Category: HIstory

Halloween Reading List

On By Christopher TuthillIn 31 Tales of Halloween, Books, Halloween, HIstory, Horror, Reading, Short StoriesLeave a comment

Starting Octber 1, I wrote short reviews and thoughts about 31 different Gothic tales that I have enjoyed through the years. I did this in no particular order, choosing a new one every day from my bookshelf. My reading is skewed heavily toward things published decades ago; the most recent one here is Roger Zelazny’s A Night in the Lonesome October, from 1993, with the oldest being Anne’s Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho from 1794. Thirteen of these were written before 1900. The breakdown, when I looked at it, went like this:

1700s: 1 1800s: 12 (1890s: 5, 1810s, 2, 1830s, 2 1840s 1 1860s 2) 1930s: 1 1940s: 1 1950s: 4

1960s: 2 1970s: 4 1980s: 5 1990s: 1

The entire list, with links, is below, for anyone interested. My reading habits in general skew this way, as well. For whatever reason I am not usually in the habit of reading contemporary things or bestsellers, with some exceptions, which you can see on the list. I recall many years ago a creative writing professor damning me with faint praise by saying my writing style was ‘old fashioned,’ which I took as a badge of honor.

This was a fun project, and I may do a more limited one of holiday tales in December.

  1. The October Country by Ray Bradbury, 1955
  2. Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1835
  3. The Sketch-book of Geoffrey Crayon by Washington Irving, 1819
  4. A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny, 1993
  5. The Case Against Satan by Ray Russell, 1962
  6. The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty, 1971
  7. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, 1959
  8. Fevre Dream by George RR Martin, 1982
  9. The Body by Stephen King, 1982
  10. I Am Legend by Richard Matheson, 1954
  11. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, 1818
  12. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, 1898
  13. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 1892
  14. A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor, 1953
  15. Interview With the Vampire by Anne Rice, 1976
  16. In Dark New England Days by Sarah Orne Jewett, 1890
  17. Ma’ame Pelagie by Kate Chopin, 1894
  18. The Moonstone Mass by Harriet Prescott Spofford, 1868
  19. The Phantom Coach by Amelia Edwards, 1864
  20. The Refugee by Jane Rice, 1943
  21. Ghost Story by Peter Straub, 1979
  22. Mort by Terry Pratchett, 1987
  23. The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury, 1972
  24. Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury, 1962
  25. The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike, 1984
  26. The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe, 1839
  27. The Cask of Amontillado by Poe, 1846
  28. Dracula by Bram Stoker, 1897
  29. The Mysteries of Udolpho by Anne Radcliffe, 1794
  30. The Stress of Her Regard by Tim Powers, 1989
  31. At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft, 1936

At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft (1936)

On By Christopher TuthillIn 31 Tales of Halloween, Books, Fantasy, Halloween, HIstory, Horror, Reading, Reviews, Short Stories4 Comments

“It is absolutely necessary, for the peace and safety of mankind, that some of earth’s dark, dead corners and unplumbed depths be let alone; lest sleeping abnormalities wake to resurgent life, and blasphemously surviving nightmares squirm and splash out of their black lairs to newer and wider conquests.”

Lovecraft is another of those giants of horror who could fill this list all on his own, but I had to pick just one story, and this is one I really enjoy. A group of ill-fated scientists from Miskatonic University make the terrible mistake of going to Antarctica where they find evidence of a race of beings far older than anything known to humans before, beyond a range of mountains larger than any that have ever been recorded. They explore buildings left behind by this civilization, which have been devised through ‘non-Euclidean geometry,’ and find hieroglyphs that help them learn about Elder-things and shoggoths, monsters that populated the place and whom they have foolishly awakened. They escape, but not before losing several members of the party. The novella serves as a warning to others who might want to return to study the antarctic.

Lovecraft has of course been highly influential and much has been written about him and his work. “Who Goes There?”, John Campbell’s horror tale set in the arctic with a group of explorers, immediately comes to mind, as do the films based upon it, including the 1951 version “The Thing From Another World,” as well as John Carpenter’s excellent “The Thing” from 1982.

