by Michael Battaglia
Review of R.I.P
December 2004
So we continue to meander through my insane quest to comment
on every story currently posted on the website. Curse my
work ethic. Probably the only good thing about doing all
of these at once is that I can't talk about myself as much,
because I've got to spread it out over the course of all
these columns. Not like that's really any difficulty for
me, as people who have had the displeasure of actually e-mailing
me have found out. At one point in my life I was in a correspondence
with someone at least once a day and somehow I managed to
turn "nothing special happened today" into a multi-paragraph
essay. Sometimes more than once a day. So either I have
a sharp eye for small details or I'm just a big blowhard.
The truth, as it often turns out, probably lies somewhere
in between. But you can lean toward the blowhard characterization.
I won't feel too bad.
Actually I did find out today that the nurse at my local
high school asked my mother if I could come in and talk
to the health careers club about being a pharmacist. I'll
probably do it, schedule permitting, but it's going to be
a weird experience, imparting knowledge onto eager young
future health professionals and somehow not scaring them
off from working altogether. But the fact that they'd be
at all interested in hearing what I have to say is in itself
odd. Does that make me officially an adult now, at twenty
five, or can I coast on "young adult" for a few
more years yet? Heh. You're only as old as you feel, I suppose.
And speaking of potentially horrifying experiences (warning:
awkward segue in progress!) this time out we're discussing
a story from our very own website founder, Daniel Olarnick,
and it's not a story rooted in the throbbing chunk of man
that is our hero Odan, but instead placed in the horror
section, where we get a more true to life and realistic
story, albeit one with a ghost involved. Now, I probably
should watch myself, being that he knows where I live, and
although he promised not to mail me any flaming poop, you
just never know what might push a man over the edge. I've
come close to doing it myself a few times. If not for a
lack of matches, the unthinkable might have been achieved.
I'm kidding. Just the fact that I feel the need to stress
that suggests there is something terribly, desperately wrong
with me.
So, the story, then.
Do I need a spoiler warning at this point? I guess every
column is someone's first, so here goes: spoiler warning
in effect. As a "horror" story, the tale itself
isn't that frightening, most of the terror (for me at least)
comes from the fact the tale is apparently true. Which of
course brings up an interesting argument involving authorial
intent. After all, I know it's true because I know the author.
But how many fictional stories have you seen that have a
beginning just like this one, where the author makes a note
that the tale is indeed true but names and place have been
changed to protect the innocent? How many Jules Verne and
HG Wells stories began with the narrator insisting the tale
was true, even if the events were too fantastic to be believed?
When in reality, it wasn't true, of course (unless aliens
really did land in London, but then they almost landed in
New Jersey, right? Thanks, Orson) but merely a device on
the part of the actual author (meaning the person who physically
wrote the story as opposed to the narrative "voice"
that composed the tale) to draw the reader further into
the story and give an otherwise fictional tale a more realistic
sheen. How do we know that the "author" of this
story is indeed Daniel Olarnick and not a fictional Daniel
who happens to look exactly as the author did in 1965 and
also worked as a shorthand reporter . . . but is just a
fictional construct, designed only to convince you that
the story did indeed happen? You see where it starts to
get confusing and where you start to wonder how much you
can trust the narrator. Because, after all, if the narrator
is the person relaying the story to you, you have no other
recourse but to believe him or her. They could be lying
(as in the case of Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun,
where the narrator has a perfect memory but doesn't always
tell the truth . . . this is something you also see in some
of John Banville's books) or simply leaving stuff out and
you really have no idea.
And a big part of the reflexive horror in the story itself
is due to the "it could happen here" aspect of
it. Most people do not believe in ghosts, because there's
no evidence in the physical world to really prove that there
are ghosts . . . and yet here comes a story that takes place
in "our" world, where such a ghost did appear
. . . it makes no sense then, you have two incompatible
worlds colliding and your brain trying to rationalize the
two together ("ghosts exist" vs. "ghosts
don't exist") is what creates that chilling feeling.
