The Incomplete Completist

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

In The Cat Pajamas's “Introduction: Alive and Kicking and Writing,” Ray Bradbury offers a clue to the meaning of his short story “The Completist.”

First, he recounts the story's inspiration. He and his wife Maggie, he says, met a “book collector and library founder” during “a voyage across the Atlantic” (xv).

After listening for to him hours, the Bradburys learned of the shocking incident with which Bradbury concludes his story (xv). The story, he adds, wasn't written for twenty years, when Maggie's death prompted him to write it (xv).

The narrative is based upon his recognition that the gentleman he and Maggie had met on their voyage represents a metaphor of sorts (xv), and this connection between the metaphorical significance of a particular person offers us a clue as to how Bradbury, the writer, wrote, or sometimes wrote.

If something is a metaphor, it shares certain characteristics with something else, the tenor, that is not otherwise like it. In doing so, the metaphor conveys a likeness between certain aspects of the otherwise different things.

Although there is no equivalency between the metaphor and the tenor, it is sometimes helpful to pretend that there is, so that a metaphor-tenor relationship may be written, as Bette Midler declares in her song “The Rose”:

Love = river

Love = razor

Love = hunger

Love = flower

She also declares how the metaphor and the tenor are alike: as a “river,” love “drowns the tender reed”; as a “razor,” love “leaves your soul to bleed”; as “hunger,” love is “an endless aching need”; and, as a “flower,” love is the product of a unique seed—the “you,” or listener, to whom Midler sings.

For Bradbury, as a metaphor, the book collector and library founder, the “Completist,” seems to personify culture.

Concerning the traveler's fictional counterpart, the story's narrator informs the reader, “At no time did he allow us to speak.” The Completist tells the couple that he travels the world, “collecting books, building libraries, and entertaining his soul (221-222).” He is the very embodiment of art and culture, collecting and distributing it, even as he himself enjoys it (222). Funded by his law firm, he has just “spent time in Paris, Rome, London, and Moscow and had shipped home tens of thousands of rare volumes” (222). Moreover, the Completist has constructed a vast repository of medical texts, novels, and books devoted to art, history, philosophy, and world travel (222-223).

In doing so, it seems that the lawyer seeks to reinvent the world as he would have it to be, a place of culture, education, and entertainment; he tells his listeners that Sir John Soane, “the great English architect” did something similar, reconstructing “all of London in his mind and in the drawings made according to his specifications” (222-223).

The Completist, having discovered some of Soane's “library dreams,” used them as the bases to build his own “university” on more than “a hundred acres” of his own property, where physicians, surgeons, and academics from around the world congregate every weekend.

His estate's “multitudinous centers of learning” allow its visitors to explore the cultural “treasures” of the world, as they stroll its meadows, amid “grand lanterns of education” and “read in an environment that [is] conducive to vast learning” (223-224).

As Bradbury warns in his book's introduction, the story ends with a shocking incident. The Completist, a man of culture, education, and refinement, a world traveler who has delved deeply into the world's cultural “treasures,” seeks to know “only one last thing”: “Why did my thirty-five-year-old son kill his wife, destroy his daughter, and hang himself?”

The couple (stand-ins, perhaps, for Bradbury's readers) is at a loss for words, not that it matters; the Completist does not wait for a response, nor does he appear to expect one. The horrific fates of his son, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter seem to represent the dilemma known to philosophers as the problem of evil, except, in Bradbury's story, it has more of a secular, than a religious, dimension. 
(In philosophy, the problem of evil is a counterargument to the assertion that the universe is ruled by a God who is both loving and just, and asks how the fact of the existence of evil be reconciled with belief in the existence of a God who is both loving and just.)

The Completist seems to seek his answer in culture and education, in medicine, literature, art, history, philosophy, and world travel, but despite his many superb and expensive “collections,” he still has no answer to the question of why his son killed his wife and destroyed his daughter before taking his own life. It is a mystery as unanswerable as it is consuming, and no amount of cultural “treasures” can compensate for these losses, both of family and of purpose.

Perhaps this is why he calls himself “The Completist.” The term refers to not to a connoisseur of art, but instead, to “an obsessive, typically indiscriminate, collector or fan of something.” Perhaps the story's Completist seeks to fill a void that cannot be filled. By filling himself and his estate and as many others as he can with culture and education, he may suggest that, if not now, if not today, then at some time in the future, the void within himself may be filled, that his thirst for knowledge in general and of one thing in particular may be quenched.

Or perhaps he collects the riches of culture simply to pass the time, merely to have something to do that others believe is significant, even if he himself does not. Until one's own demise, it is best to keep busy, he may think; it is best to pretend to believe that, despite unanswerable questions and horrific events, there is a reason to live and a purpose to perseverance.

It is also possible, of course, that the Completist actually does believe that, despite the absurdity of existence, there is, indeed, still a reason to live. Bradbury's statement, in his introduction, suggests that the story may be interpreted in this manner. Following Maggie's illness and death, he says, “for the first time in seventy years, my demon has lain quiet within me. My muse, my Maggie, was gone, and my demon did not know what to do.” As time went by, he started to question whether he'd “ever write again.” Then, he thought of “The Completist gentleman,” and he found himself eager to write the story of the metaphor with which, for two decades, he'd done “nothing.”

