From/for the October 2011 "California Focus" on the Ripper Conference

Area resident Carla E. Anderton was recently selected to present a paper at an international conference on Jack the Ripper at Drexel University in Philadelphia in late October. The conference, dubbed “Jack the Ripper: Through a Wider Lens”, will examine the myth and mystery surrounding one of history’s most infamous serial killers. Anderton’s paper is on “Our Continued Fascination with the Ripper” and her presentation will center on why society is still so intrigued by a series of unsolved murders in London that took place the late 19th century.

About the conference, Anderton said, “Being asked to present alongside such notable names in the field of Ripperology – that’s what we call the study of Jack’s crimes – is an honor, and one of my greatest achievements to date. It’s exciting to realize so many others have an interest in this riveting case and that in addition to having a chance to share my knowledge with them, I’ll have the opportunity to hear their presentations.”

Anderton first “fell in love with Jack” while on a “Jack the Ripper Walking Tour” she took as part of a high school trip to London in 1995. Tour guide and leading authority on the case Donald Rumbelow used her as a “model” for where the Ripper slashed his victims, which she called “creepy” but admits it left her hungering to learn more about the mysterious person responsible for murdering at least five prostitutes in the Whitechapel section of London in 1888.

“I’ve always been interested in British history, so it wasn’t a hard sell,” Anderton admits. “But, my fascination with the Ripper really took hold during my undergraduate studies at Cal U. I was in an Advanced Writing course with Professor Alan Natali, who I’ll always consider both mentor and friend, and I chose as my semester project a series of sketches on what might have transpired if the ‘Ripper’ had been in love with his last victim, whose murder was so much more horrific in comparison to his earlier victims. Professor Natali really encouraged me to keep going with the project, and by the next semester, when I was a student in his Creative Writing of Fiction course, I’d begun writing a full fledged novel based on the concept.”

Anderton took a hiatus from the project after graduation from Cal U while she served as Editor-in-Chief of California Focus from 2005-2009, but she returned to it with a vengeance after enrolling in a Master of Fine Arts program at Seton Hill University in Greensburg. She will graduate in January 2012, and finally completed the novel, titled The Heart Absent, in September of this year. She hopes her participation in the upcoming Ripper conference will help her land a publisher for the novel.

She realizes many may consider her fascination with the Ripper crimes macabre, and said, “I know it seems like an awfully gruesome subject to be interested in, but what I find most compelling about the case is that it elevated these women whose names we’d never have known – after all, they were basically indigent streetwalkers – to a place in history that I think it’s important to preserve. These were real people whose murderer was never caught and whose deaths were never avenged. I’m also intrigued by the role of the media in publicizing and immortalizing these crimes. The case transformed journalism as we know it today.”

Currently, Anderton serves as President of the Board of Directors at Jozart Center for the Arts. In addition to writing fiction, she has also written and published poetry, plays, articles and essays. She lives in California with her 13-year old son, pre-professional ballet dancer Allen Free, who – in addition to his many other accomplishments – regularly dances, strums the guitar and serves coffee at Jozart’s weekly open mics.

Good news (again) and a(nother) plea for help...

So, I got a bit of good news last week, which I am just now getting around to posting here in Ye Olde Blogge Space: I am going to be a presenter at an international conference at Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA, at the end of October on my boy Jack the Ripper.

Yessir. Notable names in Ripperology: Drew Gray, Martin Fido, Richard Walter and… Yours Truly? You heard it here last. Seriously, I was all over Facebook with this already; this is old news but nonetheless great news. But, in the interest of personal marketing via blog, wanted to share here too.

I’m a little nervous but mostly just excited. This is sink or swim territory for me but I’m fairly adept at treading water. My topic is “Our Continued Fascination with the Ripper”, and I’ll be presenting alongside Christopher George of Ripperologist Magazine and John Curra, professor of Sociology at Eastern Kentucky University.

I’ve got roughly two months to put together a top notch presentation and to prepare for questions from the conference participants.

