“The Music of Erich Zann” is the second Lovecraft story I’ve read. It’s about a young man who discovers an old musician up in the uppermost floor of his rooming house. This musician plays darkly. The narrator is drawn to try to befriend him in order to hear more of the music. When in the uppermost room, the narrator is drawn to look out the window but does not until the end of the story, wherein he sees not rooftops, as he should, but nothing.

There are a number of similarities between “Zann” and the previous story I read. Both are centered around an artist who is, in some way, tortured. Pickman seems a willing victim, though still a victim, while Zann is most definitely unwilling. Zann is tormented by what’s out the window. He’s frightened, terrified. Demons or nothingness. These are what await humankind.

Like “Pickman’s Model,” the setting is a key character. It’s really this device which sets up the horror of the piece. I think it could be equated to the ominous music in a scary movie. The settings in Lovecraft’s stories set the tone and the ambiance; they lure the reader into a dark place where we’re drawn by the danger which lurks just past our field of vision. It’s really the anticipation which is most effective. I almost don’t want to know the ending, because that will mean that all the things my imagination is dredging up aren’t really what’s going on. I think, ultimately, this is the brilliance of Lovecraft’s writing. To a modern reader, the endings aren’t even remotely surprising… but what our imaginations can slip into the dark corners that Lovecraft paints – well, there’s the real horror, sport.

This brings us neatly to another similarity. In both “Pickman” and “Zann” the frightening thing is what’s not seen. In “Pickman,” the narrator doesn’t see the demon which is the painter’s model, but sees a photo and interprets its existence. In “Zann,” the narrator literally sees nothing and that is what is terrifying. The nothingness calls to him. It’s the dark corners, again, which are the frightening places. It’s what we don’t know – or what we didn’t know, but know now. It’s almost like a warning, that old proverb: Be careful what you wish for. Don’t look down the rabbit hole. You don’t want to know how deep it goes.

Both narrators escape the horror, but yet are still drawn to it in one way or another. For the “Pickman” narrator, he relives it in the retelling to Eliot and one suspects he relives it more often than that. In “Zann,” the narrator relives the terror by trying to find the original street where the rooming house was located. And he cannot find it. Yet he searches.

That’s what we humans do. We ride rollercoasters; we go to haunted houses; we skydive; we race cars; we rubberneck at accident sites; we watch scary movies. We search and we’re drawn to what ultimately terrifies us.

It took me quite awhile to get into this book. I was probably about one third of the way through before I really wanted to continue reading. There are a couple inherent drawbacks to reading Phantom. First, it’s from an entirely different time. When this was written, books had a different flavor, a different format. So many things that would be considered mistakes making a manuscript un-publishable (head hopping, lots and lots of exclamation points) were common. Also, this is a translation. The book was written in French, originally, and I’ve found that there are always a few issues when reading a translated work.

So when I read this book, I tried to take those two things into account. I have to admit, the head hopping got to me. From paragraph to paragraph sometimes we were in different people’s heads. As a reader of mostly modern books, this is something that isn’t common anymore. We tend to usually have a point of view character. I admit that this issue was something that really kept tripping me up.

As far as the story itself, this really didn’t strike me as horror. Perhaps I’m jaded, but I found myself more interested in it as a mystery than horrified at it as a monster tale. I’ve never seen the musical based on the book, so I really went into it with fresh eyes and no pre-conceptions. I only had the vaguest notion of the story itself. But I was an avid reader of Stephen King (of course), Clive Barker, Dean Koontz and various other prolific and scary dudes who wrote in the 80s and 90s. So I think my sense of what horror is is very much based on those books I read as a young adult. And Phantom just doesn’t make the cut for me as horror.

I did get drawn into the story because I wanted to know what the actual deal was. I wanted to know just how crazy Eric was. I was a little disappointed in his virtue at the end and how he released Christine, but it really just compounded my confusion about who and what he was. It seemed as though Leroux wanted him to be this horrible bad guy, but then didn’t want him to be this horrible bad guy. I didn’t know whether I was supposed to like him or hate him. Subsequently, I did neither.

