Showing posts with label Faith. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Faith. Show all posts

Sunday, July 11, 2021

Evolution, Psychology, and Horror, Part V

 Copyright 2012 by Gary L. Pullman

 

Note: This post assumes that you have seen the movie The Exorcist (1973). If you have not, Wikipedia offers a fairly detailed, accurate summary of the plot.

 

Results of a 2009 Pew Research Center survey indicate that 33 percent of scientists believe in God; another 18 percent “believe in a universal spirit or higher power.” However, 83 percent of the American populace as a whole believes in God and 12 percent “believe in a universal spirit or higher power.” As far as disbelief is concerned, 41 percent of scientists do “not believe in God or a higher power” and 4 percent of the general public share their view. (A 2017 poll places the number of Americans who "do not believe in any higher power/spiritual force" at 10 percent.)

 

Source: fanpop.com

According to some evolutionary psychologists, faith developed like any other evolved adaptation, or trait: it promotes human survival and reproduction. Faith, proponents of this point of view argue, is comforting, provides community cohesion, and offers a basis for ethics and “higher moral values.” Others regard faith as a spandrel or an expatation, that is, a “by-product of adaptations” that is useful for reinforcing the authority and status of the clergy and for providing emotional support for the faithful in times of trouble. As is true of many of the arguments of evolutionary psychology, these claims are controversial, keeping critics aplenty busy on both sides of the discussion.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/42/59/82/425982ee791c9b7a9f10fa5dada841d9.jpg

Source: pinterest.com

The Exorcist offers a concrete example of faith in action in Father Karras's exorcism of the demon (or demons) who allegedly possess Regan MacNeil.

 


Source: flickriver.com    

The priest's faith may provide some emotional comfort for him, but, it is obvious to the movie's audiences, his faith does not extinguish his feelings of guilt regarding his perceived neglect of his ailing mother, and faith as such offers little immediate comfort or reassurance to any of the other characters, with the possible exception of Father Merrin, who is killed early in the movie.

Although Karras's faith may hold the “community” of Regan's family together, his life as a priest, although it may assist some members of the wider world, seems to offer little benefit to his own life or to that of the Church he serves.

 

Source: pinterest.com

Karras's faith does seem to cause him to judge, condemn, and feel revulsion toward the demons who allegedly possess Regan, and he frequently rebukes them, denouncing their behavior as impious, blasphemous, and sacrilegious, without passing judgment on the girl herself: he hates the sin, not the sinner.


 Source: docuniverse.blogspot.com

Throughout the movie, Karras experiences a crisis of faith. The ordeal that his mother faced during her illness, his own callous treatment of his mother (as he sees it); the apparent indifference and cruelty of human beings for one another; the sins that he encounters daily, both as a man and a priest; and the evil he witnesses as he seeks to exorcise the demons that have possessed the child he seeks to deliver suggest to him that, either he has lost his faith and, indeed, might never have had a true basis for belief in and trust of God; God has abandoned him; or, worst of all, God is “dead” or never existed to begin with, except as a myth. In any case, faith does not appear to have any true survival value—until Karras makes what Soren Kierkegaarad calls “the leap of faith.”

Close to despair, Karras does not despair. Close to renouncing his faith in God, Karras remains faithful to God. He shows that he is, indeed, the man of faith whom he has long professed to be. He has been discouraged. He has had doubts. He has entertained disbelief. However, to save Regan, he invites her demons into himself and then leaps out of her bedroom window, falling to his death. In doing so, he delivers her from the evil spirits that possessed her. But Karras accomplishes more as well; he remains true to his own beliefs, to his calling, to himself, to God. 

 


Source: ft.com

According to the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, in Kierkegaard's thought, “the choice of faith is not made once and for all. It is essential that faith be constantly renewed by means of repeated avowals of faith.” Despite his doubts, Karras has constantly renewed his faith. Despite his temptation to despair, Karras does not despair. Close to renouncing his faith in God, Karras remains faithful to God. In each of these decisions, he maintains his faith and, therefore, himself.

As Kierkegaard points out, “in order to maintain itself as a relation which relates itself to itself, the self must constantly renew its faith in 'the power which posited it.'” This “repetition” of his faith sustains Karras, allowing him to deliver Regan. Initial appearances aside, the priest's faith, as it turns out, has tremendous survival power, both for Karras himself, who, in remaining true to his faith in God, remains true to himself, and for Regan, whom he delivers from her demons.

