Horror at First Sight ~
Wearing tons of makeup, the incomparable Elsa Lanchester in The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) registers horror at first sight of the man (monster) she is going to marry. The experience has given her hair a permanent frizz.
Author: allen0997
He Comes in On Little Cat Feet
He Comes in On Little Cat Feet ~
Apparently stricken deaf, Elizabeth (played by the lovely Mae Clarke) doesn’t know the monster is behind her and is about to carry her away. When she can no longer deny that he is in the room with her, she screams and then faints (of course), facilitating the abduction.
The Spoils of Poynton ~ A Capsule Book Review
The Spoils of Poynton by Henry James ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp
Henry James was an American writer who lived from 1843 to 1916. If he seems more an English writer than American, that’s because he did most of his work while living in England and, late in his life, gave up his American citizenship and became a British subject. He wrote about twenty novels, the most famous of which are The Golden Bowl, Wings of the Dove, and Portrait of a Lady. He is one of the key figures of nineteenth century literary realism.
The Spoils of Poynton is a short (for Henry James) novel first published in 1897 that touches on the themes of greed, friendship, the nature of love and the strength of familial connections. Mrs. Gereth is a headstrong widow who lives on her estate called Poynton. Poynton is filled with “treasures” (these are the “spoils” of Poynton) that Mrs. Gereth and her late husband collected, including furnishings, tapestries, old china, paintings, object d’arts, etc. According to a silly and unfair English law, all the things in Poynton (including the house and estate) belong (upon the death of Mrs. Gereth’s husband) to her son, Owen. Owen can do as he pleases with his mother. He can put her out of the house of he wants to. He is under no legal obligation to her.
Owen is engaged to be married to one Mona Brigstock, whom Mrs. Gereth, his mother, loathes. Mrs. Gereth can’t stand to see Mona installed in Poynton with all the “things” that she considers her own. She would do almost anything to keep Owen from marrying Mona. This is where Fleda Vetch enters the picture. She is a friend of Mrs. Gereth’s and Mrs. Gereth’s choice for Owen to marry instead of Mona. After Owen and Fleda meet a few times, they admit they have “feelings” for each other. Could it be love?
Mrs. Gereth moves out of Poynton at the prospect of her son’s marriage to Mona and takes up residence in a place called “Ricks.” Ricks is all right in its own way but far inferior to Poynton. To mollify his mother, Owen tells her she may have a few (a dozen or so) of her favorite pieces from Poynton. She surprises everybody by taking literally everything. Owen is outraged and threatens legal action. (Apparently the desire for earthly possessions is more important than the mother-son bond.) Mona tells Owen the marriage is off until the things are returned to Poynton. She wants to marry Owen, it seems, only if Poynton and everything in it are part of the bargain.
Mrs. Gereth’s friend, Fleda Vetch, is faced with a dilemma. She loves Owen and he apparently loves her, but she believes it would be improper for her to take him away from Mona. The only way she will get Owen herself is if Mona chooses to break off with him. Owen believes it his duty to follow through on his marriage to Mona, even though he seems at times to prefer Fleda. Which way will he go? Will Mona tell him she no longer wants to marry him? What will happen to the “spoils” of Poynton?
Somebody once said that Henry James could find more drama in a raised eyebrow than most people could find in an earthquake. The Spoils of Poynton is a simple and engaging story told in Henry James’s inimitable grand literary style. If a thing could be said in five hundred words, he will more than likely use five thousand. Let’s see…how many ways are there to say the same thing?
Copyright © 2014 by Allen Kopp
False Face
False Face ~
The right kind of a mask can make even the most innocent-seeming child look menacing and creepy.
Mystery Girl
Mystery Girl ~
In this disturbing and undated vintage photograph, a girl whose face is completely covered by some kind of a mask–and whose hands are covered–appears to look at a book. If there is a meaning, we don’t know what it is.
Smoking Boy
Smoking Boy ~
A small, curly-haired, pouty-faced boy wearing strap-over shoes has a lighted cigarette dangling from his lips while sitting next to a large white chicken. No explanation given or needed.
On This Day
On This Day ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp
Traffic was light. Billie Rose Flint arrived at the cemetery at five minutes after three on a bright October afternoon. She knew the cemetery well and parked the car in the same familiar spot, underneath an old oak tree that at the moment was so suffused with sunstruck color that it was as pretty as any picture in a magazine. She breathed deeply of the pleasant leafy smell and, not even bothering to lock the car, walked up the hill that she knew so well, past the gravestones whose names she knew by heart.
By the time she came to her son’s grave, she was winded and her legs ached; she was, after all, getting old. She spread the blanket on the ground, kicked off her shoes and sat down facing the gravestone. It was a simple red-granite affair, not as showy as some of the others, with the name, Randall Wallace Flint, the date of his birth and the date of his death.
As always when she was in the cemetery and there was no one else around, she began to feel sleepy. She reclined on her back and looked up into the trees. The breeze on her face was fragrant and cooling. A little hump in the ground pressed comfortably into the small of her back as if it had been placed there especially for that purpose.