Like other writers, Bradbury writes about his own experiences, but he seems , frequently, to do so by introducing the intermediary of a metaphor. He says what he says by speaking about something else that is similar in some respects but different otherwise. The Completist is a metaphor for the absurdity of existence, it seems, but also a metaphor for the angst that Bradbury felt when the light of his life, his Maggie, was extinguished. For Bradbury, the “university” that the Completist built is the author's return to writing fiction, his stories the works of art and other cultural artifacts that make up the author's own collections, including the stories collected in The Cat's Pajamas.

Bradbury's writing fills, or attempts to fill, the great abyss within him that the death of his muse, his wife, his Maggie, created. Like the Completist, he offers it to the world, for the entertainment and edification of those who desire or need diversion and enlightenment.

Plotting by Poster

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

In this post, I would like to suggest how movie posters can help to suggest plots. Before I get to a couple of examples, though, I offer a few guidelines for anyone who might like to try this approach to plotting stories. They have served me well.

1. If the poster you select promotes a movie you have seen, pretend it does not, and don't reference the film, even in your thoughts, as you analyze the poster. The poster should speak for itself, as it were.
2. We are taught to read from left to right and from top to bottom. Graphic designers know this and use our training to their benefit in creating designs and art and in communicating to us.
3. A poster is likely to have a central image, and this central image will be emphasized in some way—through its position, just off center; through color or intensity; by being of bigger than other images. It is obvious that the artist wants the viewer to focus attention on this central image. Text and other images, if any, will relate to this central image and help to develop its figurative aspects.
4. Most art employs various “visual” figures of speech—metaphors, similes, allusions, personifications, exaggerations, understatements, symbols, puns or other plays on words, synecdoches.
5. See all there is to see—not just size, but color, intensity, depth, balance, negative and positive space, shape, texture, size, density, position, arrangement, patterns. facial expressions, hairstyles, costumes (i. e., the models' clothing), age, sex, gender, class, income level. Also consider whatever props might be displayed.
6. Analyze visual evidence of behavior: care, neglect, attendance, abandonment, support, and so forth.
7. Consider the other four senses, too: what sounds, tastes, smells, and tactile sensations does the poster suggest?
8. The text is the key that unlocks the visual imagery's figurative meaning.

With these guidelines in mind, start by describing the poster. Start at the top and work your way down. Include quotations of any text you encounter. Be detailed, but don't be flowery. At this point, be a camera operator, not a sketch artist, an objective viewer, not an interpreter.

After describing the poster, use the elements you identified to complete this list, creating a complete sentence in the process. In doing so, stick to the poster itself.

WHO?
WHAT?
WHEN?
WHERE?
HOW?
WHY?

Next, question yourself about each of the six phrases you entered into the table. In doing so, make observations; draw inferences from what you see and read in the poster. Look for potential relationships among the poster's elements. Look, also, for possible connections between your own thoughts, between your own feelings, and between your own thoughts and feelings. Ask yourself how the answers you listed in the table could be “flipped,” or reinterpreted.

As a result of this process, you may develop an idea for a story or even a synopsis of a plot for a story. At the same time, you will have a sequence of elements that are logically related and which, together, form a narrative thread upon which, by the questioning process and the use of your own imagination, you can embroider, or develop further.

FRIGHT NIGHT

Text above the image reads: “There are some very good reasons to be afraid of the dark.”

It is night. There are stars and a full moon. Spirits swarm above a house. One appears to be the ghost of a vampire; its wide open mouth is positioned above the center of the house, near the domicile's rooftops. Two other spirits have a bestial appearance. The rest are heads with faces and fanged mouths—demons, perhaps.

Behind a simple white rails, a front porch runs the length of the three-story Victorian house. In the center, second-floor room (perhaps a bedroom), the silhouette of a standing figure, hands on hips, is visible between drawn drapes, against light.

Five low steps lead to the porch from the end of a sidewalk, the other end of which connects to a sidewalk that parallels the street out front. Low shrubs are planted along the front of the porch. A tree flanks each side of the front of the house; each is almost as tall as the house. The lawn is cut. Behind the house is a line of trees, perhaps the front rank of a forest.

Text below the image reads, “Fright Night: If you love being scared, it'll be the night of your life.”

Observations

Although the house could be in a suburbs, it seems more likely that it is in a more rural area. Not only are there large trees present, but the visibility of the stars suggests that the house is some distance from the street lights common to suburbs.

The swarm of spirits seem to fountain from the house, suggesting that it is haunted.

Although rather indistinct, the figure appears to be wearing a dress, which would indicate that the figure is that of a woman. It is impossible to tell whether she faces forward, but her presence at the window suggests that she is looking out of the room.

The house is in good repair, and the lawn is landscaped and well kept.

The text suggests that this is a special night; it is Fright Night. The text also suggests that the spirits are the “reasons” that one should fear the dark.

