Cover Art

copyright 2014 by Gary Pullman

It may be true that one cannot tell a book by its title, but, fortunately for those of us who enjoy visual as well as literary art, publishers keep trying to prove this maxim wrong.

As a result, they—or the artists whom they hire—occasionally offer us some aesthetically pleasing cover art.

This is especially true when the novel between the covers is erotic horror.

Here are a few cases in point.

Dark Seduction: Talesof Erotic Fiction, an anthology of short stories edited by Alice Alfonsi and John Scognamiglio, shows a woman's hand, holding a single, long-stem rose against her bosom, the ample cleavage of which is framed by the decolletage of her black dress. The background is also black, so that her hand, her cleavage, and the rose alone are visible, which emphasizes them, both in themselves and as parts of the composition as a whole. Her flesh is pale, so the sleek skin highlights the crimson drop of blood that the piercing of her right breast by the rose's thorn produces. The red letters of the subtitle match the red of her blood, connecting the rose and her vital essence. Why, one may wonder, is she—whoever she may be—surrounded by darkness? Just as the color of the rose matches that of her blood, the black surroundings match her black dress, suggesting that she is one with the night, as she is one with life and beauty. She is a dark figure who inhabits a dark world. Surely, though, she is more than a lady of the evening; she is a queen of the darkness, a vampire, perhaps, a femme fatale whose beauty lures the unsuspecting and the unwary to their deaths. A beauty who feeds upon the lifeblood of her victims, she is a monster, a creature of the night, despite her apparent tenderness and loveliness. She is herself the embodiment of the “dark seduction” which awaits the reader between the covers of the book she adorns. Several of the titles of the short stories in this bouquet of flowers, as the word “anthology” literally means, suggest that romantic passion, not good intentions, may pave the road to hell: “Private Pleasures,” “Dark Seduction,” “Good Vibrations,” “Satisfaction.” Whether the stories can deliver the passion the book's cover art implies is a question that each reader must answer for him- or herself, but the pale woman in the black dress certainly promises the reader good times.

Blindfolded, the topless blonde raises a hand, to block someone or something, as she stands in an inverted triangle, blackbirds in flight through the fog that obscures a tangle of treetops behind her. Her other hand covers her lower abdomen. Has she escaped mysterious captors? Is she a sacrifice, about to be sacrificed? Is she prey, awaiting the attack of a predatory man or beast? Any of these scenarios is possible, but none is certain; the painting of the damsel in distress leaves open all these alternatives and as many others as a reader might imagine. However, the title of Selena Kitt's volume, Shivers, suggests that the reader may quiver as much with fear as with lust. . . if he or she dares to open the book to find out what waits inside.

A naked shoulder, arm, breast, and side is all that is visible in the darkness, these parts of the female anatomy and the author's name (“Polly Frost,” in white), the tagline, (“Extreme Erotic Fantasies,” in tan), the main title, “Deep,” in black, and “Inside,” in white), and, deeper down, the subtitle, the first four words in fleshly tan, “Ten tantalizing tales of,” and the remaining two in white, “supernatural erotica.” The piecemeal presentation of author and the main title, above, and the subtitle, below, the breast makes the woman's torso a striptease act, of sorts, which communicates, piece by piece and word by word, the message of erotica and horror that the cover art promises is in store “Deep Inside” the covers, where such stories as “The Threshold,” “The Orifice,” “The Pleasure Invaders,” “Viagra Babies,” “Test Drive,” and “Visions of Ecstasy,” among others, wait.

For authors, these images of sex and death may do more than suggest good times. The can also suggest how carefully planned design and composition can speak volumes in and of themselves. A writer, however, can provide such images only through description. He or she should plan his or her depictions of invitation and danger, of promise and peril, of temptation and destruction as meticulously as the artist paints his or her visions. By studying light and intensity, hue and shade, color and contrast, size and shape, density and texture, direction and distance, perspective and space, background and foreground, color and effect, depth and focal point, the writer can maximize his or her descriptions, making them do more with less to shock, terrify, disgust, and horrify. Cover art, like advertisements and posters, offer good ways for writers to study and to see, just as written texts can teach visual artists how to allude, be ironic, use hyperbole or understatement, wax metaphorical, be symbolic, or personify.

G. K. Chesterton‘s “The Angry Street”: An Analysis

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

What is an altar but a table made sacred by convention and design?

The first-person narrator begins his story with a surprising statement: he is unable, he says, to recall “whether this tale is true or not”; he follows it with an even more remarkable declaration, stating that he believes that the incidents that he is about to commit to paper “happened to me before I was born.”

Having captured his readers’ attention with these statements, he next begins to relate the narrative proper, hinting at the fact that it involves “atmosphere.” A number of men, all of whom are in a hurry, are seated at lunch, each with one eye upon the clock. The narrator is among them, and, into their company enters another who is dressed as they are, in gentleman’s attire, but who, unlike the others, shows a reverence for the things about him, including his “long frock coat,” his top hat, the peg upon which he hangs his hat, “the wooden chair” in which he sits and the table at which he sits. As soon as he is seated across from the narrator, he begins a “monologue.” At first, the narrator considers him “ordinary,” but is soon disturbed by the other’s gaze, which he describes as that “of a maniac.”

The odd man’s odd manner and the odd thing that he next says continue to intrigue readers. “I thought,” he says, “that another of them had gone wrong,” by which, he clarifies, he means another street. For over forty years, he explains, he has traveled the same street, walking it in the same manner. It is not a long street, he observes; walking it takes him no more than “four and a half minutes.” However, he recently took his usual stroll and found it to be not only tiring but also to have taken him longer. The street also climbed a hill, which it had never done before. The curious gentleman guessed that he had perhaps “turned down the wrong” street, despite the many years during which he has made the same journey “like clockwork.” However, as he continued his walk, it became clear to him, by the landmarks he passed, that the street was, in fact, the one that he customarily traveled. As he continued his walk, the street, instead of turning, as it had always done before, veered steeply, “straight in front of” his “face,” ascending a sharp, long upward slope that caused him to nearly fall “on the pavement.” The street, he found, had “lifted itself like a single wave, and yet every speck and detail of it was the same.” At the very summit of the street, he was able to see the “name over” his “paper shop,” as if the sign were atop “an Alpine pass.”

Quite perplexed and more than a little frightened, the pedestrian was even more astonished when, peering through “the iron trap of a coal-hole” in the street, which had now assumed the aspect of “a long iron bridge into empty space,” he “saw empty space and the stars.” When he looked up again, he saw another man, who was “leaning over the railings,” staring at the hiker, to whom the man seemed to be “not of this world,” despite his “dark and ordinary” attire and the pedestrian’s sense that he had just come out of one of the “grey row of private houses” along the “nightmare road.” The sense of the stranger’s otherworldliness is intensified by the “stars behind his head,” which appear “larger and fiercer than ought to be endured by the eyes of men.”

Calling upon the stranger, whom the traveler supposes may be either an “kind angel” of a “wise devil,” to tell him what has become of the street, which, he identifies as “Bumpton Street, which “goes to Oldgate Station.” The stranger’s reply is bizarre (and, therefore, intriguing to the story’s readers): “It goes there sometimes, Just now, however, it is going to heaven” to seek justice for the traveler’s mistreatment of it. The neglect, the stranger informs the pedestrian, lies in the traveler’s ignoring of the street that he has used (and taken for granted) for over forty years: the street, he says, “has grown tired” of the traveler’s “insolence, and it is bucking and rearing its head toward heaven.”

The pedestrian expresses his opinion that the stranger’s talk is mad; it is “nonsense,” he argues, to imagine that a street should be offended or that it should go anywhere other than where it has always led before. To the stranger’s question as to whether the traveler has ever wondered whether the street has taken him for granted, supposing him to be a non-living thing among things, the traveler has no answer. However, he confides to the story’s narrator that he has “since. . . respected the things called inanimate!” and he bows “slightly to the mustard-pot” as he takes his leave of the restaurant.