 


Source: listal.com

For those who do believe in God, even if they represent a minority of the populace as a whole, their faith delivers them (and, indeed, many others whom they aid). Their faith makes them whole, even if they are broken; sets them free, even if they are possessed; enables them to reach—and even sometimes save—others, believers and disbelievers alike, by their example. Even if their accomplishments were to be attributed solely to their belief in belief, to their faith in faith, and to their trust in trust, rather than to an objective, real, personal God, these amazing and extraordinary accomplishments stand, testaments to the assertion that the trait of faith has survival value.






Tuesday, March 17, 2020

The Horror of Abandonment

Copyright 202 by Gary L. Pullman 

Although the evil in Cujo takes the form of a rabid dog, this poster suggests the true evil of the movie based on Stephen King's novel: the adulterous affair that arises from neglect and represents an abandonment of the adulteress's husband and son; it is her unfaithfulness that tears her family apart.

A major theme of horror stories, in both film and in print, is abandonment. Often, such desertion is symbolically represented by an abandoned house or by empty rooms. It is also frequently suggested by images of crumbling stone castles or manor houses or by dilapidated houses or other symbols of neglect, including yards overrun with weeds, uncut grass, and overgrown sheds or other structures. In itself, isolation can also be representative of abandonment: a remote cabin in the woods, a castle atop a lone promontory, an expanse of empty beach, an uninhabited island, the middle of a desert, a narrow trail through a rain forest, an oil rig at sea.


The type of edifice or landscape can also imply what has been abandoned or what is at risk of abandonment: a church may suggest that religious faith has been abandoned; a hospital, the attempt to control or cure a rampant disease; a manor house, a family and its connection to the community of which it was once a vital part; a military barracks, war or peace (depending on the reason for abandonment); a strip mall, a dearth of customers.


In every case, the common element is change: something has occurred that has caused the clergy or the congregants, the medical staff or the patients, the family members, the troops, or the business owners or the customers to leave their beloved or customary place of worship, medical center, home, installation, or shopping center. The “something” is apt to be the story's villain, whatever form it takes.


Being abandoned is horrific because it results in the loss of social, psychological, commercial, medical, and other forms of support vital to the abandoned individual's or individuals' safety, health, and welfare. Being abandoned forces the abandoned to fend for themselves, even when they do not have the expertise to do so. In a highly technologically advanced society, no one can know all things or do all things. Assistance in many, not a few, endeavors is both essential and necessary. Most cannot diagnose and treat health complaints, especially horrific injuries or potentially fatal diseases; resist or defeat an army; or provide the products of the marketplace crucial to individual and communal survival.
We are, each and all, much more dependent than we might like to admit; we owe our continued happiness, safety, health, and welfare to others much more than we do to ourselves. That is the message of horror stories in which a villainous force or being lays waste to the infrastructure of religious, psychological, social, medical, commercial, and other means of support essential to human life. We like to think of ourselves as independent, as able to fend for ourselves, as self-sufficient and autonomous individuals.


Horror stories that rely on the theme of abandonment beg to differ; they take, as their implicit or explicit task, the teaching of the lessons of our mutual dependence, of our need for one another, of our need to rely on each other rather than to deceive ourselves with the erroneous belief that we are, each and all, self-reliant. The recognition of such a reality should promote humility and compassion and generosity. In horror stories, it is characters with these attributes who, generally speaking, survive, while the arrogant, the indifferent, and the parsimonious do not. In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, these are wise, worthwhile lessons, to be sure.






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 10, 2019

Doppelgänger Plots: Double Your Horror, Double Your Thrills

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood . . . . 
 
—Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken”

Each choice that we make shapes us. Every alternative choice is an opportunity to take one path or another. Every decision is a sculpting of the hands over the present and future direction of our lives. We graft and prune and weed with each action we take. Yes, I have mixed my metaphors; life is too complex for a single trope, as are the many moments that demand we shape our lives, our selves, our beings.

 
Tweedledee and Tweedledum
 Click the image to enlarge it.
 
Sometimes, horror fiction allows readers to read about (or, in the case of horror as it is depicted in theater, television, and cinema, viewers) to “see” not only the culmination of the results of the decisions and actions that a character has made, but also those of the decisions and actions that he or she could have made, revealing not only the actual character, but also an alternative character—or even alternative characters—that the one could have become, were he or she to have made other choices and taken other actions than those he or she chose or took.

 Fiction that offers multiple potential versions of the same character is existential, suggesting that, as Jean-Paul Sartre declares, “existence precedes essence”; we are, or become, what we do. However, fiction of this sort, not the least of which, has often used mythical and psychoanalytical (some would say these are redundant terms) models to present the fictitious doubles, or doppelgängers by which such multiplicities of possibility are exhibited.


