mark-fisher-the-weird-and-the-eerie-2

M A R K F IS H E R T h e W e i r d T h e E e r i e A n d Repeater

P u b lis h e d b y R e p e a te r B o o k s An imprint of Watkins Media Ltd 19-21 Cecil Court London WC2N 4EZ UK ^^w.repeaterbooks.com A Repeater Books paperback original 2016 4th edition Distributed in the United Statesby Random House, Inc., New York. Copyright © Mark Fisher 2016 Mark Fisher asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. Cover design: Johnny BuU Typography and typesetting: Jan Middendorp Typefaces: Chaparral Pro and Absara Sans ISBN: 978-1-910924-38-9 Ebook ISBN: 978-1-910924-39-6 A l rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

To Zoe, m y con stan t source o f support, and the reason there is som ething here rather than nothing.

C o n te n ts 8 INTRODUCTION The W eird and the Eerie (Beyond th e Unheimlich) 14 THE WEIRD 15 The O u t o f Place and the O u t o f Time: Lovecraft and the Weird 26 The Weird Against th e Worldly: H.G. Wells 32 "Body a tentacle mess”: The G rotesque and The Weird: The Fall 39 Caught in the Coils o f Ouroboros: Tim Powers 45 Simulations and Unworlding: Rainer W erner Fassbinder and Philip K.Dick 53 Curtains and Holes: David Lynch 60 THE EERIE 6 1 Approaching the Eerie 65 Something W here There Should Be Nothing: Nothing W here There Should Be Something: Daphne du Maurier and Christopher Priest 76 On Vanishing Land: M.R.James and Eno 82 Eerie Thanatos: Nigel Kneale and Alan Garner 98 Inside Out: O utside In: Margaret A tw ood and Jonathan Glazer 110 Alien Traces: Stanley Kubrick, Andrei Tarkovsky, Christopher Nolan 122 "...The Eeriness Remains": Joan Lindsay 162 BIBLIOGRAPHY

IN TRO D U CTIO N T h e W e ir d a n d th e E e rie (B ey o n d th e U n h eim lich ) It is odd th a t it has tak en m e so lo n g to really reckon w ith th e w eird and the eerie. For alth o u g h the im m ediate origins o f this b o o k la y in fairly recent events, I have b een fascin ated and h au n ted b y exam ples o f the w eird and th e eerie fo r as lo n g as I ccan rem em ber. Y e t I had n o t r e a ly id en tified th e tw o m od es, stiU less specified th e ir d efin ing features. No dou bt th is is p a rtly because th e m ajor cultural ex^ n p les o f th e w eird and th e eerie are to be fo u n d a t th e edges o f genres su ch as horro r and science fiction, and th ese genre association s have obscured w h at is specific to the w eird and th e eerie. The w eird cam e into focus fo r m e around a decade ago, as th e result o f tw o sym posia on th e w o rk o f H.P. L ovecraft at G old sm iths, U n iversity o f London; w hile th e eerie becam e th e m ajor subject o f On Vanishing Land, th e 2013 audio-essay I produced in collaboration w ith Ju stin Barton. Appropriately, the eerie crept up on Ju stin and m e; it had n o t b een our orig­ inal focus, b u t b y th e end o f th e project w e fo u n d th a t m uch o f the m usic, film and fiction th a t h a d always h au n ted us p o s­ sessed the q uality o f the eerie. W h a t th e w eird an d th e eerie have in com m on is a preoc­ cupation w ith th e strange. The strange - n o t th e horrific. The aUure th a t th e w eird and th e eerie possess is n o t captured b y th e idea th a t w e "en jo y w h a t scares us” . It has, rath er, to do w ith a fascin ation fo r the outside, fo r th a t w h ich lies beyond stan dard perception, cogn ition and experience. This fascin a­ tion usuaUy involves a certain apprehension, perhaps even d read — b u t it w ou ld be w ro n g to sa y th a t the w eird and the 8

eerie are n ecessarily te rrifyin g . I ^ n o t here claim ing th a t the outside is alw ays beneficent. There are m ore th a n enough terrors to be fo u n d there; b u t such terrors are n o t a l there is to th e o u tsid e. Perhaps m y delay in com ing rou nd to th e w eird an d the eerie h a d to do w ith the sp ell cast b y Freud's co n cep t o f the unheimlich. A s is weU know n, th e unheimlich has b een inad­ equately tran slated into English as th- u n caw iy; th e w ord w h ich b ette r captures Freud's sense o f ti.s term is the " unhom ely”. The unheimlich is o fte n equated w ith th e w eird and the eerie — Freud's ow n essay treats th e term s as interchangeable. But the influence o f Freud's great essay h as m ean t th a t the unheimlich has crow ded o u t th e oth er tw o m odes. The essay on the unheimlich has b een h igh ly influ ential on th e stud y o f horror and science fictio n — perhaps, in the end, m ore b ecause o f Freud's h e sitatio n s, conjectures and rejected th eses th a n for th e actu al d efin ition h e provides. The exam ples o f th e unheimlich w hich Freud furnishes — doubles, m echanical en tities th a t appear hum an, prosth eses — ccal up a certain k in d o f disquiet. But F reu d ’s u ltim ate settlin g o f the enigm a o f the unheimlich — his claim th a t it can be reduced to castration a ^ riety — is as disappointing as an y m ediocre genre detective's rote solu tion to a m ystery. W h a t enduringly fascinates is the cluster o f concepts th a t circulate in Freud’s essay, and the w ay in w hich th e y o ften recursively instan tiate the v e ry processes to w hich th e y refer. Repetition and doubling — them selves an un cann y pair w hich double and repeat each oth er — seem to be a t the h eart o f every "uncanny” phenom ­ ena w hich Freud identifies. There is certain ly som eth ing th a t th e weird, the eerie and the unheimlich share. They are a l affects, b u t th e y are also m odes: m odes o f film and fiction, m odes o f perception, u lti­ mately, yo u m ight even say, m odes o f b ein g . Even so, th ey are n o t quite genres. 9

IN TR OD U CTIO N Perhaps the m ost im p o rta n t difference b etw een the unheimlich on th e one hand and th e w eird and the eerie on the oth er is th e ir treatm en t o f the strange. Freud’s unheimlich is about the strange within the fam iliar, th e stran gely fam iliar, the fam iliar as strange — abou t th e w ay in w hich the dom estic w orld does n ot coincide w ith itself. A ll o f the am bivalences o f Freud's psychoanalysis are cau ght up in this concept. Is it ab ou t m a k in g the fam iliar — and the fam ilial — stran ge? O r is it abou t returning th e strange to th e fam iliar, the fam ilial? Here w e can appreciate the double m ove inh erent to Freudian psychoanalysis: first o f all, there is estrangem ent o f m any o f the com m on n otion s abou t the family; b u t th is is accom pa­ nied b y a com pensatory m ove, w hereby th e outside becom es legible in term s o f a m od ernist fa m ily dram a. Psychoanalysis itse lf is an unheimlich genre; it is hau n ted b y an outside w hich it circles around b u t can n ever fu lly acknow ledge or affirm. M an y com m entators have recognised th a t the essay on the unheimlich itself resem bles a tale, w ith Freud in th e role o f the Jam esian unreliable narrator. If Freud is an unreliable narra­ tor, w h y should we accept th a t his ow n tale should be classi­ fied in term s o f the category th a t his essay proposes? W h a t if, instead, th e w hole dram a o f the essay consisted in Freud’s attem p ts continually to contain th e ph en om en a he explores w ith in the rem it o f th e unheimlich? The fo ld in g o f the w eird and th e eerie in to th e unheimlich is sym p to m atic o f a secu lar retrea t from the ou tside. The w ider predilection fo r the unheimlich is com m ensurate w ith a com ­ pulsion tow ards a certain k in d o f critique, w hich operates b y always processin g th e outside th rou gh the gaps and im passes o f the inside. The w eird and the eerie m ake the opposite m ove: th ey allow us to see th e inside from th e perspective o f th e ou t­ side. As w e shall see, th e w eird is th a t which does not belong. The w eird brings to the fam iliar som eth in g w hich ordinar­ ily lies b eyon d it, and w hich can n o t be reconciled w ith the 10

