Students are to post ONE reaction (minimum 350 words) to the assigned listening/reading/viewing linked below. Students are encouraged (but not required) to additionally respond to other student reactions."The Autumnal Genius of John Bellairs" by Grady Hendrix: "There’s a particular kind of nostalgia that smells like burning autumn leaves on an overcast day. It sounds like a static-filled radio station playing Brylcreem advertisements in the other room. It feels like a scratchy wool blanket. It looks like a wood-paneled library stuffed with leather-bound books. This is the flavor of occult nostalgia conjured up by author John Bellairs and his illustrator, Edward Gorey, in their middle grade gothic New Zebedee books featuring low-key poker-playing wizards, portents of the apocalypse, gloomy weather, and some of the most complicated names this side of the list of ingredients on a packet of Twinkies." Click heading to read essay.
"Is there still room for scares in John Bellairs?" by Erik Adams: "The imagery and atmosphere of Bellairs’ work inspired a previous generation of readers to become a new generation of writers: The John Bellairs Fandæmonium website collects testimonies from such fans-turned-authors; The Decemberists’ Colin Meloy recently dropped Bellairs’ name in an NPR interview about Under Wildwood, his second YA effort with wife/personal Edward Gorey Carson Ellis. It all goes to show that the art that most often sticks with us, the work that most terrorizes and tantalizes, is that which leaves room for the unknown and the unsaid, that which invites us back by leaving room to interpret what’s hovering just out of view." Click heading to read the essay.
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THE GASHLYCRUMB TINIES by Edward Gorey: "Part Tim Burton long before there was Burton, part Edgar Allan Poe long after Poe, the book exudes Gorey’s signature adult picture book mastery, not merely adorned by the gorgeously dark crosshatched illustrations but narratively driven by them." Click heading to read/view The Gashlycrumb Tinies.
THE HAPLESS CHILD by Edward Gorey: Click title to download PDF of The Hapless Child.
Why the Link Between Bellairs & Gorey is Unbreakable by Matt Domino: "Bellairs were browsing a bookstore and came across The Fatal Lozenge, an illustrated alphabet book by Edward Gorey. Bellairs was particularly fond of Z, which was illustrated with a Zouave [a class of French Army infantry members in the 19th and 20th centuries] hoisting an impaled baby on a bayonet with an accompanying verse." Click heading to read essay.
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Charles Addams by Christian Willaims (The Washington Post): In a sunny day in 1953, patent attorney F.T. Griswold holds a funny-looking electrical gizmo out the window of his office, aiming it down at the streets below. At his side stands the inventor of the device, hat in hand and waiting hopefully. "Death ray, fiddlesticks!" comes the verdict. "Why, it doesn't even slow them up."That is, of course, a New Yorker cartoon perpetrated by Charles Addams. Like his inventor's ray gun, Addams has never successfully harmed anybody. But it is safe to say that, over the past 50 years, his weird cartoons have certainly slowed them up." Click heading to reading article.
The Father of the Addams Family (NPR): They said that Charles Addams slept in a coffin and drank martinis with eyeballs in them. They said he kept a guillotine at his house and received chopped-off fingers in the mail from fans. It was once reported that he had been given a monogrammed straitjacket as a birthday gift -- a garment that might have come in handy if the other stories were true, such as the one Patricia McLaughlin told about Addams moving around the living room at a party, "methodically and imponderably depositing" dollops of tooth powder in various corners. "A charm to ward off cavity-causing vampires?" she wondered. People said that Addams had married Morticia, the pale dagger in the spidery black dress from The Addams Family, that familiar band of subversives that included Gomez, Lurch, Pugsley, Wednesday, Uncle Fester, Grandma, Thing, and Cousin Itt. Click heading to read essay, excerpt, and/or listen to interview.
Is Someone Going to Bake Me a Pie? The eeriness of Mother Goose. Charles Addams' Illustrations remind us how the classic tales could seem in the minds of the kids to whom we read them. Click heading to view book.
11 comments:
I found the interview with Charles Addams to be very interesting, especially when they were talking about the weird things he keeps around his house like medieval crossbows and an embalming table as his coffee table. By surrounding himself with weird objects, he is immersing himself in an environment that inspires him. From the description of his house and of his behavior (like sleeping in a coffin), it is clear that his immediate environment inspired his story, the Addams Family. I also found it interesting how he would purposefully include his biggest fears in his stories as a way to desensitize himself to them and overcome them. In the interview they talked about how he would draw the most horrifying and biggest snakes he could think of and eventually he got over his fear of snakes. It reminds me of a saying (I’m not sure who said it but I’ve heard it a lot) about how art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. While the Addams Family probably disturbed a lot of people with its creepy aesthetics, for Addams it was probably the opposite.
