Showing posts with label satire. Show all posts
Showing posts with label satire. Show all posts

Saturday, February 13, 2021

Interview with Michael Williams

Campbell and Rogers Press has just published my fellow author Michael Williams's Tales with a Twist III, the third installment in his Twisted Tales series. As someone who has followed Michael since his first book, I am delighted to recommend his series. I love the short, short form and the variety of his flash fiction, and I believe you will as well. Check out his interview, below. He is a man with an imagination and a vision that is on fire!

Interview with Michael Williams

Q: What interests you in the super-short genre of flash fiction?

A: Alfred Hitchcock once said that a movie shouldn’t be longer than the capacity of the human bladder. I find I agree. Edgar Allan Poe considered the effect of short fiction to be more intense than that of longer works, such as novels or—my apologies to Hitch—full-length motion pictures. I also tend to concur with Poe: shorter fiction can pack more of an emotional wallop than longer forms. In our modern, fast-paced world, I think shorter fiction is also more convenient for many. A lot of people want complete stories without having to spend hours or days to read them.

Q: It seems that you prefer fantastic to realistic stories. Why is that?

A: Actually, I enjoy reading and writing all forms of fiction, but I think that tales of the fantastic, marvelous, and uncanny—handy distinctions that Tzvetan Todorov makes—add an element of magic to mundane experience, the icing, so to speak, on the cake. I also believe that, as Flannery O’Connor once said, a writer sometimes needs to use hyperbolic techniques to communicate with readers, and the shock of the surreal; the astonishment of the weird; and the wonder of the otherworldly, the supernatural, the occult, and the mystical provide these rhetorical approaches.

Q: As the titles of your books suggest, your tales are rather “twisted.” I'm going to ask the question most writers hate to hear: Where do you get your ideas?

A: I'm an eclectic reader. I enjoy learning about a variety of subjects. I guess you could say I'm a generalist. Sometimes, when the stars are in alignment, a remembered fact here will meet up with a recalled fact there, and, out of this connection of one thing and another, an idea will emerge. I might combine one of Thomas Edison’s inventions with the spiritualistic belief in the ability of the living to communicate with the dead, or I could update an ancient myth or a modern horror movie. As Arthur Golding wrote, in translating John Calvin, “All is grist for the mill.”

Q: I know you're something of a mariner. Does the sea ever feature in your stories?

A: Not as often as I might expect, but, yes, there is a sea tale or two. In one, the ocean solves a murder, which is rather a novel notion, I think.

Q: By definition, according to the title of your series, Twisted Tales, and by the titles of the books in the series, each of your flash fiction narratives contains a plot twist. How do you think up so many of them?

A: Usually, the story suggests one. However, I also employ a couple of tricks, or techniques—three, actually. First, when plotting a story such as those in Tales with a Twist, Tales with a Twist II, or Tales with a Twist III, I keep in mind the idea that almost everything has a direct opposite: new, old; lost, found; hero, villain; reward, punishment; rich, poor; right, wrong. Then, I start with one polarity and end with its opposite. The second way is more concrete. I keep a list of the plot twists I see in novels, short stories, movies, and TV series. Then, I adapt them to fit the situation or circumstances of my own stories. My third technique is to remember that there is a fine line not only between good and evil and right and wrong, but between all such polar opposites. A person who is cautious may become distrustful or even paranoid; a man who's strict can become controlling; a woman who's concerned with her own health and that of others—a doctor or a nurse, perhaps—can become a hypochondriac; a trusting person may become gullible. Each of these possibilities is a source of plot twists.

Q: How many of your tales with a twist are autobiographical?

A: Many of them are fantasies in which I explore how something might be if a particular set of unusual circumstances were to apply. Many of my stories are thought experiments, of a sort. I place a certain type of character in a particular kind of environment and see whether he or she adapts and, if the character does adapt, how he or she manages to do so. Frequently, the environment is physical, but it need not be; some of my stories' environments are philosophical, or moral, or psychological, or political, or cultural, or otherwise. The autobiographical element, when there is one, may be small—a detail here or there, the description of a place I've been, desires I've experienced, wishes I may have wanted to fulfill, thoughts or feelings or impressions I've had, that sort of thing, embedded in the narration, the exposition, or the dialogue.

Q: Will there be further Tales with a Twist?

A: I'm working on the next one now.

Wednesday, July 29, 2020

The Three Lessons of the Watchbirds and the Hawks

Copyright 202 by Gary L. Pullman

https://www.amazon.com/Robert-Sheckley-Megapack-Classic-Science-ebook/dp/B00DCIKKY8/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=robert+sheckley&qid=1595019447&s=books&sr=1-4

The fabulous short story “Watchbird” in The Robert Sheckley Megapack: 15 Classic Science Fiction Stories (a true bargain at only 99 cents for the Amazon Kindle version) is a masterful satire concerning logic, linguistics, and morality.


In a futuristic setting, the brainwaves and glandular processes of potential murderers tip off high-tech, flying guardians, alerting these “watchbirds” of impending murder. The watchbirds then swoop down to shock would-be killers into submission. If multiple shocks are necessary, so be it: the watchbirds' first rule is to protect potential victims, regardless of the cost. By using them as their enforcers, the government hopes to stem a rising tide of violence and save lives.


At first, things go even better than officials had hoped, and the murder rate plummets drastically. However, one of the manufacturers of these drone-like guardians is concerned that human beings shouldn't shove off their duties and responsibilities onto machines. His protests are all but ignored. Meanwhile, by regularly sharing “new information, methods, and definitions” with each other, the watchbirds become more and more effective at policing the public.


The definition of terms is a key concern of the story. Initially, murder is defined as “an act of violence, consisting of breaking, mangling, maltreating, or otherwise stopping the functions of a living organism by another organism,” as opposed to a more traditional understanding of the concept, such as “the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another.” The definition programmed into the watchbirds may seem clear, detailed, and exhaustive, but it contains some odd wording. It is not often, if ever, that a killer “breaks” or “mangles” another person. The engineer's definition (and, therefore, the watchbirds', into which the definition is programmed) is also too broad, specifying “living organisms,” rather than the traditional definition's “human being.” In formulating the definition, Sheckley lays the groundwork for much of the conflict and suspense that the remainder of the story generates, maintains, and heightens.


Based on their experience (the watchbirds are conscious and rational, but unemotional), the mechanical guardians, which are able both to learn and to think, modify and amend the original definition of both “murder” and “living organism.” Their actions follow from their revisions of these concepts. First, a slaughterhouse employee is knocked out with a high-voltage blast because, as the wingbirds understand the it (and the act), murder occurs whenever any “living organism,” human or animal, is killed. For the same reason, fishermen and a hunter are dealt with, as is a man who attempts to kill a fly. A surgeon is shocked when he starts to operate on his patient, with the result that the patient dies.