T H E W E IR D AN D T H E EERIE “h om ely” (even as its negation). The form th a t is perhaps m ost appropriate to the weird is m ontage - th e conjoining o f two or more things which do not belong together. Hence the predilection w ith in surrealism fo r th e weird, w hich understood th e uncon­ scious as a m ontage-m achine, a generator o f w eird ju xtap o­ sitions. Hence also the reason th a t Jacques Lacan - ris in g to the challenge posed b y surrealism and th e rest o f aesth etic m odernism - could m ove tow ards a weird psychoanalysis, in w hich the death drive, dream s and th e un conscious becom e un teth ered from any n atu ralisation or sense o f hom eliness. A t first glance, th e eerie m ig h t seem to b e closer to th e unheimlich than to th e w eird . Yet, like th e w eird, th e eerie is also fun dam en tally to do w ith th e outside, and here w e can understand the outside in a straightforw ard ly em pirical as w ell as a m ore abstract tran scen dental sense. A sense o f the eerie seldom clings to enclosed and in h ab ited dom estic spaces; we fin d the eerie m ore rea d ily in landscapes p a rtially em ptied o f the hum an. W h a t happened to produce these ruins, th is disappearance? W h at H n d o f en tity w as involved? W h at kind o f th in g was it th a t em itted such an eerie cry? A s w e can see from th ese exam ples, th e eerie is fu n dam en tally tied up w ith questions o f agency. W h a t k in d o f agen t is acting here? Is there an agen t a t all? These q u estion s can be posed in a psychoanalytic register - i f w e are not w h o w e th in k w e are, w hat are we? - b u t th e y also apply to th e forces govern in g capitalist society. C apital is a t every le v e l an eerie en tity: con­ jured o u t o f n oth in g, cap ital n everth eless e x e rts m ore influ­ ence th an any aUegedly substantial entity. The m etaphysical scandal o f capital brings us to the broader q u estion o f the agen cy o f th e im m aterial and th e inanim ate: the agen cy o f m inerals and landscape fo r au thors like N igel Kneale and A lan Garner, and the w ay th a t “w e” “ourselves” are caught up in th e rhythm s, pulsions and pattern in gs o f non-hum an forces. There is no inside except as a fold in g o f 11

INTRODUCTION th e outside; th e m irror cracks, I am an other, and l always was. The shudder h ere is the shu d d er o f the eerie, n o t o f th e unheimlich. O ne extraordinary exam ple o f th e displacem ent o f th e unheimlich b y th e eerie is D.M. Thom as’ n ovel The White Hotel. The novel first o f a ll seem s to b e a b ou t a sim ulated case stu d y o f a fictional p atien t o f Freud’s, “A n n a G ”. The poem b y A n na G w hich b egin s th e n ovel seem s a t first sigh t to b e saturated w ith erotic hysteria, as Thom as’ Freud proposes in the Case H istory w h ich he w rites. Freud's readin g th reaten s to dis­ sipate th e oneiric atm osphere o f A n n a G’s poem , and also establish to a direction o f explanation: from the p resen t to th e past, from th e outside to th e inside. Y et it tu rn s o u t th a t the seem ing eroticism is itself an o b fu scatio n and a deflection from the p o em ’s m ost in ten se referent, w hich is to b e fou n d n o t in A n n a G ’s past, b u t in h er fu tu re — h er death a t th e m as­ sacre a t Babi Yar in 1941. The problem s o f fo resig h t and fate here bring us to th e eerie in a d istu rbin g form. Yet fa te m igh t be said to belong to the weird as weU as th e eerie. The so o th ­ sayin g w itch es in Macbeth, a fter all, are k n o w n as th e W eird Sisters, and one o f th e archaic m eanin gs o f "weird” is "fate”. The concept o f fate is w eird in th a t it im plies tw isted form s o f tim e and causality th a t are a lie n to ord in ary percep tion , b u t it is also eerie in th a t it raises q u estion s abou t agency: w h o or w h a t is th e e n tity th a t has w oven fate? The eerie concerns th e m ost fu n dam en tal m etaphysical q uestion s one could pose, questions to do w ith existence and non-existence: Why is there something here when there should be nothing? Why is there nothinghere when there should be some­ thing? The u n seein g eyes o f th e dead; th e bew ildered eyes o f an am nesiac — these provoke a sen se o f th e eerie, ju st as surely as an abandoned village o r a sto n e circle do. So fa r, w e a re still l e f t w ith th e im pression th a t th e w eird and th e eerie have p rim arily to do w ith w h a t is d istressin g or 12

T H E W E IR D A N D T H E EERIE terrifyin g. So le t us end these prelim inary rem arks b y pointin g to exam ples of the w eird and th e eerie th a t produce a different set o f affects. M odern ist and experim ental w o rk o ften strikes us as w eird w h en w e first en cou nter it. The sen se o f wrongness associated w ith th e w eird - th e conviction th a t this does not belong— is often a sign th a t w e are in the presence o f the new. The w eird here is a signal th a t the concepts and fram ew orks w hich w e have previou sly em ployed are now obsolete. If the en counter w ith th e strange here is not straightforw ard ly pleasurable (the pleasurable w ou ld always refer to previous form s o f satisfaction), it is n o t sim ply u npleasant either: there is an en joym en t in seeing th e fam iliar and th e conventional b ecom in g outm oded - an en jo ^ n e n t w hich, in its m ixture o f pleasure and pain, has som eth in g in com m on w ith w h at L acan calledjouissance. The eerie also entails a disen gagem en t from our current attach m en ts. But, w ith th e eerie, this disengagem ent does n ot usually h a v e the q uality o f shock th a t is typically a featu re o f the weird. The seren ity th a t is o ften associated w ith th e eerie — th in k o f the phrase eerie calm — h as to do w ith detachm ent from th e urgencies o f the everyday. The perspective o f the eerie can give us access to th e forces w hich govern m undane reality b u t w h ich are ordinarily obscured, ju st as it can give us access to spaces beyond m un dan e reality altogether. It is th is release from th e m un dan e, th is escape from th e confines o f w h a t is ordinarily tak en fo r reality, w hich goes som e w ay to account fo r th e peculiar ap p eal th a t th e eerie possesses. 13

T H E W E IR D

T h e O u t o f P la ce an d th e O u t o f T im e: L ovecraft and th e W eird W h a t is th e weird? W h en w e say som ething is w eird, w hat kind o f feelin g are we p o in tin g to? I w a n t to argue th a t the w eird is a particular k in d o f pertu rbation. It involves a sen ­ sation o f wrongness: a w eird e n tity o r object is so strange th a t it m akes us feel th a t it sh ou ld n o t exist, or at least it should n o t exist here. Yet if the en tity or object is here, th en the cat­ egories w hich w e have up u n til n ow used to m ake sense o f t h e w orld can n o t be valid. The w eird th in g is n o t w ron g, a fte r a l: it is our conceptions th a t m u st be inadequate. D ictionary defin itions are n o t alw ays m uch help in defin­ ing the w eird. Som e refer im m ed iately to th e supernatural, b u t it is b y no m eans d e a r th a t supern atural en tities m u st be weird. In m any ways, a n atural p h enom enon such as a black hole is m ore w eird th an a vam pire. Certainly, w h en it com es to fiction, the v e ry generic recogn isability o f creatures such as vam pires and w erew olves disqualifies th em from provokin g any sen sation o f w eirdness. There is a pre-existin g lore, a set o f protocols for in terp retin g an d placing the v ^ p i r e an d th e w erew olf. In any case, th ese creatures are m erely empiricaUy m onstrous; th eir appearance recom bines elem ents from the n atural w orld as w e already u n d erstan d it. A t th e sam e tim e, the ve ry fact th a t th e y are supernatural en tities m eans th at any strangeness th e y possess is n ow a ttrib u ted to a realm b eyon d nature. Com pare th is to a black hole: th e bizarre ways in w hich it bends space and tim e are com pletely outside our com m on experience, an d y et a black hole belon gs to th e n a t­ ural-m aterial cosm os — a cosm os w hich m ust therefore be m uch stranger than our ordinary experience can com prehend. 15

T H E WEIRD It was this kind o f in tu ition w hich inspired the w eird fiction o f H.P. Lovecraft. “N ow a l m y tales are based on th e fun da­ m en tal prem ise th a t com m on hum an law s and in terests and em o tion s have no valid ity or significance in th e va st cosm osat-large,” L ovecraft w rote to th e publisher o f the m agazine Weird Tales in 1927. “To achieve th e essence o f real externality, w h eth er o f tim e or space o r dim ension, one m u st forget th a t such thin gs as organic life, go od and evil, love and hate, and a l such local attribu tes o f a negligible and tem porary race called m ankind, have any existence a t a l .” It is this q uality o f “real externrnality” th a t is crucial to th e w eird. A n y d iscussion o f w eird fictio n m u st b egin w ith L ove­ craft. In stories th a t w ere published in pulp m agazines, Lovecraft practicaUy in ven ted the w eird tale, developin g a form ula w hich can be differen tiated from b o th fa n ta sy and horror fiction. L ovecraft’s stories are obsessively fixated on the question o f th e outside: an outside th a t breaks through in encounters w ith anom alous entities from th e deep past, in altered states o f consciousness, in b izarre tw ists in the structure o f tim e. The en cou nter w ith th e outside o ften ends in breakdow n and psychosis. Lovecraft’s sto ries frequ ently in v o lve a catastrop hic integration o f the outside into an in te­ rior th a t is retrospectively revealed to b e a delusive envelope, a sham. Take “The Shadow over Innsm outh”, in w hich it is ulti­ m ately revealed th a t th e lead character is h im self a Deep One, an aquatic alien entity. I am It — or better, I am They. A lth o u gh he is o ften classified as a w riter o f horror, Lovecraft's w ork seldom evokes a feelin g o f horror. W h en L ove­ craft sets out his m otives for w ritin g in his sh o rt essay “N otes on W riting W eird Fiction”, he does n o t im m ediately m en tion horror. He w rites instead o f “vague, elusive, fragm en tary im pressions o f wonder, beauty, and adventurous expectancy.” The em phasis on horror, L ovecraft goes on to say, is a conse­ quence o f the sto ries’ encounter w ith th e unknow n. 16