The text that reads “it'll be the night of your life” suggests that Fright Night will be momentous, probably unique.

The figure stands in a lighted room, surrounded by darkness. The room may be her “safe place,” but only as long as the light continues to burn.

WHO? A young woman

WHAT? stands watch

WHEN? at night

WHERE? in the lighted room of an otherwise dark Victorian house in a rural part of the United States

HOW? ready to become a conduit for spiritual warriors

WHY? to ward off a horde of demons that appear every decade on Fright Night.

Questions

Over what, if anything, do the demons rule? What powers do they have? Why do they appear every decade on Fright Night? Whom do they seek to frighten? Why is one the spirit of a vampire? Why are two of bestial form? Why do the remaining demons look similar? Where are the spirits' bodies? Why have they gathered here, at this particular house? Is the house significant in some way? Who is the young woman? Why is she in the house? Why is she alone? How can the story line be flipped?

IT FOLLOWS

Text above the image reads, “it doesn't think. It doesn't feel. It doesn't give up.”

Looking frightened, a tense, young blonde woman, eyes wide, stares into her car's rear-view mirror, which she adjusts. Outside, it is dark and perhaps foggy. Her headlights don't seem to penetrate the gloom.

Text below the image, the film's title, reads, “It Follows.”

Observations

The woman wears makeup, and her nails are painted red-orange. Her eyebrows, like her eyes, are brown, which suggests that she is a peroxide, not a natural, blonde. She wears her hair in a bob or a pixie cut.

WHO? A young woman

WHAT? looks into her rear-view mirror

WHEN? at night

WHERE? on a lonely stretch of country road

HOW? as she is driving her car

WHY? fleeing from a relentless, inhuman pursuer.

 

Questions

Who is the young woman? She appears to be alone—is she? If so, why? If not, why not? Where is she going? Where has she been? Is she on some sort of mission or is she just trying to escape? Why is she driving at night? Who or what is she fleeing? Why is her pursuer chasing her? Why is her pursuer relentless? Is her pursuer behind her, as she appears to believe, or in front of her? Her tension and fear suggest she may be involved in an emergency situation? Is she? If so, what is the emergency? If not, what else explains her tension and fear? Is her car a sedan? A convertible? New? An older model? How large or small is her car? Is it in good repair? Is someone expecting her? If so, who? Why? If not, why not?

In future posts, I may model this technique for plotting by posters again. There are many posters, after all—an inexhaustible supply of them. To generate a strong, intriguing, suspenseful plot, we need only one. Meanwhile, why not try your own hand at this poster:

Bruce Stepan: A Delightful Master of the Surreal

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

Note: Bruce Stepan is the creator of all the works of art shown in this blog post; each is under copyright protection and cannot be reproduced without his express written permission.

 

Annunciation. Copyright by Bruce Stepan. All rights reserved. (Click the image to enlarge it; click again to return to the post.)

It's my pleasure to introduce the artwork of Bruce Stepan. As his website, Stepan Studios, observes, his paintings and illustrations reflect “poignant storytelling” and “surreal artistry.”

His surreal oeuvre includes “a comical mix of weird paintings, pop art, scary paintings . . . creepy paintings, fine arts [sic], and art ideas.”

Educated in the arts (Stepan has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in general art studio practices and a Master of Fine Arts degree in painting), he is also an art educator, having taught studio courses at Youngstown State University and Michigan State University. Currently, his emphases are on comics and illustrations.

Communion. Copyright by Bruce Stepan. All rights reserved. (Click the image to enlarge it; click again to return to the post.)

His website features copies of several of his paintings and illustrations (there's also a link to his fabulous blog). The paintings are colorful, vibrant, and either comical or unsettling—sometimes both at once. The drawings, executed in graphite on a variety of surfaces, are unique, detailed, intriguing, fun, and sophisticated.

I have always appreciated surreal art. A favorite among the painters whose work I admire is Renee Magritte, but I also enjoy both popular surrealism and so-called lowbrow art, including paintings by Marion Peck, Mark Ryden, Michael Parks, Nicoletta Ceccoli, Tetsuya Ishida, and many others. Now, I am pleased to add another name to this illustrious roster, that of Bruce Stepan.

Graveyard. Copyright by Bruce Stepan. All rights reserved. (Click the image to enlarge it; click again to return to the post.)

One of the things I like most about Stepan's art, some of which is inspired by one of the most celebrated authors of horror fiction, is its allusive, metaphorical, and symbolic character. Another is the multivalent potential each painting or drawing offers for interpretation, speculation, and inspiration. One of his works, Dark Shadows, is, as his website declares, a “space . . . filled to the brim with hidden meaning,” which invites each viewer to “search out the objects” in the room the painting depicts “and piece together” his or her “own narrative.”

One of the features of his website is a magnifier associated with the cursor function. By hovering over a painting or drawing, one can focus on each part of the work, discovering its rich detail and a lot more surprises than might otherwise meet the eye. It's almost as if each work contains a series of interlocking pieces that, together, form a seamless, coherent whole. His artwork is not only aesthetically pleasing, but also a puzzler's delight!