I also thought the two readings about Bellairs's novels were interesting as well, especially because it sparks a discussion about the writing industry and their influence over writers. In the articles it tells the story of how Bellairs's novel The House With A Clock In Its Walls was initially written for an adult audience, but the editors told him to rewrite it for middle grade. The book was very successful which made Bellairs want to write the next books in the series as middle grade. By the time he wrote his third book in the series, The Letter, the Witch, and the Ring, he had it in his mind that he was specifically writing for a young audience. Some writers tend to underestimate the ability of younger audiences to understand complex plots and mature themes, which I think is what happened here. His writing in the third book was described as exhausted, condescending, and uninspired. The plot was described as boring and simple and the characters as stereotypes. Maybe this book could have been better without the influence of the editors or even Bellairs himself wanting to make a profit off of younger readers. I feel like, especially these days, editors have too much influence over writers. They make them ruin their stories for whatever is most profitable currently rather than letting the author tell the story that they want to tell.
The most interesting reading to me was The Hapless Child. Never could I have imagined a short story about a little girl could tug my heartstrings like that. My emotions were jumping from place to place. From Vindication, to sympathy, to apprehension, to sadness, and finally to shock. I couldn't have predicted the story would end like it did. I think in part that this was due to the cute art by Gorey which enhanced the cute aspect of the story making me subconsciously put my guard down, while it enhanced the tragic aspect of the story immensely.
Another part of the reading I enjoyed was hearing about how John Bellairs and Charles Addams drew from their real lives when writing their stories. The notion that being authentic in your writing can be the perfect steady foundation to go crazy building on top of is something that I knew but didn't have a clear example of before. Bellairs and Addams used their real lives to ground their stories in truth while going wild with their imaginations.
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The relationship between Bellairs and Gorey is also another part of this that I found interesting. Their styles work together like bread and butter, complementing and enhancing the qualities of their respective mediums. But to find out that despite this seeming perfect synergy, they likely never spoke directly to one another is baffling to the utmost degree. Although they knew of each other and spoke well of one another work, the fact that they never exchanged ideas or concepts with one another but managed to work so well is a miracle and a testament to the abilities of Gorey in particular. For adapting Bellairs words, world, and characters into a visual medium and not have it be a jarring and contradictory mess. The macabre and unsettling quality of his illustrations proved highly influential and cemented him as one of the greats of the 20th century fiction. Sometimes I find myself wondering had they corresponded, what greatness could have come from their closer collaboration? Perhaps the latter two New Zebedee books could have lived up to the standard the first had set instead of falling victim to the simplification a Middle Grade classification insisted upon.
Finding the threshold that distinguishes adult literature from YA or middle-grade literature is challenging, but it is best represented by examining successful examples of works in the genre. Specifically, the works and collaborations of Bellairs and Gorey are ideal displays of edgy content aimed towards a younger audience. While stories of struggling and dying children may not initially seem suitable for teenagers, the authors' illustrations and literary choices shifted the target audience. Incorporating characters relatable to the experiences of younger readers helps alter the intended reading group. Additionally, illustrations can not only supplement the content of a story, but they can even change the meaning. As demonstrated through Charles Addams' visual interpretations of classic rhymes, pictures can work in tandem with the written word to create unique meaning. While illustrations may not always be appropriate for all literary works, they should be taken advantage of when possible.
Suspense is also a powerful tool in creating works within this genre of literature, but it is challenging to master. It can help maintain the reader's attention and act as a catalyst for plot progression. One way to help refine the use of suspense is to leave some aspects of the unknown untouched. While explanations and elaborations can help set the scene and initiate exposition, they should not be overdone. Although it is tempting to clarify plot points and ensure that readers understand developments, vagueness can be a valuable tool to create fear and unease when it is appropriate. In Edward Gorey's works, even the illustrations create a sense of foreboding through the ambiguous situations. The titles give some indication of the tragedies that each of the Ghastlycrumb children faces, but the actual suspense lies in the promise of horrors, not in their actual realization. The lessons imparted by these exemplary executions of middle-grade and YA literature can be applied to personal works in this genre as well. For example, although illustrations are not particularly my forte, I can use descriptions of settings and scenes to replicate a similar suspenseful effect. Ultimately, looking towards the works of iconic creators like Gorey, Addams, and Bellairs is a positive first step towards cultivating skills in this genre of writing.