Perhaps one of the most familiar examples of the double, or doppelgänger, is Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The title of the novel suggests that there are two characters, but, there is only one: the good Dr. Jekyll and the evil Mr. Hyde are one and the same character.


  Oscar Wilde also explores the possibilities of alternative pathways; the protagonist of his novel The Portrait of Dorian Gray sells his soul to the devil so that he may remain young and beautiful while his portrait ages and takes on ever more hideous and deformed aspects each time Dorian sins.

 In a short story, “One Ordinary Day, with Peanuts,” Shirley Jackson's doppelgänger takes the form of a married couple who take turns aiding and afflicting strangers, the husband acting with charity toward all, while his wife acts with malice to everyone; later, they switch roles.

Hitchcock's Rear Window: The Well-Made Film
According to John Fawell, author of Hitchcock's Rear Window: The Well-Made Film, Alfred Hitchcock employs the doppelgänger with a vengeance in Rear Window.
 

  A fan of such writers as Fyodor Dostoevsky, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Heinrich Heine. Robert Louis Stevenson, H. G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling, Oscar Wilde, Guy de Maupassant, and Alfred de Masset, all of whom used the device of the double, Hitchcock also frequently uses “doubles . . . as the basis for his stories” (73). The double, Fawell says, is used in Strangers on a Train, Psycho, Vertigo, North by Northwest, and other films, including, of course, Rear Window.


Indeed, Fawell suspects “perhaps no other Hitchcock film has as many doubles in it as Rear Window, creating the effect that the neighbors of the voyeuristic photographer, protagonist L. B. Jefferies, who is laid up in his apartment with a broken leg, are merely images of himself, rather like the figures in one's dream (76): 

The windows [in the apartments through which, using his camera's telephoto lens, he secretly spies] can be seen either as a visualization of Jeff's dream or unconscious world as paraliterary devices, means of reflection and therapy for Jeff . . . . For [critic Robin] Woods, the windows “all in some way reflect his own problems,” whereas, for Hitchcock's biographer, Donald Spoto, “each of the spied-upon neighbors offers . . . a facet of his present psychic life or possibility of the future” (77).


Hitchcock makes his audience aware of Jefferies's thoughts, attitudes, feelings, and judgments concerning the things he sees his neighbors do. In fact, Jefferies nicknames some of them for the trait of each that stands out to him: Miss Torso, Miss Lonelyhearts, The Composer, The Newlyweds. His thoughts about them are his thoughts, so his views of his neighbors allow viewers to “see” the real Jefferies who resides behind the persona of the adventurous, rather arrogant photographer.
 

 His view of them, is his view of himself. Thus, the ideas and emotions he projects on them represent the different persons he himself might have been, had he made different choices and performed different actions than those he did. Perhaps impotent, perhaps homosexual or asexual, Jefferies wants to get rid of his girlfriend Lisa, a beautiful model; Lars Thorwald, his neighbor, does just this, when he murders, cuts up, and hauls away his nagging wife.
 

 There are many other similarities, too, between Jefferies, the voyeur, and the neighbors he spies upon. For example, as Fawell points out, “just as Miss Lonelyhearts made dinner for a man who literally was not there while Lisa made dinner for a man (Jeff) who metaphorically was not there, so Miss Torso literally waits for a man to return just as Lisa waits metaphorically for Jeff to return to her” (103).
 
Throughout several seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Joss Whedon and his stable of writers provided fans of the series with an extended sequence in which Buffy is flanked by two other characters who seem to represent possible alter egos for her: Kendra and Faith. In this context, these young women can be viewed as either mythical or psychoanalytic terms:

Apollo
Socratic Soul
Dionysus
Kendra
Buffy
Faith
Mythical Model
Superego
Freudian Self
Id
Kendra
Buffy
Faith
Psychoanalytic Model

Beset from both directions, by the demands of Kendra, representing Buffy's Apollonian tendencies (or the demands of her superego) and by those of Faith, embodying Buffy's own Dionysian impulses (or the demands of Buffy's own id), Buffy, as the Socratic Soul (or the Freudian Self), must decide in which direction to go (that is, which impulse or demand to follow). From both Kendra-Apollo-Superego and Faith-Dionysus-Id, Buffy-Socratic Soul-Self acquires strengths and weaknesses, enriching and complexifying her own character.
 

