The Haunted Weblog

Tuesday, July 30, 2002

Books For People – This day should be circled on the calendar of everybody who loves literacy. Today in 1935 the modern paperback was introduced. It is hard to imagine now, but before this most people did not own books. They were simply beyond the means of most people. Free public libraries did exist, but if you wanted to read something new or popular you would either have to be rich or go to a commercial lending library. For a modest fee you could rent a book, just like we now do with videos. The affordable paperback changed all that, promoting reading and book ownership among ordinary people. As demand for books rose, costs of production fell, and the modern book business was born.

The Dirty Little Secret of Bestselling Authors – Being a bestselling author is a lot of work. Between the talk shows, signings, parties, paid speaking engagements, and movie pitch meetings, when do they ever find time to write? Hey, why bother, when they can hire someone to do that little chore for them! This article in the Washington Post mentions the obvious cases, like the books that are written “with” an unknown, and the books written from beyond the grave, but the buzz in the biz is that there are a lot of your favorite “authors” who have grown too big for the mere paperwork of writing, and are hiring ghosts. I should have known we were doomed when I first started hearing books referred to as “product” and writers as “brand-names.” (Via: Arts & Letters Daily)

That’s a Catchy Tune, I Think I’ll Get Me Some of That AIDS! – In an effort to prove that all governments are run by morons, Tanzania has banned a song that they say promotes AIDS. The song is intended to protest forced marriages, which are said to expose young girls to the disease by making them marry older, more experienced men. It includes the grimly ironic lyric “Give me AIDS, give me AIDS, give me AIDS, so that I can suffer with it.” The National Arts Council, who are apparently in charge of censorship in Tanzania, has decided that people will hear the song, leave the dance floor, and try to get infected. It is good to know that no matter where you go in the world there will always be guardians of decency ready to protect us.

Inspiration for Writers of Horror Stories – Air passengers were upset when they found that the plane they had just boarded was already filled – with the stench of death!
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Sea Monsters, Part 2! Giant Squids With Human Eyeballs! – A couple of entries ago we noted the reports of giant squid washing ashore around the Pacific Rim. The report from San Diego has changed from hundreds to thousands. Twelve tons of jumbo flying squid have now washed ashore. They hit the beach, utter a strange cry, then expire. I wonder if this is in any way related to the missing ilex squid in the waters around the Falklands Islands. In some way this must be associated with the huge penguin die-off on that island. What does it all point to? A coming environmental catastrophe or something far more sinister? Has anyone else noticed that the Esoteric Order of Dagon has been particularly quiet lately? Perhaps the end of the world is indeed nigh.

Why is this Thing different from all other Things? – When I was a kid I read a lot of comic books. My favorites were the superheroes. A guy in a cape and tights fighting crime and protecting the innocent made perfect sense to me. But even then I noticed that all of the heroes were of European ancestry. Not that there was any overt racism, but the fact that only one type of people became heroes did seem odd. As time went by the creators of my favorite four color adventures tried to address the problem by introducing the occasional hero of color, but it always seemed like tokenism. The writers made ethnicity the issue, not the character, his personal struggles or problems. A man develops the ability to shoot bolts of lightning from his body. Is he “Lightning Man,” or “The Electric Kid,” or even “Sparky?” Nope, he is “Black Lightning.” Is that because the character felt the need to point out his skin color, or because the owners of DC comics felt the need to point out his skin color? As years went by more characters were introduced, some as clumsily as Black Lightning, some more smoothly. The only problem was that none of the major heroes were of different ethnicity. Sure, Marvel had a black “Captain Marvel” for a while, and DC had a black Green Lantern, until he was badly injured. But that was it. Until now. Ben Grim, The Thing of the Fantastic Four, has announced that he is Jewish. Always has been, he just never mentioned it before now. I think that this is a great idea. You disagree? Better not say that too loudly around Yancy Street, or it’ll be clobberin’ time! (Via: Holy Weblog!)

Mm. Extruded Genre Action Fiction Product – Are you ready for the next Michael Crichton product? As is now his usual practice he has sold film rights before the book hits the stands. According to Ananova it might be a cross between Jurassic Park and The Andromeda Strain. Perhaps all the dinosaurs will get colds and have to go to the ER. Whatever, we’ll all be standing in line to see it in a couple of years. Sheep, just waiting to be shorn.

