The Lurking Adjectives of Doom

3 Comments

Put up your hand if you like adjectives. Good.

Now put up your pale, twisted claw of a hand with its squamous, flaking skin and flesh beneath which seems eldritch, almost fungoid, like some blasphemous mockery of humanity, if you really like adjectives.

Now we’re cooking.

Science fiction literature, one of my early loves, used to be plastered with things which were impregnable, unstoppable, invincible and impenetrable. The adjective ruled. Then, with equal frequency these things were pregnated, stopped, vinced and penetrated to satisfy the plot. Most SF idiots like me remember the joys of E E Doc Smith. Boy, did that man love his work.

Horror fiction, on the other hand, has always fallen back on the good ole’ indescribable.

There are two sound reasons for this. The first is that the author genuinely wants to convey something which has an impact beyond normal sensory perception, or is beyond rational description. The very best authors use subtlety, nuance and the effect on the characters to give you what you need.

And sometimes it is best not to describe. Graphic portrayal can be a risk. It reminds me of the two versions of the film Cat People. In the original 1942 version (unless my memory is shot), the menace came from shadows and suggestion. It was unsettling. The 1982 version showed what was happening quite openly and lost out in the process. But it did have a David Bowie theme song, so you takes your chances…

The second good reason for taking the indescribable route is that the author can’t think of a physical manifestation scary enough, and if they actually describe it, the readers will go “Meh! and throw the story away. I think that’s a great way out. Throw in some hints, write the rest of the story and hope that the readers can imagine things better than you can write. Why should writers do all the work?

There is a third reason, but it’s unkind to mention it. So I will. There are authors who can’t use adjectives (or similes) very well, and think that they have found an escape clause.

The creature was so big, no, enormous, well, really large, like a, what’s the word, you know, those bloody great fish, or maybe an eel but like those congers, not the jellied ones, and it had tendrils as large as, oh bugger…

The creature was indescribable.

My particular bugbear is where something supposedly can’t be put into words and then, in the next paragraph (or fifteen), everything is depicted in graphic detail anyway.

Under the guttering light of our one remaining torch, we finally managed to break open the tomb. I slid the stone lid to one side, my arms aching, and there, inside, we saw the indescribable horror that had once been St John Arthur Masters…

“Oh, wait a minute.” said Sandra, squinting. “I’ll tell you what we’ve got here. It’s a ratty old man with half his skin falling off, wearing a shroud which badly needs a wash. He’s deliquescing a bit, which is icky, and his nails need clipping. I think we should set fire to him and go for a pint.” Sandra’s First Pony by J Linseed Grant

On the other hand, I actually enjoy those stories which astonish by their use of language. By which I mean the ones where an earthquake has released a slumbering thesaurus. There are so many lurid adjectives that you have no idea what the central monster/spectre/alien looks like. It has been stamped to death by the thesaurus, which raises its head at the end and roars in triumph. I love a good B-movie.

I read a fantasy short story (no names) in bed last night, on my bargain-basement tablet. And then I read it out to my partner, and to the dogs. We laughed and wept; we shuddered. The adjective count was so high that we genuinely could not understand what had happened, even on a second reading. There wasn’t any space left for nouns and verbs.

H P Lovecraft, one of my favourite authors, was not exactly immune to the curse of the adjective. Which is to say, he used too many of them. Indescribable, antiquarian and shunned spring to mind. In fact, I had to check with The Arkham Archivist. Apparently hideous is the clear winner, with 260 uses in his complete works.

Dunwich_HorrorA subtle film interpretation of Lovecraft’s writing

Out of curiosity I picked up Lovecraft and Derleth’s The Lurker at the Threshold, which was in a pile by my desk, and looked up some descriptions of monster situations. Adjectives formed 20 – 25% of such passages. And I think you’ll agree that such an exercise demonstrates quite clearly that… I don’t have a life.

Fortunately Lovecraft’s ideas, and the impressions he conveys, far outweigh most quibbles about his writing style. He sought to portray events and beings beyond human comprehension, always a fun way to spend an evening. He also had some awareness of his own approach, as demonstrated in this passage from The Dunwich Horror:

It would be trite and not wholly accurate to say that no human pen could describe it, but one may properly say that it could not be vividly visualized by anyone whose ideas of aspect and contour are too closely bound up with the common life-forms of this planet and of the three known dimensions.