I think Phantom would do well as a modern re-telling. I suppose there are a number of books which pay homage to this story, but I think a close re-telling with modern writing styles would make it a really interesting and attention-riveting book. So overall, I was a bit disappointed in the horror element of this one and once I suspended my issues with the writing style, I did like following the mystery of who the O.G. was and how it all got resolved. I probably wouldn’t read it again though.

Spoiler alert: The ending is revealed in this blog post.

I’m a horror reader. I spent my teens and twenties devouring horror books like a dragon devours little men with tiny swords. I couldn’t get enough of Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Clive Barker, Brian Lumley, et al. But one glaring hole in my horror reading is the lack of Lovecraft on my shelf. I don’t know why, but I just never got around to reading the “classics” of horror. So when I found out we would be reading Lovecraft for my Horror Genre Reading class, I was excited.

Our first Lovecraft short story is “Pickman’s Model.” It’s a framed story in that the first person narrator is telling the story to the audience (really to a person named Eliot). He’s explaining why he stopped visiting with a particularly gifted artist prior to the artist’s disappearance. Though the artist was gifted, he had a habit of painting increasingly disturbing canvases featuring dark subjects such as demons and changelings.

In his last interaction with the artist, the narrator is led to a dark part of town and down into a basement which Pickman is using for his alternate studio. In this studio, he paints even more grotesque and frightening paintings. And eventually our narrator, after being scared out of his wits there, returns home to discover that Pickman’s most recent painting – of a huge, frightening demon gnawing on the head of a human – which he saw at the studio wasn’t developed from Pickman’s imagination, but was a real thing, a real model. This is the twist ending (obviously Lovecraft does it much better).

Modern audience are jaded. After all, we’re used to twist endings, a surprise plot twist that we’d never expect. So for a modern reader, the ending is a bit anti-climactic and I imagine some will find it disappointing. After all, so many stories end in this manner. But what the modern reader has to remember is that this story was written in 1926. This was before the “I see dead people” and “Who is Kaiser Soze?” stories of today. Now people expect a twist and are sometimes disappointed if there isn’t one.

So is there nothing for the modern audience? The ending isn’t entirely unexpected, but the vividness of the tale itself is something worth experiencing, as well. The framed story concept makes this even more interesting, because it seems as if we, the readers, are in a conversation with the narrator. He even addresses Eliot as if answering questions within the conversation itself, though we never see Eliot’s inquiries. We are Eliot.

This style leads to an atmosphere of excited dread. The narrator is conveying all of these terrible things he’s seen with specific details but also with the horrified enthusiasm of someone who has been fully and truly freaked out. A reader can’t help but keep reading faster in an effort to rush to the end to see what happens. I think this is a brilliant example of how to build tension in a first person narrative.

Of course, Lovecraft is renowned for his graphic descriptions of all manner of beastie. And “Pickman’s Model” is no slouch in this area either. But what I found is that Lovecraft is very sneaky. As the narrator is being shown the paintings in the personal gallery on the way down to the studio, the descriptions of the scenes are vivid and very detailed. Each room he goes through has more and more disturbing images and Lovecraft describes one or two pieces from each as we go along with the narrator. And they are very graphic. Yet when we get to the final room, the studio, and the final, horrible painting . . . there’s not much detail. It is a giant thing with red eyes, bony, scaly claws, a dog face, flat nose and curling lips. Oh and the body is caked with mold and the feet are half-hooved. And it’s gnawing on a human body, head first. But the description is almost skirted in favor of a ranting about the part that made it most gruesome – the painter’s technique. So the most horrible parts, the things that make it truly terrifying to the reader are left to the reader’s imagination. I find that brilliant, as well.

We have, I think, one or two more Lovecraft works to read later in the term. I’m looking forward to seeing how they compare to “Pickman’s Model” particularly stylistically.

I think humans have a number of fears which are universal. Some are the biggies: war, famine, pestilence. They’re global issues, community issues, and they’ve been around forever. We’ve heard stories, both real and fictional, about these things for millennia. Diary of Anne Frank, Saving Private Ryan, Red Badge of Courage, Angela’s Ashes, Outbreak, Andromeda Strain. They touch on our fears of destruction, of pain, of suffering. Those are deep-seated fears. But they’re also the ones that feel furthest away for most of us.

