Rawhead Rex is easily my favorite monster so far in this class. He’s a brutally mean destroyer who’s out for blood and carnage. But the best part is that he is undefined, especially when compared to other monsters we’ve read about. I Am Legend had vampires, The Funeral had witches and beasts, Breeding Ground had widow spiders—all of these are common, well-defined monsters. You say your character is a vampire, and every reader will instantly identify with that. Every reader will also bring their pre-conceived notions of that monster along with them, whether that means they instantly fear the beast or instantly laugh at it (I instantly laugh at zombies, for example). Rawhead Rex defies this principal. Barker introduces us to the monster simply by describing him physically, with the worm-filled hair and huge body, and—my favorite—the mouth that “splits the moon” when it opens and is filled with two sets of teeth. And at that first introduction, we see Rawhead rip off a scalp, bite off a head, and bury his enemy upside down in the ground. Pure evil. I read that and let all of my fears take over and fill in the blanks with Rawhead. I could picture him as a unique monster with all of this drool and blood lust, and that’s way more intense than any vampire, in my opinion.
While I thought that the ferocity of Rawhead carried through the book, and I never stopped loving the monster, there were a few things that kind of lessened his impact for me. For one, before he eats the pony, he’s watching Gwen and can’t eat her because of feminine issues. I get that he’s the male, phallic beast and feminine things stop him (the Venus rock did him in, after all), but the amount of time that female issues were mentioned on the page kind of grossed me out. I almost felt like Barker himself was trying to make some PMS joke, and it didn’t work. There were more graceful ways to pull this off, I think.
The other thing that bothered me in this story was Gwen’s second scene, when she’s trying to save her daughter. Rawhead Rex is nine feet tall…he can reach the second story of a building. Yet this woman carries her daughter upstairs, where she’s trapped, to protect her from a monster fully capable of tearing the house down. Some may argue that these were the actions of a desperate woman, but I read that and thought…how stupid could she be? At least for a few moments, Rawhead was distracted breaking through furniture, so why not try to sneak out through the other end of the house and escape unnoticed? That’s better than trapping yourself and basically feeding your daughter to the monster. I’m beginning to notice that a monster is only is good as the people it hunts, a villain is only good as the hero it faces. When rivals make stupid choices that make them easy to defeat, it takes away from the monster in the story. So, when Gwen did that, Rawhead lost something as a consequence. Of course, he regained all his macho-monster goodness when he continued on his killing spree. But for a moment, I was bored. (OK, maybe that just means I’m a sick individual, if I was bored with a monster trying to eat people.)
The other thing I love about Rawhead, though, is how he very much acts like a beast. His strength is in his innate ability to control people (think Declan) and to bite them in half. He’s no sly devil, like Randall Flagg. He’s pure power. And I felt that power on the page.
My final comment is this: even though this class focuses on the beasts, I can’t help but mention that sometimes fighting makes monsters out of men. Anyone else think Declan became a monster himself when he first talks about Rawhead? I mean, he smiles when he talks about how the beast eats children…that’s pretty monstrous, if you ask me.
Friday, September 17, 2010
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Breeding Ground
I enjoyed a few elements of this story. The first person narration worked in the beginning, because it clearly showed the progression of the main character from oblivion to worry to panic to fear, and you knew enough about him to care what happened—at least at first. Once the monsters hit and he has to fight, and wimps out the majority of the time, I stopped enjoying it altogether. However, that has more to do with the type of protagonist I enjoy than the narration itself.
I also enjoyed the concept of this – all of the women becoming sick and decaying in front of the eyes of the men. That presented a kind of psychological element to the whole thing. Because you know the main character lives at least through the story in the book (he is alive in the prologue speaking of how he wrote this, after all), the stakes aren’t so much about his safety as they are his quality of life. We watch him break down as everything he hoped for and loved is taken from him. His girlfriend, Chloe, and the hope for a baby are snatched from him, and yet some part of him still holds on to that love. He cherishes his memories. I really enjoyed that. Until he ran away from her. Practical, yes. Romantic, no. Then the widows arrive, and it’s post-apocalyptic mayhem. I’m always a fan of end-of-the-world drama, because it’s normally very exciting. However, in the hands of this passive and less than impressive character, the post-apocalyptic stuff wasn’t what I expected.
