"Alfred Hitchcock has often said that terror and suspense grow not out of shock and surprise, but out of thickening inevitability...."
The below are my underlinings and rephrasings from repeated readings of Chapter III of Elegant Nightmares: The English Ghost Story from Le Fanu to Blackwood by Jack Sullivan (1978).
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balance between uneasy vagueness and grisly clarity
tilts the balance in favor of the unseen
unsettling flashes of clarity emerge from the obscurity
indirect context
filter the story through levels of editors and narrators
narrative fabric of considerable complexity
paraphrases and direct quotations
strangely impersonal
indirection, ambiguity, and narrative distance
more convincing when suggested or evoked
ambiguous and puzzling
aggressively deflationary attitude
use every available verbal resource to avoid calling attention to themselves
emptiness and restlessness on the part of the characters
materializing out of a void in people's lives
endless process of collecting and arranging
not villainous, merely bored
spare and unadorned
terse and controlled
ruthless paring down of incidents and characters
constant editing-out
a frequent light touch
frequent impatience with the inevitable stereotypical horror scene
his own variations
whether he can play a spooky enough variation on the basic theme to make us turn up the lights
a programmatic, somewhat artificial use of understatement, innuendo, and precisely orchestrated crescendo
concern with technique
old forms of supernatural evil are still respectable, still viable, if seen through different glasses
landscape [transforms] itself in sinister, ever-changing ways
graceful
ominous forebodings
saturated with nostalgia, yet never propagandistic
emptiness of the present and richness of the past are implied by the distinct absence of the one and overwhelming presence of the other
oldness is invariably a deadly trap
immediate contact with death
implicit analogy between digging up an art object and digging up a corpse
evil is something old, something which should have died
in trouble by opening almost anything
futility of the entire antiquarian enterprise
ascetic brevity and clarity
gap between tone and story
style is distinguished by a detachment, an urbanity, and a certain amount of Edwardian stuffiness.... entirely at odds with the nastiness of the plots
contradiction between scholarly reticence and fiendish perversity becomes the authenticating mark of the antiquarian ghost story
sophisticated literary techniques are a form of exorcism in a world filled with hidden menace
to convert [menace] into a pleasant ghost story is to momentarily banish it
unwillingness of the narrators to face up to implied horrors makes the stories all the more chilling and convincing
[disguised] unpleasantness
Narrative coolness
dark center is enclosed, and occasionally buried, by several layers of supernatural apparatus
anticipated climax, the final revelation, less compelling than the means of arriving at it
disarmingly straightforward rather than metaphysical
art object acts not as a mere catalyst, but as the substance of the experience
eccentricity of the mode of perception
wry, typically understated conclusion discourages the reader from using the story as a brief for any demonic precept
brisk parallelism
more like dark enigmas than finished works of fiction
a riddle in which the supernatural appears to play a part
sly cross references are another indication of the self referential character of James's fictional world
narrative posture assumes an audience of connoisseurs, an elect readership which can extrapolate a plot from a sentence
fiction [of considerable power] succeeds in creating a universe of its own which can be apprehended only through careful, thoughtful reading
surfaces are potent and suggestive
far more innovative than he pretends to be
radical and puzzling use of subtlety to evoke ghostly horror
readers tend to associate supernatural horror in fiction with hyperbole, capitals, promiscuous exclamation marks, and bloated adjectives
ghosts materialize not so much from inner darkness or outer conspiracies as from a kind of antiquarian malaise
his fiction shows how nostalgia has a habit of turning into horror
Alfred Hitchcock has often said that terror and suspense grow not out of shock and surprise, but out of thickening inevitability
one step ahead of the character so that the dreams and premonitions are as eerie as the apparitions they announce
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Jay
27 March 2021
Illustration by Jorge Gonzalez
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