Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, a Review

Perhaps the reason I've an affinity for dark & twisted art lies with a trio of books I read as a child.  Alvin Schwartz is most known for his collection of folktales marketed towards children.  His most famous books--Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, and Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones--were some of my most favorite reads as a lad, and when I recently happened upon my personal copy of SS3, I couldn't help but dive in.  I went to the library and checked out the first two volumes (not sure why I only have the third?), then promptly drove home and leafed through the pages.

It's impossible to continue without acknowledging Stephen Gammell's defining artwork.  In fact, I'm going out on a limb and saying that it's Gammell's work that makes this collection so cherished (and challenged*, for that matter).  I love the loose, spindly, flowy lines that add an ethereal feel to each work.  Everything has the tone of something horrific waiting to be loosed upon your mind.  I would love to see Gammell do some Lovecraftian illustrations.  Yes, it is Gammell's work that shines in these books, and they've no doubt affected my subconscious.  

Allow me to wax on here.  The illustrations are grotesque.  Magnetic, whereby they repulse the reader, but attract as well.  I feel as if Gammell has somehow captured the essence of a nightmare (or some hell) and then rendered it on us, and, in particular, young minds.  Frankly I'm surprised these books are read by kids, as I can easily see them getting utterly creeped out and running for Mommy in the dead hours after midnight.  Moreover, as I was rocking Avonlea to sleep the other night, I was reading the books and left them beside her crib after she went to sleep.  Keisha brought them to me later as I was brushing my teeth and said, "You can't leave those in there. If I look over there and see 'em in the middle of the night I'd be freaked out."

I guess I would, too.  I have this fleeting fear whenever I wake up during the night.  With the thick shadows and eerie softglow lights, coupled with the fact that I'm not wearing my spectacles, everything is blurred and skewed.  My mind deceives me.  My eyes tell untruths and distortions.  I see monsters and things unknown in the darkness, sinister and evil, things that would fit perfectly alongside these horrors Gammell's illustrated.

Still, there is more to these books than just the art.  Schwartz writes in an easy to understand form, especially for children.  To my understanding, the intention is for these things to be read aloud, and working with that assumption, these stories all do well.  However, if one looks too closely as the sentences, well, one gets disappointed in the simplicity.  It's anticlimactic at times, coming across as uninspired and flat out boring.  This is not prevalent, nor is it epidemic, but the way these stories are told is very weak when compared with other folktales.  (This seems fickle, as I'm comparing a children's book to adult, scholarly things, but what can I say?)  Nevertheless, I did feel like Schwartz dropped the ball several times throughout these three books, but if you're reading them aloud, it's not too bad.

If we look at the folktales and urban legends themselves, then these three books are a treasure chest of them.  Each tale spans from 1-3 pages (most falling at just over a page) in length, and because of that, there are a multitude of stories.  Many are familiar things, things we all know, things our grandparents swear are true.  But there are more than enough unfamiliar ones, too.  And to me, digesting a "new" folktale, especially one that's been around for years, is like cream cheese icing on a carrot cake.  Delicious.

I appreciate Schwartz listing a bibliography at the end of each book, as it's nice to be able to dig deeper (or see different tellings) for a story.  When things are from oral tradition, Schwartz lists people involved, too, or areas he collected from.  I also like how there are "alternate endings" or miscellany for the stories listed.

These three books are delightful little reads.  There's no doubt that they're heavily responsible for my taking to folktales, as I read these books for the first time in elementary school, but they're also probably responsible for my weakness for dark art.  I'm glad to have stumbled on my copy of SS3 the other day, and even more glad to find the library's copies were in the stacks and not checked out.  Halloween is the perfect time to read these books, and the RIP challenge just makes it more pleasant.  If you've never read the stories Schwartz tells, then you're missing out.  But even more, if you've not had your heart stopped by Stephen Gammell's horrid illustrations, you're really missing out.  I strongly recommend remedying this as soon as humanly possible.

-----

*Not only was this series the most challenged during the 1990s, it was also the 7th most challenged between 2000-2009.  I'm assuming 

House of Leaves, a Review (Spoiler-Free)

Little solace comes

to those who grieve

when thoughts keep drifting

as walls keep shifting

and this great blue world of ours

seems a house of leaves

moments before the wind. (p.563)"

Defining Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves is like asking a five year old to describe the Riemann Hypothesis.  House of Leaves is, on its fringes, a story about the Reader.  In the Introduction by Johnny Truant, we're flat out told that what we're reading is a product from a manuscript he found in the room of a dead man named Zampanò.  The manuscript, as it turns out, is a scholarly work based on a documentary Zampanò has become obsessed with: The Navidson Record.  And if House of Leaves is about anything at all--its heart, its cornerstone, its foundation--then it's about The Navidson Record.