A driver is shocked when he tries to turn off his car (an organism's attempt to stop “the functions of a living organism” constitutes murder, and the watchbirds now consider automobiles to be “living organisms”). Thanks to the watchbirds themselves, the murder rate begins to skyrocket. People get the message and begin to modify their behavior so as not to become watchbird targets.


However, life itself is also at risk, as farmers are prevented from plowing the earth, since the watchbirds have come to regard the planet itself as a “living organism.” Farmers cannot cut hay to feed their cattle, which starve to death. Industries are crippled. Even a radio is a living organism and, like cars, may not be turned off, since doing so is the same as murdering the device. Rabbits are slain because they eat vegetables. A butterfly is dispatched for “outraging a rose.” The watchbirds are unable to appreciate, as the narrator states, that there is a close relationship between the living and the dead; nor do the machines comprehend that, for the watchbirds' creators, at least, there is a hierarchy of value where “living organisms” are concerned, with human beings at the top and other life forms on progressively lower levels of significance.

Clearly, something must be done!


The answer is to build a better machine, one that's faster, stronger, and deadlier, one that will be able to hunt and kill the watchbirds. The new mechanical slayer is called the hawk, and, before long, there's a multitude of the ferocious predators in the sky, making short work of their prey. Unfortunately, the engineers didn't learn their lesson from the watchbirds fiasco. Not only do they assign human duties and responsibilities to the new, and improved machines, but their makers deliberately refrain from installing “restricting circuits” that would limit the Hawks' targets. There just wasn't time to include these regulators. Instead, the engineers and manufacturers simply release the hawks.

After killing most of the pesky watchbirds, the hawks decide that humans constitute another type of prey, and the problems that homo sapiens had with the watchbirds pale in comparison to those involving these new predators.

The story's themes seem threefold.


First, death is necessary for life's continuance, but “no one has told the watchbirds that all life depends on carefully balanced murders,even that of the alpha predator among machines, the hawk, which may need humans to maintain and repair it, as the watchbird had. The watchbirds have thoroughly destroyed the equilibrium between the living and the dead, the consumers and the providers, totally disrupting their fragile relationship.


Second, humans cannot pass on their responsibility to machines, or, as the narrator puts it, “pass a human problem into the hands of a machine” that has been assigned, by humans, to enforce human laws. Robots do not have emotions, nor have they accumulated centuries of human experience (nor are they able to do so). Machines lack human respective and understanding. They cannot perceive, analyze, evaluate, or understand life from any perspective but that which is based upon algorithms and memory and microchips and processing units and programming. Despite their artificial intelligence, which can be brilliant, computers are severely limited. To forget these two simple truths is to be in danger of creating “guardians” like the watchbirds and hawks to police the mechanical police.


Third, neither the watchbirds nor the hawks can understand that the lives of some creatures have a higher value than the lives of other, “lesser” animals. A whale, an impala, a cow, a dog, a cat, a garden slug, even a flea or a cockroach, is all well and good, in its way, but human beings are the species that can remember, through books and databases, the events and circumstances of centuries; can manipulate time and space; can transform the world, building cities and hospitals and prisons and airplanes and automobiles and trains and ships; can put men and women into space and, perhaps some day soon, on other worlds; can plumb the depths of the ocean and climb to the top of mountains; can create art and culture, producing Michelangelo and Leonardo and Shakespeare and Dante; can commune with nature and with God. True, the depths to which humans can fall are just as incredible as the heights they can achieve, as such "accomplishments" as the atomic bomb, the Holocaust, and two World Wars, among many others, indicate, but the point is that, whether it is used for good or evil, human beings have these great abilities, abilities that far outstrip those of any other animal. In fact, these abilities are not only remarkable among the creatures of nature, but they are transcendent to nature itself as well. Human abilities reflect not mere animal existence, but also a spark of the divine. Although all men may be created equal, all animals are not. The failure to make such distinctions is, perhaps a form of insanity, for it is madness to equate a maggot with a man, a butterfly with a woman, or an earthworm with a child. Machines, even artificially intelligent ones, by such a measure, are mad—or would be . . . if they were human. Instead, they are merely machines. Their very character as such constitutes their true “restrictive circuits.”


What would be the likely end of a situation such as that which Sheckley lays out in “Watchbirds”? The author himself suggests the probable outcome: more and more capable machines would be created to eliminate the less-capable previous generation, and the situation, for humans, would get worse and worse until they were completely exterminated. Then, one by one, the machines would fail, for there would be no one to maintain or to repair them or, for that matter, to manufacture them—at least, not yet.


Friday, July 17, 2020

"The Man Who Was Used Up" by Edgar Allan Poe: Analysis and Commentary

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman



As his satirical short stories indicate, Edgar Allan Poe has a decidedly peculiar sense of humor. His lampoons invariably feature grotesque characters whose actions suggest humorous, if not charitable, interpretations of the characters themselves.


The Man Who Was Used Up” follows this same pattern. The narrator is determined to learn more about the Kickapoo Campaign (April 1839) and the part that wounded Brevet Brigadier General A. B. C. Smith played in this military action. (Mexican officials had given them land in what would become Texas; after the Texas Revolution, the Kickapoo were “forcibly evicted in 1839.”)


Although some readers believe that Smith is a stand-in for General (later President) Andrew Jackson, who was wounded during the Seminole and Creek Indian removal campaigns (1816-1858), critics generally agree that Smith is a caricature of Jackson's vice-president, Richard Johnson.


Johnson, who is credited with having killed the Shawnee chief Tecumseh, was wounded during the Kickapoo tribe's removal. (The Bugaboo tribe is an invention of Poe's, added, perhaps, because the word sounds humorous and because “bugaboo” means “object of fear”; Smith obviously fears having the number and severity of his debilitating wounds exposed to the public, and, in fact, when his wounds were discovered, “Johnson was lampooned when he appeared in public on crutches and tied up in wound dressings on various parts of his body.”

Brutus

Much of the description of Smith confirms Poe's intention that he should represent a grotesque, a figure whose physical or emotional abnormalities symbolize his or her spiritual condition. His hair is like that of Brutus, which was worn short in a “natural” style and “brushed forward onto the forehead.” However, as the reader soon learns, “there is nothing at all natural about Smith's hair,” and this bit of description, like others of Smith, heighten the horror of the revelation of Smith's true appearance and condition at the end of the story.

