Review of Literary Horror: H.P. Lovecraft vs. Dave Eggers

Topics discussed: The sensation of fear, the importance of secrecy, martyrdom, the occult, the internet’s destiny, waking the dead, visceral versus actual experience, hand jobs, and surfing in the modern era.

I was on an H.P. Lovecraft kick and sought out a densely printed edition of his work to gift to a friend of mine who was about to catch a plane to Morocco where he lives and teaches world literature at a university. During the ensuing weeks I continued bingeing Lovecraft’s Weird Tales, constantly fascinated by his ability to generate descriptions of the workings and practices of the occult. I turned giddy from the exposure to that unfathomably imaginative collection of dark and creepy tales--my version published under the title of the mythical text to which Lovecraft so often alludes--The Necronomicon. I shot Morocco an email to see if my friend was getting into any of the bliss and awe that I was and he responded by saying that he was enjoying the stories, but they had been injecting his dreams with smoky themes and causing him to awake with the willies, so he had moved it from the reading before bed pile to the reading by the pool pile. That made me feel like he was politely passing on it because I don’t believe he has a pool at his apartment in Fez but I could be wrong. The exchange got me thinking about fear and literature’s ability to stoke fear in its readers. I am a big admirer of the writing of H.P. Lovecraft but it doesn’t frighten me. You might even say that I am one of those who finds comfort in the Cthulu. I had to nearly sprint back to that comfort after having the living crap scared out of me by the book that I read on the heels of The Necronomicom, which was a peep show at the alleged motivations of the burgeoning class of millennial information sharing junkies in Silicon Valley; a foretelling of a potential cyber apocalypse by Dave Eggers called The Circle.

One of the things that stings me about The Circle is that there is a character in the book that I really identify with, which isn’t intended to mean that I share all of his paradoxical features. This character is a mid-level artist with a self-importance streak and an awkward loyalty to his relationship with the parents of his high school girlfriend. He builds chandeliers out of deer antlers that were humanely obtained, lets his physique go, dresses in a slack fashion and is highly defensive of his right to privacy. His name is Mercer and he eventually fails at martyrdom, launching his car off of a bridge over a deep gorge, Thelma and Louise style, because the internet is chasing him. During the book Mercer does an excellent job of sticking to his convictions but he still ends up on the losing side in this one.

When books force their readers to pick sides those readers become vulnerable, and feeling vulnerable is scary. When I am reading about escape artists trapped below pyramids, doctors obsessed with re-animating human corpses or ancient spinners of black magic using their young relatives as avatars, it isn’t so much that it’s easy to pick which side to be on, it’s that it matters a lot less. I can root for the blood-sucking vampires over the mortals if I want because in the end I am not really worried about my position with respect to the content of the stories to be something that comes back to haunt me. In other words, there isn’t much there to keep me up at night.

The Circle puts forth a philosophical pickle. Trying to establish a position with respect to the ethics and power of the mega-company that shares the book’s title is scary on its own; the realization that its inertia is already so massive that even having a position may be superfluous, or at the very least long overdue, is enough to make me want to--well--drive my car off of a tall bridge.

Secrets is a common theme in these books. Fans of Lovecraft find joy in the discovery of secrets. Any number of Lovecraft’s stories would provide a sufficient example, but for our purposes here, let us consider one of the longer ones, “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.”

It is revealed instantly in the story that Charles Dexter Ward is recently disappeared from a home for the mentally insane. We come to learn that Charles is the very astute and disciplined son of a prominent Rhode Island family and that he is a devoted antiquarian. As the pages turn, the source of his madness trickles out of a dark past like so much slime. Sometime in the year 1918 Charles stumbles upon an official record stating that his great-great-grandmother, Eliza Tillinghast, had her name and the name of her daughter legally changed from Curwen back to Tillinghast after her husband’s death, citing grounds that the deceased’s name had become a “Publick Reproach.” She subsequently remarried, but the discovery unearthed the identity of Charles’s actual great-great-grandfather, one Joseph Curwen. As he probes for details about his ancestor he is confronted with a string of intentional cover-ups and whispers of allegiances with the occult. The mystery taunts young Charles to be persistent on his quest for knowledge and he encounters just enough clues to keep constantly forging ahead. The pursuit morphs into an obsession as Charles tries to seek out the location of Curwen’s grave, dug supposedly in 1741, and the circumstances that led up to his death.