L O V E C R A FT AND T H E WEIRD Accordingly, it is n o t horro r b u t fascination — albeit a fa s­ cination usually ^mixed w ith a certain trep id ation — th a t is integral to Lovecraft’s ren d itio n o f th e w eird . But I w o u ld say th is is also integral to th e concept o f th e w eird itself — the w eird can not on ly repel, it m u st also com pel our atten tion . So if th e elem ent o f fascination w ere en tirely absent from a story, and i f th e story w ere merely horrible, it w ou ld no lon ger be w eird. Fascination is th e affect shared b y L ovecraft’s charac­ ters and his readers. Fear or terror are n o t shared in the sam e way; L ovecraft’s characters are o ften terrified, b u t h is readers seldom are. Fascination in L ovecraft is a fo rm o f Lacanian jouissance: an en jo ym en t th a t en tails th e in extricab ility o f pleasure and p a in . L ovecraft's texts fa irly fro th withjouissance. "Frothing", "foaming" and "teem ing” are w ords w h ith Lovecraft frequently uses, but th ey could apply equally w ell to th e “obscene jeHy” o f jouissance. This is n o t to m ake the absurd claim th a t there is n o n ega tiv ity in Lovecraft — the loath in g and abom ination are hardly concealed — on ly th at n ega tiv ity does n o t have the last word. A n excessive preoccupation w ith objects th a t are “officially” n egative always indicates th e w ork o f jouissance — a m ode o f enjoym ent w h ich does n o t in any sen se “redeem " n egativity: it sublim ates it. That is to say, it tran sform s an ordinary obj ect causing displeasure into a Thing w h ith is both terrible and alluring, w hich can n o longer b e libidinally clas­ sified as either positive or negative. The Thing overw helm s, it c a n n o t be contained, but it fascinates. It is fascination, above all else, th a t is th e engine o f fatal­ ity in Lovecraft’s fictions, fascination th a t draws his bookish characters tow ards th e dissolution, d isintegration or degen­ eration th a t we, th e readers, always foresee. O nce the reader has read one o r tw o o f Lovecraft’s stories, th ey k n ow perfectly w ell w h at to expect in th e oth ers. In fact, it is hard to believe th a t even w h en a reader en cou n ters a L ovecraft sto ry fo r the 17

TH E WEIRD first tim e th at th ey w ill be very surprised by h ow th e tale turns out. Therefore it follow s th at suspense — as m uch as h orror — is n o t a defining feature o f L ovecraft’s fiction. This m eans th a t L ovecraft’s w o rk does n o t fit th e struc­ tu ralist definition o f fa n ta sy offered b y T zvetan Todorov. According to th a t definition, the fantastic is constituted by a su sp en sion b etw een th e u n ca n n y (sto ries w hich u ltim ately resolve in a naturalistic w ay) and the m arvellous (stories w h ich resolve supernaturalisticaHy). A lth o u gh L ovecraft’s sto ­ ries involve w hat he characterised in “N otes on W ritin g Weird Fiction” as “the illusion o f som e strange suspen sion or viola­ tio n o f th e galling lim itations o f tim e, space, an d n atural law w hich forever im prison us and frustrate ou r cu riosity about th e infin ite cosm ic spaces beyond th e radius o f our sigh t and analysis”, there is n ever any su ggestion o f th e involvem en t o f supern atural beings. Hum an attem pts to transform th e alien en tities into gods are clearly regarded b y L ovecraft as vain acts o f anthropom orphism , perhaps n oble b u t u ltim ately absurd efforts to im pose m ean in g and sen se on to the “real extern al­ ity ” o f a cosm os in w h ich hum an concerns, perspectives and concepts h a ve on ly a local reference. In his b ook Lovecraft: A Study in the Fantastic, M aurice L evy fitted L ovecraft in to a “Fantastic trad itio n ” w h ich includes the G othic novels, Poe, H aw thorn e and Bierce. But Lovecraft's em phasis on the m ateriality o f the anom alous en tities in his stories m eans th a t h e is very different from th e G othic novel­ ists and Poe. Even th o u gh w h a t w e m igh t caU ord inary n atu ­ ralism — th e standard, em pirical w orld o f com m on sense and Euclidean geom etries — b e shredded b y th e en d o f each tale, it is replaced b y a hypern atu ralism — an expanded sense o f w h at the m aterial cosm os contains. Lovecraft's m aterialism is on e reason th a t I th in k we should d istin guish his fiction — and indeed the weird in gen ­ eral — from fa n ta sy and th e fantastic. (It should b e n oted 18

L O V E C R A FT AN D T H E W EIRD th a t Lovecraft h im self happ ily equates th e w eird and the fan tastic in “N otes on W ritin g W eird Fiction ”.) The fan tas­ tic is a rath er capacious category, w h ich can include m uch o f science fiction and horror. It is n o t th a t th is is inappropriate for Lovecraft's w ork, b u t it does n o t p o in t to w h at is unique in his m ethod . Fantasy, how ever, den otes a m ore specific set o f generic prop erties. Lord D unsany, L ovecraft’s early in sp i­ ratio n , and Tolkien, are exem p lary fa n ta sy w riters, and the contrast w ith them w ill allow us to grasp th e difference from the weird. Fantasy is set in w orlds th a t are en tirely d ifferen t from ours — D u n san y’s Pegana, or Tolkien’s M iddle Earth; or rather, these w orlds are locationally an d tem porally d istan t from ours (too m an y fa n ta sy w orlds tu rn o u t to b e all too sim ilar, ontologicaHy and politically, to ours). The weird, by contrast, is notable fo r the w ay in w hich it opens up an egress betw een this w orld and others. There are o f course stories and series — such as C.S. Lew is' Narnia books, Baum ’s O z, Stephen D onaldson’s Thomas C ovenant trilogy — in w hich there is an egress b etw een th is w orld and another, y e t th ere is no dis­ cernible charge o f th e weird. That is because the "this w orld” sections o f these fictions serve, m ore or less, as prologues and epilogues to standard fa n ta sy tales. Characters from this w orld go into anoth er w orld, b u t th a t oth er w orld has no im pact upon th is one, b eyon d th e effect it has on the m inds o f the returnin g characters. W ith Lovecraft, th ere is an interplay, an exchange, a con fron tation and ind eed a conflict b etw een th is w orld and others. This accounts for the suprem e significance o f L ovecraft settin g so m an y o f his stories in N ew England. L ovecraft’s N ew England, M aurice L evy w rites, is a w orld w hose “reality — physical, topograph ical, histo rical — shou ld b e em phasised. It is w ell know n th a t th e tru ly fan tastic exists on ly w here th e im possible can m ake an irru ption, th ro u g h tim e and space, in to an objectively fam iliar locale.” W h a t I propose, then , is 19