This is a short-short story. It is an odd one, certainly, as well. Among younger readers, it is apt to seem not only strange but also absurd. Some older readers, however, will comprehend the story’s theme. Because they are created by men and women, objects of art and craft are, as artifacts of design and manufacture, each with an aesthetic or a utilitarian purpose, are invested with a significance beyond their importance as mere products of technology; they are imbued with the spirit of their manufacturers. They are humanized by virtue of the fact that they are made by men and women. In that sense, they have “souls,” a point that Chesterton makes in his essay “A Piece of Chalk” as well as in this story.

If one considers a coat, a hat, a chair, a table, a mustard-pot, or a street not as a simple coat or hat, table or chair, or mustard-pot, but as an artifact designed for service or aesthetic enrichment and as a work into which a man or a woman has poured not only his or her art and craft, knowledge and skill, experience and passion, as if he or she were fashioning a gift to others as well as an expression of his or her own heart, such seemingly commonplace objects would be regarded with the respect--indeed, the reverence--that the “kind angel” or “;wise demon” suggests that they should be accorded, rather than being taken for granted and ignored.

Were the things that people make for themselves and others rightly regarded, Chesterton suggests, in “A Piece of Chalk,” it would be possible to write a book of poetry, of epic length and grandeur, about the things that one finds in his pocket or her purse. This story, absurd on its face, uses the absurdity that it generates to skew everyday reality, as represented by the street and by the restaurant and the things that each contains, so that these ordinary, everyday places and objects take on strange appearances and become, as it were, visible to readers who, in the course of their own everyday lives, are apt to dismiss their surroundings and to take things for granted much as the pedestrian in “The Angry Street” does.

By making the ordinary appear, for a moment, extraordinary, Chesterton helps his readers to see the extraordinary quality and value of the ordinary and the remarkable nature of the commonplace. Such is no mean feat, and Chesterton’s accomplishment of it in “The Mean Street” makes this story remarkable, indeed.

Demonic Aspects of Demon Art

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

Okay, I admit it: I have never seen a demon.

Not a real one, not a demon in the flesh, as it were.

I know a couple of people who have seen demons--or claim that they have, at any rate. Their statements are somewhat like those who claim to have seen extraterrestrial spaceships: they tend to contradict one another. Of course, “seem” is the key word here. Perhaps they are not contradictory at all. There may be enough demons to warrant varying descriptions of them. In all probability, one would think, there would be as much variety, at least, among the infernal hordes as there are among any other creatures. I mean, who would believe that such a creature as a starfish could be real, if one didn’t know that they actually exist? Or a jellyfish? Or a chameleon? Each of these animals seems highly unlikely, and, certainly, they are all quite different in appearance and characteristics, yet they all exist. Variety, as they say, is the spice of life, in nature as in anything else, demons, one might conclude, included.

In any case, what I’m more concerned with in this post are the aspects of demons--the characteristics that make the, well, demonic--that is, terrible, horrible, and just plain scary. As usual, one can discover quite a bit by simply taking a gander at artists’ conceptions of these infernal fiends, seeking, where possible, to identify similarities that suggest generalizations and differences which suggest differentiae.

The first thing I notice, in perusing pictures of fallen angels, is that most of them have human--or humanoid--faces. They have eyes, noses, ears, mouths--the usual--but these features are not typical of the ones a person would see in the mirror--well, hopefully not. For one thing, the complexion is likely to be of a most unusual color--yellow, red, green, perhaps--which is, of course, nothing like any skin tone that one is likely any time soon to encounter among human beings. Their features are also likely to be deformed in some way. They may have no irises, for example, the whole of their eyes being a glutinous white, or their pupils may be elongated and elliptical, like those of a serpent’s eyes. Some demons’ eyes actually glow like hot coals, if artists’ conceptions of the infernal folk are reliable guides. Demons’ ears may taper to points like the ears of a goat. Their teeth may include one or more sets of fangs. Their tongues may be forked like a snake’s tongue.

Besides the deformity of facial features, demons also sometimes come equipped, as it were, with attributes borrowed from animals: horns, scales, tails, cloven hooves, claws, that sort of thing. Those who have wings don’t, as a rule, have feathery pinions, but leathery, bat-like appendages. A few artists depict demons, usually of the female sort, with snakelike, Gorgon curls. The ancient Greeks’ satyrs (fauns in ancient Roman mythology) served as models for the more traditional type of demon familiar to many.

From Wolfman’s Gallery

However, more imaginative artists, including Hieronymus Bosch, H. R. Giger, and Javier Gil have rendered demons with more individuality and grotesquery.

Bosch’s demons tend to be anthropomorphic birds and beasts, often armed with weapons, or strange mixtures of several animals, hybrids of his fevered imagination. His The Temptation of St. Anthony and The Garden of Earthly Delights showcase some of Bosch’s more bizarre concepts of demonic creatures, each of which has a symbolic character that is now, alas, largely forgotten. In the vision of hell that is part of the Garden triptych, Bosch includes a demon--perhaps Satan himself, seated upon a chair that is a combination of throne and toilet. The demon, which wears an upside-down cauldron for a miter, and clerical garb, but has a transparent, insect-like abdomen, which projects downward, through the throne-toiler, devours men alive, defecating them into a round cistern below its seat. Not far from this demon of apostasy, there is a fiend whose hindquarters alone are shown, its upper body hidden in the cannibalistic demon’s flowing sash. It exhibits its buttocks to a naked woman who is seated against one of the legs of the popish demon’s throne-toilet. Instead of flesh, however, the kneeling demon’s posterior is a mirror in which the woman’s face is reflected. Straddled by the mirror-bottomed demon, whose legs end in antlers or barren tree branches, the seated woman is gripped from behind by an ass-headed fiend. A toad, symbolic of sexual lust, rests above her breasts. Her besetting sin appears to be vanity or, as psychologists would characterize her personality disorder today, narcissism.

Hieronymus Bosh, The Garden of Earthly Delights

Better known for his extraterrestrials (Alien, Species), H. R. Giger has also offered his own highly imaginative take on a ancient, albeit not particularly well understood, demon known as Baphomet. In his painting, a nude white woman--white not in the sense of Caucasian, but literally white, both of hair and of flesh--is suspended before a wheel, above and behind a bust of Baphomet, below whose head, upon the pillar which it tops are the heads of entwined serpents (or maybe birds with long necks; it’s hard to say which). The nude woman wears an inverted cross about her neck and brandishes, one in each hand, a pair of sharp-pointed objects that resemble the ends of a demon’s horns. Mounted upon the wheel, and facing in, toward her, are a series of hypodermic syringes whose needles appear to penetrate her outer thighs. The Baphomet head seems half dead: its ears are at half-mast, so to speak, its whiskers look wilted, and its eyes are half-closed, one showing only its whites, the other an iris that is rolling upward, into the skull. In lieu of a necklace, a hinge or metal plate resembling the end of a belt is fastened to the neck of the pillar, a buckle seeming to fasten it in place. The goat-head’s beard is tightly braided, one lock extending into a tail-like strand that ends in an arrowhead shape.

Two long, curving horns rise from the demon’s head, a third, smaller, straight horn ending in a bony crown, between them. The long horns frame the nude woman, and the crown atop the third horn rises between the woman’s spread thighs, occupying the space at which her sex would appear, were it not so obstructed. In viewing the placement of this decidedly phallic horn, one gets the impression that penetration is occurring, although it is not: the horn is in front, not inside, the woman’s sex. She seems both to be crucified and to float. Above her, in place of INRI, the acronym for the Latin phrase “Jesus Nazareth King Jews,” is the Roman numeral “XV.” There is no indication as to what the number signifies. It seems clear, however, that the nude woman is a demonic, probably satanic, priestess, possibly a temple prostitute, who worships the devil, mocking the sacred work of Christ by the inverted cross she wears as her necklace.