Because if it's true, how else can you explain it? And if
it isn't true, then the author is either delusional or making
it all up. But he just insisted it's true. And so it goes,
round and round and round.
This is where authorial intent comes into play and we get
all kinds of post-modern. The reader, then, has to decide
if the author is indeed really "the author" and
not some kind of construct created to give you an entryway
into the story . . . and regardless of the answer, you have
to ask, why would the author do such a thing? Why would
he insist a tale is true when it can't possibly be? Or why
would the author go through this lengthy charade of trying
to convince me this is him telling me that the tale is true,
when the whole thing is just fiction? Is he trying to simply
scare me? Telling me that you can't trust anything, that
you have to question all sources? Or is he just wishing
that I didn't overanalyze everything?
Or none of those questions could be relevant and the story
might just be true. In which case, why should the reader
simply assume that? Is there some kind of process that can
help you decide what is true and what isn't, especially
when you have a story like this that blurs the lines, is
suspension of disbelief enough? The trick is to make you
believe it, and if you're already consciously submerging
any doubts, what purpose does it serve, then? The story
has already failed, it becomes calculated and you've become
part of your own manipulation. Unfortunately there really
is no rigorous process that I know of, unless the author
was kind enough to provide sources that you could check
out. But this column hasn't required homework yet and we're
not about to start now, keeping in mind our all too brief
discussion about things on fire from earlier. It's just
not worth it. So what's a reader to do? Believe it and question
nothing? Disbelieve it and not be entertained? Question
it, but be unable to discern intent? There really isn't
any answer that I can find, and I have the author's assurance
that it's true. You don't have that, all you have is the
text. Thus the question still remains, how much do you trust?
You see, I overthink these things so you don't have to.
But I tend to get wrapped up in questions like these, to
the point where simple stories about spacemen chasing each
other around the galaxy becomes this bloated, unreadable
mass of putrid words. The theory behind stories and why
we believe what we do fascinates me to some degree and by
the author declaring it true and betting the fright on the
truth of the story, that adds another wrinkle . . . after
all, if this appeared in a newspaper (where they don't have
to declare, "Hey this is true") you would probably
think, "Oh, that's silly nonsense" and automatically
disbelieve it. And yet we're expected to believe all kinds
of oddness in fiction, although most of it is known to be
fictional (for all his work, I don't think Tolkein ever
believed Middle-Earth was real and I doubt he expected you
to believe it either) and thus not "real".
And I think I've gone as far as I can go with this theme.
There's no real answer for it and I keep going in circles
anyway but it's worth bringing up at any rate. Just another
way to look at things, even if it is ultimately pointless.
So with the first two sentences of the story out of the
way, let's get to the rest!
I think that's the least comforting sentence I ever wrote.
In a sense, the story has no choice but to be real if it's
going to exert any power over us. The main thrust of the
tale and the final twist is something that those of us well
versed in urban legends will be very familiar with . . .
the old story about the fellow who picks up a hitchhiker
only to find out later she died (or was murdered) years
ago is something all of us have probably heard, whether
as just a pure story or as "I knew a guy who knew a
guy who knew a guy . . ." type of deal. The author
gives it a bit of a NYC feel, a welcome addition that helps
makes the story distinctive. Horror, at least modern horror,
is a genre best experienced through the movies, I think,
only because movies are the only place where you can't control
the pacing, you're dragged along with it and subject to
the director's mercies when dealing with shocks and chills.
In a book or a comic (I'm sorry, "graphic novel")
the reader controls the pace of the story and so it's harder
to be scared when you have time to prepare yourself for
it. That doesn't mean that it's impossible and really it's
all a matter of presentation and atmosphere, as any fan
of Stephen King can tell you. Leave enough up to the reader's
imagination and they'll do all the work for you (comics
don't stack up in that respect, since it's a static visual
medium, although old issues of Alan Moore's Swamp Thing
and Neil Gaiman's Sandman creeped me the hell out)
and even a familiar urban legend can take on new meaning
depending on the execution.