In the meantime, I’ve got to put the final finishing touches on my thesis novel, The Heart Absent, the premise of which is somewhere between “Pygmalion gone horribly wrong”, “Jack the Ripper in love”, and (of course) “Take any bird and put it in a cage”. Simply put, it’s the story of Jack’s evolution from boy to man to monster who demands Mary Kelly’s heart by any means necessary. I’m looking forward to submitting it to publishers soon, as the last day of revisions on the work is close at hand, but I’m a little sad to think this means saying goodbye to my best pal Jack. For now.

But, back to the conference. So many of you wrote in and commented here and elsewhere on FB on four “facts” or “myths” you’d heard about the Jack the Ripper crimes. Thank you! Now, get ready to roll up your sleeves again, for I need your help once more.

Riddle me this, ladies and gents: What do YOU find fascinating about Jack the Ripper? (Again, let’s stick to the hit the high notes formula.) And, if you don’t personally find the Ripper narrative compelling but you do like stories about serial killers, or are a horror/true crime/historical fiction fan, what is it about stories about unsolved (and often grisly) murders that piques YOUR interest?

Looking forward to your responses!

I need your help!

There is a good chance I'm going to be presenting at an international conference on Jack the Ripper. (Cross your fingers, guys. They're interested in me, now I just have to prove I'm actually interesting.)

You guys can help. In four sentences or less, without using Google etc., tell me what YOU know about Jack the Ripper. If you know more than four sentences worth of info, I applaud you, but please just hit the high notes.

Why do I want to know this? My presentation topic, should they officially invite me, is going to be something along the lines of "The Enduring Appeal of Jack the Ripper" and it will be very useful for me to know what exactly the general public (that's you guys) knows about the Ripper murders. Since I know some of you are very well versed in the case, I'm asking responses be limited to four sentences. Just tell me what stands out most vividly in your mind about my boy Jack.

There's several ways to play. You can either leave your response in the comments here, on my Facebook page (I'm Carla E. Anderton. Add me. I can't promise I'll always be highly entertaining but I do promise to try), or you can email me your response to carla@jozart.com.

I'm not offering any prizes, just the good feeling of knowing you helped your fellow (wo)man, but I do appreciate any and all responses. I do promise that whatever misinformation you may have about the Ripper will be clarified in a future blog entry once this experiment is complete.

Batman: The Killing Joke

Allow me to preface this week’s post by saying this is the last blog entry about horror fiction I will ever pen (for a grade), assuming of course our Evil Overlord doesn’t have some nefarious trick up his sleeve. After one and a half years of reading mostly horror fiction, I will now get to read books of MY choosing! This is, no offense, a happy day indeed.

And how appropriate that I go out with a post on Batman: The Killing Joke. I think somewhere in the manual for People Who Want to Become Horror Writers, there is a rule that all of us who love dark fiction must also love the Dark Knight. To be honest, I’m not much of a comic book fan, and the only other graphic novel I’ve read was also penned by Mr. Alan Moore, From Hell. (Surprise, surprise.) Therefore, it wasn’t exactly a hard sell for me to like The Killing Joke. Aside from my reverence for Moore’s work, my love for the Batman universe knows no bounds. (See large Catwoman tattoo on upper right shoulder for more proof.)

What is it about the Batman that we as horror writers and fans find so alluring? I think it’s the combination of the dark, near noir setting, and the personalities of the Batman, his adversaries and his accomplices.

Let’s begin with the Batman. Here’s a guy you can’t help but love, even if you do think he has, well, bats in his belfry. After witnessing the tragic murder of his parents, Bruce Wayne dons a cap and a mask and seeks to avenge their deaths by becoming a one man arbiter of justice. Here is a best case scenario reaction to tragedy if I ever heard one. And yet, we like Batman not just because he collars the bad guys but because his psyche is so scarred and irretrievably twisted.

