So, I'm very nearly done (FINALLY) with "Ghost Story." A few comments before I am done with it...
I feel it’s clunky, and has a lot of shallow stuff thrown in there without much behind it – like a zombie marching band playing a bunch of kazoos (and, sadly, there’s even a peripheral character in the book, Dr. Rabbitfoot, who would likely lead such a band). Stephen King gushed about this book, but I just don’t see the attraction. It's like watching something through glass block -- hell, even that would be more terrifying. There’s only one scene that had any kind of bite for me, and even then, it was more a nibble than a bite – like a case of potential there that wasn’t realized. The whole book is very, very arm’s length, which (at least to me) violates the spirit of what Horror could/should be.
I have a theory, maybe that Straub is a conservative, and this is a conservative person’s Horror novel. Now, Horror is, by its nature, a conservative genre – that’s where the horror comes from, like the outraged sensibilities and the capacity for revulsion and terror at the Other.
BUT, by saying that it’s a conservative’s Horror novel, it’s like it’s ARCH-conservative – now, lest you think there’s some overtly political slant to it, it’s not there. But I can sniff out people’s stances, and my sense is that Straub has this Idea(tm) of Good, Decent People(tm) – MEN, in particular, up against an ineffable, horrible, Female Evil(tm) that upends the Proper Order of Things(tm). Which is certainly a component of classic Horror. I get that.
However, he can’t really properly characterize anybody in it – not the male characters, nor the female menace. They’re cardboard cutouts, and the reader is supposed to be hit by it, like “OMG! What an outrage! How HORRIBLE!” – like bad service in a restaurant or something: “Well, I NEVER—” – that kind of fuddy-duddy, pajamas-n-slippers sensibility. It’s like the cliché of how men aren’t in touch with their feelings – none of the men are really in touch with their feelings; they’re all fucking uptight, totally hemorrhoidal, so the “wild” Evil(tm) just upends things, but he can’t find the “emotional pool” (hah!) to offer the right sell, beyond the fuddy-duddy-ism.
Maybe it hit a note in 1979, but in 2010, I’m thinking “WHERE is the horror, here?” Not finding it. I was really hoping for sizzling slabs of Horror, or even a proper ghost story (I mean, "Ghost Story," right?) But, instead, none of the above -- the baddies are these shapeshifting spirits (?) that basically mindfuck people and make them kill themselves (but you never really properly see this -- Straub "averts the eye" in most of the encounters, which is doubly damning, because the detail isn't much there to begin with, so you're peeking through the glass block of his prose, trying to see what's going on, and just when you think you can see something moving back there, he shifts the scene and you're someplace else). Legerdemain.
Admittedly, the Ghost Story is the hardest kind of Horror story to write -- it really is, but that just requires one to apply oneself harder to it. There's a kind of dueling banjos of ineffability in play with "Ghost Story" -- the main characters aren't fleshed out well enough for their back story to have much meaning, and the villain is so diaphanous and chimerical as to be similarly meaningless. It's kind of my rule with fiction -- "anything goes" is almost the same as "nothing to see, here," bizarrely enough.
Admittedly, the Ghost Story is the hardest kind of Horror story to write -- it really is, but that just requires one to apply oneself harder to it. There's a kind of dueling banjos of ineffability in play with "Ghost Story" -- the main characters aren't fleshed out well enough for their back story to have much meaning, and the villain is so diaphanous and chimerical as to be similarly meaningless. It's kind of my rule with fiction -- "anything goes" is almost the same as "nothing to see, here," bizarrely enough.
I went in with an open mind, but Straub lost me with the overlong and plodding prologue, and he just dug himself in deeper. I mean, I'm glad that the book served him well and let him build a career and a reputation, but I wasn't convinced by this effort.
Poor Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. -- his last movie appearance, I think...
"Ghost Story" (1981)
Which took about a paragraph from the book and made it into a whole movie that was mediocre at best. I'd always held out hope that the book would be better than the movie, but I can't really say it's so. The above scene is actually scarier than anything in the book, which says something, right? (and, yes, the hokey nature of that death scene is editorially right in step with the book). Oh, and it looks like they CGI'd up the ghost in the movie, which sucks -- the original looked scarier.