 She also learns the benefits and the dangers of both extremes, that of the Apollonian (or superego) and that of the Dionysian (or id). Kendra tells Buffy that Buffy that whatever is specified in The Watcher's Handbook must be done—that is, Kendra goes strictly by the book, obeying authority without thought or challenge. Faith, on the other hand, follows her own precepts; when it comes to sex, she says she “get[s] some, [and] get[s] gone.” Likewise, when Faith sees something in a shop window that she likes, she doesn't buy the item; she steals it: “want, take, have” is the credo that guides her actions.
 

 Kendra's sense of duty and her unquestioning obedience gets her killed; Faith's amoral lawlessness almost gets both Buffy and herself killed. At the end of the series, however, Buffy and Faith survive the Hellmouth; Kendra does not survive even the attack of the vampire Drusilla.

 
Ultimately, Whedon's series suggests that, although both the superego and the id are valuable to a warrior, over-reliance on the Apollonian (basically, reason) or the demands of the superego (essentially, one's conscience) could get a fighter killed, whereas over-reliance on the Dionysian (basically, instinct) or the demands of the id (again, essentially instinct) although potentially dangerous, might save a slayer.

 When the chips are down, Whedon suggests, go with the gut, not the head—certainly a debatable point.

 Whether the topic of concern to a writer is morality, one's unconscious perceptions of reality, or survival, the use of the double, or doppelgänger is a proven, time-honored device by which writers of any genre, including horror and the thriller, can investigate the perils, strengths, flaws, benefits, and disadvantages of extremes, Apollonian and Dionysian, psychoanalytic, or otherwise.

Sunday, June 17, 2018

Scott Derrickson: A Christian Horror Director on Cross-Genre Horror

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Known for such movies as The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Deliver Us from Evil, and Dr. Strange, Scott Derrickson is an unusual filmmaker. A Christian, he is also a horror movie director and himself a fan of the genre. Exorcists and demonologists are featured players in his movies, as are, indeed, demons. In a National Catholic Register interview with Steven D. Greydanus, Derrickson says, horror “is the perfect genre for a person of faith to work in. You can think about good and evil pretty openly. I always talk about it being the genre of non-denial. I like the fact that it’s a genre about confronting evil, confronting what’s frightening in the world.”


He sees horror films as a way of reclaiming the mystery of life. Human institutions and enterprises, he suggests, cut people off from the mysterious, limiting them to specific, pre-established ends and means: “Corporate America limits the world to consumerism. Science can limit it to the material world. Even religion limits it to a lot of theories that can explain everything.”


Horror not only “breaks that apart” but also reminds humanity “that we're not in control . . . and we don't understand as much as we think we do.” However, he agrees that horror that merely goes for the throat, without exploring significant themes in the process, is vapid and jejune: Horror, he implies, should invite “depth, . . . moral passion, [and] ideas that are to be taken seriously.”

For Derrickson, horror movies are “not about putting something evil in the world. It’s about reckoning with evil.”

His movies tend to use established conventions as ways to introduce mystery and religious faith. “Emily Rose was a courtroom demon-possession film. It kind of classically follows the structures of both of those [genres] at the same time,” he explains, while Deliver Us from Evil is “a police procedural.” 

It's important, the director says, not to impose one's own beliefs or perspective on the audience. Instead, a moviemaker should seek to get “the audience to accept the character’s point of view as the character’s point of view.” The movie shows how the protagonist feels, believes, thinks, and interprets the world. The audience may agree or disagree with the character's world view, but they should also accept it as that of the character. It is not necessarily the director's own point of view. “I’m never trying to propagate that,” Derrickson observes.



Derrickson cites, as authors who have influenced him, G. K. Chesterton and C. S. Lewis. For those new to horror, who may want to “test the waters,” he recommends, besides The Exorcism of Emily Rose and Deliver Us from Evil, The Sixth Sense, The Exorcist, and the Spanish-language film The Orphanage.




Science fiction and horror have often been combined to produce hybrid films such as Alien, The Fly, Jurassic Park, Frankenstein, and, more recently, A Quiet Place (2018), Annihilation (2018), and The Cloverfield Paradox (2018). Derrickson's use of courtroom drama and the police procedural suggest two other genres that can be combined with that of horror to produce new types of hybrid films, half-horror, half-other. Like other serious filmmakers, he also believes that, to be worthy of an audience's time, attention, and money, horror films must be about more than blood and guts; they must address themes that transcend mere gore.


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.