Atmosphere and execution are key to what makes this story
work. By setting it in NYC and not "Anytown, USA"
(which is where most urban legends are set), he gives it
a sense of place and a feel that a generic ghost story just
wouldn't have. You can tell this was written by someone
who lived in NYC during this time, and it makes the story
breathe in a way that someone who wasn't as familiar with
the place and time couldn't do. I can't fake this, anymore
than I can convince you that spacemen are real. The eye
for detail, the attention to the procedures involved in
investigating a potential crime, it's all there and on its
own it almost makes for a more fascinating survey than the
ghost story the narrator is trying to tell you.
While we're speaking about the narrator, I have to admit
that I'm highly impressed at the style shift Dan was able
to accomplish for his story. Being more used to his fantasy
stories, I was prepared for a barrage of mad ideas, told
with gnarled sentences bursting with energy. Here we have
something a little more stark and stripped down, I wouldn't
go as far to say "Just the facts" but that's probably
apt. The words carry the story but they don't show off,
they do what they have to do and get out of the way. And
being that this is mostly concerned with police work, that's
probably the best . . . there's a reason why James Joyce
never wrote detective stories (well maybe he never cared
to but we'll ignore that for the purpose of my metaphor).
There's an understated eloquence to the prose, he's not
trying to impress us with verbal pyrotechnics, he's just
telling a story. And on that level it works perfectly fine.
I'd also like to comment on the viewpoint of the story.
The story is told through the viewpoint of "Dan",
who is meant to be the author himself (a discussion and
debate we'll table for now) and intercuts back and forth
between the person they're interrogating and his story of
how he ran into a ghost. By focusing mostly on the setting
of a police interrogating, he gives greater weight to the
story, because those types of situations are places where
people are pressed to tell the truth and thus, if a man
is telling a story in this case, we're more likely to believe
him. Some of the touches are a little melodramatic (the
line "John O'Connor's life was about to change forever"
comes to mind) but there's a definite sense of pacing as
we cut from the crew setting up to take the story and the
story itself.
The encounter with the ghost at first glance (and taken
out of context) just seems like any other one night stand.
Man runs into girl, girl makes out with man, man never sees
girl again. The seamy sexual undercurrent to it gives it
more of NYC feel to me, I always picture the city back in
the middle part of the century as a grimy, dense place .
. . not the total descent into hell it was at the late eighties
and nineties, but a city where anything could happen and
what happened might not be pleasant and it might not be
any of your business. That's a distinctly New York attitude
and the author conveys it well. Perhaps the definitive "things
were different" moment is the scene where the suspect
comes out and he's bruised and the narrator brushes it off
as "he probably deserved it". We look at an attitude
like that and say, "Oh how can that be" but that's
how things were and while today a police officer beating
a suspect is a good way to get the trial thrown out of court
(that fun word "coercion" gets tossed about),
back in the day it wasn't as frowned upon (it wasn't encouraged
either I imagine) and that nonchalant attitude is conveyed
well, without being judgmental. This is how it was, the
author says, daring the reader not to blink. And maybe that's
where the real horror is, in a callous past, but it's over
there and we're over here and there's nothing we can do
about it. Again, knowing it's a ghost story and having heard
the urban legend so many times, the actual mechanics of
the plot are almost rote, we know how this plays out even
before we get there. We know that he'll find out that she's
not dead, that he won't be able to explain how her purse
got into the car . . . now, knowing all that, what do we
know?
A ghost, then. A ghost story. So they tell us.
Dialogue carries the story even more than the prose does,
crackling along the interrogation, the back and forth between
the calm police officer and the increasingly panicked suspect,
sounding casually real in the best Raymond Chandler style,
achieving a strange kind of minimalism.