I think it’s best to learn about Lovecraft straight from the source. There are many entry points for his mythos, but I think this is a great place to start. You could also read the Call of Cthulhu, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, Dagon, or any number of others. The Library of America has a wonderful collection of his tales that I highly recommend.

So there you have it. Thirty-one tales of gothic terror and wonder over the month of October. I think it’s a pretty good list of some of the gems I’ve read over the years; I chose them in no particular order as the month went by, but I stand by each of them as tales that are either unique, or influential, or just plain scary enough to keep you up at night. Perhaps I’ll choose another 31 next October. For now, I hope you’ve enjoyed perusing this list, and that you’ve been inspired to read something you haven’t before. If you have your own favorites, or if you like what you’ve read, be sure to let me know in the comments.

Happy Halloween!

The Stress of Her Regard by Tim Powers (1989)

On By Christopher TuthillIn 31 Tales of Halloween, Books, Fantasy, Halloween, HIstory, Horror1 Comment

“Crawford felt drops of sweat run down his ribs under his shirt as he slowly forced the muscles of his neck to tilt his head up; he saw the upper slope, bristling with trees that obstructed a view of the road, and then he saw the outer branches of the tree he was braced against, and finally he gathered his tattered courage and looked straight up.

And it took all of his self-control not to recoil or scream, and he was distantly resentful that he couldn’t just die in this instant.”

Tim Powers has had a long and illustrious career writing historical fantasy, and he ought to be a household name. You can read any of his books and be transported to a different world, but for this time of year I think Stress of Her Regard is a great place to begin. It’s a wonderful tale about Michael Crawford, who accidentally finds himself the object of a nephilim, a sort of succubi that he has unwittingly courted. His bride to be is found dead, and he’s the main suspect. He travels around Europe trying to rid himself of the creature, and meets up with Shelley, Byron, Keats, Dr. Polidori, and others, all of whom are trying to avoid these strange, dangerous creatures. It’s great fun to read and gets my highest recommendation-for those who love literary history and fantasy, it doesn’t get much better than this. I’d also recommend Powers’ other books, which are all terrific. I particularly enjoyed On Stranger Tides, a pirate story, and his Last Call series. He’s one of the best fantasy writers we have, and he’s still going, with his latest book due out this fall.

The Cask of Amontillado

On By Christopher TuthillIn 31 Tales of Halloween, Books, HIstory, Horror, Reading, Short Stories1 Comment

Today, I’m again doing some brief thoughts on a few horror stories I’ve enjoyed over the years and which deserved inclusion on this reader’s guide to Halloween. You could probably pick 31 stories by Poe to read this season, but here are two of my very favorites, as well as two highly influential gothic novels.

The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe (1846)

1935 Illustration by Arthur Rackham

“The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave utterance to a threat. At length I would be avenged; this was a point definitely settled—but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved, precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish, but punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.”

One of the most widely read and anthologized stories of Mr. Poe, who was perhaps the greatest writer of Gothic tales, the Cask of Amontillado has long been a favorite of mine, as I’m sure it has for many others. The first time I read it, I couldn’t quite believe what I was reading. This was supposed to be old, boring literature, and here we were amid one of the most horrible things my young brain had ever contemplated. For the first time, I realized that these old tales were perhaps better than whatever slasher stuff was at my local multiplex.

The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe (1839)

“DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher.”

This tale gave me the chills when I first read it as a lad, and it still has that effect now. It gets weirder and weirder as it progresses; a bizarre, supernatural and disturbing story of a reclusive man, his ghostlike sister, and their creepy ancestral home. One of the greatest horror tales ever written.

I also highly recommend a trip to the Poe Cottage in the Bronx, where he lived for a time. It’s such a neat piece of local history–a lot of places want to claim Poe as their own, but he did live in New York for the last few years of his life, with his ailing wife and her mother, and the small museum there is well worth a visit for New Yorkers.