T H E W EIRD th a t in his break from th e ten d en cy to in v en t w orlds as Dunsany had done, L o vecraft ceased to be a fa n ta sy w riter and becam e a w riter o f th e w eird . A first characteristic o f the weird, at least in L o vecraft’s version o f it, w ould b e - to adapt L evy’s phrase — a fiction in w hich , n o t th e im possible b u t th e outside “can m ake an irruption, th ro u g h tim e and space, into an ob jectively fam iliar locale". W orlds m ay b e en tirely foreign to ours, both in term s o f location and even in term s o f th e physical laws w hich go vern them , w ith o u t b ein g weird. It is th e irruption into this w o rld o f som ething from outside w hich is the m arker of the weird. Here w e can see w h y th e w eird entails a certain relationship to realism . L ovecraft him self o ften w rote disd ain fu lly o f real­ ism . But if Lovecraft had en tirely rejected realism , h e w ould n ever have em erged from th e fa n ta sy realm s o f D unsan y and de la Mare. It w ould b e closer to the m ark to say th a t L ovecraft contain ed o r localised realism . In the 1927 letter to th e ed itor o f Weird Tales, h e m akes th is explicit: O n lythe human scenes and characters m ust have human qualities. These must be handled with unsparing realism, (not catch-penny romanticism) but when we cross the line to the boundless and hideous unknown - the shadow-haunted Outside - we m ust remember to leave our humanity and terrestrialism at the threshold. L ovecraft’s tales depend fo r th eir pow er on th e difference b etw een th e terrestrial-em pirical an d the outside. That is one reason w h y th e y are so o ften w ritten in th e first person: i f th e o u tsid e gradually encroaches u pon a h u m a n su b ject, its alien contours can be appreciated; w hereas to a ttem p t to capture "the boundless and hideous u n k n o ^ " w ith o u t any reference to th e h um an w orld a t all is to risk banality. Lovecraft needs th e hum an world, fo r m uch th e same reason th a t a painter o f 20

L O V E C R A FT AND T H E W EIRD a v a st edifice m igh t in sert a standard hum an figure stan din g before it: to provide a sense o f scale. A provisional defin ition o f th e w eird m igh t th e re fo re take its cue from th e sligh tly odd and am biguous phrase “o u t o f" th a t Lovecraft u ses in th e titles o f tw o o f his sto ries, “The Colour O u t o f Space” and “The Shadow O u t o f Tim e". O n the sim plest level, "out o f" evid en tly m eans "from ”. Yet it is n o t possible — especiaUy in th e case o f “The S h a d o w O u t o f T im e” — to avoid the second m eanin g, th e suggestion o f som ething rem oved, cut out. The shadow is som eth in g cut out o f tim e. This n otion o f th in gs “cut out" o f th eir proper place is one w a y in w h ich L ovecraft has an a ffin ity w ith m od ern ist tech ­ niques o f collage. Y e t th ere is also a th ird m ean in g o f" o u t o f ” : th e beyond. The shadow out o f tim e is, in part, a shadow o f th at w hich is beyond tim e as w e ordinarily un derstan d and experience it. To possess a flavour o f th e beyond, to invoke th e outside, L ovecraft’s w ork can n o t rely on already-existing figu res or lore. It depends crucially on th e prod u ction o f th e new . A s China M ieville p u t it in his in trod u ction to A t the Mountains o f Madness: “L ovecraft resides radically outside a n y fo lk tra­ dition: th is is n ot th e m odernising o f th e fam iliar vam pire or w erew olf (or garuda or ru salka o r a n y oth er such traditional bugbear). L ovecraft’s p an th eo n and b estia ry are absolutely sui generis.” There is another, im p ortan t, d im ension o f th e new ness o f L ovecraft's creations however: it is disclaim ed and d isguised b y the author. A s M ieville continues: "There is [...] a paradox to b e fou n d in L ovecraft’s narrative. Though his concept o f th e m on strou s a n d h is approach to th e fan tastic are u tte rly new, he pretends th a t it is n ot.” W h en th e y con­ fro n t th e w eird en tities, L ovecraft’s characters find parallels in m ythologies and lore w hich he had him self inven ted. Love­ craft’s retrospective projection o f a n ew ly m inted m ythos into the deep past gave rise to w h at Jason Colavito calls th e “cu lt o f 21

T H E W EIRD alien gods” in w riters such as Erich vo n D aniken and Graham Hancock. L ovecraft’s "retro-interring” o f th e new is also w hat places his w eird fictions "out of” tim e — m uch as in th e sto ry “The Shadow O u t o f T im e”, in w hich th e m ain ch aracter Peaslee en counters texts w ritten in his o ^ h an d am ongst archi­ tectural relics. China M ieville argues th a t it w as the im pact o f th e First W orld W ar w hich gave rise to L ovecraft’s new: th e trau­ m atic b reak from th e past allow ed th e n ew to emerge. But it is perhaps also usefu l to th in k o f L ovecraft's w ork as b ein g a b ou t traum a, in th e sen se th a t it concerns ru p tu res in the v e ry fabric o f experience itself. Rem arks th at Freud m akes in "Beyond th e Pleasure Principle” (“as a resu lt o f certain p s y ­ choanalytic discoveries, w e are today in a p o sition to em bark on a discussion o f th e K antian theorem th a t tim e and space are ‘ne cessary form s o f th o u g h t”') indicated th a t he b elieved th a t the unconscious operated b eyon d w h a t K a n t called the “transcendental” structures o f tim e, space and causality w hich govern th e perceptual-conscious system . O n e w ay o f grasp­ ing th e functions o f th e unconscious, and its b reak from the dom inant m odels o f tim e, space and causality, w as th rou gh studying th e m ental lives o f th o se su fferin g from traum a. Traum a can therefore b e th o u gh t o f as a k in d o f tran scen ­ d en tal shock — a suggestive ph rase in relation to L ovecraft’s w ork. The outside is not "em pirically” exterior; it is transcendentaU y exterior, i.e. it is n o t ju st a m atter o f som eth in g b ein g d ista n t in space and tim e, b u t o f som eth in g w hich is b eyond our o rd in ary experience and conception o f space and tim e itself. Throughout his w ork, Freud repeated ly stressed th a t the unconscious kn ow s n eith er n egation n or tim e. Hence the Escheresque im age in Civilisation and its Discontents of the unconscious as a Rom e "in w hich nothin g th a t has once com e into existence w ill have passed aw ay and all the earlier phases o f developm ent continue to exist alongside th e latest 22

L O V E CR A FT AN D TH E W EIRD on es”. Freud’s w eird geom etries have clear parallels in Love­ craft’s fictions, w ith their repeated invocation s o f non-Euclidean spaces. W itn ess th e description o f “th e geom etry o f the dream -place" in “Call o f C thu lhu ”: "abnorm al, non-Euclidean, and loath som ely redolen t o f spheres and dim ensions apart from ours” . It is im p ortan t n o t to surrender L ovecraft to o quickly to a n o tio n o f the unrepresentable. L o vecraft is too o fte n taken at his w ord w h en he calls his ow n en tities "unnam eable” or "indescribable”. A s C hina M ieville po in ts out, typically L ove­ craft no sooner calls an en tity “indescribable" th an he begin s to describe it, in ve ry precise techn ical detail. (Nor, despite his predilection for u sin g th e term “u n nam eable” — m ocked b u t also d efen d ed b y L ovecraft h im self in his ow n story “The U nnam eable” — is L ovecraft sh y o f giv in g n am es to Things.) B ut th is sequence has a th ird m om ent. A fte r (1) th e declara­ tion o f indescribability, and (2) th e description, com es (3) the unvisualisable. For a l th e ir detail, or perhaps because o f it, L ovecraft’s descriptions do n o t allow the reader to synthesise the logorrh eic sch izop h on y o f adjectives into a m en tal im age, prom pting Graham H arm an to com pare th e effect o f such passages w ith Cubism , a parallel reinforced b y th e invoca­ tion o f “clusters o f cubes and planes” in “D ream s in th e W itch H ouse”. C ubist and fu tu rist techniques and m o tifs feature in a n u m b er o f Lovecraft's stories, usually as (ostensible) objects o f loath in g. Even if he was hostile to it, Lovecraft recognised th a t m od ern ist visu al art could b e repurposed as a resource for invoking th e outside. So far, m y discussion o f L ovecraft has concen trated on w h at happens within the stories them selves, b u t one o f the m ost im portant w eird effects L ovecraft produces happens between his texts. The system atisation o f L ovecraft’s texts into a “m y th o s” m igh t have been th e w ork o f his follow er A u gu st D erleth, b u t th e inter-relationship o f the stories, the w ay in

