notions of bibliomancy.The characters in the novel (be they main or simply bit-part players) are all beautifully developed. I found myself liking all of them, even the ‘bad’ ones. But upon finishing it I discovered that the real hero here was simply and purely ‘books’, who throughout the story demand and conspire to be brought forth into the world through very innovative ways. In this way the Borgian influence is very apparent, as is the Poe-esque ‘The House of Usher’ flavouring he adds to the architecture. Zafon’s flirtation with Borgian metaphysics comes in the form of an homage by way of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books; a grotesque, cavernous labyrinthine library that one may gain admittance only through recommendation. Readers of Borges will recognise this structure and all its horror from his short story ‘The Library of Babel’ (to read, click on the link).

In short this novel is a bibliophile’s heaven. But anyone who has read ‘The Shadow of the Wind’ will also know of the secret pact one must agree to if they enter the cemetery, and the bad luck that ensues when one ventures to take out a book from the maw of that malicious place.

“As I walked, I ran my fingers along the spines of hundreds of books. I let myself be imbued with the smell, with the light that filtered through the cracks or from the glass lanterns that embedded in the wooden structure, floating among mirrors and shadows.”

What I also like about this story is how Zafon concentrates on a time when the written word still had a magical potency to bless or damn its author. This is a story of intricate secrets, where books are not simply of ink and paper, but are voracious, sentient beings with the capacity to cannibalise both master and reader. In Zafon’s world, books have more than one story to tell. As surely as there is a sub-text to every text, what I call the ‘world within a world’ or the whisper in the shout; there is also another more important story being playing out between each and every person that touches the cover of a single book. It is this personal history of the creation and career of these objects as they are launched into the world that forms the overarching narrative that continues until it is destroyed. The Cemetery of Forgotten Books guards against this literary death, and it is here that Martin witnesses what the cemetery really is: a morgue of human thought.

“Every book has a soul, the soul of the person who wrote it and the soul of those who read it and dream about it.”

However beautifully the plot was crafted and presented, I found this slightly lacking from ‘The Shadow of the Wind’, which earned a 5/5. Zafon tends to leave a few loose-ends to some sub-plots which, while it didn’t detract from the overall story, did annoy me a little. These little imperfections together with its’ ending (which was a bit anti-climatic) meant I couldn’t give it a full house. But all the same, fans of ‘The Shadow of the Wind’ will enjoy revisiting these old places and characters once more. In fact I felt a certain déjà vu in some places, as I remembered similar scenes being played out in ‘The Shadow of the Wind’. It gave me a weird sensation, as if I were watching two films at once. It’s the best experience of dramatic irony I have ever HAD!

I hope Zafon continues to spin tales based around Barcelona, especially if it includes the cemetery of forgotten books. Who is Sempere? Why does he damn people by introducing them to that awful place? And more importantly, what is the history of that awful place? Too many questions. I just hope Zafon can provide us with the answers.

View all my reviews

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Quick Review | ‘Poe: A Life Cut Short’ by Peter Ackroyd

Tags

biography, book review, edgar allan poe, gothic fiction, literature, peter ackroyd, poe a life cut short, Rufus Wilmot Griswold

Poe: A Life Cut Short by Peter Ackroyd

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Anyone interested in the life of Poe will be aware of the tremendous hype surrounding his death. It is a fact that he died in a state of delirium, and was found in this state only a week after he had cheerfully waved goodbye to his aunt from a steamboat bound from Richmond to Baltimore. This was the last sighting of Poe until he was found dying six days later in a dirty tavern. What happened during that missing week is a complete mystery; one that is just as confounding as his tales of ‘ratiocination’ or detective fiction. Ackroyd’s short but succinct biography of this enigmatic literary figure begins with his death and the scant facts of his final days on earth.

As an author of the perverse and the macabre, Poe’s literary legacy has somehow managed to pervade all aspects of his life, and this is something Ackroyd explores without falling into the trap of sensationalism. But having said this, there were certain themes that ‘haunted’ Poe which Ackroyd looks at in great detail. Poverty, death from consumption, loneliness and abandonment were some of Poe’s most destructive and constant companions; demons that rode his back and coloured his outlook on life. As an orphan, Poe always yearned for love in the way of literary recognition. Acceptance by the masses was to be his vanity; which sadly pointed to a very deep and forlorn void stemmed by the women in his life; or a lack of them.

“Be silent in that solitude
           Which is not loneliness, for then
The spirits of the dead who stood
           In life before thee are again
In death around thee, and their will
          Shall overshadow thee: be still.”