Dracula by Bram Stoker (1897)

The Mysteries of Udolpho by Anne Radcliffe (1794)

“A well-informed mind is the best security against the contagion of folly and vice. The vacant mind is ever on the watch for relief, and ready to plunge into error, to escape from the languor of idleness. Store it with ideas, teach it the pleasure of thinking; and the temptations of the world without, will be counteracted by the gratifications derived from the world within.”
― The Mysteries of Udolpho by Anne Radcliffe

“How blessed are some people, whose lives have no fears, no dreads; to whom sleep is a blessing that comes nightly, and brings nothing but sweet dreams.” Dracula by Bram Stoker

No list of Halloween reading would be complete without Dracula, one of the first novels of its kind. An epistolary novel that moves much slower than most of the film versions with which people may be more familiar, it inspired many dozens of similar books. Stoker borrowed heavily from folklore to write this tale, which many critics have noted bore similarities to Anne Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho, which is also well worth reading. Those interested in literary history and gothic tales should read both of these. Udolpho was published in 1794 and is considered by many to be the first gothic novel. The tragic story of a young woman’s misfortunes and strange occurrences at a castle where she lives, Udolpho has been praised by literary critics who have written on how this groundbreaking work influenced many later writers, including Poe, Stoker, Henry James, and Jane Austen, to name just a few.

The Phantom Coach, by Amelia Edwards (1864)

On By Christopher TuthillIn 31 Tales of Halloween, Books, Christmas, Fantasy, Halloween, HIstory, Reading, Short Stories1 Comment

In the grand tradition of Victorian Christmas ghost stories, Amelia Edward’s The Phantom Coach first appeared in The December, 1864 issue of Charles Dickens’ literary journal, All the Year Round. Amazingly, the preceding link is to that full issue (the cover image is below), which I intend to read. Much of the run of this journal is freely available online, thanks to the Hathi Trust, the Internet Archive, and other sources.

The narrator of this tale of the damned is a man named Murray who is traveling across the Scottish moors when a snowstorm hits; afraid he won’t make it back home, he hails a passing stranger and asks for shelter. The man, Jacob, is the servant at a nearby house, but warns Murray that his master will not want him to stay. Jacob reluctantly allows Murray to follow him back to the residence.

The master of the house is at first irritated by Murray’s presence and tells him he has lived in this secluded place for twenty-three years, with no visitors at all for the past four. But the man is eager for news of the outside world—they have a fireside chat during which the old man tells him:

“The world grows hourly more and more sceptical of all that lies beyond its own narrow radius; and our men of science foster the fatal tendency. They condemn as fable all that resists experiment. They reject as false all that cannot be brought to the test of the laboratory or the dissecting-room. Against what superstition have they waged so long and obstinate a war, as against the belief in apparitions? And yet what superstition has maintained its hold upon the minds of men so long and so firmly?”

The man further says that he himself believed in the supernatural, and as a man of science, his career was ruined for it. He speaks with eloquence about various philosophers and scientists, leaving Murray in awe at the breadth of his knowledge; Murray says that he “wandered from topic to topic, from speculation to speculation, like an inspired dreamer.”

When the storm ends, Murray wishes to make his way home, though it is late at night—it’s decided he’ll join the mail coach, which will be passing through a few miles away. Jacob leads him to the stop, and now the story gets macabre. He mentions that a mail coach had crashed over an embankment, killing all aboard, nine years before.

It’s at times like this in most ghost stories when I, and most readers, want to tell the protagonist to find some other way home. Of course, Murray doesn’t. He gets on the coach when it arrives, at first relieved to be out of the cold, until he realizes the awful truth of the matter.

This is a very fun, atmospheric horror tale, and I can see why it has been anthologized so often. You are set up beautifully by the desolate moor, the irritable servant, finally the old man telling tales of the supernatural in a parlor teeming with hundreds of books and scholarly apparatus of every conceivable kind. Incidentally, I want a room just like this, complete with a fireplace and ghost stories and a glass of sherry. If anyone out there reading this wants to help me achieve this, I’d be grateful.