Here are a couple more of the other works currently exhibited on Stepan's website:

Dark Shadows. Copyright by Bruce Stepan. All rights reserved.
(Click the image to enlarge it; click again to return to the post.)

 Trick or Treat. Copyright by Bruce Stepan. All rights reserved. (Click the image to enlarge it; click again to return to the post.)

The Covers of Gothic Romance Pulp Fiction Novels: Advertising a Genre

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

The covers of Gothic romance pulp fiction novels tip us off to the nature of the genre's fiction. Often monochromatic, perhaps to set the mood, which can be described as “brooding,” the paintings that grace the covers of such fare tend to feature a woman alone, either framed by the window of an isolated mansion, or fleeing from an unseen threat, often through rugged terrain, frequently with a manor house or castle in the background and a threatening sky above.

Whether indoors or out, the mood of menace is heightened by eerie statues, such as gargoyles or satyrs, strange obelisks, cemetery headstones, stunted or malformed trees, black cats and bats, and skies that look somehow as jagged as a predatory animal's teeth.

Sometimes milady, who's usually in her twenties, stands upon the precipice of a cliff, with the sea below. She might flee headlong down a rocky, snow-covered slope.


Occasionally, her flight takes her through an isolated cemetery. A full moon might hang in a cloudy sky.

Open land and sparse vegetation may expose her flight. The sea, a forest, a cliff, or otherwise impassible terrain features impede or prevent her rescue or escape.

As often as not, the damsel in distress is barefoot, suggesting she took to her heels in a hurry. Full, heavy dresses are likely to encumber her, forcing her to hike her skirts. Almost invariably, she looks over her shoulder, as if in search of a stalker. Fog or Spanish moss hanging from the boughs of a remote estate may lend an air of mystery and menace. One wonders what terror launched her sudden flight.

On the relatively rare occasions that the distressed damsel is shown indoors, she is usually confined by a window frame, a dimly lit staircase, or a shadowy hallway, which she negotiates carefully, perhaps with a flickering candle in hand, looking, all the while, for some lurking menace.

 

Her adversary is seldom shown, and, when the pursuer or pursuers are included in the painting, they are at a distance, indistinct: a lone figure, small in the distance, silhouetted in a the arched entrance to a castle above and behind the heroine or a small band of nameless, faceless pursuers.

Several covers mention “love” of a problematic or dangerous sort: “The lure of love led her through a jungle of horror to a house of blood” (Candace Arkham's Ancient Evil); “She came to Ravensnest to save a life—and found her own threatened as she sought love in a house shadowed by death” (Caroline Farr's Mansion of Evil); “At Whitehall Mansion, Susan's fairy tale romance became a honeymoon of horror” (Elisabeth Offutt Allen's The Hounds of the Moon).

Occasionally, a cover offers a bit of text to characterize the heroine, suggest her plight, and hint at the story's plot: “Innocent and alone, she found herself fighting the forces of Middle Age witchcraft,” reads a blurb on the front cover of Wilma Winthrop's Tryst with Terror. Paulette Warren's Some Beckoning Wraith asks, “Could love and common sense overcome the vengeful spirit that haunted Malvern Manor?” In Lady in Darkness, Evelyn Bond spins a tale in which her heroine's “memory gone, Ellen” cannot tell whether “Whit was her husband—or her jailer.”

Perhaps readers needed to know at least this much about the books they considered buying, but, for me (and perhaps for you), the artwork, which tends to be almost without exception more than simply sufficient and is often splendid, is far more mysterious and intriguing than the bald summaries such text sets forth and needs no explanation or elaboration. In any case, the covers invariably indicate and, indeed, highlight the conventional elements of the Gothic romance genre.

Translating Images into Words

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Alive in Shape andColor: 17 Paintings by Great Artists and the Stories They Inspired, an anthology edited by Lawrence Block, is Block's “encore” to InSunlight and Shadow: Stories Inspired by the Paintings of EdwardHopper. This time around, the writers themselves picked the paintings (or, in a couple cases, the statues) upon which they based their contributions. Their choices vary from Norman Rockwell's The Haircut and Art Frahm's Remember All the Safety Rules to Rene Magritte's The Empire of Light and Vincent van Gogh's Cypresses. There are even a couple of nudes, Jean Leon Gerome's La Verite sortant du puits and Lilias Torrance Newton's Nude in the Studio.

Lee Child's “Pierre, Lucien, and Me” is the shortest of the shorts. The eight-page contribution, set in 1919 and based on Pierre-Auguste Renoir's Bouquet of Chrysanthemums, is told by its first-person narrator, the “Me” of the story's title. Having had a heart attack, he learns that a second, fatal one is inevitable within days, weeks, or months. He has no regrets and no need to put things right, except in the case of Porterfield, a wealthy young heir to a steel fortune, whom he'd duped. 

Through his roommate, Angelo, the narrator learns of Porterfield's love for Renoir's work. A waiter, Angelo had overheard Porterfield express to his dinner companions his desire to purchase a Renoir before the price of the famous artist's work rises due to Renoir's recent death, and Angelo had told the heir that the narrator, an art expert who works at the Metropolitan Museum, might locate some of Renoir's paintings for him. In fact, the narrator is an amateur artist who works at the museum “unloading wagons,” but he agrees to become Porterfield's agent.