Although some moviegoers might not make the connection, supposing that the appearance of the beautiful woman who turns into an ugly old hag in Stanley Kubrick’s movie version of Stephen King’s The Shining is just another of Jack Torrance’s many hallucinations and is, as such, a manifestation of his madness, the temptress is a modern-day example of an ancient demon, the succubus, a female demon that was believed to have sex with men, usually in their sleep. (The male counterpart is the incubus.)

H. R. Giger, Baphomet

As I observe in my “Sex and Horror” series, sex, as it is depicted in horror fiction, is typically of a perverted sort that is intended to defy God’s commandment to humanity (through his directive to Adam and Eve) to “be fruitful and multiply” in order to “replenish the earth” with future generations of the human species. Anything that is not reproductive (and, by definition, therefore, heterosexual) is sinful, mainstream theologians argue. Indeed, non-reproductive sex between heterosexuals is also sinful, such thinkers contend. Javier Gil’s demonic art (i. e., his work which features demonic figures) typically portrays just such sexual activity--activity that is of a non-reproductive character, including orgies, homosexual unions, bestiality, and assorted perverse behavior. Most of his works of erotica which include demonic revelers are too pornographic for display in Chillers and Thrillers, but I offer the following picture as a milder representation of Gil’s demonic art.

Javier Gil, Untitled

What may we conclude from our examination of demons as they appear in artists’ conceptions of them? They resemble us, but they represent the worst aspects of ourselves, or of humanity: unbridled animality, sin, moral and sexual perversion, disobedience to God, an elevation of the fleshly aspects of human existence above the spiritual elements of human nature, blasphemous and sacrilegious communications, false religions or religious doctrines, and of a concern for pleasure without regard for propriety (or sanctity). These are the demonic aspects of human nature, reflected in artistic conceptions of demons as personifications of such impulses, conditions, and conduct. Writers of horror and fantasy fiction can take a clue or two from their more visual counterparts concerning what is evil and how it may be represented. (The article, “Demons,” in the online edition of The Catholic Encyclopedia has some interesting insights into the subject matter, too, especially concerning the positive and negative, or good and “sinister” senses of meaning that the word had in the original Greek usage!)

Learning from the Masters: Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

In Chapter 47 of their latest novel, Fever Dream, authors Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child shed light upon their technique for creating mysterious and engaging thrillers.

To NYPD’s Captain Laura Hayward, a stand-in, at this point in the story, for the reader, who may be as mystified as to the protagonist’s actions as Hayward herself, the investigation that her boyfriend, homicide detective Lieutenant Vincent (“Vinnie”) D’Agosta, and his friend, the FBI’s Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast, are conducting concerning the murder, twelve years ago, of Pendergast’s wife, Helen, seems to be “a typical Pendergast investigation, all hunches and blind alleys and conflicting evidence, strung together by highly questionable police work” (235).

However, from the author’s perspective (and from Hayward’s as well, once Pendergast explains his and D’Agosta’s findings to date), “the bizarre story” has “an internal logic,” for Preston and Child, of course, have plotted the story in full, in advance of their writing a single word of it. However, because they withhold relevant information from the reader, supplying key material in a piecemeal fashion, the authors deny both D’Agosta, Pendergast, and the reader the very context that the writers have had from the beginning. As a result, “the bizarre story” they tell, through Pendergast, has “an internal logic” to them, but not to the reader (or, initially, to the investigators or to Hayward, before she is clued in).

Of course, eventually, Preston and Child must allow their protagonist, with the help of D’Agosta, to figure out at least something of what is going on--in other words, to causally connect the pieces of evidence and the clues that the investigators discover--and, to gain Hayward’s confidence when he needs her to take over D’Agosta’s role as his assistant, following the lieutenant’s being gravely wounded, Pendergast shares his theory concerning the significance of the evidence:

. . . Pendergast explained his late wife’s obsession with Audubon; how they had traced her interest in the Carolina Parakeet, the Black Frame, the lost parrot, and the strange fate of the Doane family. He read her passages from the Doane girl’s diary: a chilling descent into madness. He described their encounter with Blast, another seeker of the Black Frame, himself recently murdered--as had been Helen Pendergast’s former employer at Doctors With Wings, Morris Blackletter. And finally, he explained the series of deductions and discoveries that led to the unearthing of the Black Frame itself (235).

In Fever Dream, the authors also suggest an analogy (not an especially original one, but one which is, nevertheless, illuminating) concerning their narrative technique. Due to his association with Pendergast, D’Agosta has learned, “long ago. . . to never get caught without two things: a gun and a flashlight” (138). As if the investigators were in a darkened room throughout their investigation, most of the contents of the room (the facts and clues of the investigation) are unseen (unknown, overlooked, or not understood). Therefore, facts, clues, and other pertinent information are brought to light (discovered or recognized as relevant) only a little at a time, as the flashlight’s beam (perception, comprehension, analysis, and evaluation) exposes them--and, when it does expose them, these pieces of evidence are usually not in any apparent logical or systematic order. As a result, both to the investigators and the reader at the moment that the evidence is gleaned), it may well seem that the investigators are, indeed, pursuing “hunches,” following “blind alleys,” and collecting “conflicting evidence” blindly and haphazardly. It is only after they have gathered the evidence, determined its significance, and interpreted its meaning that D’Agosta and Prendergast (mostly Pendergast) can develop a theory that fully illuminates their findings so that their work (or their “bizarre story”) begins to have “an internal logic.”

In his discussion with Hayward at his estate, following D’Agosta’s grave injury, Pendergast, in fact, models his method, deducing the meaning (and thereby providing the explanation for) “the central mystery of the case, the birds,” linking Audubon’s illness (the cause of his genius as a painter) to Helen’s discovery of the same link between Audubon’s genius and his sickness:

“And all she wanted with the painting was confirmation for this theory?” [Hayward asks Pendergast].

Pendergast nodded. “That painting is the link between Audubon’s early, indifferent work and his later brilliance. It’s proof of the transition he underwent. But that doesn’t quite get to the central mystery in this case: the birds.”

Hayward frowned. “The birds?”

“The Carolina Parakeets. The Doane parrot.”

Hayward herself had been puzzling over the connection to Audubon’s illness, to no avail. “And?”

Pendergast sipped his coffee. “I believe we’re dealing with a strain of avian flu.”

“Avian flu? You mean, bird flu?”

“That, I believe, is the disease that laid Audubon low, that nearly killed him, and that was responsible for his creative flowering. His symptoms--high fever, headache, delirium, cough--are all consistent with flu. A flu he no doubt caught dissecting a Carolina Parakeet” (236).

Nor is Pendergast through with demonstrating his powers of deduction, for he next links the birds to the Doane family’s artistic brilliance and the madness to which they later succumbed, citing significant “similarities” between the family’s behavior and Audubon’s own conduct:

“But all that still doesn’t explain how those parakeets [the Carolina Parakeet specimens Helen stole from the Audubon collection] are linked to the Doane family” [Hayward declares to Pendergast].

“It’s quite simple” [Pendergast explains]. The Doanes were sickened by the same disease that struck Audubon.”

“What makes you say that?”

“There are simply too many similarities, Captain, for anything else to make sense. The sudden flowering of creative brilliance. Followed by mental dissolution. Too many similarities--and Helen knew it. That’s why she went to get the bird from them [the Doanes]” (237).

He is also certain that Helen had known the same cause-and-effect relationship between the birds and the flowering genius (and madness) of both Audubon and the Doane family, which is why she visited the museum housing specimens of birds personally preserved by Audubon and why she visited the Doane family, stealing both museum specimens and the parrot that the Doane family had found and adopted as a pet. Helen had meant, Pendergast contends, to “extract from them [the birds] a live sample” of the avian virus, both to “keep it from spreading” and “to test it. . . to confirm her suspicions” that the virus was what had caused the artist’s and family members’ artistic genius and subsequent madness. Helen’s knowledge is attested to, Pendergast says, by the precautions she had taken to avoid infecting herself with the virus:

“. . . She wore leather gloves, and she stuffed the bird and its cage into a garbage bag. Why? Initially, I assumed the bag was simply for concealment. But it was to keep herself and her car from contamination” [Pendergast tells Hayward].

