My take on "Rawhead Rex" by Clive Barker

A moment’s preamble:  In June of 2014 I began graduate school at Seton Hill seeking an MFA in Writing Popular Fiction. This term I’m enrolled in a course that focuses on MONSTERS, and as a part of that course I’ll blog on each book/story/movie covered.

I'll break each review down into 4 parts: Strength of Character, Genre potency, Poignancy of themes, and Entertainment Value. For each of these I will assign a letter grade. My reviews will contain **SPOILERS**

Synopsis: “An ancient, malevolent monster, magically imprisoned underground, is accidentally awakened in the town of Zeal, Kent. Rawhead is a nine-foot humanoid with a huge, toothed head, and is extremely ferocious. Rawhead goes on a rampage, killing and eating people, including two children. He corrupts the local Verger, who surrenders to the violent, depraved impulses that Rawhead represents, and who helps the monster slay the Vicar, Coot.

Rawhead sets Zeal alight, and is eventually overcome by Ron, father of one of Rawhead's victims, who uses a talisman to stall the beast until he is overrun by a mob of enraged village folk. The talisman depicts a pregnant woman, Rawhead's antithesis and the only thing he fears.” (From wikipedia)

Strength of Character: B

This story was not character driven. The cast was large and varied, and many of them literally short-lived. Clive Barker used the space well, however, characterizing each person quickly and efficiently enough to make us care for them. He was able to achieve this in a few scenes with an intriguing use of multiple POVs. This “head-hopping” is generally frowned upon in writing workshops, but it was intriguing to see it used so well here. The creature, Rawhead’s own POV felt like it was stealing the focus from the humans, which contributed to the horror of his immense power. Rawhead was himself, intriguing, not just a mindless creature bent on destruction. We understood him in a way that sickened. He was so alien, so horrible, yet so unsettlingly familiar.

I found it impossible not to root for the main human characters, Coot and Ron, even though they were flawed and weak. Overall, I commend Clive Barker for his handling of the characters.

Genre Strength: A+

Is that you, Rawhead?

When I imagine reading a great horror story, I expect to have a similar experience to the one I had reading Rawhead Rex. It was reminiscent of an old folktale the likes of which you might see in a book like “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark,” but it was told in a raw, brutal, and yet beautiful way that a children’s book of horror cannot attain. This was a monster story for adults.

Rawhead Rex is a creature of pure malevolence, ancient hate, and animalistic hunger. He is an embodiment of death and carnage, thriving on the fear and misery of the humans he considered himself King over. This is highlighted by his Achilles’ heel being a talisman representation of womanhood and fertility, everything he is not.

The monster was original, genuinely horrific, and captivating. I was impressed with the way Clive Barker let the grotesque fill up his prose, so that you could never be away from it, even when you weren’t reading Rawhead’s POV.

Thematic Poignancy: A

Life vs. death. Fertility vs. impotence. The creation of life vs. the consumption of it. Innocence and corruption. Depravity vs. purity. Weakness faced with horrific strength.

These themes were ubiquitous, not just in the way Rawhead behaved, not just in his nature, but in the very DNA of Clive Barker’s prose. This is the first of his stories I’ve ever read, so I can’t speak to how the rest may be written, but the choices he made with his description bolstered his story to new heights.

Entertainment Value: A

This is my favorite piece we’ve read for my Monsters class. I’ve already covered the ways Barker won me over with his storytelling, but I should mention just how wonderfully surprising the story was. I particularly enjoyed his bait and switch technique where he made us believe Rawhead was going to take Ron’s daughter, just to have him snatch up his son.

Random Notes and Final Grade: A

*I admire the unflinching style Clive Barker writes with. He didn’t write this sort of story hoping not to offend anyone.

*This story is unapologetically repulsive, as if he was saying, “You want to read a story about a monster, huh? I’ll give you a story about a monster.”

*Rawhead pissed on that dude… I’m never going to forget that.

My Take on "The Funeral," a short story by Richard Matheson

A moment’s preamble:  In June of 2014 I began graduate school at Seton Hill in pursuit of an MFA in writing Popular Fiction. I am enrolled in a course that focuses on monsters, and as a part of that course I am to write a blog post on each book/story/movie that we cover. This is the second installment in a series of such posts.

Since there are a bevy of reviews out there that you can find that will give you a “1-5 star” type review I’m going to attempt to go a different route. I’m going to break each review down into 4 parts: Strength of Character, Genre potency, Poignancy of themes, and Entertainment Value. For each of these I will assign a letter grade. My reviews will contain **SPOILERS**

A brief summary: Morton Silkline is hired to host a funeral for an undead man, Ludwig Asper. During the funeral, a disagreement breaks out amongst the sordid company and Morton faints. After the event, Morton is counting his money when he is faced with another patron who’s been recommended to him by Ludwig. Morton decides his avarice outweighs his terror and accepts.

Strength of Character: B-

In a short piece such as this, you don’t have a whole lot of time for characterization. What time Matheson spends on building up his characters, he spends efficiently. Morton Silkline is our protagonist here, and we get a nice feel for him as a character by the way he interacts with his customer, delights over chances for fiduciary gain, and is prone to fainting. The story is a tongue-in-cheek sort that relies on the characters as being types for maximum effect, so I dock him a few points for sticking pretty well to the formula. Ludwig Asper is a vampire in the classical sense, as Jenny the Crone is a witch, and the Count is as a Dracula stand-in etc. The most memorable of the bunch is Jenny, and she jumps off the page in her limited action. Overall, I can’t award Matheson with a higher grade because these characters won’t stick with me for their well-rounded personalities, but that’s just fine for this story.

