Picador Modern Gothic
Nov. 25th, 2009 05:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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darkling_talesI've just finished the Picador Book of the New Gothic, edited by Patrick McGrath and Bradford Morrow. Published in 1991, it's not very new, but I suspect it still provides a decent rough idea of the state of gothic fiction on both sides of the pond. And you can never get enough gothic fiction, right? Well, not quite.
I believe any fan of the genre should own a copy of Chris Baldick's Oxford Book of Gothic Tales, and most of my favourite stories from that book happen to reside in the 'Twentieth Century' section. And as said section contains a fairly interesting story by McGrath himself, 'Blood Disease' (from 1988) I expected a good read from the Picador book. But I found roughly half of the book almost unreadable. Many of the stories embody what I consider to be the very worst traits of modern capital-L literature: they concentrate on atmosphere over plot to a wearying extent, and that atmosphere is inevitably one of such unrelieved blankness and ennui that it barely qualifies as atmosphere at all. At times it seems like the most complicated, confusing phrasing possible is deployed to make the reader feel stupid. I honestly had a hard job to even finish Jamaica Kincaid's Ovando (about a talking corpse that says, well, you work it out, 'cause I couldn't) or Paul West's 'Banquo and the Black Banana: The Fierceness of the Delight of the Horror' (yes, the title really does say it all.) Moreover, since this is gothic literature, a lot of these authors have given themselves carte blanche to cram their stories with as much filth, offal, blood, guts, menstrual fluid, mucus, genitalia, violent death, disease and swearing as they can, though it's all aaaaart of course...The first half of the book seems to have been written by a bunch of bored, precious academics from American universities who've been waiting forever to release their hole-and-corner fantasies onto an unsuspecting world, while having no real experience or passion to draw from in their writing. The effect is sometimes comic - I defy anyone to read Robert Coover's dirty Snow White remix 'The Dead Queen' without laughing - but mainly just depressing.
Things do start to pick up in the second half of the book though. I'm not an unqualified fan of Angela Carter and find her fairy-tale preoccupation is rather grating, but I have to admit she knows her way around a gothic story. She wrote one of the best tales in the Oxford... collection, 'The Lady of the House of Love', and here again she scoops the prize for best tale: 'The Merchant of Shadows' is a terrific tale of a keen film student's meeting with the ageing widow of a 50s Hollywood director, with a splendid nocturnal poolside setting and tonnes of real atmosphere. Peter Straub's Vietnam horror 'The Kingdom of Heaven' is full of the sweat, blood and terror of the jungle, and Emma Tenant's 'Rigor Beach' develops a barking mad, original idea into a touching if deranged romance. After that, it's a clear run of fairly decent material to the end of the book. And I should say that even in the first half, a couple of tales stand out: Janice Galloway's 'Blood' is a tense tale of a young girl's menstrual trauma, and Scott Bradfield's 'Didn't She Know' is a shimmering story about a scheming gold digger whose past is catching up with her, throbbing with an undercurrent of menace despite its sun-drenched Florida setting (although it doesn't strike me as particularly Gothic, like several tales in this book.)
The two editors' contributions are disappointing (I had expected better of McGrath in particular), and I was very annoyed by their decision to include extracts from novels as 'stories' - Martin Amis, Anne Rice and Ruth Rendell all get this treatment, and I felt a sharp pang of disappointment when I realized I wasn't going to get to read a new Rendell short story. It's especially stupid as she has written loads of great short stories, many of which are far more 'gothic' than the extract featured here (a scene from King Solomon's Carpet.) Even if they couldn't access better material due to copyright restrictions, there are lots of talented authors out there whose short stories could've appeared in the book.
On the plus side, the book benefits from an Introduction which is surprisingly easy to read, given the pretentiousness of some of the stories. The editors divide the progress of Gothic fiction since its inception into three main stages: the early days where props such as ivy-clad castles, torture chambers and other 'cthonic, clasutrophobic spaces' were an essential part of any gothic story, the 'glorious efflorescence' of the 19th century following Poe's seminal fusion of external Gothic trappings with the inner decadence and chaos of the diseased mind, and the modern era, where most authors eschew the crumbling castles and fainting maidens altogether to concentrate solely on human disintegration. Personally, I'm a little wary of the massive importance Morrow attaches to Poe, and I do sometimes miss the trappings of 18th-century Gothic fiction, but that's progress I suppose. And as the likes of Angela Carter and Isabel Allende show us, there is still plenty of potential in the modern world. It's a shame this collection hasn't done a better job of showcasing that! But then, perhaps a new edition would help, updated with new authors from the past decade or so? Meanwhile, if any of you have any modern gothic recommendations, do hit me with them!