Fighting Words – The special guest on this week’s Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me was Chuck Palahniuk, author of Fight Club and Choke. When asked what we’ll see next from him, he announced that he is working on genre fiction, specifically horror. Why horror? It seems Mr. Palahniuk thinks the genre has gotten “a little stale.” Oh great, another mainstream writer coming in to save genre. It usually turns out that they haven’t read what went before them and end up re-inventing the torture wheel. He sees himself as the breath of fresh air blowing the dust out of the stale old crypt. Will he be just another hot wind? We’ll see.
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I mentioned the other day that I am reading Buried Alive by Jan Bondeson, a history of premature burial. Fear of this grisly fate had reached the point in 18th century Europe that one French doctor invented a device that would stimulate the body to make certain it was dead. This invention was intended to prove that people should put their trust in modern medicine because doctors were not quacks. After all, would a quack invent a device to deliver tobacco smoke enemas to corpses?

Bright red glow-in-the-dark dead koalas! Oh my. In Australia careless drivers are killing koalas. The government has come up with a plan to increase awareness of the situation. “Koalas killed by cars are to be painted a fluorescent red and left on the side of roads for 24 hours in a ‘Stephen King-style’ shock tactic to make Australian motorists drive more carefully through the marsupials' breeding grounds.” I have a question about this. When did Stephen King spray paint dead animals? I just can’t remember.

Man challenges Satan to a game of crosswords. The stakes? His immortal soul.
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Sea Monsters – A squid here, a squid there, just so much calamari salad, right? Unless these small, insignificant pieces begin to form a pattern. Observe: Four days ago a rare giant squid, seven and a half feet long and 85 pounds, washes ashore in the state of Washington. Then, two days ago, a report from a few hundred miles south of the first incident: hundreds of giant squid are washing up on the San Diego coast. Marine biologists declare themselves baffled. Now today, a previously unknown species of giant squid, sixty feet long and with flaps of seemingly extraneous muscle that experts cannot explain, washes ashore in Tasmania. What next shall we expect from these monsters of the deep. CNN thoughtfully reminds us that giant squids have beaks that “can cut through steel cable.” They also report that “(d)ead whales have been found washed up on beaches with large sucker marks on their bodies, apparently from squid attacks.” People of the Pacific rim – watch the waters, beware of the squid.
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If there is one thing I hate in a weblog it is navel gazing. Weblogs about weblog design, weblog entries about weblog entries, weblog coding, weblog flamewars, the weblog community, weblog awards, and on and on. If we are of like mind on this point then you might want to skip the next seven paragraphs because they are about a book about weblogs written by a keeper of a famous weblog and how it has got me thinking about this weblog. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I’m talking about The Weblog Handbook by Rebecca Blood. Like a lot of books about the Web, this book is useful today and will be history tomorrow. When Rebecca Blood started her weblog less than five years ago the number of blogs could be measured in the low three digits. Today it is probably in the high six digits, and growing fast. Ms. Blood still occasionally refers to a “weblog community” as if such a singular entity exists today, but makes it clear in her text that the reality is of several linked weblog communities, which she refers to as the “weblog universe.” This thing has grown into something bigger than any one book can fully describe, but Blood does a pretty good job of blazing the trail.

The book starts in a logical place; an attempt to define a weblog. This is a little harder than it sounds. The most inclusive definition states that it is a website with dated sequential entries. This would seem to include on-line diaries, which I would say are not really weblogs, but it would exclude filters that do not date their entries like Robot Wisdom, which certainly are weblogs. While struggling to find a definition Ms. Blood makes an interesting observation. “Weblogs,” she says, “are native to the Web.” Until weblogs most online expression were e-versions of traditional paper documents. Personal web-pages are scrapbooks, resumes, essays and public letters. E-mail is, of course, mail. E-zines are magazines, etc. But the weblog is entirely new. We are present at the infancy of a new medium of expression. This book then makes Rebecca Blood the Benjamin Spock of this new world of bouncing baby blogs.

In attempting to define the weblog she gives a brief but interesting history of the form, leading to a description of what she identifies as the three types: Blogs, which are closer to diaries than what I think of as a true weblog, now dominate the field. Personally, I find these nearly linkless pages of personal expression to be pretty boring. Notebooks are more like what I do, and more like what Ms. Blood is up to. Filters are heavy with links, but very light on text. These can be useful, interesting, and a form of self expression.

This book advises novice webloggers on all aspects of the field, but the advice is a bit thin on the technical end. No real discussion of HTML, some advice on design, but nothing terribly practical, and although she points the reader towards the various tools available for building a blog, like Blogger, and provides tips on analyzing them, she doesn’t give us her analysis. This is, I suppose, in the spirit of blogging. She points the way, providing useful links that will fill in these gaps. These links are thoughtfully listed at the end of each chapter, rather than in the text itself, so a reader who wants to study a subject further can do so without too much page flipping. The bulk of the advice in this book is in the fields of style and etiquette. The etiquette sections are where Ms. Blood gets, perhaps, a little preachy. I think she can be forgiven though, as the need is certainly there. Just scanning through a few weblogs, message boards, and email lists at random demonstrate that etiquette, the handmaiden of ethics, is a topic that should be discussed often and early. While most people know enough not to steal and call people rude names, it is always a good idea to give the subject some serious thought, and this book does prompt the reader (this reader anyway) to do so.