“And the leather gloves?’

“Worn no doubt to conceal a pair of medical gloves beneath. Helen was trying to remove a viral vector from the human population. No doubt the bird, cage, and bag were all incinerated--after she’d taken the necessary samples, of course” (237-38).

Preston and Child do not merely have characters discuss past investigative findings. The authors also use dialogue between their characters to present rhetorical questions pertaining to as-yet-undiscovered aspects and implications of the investigation, as in this exchange between Pendergast and Hayward, wherein the reader is advised, as it were, of three other, related questions implicit in the case:

“Isn’t there another question you’re forgetting?” Hayward asked.

Pendergast looked at her.

“You say Helen stole the parrots Audubon studied--the ones that supposedly sickened him. Helen also visited the Doane family and stole their parrot--because, as you also say, she knew it was infected. By inference, Helen is the common thread that binds the two events. So aren’t you curious what role she might have had in the sequencing and inoculation?” (238)

Masters of their craft, Preston and Child show how, in skilled hands, authors can provide data without context, piece together a theory that, using deductive and inductive reasoning to analyze causes and effects and to infer implications concerning the significance and meaning of such evidence, explains criminal undertakings and their perpetrators’ motives and goals while, at the same time, keeping unresolved questions that are important to the developing case before the reader’s mind. Whether an aspiring author writes horror fiction or thrillers, he or she can learn a good deal from the example of such masterful storytellers.

Story Ideas Journal

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Like many other writers, Mark Twain kept a notebook--or a series of the, actually--I which, among other entries, he jotted down story ideas. I find that the USA Today’s “Across the USA: News From Every State” column, quite unintentionally, I’m sure, provides fruit for me (and for others), on a daily basis, for story ideas, ripe for the plucking. Notebooks and notebooks of the, in fact. By applying a bit of Gahan Wilson logic or Gary Larson perspective to the news items reported in this column, I find that I can transform at least a few of the straightforward reports into ideas for potential horror stories. For example, five of the fifty reports, or a full ten percent of the, in the September 27, 2010 issue of the newspaper show promise, which is to say, with a little revision., could become the bases of stories from the dark side of the soul. Courtesy of the great states of Louisiana, Montana, Texas, Virginia, and Washington, here they are, followed by my revisions to them and the bases of the revisions.

[Original:] Louisiana: Leesville--Work on a new veterans cemetery begins this week next to Fort Polk. Mike Sewell, project manager for Pat Williams Construction, said a survey crew should be preparing for timber clearing in about two weeks. He said the $6.1 million project should be completed late next year.

Revision: Louisiana: Leesville--Work on a new veterans cemetery begins this week next to Fort Polk. The $6.1 million project, the project manager for the contractor said, will kick off the U. S. military’s combined forces’ Operation Alpha, which is expected to ignite a theater-wide war in the Middle East, requiring at least 100,00 graves by the end of the anticipated five-year conflict. (Story Idea)

Basis of Revision: The revision is based on a reversal of cause and effect, assuming that cemeteries occasion casualty-producing wars rather than answering the need for burial sites that is caused by wars--in other words, that the cemeteries are completed prior to the wars that are fought to fill the cemeteries.

[Original:] Montana: Missoula--The art work of a former war prisoner who created drawings of atrocities he witnessed while the Japanese held him during World War II has found a home at the Montana Museum of Art and Culture. The museum announced that it has acquired 11 oil paintings and nearly 80 drawings by Ben Steele, 92. The Montana native was taken prisoner when he was 23.

Revision: Montana: Missoula--The art work of a former war prisoner who created drawings of atrocities he witnessed while the Japanese held him during World War II has found a home at the Montana Museum of Magical Realism. The museum curator announced that the 11 oil paintings and nearly 80 drawings by Ben Steele, 92, represent “performance art,” that is capable of magically recreating the actual experience that the artist underwent so that whoever views his work will actually live through the same atrocities that the artist experienced when he was taken prisoner at age 23. (Story Idea)

Basis of Revision: By transforming drawings and paintings into items of magical “performance art” that recreate the artists’ experiences as a prisoner of war so faithfully and completely that viewers actually undergo the atrocities that the art depicts, this story idea plays with the idea of art as a representation of human experience, taking the concept to fantastic extremes.

[Original:] Texas: Houston--Area residents turned over more than 3,000 pounds of expired, unused and unwanted prescription medications to federal authorities. The Saturday collection was the U. S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s first effort to round up unused prescription medications at 3,400 locations nationwide as part of its campaign.

Revision: Texas: Houston--Area residents turned over more than 3,000 unwanted infants and toddlers to federal authorities. The Saturday collection was the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services’ first effort to round up unwanted children at 3,400 locations nationwide for use in cloning and bioengineering research. (Story Idea) This story idea obviously lends itself well to satirical treatment of the federal government’s heavy-handed intrusions into citizens’ lives. (Other horrific ideas might stem from the substitution of “virgins” or “spouses” for “prescription drugs.”)

Basis of Revision: The substitution of babies for prescription drugs is an interesting revision to the original news report, to be sure, and one that calls for explanation; the explanation is as monstrous as the federal bureaucracies that involve themselves in such “health” concerns as abortion, fetal stem cell research and similar matters, replaced, in my revision with “cloning and bioengineering research.”

[Original:] Virginia: Lexington--Washington and Lee University is stepping up efforts to recruit Jewish students as part of efforts to create a more diverse campus. Jewish students currently make up 4.5% of about 1,760 undergraduate students. Recruitment efforts include attending college fairs and visiting Jewish schools, community centers, and teen groups.

Revision: Virginia: Lexington--Washington and Lee University is stepping up efforts to recruit human oddities as part of efforts to create a more diverse campus. Human oddities, or “freaks,” as they were once know currently make up 4.5% of about 1,760 undergraduate students. Recruitment efforts include attending county fairs and visiting circuses and carnival sideshows. (Story Idea) This politically incorrect storyline is certainly insensitive and bigoted, but it is one that pokes fun at political correctness and, as such, could lend itself to a satirical send-up of social and collegiate concerns for “diversity.”

Basis of Revision: Again, by simply substituting one group of people (“human oddities”) for another (“Jewish” students), an unlikely and, in this case, offensive, storyline suggests itself that could have horrific possibilities.

[Original:] Washington: Bellingham--State officials said they stopped a boat that was contaminated by zebra mussels before the invasive species could spread in the state’s waters. Officers with the Department of Fish and Wildlife and Washington State Patrol in Cle Elum inspected the boat being hauled from Michigan to British Columbia.

Revision: Washington: Bellingham--State officials said they stopped a boat that was contaminated by extraterrestrial spores that could have fertilized animal ova, resulting in a hybridized alien-animal life form such as the world has never seen. (Story Idea) The original report could also have changed by substituting an alien virus for the “zebra mussels,” causing a potential pandemic or by replacing “zebra mussels” with a reference to an extraterrestrial germ or other agent that causes a reverse-terraforming of the Earth that makes it inhabitable to humans but livable for the aliens who will soon arrive to replace the humans they’ve killed in advance of their arrival.

Basis of Revision: Substitution of terms.

Every day, USA Today provides writers with another column featuring “news from every state.” If only two items per day result in potential ideas for horror stories, a year will provide 730 entries to one’s journal of story ideas. Very likely, the column will suggest many more. If one generates as many as five each day, as I gleaned from among today’s news items, a year’s yield will provide a whopping 1,825 entries--way more than even the most prolific writer could hope to use in a lifetime!

Background: The Key to Interpreting Foreground

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Bats’ wings, horns, talons, tails, reptilian shapes, scales, tentacles, multiple mouths equipped with jaws full of jagged teeth, compound eyes, flies, worms, skeletons, corpses, mummies, skeletons, skulls, distortions of face and figure, conical heads, skin masks, blood, viscera, anthropomorphic trees, birds, hybrid life forms, living statues, men and women walking on air, eyes embedded in tree trunks, Santa with an axe, ghost children, bloody tears, alien babies, strangers at the window, vast spaces, disembodied body parts--these are but some of the images one finds in art associated with the horror genre. The fear of the animal within, of the predator, of the grave and the secrets it holds, of deformity, of a confusion of cognitive categories and loss of sense, of madness, of love and trust betrayed, of the strange, of dislocation and dismemberment, of suffering and death--these are the terrors upon which such images are based.