 I came across my copy of this tale in a Dover thrift edition of ghost stories. I’ve loved those Dover editions since I was a young man—for just a few dollars you get some first-rate stories. My college instructors used to kindly assign these editions to their poor students, and I’ve kept with the tradition.  

Amelia Edwards was a woman of many talents: in addition to writing many novels and short stories, she was also a journalist, illustrator, and Egyptologist. Like most of the authors on this list, you can learn more about her life in her Dictionary of Literary Biography entry, though you will need a login to access it.

The Moonstone Mass by Harriet Prescott Spofford (1868)

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Harriet Prescott Spofford was a prolific writer of short stories—this gothic tale, The Moonstone Mass, predates HP Lovecraft’s tales of madness in the arctic by a good half century or more, but would feel right at home in one of his books. The narrator is told by his uncle that he will receive a large inheritance if he seeks the Northwest passage, and he decides to try, on a ship called the Albatross, a bad idea if I ever heard one. He must delay his marriage to Eleanor, his beloved, but apparently considers this worth the risk.

Once on his voyage, things start to get weird. After an uneventful summer, the ship becomes encased in ice, and eventually the narrator leaves it with a team of dogs to try and find some passage to the west where the stranded crew might escape to safety. Instead, he finds himself in a world of cosmic horrors. He loses all track of time, his dogs die of fear as they are surrounded by cold light. He seems to either hallucinate or have a strange otherworldly experience:

“These enormous days and nights, swinging in their arc six months long, were the pendulum that dealt time in another measure than that dealt by the sunlight of lower zones; they told the time of what interminable years, the years of what vast generations far beyond the span that covered the age of the primeval men of Scripture— they measured time on this gigantic and enduring scale for what wonderful and mighty beings, old as the everlasting hills, as destitute as they of mortal sympathy, cold and inscrutable, handling the two-edged javelins of frost and magnetism, and served by all the unknown polar agencies. I fancied that I saw their far-reaching cohorts, marshaling and maneuvering at times in the field of an horizon that was boundless, the glitter of their spears and casques, the sheen of their white banners; and again, sitting in fearful circle with their phantasmagoria they shut and hemmed me in and watched me writhe like a worm before them.”

Amidst this, he sees a brilliant moonstone, “a thing so real, so genuine, my breath became suspended; my heart ceased to beat; my brain, that had been a lump of ice, seemed to move in its skull.” He is on a moving ice floe and attempts to climb toward the mass but is caught in an avalanche. When he recovers, he is back in an arctic fishing village. The Albatross is never found. No one believes his story, least of all his uncle. Eleanor believes him, but wishes to hear nothing about it, yet the narrator ends his tale saying he will someday recover the precious stone.

This reminded me of Lovercraft in several ways, not least because it is set in the arctic, and the narrator is up against unknowable, ancient beings that seem to bend space and time. The narrator also seems intent on his own destruction even in the face of all this—he’s drawn by the lure of this talisman. This is an interesting tale since it predates Lovecraft, and polar exploration, by decades. It’s an excellent precursor to Lovecraft, who is much better known to horror readers, and a fine story.

I’d not encountered Spofford’s work before reading this tale, but I’ll be sure to fix that. It was included in the Library of America’s wonderful collection, American Fantastic Tales. I’ve taken a few stories on this list from that excellent two volume set, which I give my highest recommendation.

Ma’ame Pelagie by Kate Chopin (1894)

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“Ma’ame Pelagie,” they called her, though she was unmarried, as was her sister Pauline, a child in Ma’ame Pelagie’s eyes; a child of thirty-five.

Kate Chopin is well known for her novel The Awakening, but she was also a prolific writer of short stories, including this gem, Ma’ame Pelagie. Pelagie and her sister live in Louisiana in a three-room cabin beside their formerly grand ancestral home. For decades, we learn, they have lived this way, hoping to save enough to restore the mansion ‘shaped like the Pantheon,’ but now fallen into ruin. The sisters are visited by a niece who comes to live with them—her father, their brother, will soon be joining her. But the young girl cannot stand the sadness of the place and wants to leave.