As I wrote five days ago, all good books prompt readers to think. The style sections of this book prompted the most thinking in me. What am I doing with this weblog? What do I want to do? The articles I link to, the essays I write, should they be on anything that tickles my fancy or should I try to focus a bit? Some of the best weblogs are political. Should I go that way? Some of the worst weblogs are political. Maybe not. Some great weblogs are highly focused. Some are as diffuse as late morning fog. I think my answer is going to be somewhere in the middle. I want The Haunted Weblog to be unique, to have a clearly defined focus, but to also reflect my own unfocused, mentally disorganized personality. The world of books and the Web, filtered through my own perspective – dark yet amused, sardonic yet hopeful. Well, that sounds a bit pretentious, but I suppose it is a goal.

Ms. Blood is not simply writing about weblogs, she is writing as an advocate for the form. She clearly loves this medium, wants to encourage its growth and those who would grow it. I think she has succeeded.

Amazon Light – It seems like everyone found this before I did. I first saw it at Daypop. It is a useful page, allowing you to search the Amazon database without all the bells and whistles. The only problem with it is you can’t search by ISBN. I tend to do a lot of ISBN searches, so it’s not such a big deal for me.

Oh Those Wacky Criminals – OK, I admit it, this has nothing to do with anything, but I can’t help it. Stupid criminal stories are like crack to me. I just can’t lay off them. How can you not love a story about a car thief who locks himself into the car?

Vampire Boy– There is nothing about this story that is at all pleasant or amusing. It is a gruesome report of the trial of a Welsh teenager who murdered a nice little old lady, mutilated her corpse, and drank her blood. It seems he was trying to turn himself into an immortal vampire. The trial has revealed his obsession with the subject, including his attempts to find a vampire and be bitten. It has also focused on his contact with the on-line vampire community. Indeed, there are people in this world who say that they are real vampires, who believe that they are real vampires, and people who believe them. Furthermore, there are people who are so into the fantasy that they make themselves available as willing donors. Don’t believe me? Start your research here. Now I understand the attraction of the fantasy. It is the ultimate expression of the goth ideal, the dark clothes, the coffins, the romantic poses, the blood. Imagine how cool you will be, forever young, on top of the food chain. Try to ignore the accompanying mythology about being a mere animated corpse, a walking, soulless hunger. The Hollywood version is so much more photogenic (assuming you’ll show up on film). The question is, how far should a fantasy be taken. Obviously no sane person would support this brutality, but how far is too far? A little role-playing at the Camarilla Dance? Okay. A hobby, even one that takes up all your free time? Sure, why not? A lifestyle choice? Um, I guess so. A little Drac themed S&M between consenting adults? I suppose. How about allowing a stranger to drink your blood? Or drinking someone else’s? How about taking a few old central European myths, filtering them through Anne Rice and Universal Studios, and making it your religion? Perhaps you ought to go home, have a lemonade, and re-think your life.

The Premature Burial – Yet another unpleasant story. This time it is an innocent child who dies, so be warned. I wouldn’t bother linking to this one usually, but I just started reading a history of this very subject. Amazing how our most ancient, primal fears never seem to go away.

Okay, that is it for awful stories for today. I just can’t take it anymore.

Thunderbirds are Go? Worst idea for a movie, ever.

That about wraps it up for the French – The next time someone tells you that the French have a superior culture or highly refined taste, think about this story. It is even better than Jerry Lewis. France has just awarded its highest literary honors to Danielle Steel.
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I have found my god! There is a new name in the pantheon of deities. He is the god of drinking, smoking, whoring, and eating red meat. His devotees call him Gora Bhagwan. One hundred forty-six years ago the British Army called him Captain F. Wale, commander of Her Majesty’s First Irregular Sikh Cavalry.
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Demons by John Shirley -- From time to time an author will write a novella that is just great, and everyone tells him that he should expand it to novel length in order to sell it. There are three ways to do it. He could inflate the story, padding it unnecessarily so that it is more commercial. He could incorporate the short work into a larger piece. What Shirley did was write a sequel. What we have here is the wonderful “Demons” that was originally published by Cemetery Dance in 2000, and another story called “Undercurrent” set in the same reality, nine years later. The first is, of course, stand-alone, the second is a complete story in itself, but is dependant upon the first.