If the foreground is the text, more or less clearly expressed, albeit, usually, in metaphor, the background is the subtext. The background is the whisper that provides the context by which the spoken (foreground) is to be interpreted, and, in artwork related to the horror genre, the background often hints at night and darkness, at the distance of stars, at clouds and fog, at alien worlds, at disorientation, at devastation, at decomposition and putrefaction, at fragmentation, at mystification, at torture, at suffering, at passion, at destruction, and at hostility.

According to Trevor Whittock, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson argue, in Metaphors We Live By, “against the view that experiences and objects have inherent properties and are understood solely in terms of those properties. . . [that] inherent properties only in part account for how we comprehend things. Just as important is [the fact that] our concepts, and consequently our experience, are structured in terms of metaphors” (Metaphor and Film, 114-115). By comparing the new and unfamiliar with the known, people seek to understand better that which is strange or novel. Often, the creation of metaphors and analogies are means of doing so.

I assert that something similar to this process can occur in the contemplation of a drawing or a painting. The foreground is the overt (known), the background the covert (unknown), half of a complete statement, or vision, that, to be understood must be considered in light of its complementary counterpart. Some of the clearest, or more obvious, examples of the background’s importance to interpreting a work of art’s foreground are seen in the work of fantasy artist Frank Frazetta, whose paintings often adorn science fiction and fantasy paperback novels, but which also frequently exhibit horrific imagery.



In one such painting, a warrior dressed vaguely in the manner of a Viking rushes toward a nubile, nude young maiden who is about to be sacrificed upon a stone altar by a cloaked figure holding a large knife. An alligator, but with wavering tentacles attached to its reptilian tail, lies at the base of the short flight of stone steps that leads to the altar. The background is peopled, as it were, with dark shapes comprised of huge bat-like wings, fanged human faces, lupine ears, and brawny arms, one or more (it is difficult to tell, for the background is dark, and the figures which occupy it are little more than shadows) seize the pale, white corpse of another nude woman who, it appears, was the victim of an earlier sacrifice. Above the heroic warrior, parallel bands of shadow descend, as if they are the dark outlines of a monstrous hand reaching for the would-be rescuer. The background suggests a hellish or demonic cult and, perhaps, the evil god whom the cultists worship and who are about to sacrifice the female victim, thereby offering a key to interpreting the overall image, or scene, that the painting, as a whole, depicts.

In another of Frazetta’s paintings, Queen Kong, a gigantic blonde stands astride the Empire State Building, New York City stretched out below her, circled by attacking biplanes. In her right hand, she holds a miniature version of King Kong. The sky is blue-gray, shot through with wisps of red-orange clouds that resemble used bandages. Obviously, the painting is a spoof upon King Kong, with the roles of the ape and the human object of his simian affections reversed; the background (the city streets below the skyscraper, in particular) helps to establish the context that makes this humorous work intelligible.

A final example should suffice to clarify my point that a painting’s background is--or can be (and probably should be)--an important contextual clue to the interpretation of its foreground. In this picture, Barbarian, a warrior stands atop a heap of rubble, a nude woman lying at his feet. The palm of his left hand rests upon the hilt of his sword, the blade of which thrusts into the pile of debris. A closer look at the rubble reveals it to be not only a heap of earth, but one which is strewn with skulls, spines, severed arms, a battleaxe, and what might be a spear. Symbolically, the warrior stands upon the bones and corpses of enemies whom he has bested in battle, an interpretation which seems to be borne out by the delicate images of a huge skull and a cowl-shrouded death’s-head which are close to the same colors--tan, light brown, yellow, and orange--out of which they appear to swirl, perhaps as representations of the warrior’s memories of the evil forces whom he has, in past battles, slain. The yellow and orange colors rise, seeming to flicker, as if they are flames, perhaps suggesting the final fate of the vanquished, whom the victorious hero has dispatched to hell.

Writers can accomplish the same effects as Frazetta and other visual artists by writing descriptions of settings in which details comprise a contextual background which illuminates, on a more or less subliminal level, the significance of a scene’s “foreground” action or characters, thereby enriching their own work. By describing settings in such a way that the descriptions themselves tell a story, the writer can tell stories within stories, the former providing emotional, thematic, or narrative subtext for the latter.

Hieroglyphic Horrors

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

When images are used symbolically, to suggest identities, situations, statuses, or other qualities, conditions, or states, a nearly subliminal effect may be obtained.

Stephen Crane, an impressionistic writer, achieves such effects in his writings. In The Red Badge of Courage, for example, he implies that nature is indifferent to humanity. As the protagonist, Henry, wanders away from the horrors of the battlefield, during the American Civil War, he stumbles into a forest, which Crane describes as if it were a cathedral.

At first, he takes heart at the sight of a squirrel that flees when he throws a stick at it, reassured that his own desertion is not a cowardly, but a natural, act. However, as he continues to wander the deep woods, he sees a predatory act: an animal seizes a fish. He encounters the ravaged corpse of another soldier, and he realizes that the forest, despite the resemblance of its canopy to a cathedral, offers no protection from war.

Despite the clashing of the armies and the hundreds and hundreds of dead who rot upon the battlefield, the sky is serene, undisturbed by the catastrophe that men have unleashed upon themselves. The juxtaposition of human struggle against nature’s peaceful disregard, as it were, of this struggle makes it clear to Henry that nature is indifferent to humanity.

Through his narrator’s comments, Crane occasionally offers direct statements concerning how his imagery should be interpreted, but his message is mostly implicit, conveyed through his imagery and the juxtaposition of violent human conduct and nature’s apparent indifference to such behavior as it goes about its own processes. Here is an example from Chapter 7 of The Red Badge of Courage:

This landscape gave him assurance. A fair field holding life. It was the religion of peace. It would die if its timid eyes were compelled to see blood. He conceived Nature to be a woman with a deep aversion to tragedy.

He threw a pine cone at a jovial squirrel, and he ran with chattering fear. High in a treetop he stopped, and, poking his head cautiously from behind a branch, looked down with an air of trepidation.

The youth felt triumphant at this exhibition. There was the law, he said. Nature had given him a sign. The squirrel, immediately upon recognizing danger, had taken to his legs without ado. He did not stand stolidly baring his furry belly to the missile, and die with an upward glance at the sympathetic heavens. On the contrary, he had fled
as fast as his legs could carry him; and he was but an ordinary squirrel, too--doubtless no philosopher of his race. The youth wended, feeling that Nature was of his mind. She re-enforced his argument with proofs that lived where the sun shone.

Once he found himself almost into a swamp. He was obliged to walk upon bog tufts and watch his feet to keep from the oily mire. Pausing at one time to look about him he saw, out at some black water, a small animal pounce in and emerge directly with a gleaming fish.

The youth went again into the deep thickets. The brushed branches made a noise that drowned the sounds of cannon. He walked on, going from obscurity into promises of a greater obscurity.

At length he reached a place where the high, arching boughs made a chapel. He softly pushed the green doors aside and entered. Pine needles were a gentle brown carpet. There was a religious half light.

Near the threshold he stopped, horror-stricken at the sight of a thing.

He was being looked at by a dead man who was seated with his back against a columnlike tree. The corpse was dressed in a uniform that once had been blue, but was now faded to a melancholy shade of green. The eyes, staring at the youth, had changed to the dull hue to be seen on the side of a dead fish. The mouth was open. Its red had changed to an appalling yellow. Over the gray skin of the face ran little ants. One was trundling some sort of a bundle along the upper lip.

