I just now finished reading "Disappearance At Devil's Rock" by Paul Tremblay. It's a terrifying story of a teenager who vanishes during a nighttime visit to a secret hangout in a wilderness park near his home. He and his 16 year old buddies meet in the park at night, to drink beer at the giant rock named in the title. On the night in question, after getting slightly drunk the boy runs off into the woods suddenly and without warning. His friends chase and call after him, but ultimately have to return home in the middle of the night - without him - to tell their parents (and the boy's mother) what has happened.
From there a tale unfolds and - like all of Tremblay's tales - it is flat-out scary. I have talked about Tremblay (or "The Trembler" as I have come to think of him) a lot lately, and for good reason. It is extremely rare to find a writer of this quality, and after reading all three of his horror novels, which take place in real life settings, I am ready to say that he is the best horror writer since The Master, Stephen King. Now, Tremblay is nothing like King in style, but again, that's another reason he is so great, because he is a unique voice with a syntax so smooth it's like glass (which I think I already said several blogs ago). The real mark of my high opinion of Tremblay is the speed with which I completed his trilogy of horror novels. I think I obtained "Cabin At The End Of The World" in late September, maybe around the 29th. That was my first Tremblay, and it was his latest book, recommended by Stephen King which is why I checked it our from The Libe.
But something happened which never happens. I had to find other books by this guy immediately. I mean, of course there have been several other writers I've felt compelled to continue reading, even right away, but not with the urgency I felt to obtain the next book by Tremblay. He has a very special and unique "writer's voice", mixing eloquence with everyday narrative and idiosyncratic observations that come off the top of his head. He gets inside the characters' heads and, by writing mostly in the present tense in all three books, he places you somewhere in the netherworld between their thoughts and their actions in up-to-the-moment real life. In his books, you are right there with everything that is being thought and felt by each character, and you are there with every one of their actions. Tremblay is my new favorite; unfortunately he's only written three horror novels and I powered through them all in seven weeks. I will highly anticipate his next book for sure.
The thing with the best horror writers is that their stories are not just a lot of slam-bang violence, gore and scares. If they were, I wouldn't give them a second glance. And there are a lot of horror writers who merely concentrate on the effects, the gross-outs and extreme stuff. It's similar to the situation with metal music, and it's funny because some of my friends would probably identify me as a metal head, and I'm not one and never have been. Most metal is mediocre to really bad. I only like the really good stuff, and in music that means the bands that are unique and have good songs, good melodies, and have musicians with their own personal styles.
I have never liked a genre just because it is a genre. So with metal, only a few bands have ever stuck with me, and with horror writing it's the same. I don't read horror for the horror - that part is a stylistic effect best used sparingly, or as a backdrop - I read horror for it's insights into the human condition, and even more for the writer's ability to tell a scary tale. When I was eight years old, in the Summer of 1968, I went to Y-Camp. YMCA. There were a couple of weekends where we had sleepovers at Chatsworth Park, on the main lawn, under the stars in sleeping bags. Something I doubt would be allowed today.
I may have related this before, but on those sleepover nights, we would sit around campfires and our YMCA counselors would tell us horror stories. Not just ghost stories, mind you. Horror stories!
Some, which I haven't the time to tell you of tonight, have stayed with me ever since, and at the time I would have been terrified almost to the point of nightmares.
But it wasn't just the scare that made such an impression. It was the way that the counselors (not much more than teenagers themselves) told the stories.
The scare was all in the telling, but the telling was very human, and involved human emotions that even a little kid could intuitively understand.
So that's what horror stories really involve, the best of them anyway. An exploration of the depth and breadth of human emotions and reactions to extreme situations. The best writers of the genre capture all of these feelings with discretion and nuance. It's as if you are feeling them yourself, and that's what horror is all about, just feeling human feelings. ////
I watched a movie tonight called "The Little Foxes" (1941), starring Bette Davis in an Oscar nominated role as a faltering Southern aristocrat, one of three siblings (she has two brothers) who come from working-class roots but who have schemed and married their way into money.
I may not have the energy to tell you the whole story because I am dog tired, but Davis lives in a mansion with her budding daughter, played by 1940s sweetheart Teresa Wright. They have colored servants and the appearance of wealth. But really they need the investment of factory capital to keep their cotton production from collapsing. The brothers and sister (Davis) have a potential investor on the hook as the movie opens, but they need the money of each sibling to make a reciprocal commitment to this factory builder.
From there a plot develops, into stealing the needed funds of Davis' recalcitrant husband, who is dying of a heart condition.
These people, the two brothers especially, are greed personified. Bette Davis is selfish and hard bitten (and also a great actress), and she wants her share of the money too, and doesn't care if her husband has to suffer for her to get it.
That is all I am gonna tell you because I really am about to fall asleep, but I give "The Little Foxes" Two Huge Thumbs Up. It's got an 8.2 IMDB rating for a reason. It was Oscar nominated for Best Picture of 1941 as well as Best Actress, and it could have won both, but check out the competition that year. You will have to Google it as I cannot look it up for you at this time.
I am on a roll with great movies recently, gotta find more that I haven't seen.
Praying for an end to wind and fire soon. See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
No comments:
Post a Comment