Michael Potts writes horror, Southern fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. He has authored three novels: End of Summer, Obedience, and Unpardonable Sin, the nonfiction Aerobics for the Mind, and the poetry collections, Hiding from the Reaper and other Horror Poems and From Field to Thicket.
Sunday, June 16, 2019
A Personal Journey to Seek One's Identity: A Review of Robin Greene's "The Shelf Life of Fire" (Durham, NC: Light Messages, 2019)
"Raw". "Vivid." "At times disturbing." These descriptions describe Robin Greene's latest novel, The Shelf Life of Fire. It is a personal journey of a woman who receives a phone call notifying her that her brother is dying of cancer. The brother was irresponsible and self-centered, and he hurt his family in deep and far-reaching ways. This call throws the woman into a depression in which she questions her identity and whether there is any point to her life or to life in general. It is an existential journey, but one that is concrete, raw, and emotionally wrenching (at times) to read, for the author writes about excruciatingly painful events. The tension is present within the main character's self from the start of the novel onward, but there is still room for a surprise near the end. The woman is caught between the poles of self-destruction and self-acceptance. The novel explores the journey that ends with one of these options. It is well worth the effort for the reader to take that journey with the main character and see it through to the end.
Friday, June 7, 2019
A Short Review of You Don't Scare Me, by John Farris
A Short Review of You Don't Scare Me, by John Farris (New York: Forge Books, 2007)
John Farris is one of my favorite horror writers, and this book was not a disappointment. True, as some reviewers noted, the characters could have been more realistically developed, but the story is fascinating--Southern horror with a twist. An evil man, a murderer and rapist, haunts a girl from the grave. She gained the "gift" (or curse) of gaining unsolicited communications from the underworld due to a near-drowning. With the help of her boyfriend, she tries to defeat the evil man before he destroys her and her beau.
One reviewer said this was a Lovecraftean story, and in some ways it is--but I will let the reader determine that for herself to avoid spoilers. I would say that the book did not bring scares in the sense of a jump scare at a horror movie; instead, it presents a sense of unease. This book is not for every horror fan, but for those who enjoy Southern horror, redneck horror, a bit of contemporary physics, a bit of Lovecraft, and a lot of unease, they will probably like this book.
John Farris is one of my favorite horror writers, and this book was not a disappointment. True, as some reviewers noted, the characters could have been more realistically developed, but the story is fascinating--Southern horror with a twist. An evil man, a murderer and rapist, haunts a girl from the grave. She gained the "gift" (or curse) of gaining unsolicited communications from the underworld due to a near-drowning. With the help of her boyfriend, she tries to defeat the evil man before he destroys her and her beau.
One reviewer said this was a Lovecraftean story, and in some ways it is--but I will let the reader determine that for herself to avoid spoilers. I would say that the book did not bring scares in the sense of a jump scare at a horror movie; instead, it presents a sense of unease. This book is not for every horror fan, but for those who enjoy Southern horror, redneck horror, a bit of contemporary physics, a bit of Lovecraft, and a lot of unease, they will probably like this book.
Tuesday, May 14, 2019
A Review of Dragonfly and Other Songs of Mourning by Michelle Scalise
Michelle Scalise's book of poems mourning the death of her husband, horror writer Tom Piccirilli, are every bit as moving as Donald Hall's "Without." I never thought I would find a book of poetry on mourning that matched Hall's in quality and emotional depth, but this book does. When I finished reading it at the airport in Grand Rapids, I was in tears and had to get up and walk around, luggage and all, to process the emotions. I teach philosophy and medical ethics and will be teaching a course on "The Meaning of Death" this fall. I plan to use some of these poems in the class. The title poem, "Dragonfly", expresses the frustration of the grieving with the trite statements well-meaning friends and relatives make: "Plug my ears to no avail / their voices go on and on / 'At least he's not in pain'," as if that makes the loss any easier. I cannot adequate describe the beauty and emotional punch of these poems. I recommend them to anyone who desires to read fine poetry as well as anyone who works with the dying and the mourning or teaches courses in those areas.