Ackroyd deftly highlights in a straightforward manner how all these elements combined to produce Poe’s most extraordinary tales of terror and the suppressed psyche. Through them, Ackroyd explores the varying stages of Poe’s mental and psychological health, which unfortunately were always in a state of painful flux. If he was ecstatic and full of hope one minute, he would be found floundering in the pits of despair the next. Ackroyd doesn’t state as much, but he gives the impression that Poe might have been a manic-depressive or even bipolar. But it was probably his alcoholism that condemned him mockery by his literary peers and kept him from the fame that he so despaired for. Ackroyd documents how Poe struggled to keep a job down due to his binge-drinking and lost some very prestigious positions because of his unpredictable nature. In fact, drink was a common demon to the Poe family, as a letter by William (a cousin) shows.

“William Poe also wished to caution his cousin against that ‘which has been a great enemy to our family.’ The enemy was of course, a ‘too free use of the Bottle’. The Bottle was the demon of the Poes.”

But despite the negativity, Ackroyd also states Poe’s achievements. He was for one, a great critic who had an innate understanding of real art. He was a perfectionist, and it was often this sensitivity to beauty and an aggressive intolerance for anything short of it that earned him many enemies. Ackroyd describes how his reviews were often scathing, bordering on personal attacks. In ‘Poe: A Life Cut Short’ Ackroyd tries hard to present Poe as a more rounded personality. His loves were all-consuming and full of sacrifice; his hate was also much the same; and his financial state did not hinder him from saying exactly what was on his mind. His most famous disagreement to date is probably with Rufus Griswold, who abhorred him so much that after Poe died, he published a false memoir which stated all sorts of defamatory allegations against the deceased. Much to my relief, Ackroyd sensibly ignores this aspect of Poe’s life (again, too much hype), but does make a statement that very neatly sums up the actions of Griswold:

“Poe had met Griswold two years before, and they had circled each other in mutual suspicion masked by professional admiration. Griswold had succeeded Poe at Graham’s Magazine, where he had gained a reputation for literary chicanery. But the publication of his anthology in 1842 brought him a measure of success. Poe was ambivalent, describing it as ‘a most outrageous humbug’ to a private correspondent while lauding it in print as ‘the most important addition which our literature has had for many years received.’ The protestation was not enough. When a wholly and sarcastically negative review appeared in the Saturday Museum, Griswold assumed (wrongly, as it happened) that Poe had composed it. The there came Poe’s animadversions upon the book in his series of lectures. But Griswold eventually had his revenge. After Poe’s death he would be responsible for the most lethal character assassination in the history of American literature.”

This probably illustrates the reason why Ackroyd found it wise to steer clear of this episode (as interesting as it is). He acknowledges the fact, but does not allow it to take over and give birth to half-baked theories and gossip about Poe’s death that have found root over the years. A ‘character assassination’ it definitely was, but Ackroyd also makes it clear that Poe was no angel during his time as editor of various journals and magazines. For one, he reveals that Poe regularly wrote ‘spoofs’ or ‘hoaxes’ that were soon found out to be nothing but lies. These little events did not go in his favour, and reflected badly on his status as a credible editor.

Overall, I think this biography did a good job in weeding out the ‘gossip’ from the ‘facts’ surrounding Poe’s life. Ackroyd is an academic writer, and I appreciated his sensitivity in what went into the account and what was left out. The best thing about it is that Ackroyd allows the reader to make up their own mind about Poe. There is a very clear relationship between his life and his works and Ackroyd gets this just right. His account is not overdone with quotations which neatly side-steps the path to sentimentalism. After reading this I realised that Poe was a difficult man to pin down. The accounts of him vary from being as ‘unstable as water’, a ‘characterless character’ to being ‘the merest shell of a man’. Those who loved him commented on his deep intellect and his way with words. I think Ackroyd sums it up very well when he states that:

“Like a salamander he could only live in fire. But the fire was often started by himself. He stumbled from one passionate outburst to the next. He hardly seemed to know himself at all, but relied upon the power of impassioned words to create his identity.”

While alive, Poe’s words were constantly used against him. He was mocked and ridiculed, only because he had mocked and ridiculed others (a sign of starting the fire himself in many ways). But it was only after the death of this orphan, when only his words were left that he finally found his identity.

“Tennyson described him as ‘the most original genius that America has produced’, worthy to stand beside Catallus and Heine. Thomas Hardy considered him to be ‘the first to realise in full the possibility of the English language’… The science fiction works of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells are heavily indebted to him, and Arthur Conan Doyle paid tribute to Poe’s mastery of the detective genre… The orphan, in the end, found his true family.”