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Thrillers

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

To date, Chillers and Thrillers has had precious little to say concerning the latter term in its title, having focused, instead, almost exclusively on chillers (that is, horror stories) and such related fare as fantasies and science fiction. In this post, thanks to Charles Derry’s excellent book on thrillers, this oversight is finally corrected.



In the second chapter of The Suspense Thriller: Films in the Shadow of Alfred Hitchcock, “Thrills; or, How Objects and Empty Spaces Compete to Threaten Us,” Charles Derry identifies the objects that are used, in several films, as symbols, or “visual correlatives”: “The cymbals in The Man Who Knew Too Much,” which represent “the assassination and the whole movement of the narrative”; “the windmill in Foreign Correspondent,” which symbolizes “the arrival of an airplane to take away the villains”; and “the glass of milk in Suspicion,” which signifies “the imminent poisoning of Joan Fontaine [sic]”; and “the blood-stained doll in Stage Fright,” which suggests “an accusation of murder” (21).

According to Derry, other symbolic objects include:

The painting of the Madonna in Obsession, which works as a symbol of the protagonists’ dilemma and the narrative; the escaping balloons in La Rupture, which works as a complex symbol of escape and freedom; Faye Dunaway’s [sic] photographs in Three Days of the Condor, which work as a symbol of trust in a morally bankrupt world; the mirrors in Lady from Shanghai, which work in part as a symbol of the destructive nature of the American woman (21).
In addition to such symbolic objects, thrillers also employ both “ocnophilic” and “philobatic” objects, Derry argues, employing terms coined by Michael Balint in Thrills and Regressions. Essentially, the former type of object is apt to be one among many that are associated with the safety and security of one’s everyday environment, whereas the other (usually one or a few “special” objects) is linked to potential dangers or risks. Examples of the ocnophilic object to which the philobat “clings,“ Derry says, include the lion-tamer’s whip, the tight-rope walker’s pole, the skier’s ski-poles, the conductor’s baton, the soldier’s rifle, the artist’s paintbrush, and the pilot’s joy-stick (25). The ocnophilic object, Derry adds, “is perhaps the antithesis of the safe ‘ocnophilic object’ embraced by the philobat and represents the most overwhelming symbol of the philobat’s inability to get away from objects that are unconquerable and oppressive,” although “the objects that the philobat encounters need not be instantly harmful” (25). Moreover, the philobat may transform a threatening or dangerous oncophilic object into “a co-operative partner” by “showing consideration, regard, or concern about” it, as “Cary Grant [sic]” does in North By Northwest when he :turns the objects at the auction into his cooperative partners and is thus able to escape the villains” or as Paul Newman‘s character does in Torn Curtain when he “allows the paper flames in the ballet set to provide him with inspiration to escape from the theatre” (26). Since the ocnophil equates ocnophilic objects with safety and security, he or she is disturbed when one or more of these objects must be abandoned or he or she is abandoned by it or them. “For the octophil,” Derry says, “the world consist of objects which are separated by terrifying empty spaces,” and, Balint contends, as Derry notes in quoting him, “The octophil lives from object to object, cutting his sojourns in the empty spaces as short as possible. Fear is provoked by leaving the objects, and allayed by rejoining them” (26). For this reason, too, “an object which remains no threatening is a source of much security, and the philobat certainly doesn’t want this object taken away” (27).

Before I had encountered Derry’s book or heard of Balint’s taxonomy of the thriller, I unknowingly described a different type of ocnophilic object in my article, “Taking Away the Teddy Bear,” except that the object was more a state of mind than an object per se. The person (or, perhaps, place or thing) that anchors us to our existence, giving us a reason to go on, despite the vicissitudes of fate and the traumas and crises of life, might be regarded as an ocnophilic object of sorts, for its possession makes us feel that life is worth living. The ultimate “teddy bear,” I suggest is one’s faith in God, which, taken away, results in despair and horror in face of the monster of meaninglessness.

Although neither Derry nor Balint identifies such an object, one might argue, for the existence of anti-ocnophilic, as opposed to both ocnophilic and philobatic, objects as well, which is to say, things--or even states of mind--that remind men and women of persons, places, or things that they find repulsive rather than comforting; an African-American might view a rebel flag in such a manner; a racist, an interracial couple; a homophobe, two men or women holding hands with one another. Rather than finding reassurance in such objects and seeking to retain or to be reunited with them, a character would seek to avoid or discard them. In some cases, an object that is initially regarded as ocnophilic might later be considered anti-ocnophilic, as, for example, one might argue, the monkey’s paw in W. W. Jacobs’ short story first is and later becomes to the elderly couple who come into possession of this talisman.