Thursday, February 7, 2019
Silver Dagger Blog Tour for Obedience this Week
I hope you can check out my blog tour set up by Silver Dagger--there are guest posts, unique summaries of the book, and a sample of the book for you to savor.
https://www.silverdaggertours.com/sdsxx-tours/obedience-book-tour-and-giveaway?fbclid=IwAR3z1WPxFeXFVdcKiCxbymeHT1dIL_wCly1W5gnutNdXojXAezWr2Z5F2j0
https://www.silverdaggertours.com/sdsxx-tours/obedience-book-tour-and-giveaway?fbclid=IwAR3z1WPxFeXFVdcKiCxbymeHT1dIL_wCly1W5gnutNdXojXAezWr2Z5F2j0
Sunday, January 20, 2019
The Contemporary Ghost Story
Do
ghosts haunt your mind? Perhaps they are the ghosts of past mistakes, waiting
to rise from unconscious darkness into the horror of full awareness. They may
be the ghosts of past relationships, those “It might have been….” “I wish it
had been….” Or “What if it had been… questions that are guests of
near-photographic memories flooding consciousness at the most unexpected
moments. Perhaps you have experienced a classic ghost, the spirit of a person
who has died. All these subjects have been treated in the contemporary ghost
story.
The
classic ghost story of the nineteenth century was about the return of a spirit
of a dead person, perhaps vengeful, perhaps not, but the goal is to create in
the reader a sense of the uncanny, the mysterious, a fear that brings chills
that continue long after someone finishes reading a story. One of the classics
is M. R. James’s “O Whistle and I’ll Come to You, my Lad,” quoting a haunting
line from Robert Burns, the Scottish poet. If you have not read the story, I
hope you do. I will not give away the plot, but like most James stories, the
tension builds slowly and a chill grows until the reader experiences a feeling
somewhat like Rudolf Otto’s notion of mysterium
tremendum et fascinans, “mysterious, tremendous, yet fascinating.” The
feeling is more like a creepy sense of awe, though it is mixed in with a good
deal of old-fashioned fear. The traditional story has continued in contemporary
fiction; a contemporary master of the traditional ghost story was Russell Kirk
(1918-1994) in his fine collection, Ancestral
Shadows (ISI, 2004). His stories left me with more of a feeling of awe that
James’s, and that says a lot. One must include Peter Straub’s fine 1979 novel, Ghost Story.
Although
traditional ghost stories are still being written, they usually have to have a
unique twist to avoid repeating the same plot line and themes of earlier
stories too closely. Many contemporary ghost stories focus on psychological
forces that haunt us—tragic errors, personality flaws, mental health issues,
living people who continue to haunt, sometimes in negative ways. The “ghost”
might be memories of abuse or memories of a first kiss full of promise of
happiness that led to heartache. A ghost might be a hallucination produced by
the mind alone based on nothing that is externally real. It might be the return
of a deadly temper suppressed for many years that explodes into murder and
mayhem. The psychological sophistication of contemporary ghost stories is
significantly greater than those written in the past (except for, perhaps,
Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw).
Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill
House leaves it an open question whether the ghosts are objectively real or
the psychological horrors of the protagonist. The stories in Joe Hill’s 20th Century Ghosts mainly
concern psychological ghosts rather than “dead people ghosts.” A masterpiece of
stories regarding psychological ghosts is Mort Castle’s Knowing When to Die: Uncollected Stories (Independent Legions
Publishing, 2018), which is literary horror of the highest order. Since my bias
is toward the supernatural ghost story, I was not a fan of the collections of
psychological ghost stories I had read before I read Castle’s book. I am a fan
of this collection; it is excellent.
I
still prefer the supernatural ghost story (“dead people ghosts”), but I am more
open than before to non-supernatural, psychological ghost stories if they
result in a similar mysterium tremendum feeling I have when reading good
supernatural ghost stories. Reading both kinds is essential for any writer of
ghost stories today.
Friday, January 11, 2019
Should Horror End in Hope?
Traditionally,
horror stories had hopeful endings. This, in part, was the result of writers,
whether they were religious or nonreligious, sharing a generally Christian
culture. If Bram Stoker had ended Dracula with the vampire winning, with evil
triumphing over good, his book would not have become a best seller in 1897. As
Christianity faded from Western Culture, horror grew increasingly pessimistic,
especially after the vast societial changes that occurred in Europe and the
United States from 1964 on. Two of the best literary horror novels written,
Thomas Tryon’s The Other (1971) and Harvest Home (1973) ended with evil
triumphing over good. I can remember as a teenager watching the movie based on Harvest Home entitled The Dark Secret of Harvest Home (1978).