Likewise, the “stiffness and rectangular precision in Smith's movement,” accounted for by the story's narrator as deriving from Smith's soldierly bearing, in fact, may be explained “by other reasons,” such as those suggested by the story's resolution.

At the end of the story, Smith is revealed, as he dons the prosthetic appliances that make him appear to be a normal, even robust man—the hero he is regarded to be by the general public who admire him greatly—to be little more than the “a large and exceedingly odd looking bundle of something” the narrator mistakes him for being.


To appear heroic, Smith needs a cork leg, a prosthetic arm, artificial shoulders and a synthetic “bosom,” a wig, dentures, and a artificial eye. As these items are fitted into place, Smith mentions how he came to lose some of his original body parts: the “fight with the Bugaboos and Kickapoos,” he confides, was “a bloody action” in which a participant suppose he will escape “with a mere scratch.” He lost his hair when he was scalped. He “swallowed” his natural teeth “when the big Bugaboo rammed” him “down with the butt end of his rifle.” The Kickapoos, he recalls, gouged out his eye.

After Smith applies these many prostheses, his whole appearance changes; he is transformed, his improved appearance astonishing the narrator:

I now began very clearly to perceive that the object before me was nothing more nor less than my new acquaintance, Brevet Brigadier General John A. B. C. Smith. The manipulations of Pompey [Smith's servant] had made, I must confess, a very striking difference in the appearance of the personal man.

There is but one detail remaining: Smith's voice, a funny “little” voice “between a squeak and a whistle.” Everyone to whom the narrator spoke as he sought to information about Smith, the man behind the myth, agreed that the general's voice was deep, rich, and commanding. The voice the narrator has heard, however, is absurdly high-pitched and weak.
Once Smith's palate is installed, however, another miracle of technology occurs, as his voice changes, resuming “all that rich melody and strength” the narrator “had noticed” when he'd first met the general. Smith offers another explanation: the palate compensates for the Indians' knocking “in the roof of” his mouth and cutting “off at least seven-eighths of” his tongue.


As Smith adds these accessories to his person, he identifies the men whose mechanical magic and technological wizardry have made his transformation possible: Thomas provided the cork leg; Pettit, the shoulders; Ducrow, the bosom; De L'Orme's, the wig; Parmly's, the teeth; Dr. Williams, the eye; and Bonfanti's. The eye.

Smith's naming of names occasions jabs at various actual “tradesmen . . . working in Philadelphia during the years Poe lived there” and suggests that their appliances are not likely to be as effective as the story suggests. For example, the oculist, Dr. John Williams, was generally regarded as a quack who got rich offering “dubious cures” to the desperate. In fact, Poe seems to summarize the oculist's character when he refers to a joke about the doctor: “Why is Dr. Williams' cash . . . like a divorced wife's pension” Because it's all eye-money.—alimony.”

Likewise, the artificial eye was supplied by “a New York retailer” known for selling “knick knacks and gew-gaws.”

As usual, there is much more to a Poe tale than first meets the eye.


According to one take on the story, in “The Man Who Was Used Up,” “Poe is saying that Johnson has been 'used up' in the war and is ineffective as Vice President” (300). this interpretation dovetails with the epigram with which Poe opens the story: “Pleurez, pleurez, mes yeux, et fondez vous en eau!/ La moitie de ma vie a mis l'autre au tombeau,” which Poe himself translates as “Cry, cry, my eyes, and melt in water!/ Half of my life has put the other in the tomb.” The first half of Johnson's life, which he devoted to military affairs, left him wounded and ridiculed, despite his heroism in action, thereby destroying the second half of his life, his political career. (“Used up,” in military slang, meant dead, as Poe implies by rendering the second part of dramatist Pierre Corneille's quotation “Half of my life has put the other in the tomb” (bold added).

The story has other messages, too. Although Johnson lost much in the service of his country (however much we might, today, decry his actions—and those of the United States, which ordered them), and should have been regarded as a hero, rather than as a target of ridicule and satire, Poe's own, included, he was lampooned for his sacrifices.


His public image was intended to disguise and conceal the effects of his service and suffering and, perhaps, the historical causes of them. The public did not love, or even know, the true man; it honored and revered only his heroic persona, the man he appeared to be. Later, the same public ridiculed and disrespected Johnson himself. As David Haven Blake has observed, “What we find in 'The Man Who Was Used Up' is that the publicity surrounding the hero's experience is ultimately more significant than a narration of his suffering.”

Thursday, July 9, 2020

Edgar Allan Poe's "King Pest": Analysis and Commentary

Copyright 202 by Gary L. Pullman


King Edward III

The first sentence of the story establishes its setting: it is “about twelve o'clock, one night in the month of October, . . . during the chivalrous reign of the third Edward.”


Edward III ruled from January 25, 1327 to June 21, 1377—about fifty years. From 1361 to 1362, there was a resurgence of the cholera pandemic, so it is on an October night during this two-year period that “King Pest” takes place. (Others suggest that the story's title alludes not to the cholera pandemic but to the bubonic plague, or Black Death.)


As in most of Poe's fiction, the story begins with the general, a night during the reign of King Edward III, and moves to the specific, “two seamen belonging to the crew of the 'Free and Easy,' a trading schooner,” as readers learn that these sailors, Legs and Hugh Tarpaulin, have gone ashore to drink; they are “much astonished to find themselves seated in the tap-room of an ale-house in the parish of St. Andrews, London.”

Poe takes pains to describe both men. Legs is taller than his companion, standing “six feet and a half.” He has “an habitual stoop in the shoulders,” and he is “exceedingly thin.” He has “high cheek-bones, a large hawk-nose, retreating chin, fallen under-jaw, and huge protruding white eyes.” Solemn,” he is not given to laughter.

Tarpaulin is his opposite, short (four feet) and “squat,” with “stumpy bow-legs . . . unusually short and thick arms”; finny fingers; “small eyes, of no particular color”; a nose which is “buried in the mass of flesh which enveloped his round, full, and purple face”; and “thick” lips that he licks frequently. Tarpaulin regards Legs with “a feeling half-wondrous, half-quizzical.”

Penniless, the drunken sailors flee after seeing a sign forbidding credit, the tavern's landlady in pursuit.

(In England, pubs lower rents to the owners of the buildings their establishments occupy, but, in return, the owners of the pubs pay more for ale and other alcoholic beverages supplied by vendors.)