With no apparent warning the world is invaded by demons. Seven types, or clans of demons appear, some creatures from our darkest nightmares, some cruel parodies of humans, all evil. Ira is visiting his friend Melissa and her father Prof. Paymenz when it happens and he is soon drawn into an ancient secret society of scientists, spiritual leaders and philosophers who are working to save the world. In the sequel evil forces are at work, trying to again summon the demons. Shirley combines actual mythologies and history with his own mythopoetics, while demonstrating that the true evil is most often our fellow man, in the form of government torturers, heartless industrialists, unscrupulous scientists and various quislings. This is dark fantasy at its best, a compelling and imaginative story packed with intellectual and emotional power.

I just love this plant. The largest flower in the world, the Titan Arum, rarely blooms, so when it does it is an event. It is a beautiful thing to behold, if you like a gigantic flower with an embarrassingly phallic shape and the aroma of a rotting corpse. Evolution is working in all its majesty here. This lovely thing must be pollinated by carrion eating insects, so it attracts them by emitting a smell that endangers buzzards on shitwagons everywhere. Here is another picture.

Here's an article in the New York Times (free reg. req.) about trends in book shoplifting. What, you thought readers were more honest than those TV watching morons? Ha! I have one quibble with this article. It says that Bible stealing is more of a national issue than a regional one. Research at my last employer showed that Bible theft was a much bigger issue in the Midwest and South. Why steal a Bible? It is especially puzzling when you know that most people who would own a one usually own more than one (we've got five or six ourselves). Have they never read it?

Wil Wheaton’s friend Spudnuts sent him a speculation on gravestone epitaphs. Mr. Wheaton posted it. I read it and laughed. Cara Mia and I occasionally wander through a 19th century cemetery not far from our haunted home. Some of the family plots would have a big stone for the husband, with his name, dates, and maybe a few words about what a great guy he was. Next to it would be a small stone with one word: “wife.” I love that. Cara Mia was less amused. Our favorite was one that had the husband and wife side by side, and on her grave it said “His patient and virtuous comfort.” I’ve been calling her that ever since.

Hurray! The latest issue of Cemetery Dance magazine is here! Hurray, it has fiction by Gary A. Braunbeck! Hurray, it has an interview with Gahan Wilson! Damn, when an I going to find time to read it?
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Doggone Blogger made it impossible for me to post yesterday. Rather frustrating really. Being a weblog tyro and an HTML moron, I rather like the simplicity of the service, but I don’t like the headaches it has been feeding me lately. I just started reading Rebecca Blood's The Weblog Handbook. Like any good book it has provoked thought. How do I want to proceed with this little pastime? What do I want it to be? I know it needs some serious work, and it is obvious that I am learning as I go. Do I want to re-shape this, to focus it, or do I want it to be a reflection of my disordered mind? Probably both.

It is not a dark and story night as I write this. It is actually quite pleasant, but that doesn’t stop me from rejoicing in the news that the results of the 2002 Bulwer-Lytton contest have been announced. As usual there are winners in several categories, which is nice, but I did not see any tribute to the horror genre. Surely the dark arts must inspire some bad prose. This oversight has inspired me to make an effort:

The sunrise clawed at the eastern sky of New Orleans, its warm ruby fingers scratching at the heavens, mere seconds from bursting upon the city with all of its life-giving yet paradoxically destructive properties, chasing the pale Pierre to his coffin, the glow of the pre-dawn sky tinting his pale yet heart-stoppingly attractive face a light pink, a subtle yet lurid reminder of the feast he had indulged in this last night of this memorable Mardi Gras, his hands with their long, sensuous fingers bringing the lid down, and as the last light he would see until that sun set once again gently illumined the interior of his final resting place, showing the once rich and beautiful silk interior, now as faded and threadbare as Pierre’s long lost immoral soul, he once again thought “I wonder where I can find an upholsterer who works nights?”

I see that the brilliant Stephen Fry has a new novel that hit the bookstores today. It is a modern re-working of the story of the Count of Monte Cristo. The American publisher has given it the rather bland title of Revenge. I much prefer the original title, The Stars' Tennis Balls. I suppose that is because we are just stupid Americans, who don’t know what a philosopher’s stone might be and wouldn’t watch a movie about George III because we hadn’t seen George parts I or II. Sigh.
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Yahoo Makes Faustian Bargain -- Yahoo! has agreed to help China censor the internet. The morality of this is fairly simple. China is one of the most oppressive governments on earth. Censorship is a tool of oppression. Yahoo! is now a willing participant in oppression. That would be bad.