People in the United States, up until 2001, had never feared war on their soil. Most modern day people living in industrialized countries have little fear of famine or pestilence. So the movies and books which touch on these fears are still seen as entertainment. They’re far enough removed from our everyday lives that they’re not immediate. They’re almost not real.

The stories which hit closer to home are the ones that really scare us, because we have universal fears which are held very close to our souls. Abandonment, death, being alone, rejection, loss of independence (financial and personal), loss of family members, the unknown, failure. Weaving these fears into a story brings about a stronger reaction in the reader (or viewer). Why? Because they’re more real on a day to day basis.

Trusting in people could lead to abandonment, which would lead to being alone. Submitting a manuscript could lead to rejection (and, in reality, probably will at least for awhile). Random acts could lead to death, or failure, or a palpable loss. Stories about these things resonate with people because they’re even more universal than the biggies. These are things we deal with every single day as humans.

Zeroing in on these fears, as a writer, can be done with a sledgehammer or with a feather. Some of the creepiest stories seem inconsequential on their surface, but we walk away from them with their characters populating our thoughts and their circumstances weighing on our minds. What if that had been me? How would I have dealt with it? Would I have survived?

Good fear-raising stories make us question our own abilities to overcome our fears. They make us imagine how we might have come through the situation, if at all. But beyond that, a good story like that also often makes us see that our fears can be overcome. Can we overcome death? Not in real life. But we can keep our fear of it from controlling us – at least long enough to get away from the axe/chainsaw/sword/needle-wielding murderer.

Horror writing is, arguably, one of the more emotional types of writing. Because horror is the art of fear. A writer’s ability to reach out to the reader and draw out some of the basest fears is the art, like a dance. It isn’t about the blood and the gore. It’s about the deeper, emotional reaction to a metaphorical monster that frightens all of us.

Okay, maybe you don’t yet, but you will. I’m taking some classes toward my MFA in Writing  Popular Fiction at Seton Hill University (yes, I already have a MA from them. It’s a long story, don’t ask). One of the classes, Readings in the Horror Genre, requires that I post thoughts and observations on our readings on my blog. So if you see a bunch of (brilliant) posts on scary books or horror-ish topics, you’ll know why.

I’ll still be posting the remaining Trip Logs from Europe, it’s just going to take me awhile to finish them. We’ve still got one more post on the Netherlands, then probably three on London. Lots of pics too! So stay tuned :)

So I’m actually home now and have been for about a week. I’ve been trying to get caught up on things, which is why this has been so long in the making. But let’s have a look at Amsterdam, shall we?

We only made it into Amsterdam for one day, due to family events, weather, traffic and illness. (Yes, I was sick the entire time I was in Europe – lovely!). I really wanted to go to the Anne Frank House. I’d been there in the past and it’s a most amazing experience. When I was last there, they were building an annex onto the side of the building that was to have more information, exhibits, etc. So I wanted to see how that ended up. I’ve always been fascinated by the Anne Frank story – about all survivors’ stories, really. So I was quite disappointed when we rounded the corner on this bitterly cold day to see a line completely around the building. The metal and glass building you see in the photo is the new part they were building when I was there. So, still being sick, I didn’t want to stand out in the cold. Instead, we went to a little tea house which was actually just a regular cafe. We split an apple turnover and had Earl Grey tea.

We wandered around the city for a little while, then headed over to the Amsterdams Historisch Museum. This museum chronicles Amsterdam's growth from a tiny, swampy village to the modern city it is today, housing over 750,000 people. All of the information displays were in both Dutch and English, which was very helpful for me and probably stress-relieving for my husband. ;) There were paintings and artwork, as well as sociological exhibits, including a lot of information on the charitable organizations which helped the poor especially during the 1700s and 1800s.

I especially found the archeological displays interesting. In some cases, they’d found leather shoes from the 1200s! And it’s always interesting to look at artifacts that people hundreds of years ago used in their daily lives. It always jump-starts my imagination to consider what they might have been doing when they were wearing those shoes.