Parts of London that are infected by the plague are sealed off, the king having imposed a death sentence upon whoever bypasses barriers to rob from stores inside these restricted areas. In fleeing the tavern, Legs and Tarpaulin run down an alley, the end of which is blocked by a barrier, which indicates the presence, ahead, of the plague. To escape the pursuing landlady, the sailors climb the barricade and jump into the street on the other side of it, where a scene of horror meets their drunken gazes:


Had they not, indeed, been intoxicated beyond moral sense, their reeling footsteps must have been palsied by the horrors of their situation. The air was cold and misty. The paving-stones, loosened from their beds, lay in wild disorder amid the tall, rank grass, which sprang up around the feet and ankles. Fallen houses choked up the streets. The most fetid and poisonous smells everywhere prevailed;—and by the aid of that ghastly light which, even at midnight, never fails to emanate from a vapory and pestilential at atmosphere, might be discerned lying in the by-paths and alleys, or rotting in the windowless habitations, the carcass of many a nocturnal plunderer arrested by the hand of the plague in the very perpetration of his robbery.


From inside “an undertaker's shop,” the seamen hear laughter, “shrieks,” and “curses.” Entering the building, Legs and Tarpaulin see an open trapdoor, through which they observe a table bearing “various wines and cordials, together with jugs, pitchers, and flagons of every shape and quality” and a “huge tub” of punch. Seated around this table, upon coffin-trestles, or stands for holding coffins, are King Pest, Queen Pest, and four members of their family, the Arch Duke Pest-Iferous,' the Duke Pest-Ilential,' the Duke Tem-Pest,' and the Arch Duchess Ana-Pest.

Poe takes equal pains in describing these characters as he has in painting the portraits of his protagonists. Each is a grotesque, with exaggerated traits, as the descriptions of the monarchs suggest, their descriptions being typical of the descriptions of the others as well:

King Pest:

Fronting the entrance, and elevated a little above his companions, sat a personage who appeared to be the president of the table. His stature was gaunt and tall, and Legs was confounded to behold in him a figure more emaciated than himself. His face was as yellow as saffron—but no feature excepting one alone, was sufficiently marked to merit a particular description. This one consisted in a forehead so unusually and hideously lofty, as to have the appearance of a bonnet or crown of flesh superadded upon the natural head. His mouth was puckered and dimpled into an expression of ghastly affability, and his eyes, as indeed the eyes of all at table, were glazed over with the fumes of intoxication. This gentleman was clothed from head to foot in a richly-embroidered black silk-velvet pall, wrapped negligently around his form after the fashion of a Spanish cloak.—His head was stuck full of sable hearse-plumes, which he nodded to and fro with a jaunty and knowing air; and, in his right hand, he held a huge human thigh-bone, with which he appeared to have been just knocking down some member of the company for a song.

Queen Pest:

Opposite him, and with her back to the door, was a lady of no whit the less extraordinary character. Although quite as tall as the person just described, she had no right to complain of his unnatural emaciation. She was evidently in the last stage of a dropsy [i. .e, edema]; and her figure resembled nearly that of the huge puncheon [an eighty-gallon cask] of October beer which stood, with the head driven in, close by her side, in a corner of the chamber. Her face was exceedingly round, red, and full; and the same peculiarity, or rather want of peculiarity, attached itself to her countenance, which I before mentioned in the case of the president—that is to say, only one feature of her face was sufficiently distinguished to need a separate characterization: indeed the acute Tarpaulin immediately observed that the same remark might have applied to each individual person of the party; every one of whom seemed to possess a monopoly of some particular portion of physiognomy. With the lady in question this portion proved to be the mouth. Commencing at the right ear, it swept with a terrific chasm to the left—the short pendants which she wore in either auricle continually bobbing into the aperture. She made, however, every exertion to keep her mouth closed and look dignified, in a dress consisting of a newly starched and ironed shroud coming up close under her chin, with a crimpled ruffle of cambric muslin.

In A Handbook to Literature, fourth edition, C. Hugh Holman defines “grotesque,” in its literary context, as the depiction of “characters” who are “either physically or spiritually deformed” and “perform actions that are clearly intended by the author to be abnormal” (207). This technique, Holman adds, “may be used for allegorical statement” and “for comic purposes (207), as, clearly, Poe uses this technique in “King Pest.”


Finding the seamen's entrance rude and their inquiry into the nature of his family's business outrageous, King pest fines the sailors, sentencing Legs and Tarpaulin to drink a gallon of Black Strap “at a single draught—and upon . . . bended knees,” whereupon they will be free to take their leave or to stay as the king's guest. (In other words, King Pest sentences the seamen to be drowned in the ale, after which their bodies will be cast aside, in the undertaker's shop, or be discarded outside,)

It's possible that, drunk, neither Legs nor Tarpaulin understand the king's sarcasm. It is possible, too, that they understand his literal intent all too well but, bolstered by false courage, pretend ignorance as a pretext for braggadocio and bragging. Legs objects that he has drunk his fill earlier, at the tavern he and Tarpaulin visited, but his companion insists that he can drink more and offers to drink both the gallon that Legs has been ordered to drink and the gallon that he himself has been ordered to drink.

However, King Pest declares that his fine must be paid in the manner he has imposed, without alteration.

Tarpaulin refuses to kneel to the king, whom he recognizes as 'Tim Hurlygurly the stage-player.”

Trapaulin's refusal is met by a chorus of shouts, as the king, queen, and the rest of the family cry “Treason!”


Legs floods the undertaker's shop with ale from the hogshead that he breaks after his companion is deposited head-first inside the cask, to drown, and the sailors attack the king and his family, killing the man with the gout, drowning “the man with the horrors,” sending the man in the coffin away on the flood, and leaving the ladies in “hysterics.” Then, Tarpaulin abducts the fat lady in the shroud, while Legs kidnaps the Arch Duchess Ana-Past and the sailors return to their ship, which, presumably, is still anchored in the Thames.

What can be said of such a story?


Robert Louis Stevenson concluded, about its author, that “he who could write 'King Pest' had ceased to be a human being.”

Perhaps Stevenson was unaware that Poe's story is a comedy—a satire, in fact.


Are the story's king, queen, and other family members based on historical persons?

Poe's king is tall and bony; his complexion is “saffron.” His brow is “unusually and hideously lofty.” His mouth is “puckered and dimpled.” Unfortunately, history does not appear to provide us with a description of King Edward III's physical appearance. However, his tomb includes a likeness of him, carved in stone. Since the sculpture purports to represent his likeness, we can assume that it, indeed, resembles the king at the time of his death. Judging by this figure, King Edward III does appear to have been tall and thin, if not “gaunt.” His forehead does not seem especially “lofty.” His mouth is not “puckered and dimpled.”