I believe any fan of the genre should own a copy of Chris Baldick's Oxford Book of Gothic Tales, and most of my favourite stories from that book happen to reside in the 'Twentieth Century' section. And as said section contains a fairly interesting story by McGrath himself, 'Blood Disease' (from 1988) I expected a good read from the Picador book. But I found roughly half of the book almost unreadable. Many of the stories embody what I consider to be the very worst traits of modern capital-L literature: they concentrate on atmosphere over plot to a wearying extent, and that atmosphere is inevitably one of such unrelieved blankness and ennui that it barely qualifies as atmosphere at all. At times it seems like the most complicated, confusing phrasing possible is deployed to make the reader feel stupid. I honestly had a hard job to even finish Jamaica Kincaid's Ovando (about a talking corpse that says, well, you work it out, 'cause I couldn't) or Paul West's 'Banquo and the Black Banana: The Fierceness of the Delight of the Horror' (yes, the title really does say it all.) Moreover, since this is gothic literature, a lot of these authors have given themselves carte blanche to cram their stories with as much filth, offal, blood, guts, menstrual fluid, mucus, genitalia, violent death, disease and swearing as they can, though it's all aaaaart of course...The first half of the book seems to have been written by a bunch of bored, precious academics from American universities who've been waiting forever to release their hole-and-corner fantasies onto an unsuspecting world, while having no real experience or passion to draw from in their writing. The effect is sometimes comic - I defy anyone to read Robert Coover's dirty Snow White remix 'The Dead Queen' without laughing - but mainly just depressing.
Things do start to pick up in the second half of the book though. I'm not an unqualified fan of Angela Carter and find her fairy-tale preoccupation is rather grating, but I have to admit she knows her way around a gothic story. She wrote one of the best tales in the Oxford... collection, 'The Lady of the House of Love', and here again she scoops the prize for best tale: 'The Merchant of Shadows' is a terrific tale of a keen film student's meeting with the ageing widow of a 50s Hollywood director, with a splendid nocturnal poolside setting and tonnes of real atmosphere. Peter Straub's Vietnam horror 'The Kingdom of Heaven' is full of the sweat, blood and terror of the jungle, and Emma Tenant's 'Rigor Beach' develops a barking mad, original idea into a touching if deranged romance. After that, it's a clear run of fairly decent material to the end of the book. And I should say that even in the first half, a couple of tales stand out: Janice Galloway's 'Blood' is a tense tale of a young girl's menstrual trauma, and Scott Bradfield's 'Didn't She Know' is a shimmering story about a scheming gold digger whose past is catching up with her, throbbing with an undercurrent of menace despite its sun-drenched Florida setting (although it doesn't strike me as particularly Gothic, like several tales in this book.)
The two editors' contributions are disappointing (I had expected better of McGrath in particular), and I was very annoyed by their decision to include extracts from novels as 'stories' - Martin Amis, Anne Rice and Ruth Rendell all get this treatment, and I felt a sharp pang of disappointment when I realized I wasn't going to get to read a new Rendell short story. It's especially stupid as she has written loads of great short stories, many of which are far more 'gothic' than the extract featured here (a scene from King Solomon's Carpet.) Even if they couldn't access better material due to copyright restrictions, there are lots of talented authors out there whose short stories could've appeared in the book.
On the plus side, the book benefits from an Introduction which is surprisingly easy to read, given the pretentiousness of some of the stories. The editors divide the progress of Gothic fiction since its inception into three main stages: the early days where props such as ivy-clad castles, torture chambers and other 'cthonic, clasutrophobic spaces' were an essential part of any gothic story, the 'glorious efflorescence' of the 19th century following Poe's seminal fusion of external Gothic trappings with the inner decadence and chaos of the diseased mind, and the modern era, where most authors eschew the crumbling castles and fainting maidens altogether to concentrate solely on human disintegration. Personally, I'm a little wary of the massive importance Morrow attaches to Poe, and I do sometimes miss the trappings of 18th-century Gothic fiction, but that's progress I suppose. And as the likes of Angela Carter and Isabel Allende show us, there is still plenty of potential in the modern world. It's a shame this collection hasn't done a better job of showcasing that! But then, perhaps a new edition would help, updated with new authors from the past decade or so? Meanwhile, if any of you have any modern gothic recommendations, do hit me with them!
