Much as I opined last week about “Buried Talents”, I think Richard Matheson's “The Funeral” makes a fine companion piece to I am Legend. Ludwig Asper could very well have been Ben Cortman and vice versa. You’ve also got a motley gang of the undead wanting vindication and recognition in both pieces. One has to think Matheson knew what he was doing when he paired these works together; they complement each other very well.
I greatly enjoyed this story, and like many of my classmates I found the fact that it was so humorous the most engaging aspect of it. The other two areas in which I felt Matheson excelled were in his characterization and setting depiction.
In the first paragraph alone, I get a sense of who Morton Silkline is; he’s a fussy type he muses “over floral arrangements” and yet he is, almost ironically, the proprietor of an establishment called Clooney’s Cut-Rate Catafalque. These two facts are obviously incongruent and yet they seem perfectly matched as they set us up for the later revelations about Silkline’s dual nature.
Silkline’s dual nature is in fact that funniest part of this piece. Here’s a guy whose life is imperiled by catering to the rather unusual demands of monsters. His establishment is nearly burned down by the same. Still, he’s willing to take the risk of that happening again if the price is right. It’s the quintessential “sell your soul to the Devil” story, except in “The Funeral” the Devil is replaced by monsters. Silkline’s character never truly aroused my sympathy but I don’t think he was intended to be a sympathetic character. Rather, I think he was supposed to be representative of the guy we’ve all met in real life, the kind of man that can be bought. (There’s no shortage of them running around.)
The monsters themselves were all so comical that they weren’t really frightening, but this certainly didn’t detract from my enjoyment of this piece. As other students have posted, I felt Matheson intentionally depicted the monsters as stereotypical Beasts that Go Bump in the Night to add to the humor of the work, and his approach definitely worked for me.
I also posted last week that in I am Legend I could see the influence that would later guide Stephen King, and that’s no less true in “The Funeral”. Additionally, Matheson’s attention to detail in his description of setting is reminiscent of Lovecraft. This is high praise as I’m not a huge Lovecraft fan but I do feel he’s a master of setting. I can’t imagine Matheson not being influenced by his predecessor so I doubt this is coincidental. I’ve often heard it said that “good writers borrow and great writers steal” and in this piece I can see Matheson stealing from Lovecraft much in the manner King will later steal from him.
In summary, there wasn’t anything about this story that I didn’t like, and my esteem for Matheson continues to grow.
Nice post, Carla. I agree about Silkline's dual nature. It's pretty funny. The incongruity between his grinning greed and his practiced sympathy is truly monstrous. It's so great, then, that his own cunning becomes the vehicle of his own punishment... and he doesn't even realize it. Faced with a semi-formless Lovecraftian horror, he still struggles to assume his professional countenance. "Barter not with monsters, lest ye become a monster", right?
ReplyDeleteYou mention Lovecraft here, and H.P.'s probable influence over Matheson, who influenced King, who probably influenced all of us. I think Matheson's final line here -- and I can't quote it, as I'm literally thousands of miles from my copy as I write this -- ends with Silkline asking for the new customer's name. There's no response, of course, which seems a definite wink in Lovecraft's direction. All those "nameless" and "unspeakable" monsters...
Thought-provoking post, Carla. I'm looking forward to reading what you have to say about BREEDING GROUND.
I wouldn't assume too much about a Lovecraft influence on Matheson. Discussing Matheson's one episode of THRILLER, which was based on a story co-written by Lovecraft disciple August Derleth, I asked him why he had never adapted Lovecraft's work for the screen, as his friends Charles Beaumont and Jerry Sohl had. He replied, "He wasn’t my kind of writer-—too heavy. Heavy stuff. You know, he’d spend fifty pages talking about some Eldritch horror that is so horrible to describe that he can’t possibly do it, and then in the last ten pages he describes it. I mean obviously, the man was brilliant, I just don’t care for that kind of writing." To learn about his adaptation of "The Funeral" on NIGHT GALLERY, see my book RICHARD MATHESON ON SCREEN (http://www.mcfarlandpub.com/book-2.php?id=978-0-7864-4216-4), tentatively due out in early October.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I loved the humor too. I wasn't planning on reading this whole thing at once, even though it is short-I had things to do- but the humor kept me going. I really really enjoyed it.
ReplyDeleteYou are right, they weren't frightening, but I think that's what makes the story as good as it was. This showed the monsters in the time when they aren't causing havoc by running off a bunch of crying citizens. It was fantastic. Out of all the short stories we've read for this class, this was my favorite.
T. Marcus