T H E WEIRD w h ich th e y generate a con sisten t reality, is crucial to u n der­ sta n d in g w h a t is sin ^ d a r abou t L ovecraft’s w ork. It m igh t appear th a t the w a y th a t L ovecraft produces such consisten cy is n o t v e ry d ifferen t to th e w a y in w h ich Tolkien ach ieved a sim ilar effect, b ut, once again, th e relationship to this w orld is crucial. B y settin g his stories in N ew E n glan d rath er th an in some in violate, fa r-d ista n t realm , L ovecraft is able to tangle the hierarchical relationship b etw een fiction and reality. The in terp olation in to th e stories o f sim ulated scholarship alongside auth en tic h isto ry produces on tological anom alies sim ilar to those created in th e "postm od ernist” fictions o f Robbe-Grillet, P yn chon an d B orges. B y trea tin g rea lly exist­ in g phenom enon as i f th e y had th e sam e on tological status as his ow n inven tion s, L ovecraft de-realises the factu al and real-ises the fictional. G raham H arm an looks forw ard to a day w hen Lovecraft wiU have displaced H olderlin from his throne as ph ilosophers’ m ost exalted object o flite ra ry study. Perhaps we can also anticipate a tim e w h en th e pulp m odernist Love­ craft displaces th e p o stm od ern ist Borges as the pre-em in en t fiction al explorer o f on tological conundra. L ovecraft in stan ti­ ates w h at Borges o n ly “fabulates"; n o one w ou ld ever believe th a t Pierre M enard’s version o f Don Quixote exists outside Borges’ story, w hereas m ore th an a fe w readers h ave contacted the B ritish L ibrary askin g f o r a copy o f the Necronomicon, the b ook o f ancient lore w hich is freq u en tly referred to in m any o f L ovecraft’s stories. L ovecraft generates a “reality-effect” b y o n ly ever show in g us tin y fragm en ts o f the Necronomicon. It is the v e ry fragm en tary q u ality o f his references to the abom ina­ ble te x t th a t induce th e b e lie f in readers th a t it m u st be a real object. Im agine i f L ovecraft h ad a ctu ally produced a fuU text o f th e Necronomicon; th e b o o k w ou ld seem fa r less real th an it does w h en w e o n ly see citations. L ovecraft seem ed to have understood th e po w er o f th e citation, th e w a y in w hich a text seems m ore real if it is cited th a n i f it is encountered in th e raw. 24

LO V ECR A FT AN D TH E WEIRD O n e effect o f such on tological displacem ents is th a t Love­ craft ceases to have u ltim ate a u th o rity over his ow n te x ts. If the texts h ave achieved a certain au ton om y from th eir author, th en L ovecraft’s role as th e ir osten sib le creator becom es in ci­ dental. He b ecom es in stead the in ven tor o f en tities, char­ acters and form ulae. W h at m atters is th e con sisten cy o f his fictional system — a consi sten cy w h ich in vites coUective par­ ticipation by b o th readers and oth er au thors alike. A s is w ell k n o ^ , n o t on ly D erleth b u t also C lark A sh to n Sm ith, R obert E. H oward, B ria n Lum ley, R am sey C ^ p b e U and m an y oth ers have w ritte n ta les o f th e C th u lh u m ythos. B y w e b b in g his ta les together, L ovecraft loses con trol o f his creations to the em erging system , w hich has its ow n rules th a t acolytes can determ ine ju st as easily as he can.

T h e W e ird A g a in st th e W o rld ly : H .G .W e lls I w a n t n o w to approach the w eird from a d ifferen t angle, via a reading o f H.G. W ells’ sh o rt sto ry “The D oor in the W all” . I believe th is sto ry possesses a stron g w eird charge, even th o u gh it is v e ry differen t from L ovecraft's w ork. The n arrator is Redm ond, and th e sto ry concerns his friend, th e p o litician Lionel W allace. W allace tells Redm ond o f his childhood m em ory o f seein g a green door in a w all som ew here in the streets o fW e s t K en sin gton in L ondon. For som e reason, h e w as attracted to o p en in g th e door. Initially, h e w as appre­ hensive, fee lin g it is “u n w ise or w ro n g ” to go th ro u g h th e door, b u t "in a gu st o f em o tio n ”, h e overcom es th ese anxieties and runs th rough the D oor in th e W all. The garden b ey o n d the D oor in th e W all has so m eth in g o f the fee l o f a surrealist paint­ ing b y D elvaux or E rn st — th ere is an atm osphere o f languid joy, w hile a diffuse sense o f kindness seem s to em anate from a l o f the people he m eets there. There are anom alous things there — he sees a pair o f pan th ers, and som e k in d o f b o o k in w hich the im ages "were n o t pictures b u t realities”. W hether this book is a m agical object, an exam ple o f advanced technology, or the product o f som e k in d o f intoxicant is n o t d ear. A fte r a while, though, w hen he is look in g through this b ook, he suddenly finds h im self seeing “a lon g grey street in W est K en sin gton , on th at chill hour o f afternoon before th e lam ps are lit, and I was there, a w retch ed little figure, w eep in g aloud”. However, for reasons th a t are n o t fu lly d e a r — w h y does h e n o t im m ediately go through th e D oor in th e WaU again? — h e can n o t retu rn straigh t away. O n ce again consigned to th e m un dan e world, he is overcom e b y a sense o f “ungovernable grief". 26

T H E W E I R D A G A I N S T T H E W O R L D L Y : H.G. W ELLS Wallace on ly sees th e D oor in the WaU a few years later, ini­ tially by accident. He "got entangled am ong som e rather lowclass streets on th e oth er side o f Cam p den Hill”, u n til he sees the long w hite w all and th e door th a t leads into th e garden. However, this tim e he does n o t go through. He feels he wiU be late for school, so h e w ill return later, w hen he h as m ore tim e. He m akes the m istake of tellin g som e school friend s about the door and the gard en . They force W allace to take th e m there, b u t he cannot find it. He sees the door again a couple o f tim es in his you th — once w hen he is on the w ay to collect his scholarship fo r O xford — but, again consum ed b y th e urgencies o f everyd ay life, he passes by w ith ou t going th rou gh th e door. In recent years, as he en ters m iddle age, W allace is once again h a u n ted b y the door, and fears th a t he m ay n ever see it again: Years of hard work after that and never a sight of the door. It’s only recently it has come back to me. With it there has come a sense as though some thin tarnish had spread itself over my world. I began to think of it as a sorrowful and bitter thing that I should never see that door again. Perhaps I was suffering a little from overwork - perhaps it was what I've heard spoken of as the feeling of forty. I don’t know. But certainly the keen brightness thatm akes effort easy has gone out of things recently... Yet he does see th e d o o r again - th ree tim es. B u t each tim e he passes it b y — because he is em broiled in im p ortan t p o lit­ ical business; because he is en route to his fa th er’s deathbed; because he is engaged in a conversation abou t h is position. W h en W allace recounts this to Redm ond, he is racked w ith anguish about his failure to go th rou gh th e door. It doesn ’t surprise us to learn th a t the n e x t th in g Redm ond hears o f Wallace is th a t he is dead. His b o d y is discovered “in a deep excavation near East K en sin gton S tation ”. 27

T H E WEIRD W hy should “The D o o r in th e W ail” b e classified as a weird tale? The problem o f w orlds - o f con tact b etw een incom m en ­ surable w orlds - is d ea rly som eth in g th a t th e sto ry shares w ith Lovecraft, and brings us once again to th e h ea rt o f th e weird. A s w e began to explore in th e last chapter, w eird fic­ tio n always presents us w ith a threshold b etw een worlds. “The D oor in th e W a l”, evidently, centres o n ju s t such a threshold. M uch o f its po w er derives from th e op position b etw een the m u n d an ity o f th e L ondon settin g , w ith its q u otid ian details — “he r e c a ls a num ber o f m ean, d irty shops, and particularly th a t o f a plum ber and decorator, w ith a d u sty disorder o f earthenw are p ip es, s h e e t lea d ball taps, p a tte rn b o o k s o f waU paper, and tin s o f enam el” — and th e w o rld b e y o n d the door. L ovecraft’s stories are o f thresholds b etw een worlds: o ften th e egress w iil be a b o o k (the dreaded Necronomicon), som etim es, as in th e case o f the Randolph C arter “Silver K ey” stories, it is literally a portal. G atew ays and p ortals rou­ tin ely feature in th e deeply Lovecraftian stories o f the M arvel Com ics character D octor Strange. D avid Lynch's film and te l­ evision w ork is sim ilarly fixated on doorw ays, curtain s and gatew ays: as we shall see later, Inland Empire appears to b e a “h oley space” con stru cted o u t o f thresholds b etw een w orlds, an ontological rabbit warren. Som etim es the thresh old into an oth er w orld m ay on ly b e a m atter o f re-scaling: Richard M atheson's The Incredible Shrinking Man dem onstrates th at your ow n livin g-room can be a space o f w eird w on d er and dread i f you becom e su fficien tly small. The cen trality o f doors, thresholds and p ortals m eans th at th e n otion o f the between is crucial to the w eird. It is clear that if W eils' story had taken place o n ly in the garden b eh in d the wall, th en n o w eird charge w ould have b een produced. (This is w h y a feelin g o f the w eird attaches to th e lam ppost at the edge o f N arnia in C.S. L ew is’ stories, b u t n o t to N arnia proper.) If th e s to r y w ere se t en tirely b e y o n d the door, w e w ould b e in 28