“The Case of Charles Dexter Ward,” is fueled by discovery. As information is revealed it continues to be the missing components that drive the action forward. It’s the allure of the unknown that keeps Charles’s and the reader’s motivations up. It helps that Charles is well-born and benefits from his access to resources, time in particular, for following the trail. Trips to Salem, New York and New London pay off as he learns the location within Providence of the original Curwen home. By the time he visits the site, he has the benefit of several other pieces of information. As I have already mentioned, Joseph Curwen was once married to Eliza Tillinghast. This marriage was arranged under pressure from Curwen and we don’t know to what extent. What we do know is that at the time Eliza Tillinghast was already betrothed to another man, and that it is the scorned fiancé who originally opted for vigilance of the suspicious Curwen. This man was a sailor named Ezra Weeden who eventually entrusted a compatriot in his stakeouts named Eleazar Smith. Weeden’s notes on Curwen have vanished but Smith’s remain and from them it is confirmed that Joseph Curwen lived an exceptionally long life, seeming not to age, that he was cordial but anti-social and in apparent possession of secrets that only the dead should know. He had a farm close by that was shrouded in secrecy and consumed incredible amounts of supplies and food considering no one but an old Indian couple lived there. It was on this farm that Curwen allegedly communicated with the dead, may have even raised the dead. It was on this farm that Curwen probably died.

Charles isn’t able to locate a physical description of his great-great-grandfather, but he does find mention of a portrait that Curwen had commissioned to be painted on one of the wallboards of the library of his Providence home. When Charles visits the address of the house, which has been completely redone on the interior, it is for this panel in particular that he hunts. After an hour or so of looking, Charles uses his pocket knife to expose a small portion of the oil painting under many layers of peeling paint. Rather than hastily, digging out the image, he hires experts in art restoration who work for many days to reveal the painting. When it is finally exposed and cleaned, the likeness is of Charles precisely.

Charles’s father is enamored by the creepy portrait that resembles his son and pays handsomely to have it removed and installed in his son’s study. Charles oversees the removal of the wall panel and transportation of the piece. Once it is completely detached, he notices a recess in the brickwork behind where it was mounted.

“The youth approached and looked within; finding beneath the deep coatings of dust and soot some loosed yellow papers, a crude thick copybook, and a few mouldering textile shreds which have formed the ribbon binding the rest together. Blowing away the bulk of the dirt and cinders, he took up the book and looked at the bold inscription on its cover. It was in a hand that he had learned to recognize at the Essex Institute, and proclaimed the volume as the ‘Journal and notes of Jos. Curwen, Gent., of Providence-Plantations, Late of Salem’” (Lovecraft 687).

At this point I intend to cease my summation of “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.” Giving the ending away would be contrary to the spirit of the point that I am trying to make: that mystery is more satisfying than omnipotence.

Secrets such as the dark legacy of Joseph Curwen, and every other type of nature, are what the shark-like monopoly Dave Eggers calls The Circle are trying to dispense with permanently and completely. By compiling data, watching everything all the time, and being relentlessly public, The Circle attempts to erase the blanks from history.

It is already cheap and easy to set up wirelessly connected security cameras, and it doesn’t seem far fetched at all to me that inexpensive, solar powered, satellite connected cameras will be available and placed essentially everywhere. In the book, surveillance, transparency, call it what you will, goes to this level and beyond. This concept incites a sensation of real and genuine fear in me, as though there is nothing I could imagine wanting to happen less. But why is that? Is it because I have a gang of embarrassing and kinky habits that I don’t want you knowing about? Frankly, yes, and I’d like to keep it that way. What I can do for your curious and dirty mind is assure you that whatever it is that I am doing when you aren’t looking isn’t all that big of a deal, isn’t affecting anyone but myself, and I also realize that not everyone can say that. Is it worth it to protect my right to conceal the fact that I like to sleep wearing women’s undergarments on a bed of nails, or whatever, if it comes at the expense of having an environment in which the likes of child abductors and serial killers can operate? That is a pretty tough call. It’s also a non-call, since it isn’t as though any of us are going to be the ones to make these decisions.