Other elements that I thought really worked: the descriptions. So much of the tension in this story came from the way the world and Chloe and the widows were described. It was very clear prose that evoked very vivid images, in my opinion. And although the oblivion that Matthew experiences in the first few chapters seems ludicrous to me, it also rings true. I’m not sure if I would notice the state of the neighborhood until it started effecting me directly. That’s a scary thought in and of itself, because the most frightening aspect of what happened in this book is how easily it happened. It just snuck up on the world without a fight, and then it was just a “wait and see” game, like the doctor said. Everyone was helpless against it, and that’s my kind of monster. One where surviving requires beating the odds. At the same time, though, I wasn’t always on the edge of my seat, scared by the story. Not even in the beginning, before it’s clear that Matthew Edge is a coward.
After answering this week’s IPP, I got to thinking about the fear factor of this novel. What was it that made me think the monster was beautifully crafted but prevented me from really feeling the fear? I think it may be the structure of the novel itself. It starts off with a prologue that clearly shows us that the narrator was alive throughout the events in this text, since he wrote it after it happened. And the way he talks about Chloe in the opening chapter lets the reader know that she doesn’t make it, so there’s no reason to become attached to her character from the start. I think that lessens the emotional impact, thus lessening the fear. However, I’m not sure that changing the structure would change this, mostly because Pinborough may have lost something had she set the novel up any other way. The prologue serves as the hook that grabs the reader and pushes us to turn the page, even while the condition develops slowly in those early chapters. Removing the prologue and changing the structure may eliminate that hook. So, I’m not sure what could be done to restore that fear factor that comes with the unknown, with the uncertainty of whether or not the characters will survive.
I know a lot of this post is focused on the beginning of the book, but as I’m currently redrafting the beginning of my WIP, I learned the most from Breeding Ground’s opening, especially since that’s the part I enjoyed most. I wonder what other readers think of the structure and the way this novel starts.
I also enjoyed the concept of this – all of the women becoming sick and decaying in front of the eyes of the men. That presented a kind of psychological element to the whole thing. Because you know the main character lives at least through the story in the book (he is alive in the prologue speaking of how he wrote this, after all), the stakes aren’t so much about his safety as they are his quality of life. We watch him break down as everything he hoped for and loved is taken from him. His girlfriend, Chloe, and the hope for a baby are snatched from him, and yet some part of him still holds on to that love. He cherishes his memories. I really enjoyed that. Until he ran away from her. Practical, yes. Romantic, no. Then the widows arrive, and it’s post-apocalyptic mayhem. I’m always a fan of end-of-the-world drama, because it’s normally very exciting. However, in the hands of this passive and less than impressive character, the post-apocalyptic stuff wasn’t what I expected.
Other elements that I thought really worked: the descriptions. So much of the tension in this story came from the way the world and Chloe and the widows were described. It was very clear prose that evoked very vivid images, in my opinion. And although the oblivion that Matthew experiences in the first few chapters seems ludicrous to me, it also rings true. I’m not sure if I would notice the state of the neighborhood until it started effecting me directly. That’s a scary thought in and of itself, because the most frightening aspect of what happened in this book is how easily it happened. It just snuck up on the world without a fight, and then it was just a “wait and see” game, like the doctor said. Everyone was helpless against it, and that’s my kind of monster. One where surviving requires beating the odds. At the same time, though, I wasn’t always on the edge of my seat, scared by the story. Not even in the beginning, before it’s clear that Matthew Edge is a coward.
After answering this week’s IPP, I got to thinking about the fear factor of this novel. What was it that made me think the monster was beautifully crafted but prevented me from really feeling the fear? I think it may be the structure of the novel itself. It starts off with a prologue that clearly shows us that the narrator was alive throughout the events in this text, since he wrote it after it happened. And the way he talks about Chloe in the opening chapter lets the reader know that she doesn’t make it, so there’s no reason to become attached to her character from the start. I think that lessens the emotional impact, thus lessening the fear. However, I’m not sure that changing the structure would change this, mostly because Pinborough may have lost something had she set the novel up any other way. The prologue serves as the hook that grabs the reader and pushes us to turn the page, even while the condition develops slowly in those early chapters. Removing the prologue and changing the structure may eliminate that hook. So, I’m not sure what could be done to restore that fear factor that comes with the unknown, with the uncertainty of whether or not the characters will survive.
