Laughing at the Abyss

This is the third and final blog in a series devoted to discussion and analysis of Jack Ketchum’s Halloween story “Gone”. At this stage of the game, my commentary about “Gone” probably comes close to exceeding the word count of the story itself. There’s a reason for that. “Gone” is an important story to me. It (along with a handful of others like it) changed the scope and direction of my fiction.

 Prior to reading “Gone”, I was obsessed with the power of the absurd and satiric; the dadaistic, outlandish, and the transgressive. These tendencies run deep in my personality. They’re part of who I am, and even now I’m not seeking to exorcise them. The only problem was that, for a good long while, those shades dominated my palette, to the exclusion of all else. Read any of the work I sold from 2009 or 2010 and I think you’ll see that.

 Then a few things happened (by sheer chance, really) that added new colors to my palette. I attended an event last December thrown by Apex Book Company to celebrate the launch of Gary Braunbeck’s non-fiction book To Each Their Darkness. As I’ve shared in part one of this blog series, Gary’s book was the place I first discovered “Gone”. I don’t know Gary Braunbeck well, personally, but after spending some time around him (sometimes as a student in various workshops), I’ve learned that I should take his opinions pretty damned seriously.

 I read the story.

 I discovered a new kind of horror, much different from most of what I’d been reading. It wasn’t really“new”, of course. It’d been around since the days of Ambrose Bierce, at least. But, for some reason, I hadn’t the opportunity to engage it. Maybe I hadn’t been taught before that it was worth engaging.

 “Gone” showed me how to terrify a reader without showing even a second of violence. “Gone” showed me that I could weave enough subtext around a tale to support it, without yielding to a compulsion to explain everything – it showed me a kind of horror the reader can deduce from putting together the puzzle him-or-herself. (“Gone” is like nothing so much as a jigsaw puzzle which remains inscrutable until the very last piece is placed. But the recognition of the completed picture – however delayed – sends waves of soul-sickness through the reader in a way few other moments can.)

 I’d learned in one of Gary’s short story classes (a few years ago, now) that there’s a trade-off with the short story form: what you lose in length you gain in intensity. (Of course, this isn’t an automatic sort of thing. It might be better said, “since what you’re offering is short you’d damned well better make things intense). “Gone” taught me a new way to manage that intensity. It taught me that there are times when a whisper or a whimper can be more intense than a scream. Tears can be more disturbing than blood.

 “Gone” also taught me that one of the most effective themes in storytelling is the ache of relationships lost (particularly the loss of relationships with children). It’s in The Odyssey. It’s in the myth of Demeter & Persephone. It probably goes back even before then.

 Around the same time I first encountered “Gone”, I also found myself – for the first time, with significant support – able to confront a variety of hitherto-triumphant personal demons. This, of course, impacted my writing. Before, my storytelling emanated from my head. Slowly (inspired by the work of Braunbeck, and Ketchum’s “Gone”, and enabled by my new ability to look past traumas in the eye), I started to let my heart into the act, too.

 Then my reading habits changed. An interest in “Gone” led to an interest in another author Braunbeck talks about in To Each Their Darkness, John Cheever. Cheever led to Raymond Carver. Raymond Carver led to Junot Diaz, and before you knew it I was knee-deep in so-called literary fiction (all of it with a decidedly dark bent, mind you). Nowadays, my reading habits are more diverse than they’ve ever been – and I’m loving it. Variety is the spice of life.

 And that’s what this blog is really about, isn’t it? Balance. This isn’t about throwing the baby out with the bath water. This doesn’t mean that my work won’t continue to be weird, a fair bit of the time. It doesn’t mean I’ll never play around with the transgressive again. What it means is that I’m no longer limited to the weird and transgressive. It was almost as though, before all of this, I only saw a limited band of the visible spectrum, and now I can see more of it. I have more colors on my palette. This means I have more ways to create. In the last year, I’ve written dark stories that weren’t weird at all. I’ve written stories influenced by a Bradburyesque nostalgia. I’ve written stories without any horrific or speculative element at all. Then I’ve also written stories that were every bit as odd and transgressive as the stuff I wrote before, but the oddness is tempered with what I like to think is a heightened emotional awareness.

 Ketchum’s entire career is a testament to the power of equipping one’s fiction-making toolbox with lots and lots of tools. Switching metaphors, no one can accuse him of being a one-trick pony. He can depict grisly violence or he can write quiet horror.   I think in Peaceable Kingdom he even includes a story set in the old west as well as an SF tale.  As he says in the introduction to that volume:  “As a writer, I’m all over the place.” In these days when newer authors are repeatedly told they need to rush to define themselves and “establish a brand”, Ketchum’s career shows this ain’t necessarily so. Or maybe it shows that “establishing a brand” doesn’t mean limiting yourself to a single creative approach.

 (Or maybe I just don’t know a damned thing about branding.)

 Brands are, after all, reserved for livestock. To the best of my knowledge, they’re never used for the benefit of the cow (or even for the benefit of those who eat they cow). They’re only for the benefit of its owner. We’d all do well to remember that.