Twisted, but not as twisted as the psyches of most of the villains in the Batman universe, most notably The Joker. The depiction of the Joker in The Killing Joke is so intriguing and effective because he embodies the classic psycho, dashing and mysterious in spite of his evil deeds. Further, we can all sympathize with the Joker’s plight, and as has been posited so often in this course: Where is the line between sanity and insanity, between normality and psychosis, and how closely do any of us skirt it? I think it’s safe to assume we’ve all experienced at least “one bad day” in our lives, though most of us have managed to avoid disfigurement via vat of acid. The Joker’s reaction to the string of tragedies that unfolds in this novel is understandable. No, it is more than understandable, it is human. We are all flawed creatures with villainesque tendencies we (mostly) keep under wraps. Who among us wouldn’t welcome the freedom to be the evil that touches so many of our lives?

What is inhuman, if anything in this novel can be described as such, is Commissioner Gordon’s stoicism, his unswerving dedication to the job that is the root cause of his own difficulties. And yet, for everyone unrepressed Joker in our midst, there are a hundred Gordons, desperate men finding solace in the tedium of workaholism.

Aside from being a damned good story with a cast of sympathetic characters, The Killing Joke is beautifully rendered. Brian Bolland’s illustrations perfectly capture the dark universe that is Gotham City.

I’d close with my usual statement about the books I’ve loved, that I’ll be passing this one on to my son, but on this occasion I can’t claim that. I can’t pass it on to him, he’s already stolen it from me and is deeply engrossed.

Joyride

Buckle up, guys, because we’re able to take a wild ride on the Bipolar Express. Yes, I am out of my tree, and I’m about to confound every statement I’ve made in weeks past when I say I loved Jack Ketchum’s Joyride. While it had its share of the ole torture porn and definitely lent credence to the argument that women are subjugated in horror fiction, two of the things I’ve mentioned bother me about the genre, I thoroughly enjoyed this fast paced read. I felt the “on camera” carnage – albeit limited compared to what I understand Ketchum does in most of his books – and the degradation of women was spot on, and in this case it definitely worked for me.

What I liked most about this book wasn’t so much the story – which was no less stellar – but rather the substance and the structure. (Alliteration more or less unavoidable, sorry.) Rather than making this post a book report, I’d like to talk more about what Ketchum does that I find admirable and seek to emulate.

First off, the murder spree depicted in this novel is reminiscent of the real life spree of Howard Unruh, a veteran of the second World War who had a similar list to Wayne Lock’s: a deadly version of Santa’s “Naughty or Nice” list. As someone who writes about true crime – “real” murders to be exact – I found this novel to be a textbook exercise in What to Do When You Write About Real Serial Killers. Although this is my first experience with Ketchum’s work, a little Internet research reveals that many of his books are based on actual events and in Joyride, his mastery of this genre is apparent. Ketchum seems to have a keen understanding of a truth I hold to be self evident: The world is a sick and twisted place, and the real life atrocities man visits upon his fellow man are often way more sadistic and shocking than those found in books that are entirely fictional. Reality trumps fiction, every time.

Moving on to structure, I really liked the way the point of view switches in the novel. In a longer novel, it might not work as well, but given the brevity of this work it was a great storytelling device. I’m doing this in my own thesis novel and have been a little concerned whether it’s going to be effective, but seeing how Ketchum accomplishes this is both comforting and inspiring. Just as we’ve often been counseled to note the weaknesses in other author’s books so we don’t make the same mistakes in our own work, it’s also important to note the strengths so we can utilize similar techniques as we write.

Back to brevity, I think one of the reasons I so enjoyed Joyride was it’s a quick enough read that you stay on the edge of your seat the whole time. There’s plenty of mayhem but it’s an abbreviated enough form that I never felt Ketchum was bashing me over the head with the gory details, although there were some of those as well. I had no issue getting and remaining invested in the story, and at no point did my interest falter.