Spies Like Us -- There has been a lot of talk lately about this “Operation TIPS” thing. Some see it as potentially dangerous. Some hysterical types see it the beginnings of an East German-style informant network. To me it sounds as terrifying as a neighborhood watch. It looks like folks will be told what they should keep an eye out for, and given a number to call. A lot of people see this as Big Brother and his little brothers. I just keep thinking about Johnelle Bryant and her meeting with Mohamed Atta. What if she had just read a handy brochure that said “If someone expresses an interest in putting enough poison in an airplane to kill a city, and then gets excited about an aerial photograph of Washington, you should call a cop.” That might have been a good thing.
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In case you hadn’t heard, the sovereign territory of a NATO nation has been invaded and occupied by a foreign power. As a signatory to the NATO accords, I call on the United States to immediately invade Morocco!

Cara Mia and I went to the movies this weekend. Second time this month, probably a record for us. We saw Spiderman. It was a lot of fun. In the lobby a middle aged pseudo-intellectual loudly criticized the picture in a successful effort to impress his giggling young date. The plot, he announced, was “malarkey.” What, I wonder, did he expect when he bought his ticket? My Dinner With Spidey? Ah, the poseur, my favorite fellow filmgoer.
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This last weekend I read The Death Artist, a collection of short stories by Dennis Etchison. Etchison is a master of psychological horror. No vampires or werewolves here. These are real horrors. These could happen to you. No light escapism, these stories show us how fragile our lives are. They can be destroyed by the death of a loved one, by betrayal, or by random chance. They can be destroyed by the cruelty of our fellow beings, by madness, or by indifference. Other writers have tried with much less success to wring terror out of the ordinary and everyday. Etchison succeeds with powerful stories like “The Wind From the South,” “On Call,” and “When They Gave Us Memory.” There is more here than just terror. There is commentary on the concept of entertainment and the voyeurism and cruelty that run along with it. There is hate, revenge, and forgiveness. There is love, death, memory, and identity

Just a word on the cover art. It is a nice scary piece by J.K. Potter, but it in no way reflects the contents of the book. I suppose it is meant to represent the “death artist” who collects these lives and stories. Perhaps that is Potter’s vision of the writer. But the imagery is just a little too over the top for the sophisticated horror within.

This has been a weird week for me. The town where I work has been experiencing a number of power failures, and no on can explain why or what the problem is. No power means no computers, no light, and no customers, so we are closed, and I can’t do most of my job. I did get to meet with my favorite publisher’s rep today, Michael Walsh. Michael’s day job is selling books for university presses, but his real life is as a small publisher of quality science fiction. His press, Old Earth Books, is probably best known for reprints of the classic E.E. “Doc” Smith books, but just won a Locus Award (and a lot of good reviews) for Michael Swanwick’s Being Gardner Dozois. Congratulations to Old Earth!

It’s alive! Scientists have created a virus from scratch. Most commentary has focused on the possibilities this presents for bio-terror, ignoring the fact that the old-fashioned means of growing germs is still the most likely threat. What is really amazing about this is the fact that man has created life where no life existed before. We need to start thinking about the implications of this. Fortunately, someone has written a book on the subject. Here is a quote from it: "After days and nights of incredible labour and fatigue, I succeeded in discovering the cause of generation and life; nay, more, I became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter."
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Last week I read In the Dark by Richard Laymon. Frankly, I just don’t know what to say about this book. Sure, it is entertaining, a real page turner. It is a testament to the late Richard Laymon’s considerable skills. It has action, it has suspense; the man knew how to generate horror. What it doesn’t have is a protagonist whose motivation I can begin to understand. Jane is a librarian who gets an envelope with $50 and an invitation to play. If she wants more she has to follow the clues. It is signed by Master of Games, MOG for short. At each new clue she gets twice the money of the last, and each new challenge is more difficult than the last. At first it seems exciting and fun. I can see why she might go along with it. But it gets weirder and kinkier and more dangerous. I suppose the idea is that the shift is gradual and she just goes along, but the moment her privacy is violated, her safety is compromised, or her dignity as a human being is diminished, I can’t see why she doesn’t try to quit the game. She willingly goes on past the point of sanity. She rationalizes it, saying it is the money, even though she has a good job. She seems to think that the challenges are making her a better, stronger person. Events in the story seem to bear that out, but I would have thought a weekend with Outward Bound and gym membership would have done that just as well. The challenges become very dangerous and even sexually perverse. The novel moves from somewhat scary to extreme horror with the concluding chapters giving us some of the most horrific and repulsive grotesqueries imaginable. I had no problem with any of that. In fact I liked it, it was well done and once she puts herself into these circumstances I understand the protagonist’s motivations completely. The question is, why is she there? Why does she allow herself to be manipulated like this? What makes her choose to be this man’s plaything? Is there some psychological trauma in her life? Other than an unfortunate choice in lovers some time ago, it does not appear to be so. Is Laymon saying that all women, or all people, could go this far? He is known for his low opinion of humanity, but I can’t say as I buy it. Again, even in the face of this, and the fact that the ending seemed a little artificial to me, it is a testament to Laymon’s skill that I can’t say I didn’t enjoy the book. Strange.

