Re: the "level of threat" posed by HPL, CAS
Posted by:
Sawfish (IP Logged)
Date: 8 September, 2020 03:10PM
OK, done, Dale.
I enjoyed your paper. This sort of mental exercise is something I've always enjoyed, and since retirement it's of much more value to me than at any previous time, if simply because I need something enjoyable to do.
Now there's a lot in the paper I'd take exception to, and in some cases strongly, but expansion and further discussion would be best done as either separate threads or private correspondence, either of which would be fine by me.
But I'd like to focus on one or two points you've made in the paper.
You make the point that Lovecraft is "comfortable" to read and to re-visit. I agree with this. You also mention the creation of anxiety in the reader by certain other author that are more effective in doing this. I recognize this as a valid statement as it relates to my own enjoyment of literature.
And in thinking about these aspects, it caused me to really--and I mean *really*--think about how I read escapist fiction. And to me, CAS, HPL, Le Fanu, James, Poe, etc., are most certainly escapist fiction, the way that I consume their works. They are, at their best (not all of the named authors will share this in the distinction I'm about to make), like Raymond Chandler, and a few other "period authors" for me.
I read certain authors repeatedly because it works for me much the way a vacation works for many other people.
Now, I'm far too cheap to take real vacations, the last one that could be considered a traditional vacation was in 2006, and in truth, I, myself, get more enjoyment out of spending a couple of days in 1940's LA, or in Hyperborea, than forking out a lot of money to be physically uncomfortable for much of the time I'm away.
What this means in my attachment to these kinds of books is that I'm NOT personally invested in them enough to actually feel anxiety, lasting or otherwise, or even anything approaching the simulation of fear, any more than standing in line to get on the Santa Cruz boardwalk roller-coaster.
What I'm looking for in terms of cheap thrills is to be momentarily and convincingly "creeped out". Cheap thrills, indeed... ;^)
So the closest to any lasting frightening impression that I've felt in CAS is more like the queasiness that I feel, when reconsidering the manner of the execution of Calaspa in The Chain of Aforgomon---"Wow. To be cooked-off in what amounts to a giant, robust lightbulb filament...YEOW!".
For HPL, it is the dénouement of The Statement of Randolph Carter...
"YOU FOOL, WARREN IS DEAD!â€
Contrast this with my personal involvement in reading McCarthy's The Road. This book, I think, has its most profound effect on a parent, and this is because the POV is a parent, with all of the instinctual parental drives to optimize one's child chance for survival and to ensure their future success, but it's in a world completely devoid of any hope for the future. It becomes apparent to the POV that he'll die, leaving his child, aged about 8 or so, alone in this desolate and very threatening world.
The father's sole valued legacy to his son, after all this, is a revolver with one bullet left, and the knowledge of how and when to use it to end one's life, should reality become so horrible (and we are given every reason to think that it will) that death is a welcomed option.
This was impossible for me to detach from, either as I read it, or even now.
And a further contrast on reader involvement. I'm lumbering thru Caesar's Commentaries and should be done soon, and it's no vacation. But it is wryly amusing in that you realize that not only did Julius Caesar give himself all the best lines, but the volume appears to have been hagiographically (if there is such a word...) revisited by subsequent editors. But you also get to see that, as those Frenchmen like say to say, "the more things change, the more they remain the same"---you see where one of Caesar'a rivals hopes to gain voter approval by--get this--forgiving all debt, public and private.
Which is what we have occasionally heard from current politicians, so there's apparently nothing new under the sun.
--Sawfish
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"The food at the new restaurant is awful, but at least the portions are large."
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