Queen Pest shares one of the conditions that afflicted Queen Philippa of Hainault (1315 - 1369), but she otherwise does not resemble the true queen, King Edward III's wife, whom historian Ian Mortimer describes:

The lady whom we saw has not uncomely hair, betwixt blue-black and brown. Her head is clean-shaped; her forehead high and broad, and standing somewhat forward. Her face narrows between the eyes, and the lower part of her face is still more narrow and slender than her forehead. Her eyes are blackish-brown and deep. Her nose is fairly smooth and even, save that it is somewhat broad at the tip and also flattened, and yet it is no snub-nose. Her nostrils are also broad, her mouth fairly wide. Her lips somewhat full, and especially the lower lip. Her teeth which have fallen and grown again are white enough, but the rest are not so white. The lower teeth project a little beyond the upper; yet this is but little seen. Her ears and chin are comely enough. Her neck, shoulders, and all her body are well set and unmaimed; and nought is amiss so far as a man may see. Moreover, she is brown of skin all over, and much like her father; and in all things she is pleasant enough, as it seems to us. And the damsel will be of the age of nine years on St. John's day next to come, as her mother saith. She is neither too tall nor too short for such an age; she is of fair carriage, and well taught in all that becometh her rank, and highly esteemed and well beloved of her father and mother and of all her meinie [i. e., small-minded], in so far as we could inquire and learn the truth (The Register of Walter de Stapledon, Bishop of Exeter, 1307–1326).


The condition which Queen Pest has in common with Queen Philippa is dropsy, or edema, or an illness similar to it, from which she expired.

Part of the satire lies in his descriptions of King Pest, Queen Pest, and the other members of the royal household, who suffer from various diseases, such as emaciation, dropsy (edema), delirium tremens, and consumption (tuberculosis). However, the story may not be about the English at all.

Poe supplies a hint of his intention in the story's subtitle, “A Tale Containing an Allegory.” As Dawn B. Sova observes in Critical Companion to Edgar Allan Poe: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work, “each character . . . represents a different type of 'pest,' from the intellectual who produces nothing original to the drunkard” (91).

It seems clear that Poe takes artistic license in describing the characters of “King Pest.” His story alludes to, but is not much based upon, historical incidents and these royal individuals. Its aim is not to narrate history, but to satirize politics and political actors. The targets of Poe's satire may not, in fact, be English at all.


One critic is convinced that the story satirizes “an extremely wet banquet on January 8, 1832, honoring both president Andrew Jackson and . . . the abolition of the national debt.” According to The Short Fiction of Edgar Allan Poe: An Annotated Edition, which cites William Whipple, one of the founders of the United States, King Pest is Jackson; Queen Pest is his wife Rachel; the Arch-Duchess Ana-Pest is Peggy Eaton; “the man with the bandaged leg and cheeks on his shoulders” is Colonel Thomas Hart Benton; “the thin man with the alcoholic tremor” is Francis Blair “of the Globe”; “the paralyzed man in the coffin” is Amos Kendall or William H. Crawford; Tarpaulin is Martin Van Buren; and Legs is probably Major Jack Downing (294).


Along these same lines, A Companion to Poe Studies adds to this interpretation, noting that King Pest is described as “the President of the Table”:

He is tall and gaunt, with a yellow complexion and a lofty forehead, his head decorated with sable plumes. This is Andrew Jackson, seventh president of the United States (1829-1937) . . . . The story takes place in “the parish of St. Andrew's Stair” [the direction in which Legs and Tarpaulin flee from the tavern's landlady]. The stairway of Jackson's home named “The Heritage,” near Nashville, Tennessee, was named “St. Andrew's Stair.” The undertaker's shop, therefore, must be the kitchen of the White House, and the other persons are the members of the Jackson “family,” including some members of Jackson's Kitchen Cabinet. Queen Pest, the lady with the big mouth, is Peggy Eaton, the wife of Secretary of War John Henry Eaton, whose chastity Jackson defended; Arch Duke Pest-Iferous, who has large ears, is Amos Kendell, fourth auditor (< L. audire, to hear) of the Treasury; Duke Pest-Ilential, who has goggle-eyes, is Francis Preston Blair, Sr., assistant editor of the Frankfort (Kentucky) newspaper, The Argus (giant with a hundred eyes), and editor of the Washington Globe (globus, ball; hence, related to “bulging” or “goggle”-eyes); Duke Tem-Pest, who is cheeky, is Secretary of War Eaton, whose wife became the center of a teapot tempest that split the president's cabinet wide open; and Arch Duchess Ana-Pest, the diminutive, haut-ton lady who is consumptive is Emily Donelson, Jackson's acting First Lady (his wife, Rachel, died ten weeks before his inauguration). Emily died of consumption in December 1836 (126).


Although these interpretations don't agree in every respect, it's clear that both critics believe that the allegory to which Poe alludes in his story's subtitle is, indeed, political in nature and targets American president Andrew Jackson and various members of his political “family.”


Notes

Peggy Eaton and her second husband, Secretary of War John Eaton, were scorned by the wives of Andrew Jackson's cabinet on the basis of unfounded rumors that Peggy had had an affair, which caused her first husband John Timberlake to commit suicide in 1828. (In fact, Timberlake died from pneumonia.) The wives would neither call upon the Eatons nor invite them to parties and other functions. Although Jackson tried to end this Petticoat Affair, by forcing the wives to accept the Eatons, their ostracism of the Secretary of War and his wife was supported by Johnson's vice-president, John C. Calhoun. As a result, Jackson supported Martin Van Buren, who had accepted the Eatons. Van Buren's resignation helped to end the scandal, and Jackson replaced his disloyal cabinet members. At the end of Jackson's term, Calhoun was not renominated as vice president, and he resigned. Van Buren replaced him on the ticket as Jackson's vice president and succeeded him as president in 1837.


In The Petticoat Affair: Manners, Mutiny, and Sex in Andrew Jackson's White House, historian John F. Marszalek may shine some light on why Poe describes Queen Pest as having a cavernous mouth that extends from ear to ear:

She did not know her place; she forthrightly spoke up about anything that came to her mind, even topics of which women were supposed to be ignorant . . . .

According to Encyclopedia Britannica, Blair was “an ardent follower of Andrew Jackson,” whom the newspaperman “helped” to elect during the 1828 presidential election. A year later, after becoming the editor of the Washington Globe, Blair was doubly effective in influencing politics at the national level, as he also belonged to the Kitchen Cabinet, the president's own unofficial advisory group.