For this assignment, I read The Hapless Child by Edward Gorey, a story that tells of the deteriorating life and unfortunate death of Charlotte Sophia. Charlotte starts off the way many victims of tragedy do, that being happy. She then proceeds to lose both of her parents, her father to war and her mother to illness, before her uncle dies to a falling brick. She moves in with her family's lawyer and is forced to attend boarding school with fellow students that would be perfect for birth control advertisements. After losing consciousness (as well as her locket) for plot reasons, Charlotte is kidnapped, sold, and forced to make fake roses by a drunkard, who is likely responsible for raising at least one of the girls that she met in school. The conditions are horrible enough to make her lose most of her eyesight and plot twist! Her father isn't nearly as dead as the letter at the beginning wanted us to believe. Judging by the peculiar outfit he wears in the page after we learn this, I wouldn't be surprised if he faked his death and was laying low for whatever reason. Meanwhile, Charlotte, while not completely blind, is blind enough to not hear the car that ends up hitting her. Her father finds her, but no longer recognizes her, and the story concludes.
The first thing I noticed was the art, as one tends to do when the pictures take up most of the screen. There's something pleasing about the art style, even if the story is as dark as it is. On the subject of the art, I like the fact that you can see little demon-esque creatures hidden in the pictures, as well as the larger beast with what might be the same mirror/portrait in the second to last image that the two creatures in the first image were holding. The fact that this image has no caption makes it a lot more interesting in my opinion since it leaves certain things unclear. Did this larger creature somehow orchestrate all of the suffering Charlotte went through? Are the little ones its servants? Is it perhaps a sort of failed guardian angel, who only realized what had occurred far too late to fulfill its purpose? What happened to the two creatures that were holding the portrait/mirror in the beginning? Curiously, all of the final creature looking away from the mirror/photo, its two heads seeming to face the reader (in this case me) and from the positioning of its hands, it seems to be dropping the framed object with Charlotte's face, perhaps symbolizing her death.
The kind of writing that is described as John Bellairs' really resonates with me; a lameo like Lewis Barnavelt is someone we can all relate to at least once in our lifetimes. And I really like the description of the "laidback kind of magic" the article suggests: magic being a casual part of people's daily lives still encapsulates that wonder I have because I always love to think how I could use magic in my own day to day life, like saying a few magic words that makes the trash take itself out.
I like the concept of "defusing your fears" like Charles Addams did with his fear of snakes in the NPR article. I find it very relatable that, for as fearful as he was, he had such a tight hold on how to use dark and grim humor in a timeless capacity so that we may still enjoy the Addams family to this day. Even more important, he embodied only the qualities that made his work great - he may have had unusual hobbies, but he was still kind and understanding and gentle. That kind of balance is quite easy to fall off of in one's pursuit of trying to become the kind of person people THINK you are, not who you want yourself to be. Staying true to yourself is hard when people have a certain expectation based on the stuff you write. You can laugh about death while still having a healthy attitude about it. You can have a fascination of the inner workings of biology without being a mad scientist doing live vivisections.
Of the given choices for this assignment, “The Hapless Child” by Edward Gorey was certainly the one which most caught my attention. The drab art style and disproportionate bodies were what initially caught my eye at a first glance, but the story and absolute despair sprinkled throughout were what kept me. Never could I have imagined such a depressing tale to be so perfectly told in just thirty sentences. The beginning of the story sets up our protagonist (Charlotte) in this seemingly perfect household with caring parents and a loveable doll. Then, as one domino falls, they all begin to come crashing down around poor Charlotte in such quick succession. There is something to be said about how abrupt yet natural it all feels, which I believe is partly credited to the visuals seeming to fill up more time as you stare at them while reading. Something about them is just so eerie in the way they picture the events taking place with such morbid bleakness. Every panel displayed makes me feel like a kid who picked up a book from the library that they most certainly shouldn't be reading.
Despite none of the characters being fleshed out, the author still manages to make you care for the protagonist due to a number of reasons. Firstly, the fact that she is simply a child and still somehow simultaneously bearing such unspeakable tragedies one after the other is enough to evoke feelings of empathy from most. Then, the kicker is just how terrible such happenings are. She is stripped of everything that one may hold dear to them, which is guaranteed to hit any reader where the heart is. Whether that be the loss of her family, her constant endurance of bullying at school, her lack of control under the man she is sold to, or the fate she meets as the story concludes, it’s all there with the intent to emotionally damage the reader as much as possible. In the end though, the fact that her father is the one to run her over, after all she has been through, is what truly seals the deal on this disturbing yet morbidly intriguing piece of art.
I found the hapless child a very interesting and shocking read, both with the ups and very sharp downs that the story presented in rapid succession as well as the shockingly dark turns the story had taken. For one I did not expect the ending with the father being alive and searching for her only to find her struck by a car and changed exponentially,It was a heart wrenching ending but also an abrupt one that sticks the shock landing. I found myself very caught up in the suspense of what was going to happen next while watching the story grow increasingly darker. I also really like the bluntness of Gorey’s work and how it does not sugarcoat the horrors that the characters go through, something a lot of stories seem very afraid to do. Delving into the grotesqueness of charlottes situation allowed for a grim but meaningful story to be weaved, as well as kept the mood consistent for the entire story.