Today is the 103rd anniversary of the birth of E.B. White. I have always loved Charlotte's Web, but I cannot live without my copy of The Elements of Style. There is a nice thumbnail biography here. It is where I picked up this cool quote by White, writing about New York City in 1949: "A single flight of planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges, turn the underground passages into lethal chambers, cremate millions... Of all targets New York has a certain clear priority. In the mind of whatever perverted dreamer might loose the lightning, New York must hold a steady, irresistible charm." The man did know what he was talking about. My favorite White quote came from Wilbur, speaking of Charlotte: "It isn't often someone comes along who is both a true friend and a good writer.” True enough.
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Ordinary Horror by David Searcy -- I read this book last month. It came with a lot of good buzz. It won an International Horror Guild Award for Best First Novel. The reviews suggested that it found horror in the routine things of our lives. Perhaps it would be like Ramsey Campbell, who shows us real horror in our lives -- age, loss, other people. Perhaps he would be like Dennis Etchinson, who can show us lives ruined by the murder of a casual acquaintance, the madness of a loved one, or the fragility of our emotional underpinnings. I note that the author has another book coming out this fall, Last Things, that is advertised as being a similar combination of the horrific and the mundane. Is Mr. Searcy a lucky horror writer who is getting away with being called “literary?”

Nope, Mr. Searcy’s book is, in fact, “literary.” It has all the sins of contemporary literary fiction, poor pacing, pointless focus on minutia, long meandering passages that do not move the story but are kept in for their beauty, with none of the honesty and real terror of the authors I mentioned above.

Frank Delabano is a seventy year old widower who buys an exotic plant that is purported to be a type of gopher-bane. After that some odd things happen. His neighbor’s dog vanishes, he notices that pets are missing throughout the neighborhood, he meets his neighbors for the first time in years, and he begins to experience a sense of languor. A sense of dread and foreboding seems to permeate almost every passage in the book.

The trick to this book is that it is a melding of 19th century “gothic” with contemporary themes. Searcy has obviously read Edgar Poe's advice that an author must strive for unity of effect. Every action, every description must all aim towards establishing a feeling of dread. He loads his descriptions with terms that are redolent of death and decay. Dry yellow grass. Hollow, whistling wind. It works for Poe, but only in the short form. It failed Poe when he tried a longer work, as with the flawed Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. Searcy has a short story's worth of ideas here, blown up to novel length so as to carry more prose. As in 19th century fiction there are long meandering paragraphs, some more than three pages long, that follow along with what is probably the protagonist's decaying mind. Is it just old age and grief for the loss of his wife, or something more sinister? At the end I can’t say that I care. The occasionally trance-like style does carry you into the decaying mind of a decaying man in a decaying suburb, but for all that I am left with the feeling that I have visited a tedious man with a tedious mind told in a tedious manner.

You should probably know that most reviewers seem to love the book. Here's a dissenting opinion. Here is a review from Salon.com that combines a review for this book with one for Stephen King's Dreamcatcher, which I quite liked.

Get ready to re-write the textbooks -- The oldest human ancestor has been found, and almost everything they taught me in high school about the descent of man is wrong.
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Before I started reading spooky stories and watching out for news that confirmed my spooky world view, I was a science fiction fan. It is the first genre I fell in love with, and no one ever forgets their first. The greatest living Grand Master of SF is the prophetic Sir Arthur C. Clarke. In one of his earliest stories he predicted that the first space vehicles would be multi-stage to orbit rockets (which seems pretty obvious now, but seemed pretty odd then). He wrote about virtual reality when computers still had vacuum tubes, and artificial intelligence when computers still used punch cards. To date his greatest gift to mankind is the communications satellite, which he invented in an essay written before the technology existed to launch them. In 1979 Sir Arthur made the case for a space elevator in The Fountains of Paradise. A strand is reeled out of a satellite, all the way down, and anchored to the Earth’s surface. That strand is reinforced. Pretty soon you have a big cable running to space, the ultimate lift, a secular Jacob’s Ladder. The more you think about it, the more sense it makes. Flying to space is expensive, and always will be. You must achieve escape velocity, so you must burn a lot of fuel, and the ride will always be uncomfortable. By comparison the space elevator would be cheap and one heck of a ride. This article occasionally suggests a bit of humorous skepticism, but if our species is to survive we must become space faring, and this is the next logical step.

Back to spooky stories now. Here is a weird one about a “monster man” in India. They call him (it?) Mooh Nochva, and he has long claws with which he tears flesh from his victims.