The youth gave a shriek as he confronted the thing. He was for moments turned to stone before it. He remained staring into the liquid-looking eyes. The dead man and the living man exchanged a long look. Then the youth cautiously put one hand behind him and brought it against a tree. Leaning upon this he retreated, step by step, with his face still toward the thing. He feared that if he turned his back the body might spring up and stealthily pursue him.

The branches, pushing against him, threatened to throw him over upon it. His unguided feet, too, caught aggravatingly in brambles; and with it all he received a subtle suggestion to touch the corpse. As he thought of his hand upon it he shuddered profoundly.

At last he burst the bonds which had fastened him to the spot and fled, unheeding the underbrush. He was pursued by a sight of the black ants swarming greedily upon
the gray face and venturing horribly near to the eyes.

After a time he paused, and, breathless and panting, listened. He imagined some strange voice would come from the dead throat and squawk after him in horrible menaces.

The trees about the portal of the chapel moved soughingly in a soft wind. A sad silence was upon the little guarding edifice.

Of necessity, motion pictures must also employ images that are packed with symbolic value. They do not, as a rule, have as much time to devote to extended treatments, and although dialogue allows them the opportunity of making direct comments on the images they display, films rarely do so, leaving it to audiences, instead, to interpret the symbolism of these images themselves. However, on occasion, the same or similar images will be repeated to establish a motif by which characters’ actions should be evaluated or interpreted.

For example, in his film version of Stephen King’s novel Carrie (1976), Brian De Palma wants to make it clear that protagonist Carrie White is a target of her peers’ harassment. When she misses a volleyball return during a physical education class, she is bombarded by her fellow students, who take turns slamming the ball into her. Later, surprised by her first menstrual period (her mother, a religious fanatic, has not bothered to tell her the facts of life), Carrie, terrified, calls for assistance, only to be pelted by the tampons and sanitary napkins that the other girls throw at her. Twice, without a word of direct commentary concerning Carrie‘s status (or lack thereof) among her peers, De Palma has identified her as a target of her peers’ hatred and abuse. (He has also made Carrie a sympathetic character, whom the audience pities.)

Tony Williams points out another example of this technique in Hearths of Darkness: The Family in the American Horror Film. Concerning Alice, Sweet Alice (1978) (which is also available by the alternate titles Communion [1976] and Holy Terror [1981]), he observes: “Alice’s credits show a female communicant holding a cross. She lifts it up, revealing its lower end as a blade. . . . This image aptly signifies Catholicism’s repression of female sexuality and its unexpressed eruption into violence. A virginal Bride of Christ is also a psychotic murderer” (169).

A similar image is presented in Cruel Intentions (1999) when, at the end of the movie, Kathryn Merteuil’s hypocrisy in posing as a blameless, virginal, saintly young woman is exposed and her conniving and fraudulent character is revealed as the headmaster of her private and exclusive school opens the crucifix she wears around her neck and the cocaine inside the cross spills into the air, for all to see.

Sometimes, not even an image is needed to reveal character or suggest a theme. A camera angle can be sufficient, as Williams points out. Following Carrie’s death, he says, “a dark legacy remains. As Sue [one of Carrie’s tormentors, now repentant] awakes from a traumatic nightmare in Carrie’s climax, the camera cranes out to show Mrs. Snell comforting her daughter. Her words, “It’s all right. I’m here” are ironic. Mrs. Snell was never a good mother. The final camera movement dwarfs mother and daughter into insignificance” (240).

In a previous article, “Building Suspense the Tobie Hooper Way,” I indicate other examples of writers and moviemakers who characterize or suggest identities, situations, statuses, or other qualities, conditions, or states through the use of images, symbolism, and other forms of indirect communication.

Writers of horror can follow the examples of Crane and moviemakers, using symbolic images to effect subliminal suspense, fear, and other emotions. In doing so, forego direct commentary through narrative exposition or dialogue between characters, and, instead, limit yourself only to the use of symbolic images.

Describe (show) a trait in action (for example, a jealous character acting in a jealous fashion) or associate a character with a physical object, or property, that symbolizes something important about him or her, shows how he or she is regarded by others, or what is at the core of his or her being.

The use of a dream dictionary can help you to select such objects, because such a reference shows what various commonplace things often represent psychologically.

An examination of William Shakespeare’s use of images and symbols in his poems and plays will pay huge dividends, because these works are written not only in blank verse but also, by and large, in symbolic images that, rather often, link to and build upon one another. Seeing how the bard accomplishes this literary feat will help you to become accomplished at it as well.

Finally, another way to research how artists translate intangibles such as thoughts and emotions into pictures is to consider the images in the works of visual artists such as illustrators, painters, and photographers, whose very media are dependent almost exclusively upon their use of symbolic imagery. How does an illustrator represent fear? How does a painter portray hope or despair? How does a photographer suggest victimization, evil, saintliness, or honesty? Search the works of fine artists rather than their popular counterparts, for there is a reason that classic art is classic. Then, sure, take a look at the popular forms, too, after you’ve seen what the masters do. An Internet images browser is a helpful tool in tracking down such images, but I also suggest A World History of Art as an excellent starting point.

Quick Tip: Futurological Predictions as Grist for the Mill

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

It is impossible to predict what shape horror fiction will take in the future. As Soren Kierkegaard points out, “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” The same is true of fiction.

Nevertheless, there are some indications that the horror fiction of the future may address some of the concerns of the futurologist. As the science, or study, of the future, futurology attempts to discern future trends by studying present patterns and causes. Global warming, it might be argued, is an example of futurological thinking. At the heart of futurology are statistics and probability theory, but history, economics, mathematics, and most of the sciences also play key roles in efforts to discern possible and probable future events and to devise possible and probable future scenarios. As one article summarizes the science, “Future Studies is often summarized as being concerned with ‘three P’s and a W,’ or possible, probable, and preferable futures, plus wildcards, which are low probability but high impact events (positive or negative), should they occur” (“Futurology,” Wikipedia).

Of course, such a characterization is simplistic, as futurology also depends upon a nexus of other subordinate, often interrelated, disciplines and approaches, including anticipatory thinking protocols, systems thinking, causal layered analysis, environmental screening, the scenario method, the Delphi method, future history, monitoring, backcasting, back-view mirror analysis, cross-impact analysis, futures workshops, failure mode and effects analysis, futures biographies, futures wheels, relevance trees, simulation and modeling, social network analysis, systems engineering, trend analysis, morphological analysis, and technology forecasting.

The literary equivalents to futuristic societies are, perhaps, the dystopias and utopias of science fiction. In horror fiction, extrapolating from current, known scientific knowledge and theoretical understandings to possible or probable future states of affairs is also a way to anticipate the monsters to come. Some suppose that H. R. Giger’s biomechanical art and the short stories of Ray Bradbury which marry technology and art, such as “The Veldt,” point the direction to at least one likely future topic for horror fiction: mankind’s ambiguous and troubled relationship with the works of his own hands (and mind).

Needless to say, the very concept of futurology is itself very controversial.

Besides, fiction benefits from being fiction; it doesn’t have to be about actual, or real, situations; by nature, it is made up, invented, pretended, even when it is based upon actual events. However, an awareness of the predictions made by futurologists can certainly provide grist for the always-ravenous mill of the creative writer’s imagination.

The Value of Literature

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

Fiction begins with empathy, as a writer imagines what it would be like to be another individual. He or she puts him- or herself into another person’s shoes, except that, of course, the person is a literary character, rather than a flesh-and-blood man, woman, or child, whom the writer creates. The process works in reverse, too--or is claimed to do so: readers, identifying with literary characters, experience and understand life from these figures’ points of view. For this reason, literature is said to broaden and to deepen human experience.

Since the behavior of fictional characters models that of actual human beings, fiction provides the potential for making ethical decisions and statements about human behavior in general; it allows readers to assess, evaluate, and judge whether a character’s conduct is moral and beneficial or immoral and disadvantageous to him or her and to others, including society in general. Indeed, fiction can be--or has been, at least--a means of transmitting values to present and future generations and societies, as, for example, Beowulf did and as the Bible continues to do for many.

