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Sunday, June 8, 2014

Metamorphosis - a Horror Insect Story


To me, at least in his later years, Franz Kafka was our whiny man of literature. This is never so true as when he berated his family during the time of Metamorphosis and his portrayal of his family's treatment of him in the horror story. Where is the thanks and gratitude? But if you have never read it, you give it a spin.

One of the best things about Kafka, however, are his quotes on literature. Consider this one he wrote when 20 years old to his friend Oskar Pollak in January of 1904:

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide.

Saturday, June 7, 2014

First out of body experience in a horror short story

Richard Harris Barham (1788-1845)

One of the first short stories in the English language to feature an out of body experience is A Singular Passage in the Life of  the Late Henry Harris D.D. The early horror story was published in Blackwood's Magazine by Richard Harris Barham (1788-1845). This is little surprise given the many early horror tales Blackwood's published by authors mostly in the UK.

Without giving too much of this excellent story away, the protagonist finds her "spirit" teleported to another place where she does not want to be with people she would rather avoid as they practice their dark arts. Published in 1831, this story is ranked 35th in the Top 40 horror short stories from 1800-1849. Still, it is well worth a read to learn about this dark secret.