“It was not the first time she had stolen away to the ruin at night-time, when the whole plantation slept; but she never before had been there with a heart so nearly broken. She was going there for the last time to dream her dreams; to see the visions that hitherto had crowded her days and nights, and to bid farewell to them.” Pelagie recalls these past grand days in a dreamlike reverie, the grand parties held there, and her lover, who went off to fight in ‘le guerre,’ as did so many others. And now we have the central problem on which this tale rests—the war, which eventually comes to the plantation. It is the tragedy of her life, to see her dreams ruined along with the grand house.

A year later, her brother Leandre builds a new, beautiful brick house where the old one stood. The house bustles with activity and music and the laughter of young people, the friends of ‘La Petite,’ her niece. However, Pelagie’s “soul had stayed in the shadow of the ruin.”

This is a great short gothic tale that works very well not only in the tragedy of these two women who live in the ruins of a once grand life, but also in the shadow of the civil war. The stain of slavery and the shadow of war haunts everything in this story of the south. The writing is quite elegant, as is much of the best writing of this period, and does much to transport us to these bygone days.

To learn more about Kate Chopin and her life, you can view this excellent PBS documentary on her.

Jeff Shaara in Poughkeepsie

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Yesterday my son and I were lucky to see Jeff Shaara, the historian and novelist, speak on his book Rise to Rebellion, the first of his two novels of the American Revolution. The books are terrific reads centered around some of the main players in the revolution, including Franklin, Adams, Washington, Jefferson, and others. Like his father, Michael, who wrote the Pulitzer winning classic The Killer Angels about Gettysburg (and which Jeff continued in two gripping books to complete a civil war trilogy), Jeff does a lot of research for his books and uses painstaking historical details to tell the story through the point of view of these characters. It truly makes history come alive in a way that general readers as well as history buffs will savor. My son, who is a well-read thirteen-year-old, loves Shaara’s books as well, and has read a number of them, including one on World War II and his most recent book on the Cuban missile crisis. Shaara also said that his newest book, due next May, is told from the point of view of Lincoln, starting in 1861 and ending in 1863; I’m sure my son and I will be picking up that one as well.

After a lively talk in which Shaara went over some of the details of these historical figures, there were some great questions from the audience about his writing process, and his thoughts on various historical events. He pointed out that while he understood why no one really writes much in popular fiction about someone like Robert E Lee anymore, he felt that it is a mistake to simply ignore or try to erase such historical figures. In a book like Gods and Generals, he showed Lee as the flawed man he was, and Shaara does a great service with work like this. It’s unhelpful to simply view Lee as an evil traitor, or on the other hand, as a noble son of the South. Instead, Shaara paints a picture of an imperfect man who, while acting gallantly in the eyes of the south, committed treason in the eyes of the North. He certainly made some choices that led down a destructive path, for a cause that was indeed evil. Yet it helps to put these actions in the context of the events through which Lee lived, to better understand what happened. But these days, most of us in this country don’t want nuance.

Shaara was also asked his opinion of the current state of the United States, since this event was part of the celebrations that are taking place as part of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. He said what many in the auditorium were feeling, that we are in a very dark time, and that he feared what the future may hold.

If you enjoy history, or even if you don’t, you ought to read some of his books. You can start anywhere, but since we’re at that 250th anniversary, I’d suggest starting with Rise to Rebellion and the Boston massacre. It’s a great book, and a timely way to learn some things about our history that you may not know. It may even inspire you to do some things to help make sure this republic of ours survives through these perilous times for more anniversaries.

Thanks to the Poughkeepsie Public library for hosting this event. This was our second time seeing Mr. Shaara—he is usually at Gettysburg on every anniversary of the battle, and we saw him there last year on a family trip.