In the thriller, Derry argues, based upon his reading of Balint, the protagonist fears a “real external danger,” to which he or she voluntarily exposes him- or herself, confident in his or her hope that he or she can survive it. Balint contends that “this mixture of fear, pleasure, and confident hope is what constitutes the fundamental elements of all thrills,” and, likewise, according to Derry, comprise the “three-part progression” of “most suspense thriller plots,” to which may be added thrills “associated with high speed, such as racing, horse-riding, skiing, sailing, and flying”; thrills “associated with exposed [or risky] situations, such as jumping, diving, rock climbing, taming wild animals, and traveling into foreign lands”; and thrills “associated with unfamiliar forms of satisfaction, such as new foods, new customs, and new sexual experiences” (22).

In Thrills and Regressions, Balint coins the words philobatism and ocnophilia to refer, respectively, to the thrill seeker and his or her opposite, who is quite content to avoid thrills of any kind. Using Balint’s terminology and Derry’s insights, one could define a suspense thriller as a story in which an initially ocnophilic protagonist enters the philobatic world of external danger, triumphs over the peril, and is able, thereafter, to balance the extremes of a safe but uneventful existence with the dangerous but thrilling aspects of life.

Although the thriller plot’s emphasis upon a “real external threat” and an ultimately thrill-seeking protagonist suggests that such stories are more likely to be addressed to male audiences, it is clear, given the synopsis of Wait Until Dark, which involves a female protagonist, that this storyline can also involve female protagonists and can be directed toward female audiences:

In Wait Until Dark. . . the ocnophilic and clinging Audrey Hepburn [sic] loses the secure protection of her husband and home base, faces a series of terrifying thrills which she conquers, emerges victorious, and returns unharmed to the security of her husband, although now in touch with her own philobatic abilities and no longer in need of his protection” (24-25).

Indeed, as Derry himself points out,

there are many notable female protagonists in thrillers (as for example in Shadow of a Doubt, Le Boucher, or The China Syndrome) who become adventurers. . . and there are so many female spectators who have been moved by the thriller that it would be wrong to argue that these works are--more than any other popular genre--unusually reflective of sexist male fantasy (29).
In this chapter of his book, Derry also suggests how empty spaces can threaten the philobatic protagonist. For example, Derry contends that “in Wait Until Dark. . . it is precisely the empty spaces that are terrifying to the blind heroine; the empty spaces are blank, and she is unable to maneuver herself from place to place without the help of the anchored objects which make up her world” (26).

Two passages in Derry’s book explain how and why the suspense thriller differs from the horror story. In the first of these passages, Derry, alluding to the observations of both Alfred Hitchcock and William Castle, suggests that the suspense thriller “excludes horror,” just as it excludes “traditional whodunnits and detective films,” because, as Hitchcock insists, “the whodunnit generates a kid of curiosity that is void of emotion, and emotion is an essential ingredient in suspense” and horror often includes “supernatural suppositions” that identify the genre as “outright fantasy.”

For his part, Castle defines horror as the use of a monster to frighten audiences, whereas he defines a thriller as using “an identifiable person” such as someone the moviegoer could actually encounter and with whom he or she could empathize “in jeopardy” so that the audience can “root for” him or her (8-9).

The second passage adds a contemporary, all-too-human monster to the traditional ones that Castle featured in his films: “in certain horror films,” Derry points out, “the ‘monster’ is not a mystical or fantastic creature, but an insane individual who commits crimes,” and “because their murderous protagonists are presented as objects of horror and virtual monsters, films such as Psycho (1960), Repulsion (1965), and The Collector (1965) might most accurately be perceived as belonging to both the suspense thriller and horror genres simultaneously” (324-325). One could argue, indeed, that Dean Koontz’s much-vaunted “cross-genre” novels represent an even greater hybridization of genre fiction, often including, as it does, elements of science fiction, romance, the thriller, and the traditional horror story.

In the table of contents of The Suspense Thriller, and based upon his study of the thriller genre, Derry identifies six specific subtypes and promises (“To Be Continued”) more, perhaps, in a future volume: the thriller of murderous passions, the political thriller, the thriller of acquired identity, the psychotraumatic thriller, the thriller of moral confrontation, and the innocent-on-the-run thriller (vii). Perhaps Chillers and Thrillers will feature more summaries and commentaries upon these chapters of Derry’s excellent book in the future. Stay tuned (so to speak.)

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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