T H E W E IR D A C A I N S T T H E W O R L D L Y : H.G. WELLS the realm o f the fa n ta sy genre. This m ode o f fa n ta sy natural­ ises other worlds. B u t th e weird de-naturalises all w orlds, b y exp osing th eir instability, th eir openness to the outside. O ne obvious p o in t o f departure from the form ula o f the Lovecraftian tale is th e lack o f a n y inh u m an en tities in “The D oor in th e Wall". W h en WaUace passes throu gh th e door, he encounters strange beings, b u t th e y appear to be h um an. The feelin g o f the w eird th a t th e s to r y gives rise to is n o t prim arily produced b y these lan gu id , b en eficen t beings; and the w eird does n o t require a n y o f the “abom inable m o n stro sities” w hich are so central to Lovecraft’s tales. A second difference b etw e en L ovecraft a n d “The D oor in th e W all” concerns the qu estion o f suspense. A s w e have seen, Lovecraft’s stories are rarely characterised b y a feelin g o f suspense: we are n o t left w on d erin g i f th e outside is real or n ot. A t the end o f “The D oor in the W a l", b y contrast, Red­ m ond finds his m ind “darkened w ith questions and riddles”. He can not d ism iss the po ssibility th a t W allace was suffer­ in g from an “unpreceden ted typie o f h allu cination ”. W a la ce w as eith er a m adm an or a “dreamer, a m an o f v isio n a n d the im agination". “W e see o u r w orld fair a n d com m on," Redm ond concludes, inconclusively, “the h o a rd in g a n d th e pit. B y our daylight stan dard he w alked o u t o f security into darkness, d an ger and death. B u t did he see like that?" This brings us to a th ird difference b etw een L ovecraft and this story: the question o f insanity. In Lovecraft's tales, any insan ity the characters experience is a consequence o f th e tran ­ scen dental shock th at the encounter w ith the outside pro­ duces; there is n o q u estio n o f th e in san ity causing characters to perceive the en tities (w hose status w ou ld then, evidently, be degraded; th e y w ou ld m erely be prod u cts of a delirium ). “The D oor in the WaU" leaves open the q u estion o f psychosis: i t is possible — th o u gh Redm ond doubts it, it is n o t his “profoun dest b e lie f” — th a t WaUace is m ad, or is deluded, o r has 29

TH E WEIRD confabulated th e w hole experience from garbled childhood mem ories (which, to use a d istin ction from Freud’s essay on “S creen M em ory" w ou ld th en be m em ories o f childhood, n o t m em ories from childhood). W allace h im self suspects th a t he m ay h a ve augm en ted a childhood m em ory — re-dream ed it — to th e p o in t o f com pletely d istortin g it. B ut perhaps th e m o st decisive difference b etw een “The D oor in the Wall" and L ovecraft consists in th e q uality o f lo n gin g th a t is central to W ells’ story. In Lovecraft, th e p o s­ itive lure o f th e outside h a s to be repressed a n d inverted, tran sform ed into lo a th in g and dread. B ut th e appeal o f th e w orld b eyon d th e door shines th ro u g h “The D oor in th e Wall". The k ey op position stru ctu rin g th e sto ry is n o t naturalism versus th e supern atural — there is little to su ggest th a t the world b eh in d th e w all is supernatural, thou gh it is certain ly “enchanted" — it is the op position b etw een the quotidian and th e n um inous. WaHace’s description o f an “indescribable quality o f tran slucen t unreality, [different] from th e com m on th in gs o f experience th a t h u n g a b o u t i t a l ” recalls R udolf O tto’s characterisation o f th e num inous in The Idea o f the Holy. Yet, for b o th W allace an d O tto, an “indescribable quality o f translucent u n reality” accom panies en counters w ith th a t w hich is more real th a n “the com m on th in gs o f experience". The Real d oes n o t feel real; it involves a heigh ten in g o f sensa­ tion, exceeds the param eters o f ordinary experience, b u t to W allace “at least the D oor in th e W a ll was a real d oor leading th ro u g h a real w all to im m ortal realities." M ichel H ouellebecq e n title d his b o o k on L ovecraft Against the World, Against Life, b u t it m ig h t b e th a t L ovecraft’s real an tip ath y w as to th e worldly, to th e m ean confines o f the m undane, w hich his tales endlessly explode. The a tta ck on the deficiencies o f th e w orldly is surely one o f th e d rivin g im per­ a tives o f “The D oor in th e W a l”. “Oh! the w retchedness o f th a t return!" W allace com plains, w h en he finds h im self back 30

T H E W E I R D A G A I N S T T H E W O R L D L Y : H.G. W E LL S in “th is grey w orld again". W allace feels th a t he is depressed because he has yielded to th e tem ptation s o f the worldly. W hen W allace describes his grief, he seem s to be a p lay­ th in g o f the psychoanalytic death drive. “The fact is - it isn ’t a case o f gh osts or apparitions — b u t — it’s an odd th in g to t e l of, — I ^ haunted. I am h au n ted b y som eth in g — th a t rather takes th e lig h t o u t o f thin gs, th a t fills m e w ith lon gin gs...” Reflecting on W allace's first encounter w ith th e door, Red­ m o n d pictures “the figu re o f t h a t little boy, drawn and repelled' (emphasis added). Freud describes th e d eath d riv e in term s of just th is am bivalent attraction tow ards w h at is unpleasurable. It is Lacan and h is follow ers w ho have draw n ou t the strange geom etries o f the death drive, th e w ay in w h ich desire p erp et­ uates itse lf b y always m issin g its official ob ject o f satisfactio n — ju st as Wallace repeatedly fa ils to go th rou gh th e door, even tho u gh th is is ap p aren tly his deepest desire. The p u ll exerted b y the door and th e gard en deprives all o fh is w orldly satisfac­ tion s and achievem ents o f th eir flavour: Now that I have the due to it, the thing seems written visibly in his face. I have a photograph in which that look of detachment has been caught and intensified. It reminds me ofwhat a woman once said o f him - a woman who had loved him greatly. 'Suddenly,' she said, ‘the interest goes out of him. He forgets you. He doesn't care a rap for you - under his very nose .. .' The door was always a thresh old leading beyon d th e pleasure principle, and into the weird.

"B o d y a ten tacI e m ess": T h e G r o t e s q u e a n d T h e W e i r d : T h e F all The word grotesque derives from a type of Roman ornamental design first discovered in the fifteenth century, during the excavation o f Titus's baths. Named after the ‘grottoes' in which they were found, the new forms consisted of human and animal shapes intermingled w ith foliage, flowers, and fruits in fantastic designs which bore no relationship to the logical categories of classical art. For a contemporary account o f these forms w e can turn to the Latin writer Vitruvius. Vitruvius was an official charged with the rebuilding of Rome under Augustus, to whom his treatise On Architecture is addressed. Not surprisingly, it bears do^n hard on the "‘improper taste" for the grotesque: “Such things neither are, nor can be, nor have been," says the author in his description of the mixed human, animal, and vegetable forms: “For how can a reed actuaUy sustain a roof, or a candelabrum the ornam ent of a gable? Or a soft and slender stalk, a seated statue? Or how can flowers and half-statues rise alternately from roots and stalks? Yet when people view these falsehoods, they approve rather than condemn, failing to consider whether any o f them can really occur or not." — Pa t r ic k Pa r r in d e r , James Joyce I f WeUs’ sto ry is an exam ple o f a m elancholic w eird, th en we ccan appreciate a n o th er dim ension of the w eird by th in kin g a b ou t th e relationship b etw een th e w eird and the grotesque. Like th e w eird, th e grotesq u e evokes som eth in g w hich is out o f place. The response to th e apparition of a grotesque object 32

T H E G R O T E S Q U E A N D T H E W E I R D : T H E FALL w ill involve laughter as m uch as revulsion, and, in his stu d y o f th e grotesque, Philip Thom son argued th at the grotesque w as o fte n characterised by the co-presence o f th e laughable and th a t w hich is n o t com patible w ith th e laughable. This capacity to excite lau ghter m eans th at the grotesque is per­ haps b est un derstood as a p articu lar form o f th e weird. It is d ifficult to conceive o f a grotesqu e object th a t can not also be apprehended as w eird, b u t there an' w eird ph en om en a w hich do n o t induce laughter — L ovecraft’s stories, fo r exam ple, the on ly h um our in w hich is accidental. The confluence o f the w eird and th e grotesqu e is no b ette r exem p lified th a n in the w o rk o f th e po st-p u n k grou p The FaU. The Fall's w ork — particu larly in th eir p eriod b etw een 1980-82 — is steeped in references to th e grotesque a n d th e weird. The group's m eth od olog y at this tim e is viv id ly captured in th e cover im age for the 1980 single, “C ity H obgoblins”, in w hich we see an u rb a n scene invad ed b y "em igres fro m old green glades"; a leerin g, m a levo len t cobold loom s over a dilapidated tenem ent. But rath er than b ein g sm oo th ly integrated into the photographed scene, the crudely rendered hobgoblin has been etched onto the background. This is a w ar o f w orlds, an on to­ logical strug gle, a struggle over the m eans o f representation. From th e p o in t o f v ie w o f the official b ourgeois culture and its categories, a group like The F a l — w orkin g class and exp er­ im ental, p opular and m od ernist — could n o t and sh ould n ot exist, and The F a l are rem arkable fo r the w a y in w hich th e y draw out a cultural politics o f the w eird and th e grotesque. The Fall produced w h at could b e calied a popular m odernist w eird, w herein the w eird shapes the fo rm as weU as th e con­ ten t o f the w o r k The w eird tale enters into becom ing w ith the w eirdness o f m od ern ism — its unfam iliarity, its com bination o f elem ents previously held to be incom m ensurable, its com ­ pression, its ch a le n g es to stan dard m odels o f le g ib ilit y - a n d w ith all th e difficulties and com pu lsion s o f po st-p u n k sound. 33

