{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1215", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 1215, "subject": "Dualism and Horror", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "1998-10-20T09:38:16+00:00", "last": "1998-10-20T09:55:46+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Tony Ellis", "address": "tony.ellis at futurenet.co.uk" }, "date": "1998-10-20T09:38:16+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Re: Re: Dualism and Horror", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I wrote:\nWell, the usual expression is \"supernatural horror\" rather than\n\"supernatural evil\". Most of the more highly-regarded horror writers\nlong ago grew out of the simplistic good\\evil trap. " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "and Alex David Groce wrote: \nPerhaps out of the simplistic version of it--I think there are some good horror\nwriters who still make use of the concepts. Even a supremely ambiguous writer\nlike Robert Aickman (my favorite) often suggests, in his quiet way, that\nsomething is evil--the dog in \"The Same Dog,\" or Mr. Millar in \"Meeting Mr.\nMillar\" or Parliament in \"My Poor Friend.\" " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Now that -is- interesting. I was actually thinking of Aickman when I\nwrote that! He's one of my favorites too. But for me he's very much a\nwriter of supernatural horror, rather than evil. The dog in \"The Same\nDog\" or the father in \"The Stains\" scare -me- because they seem\nrepresentative of an alien, unknowable universe, rather than \"evil\". I\ndon't know what Aickman's religious beliefs were, if any, but the\nimpression I receive from his books is of a fundamentally pagan\nworldview, where \"good\" and \"evil\" are labels for things we don't\nunderstand rather then absolutes." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Alga wrote: \nI don't pretend to be a Lovecraft expert (though I have a friend who is; I'm\nnot going to ask him about this, however) but still, you have to have a\nLight that has beaten the Dark back for a while, don't you? During that\nblip?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well... no, actually. Sorry to be so insistent, but this is the essence\nof Lovecraft's fiction. The Dark is merely sleeping, as the result of\ncertain cosmic cycles - it hasn't been beaten back by anything. Later\nimitators developed the idea of Good Gods defeating the Bad Gods and\nimprisoning them, but you don't find that in the original McCoy." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "It does seem to me that, as a generalization, Good v. Bad works pretty\nwell for horror. You start with a norm and discover that Things Are Not What\nThey Seem. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Perhaps as a generalisation for a certain kind of horror story, but I'm\nstill not convinced. If you find that the norm turns out to be Not What\nIt Seems, haven't you just collapsed dualism into monism?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Easy to parody. Jane Austen did it in -Mansfield Park- a long\ntime ago." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Northanger Abbey, actually. (Sorry.)" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Alex David Groce", "address": "adgroce at eos.ncsu.edu" }, "date": "1998-10-20T09:55:46+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Re: Re: Dualism and Horror", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Tony Ellis wrote:\nPerhaps out of the simplistic version of it--I think there are some good\nhorror\nwriters who still make use of the concepts. Even a supremely ambiguous\nwriter\nlike Robert Aickman (my favorite) often suggests, in his quiet way, that\nsomething is evil--the dog in \"The Same Dog,\" or Mr. Millar in \"Meeting Mr.\nMillar\" or Parliament in \"My Poor Friend.\" " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Now that -is- interesting. I was actually thinking of Aickman when I\nwrote that! He's one of my favorites too. But for me he's very much a\nwriter of supernatural horror, rather than evil. The dog in \"The Same\nDog\" or the father in \"The Stains\" scare -me- because they seem\nrepresentative of an alien, unknowable universe, rather than \"evil\". I\ndon't know what Aickman's religious beliefs were, if any, but the\nimpression I receive from his books is of a fundamentally pagan\nworldview, where \"good\" and \"evil\" are labels for things we don't\nunderstand rather then absolutes." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Ah. I would tend to agree that they represent an unknowable universe; I've\nalways wondered what exactly Aickman's beliefs were as well (I've never managed\nto get ahold of a copy of his autobiography...) other than a passionate belief\nin England's inland waterways (which is parodied in \"My Poor Friend\").\nHowever, an unknowable can be implicitly evil or good, I think--I would say\nthere are moral judgments very quietly hiding in a lot of Aickman's\nstories--it's because they are hiding that they are so convincing... I think\nthat the haunting statement in \"Larger Than Oneself,\" (roughly--don't have the\nbook with me) \"They got what they wanted; as in the end we all do,\" has moral\novertones--David Hartwell seems to agree, and placed it in the section of THE\nDARK DESCENT that deals with stories about good & evil. After all, Christian\nthinking suggests that in this state both good and evil are to some extent\nunknowable--\"now we see through a glass darkly.\" And a story like \"The Houses\nof the Russians\" strikes me very much a good/evil tale, in a Christian sense.\nWhile \"The Real Road to the Church\" would be touching on the Mystery in Good.\nNot that I'm saying Aickman's a C. S. Lewis of the spooky or anything--I'm not\nat all sure from his fiction what his beliefs were, but I'd say he makes use of\ngood and evil and even very Christian ideas about them at times.\n\tHmmm... Probably boring the daylights out of the non-Aickman reading\npublic on the list. Although if you like Wolfe, you should give him a try." }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "\"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.\" - John 8:32\n--\nAlex David Groce (adgroce at eos.ncsu.edu)\nSenior (Computer Science/Multidisciplinary Studies in Technology & Fiction)\n'98-99 NCSU AITP Student Chapter President\n608 Charleston Road, Apt. 1E (919)-233-7366\nhttp://www4.ncsu.edu/~adgroce" } ] } ] }