Let's Luxuriate In The Gothic A Minute
"She sat there, at the statue's feet, and tugged at a blade of grass wondering if someone ever bothered setting flowers inside the mausoleum..." - Silvia Moreno-Garcia, 'Mexican Gothic'
Light the lanterns and traverse the misty moors in a creaky carriage, we have been summoned to a Named Estate owned by a wealthy-but-broke mysterious stranger with at least 10 years of biography shrouded in secrecy. Not to spoil Friday’s Friday Links, but I’m reading some Gothic lit this week. Specifically:
As a big fan of flash fiction and Guy With A Poetry Podcast, I don’t often go for the Gothic. Those books are frequently very long. I’m also an avid hater of most Victorian things—really, Dickens? Bleak House was the best available title?—and a good chunk of canonized Gothic lives in the Prude Queen’s era. That said, I stand by the hallmarks of the genre, namely: creeping dread, cool houses, spooky shit, and lush details.
It is proof of the cliché that variety spices life, how much I’m enjoying this novel. I started working on a short story this past weekend—unrelated to reading Mexican Gothic, except it is also a horror story—and thought “hey, this is already going to be a longer one. Why not take some time? Luxuriate in these details like it’s your third daiquiri at a swim-up bar in the Ozarks and Darryl The Bartender Who Pronounces ‘Darryl’ With One Syllable gave the OK to pee in the pool.”
It was a very fun writing day. The story has a first-person narrator but is mostly focused on other characters, so the ‘I’ kinda disappears, you know? Very fun for a gothic story. Writing is so rad, you guys.
What’s really got my heights all wuthering is how much it feels like Silvia Moreno-Garcia had fun writing this book. I haven’t read any interviews or things like that but she is relishing these characters. I’m like 100 pages into the book and very much feel like I know these people, and definitely feel like I couldn’t keep up with partying with Noemí for longer than a weekend. Maximalist details will do that. But SMG takes care not to “Mary Sue” Noemí—she’s a beautiful socialite who always knows where her fancy cigarettes are, but she is not some Big City Savior come to vanquish the evil imperialists in the silver mine. Noemí is simply a cool person who ended up in a haunted house. Or, put more eloquently by a better writer, Noemí is not this:
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I go to bat for the protagonist here because a major bullshit detector I have for fiction is when the author is clearly inserting themselves into the story. The way Noemí’s wardrobe and habits are so lovingly described, I started off wondering if there was some fantasy wish fulfillment going on. But then I realized: it’s a Gothic novel! Everything is getting this treatment! The atmospheric discombobulation of the mountains, the mistiness over the English-only cemetery outside High Place, the excellent and truly surprising haunting scenes. It’s a deep, rich text filled with deep, rich characters—although don’t tell the English ones they’re actually broke.
The English characters, by the way, take on an extra sense of scary by being the proprietors of a wannabe-Gentry House and an abandoned silver mine. The Doyles are pitiable, pathetic people: strangers in a strange land with an absolutely unearned sense of superiority and desire to nevertheless be perceived as important. There’s a kind of not-wanting-to-acknowledge-our-back’s-against-the-wall that gives them extra menace. They’re like the Republican Party in that way.
Zooming back out of the novel, though, it’s very fun to read a different kind of book every now and again. It’s also very fun to watch an author really relish their work, especially in a genre that should be fun. If Jovial Bob Stine taught me anything, it’s that scary stuff should be at least a little fun. We’re all going to die anyway, might as well enjoy haunted houses while we can.
Also, if you have a chance, visit the Brontë house in Haworth. It’s very cool. Read Wuthering Heights! It’s very good. But don’t take the Ted Hughes Walking Tour. Ted Hughes sucks.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris