February review for the Eclectic Reader's Book Challenge 2014: American Supernatural Tales edited by S.T. Joshi, Penguin Horror Series 2013. [Anthology category]
This month was anthology month, and what better choice than the collection of horror stories that I got from my secret santa? It felt quite perfect, actually. Guillermo del Toro is curating a horror series that I have been obsessed with from afar since my boyfriend told me about it late last year. I am a sucker for good designs (half my beer choices are based on the name and the label, I'll be honest), and I've always sort of had a thing about covers. So when my secret santa bought me the anthology, it seemed a perfect confluence of events, begging to be taken advantage of. And I did, because who am I to say no to The Fates?
It's been a while since I've read an anthology cover to cover. For school, it was generally a few select stories, although the overachiever in me always tried to read as much as I could to get a sense of the whole collection. As such, I wasn't quite sure what to pay attention to in my reading. Obviously the stories all have a common supernatural thread, as well as being authors from the States--those are the two qualifications for the anthology set forward in the title--but I wasn't quite sure what to do with them. In the end, I simply relished all the different interpretations of the word "supernatural," as well as all the different writing styles, letting them wash over me one after the other. Joshi organized the book chronologically, in addition making a note when authors played off of or influenced each other. As a result, I was treated to a sort of whirlwind tour of supernatural writing through the ages, and I really quite enjoyed it. I enjoyed finally reading some stories that have been on my list for a long time ("The Fall of the House of Usher" by Nathaniel Hawthorne), being exposed to the beginning of a mythos that I've become familiar with through countless televised cultural appropriations ("The Call of Cthulu" by H.P. Lovecraft), and falling in love with new weirdness ("The Late Shift" by Dennis Etchison).
In my last Eclectic Reader entry, I talked about what the genre of horror means to me, what my immersion in this subject has taught me. I talked about it as a way to answer questions that do not or cannot have concrete answers, a way for humans to rationalize the unrationalizable, in a way similar to religion. Guillermo del Toro, ever the artist and mastermind, brilliantly hits upon what I was trying to evoke in his series introduction, talking about the beneficial qualities of horror, of being scared, "for to learn what we fear is to learn who we are." Gah, this man has consistently found a way to make my heart tighten in that singular realization that someone else feels exactly the way that you do.
In another instance of the universe and my reading list aligning, I just started watching HBO's True Detective, which happens to feature the story "The Yellow Sign," part of The Yellow King by Robert W. Chambers, which happens to be collected in this volume. It was, in fact, one of my favorite stories, largely due to the intricacies of the characters and the ambiguity of the horror described and the conclusion, things that I'm looking forward to seeing portrayed on screen.
I would be hard-pressed if asked to try to choose my favorite story within the multitudes, as many of them touched me in ways that only they could. I guess I'll list some of them with a little bit of reasoning:
- "The Girl With the Hungry Eyes" by Fritz Leiber (1949): I am a sucker for vamp reimaginings, and this one is one of the most eloquent and high-flown that I have ever experienced that still had the added bonus of not making me want to punch whoever came up with it in the face. The idea of a sort of consumerist vampirism with photography as the lure is so incredibly innovative that I can't help but be drawn in as the protagonist was.
- "The Hollow Man" by Norman Partridge (1991): I love me a good wendigo myth. Ever since episode 2 of Supernatural, I've been fascinated by this creature that I can never quite place in a monster category. I really enjoyed the perspective shift in the tale, being told by the monster himself; it's a rare horror story that focuses on the one who causes the horror. I used to write dorky stories like this when I was a kid, but never with as much pathos as Partridge pulls off.
- "In the Water Works (Birmingham, Alabama 1888)" by Caitlin R. Kiernan: I really enjoyed this story and its position at the end of the anthology because I feel like it lends itself to the idea that I and del Toro have examined, the idea that some things cannot be explained, try as we might, and even if that is the case, we should not forget about them. We should remember, and let that fear inform our lives, though we should not let it overtake our lives.
I hope you have enjoyed my ramblings on American Supernatural Tales. It's been a fun time. I haven't read an anthology in a while, as I mentioned before, and I think I wanted to keep my post as open-ended as I could in order to address everything I wanted to. Stay tuned!
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