The House with The Clock in its Walls starting as a adult story and then having aspects of the writing changed to make it more suitable for middle grade readers - as discussed in the first two articles - is very interesting to me. Both writers speak about the way that John Bellairs’ writing with that audience in mind spoke down to the readers, but that the rich and textured descriptions of his normal style stuck with them into adulthood. I think it says something about book publishing, and our perceptions of children as innocent and simple creatures undeserving of substance or fanfare, that the focus on making writing reflective of children’s relationships to their friends over an actually good story.
The discussion about wonder and how the magic went away with more world building also made me consider the way that people feel about Harry Potter, where they fill in the empty spaces with their own conception of what’s there. The only issue with this approach for an ongoing series is that authors generally go back and add more to the world which then makes it seem smaller. The explanations and lore work against the genre and the feeling of possibility which the reader wants to live in for as long as possible, and feel like they can be the only one clever enough to understand - by providing their own explanation or not feeling the need for one at all.
Aspects of The Hapless Child remind me of Sweeney Todd, and the storyline regarding his wife. There seems to be something about Victorian England that encourages writers from late 20th century to construct stories around separation from one’s family and bittersweet reunion where both parties have changed too much to see each other for what they are, resulting in at least one death. It’s a very curious thing. Maybe it’s born from the neatness of the resolution to Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and the frustration which it might’ve breed in the people that read it. It might also be based on the fact that many had loved ones leave during wars and return changed, but usually you would focus on the veteran’s difficulties rather than how the loved one has changed.
AAAAA / Daniel:
I think it’s kinda funny how both the Hendrix and Adams articles both agreed that Bellairs’ first MG book, The House with a Clock in Its Walls was the best (implying it was downhill from there). I find their points pertinent to what we discussed in class, about the “scariest thing is a door never opened.” Both articles praised how he is direct and specific about the wonders (magic, eccentric characters) so that he can be less direct about others (the clock, dangers). They also praised how, despite being aimed at younger readers, there is an indelible sense of maturity brought about by authentic experiences, like Lewis wanting to impress Tarby and Rose not wanting to grow up.
The complexity of childhood emotions is also captured in Gorey’s The Hapless Child, with bullying and lack of parental figures. The inclusion of Hortense as a stand-in for Charlotte Sophia (the doll’s quartering implying but not directly showing physical abuse) was most gripping. I think Gorey is strongest when he sticks to this method, like he did in The Gashlycrumb Tinies. The “deaths” of Hector and Prue (in quotes because they’re not directly shown) I still think about from time to time specifically because of the suspense he built. That’s why I felt the ending to The Hapless Child was a bit odd, because it was far more direct. Gorey shows both Charlotte Sophia’s death and the events thereafter. I’d have preferred if Gorey illustrated the car incoming rather than having already passed for the “She was at once struck by a car” caption. I’d have also been satisfied if the story ended there, though the imagery of the father failing to recognize the daughter he killed is chilling in its own right.
Addams says “the best cartoons don’t have captions,” but I have to disagree. I find that I appreciate Gorey’s illustrations (I guess you could consider them “cartoons”) to be effective specifically because they accompany a caption. There is nothing really intriguing about a child ready to dine on a peach, but what makes The Gashlycrumb Tinies work is its dramatic irony where we as the readers are aware that something macabre is about to happen.
Eight-arm thief saint
As I read the draft, which stated the work of John Bellairs. I became interested in the structure and work that went into his story how it came to be as it described how it was first made for adults and was later suggested to be edited for young adults I found it interesting the way he wrote the book and the descriptions that were made they were quite different and unique in the way he described how certain troubling events occur and how it is explained how some people would imagine certain things happening since it is made for young adults interesting how it is expected to see as much more gory to the reader. Well, he also uses a certain way to still rate the book, making it seem less like some important tasks, and more like a side mission or other things occur to rush the plot of the story, adding new problems to take care search as the reanimation of is there it's wife and the description that is given about her.
Also in the 2nd book he made he refers to his characters by full name to make them much easier for the reader still remember he does he's the same approach in the first book but it seems less effective men before using some characters towards tension having some changes in scenes but when reaching the end it feels rather strange the conclusion we are brought to and the development the characters take.
In the third book it goes over one of the characters who sings psychic there and the former maid character gone it goes over certain stereotypes such as the main antagonist being described as a witch and how she acts is mainly what we would expect or I guess how which would act in some moments that occurred or rather strange or not completely understood by me I found it rather confusing how son actions the characters have taken or some things that have been done in all three books and in the ending of the third it goes over how the main character wants to grant a certain wish Jermaine how she is forever as if time stopped for her with this accounting it makes her seem more like the antagonists of the book.
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