In closing, I want to address the fact that this author isn’t shy about depicting graphic violence towards women. Ordinarily that’s a “button” – that John Dixon first mentioned and Jenn Loring mentioned again in her post about this book – for me as well, but I didn’t feel this particular novel went overboard with it. What Ketchum’s own feelings are about women, and how misogynistic or not his general illustration of them is I can’t really speak to since I’ve only read Joyride. I’ll likely pick up a few more of his novels in the future to determine if this is truly a hallmark of his work.

The Sculptor

All things happen for a reason, and I believe I screwed up/switched up the readings/viewings on the syllabus for a reason, too. No one wants to read two weeks in a row of my outright bashing yet another novel in the genre I claim to love, and I think if I’d written this post a week ago, many of you would be left wondering: “Carla, do you even like to read BOOKS, period?”

The answer, in the case of The Sculptor, is a resounding “no”, not if this what the genre has come to. In fact, I question whether I even want to continue writing in it, if this is what sells.

Start off with our killer, a cookie cutter character if ever I encountered one, and these elaborate murder scenes that are frankly torture porn. Throw in one of the silliest signatures – making his victims into representations of Michelangelo’s work – I’ve ever heard of and you end up with a book that is the psycho killer genre equivalent of The DaVinci Code. (I realize the aforementioned was a huge bestseller, and we should all be so lucky as to be Dan Brown, but it’s still not a compliment, just in case you need clarification.) Don’t even get me started on the romance and relationship between the big strong man and the puny little library mouse of a woman – whose life is, naturally, in danger – that he finds strangely alluring.

It’s almost hard for me to pinpoint exactly what I disliked most of this book. Some of my fellow classmates have mentioned in their entries that they found the dialogue clunky and the repetition of the same jarring, and I agree wholeheartedly. However, since we should presumably all be thinking about our writing style when we read others, I have to admit repetitious dialogue is a trick I frequently employ in my own work. I apologize now to my former readers, am currently editing most instances of this trick out of my own book, and promise to never ever do it again in the future. It does take you out of the story and serves no real purpose other than to bash the reader in the head with info they already had.

But let’s get away from style and get back to substance. I’ll admit this killer was extremely creepy, and these murder scenes lingered in my head long after I closed the book, and that is indicative of a successful horror novel. It did scare me. The thought of becoming the Sculptor’s prey gave me chills. But I think it was more the graphic nature of these scenes, and not the personality ascribed to the killer by the author, that I found frightening.

I’ve got a confession to make. I’m not a huge fan of the torture porn that’s so prevalent in the horror genre. Movies like Saw and books like The Sculptor bother me, and not necessarily in a thought provoking way, and I think it’s because so much of the action is “on camera”. Very little is left to the imagination, and the killers in these works don’t really seem to be serving a higher purpose. Maybe they do really have a “higher purpose” and I just don’t get it. I guess you could say I’m old school. I don’t want my vampires to sparkle, but I do like my serial killers to be romantic figures. The Sculptor was not.

This is not a book I’ll revisit, but I will say it made me think about the genre in general and my own writing, so I’m glad I had the chance to read it.

Se7en

A few of my classmates have opined that Red Dragon, the novel, and Silence of the Lambs, the film, were major influences on their decisions to become horror/suspense writers/readers. This was the case with me and the movie Se7en. This film, coupled with a tour of the Jack the Ripper kill spots I embarked on about six months before I saw this film the first couple of times, had a tremendous impact on me and was a pivotal influence on my own decision to write about serial killers. I really love this movie, so much so that I jumped ahead in the syllabus to have the opportunity to revisit it. (That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Stay tuned for my thoughts on this week’s ACTUAL assigned reading, which I am currently reading as if my life depends on it. It sort of does. But, back to Se7en.)