In previous posts, we have considered the types of values that horror fiction conveys. It shows what writers consider to be wrong, or evil, and it demonstrates, through the behavior of the protagonist, how such wickedness can be resisted or overcome, indicating, in the process, that terrible and horrific experiences, including the loss of life and limb, can be endured and that the truly important things in life have nothing to do with such petty pursuits as power, fame, and fortune.

Can the assertions that literature makes--the themes of stories--be proven to be true or false, as a scientist, for example, can demonstrate the truth of the theory that some microorganisms cause disease or that the bonding of oxygen and hydrogen molecules results in the substance we call “water”? No. Are such claims without value, then?

Sigmund Freud

Until relatively recently, Sigmund Freud’s theory of human personality and behavior, psychoanalysis, was not only the predominant school of thought in this domain, but it was the domain, or, to use a different metaphor, it was the only game in town. Carl Jung’s psychology, like that of Alfred Adler’s, Erik Ericson’s, Ernest Jones’, Karen Horney’s, Jacques Lacan’s, Otto Rank’s, Erich Fromm’s, and others in the fold, were mere variations of Freud’s thought. Psychoanalysis was psychology.

Karl Popper

It was not until Karl Popper and other critics asked Freud, as it were, to set his theory’s superego, ego, and id upon the examination table, the better to see and feel, taste and touch, smell and measure them, that psychoanalysis lost its devotees. It was considered unscientific because it consisted of ideas which, by definition, cannot be measured or quantified and, therefore, cannot be empirically verified. In other words, it was a myth, not a science.

Besides the triune composition of personality that Freud posited, other of his ideas were also found to be unscientific and suspect, such as his theory of psychosexual development as being comprised of discreet stages (oral, anal, Oedipal, and genital) and his view of the existence of an “unconscious mind.” His much-vaunted “talking cure” and his attributing all behavioral disorders to unresolved sexual problems related to childhood also came under serious attack, chiefly by feminists, who regard Freudian thought and, in particular, his references to “penis envy” and to women as wannabe men, as highly sexist and offensive. Once the end-all and the be-all of psychology, psychoanalysis took on the appearance of being little more than a modern version of ancient shamanism, with its practitioners considered more witchdoctors than scientists.

How is this related to the value of literature? The themes that literature expresses are of the same type as those which psychoanalysis makes--that is, they are speculative, not scientific; they cannot be quantified or verified. They cannot be scientifically proven or disproved. If, therefore, psychoanalysis is without value, literature would also seem to be without value, for the same reasons.

Martin Heidegger

Those who believe that literature, including, for example, philosophical and religious texts, does have some kind of value have had to reevaluate the matter. Many, in doing so, adopt a position akin to that of the existential philosopher Martin Heidegger, who argues that literature is not about the objective, measurable world of nature, but is, rather, about the inner man or woman.

In short, literary texts are about human experience, as it is understood consciously, by the person him- or herself, and, since people do not exist in a vacuum, but are products of their cultures and societies, literature also provides insights into the nature of such traditions and social groups. Moreover, literature is a means by which authors and readers may share such experiences and it is, as such, a sort of glue that helps to cement individuals and societies together and to suggest personal and social meanings for them that science, by nature, cannot suggest.

Since most other disciplines, scientific and otherwise, impinge upon literature (or literature impinges upon them), it creates a complex network of interrelated ideas which enriches the discussion of the artistic, moral, social, legal, philosophical, political, religious, and theological questions that literature often raises. Although many of these other domains are as unscientific as literature itself, they have value for the same reason that literature does: they unite human beings through shared experience. Men and women are more than natural objects among a world of other things. They are conscious. They think and feel, believe and desire, hope and strive. Science’s importance, notwithstanding, science has little to do with any of these subjective expressions and functions of the human soul.

Soren Kierkegaard

Science may tell us what is, but it cannot tell us what should be, any more than it can tell us how what is feels or how we should think or feel about reality. The Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard said that, although, in principle, through science, the universe is known, he himself is left over, as “an unscientific postscript.” The domain of philosophy, religion, and literature in general, including horror fiction, is that of the “leftover” self, and these domains are about sharing the self with the other selves of the world. As long as people believe that they themselves and others have value and that their experience matters, literature and its themes will continue to have value as well.

Besides, literature can be pretty entertaining.

The Here, the Now, and the Eternal

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

Paintings and illustrations are, of course, visual modes, whereas fiction is a narrative form. A painting or an illustration may suggest a story, but fiction must tell a tale. In the process, it will suggest images, through description. However, in doing so, its purpose will be ever the same: to tell a story. Paintings and illustrations are under no such obligation; they may or may not tell a story, as their creators please. For visual artists, the picture is the point; for writers, pictures are means, not ends, and the end that they do serve is to contribute to the tale’s overall effect and theme.

In “The Premature Burial,” Edgar Allan Poe describes, from the point of view of one who has suffered the fate suggested by his story’s title, what it would feel like to be buried alive. In doing so, Poe puts his reader alongside his living corpse, as it were, heightening the horror and the terror of the protagonist’s situation. Before reading his story, one may have dimly understood the horror and the terror of such a situation, but Poe ensures that his reader shall comprehend, in full, the emotional and even the visceral significance of such a situation. The author makes the reader live, as it were, inside the coffin for much of the duration of his story.

The tale is horrific, and its great fear deepens as one returns to the tale when he or she has advanced in years and the story’s potential threat looms larger--or closer. The victim’s struggle inside the coffin seems to suggest the ordinary person’s fear that life may be ultimately without meaning or value, that eternity reduces a life lived in time to insignificance. (Art, as represented by “The Premature Burial” itself, it may be argued, transcends time and, thereby, may give value and significance to temporal human existence.)

A visual artist might depict the living corpse’s situation, as, for example, Buffy Summers’ having been buried alive is depicted in an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in which, having died, she is brought back to life by a spell cast by her friend, the witch named Willow Rosenberg: the viewer sees Buffy’s somewhat skeletal remains take on flesh, as it were, as her corpse reverts to life, and her eyes, having reformed, snap wide in abject terror.

It’s a disturbing scene, to be sure, but it’s over almost as soon as it begins, Buffy’s reversion to life taking but a few seconds, and, thereafter, we only hear of her sustaining lacerations and bruises to her hands (and, presumably, a few broken nails) as she clawed her way out of her premature grave. In a couple of later episodes, Buffy performs in a mechanical fashion, merely going through the motions of living, before finally confiding to the vampire Spike that Willow’s spell had snatched her out of heaven, returning her to this world, which seems, by contrast to the bliss she’d experienced, rather like hell to her. Nice touches, but they are far removed from her plight as one who has been, as it were, buried alive. Poe keeps the pressure on his reader by focusing his entire story on the trauma that his story’s victim experiences as one who has been buried alive.

A story, as Aristotle taught us, long ago, is a sequence of causally-related incidents which comprise a single, unified action theoretically divisible into a beginning, a middle, and an end. It has a destination, in other words; having started somewhere, it goes somewhere, that it might, as it were, arrive somewhere. It moves (as do our eyes, from left to right, as we track the text down the page). A painting or an illustration may suggests a sort of narrative flow, but, of course, it is not going anywhere; it is, even if it does draw and move the eye, a static picture, a snapshot of life, eternally memorializing a moment rather than an experience.

The significance of the painting or the illustration is the moment which it captures in paint or ink. The significance, in fiction, is not in the momentary image, but in the relationships among a series of such images and the incidents which give rise to these images. It is as if the visual artist is saying, “Behold the moment; in it is the meaning of life,” whereas the author is proclaiming, “Behold the experience; in it, is the meaning of life.” One artist is seized by the particular moment; the other, by the relationships among a series of moments in which he or she discerns a cause-and effect or a logical sequence.