She dozed and in a moment she was aware of someone standing beside her. She opened her eyes and looked up into his face but the sun kept her from seeing him. He smiled and sat down beside her on the edge of the old quilt.
“How have you been keeping yourself?” he asked.
“Just peachy keen,” she said.
“I had a feeling you’d be here today.”
“It’s a special anniversary,” she said.
“Anniversary of what? You can say it.”
She looked at him and saw he was trying to keep from laughing, as if it was all a joke to him.
“Thirty years ago today,” she said, “you hanged yourself from a rafter in the garage after school.”
“Go on,” he said.
“I found you when I opened the door to pull the car in. You were just hanging there. There was a tipped-over chair. I knew right away it was too late.”
“And then what did you do?”
“I screamed. The woman who lived next door, Doris Ellsworth, was in her backyard and heard me. She came running to see what was wrong. When she saw what had happened, she closed the garage door and took me into the house and called an ambulance.”
“And then what?”
“They came and cut you down. By then, all the neighbors had gathered around to watch. The paramedics carried you out on a stretcher and put you into the back of the ambulance. They were moving very slowly because they knew there was nothing to be done.”
“What did you do then?”
“I drank a glass of scotch and called your father and told him he needed to come home.”
“And did he?”
“He was there in a few minutes. At first he didn’t believe you were really dead. He wanted to see to make sure for himself. They let him see you, with all those people watching, and then he turned to the ambulance driver and very calmly told him to take you to the funeral home. Then he made me get into the car with him and we drove there behind the ambulance and bought you a casket. Your father wrote a check to pay for it.”
“It was some funeral, though, wasn’t it?” he said.
“Yes, it was a big funeral.”
“Everybody from school was there. Standing-room only. There wasn’t a dry eye in the place. Suddenly everybody likes you when you’re dead.”
“They liked you before you were dead but you didn’t see it.”
“I was going through an adolescent phase. I thought I couldn’t go on.”
“If only there had been some way to help you before it was too late.”
“It doesn’t do any good to think that way. What’s done is done.”
“Was your life really so unbearable?”
“I was a misfit. I was failing algebra. I had acne. I couldn’t take being chosen last for basketball any more. Do you know how much I despise basketball to this day?”
“Those things would have passed. If you had only talked to me about what was bothering you, I could have helped.”
“Maybe not,” he said. “Who knows?”
“Insanity has always run in my family,” she said.
He laughed. “Do you think that’s what was wrong with me?”
“Who can say?”
“If that helps you to understand what I did,” he said, “I guess it’s as logical an explanation as any.”
“Do you think about all the things you missed?”
“Not much,” he said. “ I think more about the things I avoided. Like having to get a job, paying taxes and having a bad marriage.”
“What makes you think you would have had a bad marriage?”
“I don’t know. Aren’t all marriages bad in one way or another?”
“It depends on who you talk to, I guess.”
“You and father had a terrible marriage.”
“I wouldn’t say it was terrible.”
“You fought all the time.”
“Did we? I don’t remember.”
“I call that ‘convenient forgetting’,” he said.
“Anyway, it’s all in the past now and no longer matters.”
“Yes, all in the past.”
“I’m just glad you’re not in torment for what you did,” she said.
“No, not in torment. Not in heaven, either.”
“I won’t ask you what it’s like where you are because I don’t want to know. All I want to know is that you’re not being made to suffer for what you did.”
“Of course I’m not. There isn’t any such thing as hell.”
“Now you’re forty-five,” she said. “Or you would be if you had lived. When I look at you, I see a forty-five-year-old man. You look a little like your father but more like my side of the family.”
“You see what you want to see,” he said.
“The unhappy fifteen-year-old is gone. I can no longer even see his face.”
“Good riddance,” he said. “I never liked him much, anyway.”
“Are you sorry for what you did? I mean, ending your life before it even had a chance to begin?”
“If you say so, mother.”
She heard voices and when she turned her head to see who it was, she saw two very old ladies hovering over a fresh grave nearby. When she turned back to her son, he was gone. The spell was broken. He wouldn’t have wanted anybody else to see him.
She picked up her blanket and walked over to where the old ladies were and greeted them. One of the old ladies had an excess of makeup caked on her face and the other wore a man’s hat and suit, as if they had just come from a costume party.
“Lovely day,” the woman dressed as a man said.
“Fall is my favorite time of the year,” makeup face said.
“A sad day for me,” Billie Rose Flint said. “My son died thirty years ago today.”
“Oh, my!” makeup face said. “How sad! How old was he?”
“Fifteen.”
“Aww.”
She picked up a lily from the flowers that were left on the fresh grave and handed it to Billie Rose Flint. “In remembrance,” she said.
Billie Rose Flint took the flower and, in spite of herself, began crying uncontrollably, trying to cover her face with her handkerchief to keep the old ladies from looking at her. She opened her mouth to speak again but instead hurried off with the flower before she felt compelled to tell them the whole story.