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Robert Sheckley’s “Gray Flannel Armor”: A Lesson on Love and Literature

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman


Published in 2005 by The NESFA Press of Farmingham, MA, The Masque of Manana offers science fiction fans forty one of Robert Sheckley’s often-satirical, always incomparable short stories, one of which, “Gray Flannel Armor,” I discuss here, because it offers a lesson not only in love but also in literature.

The protagonist is a young man named Thomas Hanley whose very ordinariness as an everyman makes him an appealing character. He is also made interesting by Sheckley’s omniscient narrator’s description of him. Hanley’s ordinary nature comes through in story’s first two paragraphs:

Thomas Hanley was a tall, slim young man, conservative in his tastes, moderate in his vices, and modest to a fault. His conversation with either sex was perfectly proper, even to the point of employing the verbal improprieties suitable to his age and station. He owned several gray flannel suits and many slim neckties with regimented stripes. You might think you could pick him out of a crowd because of his horn-rimmed glasses, but you would be wrong. That wasn’t Hanley. Hanley was the other one.

Who would believe that, beneath this meek, self-effacing, industrious, conforming exterior beat a wildly romantic heart? Sadly enough, anyone would, for the disguise fooled only the disguised [i. e., Hanley himself].
The narrator’s description of Hanley, in paragraph five, suggests that Hanley is also an everyman:

Young men like Hanley, in their grey flannel armor and horn-rimmed visors, are today’s knights of chivalry, Millions of them roam the streets of our great cities, their footsteps firm and hurried, eyes front, voices lowered, dressed to the point of invisibility. Like actors or bewitched men, they live their somber lives, while within them the flame of romance burns and will not die (427).

When Joe Morris, a salesman, appears at his apartment’s door, trying to sell him on a subscription to New York Romance Service, assuring Hanley that the “service” that the company provides has nothing to do with call girls, but, instead, will help him to find the woman of his dreams, the protagonist earns the sympathy of readers who, like Hanley, understand how difficult it is for men and women to find romance even in a city of millions. Therefore, they are likely to care enough about his plight (and, by extension, in many cases, their own), and the story’s opening sentence is likely to prompt them to continue to read, promising them, as it does, that, as a result, they will learn how Hanley met “the girl who later became his wife” ((427).

Most of Sheckley’s stories establish a problem for which their characters seek solutions. “Gray Flannel Armor” is no exception: Hanley’s problem is that he cannot meet a fiancée. The solution, he is told, is New York Romance Service, which employs “scientific precision and technological know-how” based upon “a thorough study of the factors essential to a successful meeting between the sexes” (429). These “essential” elements of romance, the salesman says, are “spontaneity and a sense of fatedness” (429). Readers may be curious as to how Hanley meets his future wife, but, like the protagonist himself, they are also apt to be skeptical that romance can be analyzed on the basis of science and secured through technology.

Still, the premise is intriguing, and, in the second scene of the story, the salesman’s claims are put to the test. On a trial basis, Morris loans Hanley “a small transistor with a tiny video eye” by which New York Romance Service can track and coach him in his quest for romance (neither sex nor love is guaranteed, just romance). Directed by a voice he hears through the radio, Hanley goes to a rooftop, where he meets a beautiful young woman who is there stargazing. When he is uncertain as to how to proceed, the voice advises him to talk about “the lights,” which results in the following romantic exchange:

“The lights are beautiful,” said Hanley, feeling foolish.

“Yes,” murmured the girl. “Like a great carpet of stars, or spearpoints [sic] in the gloom.”

“Like sentinels,” said Hanley, “keeping eternal vigil in the night.” He wasn’t sure if the idea was his or he was parroting a barely perceptible voice from the radio.

“I often come here,” said the girl.

“I never come here,” Hanley said.

“But tonight. . . .”

“Tonight I had to come. I knew I would find you” (431).
The voice on the radio next directs him to “take her in your arms,” and, when he opens his arms to her, she steps into them (431).

Although their encounter ends well, in romance, Hanley can’t help but feel that “something about it seemed wrong” (432), and he wonders “how many dreams the Romance Service had analyzed, how many visions they had tabulated, to produce something as perfect” as his seemingly spontaneous and fated meeting of the lovely young woman on a rooftop under the stars (431).

A second date, with a different woman, also ends well, in romance. Guided again by radio, Hanley arrives at the scene of a mugging just in the nick of time and, after saving the beautiful young woman from the muggers, enjoys both a “meeting that was not only spontaneous and fateful, but enormously pleasant as well” and “a wild, perfect, and wonderful” night with her. Nevertheless, he is still “disturbed” and cannot “help feeling a little odd about a romantic meeting set up and sponsored by transistor radios, which cued lovers into the proper spontaneous yet fated responses. It was undoubtedly clever but something about it seemed wrong” (432). He realizes--and his realization is the part of the story’s theme--that “you simply can’t throw strangers together at random and expect the fiery, quick romance to turn into love. Love has its own rules and enforces them rigidly” (434).

Hanley’s insight is confirmed when, walking through a park, his radio silent for once, he encounters a third beautiful young woman. At last, he experiences an “adventure” that seems “truly fated and spontaneous.” However, he soon discovers, that this experience, too, is staged, albeit by a company that employs more sophisticated methods than the use of “a small transistor with a tiny video eye”:

. . . I am your Free Introductory Romance, given as a sample by Greater Romance Industries, with home offices in Newark, New Jersey. Only our firm offers romances which are truly spontaneous and fated. Due to our technological researches, we are able to dispense with such clumsy apparatus as transistor radios, which lend an air of rigidity and control where no control should be apparent. . . (435).
Hanley is so disheartened by the sales pitch that, as he flees the scene, “he plucked the tiny transistor radio from his lapel and hurled it into a gutter” and “further attempts at salesmanship were wasted on Hanley” (435).

At the outset of the story, the narrator promises to show how the protagonist met “the girl who would later become his wife,” and the end of the story makes good on this promise: “It is interesting to note,” the narrator tells the readers, that Hanley was among the last to find a wife in the old, unsure, quaint, haphazard, unindustrialized fashion” (436), i. e., through a blind date arranged for him, and chaperone by, his old-fashioned aunt. Even this natural experience becomes the subject of a scientific study and crass commercialization:

And now one of the Companies’ regular and most valued services is to provide bonded aunts for young men to call up, to provide these aunts with shy and embarrassed young girls, and to produce a proper milieu for all this in the form of a bright, over-decorated parlor, an uncomfortable couch, and an eager old lady bustling back and forth at meticulously unexpected intervals with coffee and homemade cake.
Ironically, the narrator adds, “The suspense, they say, becomes almost overpowering” (436).

