The Yattering and Jack

While I've enjoyed reading many stories from Clive Barker's Books of Blood, the Yattering and Jack was not my favorite story. Within the first few pages, the stage was set for a psychological horror, more based on insanity than actual physical damage, and I usually love that type of tale. However, it's only really effective when you get into a character's head, thus experiencing all of the mental ups and downs and crazies. (Ironically, I read this story after posting a response to IPP #6, and the monster I used for that post was creepily close to the Yattering, although Polo used a different method of defeat.) So, I think it’s the set up and POV here that’s ruining the monster and the horror factor.

“He seemed to live apart from his experience, living his life as an author might write a preposterous story, never involving himself in the narrative too deeply.” (49) This quote describing Jack Polo also seemed to describe Clive Barker’s approach when writing the story. Sometimes, I can appreciate the irony in that, but not here. Clive Barker’s approach of an omniscient narrator only served to make me as disaffected by the story as Jack Polo was by his dying cats. I didn’t feel fear at the Yattering’s pranks. I didn’t feel fear when he stalked Jack Polo through his house. I wasn’t even disgusted with him ogling the naked widow or blowing cat guts all over the house. This is the result of the distance of the omniscient POV, for me. I don’t think it worked in this story, just like I didn’t quite like the distance in I Am Legend. I want to be scared when I read horror, and if I’m not in the moment with my characters, that doesn’t happen. So, for me, the distance ruins the monster. I know that might not ring true for everyone. Note: that’s not to say this POV can’t ever work in horror, it’s just how you pull it off. I don’t think it was right for this particular story, but it really worked in The Stand. I think that's because even though King wrote in a semi-distant third person, there was plenty of time to get to know all of the characters and care about them. When you care about the characters, the stakes are higher. However, in a short story, you don't have the page space that King had, and that omnicient narrator creates a distance that there isn't time to overcome.

There were other things, little author mistakes, that also took something away from the monster. The first is that we have a twenty-two and twenty-four-year-old daughter, and yet the dialogue between father and daughters sounded to me like a discourse between a father and a five year old. All of the “daddy’s” instead of “dad,” all of the little things that aren’t quite adult made me feel like the monster didn’t have to work as hard. It’s a lot easier to scare a child than it is a tough-as-nails woman. And the initial description of the two girls made them seem like they would be tough as nails, so when they weren’t I was disappointed.

Also, when everything is spinning, Jack Polo is convinced the monster must be exhausted and confused, and yet the Yattering is excited and enjoying things…it doesn’t quite make the reader believe that Jack knows 100% what he’s doing, but rather than up the stakes for me, it made things fall flat. Not quite sure why. Finally, there were “housekeeping” mistakes. The Yattering blows up the second new cat Jack brings home (thus Freddy III), but the Yattering labeled it the third new cat. If there were three new cats after the first Freddy’s demise, it should have been Freddy IV that he blew up. As for Freddy I, regular fires don’t cremate cats (or anything, for that matter), yet there’s nothing in there about the Yattering upping the temperature. Missing details weaken a monster because I’m left wondering if the Yattering actually has the ability to make that powerful of a fire, when I should know from the story. When the daughter gets turkey grease on her face – grease from a turkey straight out of the oven – she isn’t burned. These details rob authenticity from the story and thus from the monster. A monster is only as good as the people it has to scare, and the details in this story made them seem inept and numb. That combined with the detail that this is a lower demon of lesser power really made the Yattering seem like a wimp, in my opinion. Finally, because of the POV, I knew that Jack Polo was playing his own game, so the “twist” at the end wasn’t all that unexpected. I think it could have been more shocking if it was just left in the Yattering’s POV.