Dave’s Anatomy: My History As a Writer, #92: Postmodernism/Love: “Parody.”

from the film Sixth Sense

Ghost stories are usually not very philosophical. They are scary and reach down to touch our primal fear of the undead, of spirits, of ghosts and wraiths. If you saw the film Sixth Sense, you know that ghosts want something. And, of course, this is more or less an assumption lying behind all ghost stories. An spirit returns to earth not because they want to but because something prevents them from achieving rest and peace after they die—usually, some injustice done to them, something that must be corrected, set right, understood, and let go of. In the story “Parody” a ghost appears who cannot rest because something he has done in life is being coopted by what he believes is an invalid form of art based on an invalid philosophy.

Postmodern architecture

It begins when Andrew Halliway, a musician who is starting to make a name for himself in the world of guitar, sees someone standing on the sidewalk in front of his girlfriend Elizabeth’s apartment. He confronts the man, who disappears. Unsettled, he goes to her apartment. Elizabeth is an architect currently working on a project to expand the City Hall. The project has been bedeviled by delays, broken equipment, and other obstacles.

Elizabeth’s mode of architectural design is postmodern. We hear that term today and usually connect it with literary arts. The French Lieutenant’s Woman is a postmodern novel, Shakespeare in Love is a postmodern film. But postmodernism began as an architectural movement. In Italy, designers of buildings began to defy categories (which is what postmodernism essentially is). They mixed up styles that usually stood as monolithic, designing buildings that had gothic arches and modern steel girders, Romanesque towers and glass and steel entry ways, classic Greek pillars and baroque decoration.

And postmodernism engages in parody. It will copy certain art forms, making light of them in one sense but also calling attention to their brilliance. Writer John Fowles once described a certain type of painting as “simultaneously a tribute and a thumbed nose at a very old tradition.” This is often cited as a definition of postmodernism. And, in my story, it is exactly what Elizabeth is doing in her addition to the City Hall. She is copying the old design in a way that calls attention to its eccentricities but at the same time recognizes its genius and beauty.

Elizabeth

They spend the night together. Andrew gets up before her, goes into the living room, and finds a book on architecture. Thumbing through it, he comes across a picture that looks like the man he saw staring up at Elizabeth’s lighted window. She appears at that moment and sits down beside him. He points to the photograph and asks who it is.

She tells him it is Marvin Quinn, a local architect who died some years ago and who designed the original City Hall. She smiles and adds, “He wouldn’t be happy if he knew I was doing a post-modern take on one of his buildings.” When Andrew asks her why she replies: “He hated postmodern architecture—wrote some pretty nasty things about it. He’d roll over in his grave if he knew what I doing with the City Hall project.”  Though Andrew finds the idea impossible he begins to see that Quinn has in fact rolled out of his grave.

Andrew sees more of Quinn. He is watching from a distance when Elizabeth gives the city council a tour of the construction site. He shows up at one of Andrew’s concerts she attends. He confronts the man, who eventually admits he is Quinn returned to life and instructs Andrew to make Elizabeth stop the building project. “Stop her or I will,” he says. A few days later, Elizabeth has a seizure. The doctors tell her it was from overwork. Andrew knows it was Quinn’s doing. Quinn later appears to him and tells him he will not tolerate her postmodern parody of his building and that he willing to “pay the price” to stop her. He doesn’t say what the price is.

Dante's World

Andrew wonders how one fights a ghost. But he also wonders what is preventing Quinn from further harming her; and why Quinn has appeared to him but not to her. The answer comes to him immediately. Elizabeth told him she had been reading Dante’s Divine Comedy in Italian, which she learned while studying architecture there. She mentions the line, The Love which moves the sun and the other stars. He realizes Quinn is hampered by the love he and Elizabeth share. It is hindering and preventing him from going after her. He summons Quinn and asks him to meet him at a local sculpture garden. He promises that if Quinn hears him out, he will try to persuade Elizabeth to abandon her project. Quinn agrees.

DaVinci's Horse, Grand Rapids, Michigan

They meet by the sculpture of Leonardo DaVinci’s horse—a project he designed but never finished. As they stand there Andrew tells him that when a group of artists decided to create the sculpture Leonardo never got to build, they ran into trouble. “… when the artist began the project, she found out the design was imperfect.  Leonardo was not good at drawing animals. The musculature was all wrong; the proportions were off, the perspectives not realistic. Nina Akimo corrected all that. In other words, she kept the general design of DaVinci’s project but improved on it. You might even say Ms. Akimo’s work is a parody of DaVinci’s—one that improved it. Elizabeth is doing the same thing. She isn’t mocking and ridiculing your building, Mr. Quinn. She’s calling attention to its brilliant features.”

Andrew persuades Quinn. He sees what Elizabeth is doing. He only nods and vanishes, but knows the danger is at an end. He calls Elizabeth and she says she slept well and feels fine. She invites him over. A star falls as he leaves the sculpture park. He thinks of the love that moves the sun and all the other stars.