The story’s title reinforces the relationship between the narrative’s story and its theme. Hanley (the readers’ stand-in) learns that “you simply can’t throw strangers together at random and expect the fiery, quick romance to turn into love“ because “love has its own rules and enforces them rigidly,” especially when the “romantic meeting is set up and sponsored by transistor radios, which cued lovers into the proper spontaneous yet fated responses.” Fortunately for Hanley, as an everyman he is protected from such artificiality-by-design. He is armored, as it were, by his own everydayness and the conventions and traditions of conduct of such everydayness that are symbolized by his “gray flannel suits and many slim neckties with regimental stripes” (427):

Thomas Hanley was a tall, slim young man, conservative in his tastes, moderate in his vices, and modest to a fault. His conversation with either sex was perfectly proper, even to the point of employing the verbal improprieties suitable to his age and station. He owned several gray flannel suits and many slim neckties with regimented stripes. . . .
If part of the story’s theme is that “you simply can’t throw strangers together at random and expect the fiery, quick romance to turn into love. Love has its own rules and enforces them rigidly,” the rest of it seems to be that it is the interplay between the commonplace and the romantic, not contrived spontaneity and an artificial “sense of fatedness,” that makes encounters and relationships truly romantic.

Sheckley’s story is a more-timely-than-ever satire against dubious dating services and dismal lonely hearts clubs (or today‘s computerized equivalents), some of use (or claim to sue) scientific surveys, psychological testing, personality profiles, and statistical analyses to match strangers. However, “Gray Flannel Armor” is more than a lesson in love; it is also a lesson on literature, for Sheckley’s implicit critique of the absurdity of trying to quantify love is applicable also to fiction. Natural, but unpredictable, plotting creates true suspense, but there is something “wrong” with formulaic stories that are cranked out in assembly-line fashion. That’s a lesson that writers of horror as well as of science fiction (or any other genre) can take to the heart.

Paranormal vs. Supernatural: What’s the Diff?

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

Sometimes, in demonstrating how to brainstorm about an essay topic, selecting horror movies, I ask students to name the titles of as many such movies as spring to mind (seldom a difficult feat for them, as the genre remains quite popular among young adults). Then, I ask them to identify the monster, or threat--the antagonist, to use the proper terminology--that appears in each of the films they have named. Again, this is usually a quick and easy task. Finally, I ask them to group the films’ adversaries into one of three possible categories: natural, paranormal, or supernatural. This is where the fun begins.

It’s a simple enough matter, usually, to identify the threats which fall under the “natural” label, especially after I supply my students with the scientific definition of “nature”: everything that exists as either matter or energy (which are, of course, the same thing, in different forms--in other words, the universe itself. The supernatural is anything which falls outside, or is beyond, the universe: God, angels, demons, and the like, if they exist. Mad scientists, mutant cannibals (and just plain cannibals), serial killers, and such are examples of natural threats. So far, so simple.

What about borderline creatures, though? Are vampires, werewolves, and zombies, for example, natural or supernatural? And what about Freddy Krueger? In fact, what does the word “paranormal” mean, anyway? If the universe is nature and anything outside or beyond the universe is supernatural, where does the paranormal fit into the scheme of things?

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word “paranormal,” formed of the prefix “para,” meaning alongside, and “normal,” meaning “conforming to common standards, usual,” was coined in 1920. The American Heritage Dictionary defines “paranormal” to mean “beyond the range of normal experience or scientific explanation.” In other words, the paranormal is not supernatural--it is not outside or beyond the universe; it is natural, but, at the present, at least, inexplicable, which is to say that science cannot yet explain its nature. The same dictionary offers, as examples of paranormal phenomena, telepathy and “a medium’s paranormal powers.”

Wikipedia offers a few other examples of such phenomena or of paranormal sciences, including the percentages of the American population which, according to a Gallup poll, believes in each phenomenon, shown here in parentheses: psychic or spiritual healing (54), extrasensory perception (ESP) (50), ghosts (42), demons (41), extraterrestrials (33), clairvoyance and prophecy (32), communication with the dead (28), astrology (28), witchcraft (26), reincarnation (25), and channeling (15); 36 percent believe in telepathy.

As can be seen from this list, which includes demons, ghosts, and witches along with psychics and extraterrestrials, there is a confusion as to which phenomena and which individuals belong to the paranormal and which belong to the supernatural categories. This confusion, I believe, results from the scientism of our age, which makes it fashionable for people who fancy themselves intelligent and educated to dismiss whatever cannot be explained scientifically or, if such phenomena cannot be entirely rejected, to classify them as as-yet inexplicable natural phenomena. That way, the existence of a supernatural realm need not be admitted or even entertained. Scientists tend to be materialists, believing that the real consists only of the twofold unity of matter and energy, not dualists who believe that there is both the material (matter and energy) and the spiritual, or supernatural. If so, everything that was once regarded as having been supernatural will be regarded (if it cannot be dismissed) as paranormal and, maybe, if and when it is explained by science, as natural. Indeed, Sigmund Freud sought to explain even God as but a natural--and in Freud’s opinion, an obsolete--phenomenon.

Meanwhile, among skeptics, there is an ongoing campaign to eliminate the paranormal by explaining them as products of ignorance, misunderstanding, or deceit. Ridicule is also a tactic that skeptics sometimes employ in this campaign. For example, The Skeptics’ Dictionary contends that the perception of some “events” as being of a paranormal nature may be attributed to “ignorance or magical thinking.” The dictionary is equally suspicious of each individual phenomenon or “paranormal science” as well. Concerning psychics’ alleged ability to discern future events, for example, The Skeptic’s Dictionary quotes Jay Leno (“How come you never see a headline like 'Psychic Wins Lottery'?”), following with a number of similar observations:

Psychics don't rely on psychics to warn them of impending disasters. Psychics don't predict their own deaths or diseases. They go to the dentist like the rest of us. They're as surprised and disturbed as the rest of us when they have to call a plumber or an electrician to fix some defect at home. Their planes are delayed without their being able to anticipate the delays. If they want to know something about Abraham Lincoln, they go to the library; they don't try to talk to Abe's spirit. In short, psychics live by the known laws of nature except when they are playing the psychic game with people.
In An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural, James Randi, a magician who exercises a skeptical attitude toward all things alleged to be paranormal or supernatural, takes issue with the notion of such phenomena as well, often employing the same arguments and rhetorical strategies as The Skeptic’s Dictionary.