He gets points for that. And I am quite keen on “teratologically fabulous”, also from Lovecraft’s The Dunwich Horror. You don’t come across combinations like that every day.

Don’t get me wrong. I make my own mistakes when writing. My particular weakness has always been for metaphors, where people have granite faces and spider hands, that sort of thing. It works really well for a golem infested with arachnids, but it can be a tad overused. Mea culpa.

In conclusion, because this entry is already too long, I can only hope that I’ve used the word “indescribable” so much that you can’t stand to hear it or come across it any more. In which case, my work is done.

In an unnameable, tenebrous and decadent sort of way, of course.

Share this article with friends - or enemies...

Of Gods and Garden Rollers

Leave a comment

Last time I was rattling on about some neglected writers of early ghost stories. We’d reached, rather oddly, Edgar Wallace and his questionable character Sanders of the River. You’ll have to bear with me whilst I navigate back to my actual subject here.

One thing I always liked about the Sanders stories is the coverage of complex local beliefs, especially those which centre round the evocatively-named deity or demon M’shimba M’shamba.

“M’shimba M’shamba was abroad, walking with his devastating feet through the forest, plucking up great trees by their roots and tossing them aside…”

Intrigued, I hunted for any more information on this West African God of Storms. The web was not helpful. One of the only references I could find was to M’shimba M’shamba of Houghton Hill. Sounds encouraging, doesn’t it? Perhaps a chilling tale of African power wreaking havoc in wherever Houghton Hill is (Cambridgeshire, apparently), only to be laid to rest by a brave young curate who has recently returned from a Mission in the Congo? Well, it’s even better than you think.

Yes, you guessed it. M’shimba M’shamba of Houghton Hill is, according to Google, someone’s pedigree Shetland Sheepdog, a little fawny-brown dog which yelps a lot. I had a sheltie just like it when I was little.

Not quite a real God, then.

The writer Henry S Whitehead was a real minister, though, as mentioned last time. Some of his Gerald Canevin stories include the value of having faith in the Christian God, but it isn’t a dominant theme. Two of my other favourite writers, William Hope Hodgson and H P Lovecraft, were less enthusiastic in their support for the established churches.

Lovecraft’s stories depicted the universe as a mostly empty void ruled by hostile or indifferent nightmares, with mankind at the mercy of the unknowable. And probably doomed. Nice. He described his own religious feelings in his correspondence:

“Personally, I am intensely moral and intensely irreligious… What the honest thinker wishes to know, has nothing to do with complex human conduct. He simply demands a scientific explanation of the things he sees. His only animus toward the church concerns its deliberate inculcation of demonstrable untruths in the community.” (Letters, 1918)

WHH, although the son of an Anglican minister, seems to have abandoned his father’s faith, or pushed it well to one side. His occult detective Carnacki was a scientist above all, although he at least thought there were benevolent forces which might occasionally intervene to protect the human soul. I don’t remember him packing crucifixes in his kitbag, and The Exorcist would probably have appalled him. No electric pentacle, for starters.

So we have to turn to the wonderful Mr Batchel, E G Swain’s creation, for good old fashioned vicar power. See, I did get there.

I don’t know how Mr Batchel drifted out of favour. E G Swain was a friend of M R James, and chaplain of King’s College, Cambridge. His short collection, Stoneground Ghost Tales, originally published in 1912, contains what might be described as utterly English ghost stories, gentle and redolent of place, of a long, slow sort of history rambling along its way.147989

If they fail to deliver the sense of incipient horror that marks some M R James stories, they succeed by providing the most genial of protagonists, a man who potters enthusiastically through life. James never pulled off this aspect in the same way. Mr Batchel himself is a treasure.

“Now Mr Batchel… was not much at home with young ladies, to whom he knew that, in the nature of things, he could be but imperfectly acceptable. With infinite good will towards them, and a genuine liking for their presence, he felt that he had but little to offer them in exchange.” (The Rockery)

He is mild without being characterless, personable in a way which can delight. He has an ongoing dispute over his shrubs with his gardener, and a love of odd objects which turn up in the soil. He believes in what I would call a very Church of England God – important and always around, but not given to crushing forests with His devastating feet.