After, we wandered around a little more, taking photos and chilling out. We had dinner at a Mexican restaurant because I wanted to see what Dutch Mexican would be like. The food was good, but it’s the first time I’ve ever had to eat tacos with a knife and fork from the beginning! After the tacos are put together, they put cheese over the hard shell and then put it in the oven. Considering that all the Dutch folks I know use a knife and fork for everything (including French fries and pizza!), I really wasn’t that surprised. But it tasted good and that’s all that really matters!

Ahhh, but then… then I finally got to go to a brown cafe! My husband was born and raised in Amsterdam and he’s been to brown cafes before, but they’re not his thing. But ever since my first visit, I wanted to at least go into one and have that experience. He’d never go with me :p So finally I told him this trip that if he wanted to stand on the street and wait for me, that was fine, but I was going to go in. He went in with me.

It was tiny, with lots of green, red and gold alongside the Bob Marley posters. The upstairs seating area had seven tables crammed into about a twelve by twelve room. Sparkly holiday ornaments hung from the ceiling in – you guessed it – Jamaican colors. The walls were mirrored and the haze in the tiny room was like someone had lit a signal fire in the corner. On the menu, you could order actual drinks (coffee, tea, espresso, etc) along with weed or hash or a mix, loose in a bag. There was also the option of buying a joint: either weed or a mix of weed and hash. And did I buy anything? Well, I did buy something… but I’m not telling what! :)

Some photos of Amsterdam for your enjoyment:

So we only spent a few more days in Valles, but we were there for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, as well, which was very nice. It snowed again the night before Christmas Eve and then it was snowy and rainy on Christmas Day. Though it was breathtaking to see some of the vistas, it was very, very cold. And since I’d been sick since the day we arrived in Italy (and am still sick, writing this in London!), I’d been trying very hard not to go out for long periods of time. But the photo ops were irresistible!

And now, something funny. I believe I mentioned that people in that area speak both Italian and German. Now, in high school I took Latin and Spanish. In college I took French and about seven years ago I took a few Italian classes. So all my foreign language skills are in the Romance Languages. I’m not fluent in any of them, but my mouth, throat and voice box understand how to make the sounds required, including the rolling “r” and the lilting accent at the ends of words. But German… that’s a language that’s always eluded me. Truth be told, I never had much interest in learning it. But because my in-laws are all Dutch and the two languages are relatively close in sounds, they all speak German (rather than Italian). At any rate, I was trying my hand – or, rather, mouth – at German now and again. So I went to order some hot tea, which is what I was drinking for almost my entire stay there. And in German, hot tea is “heisse thee” which is pronounced very, very similarly to the English “iced tea.” I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this. So I (thought I) ordered heisse thee in German. I was pretty proud of myself for getting over my fear of looking stupid because I couldn’t speak German. I’m sure you can imagine my chagrin when what came to me was a small glass with cold, cold tea. I resolved to have learned Italian semi-fluently by the time I return. No more German for me!

So we did presents for the kids on Christmas Eve night and on Christmas Eve day everyone tried to take advantage of the last full day we’d be there, by getting out on the slopes. It was cold and rainy all day, though, so by lunchtime everyone was in the warm hotel bar. While we were ordering lunch, we noticed a helicopter in the parking lot across the little street. Over the next hour or so, we saw emergency vehicles bring volunteers from all around. There’d been an avalanche on the backside of the mountain. We didn’t learn details til later, but watched the helicopter disappear to the other side with rescue workers and return at least half a dozen times. At least two trips included dogs. It was really amazing to watch everyone mobilize in order to search and rescue, if necessary. We recognized that many of the emergency vehicles that arrived were from neighboring villages. The way the communities bind together in order to deal with an emergency is awe-inspiring.

Later, we spoke to one of the ski instructors who was part of the rescue effort and he told us that initially, there had been a set of ski poles found near the site of the avalanche, so everyone mobilized as if there were people trapped, though they found out relatively quickly that the poles had just been accidentally left behind and that no one had been in danger. I was very relieved to have heard this, because I couldn’t imagine how terrible it would have been to have learned that a loved one or friend had been trapped in that avalanche on Christmas Day.