“Parody” appeared in the Australian journal Roar and Thunder, which has ceased publication but maintains an archive. Read it here.

For winter reading get a copy of The Sorceress of Time. Wuxia warrior Jing Lin travels time to understand how to win a battle and how to win the battles she faces in her own life. The key to the future lies in the past.

I would love to hear your comments.

Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer, #13: Wherein I Write a Real, Genuine Horror Stor

In an earlier post, I said that I did not write what is called "dark horror" and that the stories I do that fall in that genre are mostly "soft horror"—with a happy ending and one where the evil forces are defeated and the good guys win, though it might be a hard-fought and costly battle. I did do one story that is more traditional, where the evil creature dominates and the protagonist is captured by a sinister tormentor in the end of the tale.

I like to write about people who teach literature. Of course, it's what I've done for a living many years, and Hemingway said write about what you know. A literature teacher, Scott Sheridan, meets an attractive woman, Lucinda Arnold, at a book sale. Scott likes his work, but he is vexed by the politics, the bullying, and the egotistic blathering of those who have rank on him in the Literature Department—in other words, I paint an accurate picture of what it's like to work in the academic world!

He and Lucinda talk about books, read together, and, 

soon, are sleeping together. It's a nice relationship. Scott is up for tenure has is nervous because a capricious colleague named Pauline who outranks him is insinuating she might block his tenure—meaning he will have less money and less security. Her reasons are simply that she has power over him and enjoys exercising it and watching him squirm (as often happens in the academic world). Lucinda visits him is introduced.

They talk about Chaucer. Pauline mentions the "Reeve's Tale" one of the Canterbury Tales and notes that the main character in it has a "boil" on his leg. Lucinda corrects her: it's "The Cook's Tale," not "The Reeve's Tale," and it's not a boil. Pauline insists she is right. Lucinda recites a line: “Greet harm was it, as it thoughte me, / That on his shyne a mormal hadde he.” She says a "mormal" was an abscess, a sore that would not heal. Pauline insists Lucinda is wrong and mocks her, saying since she works in a bookstore at least she's around books a lot. Scott is amazed at how accurately she pronounces the Middle English words. Later on, a colleague says he has seen Lucinda somewhere but can't quite recall where.

Charles Dickens

Soon Pauline gets a lesion on her face. It won't heal, spreads, and she dies of infection. Another hostile colleague begins to gain weight so much that before the tenure hearing he is confined to a wheelchair. His obesity necessitates knee surgery. With two hostile colleagues gone, Scott sails through his tenure hearing. Lucinda also begins giving him to books. He reads, they talk about the books, which gets her sexually excited, and they make love. When he fails to finish a book on time, she gets cross and says she will see him when he gets it read.

Soon, too, his friend Mike says he has figured out where he saw Lucinda before and shows Scott a photograph of several Victorian writer's, including Charles Dickens. Behind him, smiling, hands on his shoulders, is a woman who looks like Lucinda's twin. He thinks it must be an ancestor; she is wearing a large onyx ring Lucinda wears, but he knows it could be a family heirloom passed down to her.

After he tells Lucinda, they talk books and go to bed, as usual. He has noticed that their lovemaking often follows the contours to what they have read. Tonight they read Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, a violent and rather grim text. Their embrace is violence and dark. When he turns to face her after post-coital dozing, she tells him she is indeed the women in the photo, has lived a long life, and stays alive by means of books she had lovers read to her. He dismisses it as psychosis, but she proves her statement to him in a most unpleasant fashion:

The dim light around her quivered and she in a dark flash she changed. Her skin became green, her eyes feline and red, mouth fanged, fingers claws, hair writhing like snakes.  He tried to get up, but her arms held him down with superhuman strength. Fire flashed from her eyes and her tongue, cloven like a snake’s, shot out at him and left a track of foul-tasting slime from his chin to his nose. He tried to scream but fear had paralyzed him so he could not make a sound. 

Then she was herself again.

 Since he doesn't seem quite convinced, she then transforms into a blob-like, slimy creature was oily pink skin, a shapeless mouth, and tentacles. Scott is convinced. She is succubus who thrives not off of sex but off of reading. He has become her captive. He dares not disobey her. She tells him she has had lots of men in her care:  Geoffrey Chaucer, Charles Dickens, and others. And, she reminds him, she eliminated the two colleagues who threatened his tenure. He needs to be thankful. She tells him, "I am your friend and lover, Scott.  Don’t be afraid of me.  You don’t need to be—as long as you keep reading.”

She leaves. Stunned, shaken, Scott begins the book she has left him to read:  Bag of Bones by Stephen King. It is 800 pages long. But he has no choice. He begins reading as dawn breaks over the horizon.

I don't like writing dark horror. I don't like to see the monsters win. But, it is a good exercise. You have to know how write in all sorts of genres. And the market for this sort of horror is good. Negative capability enables one to see many facets of a matter without necessarily being committed to one. So it is with me and dark horror.

For titles, check out my Writer's Page.

Daemons, possession, the occult? Look at The Prophetess. Horror from the New Testament! Really!