Perhaps what I love most about Se7en is its intensity, its succession of “OMG, that’s just horrible” scenes, each progressively more grotesque. Each of the murder sites are depicted in sickening detail so vivid they stay with you hours, days, even years after seeing them. It’s in your face shocking and it haunts you. The first time I saw this movie, when it came out in the theaters, my date nearly jumped in my lap during the “Sloth” scene. Roughly sixteen years later, my “date” has a lot less hair but basically had the same reaction. (If you’re sensing a trend, it’s just this film is so disturbing I refuse to watch it alone. This is saying a lot when you consider that in my writing space there are two framed prints of the corpse of Mary Kelly directly in my line of vision at all times.) Just when you think John Doe’s crimes can’t get any more horrific, they do just that.

And while John Doe’s victims’ deaths are orgies of almost unimaginable cruelty and violence, they are not senseless. Far from it, in fact. John Doe is a very smart killer, as evidenced by both his elaborate crimes and his ability to avoid detection long enough to carry out his mission of murdering people according to the Seven Deadly Sins. This premise, that Doe’s victims have each violated one of the Seven Deadly Sins and therefore must die accordingly, is a relatively simple one but it’s genius. Religion or more accurately fanaticism is a motive for murder in real life and in fiction, and even though I find what goes on in John Doe’s head prior to and during each murder extremely alarming, I do understand his rationale. He really believes he is doing the Lord’s work and his commitment to his mission is clear.

It almost goes without saying that the acting in this film is superb but I’ll say it anyway. It greatly increased my respect for Brad Pitt and only advanced my esteem for Morgan Freeman. Kevin Spacey is perhaps the creepiest actor working in Hollywood now or then, and he was a prime choice to play John Doe. Even the bit parts were filled by fantastic actors. The West Wing junkie in me squeed a little to see Richard Schiff as Doe’s attorney, this of course several years before West Wing first aired. I did find Gwyneth Paltrow’s portrayal of Tracy Mills to be extremely whiny and was honestly happy when she died, but that’s my only beef with the casting.

In a nutshell, this is the best film about a serial killer I’ve ever seen, it had a tremendous influence on my own writing and interests, and I would definitely consider it required viewing for anyone working in the serial killer genre.

Misery

When you call yourself a “fan” of an author, and that same author is prolific, it’s inevitable they’re going to write a novel that isn’t to your taste. It’s less likely they’ll write a novel you’ll outright hate, but while I call myself a Stephen King fan and have read most of his books and seen most of the screen adaptations of his works? I despise Misery. I hated it when I read it for the first time circa 1993, and I hated it even more (if such a thing was possible) reading it again for this course. Finishing it the first time was laborious, but this latest instance was – frankly – torturous.

Having said all that, Misery isn’t a bad book, quite the contrary. It’s got a compelling, well woven story and memorable characters, two of the hallmarks that define King’s writing style. Say what you will about King, he’s a master storyteller. No, my personal revulsion aside, Misery has a distinct and well deserved place in the canon of horror literature.

We talked a lot in recent weeks about how Red Dragon and then Silence of the Lambs (or the inverse, in my opinion) were revolutionary works in that they introduced the horror genre to a wide variety of readers, particularly readers who had previously disdained horror books, stories and films. This is no less true of Misery. When the big screen adaptation of this novel was released, once again Oscar came calling and Kathy Bates – a phenomenal actress in all respects – lent the character of Annie Wilkes a persona that was both terrifying and intriguing. The general public fell in love, just as they would fall in love with Dr. Lecter not long thereafter, with this unpredictable female psychopath, and it could be opined this particular character – Annie Wilkes – was the mother of what I’ll call the crazy bitch genre.

And the crazy bitch genre, a subset of the psychos genre we’re studying this term, contributed greatly to improving the overall public sentiment toward and respect for horror fiction in the 1980s and 90s, much as haunted places and people did in the 60s and 70s and as zombies, werewolves and vampires are doing for it now.

But let’s get back to what I hated so much about this book. Like any other work of literature, or film, or visual media, the audience (or, in my case, the reader) brings a lot of baggage with them – roughly akin to how much I pack for SHU res – when they read/watch/observe a work. Their personal experiences play a role, whether or not they’re conscious of the same. This was the case with me and Misery.