The next morning, Carlita and Anita (half of the family team that runs the hotel) made sure we had a good breakfast as well as sandwiches for lunch on the road, then saw us off with hugs and kisses. Everyone at the hotel was so welcoming and friendly. Anita and one of the waitresses, Sabina, had a little bit of English and I helped them learn a little more while they encouraged me with German (not that it did much good, obviously! ;) ). I really felt as if I were visiting family, not just staying at some hotel in the mountains.

I’d love to organize a writing retreat up there during summertime. Anyone want to go to the Italian Alps and write?

On our way back, we passed some pretty sites. A few photos:

We found this little church down a pathway from a small parking area (a rest stop without facilities) on the side of the highway. It’s a functioning church, with services and events like any other church.

Happy New Year! Wishing all my readers (all five of you!) a wonderfully prosperous 2010!

So I’m at least ten days behind on my trip log. My excuse is that I’ve been sick and haven’t been in a very writing frame of mind. Right now we’re at Schipol Airport in Amsterdam waiting for our flight to London Heathrow. We’ve spent about a week in Amsterdam, some days shuttling among family and some days on our own. This trip to London is our long-awaited honeymoon (married May 2002!), so we’re on our own! But, backing up to the Italian leg:

The day before Christmas Eve, we drove about fifteen minutes to get to the small village of Brixon/Bressalone. It’s got a beautiful little shopping area, plus they were having their Christmas Market. The roads were okay on the way there. We’d had a lot of snow the previous days but they really know how to take care of the roads up in the mountains, so we didn’t have any problems getting to Brixon. It was dark when we left though, so things were a bit slippery and slick.

If you’d imagine a little Italian shopping village in the mountains, you would probably be pretty close to imagining Brixon, with the homes and businesses built along the rise of the mountain. The narrow streets are a little stressful from an American perspective (everyone’s glad I wasn’t the one driving!), but the drivers are overall very accommodating and, I think, much more friendly than the average American driver. There were a number of tour busses in the village when we were there and I was amazed at how well the drivers managed the curves and hills!

As I mentioned, Brixon has a nice shopping district with cobblestone streets and ivy covered walls. It’s very hard not to imagine being in a postcard while walking past the shops. The whole town was lit up for the holidays and it had a magical quality.

As far as shopping, I was looking for a nice pair of Italian boots. I expected they wouldn’t be cheap and I found a range of 140 to 250 Euros. Still, very expensive, but what really kept me from getting a pair was the fact that apparently Italian women have very small feet! I couldn’t find any boots I liked to fit my size 9.5US feet! So the Italian boots were a bust, much to the relief of my wallet!

At the heart of the shopping district, Brixon was having its Christmas Market. Many wooden stalls were built there, many housing hand-made Christmas trinkets. Some had generic China-made tourist souvenirs, as well, of course. And at each corner was a stall selling espresso, tea and other warm drinks. Coffee, particularly espresso, is an absolute staple in Europe. I really have no idea how it can be an after dinner drink, because it would keep me up half the night! Anyway, though we didn’t buy anything at the Christmas Market, it was really fun to stroll through. Some of the hand-made work was truly beautiful! Check out a few photos:

We only spent a few more days in Italy, so one more post on that, then we move on to Amsterdam!

One quick update on current events: We did make it to London and I have to say, I’m really impressed with the Underground here. It’s incredibly easy to get around! I really wish Atlanta had a system like this.

Of course, the day we arrived in Italy, I got sick. Everyone around me had been sick for two months at least and I managed to keep the germies from getting me. Until we hit Italy. So I’m sick during my vacation. How sucky is that? But I’m trying to persevere!

It was snowy here in Val/Valles when we arrived. The hotel is situated in a little valley surrounded by mountains. We have a room with the equivalent of a king size bed, a big bathroom  complete with bidet, and a balcony which overlooks the rest of the valley and the ski lift across the creek. The views here are spectacular. It’s difficult to wrap my mind around the fact that the view out my front window looks like a painting on a wall. I can remember when my husband (before we were married) had gone to see the Grand Canyon and said he couldn’t be impressed with it because it was too big to wrap his mind around. I thought that was silly at the time, but I have a better idea of what he meant now. I mean, how can you  fully appreciate a view like this? It’s almost beyond comprehension. And I find it amazing that people actually live here and this is their normal day-to-day life, seeing these views whenever they look out their windows.