In Paris, the narrator locates Lucien Mignon, a painter and friend of the late painter. His own unsigned works closely resemble those of Renoir, whose work is also available. One of the famous artist's unfinished canvases bears a separate painting in its corner: a vase of chrysanthemums. The narrator purchases the still life, and Mignon cuts it from the canvas, reluctantly agreeing to forge Renoir's name on it, since Renoir did, in fact, paint the chrysanthemums. The narrator also buys twenty of Mignon's own paintings, later forging Renoir's name on each of them as well, and ships Mignon's paintings to Porterfield, keeping the genuine Renoir for himself.

Now that he is dying, the narrator regrets having cheated the naive, trusting young man. To make things right, he takes the actual Renoir painting down from his wall, wraps it, and takes it to Porterfield's home, leaving it with the heir's “flunky,” telling him that he wants Porterfield to have the painting because Porterfield likes Renoir. Returning home, he sits, “waiting for the second episode,” the heart attack that will kill him. “My wall looks bare,” he observes, “but maybe better for it.”

Although Child's story is not a horror story, it's an entertaining, well-written piece. How might Renoir's painting inspire a horror story? The answer, clearly, is in any number of ways. Here, for example, is one possibility, a good title for which might be “Last Respects”:

After the wake that follows a lavish funeral in which hundreds of people paid their last respects, the decedent's widow, Chloe Sullivan, recalls moments of happiness she shared with her late husband: his proposal, their honeymoon in Naples, the elegant home they bought, the births of her children and how her husband had doted on them, the birthdays and holidays they enjoyed as a family. 

She is interrupted by her maid, Juanita, who asks her what she should do with “all the flowers” in the parlor, where her husband's body is laid out. It's a shame to toss them out, she laments. “They are so beautiful, especially the chrysanthemums the family sent.” Chloe snaps, “I'd throw those things in the garbage this instant if Salvatore's son, Guido, had attended the wake, but, even now, he has to screw things up, missing his damned plane! It wasn't bad enough his father put a hit out on my Brody?” The maid tries to console her employer, but Chloe shoos her away. “As soon as Guido pays his last respects, though, that bouquet of chrysanthemums will be the first to go!” she promises herself, as, alone in the parlor, she gazes on her husband's remains.

Block found that he was at a loss for his intended contribution to the anthology, until a friend emailed him a reminder that “Looking for David,” a story Block had written years ago, about Michelangelo's statute of David, would make a perfect addition to the volume. The painting in which Block had sought inspiration for an original story, Raphael Soyer's The Office Girls, serves as the anthology's frontispiece; at the close of his foreword to Alive in Shape and Color, Block invites readers to “come up with a story of your own” for Soyer's painting. “But don't send it to me,” he adds. “I'm done here.”

Joyce Carol Oates based her contribution, "Le Beaux Jours," on this painting, Les  beaux jour, by Bathus

Thomas Pluck based his story, "Truth Comes Out of the Well to Shame Mankind," on Jean Leon Gerome's La Veritie sortant du puits

Remember All the Safety Rules by Art Frahm inspired Jill D. Brock's "Safety Rules"

The volume contains seventeen muses, and there are, of course, hundreds, even thousands, of others available in museums around the world—and online—all waiting for a writer, of horror or other types of fiction, to tell the stories that they, the paintings, suggest. They await, in other words, the translation of images into words.

H. G. Wells: The Art of "The Cone"

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

H. G. Wells's masterful short story, “The Cone,” tells a simple, straightforward tale of vengeance and horror. During his stay with Horrocks, who manages the Jeddah Company Blast Furnaces, the artist Raut, who is making a study of the ironworks, has an affair with Horrocks's wife, talk of which the manager overhears, including his wife's confession of her love for Raut.

During the lovers' conversation, Horrocks's wife insults and denigrates her husband as unimaginative and insensitive and praises Raut for the love and beauty he has brought into her dull, drab life. Like Raut, she has an aesthetic appreciation of life, whereas, she tells Raut, her husband “thinks of nothing but the works and the prices of fuel,” having “no imagination, no poetry.” Horrocks also overhears his wife's mockery of him, before he enters the room and offers to take Raut for a tour of the ironworks so the artist can get a better view of its aesthetic effects.

As the men tour the ironworks, Horrocks points out its “effects,” as he leads the artist along, gripping his arm so firmly that it hurts Raut. On their way through the industrial landscape, Horrocks explains how cones have been added to block the throats of the furnaces so fire doesn't “flare out” of them like “pillars of cloud by day . . . and pillars of fire by night.” Despite the cones, however, occasionally a furnace does belch “a burst of fire and smoke.”

A sign warns, “Beware of the Trains.” As a train approaches, Horrocks shoves Raut into its path, pulling him back at the last moment, so that the artist narrowly escapes death. As they resume the tour, Raut wonders whether Horrocks is aware of his affair with his wife and whether, as a result, he had “just been within an ace of being murdered.”