In Dark New England Days by Sarah Orne Jewett (1890)

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Sarah Orne Jewett is a Maine writer known for tales like The Country of Pointed Firs, A White Heron, and numerous short stories and poems that bring the region to life. One of the really interesting things about reading her books is that not only do you get a sense of what Maine was like in the late 1800s, you also get to hear the way people spoke, the diction and accent that they had. If you’re traveling in Maine you will still hear an accent that differs from other regions of the country, and even other areas in New England and the northeast. As time goes on and people are more apt to move around, these kinds of accents are being lost, but you can still hear it when you travel off the beaten path.

“In Dark New England Days” is a gothic story with a deep sense of doom and foreboding from the beginning. We are introduced to the sad case of the three Knowles sisters, ‘Closed-mouth old maids’ who spent their lives taking care of their cruel old father who has now died of a stroke. Mercifully, from the sounds of the story, as one character declares: “The old Cap’n kept ’em child’n long as he lived, an’ then they was too old to l’arn different.” His body is on display in their home–quite macabre by today’s standards, but more commonplace when the story was written. Even so, it is enough to give you the creeps from the opening lines of the story.

On the evening he dies, the sisters, Betsy, Hannah, and Susan, pull out an old chest belonging to their dead father, who had been a seafaring man, and learn that he’d been hoarding gold his whole life, though they lived in abject poverty. They are ecstatic with their new wealth and for the first time in many years they seem to have hope. Yet even as they stare at their gold: “He stopped to listen, came nearer, stopped again, and then crept close to the old house. He stepped upon the banking, next the window with the warped shutter; there was a knot-hole in it high above the women’s heads, towards the top. As they leaned over the chest, an eager eye watched them.”

The next morning, the money is gone: “The sisters had been rich for one night; in the morning they waked to find themselves poor with a bitter pang of poverty of which they had never dreamed.” They blame a neighbor with whom their father had a feud: Enoch Holt, and take him to court. He escapes without a guilty verdict, but not before Hannah Knowles stands before the court and declares: “Curse your right hand, then!” cried Hannah Knowles, growing tall and thin like a white flame drawing upward. “Curse your right hand, yours and all your folks’ that follow you! May I live to see the day!”

It is a chilling scene, and an awful declaration. The misery with which the sisters lived under their tyrant of a father is only made worse by the cruelty of the theft. But as in any good gothic tale, there are some fates worse than death, some things worse even than a sad, lonely life of poverty. I don’t wish to give away the ending, so I highly recommend reading this story and some others by Jewett.

Today we are not without plenty of so-called horror movies, gore-fests and plenty of over-the-top films and television to give us superficial scares. In my view, stories like this one do the job in a much more convincing, chilling fashion. The tale sets you up and gets its hooks in and doesn’t let go.

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1892)

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“I really have discovered something at last. Through watching so much at night, when it changes so, I have finally found out. The front pattern does move – and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it! Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over. Then in the very bright spots she keeps still, and in the very shady spots she just takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard. And she is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody could climb through that pattern – it strangles so; I think that is why it has so many heads.”

This story has been analyzed in myriad ways and is considered an important work of feminist literature. It’s a chronicle of a mental breakdown; a woman is suffering from ‘a slight hysterical tendency’ according to her physician husband, following the birth of her child. She spends the story confined to an upstairs room at a country estate and comes to believe that a woman is trapped behind the yellow wallpaper in the room.

On reading the story, you end up infuriated by the woman’s husband, and sympathetic toward her plight, but the way Gilman describes her experience through a series of journal entries also makes the story quite memorable. Her slow descent into madness is told with convincing, disturbing detail.

Gilman suffered from postpartum depression, so this story has been read with this in mind. At the time, a ‘rest cure’ was administered for treatment, which only made things worse for her, so she stopped the treatment and resumed writing, later saying that she feared a mental breakdown had she continued to follow the doctor’s cure. Gilman instead followed the advice of a female doctor, Mary Putnam Jacobi, who argued against such rest. Much has been written about Gilman and her pioneering story, for those interested, your local library will have plenty of information about her life.