Of course Shirley Jackson’s short story, “The Lottery” (1948) is a similar
story and a precursor to the more pessimistic horror stories to come. The movie
upset me as much as “The Lottery” did when I read it in junior high school. It
did not seem right that evil would win. Of course H. P. Lovecraft’s stories from
the early twentieth century are nihilistic in a way, but they are good at
revealing a world without purpose and deity, subject to the arbitrary whims of
the mindless god Azathoth and the other “gods.”
Although
Stephen King’s work is generally hopeful and optimistic at the end of his
books, the change from the ending of King’s story, “The Fog,” into the ending
of the recent movie reveals, in part, a change in the culture of horror. Books
and movies with hopeful endings are still being written, but some horror, such
as the Splatterpunk movement of the 1980s, comes across as nihilistic rebellion
against order in general. At least the characters in Lovecraft’s fiction
believe in fighting against the chaos they find. The Nightmare on Elm Street series along with the Halloween series, has Freddy and Jason
being resurrected time and time again as if they are undefeatable. To me, this
is not a good thing—it is not the same as J.R.R. Tolkien’s saying that evil
always reappears in other forms over time for Tolkien has ultimate hope that
one day evil with be totally conquered.
I do
not mind if children read or watch horror per se; children love to get scared.
What is hurtful is when a horror story or movie leaves them without hope.
However, there is a way that some adults can get something useful from
nihilistic horror—they can see the results of a godless universe. Rather than
parroting the atheistic existentialist’s manta about finding one’s own meaning
in a universe without God, nihilistic horror spits in the face of that view,
recognizing it as a cop-out, a denial of reality. Thus religious people can
watch and learn from nihilistic horror how a totally matter-energy based universe
leads to meaninglessness, violence, and despair. However, when others read such
books and watch such movies, they may think that nihilism is the correct view
of reality—and behave accordingly.
Nihilistic
horror is a logical development from the loss of Christianity among writers and
others in the intellectual and artistic classes. It still does not appeal to
most Americans who watch movies, as the ending to the movie The Fog killed any chance of it being a
financial success in the United States. Japanese horror, such as the Ring series and the Grudge series, is not nihilistic since the bad things that happen
have a purpose in the Buddhist karmic system. Neither is the Saw series since the motive for killing
is moral desert—the victims deserve what happens to them. Cormac McCarthy’s
works sometimes border on nihilism, especially Child of God and perhaps Blood
Meridian, but in the end his characters are searching for a truth in their
lives that they find elusive. No Country
for Old Men reflects the point of view of a sheriff who sees the rise of
psychopathic violence that he attributes to the loss of traditional values. However,
violence and destruction for no reason at all other than to shock the reader or
viewer does reflect a nihilistic world view.
This
does not mean that everyone should avoid nihilistic books or movies; not only
can educated Christians learn from them, but also writers of all religious
backgrounds or none. Thomas Tryon is a master of prose. Clive Barker writes a
variety of work, not all nihilistic, and his fiction has a literary flare
arising from Barker’s love of the King James Bible and classic literature. The
horror elements in some of these books are useful, and the writer should always
seek new ways or variations on older ways of creating suspense and a sense of
dread.
The
writer of horror who prefers hopeful endings should avoid the ending coming
across as contrived. That is an easy mistake to make. The ending should flow
logically and naturally from the overall story while still having an element of
surprise in the climax and denouement. Stephen King’s early work and Dean
Koontz’s horror works are good models to follow.
Personally
I will not write a horror novel with an unhappy ending unless I am trying to
illustrate what a world without God will look like, as I did in my short story,
“Earnest Expectations,” about a man who gets an unpleasant surprise about the
ultimate nature of the afterlife. H. P. Lovecraft was a model for that story.
In my novels, focusing as they do on the battle between good and evil, I cannot
in good conscience as a Christian end them by leaving the reader without hope.
What Tolkien labeled the “eucatastrophe” (“good catastrophe”) of Christianity
and a good story is what I am trying to capture, and I pray that thus far I
have done that well and will do so in any future work.
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