Continuing the tour, Horrocks points out additional effects, such as the canal. “You've never seen it? Fancy that! You've spent too many of your evenings philandering,” Horrocks tells Raut.

They take an elevator to a “narrow rail” overhanging a furnace seventy feet below. “That's the cone I've been telling you of,” shouts Horrocks, “and, below that, sixty feet of molten metal, with the air of the blast frothing through it like gas in soda-water.” He adds that the cone's “top side” is 300 degrees, which is hot enough to “boil the blood out of you in no time.” Raut tries to escape, struggling with Horrocks, who detains him, and Raut plunges into “empty air.” Although his lower body makes contact with the “hot cone,” Raut manages to cling to the chain from which the furnace's cone is suspended, the tremendous heat singeing his hands and causing “intense pain” to assail “him at the knees.” Raut tries to ascend the chain, but Horrocks flings coal at him, shouting, “Fizzle you fool! Fizzle, you hunter of women! You hot-blooded hound! Boil! boil! boil!”

Only after Raut, still clinging to the chain, has been immolated does Horrocks's anger pass and “a deadly sickness [comes] upon him.” as he smells “the heavy odour of burning flesh . . . . his sanity” returning.

From “below was the sound of voices and running steps. The clangour of rolling in the shed ceased abruptly.”

* * *

The plot of Wells's story is itself a thing of beauty. Tight, unified, and artistically executed, with every detail leading to the final effect, it's a tale of terror worthy of Edgar Allan Poe.

Beyond the plot itself, Wells's story is a masterpiece of literary excellence because of its style. A tale of vengeance against an artist, the story is rendered as if Raut himself might have painted it, as a series of images, some impressionistic, others surreal. Wells's protagonist doesn't only speak of the aesthetic effects of his workplace, but the omniscient narrator's artistic descriptions of these effects is like detailed verbal paintings, as these few samples indicate:

The night was hot and overcast, the sky red, rimmed with the lingering sunset of mid-summer. . . . The trees and shrubs of the garden stood stiff and dark; beyond in the roadway a gas-lamp burnt, bright orange against the hazy blue of the evening. Farther were the three lights of the railway signal against the lowering sky.

* * *

Horrocks pointed to the canal close before them now: a weird-looking place it seemed, in the blood-red reflections of the furnaces. The hot water that cooled the tuyeres [“a nozzle through which air is forced into a smelter, furnace, or forge”] came into it, some fifty yards up—a tumultuous, almost boiling affluent, and the steam rose up from the water in silent white wisps and streaks, wrapping damply about them, an incessant succession of ghosts coming up from the black and red eddies, a white uprising that made the head swim.

* * *

They went . . . through the rolling-mills [“a factory or machine for rolling steel or other metal into sheets”], where amidst an incessant din the deliberate steam-hammer beat the juice out of the succulent iron, and black, half-naked Titans rushed the plastic bars, like hot sealing-wax, between the wheels. . . . They went and peeped through the little glass hole behind the tuyeres, and saw the tumbled fire writhing in the pit of the blast-furnace. It left the eye blinded for a while. Then, with green and blue patches dancing across the dark, they went to the lift . . . .

These descriptions support Horrocks's view of the ironworks as itself an artistic setting as well as a technological marvel. Unlike Raut and his own wife, Horrocks is able to see the beauty of technology and industry. It is ironic that such beauty, as Horrocks perceives it and the narrator describes it, should be the background to the artist's demise at the hands of Horrocks and the technology of the ironworks itself.

But Wells achieves yet more through the figures of speeches, allusions, and point of view his omniscient narrator employs in describing what, to Horrocks, is a work of art and what is to his victim, “Gehenna,” “a place of burning, torment, or misery.” From Horrocks's point of view, the ironworks is described as a work of art; the furnace is personified as Horrocks's “pet” (“I packed him myself, and he's boiled away cheerfully with iron in his guts for five long years. I have a particular fancy for him”); and the water of the steaming canal is described with an allusion to “sin” and “death,” just as the “flames” that once erupted from the “throats” of the furnaces looked like God, as He revealed Himself to Moses and the Israelites, as “pillars of cloud by day . . . and pillars of fire by night” (Exodus 13:21-22) as they journeyed through the wilderness.

Wells's descriptions are dynamic, not static; they move and act, as if the ironworks is itself a conscious entity, a willing instrument of its manager's revenge. The movement prevents the plot from slowing, keeps up the pace of the action, and is perfectly suited to the tour of his workplace that Horrocks conducts. The descriptions heighten and underscore the unity between Horrocks and his beloved ironworks, emphasizing the relationship that exists between him, as a man, and the industry and technology of the works he manages.

Horrocks's appreciation of the beauty of the ironworks also suggests that both the artist Raut and Horrocks's wife underestimate his sensitivity, intelligence, and imagination. It is not that he lacks the ability to appreciate beauty, but that the type of beauty he appreciates differs from that of Raut and Horrocks's wife. They are detached from the material world, thinking in terms of “effects” and of romantic passion; a man of the earth, a “Titan,” Horrocks is immersed in the physical world of labor and sweat, of industry and technology. To him, the ironworks is a place of beauty, whereas, to Raut, it is a “Gehenna,” a blot upon the beauty of the countryside, and, to Horrocks's wife, it is a stifling, suffocating place devoid of beauty and love. The story suggests that it is the illicit lovers who are unable to appreciate beauty—at least the beauty that Horrocks is able to see.