Here is one I first heard about at the Daily Rotten. A fiend has been mutilating corpses in a Florentine mortuary. Bad as that is, the mutilations are identical to those done by the "Monster of Florence," a serial killer who stopped work almost 20 years ago. Is he back? Did he ever go away? Or is there some other, equally sinister explanation?

Still more evidence, should it be needed, that beer is good. Beer is food. Now we know that beer prevents strokes.

Word of the Day -- I am reading Demons by John Shirley and came across the word “contumacious.” I like it, and have used it several times when speaking to my cat. It didn’t help, but I felt better.
Book 9:38 AM [+]
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In our last installment we mourned the passing of Teddy Ballgame. Following up on that, the Boston Globe was kind enough to re-print Updike’s great essay, “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu.” We then go from the sublime to the ridiculous and return to our usual spooky point of view by observing Ted’s sleaze ball son John Henry Williams, who has had his father flash frozen. Not content with trading off his father’s legacy and selling off his father’s memorabilia, this 33 year old juvenile delinquent will now auction off his parts and pieces, sending splinters of the splendid DNA to the highest bidder.

I told you I love reading the news after the Fourth. Here’s the story of the teenager who learned that if you jam five lit bottle rockets into a PVC pipe, you should probably not hold onto it.

I concede that this probably will never work, but I just love the idea. The future just isn’t the future without fire-fighting blimps.

More reasons why beer is good. Beer is food. Beer builds strong bones.

Here is a silly little news item from Ananova. Some folks in Germany saw a guy wearing a mask, so they called the cops. He told the cops that he had been hired by a nursery to come in and frighten the children, who were having their first sleepover. Two thoughts occur. First, I wonder if after he explained to the police that he was not a real ghost, but was just trying to frighten children, did he then look at the people who had turned him in and say “And I would have made it too, if it wasn’t for those meddling kids!” Second, I note that we now know that German nurseries hire people to come in and frighten the children. Toughens them up, I suppose.

Here is a piece from the New York Times (free reg. req.) about how American farm subsidies are killing Africans. Not long ago I pointed out how bad African leadership and discredited communist strategies cause famine. It is only fair to point out that bad American leadership and discredited American communist strategies cause famine. George Bush, Maoist? Either way, Africans starve.

I recently read Wide as the Waters by Benson Bobrick. If you are at all interested in history, religion, language, or literature then I recommend it. If you are not interested in any of those subjects then I recommend you go eat a plate of curly fries and watch a soap opera. The sub-title of this work is “The Story of the English Bible and the Revolution it Inspired.” To trace the history of the English Bible is to follow the history of the anti-Catholic feelings and the Protestant Reformation in Britain. The great debate was over the question of whether the Bible should be accessible to the masses. The new thinking said that people should read the Word of God and learn for themselves what the truth was. All religious truth should be based on Scripture and conscience. This ran dangerously counter to the established thought that said that tradition that had arisen after the Bible was written was of equal importance, and without the learned priests to interpret the difficult text the people would fall into error. Furthermore, it undermined the authority of the Pope, who had been officially infallible since the 11th century when Gregory VII declared “The pope can be judged by no one; the Roman church has never erred and never will err till the end of time.” The English had a lot of reasons to doubt this notion. Popes had become increasingly materialistic, selling indulgences and demanding cash from their dioceses. For quite a while there had been two rival popes, and money that went to the Holy See really went to the treasury of the French king, England’s bitter enemy. Furthermore, relying on priestly authority was becoming absurd, as many priests were shockingly ignorant of the text. England was ready for Reformation, and the Bible was at the center of it.

It is hard to believe today, when all Christian sects use the Bible as the basis of their various dogmas, that at one time the Catholic church made Bible reading a capital offence. When Bloody Mary took the throne she began a Catholic reign of terror, burning heretics and Bibles in great bonfires across the nation. The terror of her time was the final straw, and when she was gone Catholicism went with her. To be Catholic was to be anti-English, and the Pope did not help his case when he announced a fatwa against Elizabeth. The people embraced their Bibles and chose Protestantism or the more radical Puritanism, but never looked back.

While tracing the history of the Bible within the English Reformation Bobrick also traces the development of that Bible, from the first major translation of John Wycliffe to the “King James Version.” He shows how each new translation respected the work of those that had gone before, keeping particularly good, accurate, illustrative phrases, while correcting errors and adding gems of their own. He then demonstrates how the book enriched English language and literature, while the ideas of free thought and individual will that were fostered at this time changed our very concepts of governance for all time. An understanding of the Bible is central to an understanding of Western Civilization. This is a good history of how that happened.