View all my reviews

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Famous Quotes | Edgar Allan Poe

Tags

edgar allan poe, gothic fiction, peter ackroyd

Edgar Allan Poe (January 19 1809 – October 7 1849)
The father of detective fiction and probably the first proper ‘Goth’ of modern literature. He was known for his stories of mystery and the macabre.

Calling all emo-goths, Tim Burton fans and general lovers of kohl-rimmed eyes and dark, dark clothing; a round of applause please because our next ‘Famous Quotes’ author is none other than Edgar Allan Poe. Here is the original ‘man of melacholy’ letters. Let’s face it, Hallowe’en just isn’t the same without him. I’m a bit upset that I missed the anniversary of his death (it would have been VERY fitting to have posted this 18 days ago) but you can’t have everything. So here I am gearing up for Hallowe’en by reading up a little on Poe’s dramatic life through Peter Ackroyd’s ‘Poe: A Life Cut Short’. Even though I’m halfway through it, I got a strong sense that although Poe was born under a lucky literary star, he was always sabotaged by his demons, his vanity and his circumstances. Like most great writers, Poe was way ahead of his time; and unfortunately people only truly appreciated his work after his death.

In honour of Poe and all Gothic fiction here are some brilliant quotes from the master of the macabre.

“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”

“Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.”

“I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.”

“I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active – not more happy – nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.”

“I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat.”

“If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.”

“It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future existence, we shall look upon what we think our present existence, as a dream.”

“The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?”

“They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.”

“Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.”

“Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence– whether much that is glorious– whether all that is profound– does not spring from disease of thought– from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect.”

“I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom.” 

“Never to suffer would never to have been blessed.” 

Probably the most curious quote out of all of these is the one about the cat. I would love to know exactly what he meant by it.

Book Review | ‘Disquiet’ – Julia Leigh

Tags

book review, disquiet, gothic fiction, Jack Torrance, julia leigh, Shining

Olivia arrives at her ancestral home. She brings with her two children, a broken heart, wounds from an abusive marriage and many, many regrets. This is her final attempt at putting right the wrongs in her life, by returning to the bosom of the great gothic mansion she once fled from, and to accept the familial fate of being buried amongst the inherited whispers and pregnant silences of those dark hallways. Unknown to Olivia, her brother Marcus and his wife Sophie also arrive with their newborn child… and a terrible tragedy that will test everyone…

“The earth is thriving… The child’s life is – done.
The child is no longer suffering.
She will remain in your thoughts.
I do not believe in any soul, God is not the mystery…”

Julia Leigh‘s stark but haunting story of a doomed dynasty explores the key elements of the traditional Gothic novel. The brooding presence of a mansion is the key setting where themes of life and death within families are studied in their extremities. The grief of a young mother who brings home her dead daughter is probably the most disturbing example of the quiet, inward delirium that Leigh takes to examining with each character. Her husbands’ blatant infidelity manages to tip the scales of bitterness and adds insult to injury after the long, tedious treatments she endured to become pregnant. The grandmother, silent and graceful is portrayed as the last stronghold that her wayward offspring have in terms of getting back to normality. She stands as the final tether that binds the younger generation to their past, and the death of the infant tests everyone’s resolve in moving forward.

The way families cope with death is as unique as a fingerprint. There might be time-honoured rituals and traditions when it comes to letting go of a loved one, making that transition easier, or there might not be; which is most often the case. Here, the family begin with their traditions, but are met with the moving yet irksome maternal instincts of Sophie. What unfolds is a series of strange rites that spiral more and more towards the unnatural, as finally Sophie yields to the reality of her decomposing baby, and allows the child to be buried.

While reading this short book, I often felt that Leigh was trying to make a statement about how people make the decision to let go of their past. Olivia’s disastrous marriage portrays a woman caught between wanting to put her past behind her, yet unable to because of her children. Their existence is an eternal proof and tie to the humiliation she has had to suffer. The life that came forth from her marriage is the real contract that tethers her to her past. Sophie on the other hand is suffering the opposite – her baby Alice is the one she somehow cannot bear to bury. Laying Alice to rest means laying her dreams to rest, dreams of reconciling with her cheating husband.

Although this is a fairly short novel of 117 pages, each character has been properly developed. The house itself is wonderfully constructed, and at moments reminds me of Stephen King’s The Shining, which probably owes to the topiaries and the family discord, though there is no inkling of a Jack Torrance in sight. Leigh’s muted prose casts an enigmatic spell. I felt haunted by the deep, raging emotions that were kept hidden by the various family members. Yet there were moments in the dialogue that woke me and cut me to the quick with its crystal clarity. ‘Disquiet’ is a very apt title for this book.

I give this 3/5 stars. Well worth a read.

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