There is a delicious, under-played humour in most of Swain’s work:

“But there are real ghosts sometimes, surely?” said Mr Batchel.
“No,” said the policeman, “me and my wife have both looked, and there’s no such thing.”
“Looked where?” enquired Mr Batchel.
“In the ‘Police Duty Catechism’. There’s lunatics, and deserters, and dead bodies, but no ghosts.” (The Richpins)

His tales are not ones of loathsome horror, or doom to come. They include hauntings, but avoid being trite or overly romanticised. They occur in a small fenland parish, and they are of loss, longing and wistful souls, and all the better for it. Incidentally, the story that most resembles M R James is The Man with the Roller, which really does feature a garden roller. It always makes me think of James’ The Mezzotint.

There were only nine of Swain’s Mr Batchel stories, although in the eighties David Rowland did a fine job extending the canon with a set of tasteful Mr Batchel follow-up stories. These are also well worth reading. They’re included in the old Equation Chillers collection of The Stoneground Ghost Tales, but you might be able to find some of them elsewhere.

And that, dear listener, is my other recommendation for the week. E G Swain.

Share this article with friends - or enemies...

Vodun Child

2 Comments

My dear readers will already know that, as a writer in these harsh and competitive times, I have a number of ethical rules which guide my literary career:

  • Hide or lie about my sources, especially if I’ve stolen heavily from them,
  • Keep my ideas to myself until the money’s in, and
  • Never point out that all my plots have been better handled by someone else.

These rules have been invaluable to me, and account for why I’m a penniless agoraphobic who relies on discount artisan ale to get him through even the shortest blog entries. Note the artisan bit, though. I have very high standards of moral and physical bankruptcy.

As a lover of the weird and wild, on the other hand, I like sharing everything and to hell with it. So I’m letting the longdogs loose. Instead, I want to mention two authors you may not yet have come across (or across whom you may not yet have come, if you prefer), Henry S Whitehead and E G Swain. The first I discovered only a couple of years ago, but my little Bone to His Bone collection by Swain has been a prized possession for over twenty years.

I would have described both their recurring protagonists as occult or psychic investigators in their own ways. Sadly, one of them, Swain’s Mr Batchel, has already been kicked out of the club by the writer Tim Prasil, who produced the excellent A Chronological Bibliography of Early Occult Detectives (you don’t come across that phrase very often) on his website. Do look him up, and check out his stories, because I always get the hyperlinks wrong.

So this blog entry will introduce the argument for Henry S Whitehead’s occult investigator, Gerald Canevin, a man of leisure living in the Virgin Islands in the first quarter of last century.

15955889

Just for the trivia-lovers, Whitehead (1882–1932) was a minister of the American Episcopal Church and a friend of H P Lovercraft. He had, at times, church responsibilities in the Virgin Islands, and obviously picked up a lot of local lore. His stories are, for the most part, set in the Caribbean, and a large number include Gerald Canevin’s exposure to curses, entities and events which stem from West African beliefs:

“At last it came, the clue; in a childish, piping treble; the clear-cut word, Jumbee. I had it now. The screaming woman believed, and the crowd about her believed, that some evil witchery was afoot. Some enemy had enlisted the services of the dreaded witch-doctor – the papaloi…”
(Black Terror)

Jumbees are usually malevolent, possessing spirits, and papaloi is one name for a male voodoo priest. As opposed to the mamaloi. Don’t make me explain it. Whitehead drew heavily on the fact that before a chunk of the Virgin Islands was bought by the US, it was actually the Danish West Indies, with a history of plantations, slavery and mixed race populations, creole etc. I have to confess that I didn’t even know that there was a Danish West Indies, so that was a discovery in itself.

The argument which others will raise is that Canevin isn’t enough of an investigator. He does get involved and he does seek out answers, but an awful lot of scary things happen whether or not he does anything. Still, an interesting read. My caveat to interested parties is that very occasionally Whitehead seems to become obsessed with lost Atlantis and ancient Mayan races living under the earth. These (thankfully) few excursions don’t work half as well as some of his creepy, atmospheric stories of the West Indies people and their beliefs.

I was going to end there, but thinking about voodoo, related systems of belief and their African sources reminded me of an even more tenuous claim. Sanders of the River. Edgar Wallace was, I guess, a man of his time *cough*. His Sanders stories can be very dubious, but every so often they’re leavened with a peculiar respect for African people and spiritual systems. And I can now remember at least three which involved ghosts/psychic events which he could not disprove.

Sanders, Occult Colonial Administrator – a new series coming soon.

Next time, in Part Two – Nice People: Mr Batchel and a bit of M R James. Maybe.

Share this article with friends - or enemies...

Literature, lurchers and life