In short, the difference between the paranormal and the supernatural lies in whether one is a materialist, believing in only the existence of matter and energy, or a dualist, believing in the existence of both matter and energy and spirit. If one maintains a belief in the reality of the spiritual, he or she will classify such entities as angels, demons, ghosts, gods, vampires, and other threats of a spiritual nature as supernatural, rather than paranormal, phenomena. He or she may also include witches (because, although they are human, they are empowered by the devil, who is himself a supernatural entity) and other natural threats that are energized, so to speak, by a power that transcends nature and is, as such, outside or beyond the universe. Otherwise, one is likely to reject the supernatural as a category altogether, identifying every inexplicable phenomenon as paranormal, whether it is dark matter or a teenage werewolf. Indeed, some scientists dedicate at least part of their time to debunking allegedly paranormal phenomena, explaining what natural conditions or processes may explain them, as the author of The Serpent and the Rainbow explains the creation of zombies by voodoo priests.

Based upon my recent reading of Tzvetan Todorov's The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to the Fantastic, I add the following addendum to this essay.

According to Todorov:

The fantastic. . . lasts only as long as a certain hesitation [in deciding] whether or not what they [the reader and the protagonist] perceive derives from "reality" as it exists in the common opinion. . . . If he [the reader] decides that the laws of reality remain intact and permit an explanation of the phenomena described, we can say that the work belongs to the another genre [than the fantastic]: the uncanny. If, on the contrary, he decides that new laws of nature must be entertained to account for the phenomena, we enter the genre of the marvelous (The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, 41).
Todorov further differentiates these two categories by characterizing the uncanny as “the supernatural explained” and the marvelous as “the supernatural accepted” (41-42).

Interestingly, the prejudice against even the possibility of the supernatural’s existence which is implicit in the designation of natural versus paranormal phenomena, which excludes any consideration of the supernatural, suggests that there are no marvelous phenomena; instead, there can be only the uncanny. Consequently, for those who subscribe to this view, the fantastic itself no longer exists in this scheme, for the fantastic depends, as Todorov points out, upon the tension of indecision concerning to which category an incident belongs, the natural or the supernatural. The paranormal is understood, by those who posit it, in lieu of the supernatural, as the natural as yet unexplained.

And now, back to a fate worse than death: grading students’ papers.

My Cup of Blood

Anyone who becomes an aficionado of anything tends, eventually, to develop criteria for elements or features of the person, place, or thing of whom or which he or she has become enamored. Horror fiction--admittedly not everyone’s cuppa blood--is no different (okay, maybe it’s a little different): it, too, appeals to different fans, each for reasons of his or her own. Of course, in general, book reviews, the flyleaves of novels, and movie trailers suggest what many, maybe even most, readers of a particular type of fiction enjoy, but, right here, right now, I’m talking more specifically--one might say, even more eccentrically. In other words, I’m talking what I happen to like, without assuming (assuming makes an “ass” of “u” and “me”) that you also like the same. It’s entirely possible that you will; on the other hand, it’s entirely likely that you won’t.

Anyway, this is what I happen to like in horror fiction:

Small-town settings in which I get to know the townspeople, both the good, the bad, and the ugly. For this reason alone, I’m a sucker for most of Stephen King’s novels. Most of them, from 'Salem's Lot to Under the Dome, are set in small towns that are peopled by the good, the bad, and the ugly. Part of the appeal here, granted, is the sense of community that such settings entail.

Isolated settings, such as caves, desert wastelands, islands, mountaintops, space, swamps, where characters are cut off from civilization and culture and must survive and thrive or die on their own, without assistance, by their wits and other personal resources. Many are the examples of such novels and screenplays, but Alien, The Shining, The Descent, Desperation, and The Island of Dr. Moreau, are some of the ones that come readily to mind.

Total institutions as settings. Camps, hospitals, military installations, nursing homes, prisons, resorts, spaceships, and other worlds unto themselves are examples of such settings, and Sleepaway Camp, Coma, The Green Mile, and Aliens are some of the novels or films that take place in such settings.

Anecdotal scenes--in other words, short scenes that showcase a character--usually, an unusual, even eccentric, character. Both Dean Koontz and the dynamic duo, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, excel at this, so I keep reading their series (although Koontz’s canine companions frequently--indeed, almost always--annoy, as does his relentless optimism).

Atmosphere, mood, and tone. Here, King is king, but so is Bentley Little. In the use of description to terrorize and horrify, both are masters of the craft.

A bit of erotica (okay, okay, sex--are you satisfied?), often of the unusual variety. Sex sells, and, yes, sex whets my reader’s appetite. Bentley Little is the go-to guy for this spicy ingredient, although Koontz has done a bit of seasoning with this spice, too, in such novels as Lightning and Demon Seed (and, some say, Hung).

Believable characters. Stephen King, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, and Dan Simmons are great at creating characters that stick to readers’ ribs.

Innovation. Bram Stoker demonstrates it, especially in his short story “Dracula’s Guest,” as does H. P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Shirley Jackson, and a host of other, mostly classical, horror novelists and short story writers. For an example, check out my post on Stoker’s story, which is a real stoker, to be sure. Stephen King shows innovation, too, in ‘Salem’s Lot, The Shining, It, and other novels. One might even argue that Dean Koontz’s something-for-everyone, cross-genre writing is innovative; he seems to have been one of the first, if not the first, to pen such tales.

Technique. Check out Frank Peretti’s use of maps and his allusions to the senses in Monster; my post on this very topic is worth a look, if I do say so myself, which, of course, I do. Opening chapters that accomplish a multitude of narrative purposes (not usually all at once, but successively) are attractive, too, and Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child are as good as anyone, and better than many, at this art.

A connective universe--a mythos, if you will, such as both H. P. Lovecraft and Stephen King, and, to a lesser extent, Dean Koontz, Bentley Little, and even Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child have created through the use of recurring settings, characters, themes, and other elements of fiction.

A lack of pretentiousness. Dean Koontz has it, as do Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, Bentley Little, and (to some extent, although he has become condescending and self-indulgent of late, Stephen King); unfortunately, both Dan Simmons and Robert McCammon have become too self-important in their later works, Simmons almost to the point of becoming unreadable. Come on, people, you’re writing about monsters--you should be humble.

Longevity. Writers who have been around for a while usually get better, Stephen King, Dan Simmons, and Robert McCammon excepted.

Pacing. Neither too fast nor too slow. Dean Koontz is good, maybe the best, here, of contemporary horror writers.


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