For the visual artist, meaning is fragmented and brief, here one moment, in this or that instance, and gone the next. Life is a transitory and temporal affair. For the literary artist, meaning is whole and long-lasting, if not permanent. Life is enduring and eternal. One artistic form is not necessarily better than the other, for painters and illustrators remind us that the here and the now are important, that much of life is lived in the instant, and that what happens today shall happen just this once and, therefore, should be appreciated and, where possible, enjoyed and prized, and writers remind us that it is important to understand relationships among the momentary and fleeting parade of sensations and perceptions, to interpret them together, whenever possible, and to take away from our experience an understanding that transcends the moment and can be recalled again, in some sense, independent of the moments themselves, out of which the understanding arose.

Visual art immerses us in the moment; narrative art lifts us above the present. To remain immersed forever in the present would cause one to tire of the assault of impressions upon his or her flooded senses, but to remain, as it were, on the dock, looking out to sea, would be never to bathe one’s soul in the refreshing ebb and flow of life and to be as much alive as one of the stationary planks or posts of which the pier is built.


In horror fiction, a series of seemingly unrelated incidents of a bizarre and horrific nature occur, and the protagonist seeks to understand the reason or the cause of these incidents. In other words, he or she seeks to fathom their meaning, their significance, their importance. When something--even something horrible--can be understood in such terms, it may remain horrible, but it also becomes consequential; its importance recognized, it becomes known and familiar, and it may also be understood to have some benefit, despite the pain and suffering it causes in the moment, in the here and now. An early narrative of such a theme is the story of Job, who learns, as a result of the horrific and undeserved suffering he undergoes, that “the just shall live by faith.”

But let’s have an example from the horror genre. In The Exorcist, the protagonist, Father Damien Karras, has come to doubt his faith because of the suffering that his dying mother endured before her death. Since, in Christianity, an unbeliever goes to hell after dying, the priest is in danger of losing his immortal soul. According to William Peter Blatty, the author of the novel, it is in the hope of bringing about the priest’s damnation that the demon possesses the soul of young Regan MacNeil.

In doing so, the demon sets up the occasion of the exorcism which involves Father Karras and so now has the opportunity to tempt the priest to renounce his faith by showing him the work of the devil, up close and personal, so to speak, as the demon torments the innocent girl whom it has possessed. Father Karras’ suffering now has meaning. It has importance beyond itself. It has value, for it has become the means by which, in the exercise of his own free will, he will retain or lose his faith and, thereby, his soul.

Other horror stories depict sets of circumstances or series of incidents which also find meaning and value by pointing beyond themselves, to the eternal realm of value, of reason, of faith, of beauty, and, in doing so, point the way to something like the possibility of Platonic forms or (less abstractly) the enduring value of life, or, for the religious reader, the reality of God. (“The just shall live by faith,” as both Job and Father Karras learn.) Along the way, such stories often also criticize many of the fallacies and idols, philosophical, theological, personal, cultural, and otherwise, that we hold in false esteem or false reverence.

The good life, horror fiction suggests, lies not in misery, madness, mayhem, suffering, and sin, but in the significance that such experiences may have beyond themselves, as stories, so to speak, that lead one from the temporal to the eternal. Without the hope of meaning within and beyond the moment, we would be mired only in sensual and perceptual experience; we would be lost among the phenomena of subjective experience, forever an image among images in a painting or a drawing of the here and now.

As Buffy’s Watcher, Rupert Giles, once quipped, concerning his protégé, “Buffy lives very much in the now.” Her philosophy, as Buffy herself tells Willow, is carpe diem, or seize the day--that is, live for the moment--because life is short. The series itself, however, rises above the discrete incidents of pain and suffering, of beauty and joy, that make up the protagonist’s day-to-day existence to show the series’ viewer that the meaning of life lies (as it is understood in the context of the series as a whole) in the acceptance of responsibility and the answer of the call of duty, even when doing so requires the sacrifice of oneself. Life may be short, but the consequences of one’s behavior can have lasting effects on others, including those generations which are yet to come.

Demons Old and New

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

In the old days, demons were personifications of destructive natural forces. Later, these evil external spirits became inner demons. After the cosmos filled up with demons, many of whom entered Christian thought, for example, as deposed gods and goddesses from other religions, theologians sought to classify and catalogue them, and the science, as it were, of demonology arose. Demons, some such cataloguers believed, formed a hierarchical social structure that essentially parodied that of the angelic order.

According to one such system--that of Sebastian Michaelis--there are three hierarchies. The highest, or first, hierarchy consists of Beelzebub (arrogance), Leviathan (heresy), Asmodai (lust), Berith (murder and blasphemy), Astaroth (laziness and vanity), Verrin (impatience), Gressil (impurity, uncleanness, and malice), and Sonneillon (hatred). The second tier is composed of Lilith (Adam’s first wife and a succubus) and Azazel, the angel of death. Three demons make up the third hierarchy: Belial (arrogance and adversity), Olivier (fierceness, greediness, and envy), and Jouvart (sexuality).

There are additional demonologies, including those of The Testament of Solomon, of Michael Psellus, of Alfonso de Spina, of Peter Binsfeld, of Francesco Maria Guazzo, of Francis Barrett, and others. Some give to their demons such worldly titles as great marshal, knight, president, great president, earl, great earl, duke, great duke, and the like, up to emperor. Those who do not warrant inclusion among the demonic nobility make up the peasantry, as it were, which divides into numerous legions. The ranking demons typically rule over one or more emotional or attitudinal element or elements.

Many demons come from pagan religions, but others are supplied by Jewish folklore, Gnosticism, and various mythologies. Most have specific adversaries against whom fight continuing cosmic battles.

Frequently, demons are depicted as monstrous entities, with eyes instead of nipples in their breasts, with bats’ wings on their backs, with mouths in their bellies, with horns growing from their skulls, and so forth. The imagination is free to run wild in its conception of these evil spirits, and artists give full vent to their most outrageous fancies in giving form to these demonic beings, as the following gallery suggests.

Aamon

Astaroth

Baal

Baphomet

Beelzebub

Buer

Dagon

Incubus

Lilith

Moloch

Satan

Times have changed since the ancient and medieval demonologies were compiled, and the demonic has gained new forms to supplement the largely bestial and insect shapes that demons previously often took. Many of these new forms are hybrids of men (or women) and machines, reflecting the dehumanization of today’s people in terms not so much bestial as mechanical. To be demonic is seen, increasingly, as not so much a matter of being animalistic as it is of being artificial. The demonic is the perfunctory and the robotic, the mechanized and the programmed, the automatic rather than the autonomous. Painters such as biomechanical artists H. R. Giger, fantasy artists such as Frank Frazetta and Julie Bell, and filmmakers such as Steven Spielberg and Joss Whedon depict the contemporary demon, just as, in previous terms, such artists as Hieronymus Bosch, Gustave Dore, and others depicted the demon as he, she, and it was understood in their days.

Birth Machine by H. R. Giger

Whether insect-like, animalistic, or mechanical, the demon always depicts the worst aspects of the human personality, for it is the demonic which leads human beings downward, toward the carnal and the sensual or the otherwise blasphemous and idolatrous, and only God can lead them upward, toward self-transcendence and the sacred realm of the transpersonal divine. No doubt, as something replaces the machine, the mechanical demon will be joined by new expressions of evil.

Jar Jar Binks

Perhaps, as with the demon Moloch the Corruptor, in Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s “I Robot, You Jane,” the latest transformation is already underway, for, in this episode’s contribution to demonic lore, before the demon appears as a robot, it is simply a spirit that escapes from a book as it is scanned into a computer’s memory, whereupon it gains unfettered access to cyberspace. The electronic demon, it seems, has already arrived. In this episode of Buffy, it symbolizes the dangers to teens of Internet chat rooms.

New demons should represent new threats, not old, for, otherwise, what need have we of new ones? The mechanical--and biomechanical--as well as the electronic demons that have begun to emerge from artists’ exercise of their imaginations seem to represent such menaces as the dehumanizing effects of rampant industrialism and the near-omnipresence of surveillance and control mechanisms that the Internet provides or seems to provide the government, the depraved, the faceless stalker, and other menaces especially representative of our time and day.

Note: All illustrations are from Wikipedia, which takes most of them from Creative Commons.