There’s several hotels, little restaurants and a couple bars. The other day, we went across the creek, got some hot chocolate at one of the restaurants, then took the ski lift up to the top of one of the mountains. I’m not a skier, so I’ve never even been to any sort of ski facility. I assumed that we’d take the lift up and we’d see the top of the mountain, along with the ski slope that goes down to the valley where our hotel is. Wrong! We got to the top of the mountain and there were ski slopes everywhere! I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me that they’d utilize the entire mountain for skiing. What a dope, right? But there were half a dozen ski slopes up there, in all different directions. I know there was some sort of organization to it, but I couldn’t make it out.

Also at the top of the mountain was a little restaurant where those of us who weren’t skiing hung out. Something interesting about this area of the country: it was part of Germany until about World War I, and everyone here speaks both German and Italian. So the restaurant menus are in both languages. I’ve taken some Italian as well as other romance languages, so I can make out a lot of the written stuff. But German is definitely predominant here.

Yesterday, we drove about fifteen minutes to a small village called Brixen/Bressanone (German/Italian) where we went shopping. They’ve got a great little shopping area and they were having their winter market with lots of little stalls where people sell holiday trinkets, some hand made, some made in China ;) More photos of that trip next!

I’m sitting in the bar of the hotel we’re staying at in the Italian Alps. It’s almost lunchtime and skiers are clomping through with their big, plastic ski boots. We’ve been here a couple days now, but this is the first time I’ve had a chance to sit and write some things up. I’m going to try to give some highlights of my trip so far. And hopefully the pics will upload properly. Internet here is 2 Euros per hour, so you can imagine I’m not connecting all that often!

We arrived in Amsterdam at about 11:30am local time on 17 December. The flight itself was good, but we were surrounded by children and they really got into the tag-team screaming (I’m sure there’s a story in there somewhere about the secret screaming-child conspiracy). There was snow on the ground when we landed in Amsterdam! For those of us from the US, snow isn’t often a  big deal, but snow is rare in Amsterdam, especially in December. So when we went to the house we’ll be staying at here, all the school kids were outside throwing snowballs and building snowmen.

The next morning, we left with my mother in law and brother in law. We drove about  seven hours and stayed overnight in a small town in Germany. Along the way, we stopped at rest areas where you had to pay 50 Euro cents to use the bathroom. You got a ticket and could take it to the counter and use the ticket as credit for a purchase. I thought this was an interesting way to ensure people bought things at the rest area. And because it was all the same system, you can use the bathroom in one area and use the tickets as credit in another rest area. Very interesting! Though I have to say, for those who complain that Starbucks coffee is expensive, you should try the espresso in Germany! It’s wonderful, but at these rest areas, a single espresso, which would cost $1.80 at Starbucks is 2,85 Euro, which comes out to be about $4US. Talk about expensive coffee!

So we go to the little hotel in Germany, called Salzburger Hof, and settled in for the evening. We had dinner in the restaurant on-site and the food was fantastic! We got this family style mixed grill that had weinerschnitzel, chicken, pork, spaetzle, shrimp, french fries and veggies. It was pretty awesome. I really have to admit that the Germans know how to make great food!

It got down to -15 Celsius overnight and it snowed. Freaking cold! So we got back on the road for the last leg of the trip to Italy, which should have been about three hours. It turned into five hours instead. We were driving in temps between –7 and –11*C and the windshield wiper fluid froze in the tubes. You wouldn’t think this would be an issue unless you’ve had the experience of driving in the snow in freezing temperatures. The dirty sludge thrown up from the road stuck to the windows – froze solid whenever we’d run the wipers. So it was smeared along the windshield, leaving a grey grime for us to try to see through. Of course, we had anti-freeze in the wiper fluid, but it was only for temps as low as –20*C. We ended up buying –60*C and finally got the ice broken up in the tubes at around 1pm. After that, we were able to get back up to speed. We passed a lot of little towns nestled in the foothills of the Alps and even got some photos of small castles and strongholds. Some of the views were absolutely spectacular!

We arrived at the hotel in Valles, Italy at about 3pm local time. More photos to come!