TH E W EIRD M uch o f this comes together, albeit in an oblique and en igm atic way, on The Fall's 1980 album Grotesque (After the Gramme). O therw ise incom prehensible references to “huck­ leberry m asks", “a m an w ith butterflies on his face”, “ostrich headdress" and “lig h t blue plant-heads” b egin to m ake sense w hen y o u recognise that, in P arrinder’s description quoted above, th e grotesq u e originaUy referred to “h u m an and a nim al shapes interm in gled w ith foliage, flowers, and fruits in fan tastic designs w hich bore no relationship to the logical categories o f classical a rt”. The songs on Grotesque are tales, b u t tales half-told. The words a re fragm entary, as if t h e y have com e to us v ia an un re­ liable transm ission th at keeps cu ttin g out. V iew points are garbled; ontological distinctions b etw een author, te x t and character are confused and fractured. It is im possible to defin­ itively so rt out the narrator's w ords from direct speech. The tracks are palim psests, b ad ly record ed in a deliberate refusal o f th e “coffee tab le” aesthetic th a t th e grou p’s leader M ark E. Sm ith derides on th e cryptic sleeve notes. The process of recording is not airbrushed ou t b u t foregrounded, surface hiss and iUegible cassette noise brandished like im provised stitch in g on som e H am m er F rankenstein m onster. The track “Im pression o f J Tem perance” was typical, a story in th e Love­ craft style in w hich a dog breeder's “h ideous replica’’, (“brow n sockets... purple eyes . . . fed w ith rubbish from disposal barges ...") stalks M anchester. This is a w eird tale, b u t one sub­ jected to m od ern ist techniques o f com pression and collage. The resu lt is so elliptical th a t it is as if the te x t — part-oblit­ erated b y silt, m ildew and algae — has been fished ou t o f th e M anchester ship canal w hich Steve H anley’s bass sounds like it is dredging. There is certain ly laugh ter here, a renegade form o f parody and m ockery th a t one hesitates to label satire, especially given the pallid and tooth less form th a t satire has assum ed 34

T H E G R O T E S Q U E A N D T H E W EIR D: T H E FALL in B ritish culture in recent tim es. W ith The Fall, how ever, it is as i f satire is returned to its origins in th e grotesque. The Fall’s laughter does not issue from th e com m onsensical m ain stream b u t from a psychotic outside. 'This is satire in th e oneiric m ode o f Gillray, in w hich invective and lam p oon ery becom es delirial, a (psycho)tropological spew ing o f associ­ ations and anim osities, th e tru e object o f w h ich is not any fallin g o f p rob ity b u t th e delusion th a t h u m an d ign ity is possible. It is n ot surprising to find Sm ith alluding to J arry’s Ubu Roi in a barely audible line in “C ity H obgoblins”: “U bu le Roi is a hom e hobgoblin.’’ For Jarry, as for Sm ith, th e inco­ herence and incom pleteness o f th e obscene an d th e absurd w ere to be op posed to th e false sym m etries o f go od sense. We could go so far as to say th a t it is the hu m an condition to be grotesque, since th e hum an anim al is th e o n e th a t does n o t fit in, the freak o f n ature w ho has no place in th e n atural order and is capable o fre-c o m b in in g n a tu re’s products in to hideous n ew form s. The sound on Grotesque is a seem ingly im possible com bina­ tion o f th e sham bolic and the disciplined, th e cerebral-literary and the idiotic-physical. The album is stru ctu red around the opposition b etw een th e quotidian and th e w eird-grotesque. It seem s as i f the w hole record has b een constru cted as a response to a h ypothetical conjecture. W h a t i f rock and roll had em erged from the industrial heartlands o f E ngland rather th an the M ississippi Delta? The rockabiUy on “C on tain er D rivers” or “F iery Jack” is slow ed b y m eat pies and gravy, its dream s o f escape fataUy p oison ed b y pin ts o f b itter and cups o f greasy-spoon tea. It is rock and roll as w orkin g m en’s club cabaret, perform ed b y a failed Gene V in cen t im itator in Prestw ich. The w h at if? speculations alil. Rock and roU needed the en dless open highw ays; it cou ld n e v e r have b egu n in E ng­ lan d ’s snarled-up rin g ro a d s and claustrophobic conurbations. 35

T H E WEIRD It is o n th e track "The N. W .R.A.” (“The N orth W i l Rise Again") th a t th e conflict b etw een the claustrophobic m undaneness o f E n glan d and the grotesque-w eird is m o st explicitly played out. A l o f th e album ’s th em es coalesce in th is track, a tale of cultural political in trigu e th a t plays like some im probable m ulching o f T.S. E liot, W yndh am Lewis, H .G. WeHs, Philip K. D ick, L ovecraft and le Carre. It is th e sto ry o f R om an Totale, a psychic and form er cabaret perfo rm er w h ose b od y is cov­ ered in tentacles. It is o ften said th a t Rom an Totale is one o f Sm ith's “alter-egos”; in fact, Sm ith is in th e sam e relationship to Totale as L ovecraft w as to som eone like Randolph Carter. Totale is a character rath er th an a persona. N eedless to say, he in no w ay resem bles a “w ell-rounded” character so m uch as a carrier o f m ytho s, an in ter-textu al linkage b etw een Pulp fragm ents: So R. Totale dweUs underground I Away from sickly grind I With ostrich head-dress I Face a mess, covered in feathers I Orange-red with blue-black lines I That draped down to his chest I Body a tentacle mess I And light blue plant-heads. The form o f “The N.W.R.A.” is as alien to organic w holeness as is Totale's abom inable tentacu lar body. It is a grotesque concoction, a collage o f pieces th a t do n o t belon g together. The m odel is th e noveUa rath er th a n the tale and th e sto ry is told episo dically, from m ultiple points o f v iew , u sin g a heteroglossic rio t o f sty les and tones: com ic, journalistic, satirical, n ovelistic, it is like L ovecraft’s “C a l o f C thulhu” re-w ritten b y the Joyce o f Ulysses and com pressed in to ten m inutes. From w h a t w e can glean, Totale is at th e centre o f a p lo t — infiltrated and betrayed from th e start — w hich aim s a t resto rin g th e N orth to glory, perhaps to its V ictorian m om en t o f econom ic and ind ustrial suprem acy; perhaps to som e m ore ancient pre-em inence, perhaps to a greatn ess th a t w ill eclipse any36

T H E G R O T E S Q U E A N D T H E W E I R D : T H E FALL th in g th a t has com e before. M ore th a n a m a tter o f regional railing against the capital, in Sm ith’s visio n th e N orth comes to stan d for e v e ry th in g suppressed b y urbane go od taste: the esoteric, th e anom alous, th e vu lgar sublim e, th a t is to say, the w eird and th e grotesque itself. Totale, festoon ed in th e incon ­ gruous G rotesque costum e o f “ostrich head-dress” , "feathers/ orange-red w ith blue-black lines” and “lig h t blue plant-heads’’, is the w ould -be F aery K in g o f th is w eird revolt w ho ends up its m aim ed Fisher King, abandoned like a pulp m od ernist M iss H avisham am ongst th e relics o f a carnival th a t n ever h ap­ pen, a d ro olin g totem o f a defeated tilt at social realism , the visio n a ry leader reduced, as the psych otrop ics fade and the ferv o u r cools, to b eing a w ashed-up cabaret artiste once again. Sm ith returns to the w eird tale form on The F a l's 1982 album H ex Enduction Hour, another record w h ith is saturated w ith references to the weird. In the track “Jaw bone and the A ir Rifle", a poacher accidentally causes dam age to a tom b, u n ea rth in g a jaw bone w h ich “carries the germ o f a curse / O f the Broken Brothers Pentacle Church". The son g is a tissue o f a lu s io n s to texts such as M .R. Jam es’ ta les “A W arn ing to th e Curious" and “Oh, W histle, and I’ll C om e to Y ou , M y Lad”, to Lovecraft's “The S hadow over In nsm ou th”, to H am m er H orror, and to The Wicker M an — cu lm in ating in a psyche­ delic/psychotic b r e a k d o ^ , com plete w ith a torch-w ielding m ob o f villagers: He sees jawbones on the street I advertisements become carnivores I and roadworkers turn into jawbones I and he has visions o f islands, heavily covered in slime. I The villagers dance round pre-fabs I and laugh through twisted mouths. ‘'Jawbone and th e A ir Rifle" resem bles n o th in g so m uch as a routine by the British com edy group the League o f Gentlem en. The League o f G entlem en’s febrile c a r n iv a l- w it h its m ultiple 37

