The title of this post is probably misleading (see how I suck at titles in yesterday’s post, actually).
I don’t really want to talk about Stephen King’s review of Joyce Carol Oates’s recently released “The Accursed.” It’s a review of a book. There are many out there: reviews and the books they review. I want to talk about something else.
As soon as I heard about this book, I thought, “I need this now.” Just lately, I’ve been aching for all those 18th- and 19th-century Gothic novels I almost choked on during my undergrad, I consumed them so voraciously. I’m pretty sure that, during that entire four years, there wasn’t a day that I wasn’t reading one. Finish one, and sometimes start another in the same sitting. So, it would make sense that this would appeal to me so strongly, right now.
Despite my very much wanting to read one of those right this moment, I made a pact with myself: I promised that I would spend this year reading as many new books as possible.
I have a tendency—and I’m the same way with horror flicks—to isolate myself in a world fashioned decades ago. Few films from the 90s interest me, even fewer from the 2000s. Not like the volume of films I love from the 70s, and even the 80s. Anything before that, also, is readily popped into our DVD player. This isn’t to say that I refuse to watch anything new—it just requires more convincing, that’s all.
Same with books, especially horror. 1960s and back, and I’m good. The further back we go, the happier I am to pick it up. And those massive Gothic tomes are included.
So, considering my promise to myself and the pull I’m feeling to revisit the old, old ones, Oates’s The Accursed probably couldn’t come along at a better time for me.
Funnily, King’s major complaint seems to be everyone’s major complaint:
The book is too long, but what classic Gothic isn’t?
As with my reading habits, this is actually a selling point. Some reviewers at Amazon dismiss it as “overwritten, pretentious dreck,” and complain of its “great, thick hedgerows of verbiage.” Still others who even praise it will mention that it “would have been a better one if shortened by a hundred or so of its more than 650 pages.”
Obviously, everyone is entitled to their opinion, and certainly not everyone enjoys the same sort of book. And I am not arguing that all books should be upwards of 600+ pages. But I will say that I feel it a shame that folks might be put off a book due to its lofty page-count.
One of the things I love best about those thick-ass Gothic works is exactly their tendency to meander. It’s part of the joy of sinking into a thing like that; it’s reveling in the comfort of a certain soft, warm place. That comfort is only attained through time spent with it. This is where I best love to be.
I understand everyone’s short attention span. I struggle with my own, and I think anyone who’s managed to follow even a fraction of technology up into the new millennium struggles with this. I somewhat depend on long works like this to ground me and bring the words on the page back into focus, as opposed to the blur of black and white on the computer screen. Heck, for some people, just engaging in a 200-300-page novel requires a certain level of effort, but if part of the idea is to re-center yourself, concentration-wise, those shorter books just aren’t up to the task. It takes a whopper of a book to really benefit you in that way.
When this year’s up and I allow myself to get back to just reading where my heart leads (which could be way back when, or yesterday’s book), I fully instead to pick up Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer again (704 pages), and the almost flimsy by comparison, but still a favorite, Godwin’s Caleb Williams (400+). A true challenge, but a sweet one, is Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (about the same as Melmoth, but its asides are less engaging).
The things I’d have missed if I let page counts deter me from reading a book! I love these books. I don’t always love every little thing about them, but as whole pieces, I would be devastated if they had disappeared from my shelves forever.
I have a bit of a queue, reading list-wise. But this one’s joining the line. I might even move it up a bit, just to satisfy the itch that, sadly, to some folks, it merely an annoyance. For me, scratching that sucker is pure pleasure. I can’t wait.