Not everything fits, of course. Questions remain. Why does
the suspect not admit he was in Vietnam the first time they
ask him where he was last year . . . surely he knew that
would get him off the hook entirely, regardless of what
they were accusing him of? Also, the police don't seem interested
in investigating the tale further, they just accept the
details that the suspects gives and leave it at that, without
following any other possible leads (maybe he had friends
who could have left the purse in his car, maybe he's simply
lying) . . . although they might and we just don't see it.
Why has nobody been able to figure out who murdered the
girl? Lack of evidence? Again, these are questions that
can be answered outside the story itself and in terms of
the ghost story, they aren't really important . . . the
focus is on the phantom aspect of the tale and everything
else tends to fall into service with that concept. Which,
on one hand, is the point, but on the other hand, it means
that all details that aren't immediately relevant get pushed
to the side. Who was John O'Connor? Who was Victoria Masters?
The plot defines the people but we never really get to know
the people and the story feels somewhat incomplete because
of that. They don't feel real (although the suspect's dialogue
does feel authentic) and as such I can't make myself feel
the horror, or even a mild chill. It probably happened.
But it didn't happen to me.
But the point really isn't to delve deeply into these people's
lives, it's to merely detail an event that happened to them
and spook the reader a little bit, or at least give them
something to think about. And on that level, it succeeds,
regardless of what I would like to see (he says, because
he's not arrogant at all) and it does exactly what it sets
out to do, which is tell a simple ghost story. Maybe there's
another explanation for what happened, but the story doesn't
allow for that and that's fine . . . the author isn't doing
a case study, this isn't the ghost version of In Cold
Blood, where we get or need a detailed analysis of the
incident. Perhaps the author shaves off all other details
that would not make it look like a ghost story .
. . who cares? There's no way for us to know. As much as
I like to debate the stuff that's merely implied, we can
only go by what's there, on the page.
In that sense, the ending is appropriate. Having encountered
his phantom, the story can only end for John O'Connor in
one way. Perhaps, in another world, he becomes a pioneering
ghost hunter or parapsychologist, studying the occult and
increasing our knowledge of it . . . but that's not very
gothic now, is it? So he vanishes. Maybe he had a different
reason and there's a perfectly rational explanation for
it. We'll never know. The implication is that forces beyond
this world did it and in terms of the story, that's the
only explanation that makes sense. The last sentence of
the story feels a little too pulpy for me, giving the understated
tone of the pages before, like the Crypt Keeper just walked
in to cackle and tell us the punch line . . . for me, personally,
I prefer to just leave the implication hanging out there
and enjoy the dawning expression of horror that comes over
the reader's face as they connect the dots themselves. Sometimes
if you spell it out, it dilutes the impact. Me, I would
have ended the story on "No other explanation is possible"
and left it at that, neither open nor closed, leaving the
reader waiting for a next sentence that will never come,
no "he was later found dead" or "just kidding,
folks", nothing at all.
But maybe that's not really the point. Perhaps it's just
all in good fun. I'm a terrible judge of these things, as
we've seen.
I liked this, especially the style . . . as much fun as
Odan is, sometimes the stuff that's truer to life appeals
to me more and we could definitely be entertained by an
eventual series of "From the Case Files Of . . .",
especially if they're as dripping in NYC atmosphere as this
story is. We don't have many people who can successfully
recreate that era in all its detail and that, not the ghost
story, is what I think is the story's biggest triumph. Again,
your mileage may vary. If the fantasy thing never works
out, Dan's got a valid branch in the literary road to go
down instead, turning out more of these minimalist workouts.
It's reassuring to see an author who can work in more than
one style, if need be.
And that's it. I've rambled on for far longer than I should
have, probably, but you can't claim I don't read the stuff
thoroughly. Next up, an examination of the Gettysburg Address,
one letter at a time. That'll surely increase my popularity.
Hm, that sounds like a plan.
I'm sure you all can't wait.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I think the mailman just dropped
off a package.
- MB
12.8.04
"It's too nice to breathe, I'm freer than the living,
if that's what they're called . . ." - the Posies,
"Fall Song"
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