Genre Strength: B

This story is more humorous than frightening by design, and only could be labelled as horror by its use of monsters and not by any sort of fear that it seeks to elicit. It is a nice twist on the genre, genuinely funny, if not quite brilliant. You get the same sort of kick out of this as you might get out of The Adams Family. This is a good example of a story that pushes on the “boundaries” that we might set up in our minds for genres like horror.

Thematic Poignancy: C-

As opposed to his work in I Am Legend, this piece doesn’t do much heavy lifting when it comes to the potency of its themes. I can detect a wry sense of mocking for the frailty of human’s ability to accept things outside the status quo, and some satire leveled at people for being able to overlook distasteful things when money is concerned. Not particularly powerful, but interesting themes nonetheless.

Entertainment Value: B

This was an entertaining story. I got a kick out of all the monsters gathering together to celebrate the funeral of Ludwig, who keeps popping up out of his casket to scold the guests. It was an easy read, and one I would recommend. Part of why it works this well is because of its brevity, and I think it may have worn out its charm if extended.

Random Notes and Final Grade: B-

*I found Matheson’s prose charmingly pedantic here, serving to juxtapose itself against the silliness that was being described.

*More witches need to disappear into spume, orange or otherwise.

*Mrrrrrow

My Take: I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson

A moment’s preamble:  In June of 2014 I began graduate school at Seton Hill in pursuit of an MFA in writing Popular Fiction. I am enrolled in a course that focuses on monsters, and as a part of that course I am to write a blog post on each book/story/movie that we cover. So this will be the first installment of a series of such posts.

Since there are a bevy of reviews out there that you can find that will give you a “1-5 star” type review I’m going to attempt to go a different route. I’m going to break each review down into 4 parts: Strength of Character, Genre potency, Poignancy of themes, and Entertainment Value. For each of these I will assign a letter grade. My reviews will contain **SPOILERS**

Strength of Character: C

"This film is not a faithful adaptation of the book."

Robert Neville is an intriguing man with some real flaws. He has many hang ups about women, he’s temperamental, prone to alcoholism, and mercurial. I recognized his struggle from the first chapter and found myself both pitying the man and imagining myself in his shoes. He’s lost his wife and daughter, and is so lonely that it is threatening to drive him mad. But he is thrifty and resilient, and wins us over with his desire to understand the virus. Neville is rounded and fairly interesting, but the only other character, Ruth, falls a bit short. She seems like a sketch of a person, an idealized woman representative of the sort of tenderness that Robert sorely misses. She operates in the book mostly as a symbol, and less as a character.

Genre Strength (Fright Factor): D+

Since this is a book of horror I feel obliged to rate it as such. The vampires described are not particularly frightening. They don’t make especially capable adversaries as they are easily knocked around by Neville with a punch or a kick. The horror of the vampire comes from the pandemic of their existence, the wiping out of the human race, the gross perversion of humanity that is Ben Cortman, Neville’s neighbor-turned-vampire-turned-antagonist. The world is dark and post-apocalyptic, but not particularly memorable.

Thematic Poignancy: B+

This is where I Am Legend shines. The plot unfolds in a way to highlight the themes that I believe Matheson was attempting to explore. He seeks to blur the lines between man and monster. Neville is the way he is so that we can see the animalistic side of him, the violent side, the depraved side. Matheson first highlights these characteristics to show Neville as far from heroic. Then he humanizes the vampire with Ruth, showing her to be capable of compassion, of love. At last he turns turns the mythos of the vampire on its head, when Neville realizes with terror that he has become the outsider, the Dracula-like monster, the other. “I Am Legend.”

Entertainment Value: C+

Entertainment Value is a fickle thing to try and pin down, but I will share my personal experience with it. I found the book dark and poignant, the character a little bland, and the plot at times sluggish though intriguing. Some of the best moments were when Neville discovered his watch was dead and that he’d no idea how long he’d been out, the whole of the interaction with the dog including its brutal final moments, and the moment where Ruth makes her move, striking him with the Mallet. These moments were interspersed with some long passages of navel-gazing and hand-wringing that I didn’t find particularly interesting.

Random Notes and Final Grade: C+

* Matheson hooks us nicely with this opening: “On those cloudy days, Robert Neville was never sure when sunset came, and sometimes they were in the streets before he could get back.” I wanted to know more, to get answers.

* Some people may want to condemn Richard Matheson for his character’s views on women, and to that I say, pump thine brakes. Too often readers fall into the trap of seeing characters as the author thinly veiled, which may sometimes be true, but often is a mistake. Neville’s strange views on women serve the story by amping up the tension when he first meets Ruth. What is this crazy guy who’s been thinking about having sex with vampires going to do when he gets this woman all alone? We only are worried about this because we’ve seen how conflicted Neville is, how adolescent his desires seem. This isn’t to say that I know anything about Matheson’s real life views on women, he may be a huge misogynist for all I know, I’m just not going to base my judgment of the author on the prejudices of a character in his book.

* For some reason Richard Matheson was obsessed with telling us every time a character’s throat moved, which was a lot. “Too many times,” I say, my throat constricting and un-constricting as I finish this review.