Characters in The Circle, politicians in particular, start going “clear.” What “clear” means is that the individual has pledged to lead a completely transparent life. They wear a camera on a string about their necks which provides video and audio feed to whoever cares to stream it off of their websites. Of course everyone everywhere is constantly hemming and hawing about the back door dealings of shady politicians and it is easy to envision the type of pressure that would suddenly be exerted on public figures if such a practice became common. All future Monica Lewinskys would be erased from existence. Does that seem tragically sad to anyone else? Or am I just a pathetic relic from a quickly fading generation whose parents were so unconcerned with safety that they didn’t even require their children to be in seat belts in the car. Of course the book contains a polarizing approach with respect to this technological advancement. Mae, the book’s protagonist and a white hot new employee of The Circle, goes clear and broadcasts a grindingly unnatural dinner with her parents to an audience of well over twenty million online gapers. On her drive back to the bay area, after the dinner, she is inundated with messages questioning her parent’s appreciation of and participation in the “clear” lifestyle, particularly because The Circle has generously agreed to add the entire family to Mae’s comprehensive health insurance policy, a daring move considering her father suffers from multiple sclerosis. Mae swings the car around, determined to confront her parent’s publicly about their opinions about The Circle, its generous financial assistance in exchange for the simple request of complete transparency, and the alleviation of the terrible burden of stress surrounding the medical bills stemming from her father’s condition. What she winds up interrupting in her surprise return visit is her mother, with the aid of ample bargain hair conditioner, administering a hand job to Mae’s father, a man who is clearly by this point of the novel floundering in his attempts to find a will to live. Twenty-seven million souls witness the embarrassing moment, and they have an interesting reaction.

A school of thought here is that most of the naughty things that many of us feel like we are executing behind closed doors are not really all that weird or uncommon. There is no reason to be ashamed about them because lots of people are doing them and it’s time to dissolve the stigmas. And that activities that exist outside of these behavioral patterns (molestation and rape, etc.) are best routed out and dispensed with anyway. Hello logic, vivid and indisputable. With it comes the question: should logic be the force that guides human behavior? Or are we spiritual beings that were designed to function according to a more complex set of terms?

H.P. Lovecraft, for all the hideously unthinkable monsters that he didn’t escape having to live with, managed to elude social media. The types of interpersonal relationship dynamics we may be constructing online, and the extent to which we attach importance to these “profiles” is a worthy topic and outside of the scope of this paper other than to utter a single warning: that mystique is valuable and can not be reclaimed once it is lost.

While it is hard to but up against the practical advantages of information sharing, the one thing that convenience outlets like the internet have failed to create is more time, meaning time retains its value. And while it can be nice to know how to evade traffic jams on the way to whichever surf break you are certain is working because you have checked the live cameras, there is the issue of having to take the time constantly to read and upload posts, and the reality is that if everyone has the same information access as you, the waves are likely to be crowded. Of course this theme is one of the major quandaries of the lifestyle The Circle and the bulk of its staff are attempting to project onto the globe, like it or not. The time that it takes to participate in discussion has to come from somewhere and it seems to often come out of the time that could have been spent participating in activities; experiencing, in lieu of commenting on experiencing, or more often, the presumptuous stabs at what experiencing ought to be like.

For example: in The Circle, there is a group of three business entrepreneurs called the Three Wise Men. This triumvirate comprises the brain trust of the ground breaking company, even if their personal convictions sometimes run contrary to the company’s mission. One of these men, Tom Stenton, has disabled child and at one point he tries to make the meek point that a person ascending a treacherous mountain like Kilimanjaro with a camera about his neck could viscerally provide the experience with poor children, such as the disabled Gunner, for whom taking on such a challenge is impossible due to his physical impediment. What Stenton manages to ignore completely in his hypothetical experiential description is any notion of stakes. Gunner doesn’t need to train to watch the camera, endure cold or fatigue, the threat of incoming weather, blinding conditions or death. To me, the idea that a virtual experience could stand in for a real one, that is real horror. Knowing the unknown, there is no way I want to do that. Why would I get up if I knew what was going to happen?

Both Eggers and Lovecraft are frightening in their respective habits and which is more so is a matter of subjectivity. It’s compelling to ponder how they both achieve it while being so disparate. Horror I suppose, like humor, resists being reduced to a formula. Lovecraft’s monsters entice us to chase facts through disintegrating documents over a hundred and fifty year span and Eggers’ threaten to make all information not only preserved but instantly accessible and sufficiently judged by human mini-gods.

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