Simply put, I’m not a big fan of captivity stories; there’s a reason this blog is named “Any bird out of a cage” and the idea of being trapped like Paul Sheldon leaves me feeling downright queasy. Then, there’s the matter of the drug dependence Paul develops after Annie essentially force feeds him opiates. I know a little about opiate addiction, having myself developed and kicked a dependence on Vicodin after a particularly nasty tumble down a flight of stairs that landed me in the hospital and left me unable to walk for two months. So, I’ve been Paul Sheldon, and it ain’t fun, and reading this just took me back to a couple of places I’d rather not go.

Finally, throw in all the torture and sensory deprivation in this novel, and I just had a very unpleasant, visceral reaction that left me with little love for this book.

Silence of the Lambs

Last week I opined that Red Dragon, while a good novel, was not a great novel as asserted by many of my classmates, and there were strong, well stated reactions to my beliefs that Red Dragon was full of stereotypes, cookie cutter characters and tired plot devices. I want to clarify my position a little before I move onto the film version of the second book in the Hannibal Lector series, Silence of the Lambs. I very much enjoyed Red Dragon, and I thought it was revolutionary for its time. I just thought it failed to live up to its incredible potential.

Silence of the Lambs – both the print and film versions – did more than live up to its potential; it exceeded it. Further, the film version – much more so than the original print version of Red Dragon – arguably launched the serial killer/forensics/cold case craze that now dominates much of cinema/television and a rather large section of your local bookstore.

About now you must be thinking I’m a nutjob, or at the very least an idiot, for the preceding statement. I can’t seriously be crediting a film that came out more than a decade AFTER Red Dragon was first published with being more groundbreaking than it’s a predecessor, can I? I am. Here’s why:

The film version of Silence of the Lambs was such a critical and commercial success that it introduced the “criminal horror” genre to two different but vitally important groups: Oscar voters, as well as their ilk, and the Great Unwashed. Both groups had virtually ignored the genre up to this point. When the film came out in 1991, it swept the Academy Awards for that year and had the effect of making the American moviegoer do the unthinkable: pick up a book and read. Yes, they devoured Harris’s second novel in the Hannibal Lecter series then followed that up by revisiting Red Dragon. They clamored for a third book, then a fourth. (For the record, I loathed Hannibal Rising and refuse to apologize for saying so.) And they set out to read/watch every similarly themed book/movie they could get their grubby little hands on. The release of the film Silence of the Lambs did far more than its literary predecessor Red Dragon did to inspire and incite the criminal horror craze.

In my view, Silence of the Lambs was a hit for a host of reasons, chief among them it’s simply a superb film. The acting is marvelous. There’s no question Foster and Hopkins deserved their Oscar wins. Hopkins especially made the role of Hannibal Lecter his own, and I’ll never be able to read any of novels in the series without picturing his face (and voice and overall creepy demeanor). Speaking as someone who was roughly thirteen when this film came out, I can assure you half the girls at my middle school wanted to grow up to be Clarisse Starling as portrayed by Jodie Foster, and I think that Foster’s performance as a strong, capable female advanced the very cause of feminism.

The film’s storyline is very engrossing and the villains – both Lecter and Buffalo Bill – never fail to terrify me. Lecter is my favorite character in the Harris series and this particular story seems to be more about him than when we first meet him in Red Dragon (the book). Here is a serial killer I admire, even if I find his dietary habits reprehensible. He’s smart, articulate, educated – what Stephen Dobyns might call a “professional man” – not to mention downright likable when he’s not murdering people in bizarre ways and consuming their flesh along with “a side of fava beans and a nice Chianti.”

In conclusion, I very much enjoyed this film the first and last twenty plus times I’ve seen it. It’s one of those films I consider a classic and enjoy having the chance to revisit on occasion.