The characters live in different worlds, which results in a conflict of aesthetics, passion, and love that ends in horrible death for Raut, a realization of the darkness within him for Horrocks, and the end of an affair that Horrocks's wife said opened “a world of love” to her. The story suggests that life, like the setting in which it is experienced, may be a place of beauty which suggests the presence of God, as the ironworks does for Horrocks, or a “Gehenna” of torment and anguish suggestive of hell for those who cannot fathom the beauty and majesty of the place. The story also suggests the significance and power of aesthetics, for it is both the appreciation of the ironworks's beauty, on Horrocks's part, and the failure to appreciate the beauty of such a place, on Raut's and Horrocks's wife's part, that leads to adultery, betrayal, vengeance, and murder and to the horrific death of the artist at the hand of the ironmaster:

His human likeness departed from him. When the momentary red had passed, Horrocks saw a charred, blackened figure, its head streaked with blood, still clutching and fumbling with the chain, and writhing in agony—a cindery animal, an inhuman, monstrous creature that began a sobbing intermittent shriek.

Abruptly, at the sight, the ironmaster's anger passed. A deadly sickness came upon him. The heavy odour of flesh came drifting up to his nostrils. His sanity returned to him.

“God have mercy upon me!” he cried. “O God! what have I done?”

He knew the thing below him, save that it moved and felt, was already a dead man—that the blood of the poor wretch must be boiling in his veins. An intense realisation of that agony came to his mind, and overcame every other feeling. For a moment he stood irresolute, and then, turning to the truck, he hastily tilted its contents upon the struggling thing that had once been a man. The mass fell with a thud, and went radiating over the cone. With the thud the shriek ended, and a boiling confusion of smoke, dust, and flame came rushing up towards him. As it passed, he saw the cone clear again.

Want a Revolution? Try Being a Reactionary

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Written horror fiction is a dying breed. There are plenty of reasons for this state of affairs. Anyone and everyone can write and deliver-on-demand a printed or electronic version of as many horror novels as he or she wants, selling them through Amazon, Google, Barnes & Noble online, or some other website.

Talent doesn't much matter, nor does familiarity with the history of the genre, nor does respect for the genre or its readers. Just put it out there, and nobody will buy it. (Sales are spectacularly dismal for any but established writers, and sales are dismal enough for 99 percent of them). However, the sheer volume of “novels” now available in cyberspace clogs publishing arteries, offering so many choices that readers are apt to make none at all, unless its a novel by somebody like Stephen King, whose best work seems to be far behind him.

We prefer movies to books, because we're more visually than cognitively oriented, preferring images to words. Besides, we don't have to use our imaginations or think much when we watch a movie: the writer, director, actors, special effects team, and others have done most of the work for us. Watching a movie, as opposed to reading a book, is almost pure entertainment and unadulterated pleasure. Reading, by comparison, seems a laborious, often unrewarding, burden.

Novelists have tried to emulate screenwriters, writing tighter scenes, eschewing exposition and long-winded dialogue, foregoing interior monologues and stream-of-consciousness, restricting themselves, more and more, to the limited third-person point of view, avoiding “head-hopping,” and making something happen every other page or so. They strive to show, avoid telling, and still—readership declines and declines. Some statistics have suggested even moviegoing isn't as popular as it once was, although it's way more popular than reading. Times change, and written horror, the horror of the pages, as opposed to the soundstages, is a casualty of these changing times.

I'm not blaming technology. Times, as I said, change. Those who don't change with them—well, we know what happens to organisms that fail to evolve. Emulating the techniques of the screen isn't enough. Novels—and novelists—are on their way out. (That's why Borders went bankrupt and Barnes & Noble may be next.) No, they won't be gone overnight. (The dodo was last seen alive in 1662.). But novels and novelists, it seems, are doomed. Their day has come and is just about gone.

Like most people, I'm a movie fan, although I find I watch fewer and fewer each year, and I watch the few I do watch on Netflix, Amazon Prime, or Hulu. I prefer to see them streaming into my living room, on my big-screen TV, than to go to all the trouble and bother of leaving home, driving to a theater, waiting in line (or buying online so I don't have to wait in line), finding a seat (usually, an uncomfortable one with limited space for my arms and legs), being interrupted by late arrivals and talkative neighbors, and being blasted by sound that's much louder than necessary, even for me (and I'm hearing impaired). If I want to buy snacks or visit the restroom, my moviegoing experience is much worse. Then, at the end of the movie, I have to file out of the theater, find my car, and drive home, through the fairly heavy traffic of Las Vegas. (And, oh, yes, pay about $10 for the ticket, not to mention the round-trip cost of gasoline and the snacks, if any, I buy.) No, thanks, I'd sooner stay at home and watch a movie from the comfort and convenience of my living room couch.