Will Navidson is a critically acclaimed photojournalist.  Years of life spent away from his long-time partner Karen Green, a former cover model, and his two children, Chad and Daisy, has the Navidson family barreling towards non-existence.  Will and Karen decide to purchase a quaint Virginia house and settle down and work on their family.  Will seeks to finish his career with a simple documentary on their new lives in their new home.  He installs video cameras throughout the house, motion sensors to pick up when activity is going on, and settles in for a calm retirement.

But everything does not go as planned.  The house seems odd, and one day, for no apparent reason, Will and Karen discover a new closet situated outside their bedroom door.  Baffled, Will gets the floor plans and begins going through measurements, confused.  And when he discovers that the house measures larger on the inside than it does on the outside, the groundwork is laid for the rest of the "movie."

The Navidson Record is as tantalizing as it is terrifying.  The house on Ash Tree Lane is creepy and dark.  Navidson, an explorer at heart, sets out to understand the house and its unnerving black (and apparently unending) labyrinth of hallways that appears in its center.

Zampanò's manuscript exhaustively covers the film, from its subtle and serene beginnings to its haunting and stunning conclusion.  His work is littered with footnotes, and as Truant tells us at the onset, many of these footnotes' references simply do not exist in real life.  Keeping this in mind, the remainder of the manuscript makes for a fascinating exploration of the film, sometimes mind-numbingly so.

"As I discovered, there were reams and reams of it. Endless snarls of words, sometimes twisting into meaning, sometimes into nothing at all, frequently breaking apart, always branching off into other pieces I'd come across later--on old napkins, the tattered edges of an envelope, once even on the back of a postage stamp; everything and anything but empty; each fragment completely covered with the creep of years and years of ink pronouncements; layered, crossed out, amended; handwritten, typed; legible, illegible; impenetrable, lucid; torn, stained, scotch taped; some bits crisp and clean, others faded, burnt or folded and refolded so many times the creases have obliterated whole passages of god knows what--sense? truth? deceit? a legacy of prophecy or lunacy or nothing of the kind?, and in the end achieving, designating, describing, recreating--find your own words; I have no more; or plenty more but why? and all to tell--what?" (p.xvii)

But still yet, in an even further removed frame, the Reader understands (again, at the beginning of the novel, so as to keep SPOILER-FREE) that we're also reading Johnny Truant's annotations of Zampanò's manuscript.  Truant's story begins in the Introduction, and as it unfolds throughout the footnotes, we discover how the manuscript affects him.  Truant is a mesmerizing POV, as one of the first things he tells us is that he's unreliable.  And as we read, both the manuscript and the footnotes, we're constantly left puzzling over what's been altered, if anything.  This, as the Reader will undoubtedly understand, is disorienting and intentional.  And as we come to understand Truant's background, especially concerning the Whalestoe Letters, what's real and what's not comes under even more scrutiny.

To me, the most interesting part of the book deals with the darkness inside the house.  Danielewski a la Truant a la Zampanò paint a vivid picture of the blackness, the absence of light within the house.  

"The walls are endlessly bare. Nothing hangs on them, nothing defines them. They are without texture. Even to the keenest eye or most sentient fingertip, they remain unreadable. You will never find a mark there. No trace survives. The walls obliterate everything. They are permanently absolved of all record. Oblique, forever obscure and unwritten. Behold the perfect pantheon of absence." (p.423)

I know what dark is.  I live in the state with the largest cave system in the world.  I've been to the depths of the earth and had the lights extinguished, propelled into absolute darkness, a blackness so thick that one can't help but despair.  And yet, the darkness within the house seems darker.  This has definitely played upon my mind at night as I've roamed the halls of my own house, and I confess to a quickened pulse a time or two.

Another part that must be addressed is the bizarre formats used.  This was the primary reason I wanted to read the book, and after finishing, I enjoyed the way the book was presented.  The Reader has to flip the book, turn it sideways, and go through mental hoops to read certain passages, but it definitely adds to the story.  I read the full color edition, which is the author's preferred edition, as it includes over two-hundred pages of appendices, filled with more fascinating puzzle pieces (and if you read the book, I recommend following the instructions to see the Appendix before continuing on with the novel) and I can't imagine reading this book any other way.

So what is House of Leaves?  It's a book containing four stories, one woven story, some spelled out more than others, some flat out ignored.  It's meta.  It's contained.  It's puzzling.  It's erudite, so keep a dictionary very close.  It's compelling.  It's tedious.  It induces smiles and wicked grins, but groans and sighs.  It's beautiful.  It's art.  It's a love story.  It's disgusting and leaves one needing a bath.  It's definitely not for the faint of heart or those offended by crude sex.  It is a remarkable read, leaving the Reader satisfied and immediately ready to dive back in again to see what's missed, but at the same time worn down and betrayed.  If Danielewski intended this, then he succeeded.  I enjoyed House of Leaves immensely and would love to discuss it with someone (thankfully there are forums devoted to it).  It's easy to recommend.