Copyright © 2014 by Allen Kopp
Paranormal Horror Two ~ An Anthology of Short Stories
Paranormal Horror Tw0 ~ An Anthology of Short Stories from Simone Press
With terrifying stories about werewolves, stuffed humans, vampires, guardian angels, the devil and a variety of malevolent demons between its macabre pages. It’s the sequel to the popular “Paranormal Horror” anthology. It features new contributors Ed Ahern, Diane Arelle, Daniel Davis, W.K. Erwin, Jerry G. Erwin, John Haas and David Perlmutter. Their chilling tales will give you nightmares. Returning as authors are the writers that made the prequel so good: Jim Cagwin, Gary Clifton, Katanie Duarte, A.A. Garrison, Allen Kopp, Chris Mawbey, Jenean McBrearty, Matthew Wilson and Wendy L. Schmidt have written brilliant new tales. If you are interested in the paranormal and like being scared then this is the perfect book for you.
Available on Amazon in Kindle edition at $2.99:
http://www.amazon.com/Paranormal-Horror-Two-Jim-Cagwin-ebook/dp/B00NUAFUC0/
Absalom, Absalom ~ A Capsule Book Review
Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp
William Faulkner (1897-1962) is arguably the best American novelist of the twentieth century, the supreme literary stylist. His works are deep, cerebral, rich and complex. His style is dense, sometimes fragmented, wordy and difficult to read. He has the longest sentences and the longest paragraphs of any other writer. If you are trying to follow the thread of a sentence, you might have to go back and break it down into its many parts to figure out exactly what is being said. If reading a novel by Faulkner is frustrating and tedious at times (a painful slog), you must also know that it is worth the effort or you wouldn’t be doing it.
When I first started reading Faulkner’s 1936 novel, Absalom, Absalom, I found the first chapter (told in the voice of Miss Rosa Coldfield in 1909 when she is 64 years old) so difficult that I almost gave up. If you are able to make it through the first chapter, however, the following chapters are easier. Not easy, but not quite as difficult. (There’s no linear structure to the novel.)
Absalom, Absalom is the multilayered family saga of the Sutpen and Coldfield families in the American South in the decades leading up to the Civil War. Thomas Sutpen confounds the town of Jefferson, Mississippi—and particularly the Coldfield family—when he comes from nowhere and acquires a huge tract of land, called the Sutpen Hundred (square miles, not acres), and builds an enormous house on the edge of a swamp with the help of his band of wild black men and a French architect, who he more or less treats as a captive.
For years after the house is built, Thomas Sutpen entertains a band of his male friends with wild hunting and drinking parties and wrestling matches, until the day arrives when he decides he wants to acquire respectability in the form of a wife and children. He drives away his male friends and proposes to a town girl named Ellen Coldfield. (Faulkner compares her throughout the novel to a butterfly.)
To the unlikely union between Thomas Sutpen and Ellen Coldfield are born Henry and Judith. (Thomas Sutpen also has a half-black daughter named Clytemnestra, or “Clytie,” that he had with a slave woman.) Ellen Coldfield has a sister, Miss Rosa Coldfield, who is twenty-seven years younger than she is (younger than her own children). The first part of the story is being told by the elderly Rosa Coldfield to Quentin Compson, whose grandfather was the best friend of Thomas Sutpen. The part that Rosa Coldfield plays in the novel is more of an observer than active participant in what is going on.
When Henry Sutpen is grown (or almost grown), he goes away to college in Oxford, Mississippi. There he meets and becomes good friends with one Charles Bon. Charles is older and more worldly-wise and sophisticated than Henry. (Henry is clearly infatuated with Charles Bon. Faulkner later suggests more than just simple friendship between the two, especially on Henry’s part.) When Henry writes home about Charles Bon, his mother immediately sees Charles as a likely husband for Judith. Charles visits the Sutpen home with Henry on more than one occasion. His interest in Judith seems perfunctory. Will he propose to her or won’t he? We learn later a dark secret about Charles Bon, which I won’t reveal here, and that his association with the Sutpen family is part of an elaborate scheme of revenge. This element of the story drives the narrative for much of the second half of the novel.
The Civil War obtrudes upon the lives of the characters. The three principal male characters (Thomas Sutpen, Henry Sutpen, Charles Bon) all find themselves in battle. (Thomas Sutpen achieves the rank of colonel.) The war, of course, doesn’t turn out the way many Southerners hoped it would or expected it would. (Faulkner points out that the Southern army had the highest mortality rate of any army in history.) The men who survive, defeated not only in war but also in spirit, return home starving and in tatters to discover that everything they loved or cared about has been swept away. It is this defeat that is subtext to everything else.
Absalom, Absalom (the name derives from a character in the Bible) is a dark story, full of revenge, incest (or almost incest), miscegenation, family secrets, hubris, intentions gone awry, class distinction, loss and suffering. There’s no redemption for anybody, no life-affirming conclusion. Nobody writes about these things (or about the South) the way Faulkner does.
Copyright © 2014 by Allen Kopp
Literary Fictions 