Red Dragon

I mentioned to a friend of mine last night that I had recently re-read Red Dragon and had to blog about it today, and his response was “Red Dragon? That’s a great book.” I found his reply noteworthy only because he’s not much of a reader, so when he mentions having really liked a book, I pay attention. I was thinking about his response earlier today, thinking of how I’d spin it into a blog entry on how Red Dragon was a book so great even “non-readers” sang its praises. I read some of my classmates’ blogs, all of whom seemed to also feel Red Dragon was a “great book”. Their entries listed, quite cogently, all the reasons the novel is considered so compelling by so many, as well as addressed the fact that it is an iconic work, groundbreaking for its time.

I won’t argue with Red Dragon’s icon status, but I will posit that it’s not actually a great book.

Yeah, I said it; it’s not a great book. Sure, it’s a good story, fast paced, full of vaguely interesting characters and downright creepy in parts. It’s well written and clearly well researched. However, it’s also full of stereotypes, cookie cutter characters and tired plot devices.

Let’s start with the circumstances in which we first encounter Will Graham. The man’s had a fairly serious mental breakdown and nearly died at the hands of Hannibal Lecter (or rather, Dr. Lecter’s linoleum knife) and now he’s just trying to live a nice, quiet life with his wife and stepson. I don’t buy that Jack Crawford would find it expeditious or wise to involve Graham in the manhunt for the “Tooth Fairy”, nor do I believe Graham would accept Crawford’s challenge with as little reluctance as he does. Now, I realize much of the horror canon – books and film – is precipitated on the “Don’t go in the house alone” syndrome, but I just found it incredibly hard to stomach the notion that Graham would get back in the ring, so to speak, with such haste and so little thought. So, there’s that.

Then there’s our bad guy, Mr. Dolarhyde, who frightens me about as much as Casper the Friendly Ghost. He is the Everyman of serial killers: he’s deformed, his parents abandoned him, his fellow orphans tormented him, and his grandmother abused him. Stop me if you’ve heard this tune before. Very Norman Bates, as one of my classmates pointed out in their blog entry. (That was Jen Loring, I think.) His crimes are horrific, true enough, and I’ll be forever haunted by the scene in which he kills Freddy Lounds, the tabloid reporter, but compared to other fictional and/or real accounts of serial murders, Dolarhyde’s actions seem almost tame. I did like the idea of his falling in love with Reba and wanting to “reform” for her sake compelling, though. I may have to use that one in a book of my own some day.

Finally, the book is incredibly dated, though this doesn’t detract from the fact that, for it’s time, it WAS revolutionary. The twenty-five plus intervening years haven’t been kind to some of the plot details. Think about Dolarhyde’s day job, the means through which he selects his victims. Nobody sends film away to be processed anymore. Now, it can be argued that his job was only a minor detail and thoroughly interchangeable, that he could have had any job and the book would have been largely the same.

And that’s the rub, this whole book is interchangeable. It reads like every other novel about a serial killer and the police working feverishly around the clock to stop him that I’ve ever had occasion to read. It’s a premise that’s just been done to death.

The Church of Dead Girls

Occasionally I have the opportunity read a novel so complex and multilayered that I want to thank the person who recommended it to me. Stephen Dobyns' The Church of Dead Girls is one of those books. I was hooked from page one, and at the thrilling conclusion, I was genuinely sorry the experience of reading it had come to an end.

First off, I strongly identified with many of the characters. I live in a town like Aurelius, and I have met all these people. On a personal note, I felt the strongest kinship to Franklin, the small town newspaper editor. By way of background, I was Editor in Chief of a small monthly newsmagazine for half a decade that covered stories much like the ones Franklin wrote and published in his newspaper. When he described the joy it brought him to showcase the extraordinary endeavors of rather ordinary people, it was spot on and so similar to my own experiences that it moved me tremendously.

It occurred to me after some reflection on this subject that I’m probably not alone in my reaction. There was something – or rather someone – in The Church of Dead Girls for everyone. No profession seemed to be unrepresented.