I know a lot of this post is focused on the beginning of the book, but as I’m currently redrafting the beginning of my WIP, I learned the most from Breeding Ground’s opening, especially since that’s the part I enjoyed most. I wonder what other readers think of the structure and the way this novel starts.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
The Funeral
There were several things I really enjoyed in The Funeral. For one, I really enjoyed Morton Silkline. He’s presented at first as a greedy but business-like man, and you can’t help but be amused at his less-than-proper mindset. He thinks of money, even when surrounded by death. And then, when the tables are turned on him and he realizes that he’s throwing a funeral for a supernatural, undead creature…his reaction is perfect. He passes out. But he still gains strength from the money he earns, so he stays true to his despicable character. So, at the end, I really enjoyed that he’s bringing in new undead clients and turning it into a business that both scares and pleases him. That he’d face these unnatural beings that find him ”tasty” just to earn a little bit of cash…well, I had a good laugh at that.
I also enjoyed the character interactions in this story. While in I Am Legend, the story starts off with the main character alone, this story starts off with characters meeting and reacting to one another. You see the internal and external actions of these characters and they engaged me more than Mattheson’s first story. Asper is a unique character in that he wants a better funeral to celebrate his undead state, and that premise really pulled me in. The second he stated that the funeral was for him, I was hooked. When the story progressed to the actual funeral, the character interactions really took off. Even though he doesn’t say much, Silkline’s actions speak louder than words, and the things that Ludwig Asper’s friends say and do inspired both fear and laughter. I could understand why Silkline was rigid in his seat, but I couldn’t help but laugh as a reader. Picturing the scene was kind of like watching Death at a Funeral, another comedy. Everything at the funeral goes wrong in the worst sort of way in both stories, and it garners laughter more than fear.
The crone was by far my favorite character, with her cat meowing and responding to her comments. I think I enjoyed her the most because while she is a witch with some stereotypical attributes, she adds flair to the group. She isn’t all morose and serious, like the Count and Asper. She isn’t a grunting beast, like the creature that left half-way through, and she isn’t as stereotypical as the hunchback who calls the vampires “master.” She manages to call Silkline a duck and a pretty boy all on one page, spark lightning without chanting any typical spells, and she doesn’t have your usual wart-covered face. So, I found her unique. And the fact that it wasn’t only vampires at the funeral adds a whole new dimension to the story. Usually it’s one type of being in a story, or at most two (Werewolves AND vampires), but the presence of multiple undead beings in one group of friends was entertaining.
The one thing I didn’t like was the language. While the formality struck me as appropriate for a funeral home—Silkline himself adapts a formal air when dealing with clients—at times it read as though Mattheson just went through a thesaurus to replace all the common words. So, at times I felt I was fighting with the words to follow the story. Descriptions weren’t always clear (Silkline’s eyes are both liver-colored and cinnamon on the first page, which creates two different images in my mind, one a dull brown and the other a bright one), and that kept me from seeing some aspects of the story. I’m not sure if this was a structure Mattheson used on purpose, or if it’s just his style of writing. Any thoughts on this? Any thoughts on why the language was so…over the top literary? Or is that just me? Maybe I was just reading too fast and missed something.
Edit: After scanning this story a second time, I thought the language added humor. I think that the first read through, which I did immediately after I Am Legend, really bothered me because it was so different from I Am Legend. I was prepared for more doom and gloom, straightforward language, and the switch was jarring. After a few days away from Mattheson, I was able to appreciate his word choices. The purple prose was enjoyable rather than jarring. Go figure...maybe that says more about my reading style than Mattheson's writing.