This was a strange weekend for me. Instead of taking the few days off to relax or get some work done, I drove for a couple of hours (I hate driving) to a quilt store in New Hampshire. My girlfriend shopped (and spent a lot of money) while I sat outside (at least the weather was nice) and read a good collection by Dennis Etchison called The Death Artist (more on that in another entry). Later in the weekend we went to the movies with our old friend Soozie. We saw the new Star Wars and had a lovely time. Pretty good movie, lots of thrilling action scenes (that, by sheer chance, lent themselves beautifully to becoming computer games), great fun. I thought the scene with Anakin’s mother and the immediate aftermath was well done, and it is interesting to watch the beginning of his fall. I did more driving this weekend than I have for four years. I need a weekend to rest from the weekend.

Book 1:55 PM [+]
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Tonight The Haunted Weblog is in mourning for The Kid. Here is a well written and balanced obit of a great hitter and a great American. I never got to see him in his prime, but I was in Fenway for Ted Williams Day in 1991 when he made his peace with the fans. That was a privilege.
Book 10:28 PM [+]
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Happy Fourth of July everybody! I’ve got a bunch of stuff today, so strap in.

First up is this juicy story about the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. If you are at all interested in the history of the Second World War, you may want to look at this. If, like me, you have always despised Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson, you will definitely want to look at this.

Now I know that Britney Spears makes some people sick, but food poisoning is a bit much.

A group of distinguished independent Arab scholars have put together an in-depth report for the United Nations Development Program explaining why the Arab world is lagging behind when, with all of its wealth, it should be moving ahead. Surprisingly the answer is not a secret international anti-Islamic cabal run by the Americans. It is, briefly, insufficient individual freedom, insufficient gender equality, and insufficient education. The rest of the world, led by those nasty old cabalistic Americans, of course, can help (it is obviously in the world’s best interests to do so), but it will require strong and enlightened Arab leadership.

Do you want to get away with murder? Well of course you do! Then just buy a car! As a side-benefit you’ll be wasting the world’s natural resources, increasing the West’s dependence on fossil fuels, ruining the environment, and spending a ton of money. In Cambridge, Massachusetts a graduate student who had chosen not to do any of these things was riding her bicycle along the marked bicycle lane when the driver of an SUV opened his door into the lane without looking. The bicyclist slammed into the door, bounced into the road, and right under the wheels of a city bus. Did the SUV killer get charged with second degree murder? Manslaughter? Vehicular homicide? Nope. He’s been charged with opening his door in traffic. He’ll probably have to pay a fine. Hell, his name is not being released because murdering a bicyclist is not even considered to be a crime! Damn him and damn the Commonwealth of Massachusetts!

Every year I look forward to the Fourth of July. The concerts, the hot dogs, the feeling of patriotism, the self-mutilation and Darwin Award nominees. Here is the first I’ve seen so far. My favorite sentence from this story: “When the blast occurred, the most seriously injured man had been holding the device with his left hand while attempting to crimp its end by pounding on it with a hammer."

Neil Gaiman has a new children’s(!) book out.

Why, in what should be a land of plenty, do people starve? Is it evil capitalist gnomes? Is it old world imperialists? Could it be the people’s own leaders, spouting Maoist philosophy while enriching themselves and their cronies? The next big famine in Africa will be in Zimbabwe, and it will have been manufactured by their own president.

The fifth Harry Potter book is out in China! Sort of.

Some police officers in Pennsylvania are SHITHEADS! Come and get me ya fucking fascists!

As you all know, TANJ. But this story comes pretty close to being justice, plain and simple. If you don’t find yourself grinning a little at the first sentence to this story, then either you ain’t human, you’re a saint, or you are a Roman Catholic clergyman.

Speaking of that, did you see South Park last night? They looked inside the Vatican and found it was a weird, freaky place, out of touch with the real world. It was, of course, an exaggeration. Nothing that bizarre really happens in Vatican City, right?
Book 8:56 PM [+]
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Yet Another Update -- Dracula Land lives! I knew we should have staked this bastard. Help us Van Helsing, you're our only hope!

Here is a nice little story about the growing popularity of bananas in the U.K. I can't help thinking that if this had been published in USA Today it would have been called "We're Eating More Bananas!" and been accompanied by an amusing bar chart.

Forthcoming Book To Watch Out For -- You heard it here first. Extreme Encounters by Greg Emmanuel will be hitting the bookstores in a couple of months. I have no idea if the book is any good, but I just love the sub-title: "How It Feels to Be Drowned in Quicksand, Shredded by Piranhas, Swept Up in a Tornado, and Dozens of Other Unpleasant Experiences." It reminds me of Edgar A. Poe's facetious advice to aspiring writers "Should you ever be drowned or hung, be sure and make a note of your sensations."
Book 10:29 PM [+]
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