I'm suggesting that movie theaters may be on their way out. The future of fiction (i. e., movies), it seems, is streaming—but it isn't.

What is the future of fiction? Who knows? Nobody has a crystal ball, including the few who have crystal balls. Maybe movies will happen inside the theaters of our skulls, as sounds and images are uploaded to our brains, either by wire or through wireless technology (I prefer the latter—I think).

Instead of dreaming at night, we'll watch the streaming movies of our choice. For those who enjoy nightmares, horror movies will likely be available. During the day, we might be immersed in 3-D holographs. (Princess Leia was ahead of her time.) Instead of a movie's coming soon to a theater near you, it will be coming at once, all around, or inside, you.

Maybe on our way to or from work, if we're still working outside our homes—or working at all—we'll be able to upload a movie trailer or two. A few forward thinkers also suggest our fiction may be written by robotic devices using linguistic-mathematical logarithms, virtual reality (VR), and artificial intelligence (AI). (The “fake news” of our own day suggests that “non-fiction” may be produced and delivered in much the same way.)

Once the few remaining, die-hard horror novelists, the Stephen Kings, the Peter Straubs, the Bentley Littles, and the Whoever-Elses, expire, the horror genre, as far as the novel is concerned, at least, is likely to become extinct. Movies will probably continue to be made, promoted, released, watched, and critiqued until something more evolved comes along. Then, they, too, will go the way of all celluloid.

The process is already in progress. This trailer from 20^th Century Fox (courtesy of IBM's AI program, Watson) is about a superhuman AI. To create the trailer, Watson analyzed “100 horror movie trailers, studying each scene and looking for common ground,” before selecting 10 of them from the 90-minute movie Morgan that Fox had produced. The whole process took Watson a mere 24 hours. Humans take as long as a month to make a trailer. Watson cheated, though: a film editor had to piece “together the scenes,” because the AI program lacks the ability to “understand and calibrate . . . emotions,” Morgan's director, Luke Scott said.

Jim Smith, a fellow with Machine Vision—IBM Research, said a lot must happen before Watson or any other AI program could develop an entire movie, if such a program is ever able to accomplish such a feat at all. It's unlikely AI will “be able to create art,” Smith believes, because it is incapable of the “original thought . . . essential in creativity.”

Yes, all this may (or may not) happen, but, in the meantime, as comic book writers are fond of writing, what, if anything, can be done about the current, stagnant state of horror novels?

We need a revolution of sorts, and that's the problem. Historically, revolutions in art start as reactions against the art of the status quo. In painting, impressionism started as a reaction against traditional artistic conventions. Other times, innovations occur within a revolutionary cycle itself, as when Vincent van Gogh “carried Impressionism to its limits by using expressive colors [and] Fauvism went one step further in using simplified designs in combination with an 'orgy of pure colors.'” Likewise, Expressionism can be considered “a German modern art version of Fauvism.”

New forms of painting also originated as reactions against commercial transitions, such as that which occurred when an industrial economy began to replace the earlier agrarian economy: “Art historians tend to interpret this new movement [art nouveau] as a natural reaction to the Industrial Revolution.” In turn, the Industrial Revolution might also have affected art nouveau, as Art Deco, which followed art nouveau, represented a “simplified” movement that was “closer to mass production.” 

Surrealism turned inward, seeking to emphasize the importance of the unconscious mind. It wasn't restricted only to painting, however; it also influenced literature and film.

A reaction against abstract art, popular art, or pop art, sought “to bring art back into the daily life of people” and took, as its subject matter, “objects from everyday life.”

Literature has long allied itself with painting, as it has with the other arts. It has also long been allied with theology, philosophy, history, geography, psychology, sociology, and, more recently, with the sciences. In fact, one of the great strengths of literature—perhaps its greatest—is that it unites human experience, bringing together a wide variety of interests that, although seemingly unrelated, have a common source in humanity itself, in individuals, society, and culture. In fiction, human beings truly are “the measure of all things.”

Too often, writers are caught up in the moment, not only representatives, but also prisoners, of their own times. It is by venturing out of one's habitat, by setting forth to explore new lands, that creativity is excited and originality is awakened. By writing the same thing over and over that has proved to have a market, writers (and publishers)—and, yes, readers as well—sell and buy the same sort of fiction over and over again. Why take a chance on writing something new, on publishing something different, of buying an unknown quantity, when we already know another Stephen King novel, no matter how familiar the characters, setting, plot, and theme, will be a New York Times bestseller. We get the type of horror fiction we want and, some might suggest, deserve.

Until AI can write movie scripts for us to play inside our heads or surround us on every side, if we want something different, readers are going to have to demand it, writers write it, and publishers publish it. Maybe the history of recent art movements among painters can suggest some ways writers can write some new forms of fiction, horror and otherwise. Our world suggests, more than ever, perhaps, many things to which horror novelists (and moviemakers, for that matter) could react, if they've a mind to do so.

Otherwise, look for yet another "blockbuster" by Stephen King, Peter Straub, Bentley Little, or Whoever-Else; it's probably being written, published, or distributed this very moment.