I also enjoyed the character interactions in this story. While in I Am Legend, the story starts off with the main character alone, this story starts off with characters meeting and reacting to one another. You see the internal and external actions of these characters and they engaged me more than Mattheson’s first story. Asper is a unique character in that he wants a better funeral to celebrate his undead state, and that premise really pulled me in. The second he stated that the funeral was for him, I was hooked. When the story progressed to the actual funeral, the character interactions really took off. Even though he doesn’t say much, Silkline’s actions speak louder than words, and the things that Ludwig Asper’s friends say and do inspired both fear and laughter. I could understand why Silkline was rigid in his seat, but I couldn’t help but laugh as a reader. Picturing the scene was kind of like watching Death at a Funeral, another comedy. Everything at the funeral goes wrong in the worst sort of way in both stories, and it garners laughter more than fear.
The crone was by far my favorite character, with her cat meowing and responding to her comments. I think I enjoyed her the most because while she is a witch with some stereotypical attributes, she adds flair to the group. She isn’t all morose and serious, like the Count and Asper. She isn’t a grunting beast, like the creature that left half-way through, and she isn’t as stereotypical as the hunchback who calls the vampires “master.” She manages to call Silkline a duck and a pretty boy all on one page, spark lightning without chanting any typical spells, and she doesn’t have your usual wart-covered face. So, I found her unique. And the fact that it wasn’t only vampires at the funeral adds a whole new dimension to the story. Usually it’s one type of being in a story, or at most two (Werewolves AND vampires), but the presence of multiple undead beings in one group of friends was entertaining.
The one thing I didn’t like was the language. While the formality struck me as appropriate for a funeral home—Silkline himself adapts a formal air when dealing with clients—at times it read as though Mattheson just went through a thesaurus to replace all the common words. So, at times I felt I was fighting with the words to follow the story. Descriptions weren’t always clear (Silkline’s eyes are both liver-colored and cinnamon on the first page, which creates two different images in my mind, one a dull brown and the other a bright one), and that kept me from seeing some aspects of the story. I’m not sure if this was a structure Mattheson used on purpose, or if it’s just his style of writing. Any thoughts on this? Any thoughts on why the language was so…over the top literary? Or is that just me? Maybe I was just reading too fast and missed something.
Edit: After scanning this story a second time, I thought the language added humor. I think that the first read through, which I did immediately after I Am Legend, really bothered me because it was so different from I Am Legend. I was prepared for more doom and gloom, straightforward language, and the switch was jarring. After a few days away from Mattheson, I was able to appreciate his word choices. The purple prose was enjoyable rather than jarring. Go figure...maybe that says more about my reading style than Mattheson's writing.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
I Am Legend
To be honest, I was a bit disappointed by I Am Legend. (I realize I'm in the minority here.) I'm not sure if it's because I've read a ton of other books that I've loved recently and this book just wasn't as good, or if it just wasn't my kind of thing. I can put a finger on what I didn't like about it, though.
I'm not picky about point of view most of the time, but I really thought the POV in this story was distancing. We don't get too many of the main character's thoughts, and for the first couple of chapters, he's referred to as either "he" or his full name, "Robert Neville." The full name thing gave me the impression that this book was very formal. However, most of the tension here has to come from the internal conflict - the loneliness, the fear, the frustration, the boredom. And that doesn't come across so strongly in third person, in my opinion. Are the vampires scary? Yes, but they are stuck outside until he accidentally forgets to wind his watch and leaves the garage open. And a monster that can't even break in a window because of a string of garlic isn't all that intimidating. If he wasn't alone, if he had company (especially female company), I'm willing to bet he could ignore the cat calls every now and then. So again, it all comes down to the internal stuff, and I wanted more of it. I wanted to be closer to it, and that was the job of the POV. That isn't to say I didn't see how pained Robert Neville was, but I didn't feel the impact as strongly as I would have had it been first person. Had Robert Neville been directly showing me how he felt by letting me straight into his head.
Having that distance kept me from really becoming absorbed in the text. And without that absorption, I kept stumbling upon author mistakes. For example, in chapter one he falls asleep with earplugs in, earplugs good enough to block out the noise of a hoard of vampires calling his name and throwing rocks at his house. Chapter two opens with his alarm waking him up the next morning. But the earplugs are in still, that's not something you normally take out in your sleep. So how does he hear the alarm? That's a nitpicky thing that I'm sure many readers could clarify (maybe the earplugs fell out in the night?), but the fact that I caught that really tells me how unabsorbed I was in this story. Ordinarily, when I love a book, I'll read it in a day and won't even notice if the author changed the main character's name halfway through. With I Am Legend, I found myself struggling from chapter two until chapter six.
