Sometimes we forget to blink: The Ceremonies by T.E.D. Klein (1984)

Or, a note on contradictions of the horror novel

Those seeking an aesthetic appreciation of 1980s U.S. horror fiction need to read, among many other works, Klein's The Ceremonies.

Based on the author's 1972 novella "The Events at Poroth Farm," it is a praiseworthy work. Klein is a writer's writer: though his fiction output is small, it is of high quality; it is U.S. publishing's house style: slick, curious, and character-driven. In this, Klein is similar to Cheever and Updike.

The Ceremonies does not add any new fundamental elements to the plot of "Poroth Farm." Two new characters, Carol and Mr. Rosebottom, are presented to concretize each step in the plot, spelling out at length what was only suggested in the novella. 

Of course this is the central pitfall of novel-length horror fiction: the genre thrives on suggestion and the power of what is only hinted at. The novel makes most things clear, at the risk of making most elements appear absurd. (The Coney Island scene is a salient example). 

At the end of nearly 600 pages we are left with the same ambiguities about the Old One's plan as we were at the start. (And for me, some crucial questions of the everyday are also left in midair: did Jeremy Friers complete his summer reading? Is he progressing with his thesis on gothic?).

In "The Events at Poroth Farm" Jeremy, as first-person narrator, consciously states the connection of landscape-as-psychology presented in his readings. In The Ceremonies that insight is left unstated. That choice surprised me, since Klein seems intent on spelling-out most plot elements, including points drawn from Machen's "The White People."

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The climax ending The Ceremonies strikes the reader of "Poroth Farm" as perfunctory at best after hundreds of pages of expository build-up. 

While the death of the Old One is presented with some slapstick and brio as an absurd accident, the most chilling line of the novella is unaccountably dropped:

....my escape was largely a matter of luck, a physical wreck fleeing something oblivious to pain or fatigue; but that, beyond mere luck, I had been impelled by an almost ecstatic sense of dread produced by his last words to me, that last communication from an alien face smiling inches from my own, and which I chose to take as his final warning:

     "Sometimes we forget to blink."

Jay

15 July 2020

P.S.

I previously wrote about Klein's Dark Gods here and here.

My notes on The Ceremonies are here.