The narration in TCODG was masterfully done, and Dobyns’ choice to use the closeted high school biology teacher as the point of view character was a good one. He was just close enough to the action to react to it without being so close that he intruded on the story he was telling.

This wasn’t a terrifying tale, though any book that begins with the discovery of three dead teenage girls in an attic deserves the label “chilling.” I felt the murders were secondary to what I considered the real plot of how hysteria invades and pervades small town life, and how in desperate situations everyone is suspect and civil liberties go out the window. The mob mentality Dobyns describes in this novel – particularly the controversy that surrounds the Inquiries Into The Right discussion group – very much reminded me of one of my champion causes, the West Memphis Three, a real life situation that seems to parallel in many ways the situation in TCODG. Here’s a link if anybody wants more info: www.wm3.org

The prose itself was tight and well crafted. Dobyns did a fantastic job of marrying all of the different side stories and back stories in the novel and of bringing them all to one rich conclusion.

As far as the reveal of “whodunit” when we learn who the killer is, I have to say by the end of the novel, I was so wrapped up in the various subplots and so invested in many of the characters that I didn’t really care. In many cases, that would have been detrimental to my enjoyment of a work, but not in this one. Once we learned who the killer was and he described his motivations, however, I have to admit a chill ran down my spine.

I will read this book again. I will recommend it to my friends. I will go so far as to say that of all the readings I’ve been assigned for the horror genre readings course, this was and is my favorite.

Psycho

The story of Psycho is one I’ve long been familiar with due to Hitchcock’s excellent, groundbreaking film, but it wasn’t until recently that I was privileged enough to read the seminal Robert Bloch novel of the same name on which it was based.

This is a great book, hands down. The story itself is intriguing, the characterization near flawless, the prose itself is tight, the pace is relentless and we are left wanting for nothing at the end of the tale. In fact, the genius of this novel is in its sparsity, and in the decided minimum of gory spectacle that we now associate with the horror genre.

Consider the famous “shower scene” that spawned a thousand copy cats in literature and film alike and made me personally afraid to draw the curtain all the way. In Bloch’s book, the scene is only four paragraphs long, and short paragraphs at that. This doesn’t interfere with my enjoyment of the scene but rather it intensifies it. Here’s why: It’s not what we “see” or read here that makes this particular passage so terrifying. It’s what we don’t. It’s the fact that Bloch gives us only certain relevant facts and leaves the rest to our imagination. We don’t need more to be revolted.

Beyond the novel’s highly effective leanness, the characterization of Norman Bates is impeccable, and one of the first glimpses into the mind of a “psychopath” in the literary canon. Bloch does a masterful job both in depicting Norman and making us sympathize with him. As someone working in a closely related genre, I paid especial attention to all the ways in which Bloch provided us with just enough background that we found Norman’s horrific acts understandable, i.e. the description of the overly domineering mother and his meekness up until and right after each murder.

Unlike the legions of “serial killers” and “psychopaths” that populate much of contemporary horror fiction, Norman Bates isn’t a traditional sociopath. His emotions aren’t at all divorced from the act of killing, and he views each murder with a sense of expediency. After all, Mary does the unthinkable, she titillates Norman and she questions his behavior. He isn’t emotionally capable of dealing with either. His subsequent murder of Milton Arbogast he also views as necessary and in fact downright unavoidable.

If I have any beef with this novel, it’s that Bloch does such a terrific job with the character of Norman Bates and his dysfunctional relationship with his mother that the supporting characters and situations seem one dimensional and insipid by comparison. Mary’s relationship with Sam seems to exist only as a plot device and at the conclusion of Psycho, one is left wondering if Sam has exchanged Mary’s memory for her sister Lila’s obviously more animated attentions. Mary’s initial theft which necessitates her flight from Texas also seems like merely a means of getting her to the Bates Motel and not like the act of a particularly rational or intelligent person.

In short, I very much enjoyed this novel, and found it to be a textbook example of how to write about sympathetic psychopaths, which is a technique I attempt to employ in my own work.