However, I will say that once I made it past part 1, there were moments I did enjoy. The heart wrenching parts where he relives the last days of his family really reached me. Finally the emotional/internal side I was looking for! Perhaps I liked this section more because he's interacting with people, too, just as I like the section where he's winning over the dog. It gives him another living thing to interact with, and the way he lures the dog in with burgers in garlic rings is kind of endearing, if only because he's trying to make sure the dog gets the food, not the vampires. Toward the end, I enjoyed how he became the enemy in a way. He goes out to hunt Cortman as a relaxing hobby, which really says something about his place in this new, vampire-ridden world. It was an interesting twist that elevates this over other vampire stories.
My final thoughts: although I couldn't get into this story the way other readers have, I'm very glad it was different from the movie. I was incredibly nervous about reading this it all because the movie was such a "Hollywood makeover" of an apocalyptic world. On screen, I didn't know that there were vampires. I had no idea what the other people had become. At least in the book I had some sense of what was going on, some deeper understanding of what Neville was up against. And while I would have liked to have been more inside his head, I can appreciate what Richard Mattheson achieved with this story (and mourn what Hollywood destroyed).
I'm not picky about point of view most of the time, but I really thought the POV in this story was distancing. We don't get too many of the main character's thoughts, and for the first couple of chapters, he's referred to as either "he" or his full name, "Robert Neville." The full name thing gave me the impression that this book was very formal. However, most of the tension here has to come from the internal conflict - the loneliness, the fear, the frustration, the boredom. And that doesn't come across so strongly in third person, in my opinion. Are the vampires scary? Yes, but they are stuck outside until he accidentally forgets to wind his watch and leaves the garage open. And a monster that can't even break in a window because of a string of garlic isn't all that intimidating. If he wasn't alone, if he had company (especially female company), I'm willing to bet he could ignore the cat calls every now and then. So again, it all comes down to the internal stuff, and I wanted more of it. I wanted to be closer to it, and that was the job of the POV. That isn't to say I didn't see how pained Robert Neville was, but I didn't feel the impact as strongly as I would have had it been first person. Had Robert Neville been directly showing me how he felt by letting me straight into his head.
Having that distance kept me from really becoming absorbed in the text. And without that absorption, I kept stumbling upon author mistakes. For example, in chapter one he falls asleep with earplugs in, earplugs good enough to block out the noise of a hoard of vampires calling his name and throwing rocks at his house. Chapter two opens with his alarm waking him up the next morning. But the earplugs are in still, that's not something you normally take out in your sleep. So how does he hear the alarm? That's a nitpicky thing that I'm sure many readers could clarify (maybe the earplugs fell out in the night?), but the fact that I caught that really tells me how unabsorbed I was in this story. Ordinarily, when I love a book, I'll read it in a day and won't even notice if the author changed the main character's name halfway through. With I Am Legend, I found myself struggling from chapter two until chapter six.
However, I will say that once I made it past part 1, there were moments I did enjoy. The heart wrenching parts where he relives the last days of his family really reached me. Finally the emotional/internal side I was looking for! Perhaps I liked this section more because he's interacting with people, too, just as I like the section where he's winning over the dog. It gives him another living thing to interact with, and the way he lures the dog in with burgers in garlic rings is kind of endearing, if only because he's trying to make sure the dog gets the food, not the vampires. Toward the end, I enjoyed how he became the enemy in a way. He goes out to hunt Cortman as a relaxing hobby, which really says something about his place in this new, vampire-ridden world. It was an interesting twist that elevates this over other vampire stories.
My final thoughts: although I couldn't get into this story the way other readers have, I'm very glad it was different from the movie. I was incredibly nervous about reading this it all because the movie was such a "Hollywood makeover" of an apocalyptic world. On screen, I didn't know that there were vampires. I had no idea what the other people had become. At least in the book I had some sense of what was going on, some deeper understanding of what Neville was up against. And while I would have liked to have been more inside his head, I can appreciate what Richard Mattheson achieved with this story (and mourn what Hollywood destroyed).
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