TH E WEIRD references to w eird tales, and its frequ en t conjunctions of the laughable w ith th a t w hich is n ot laughable — is a m uch more w o rth y successor to The Fall th an m ost o f th e m usical groups w ho have attem p ted to reckon w ith their influence. The track “Iceland”, m eanw h ile, recorded in a lava-lined studio in Reykjavik, is an en counter w ith th e fad in g m yths o f N orth European culture in the fro zen territo ry from w hich th e y originated. Here, th e grotesque lau gh ter is gone. The song, hypnotic and undulating, m ed itative and m ournful, recalls the bone"w hite steppes o f N ico’s The Marble Index in its arctic atm ospherics. A keen in g w in d (on a cassette recording m ade b y Sm ith) w hips th rou gh the track as Sm ith invites us to “cast th e runes against y o u r ow n soul”, an oth er M.R. Jam es reference, th is tim e to h is story, "C asting the Runes”. “Ice­ land” is a Twilight o f the Idols for th e retreatin g hobgoblins, cobolds a n d tro lls o f E urope’s re ceding w eird culture, a lam en t for th e m on strosities and m y th s w hose d y in g breaths it cap­ tures on tape: Witness the last of the god men A Memorex for the Krakens

C a u g h t in t h e C o i l s o f O u r o b o r o s : T im P ow ers Templeton sits immobile i nhis attic room, immersed in the deceptively erratic ticking of his old nautical clock, lost in meditation upon JC Chapman's herm etic engraving. It now seems that this complex image, long accepted as a portrait of Kant, constitutes a disturbing monogram o f his o ^ chronological predicament. As if in mockery of stable framing, the picture is surrounded by strange-loop coilings of Ouroboros, the cosmic snake, who traces a figure of eight and of moebian eternity - by endlessly sw alow ing itself. — CcRU, “The Templeton Episode” One is [...] tem pted to see in the ‘time paradox' of sciencefiction novels a kind of 'apparition in the Real’ of the elemen­ tary structure of the symbolic process, the so-called internal, internaly inverted eight: a circular movement, a kind of snare where we can progress only in such a manner that we ‘overtake' ourselves in the transference, to find ourselves later at a point which we have already been. The paradox consists in the fact that this superfluous detour, this supplementary snare of understanding ourselves (‘voyage into the future’) and then reversing the time direction ('voyage into the past') is not just a subjective illusion/perception of an objective process taking place in so-caled reality independent of these illusions. The supplementary snare is, rather, an internal condition, an internal constituent o f the so-caled ‘objective' process itself: only through this additional detour does the past itself, the ‘objec­ tive' state of things, become retroactively what it always was. — S la v o j Zizek, The Sublime Object of Ideology 39

T H E W EIRD Is there n o t an intrin sically w eird dim ension to th e tim e travel sto ry? By its v e ry nature, the tim e travel story, a fter all, com ­ b in es en tities and objects th a t do n o t b elon g together. Here the thresh old b etw een w o rld s is th e apparatus th a t allows tra v el betw een d ifferen t tim e period s - w h ich m ay be a tim e m achine, or w h ich could actu ally be a k in d o f tim e-cross­ in g d oor o r g a te - and th e w eird e ffe c t typically m anifests as a sen se o f anachronism . B u t another w eird e ffe ct is trig­ gered w h en th e tim e travel story involves tim e paradox(es). The tim e tra v el paradox plun ges u s in to th e structures th a t D ouglas H o fstad ter c a ls “strange loops" or “ta n g led hierar­ chies”, in w h ich th e orderly distinction betw een cause and effect is fa ta lly disrupted. The Anubis Gates b y T im Powers is a fa b u lo u sly inven tive take on th e tim e travel paradox story, on th e m odel o f Robert H einlein ’s “A l You Zom bies" and “B y H is B ootstraps”. B ut perhaps th e predecessor to w hich The Anubis Gates is closest is M ichael M oorcock’s 1969 novella Behold the Man, in w hich K arl G logauer tim e-travels back tw o th o u san d years from the 1960s and ends up re-creating — or livin g for the first tim e — the life o f Christ, including h is crucifixion. The Anubis Gates is in effect an extended w eird tale. A lth o u gh it is stuffed fu ll o f references to sorcery, bod ily tran sform ation and anom alous en tities, the m ain source of the novel’s weird charge is the tw istin g o f tim e into an infer­ n al loop. In The Anubis Gates, th e academ ic Brendan Doyle is lured into a tim e-travel exp erim en t b y th e eccentric plu tocrat Clarence Darrow. D arrow is dying, and, w h ilst u n dertakin g th e prodigious and apparently deranged research h e has pur­ sued in a desperate b id to prolong h is life, he comes upon the story o f “Dog-Face Joe" am ongst th e folklore o f early-nineteen th -cen tu ry London. B y a process o f d iligen t scholarship and d arin g supposition, D arrow d eterm in es th a t Joe w as a m agician capable o f tran sferrin g his consciousness from 40

C A U G H T IN T H E C O I L S OF O U R O B O R O S : T I M P O W E R S b o d y t o body, b u t w hose b od y-stealin g h a d an u n fortu n ate side-effect: alm ost im m ed iately as Joe en ters it, th e purloined b o d y grow s profuse, sim ian-like hair, so th a t its n e w o ^ e r is forced to discard it v e ry soon after sw itching in to it. For obvi­ ous reasons, Darrow w an ts to acquire the secret o f th is pro­ fa n e transm igration, and he seem s to h a v e th e m eans to m ake con tact w ith the b od y-sw itch in g m agician since h is research has uncovered “gaps" in th e river o f tim e, gates th ro u g h w h ich it is possible to pass into th e past. D oyle's role is to a ct as a k in d o flite ra ry tou r guide fo r the ultra-w ealthy tim e traveliers D arrow has assem bled, attracted b y the po ssibility o f seeing a lecture b y Coleridge, and w hose m iliion doliar fee finance the trip. V ery soon after arriving in th e n in eteen th century, Doyle is abducted into a rhizom ic under-London th a t is p a rt Oliver Twist, p a rt B urroughs' The Western Lands (if y o u ^ 1 perm it the anachronism — The Western Lands w as a c tu a ly published a fter The Anubis Gates). Powers’ phantasm agoric London — the apocalyptic vivid ness o f whose rendering led Joh n Clute to describe The Anubis Gates as “Babylon-on-Tham es pu n k” — is th e site o f a w ar b etw een th e forces o f E gyptian p o lyth eistic sorcery and the grey positivism o f B ritish em piricism , in volv­ ing rom anys, magical duplicates, po ets, beggars, costerm on ­ gers, m ale im personators... A fte r a w hile, D oyle com es, reluctantly, t o accept his Fate — w hich in literary-gen eric term s is to be propelled, b y m eans o f SF, into th e n in eteen th -cen tu ry picaresque — and m ore or less gives up any hope o f retu rn in g hom e. He resigns h im self to m ake the b est o f his n in eteen th -cen tu ry life and decides th a t his m ost realistic hope o f an escape from b eg g a ry is to make contact w ith W iliiam A shbless, the m inor poet in w hose w o rk s he has specialist know ledge. D oyle goes to the Jam aica C offee H ouse on th e m orn in g in w hich, according to A sh bless’ biographer, th e A m erican p o et 41

T H E W EIRD w ill w rite his epic poem , “The T w elve Hours o f th e Night". The appointed tim e arrives, b u t there is no sig n ofA sh b less. W hile h e w aits, a t first agitated and th en deflated, D oyle id ly tran ­ scribes "The T w elve Hours o f th e N igh t” from m em ory. He is soon cau gh t up in m ore intrigu e and, fo r a while, forgets a b ou t A shbless. In a m om ent th a t is m ore eerie th a n weird, D oyle hears, o r fancies he hears, som eone w h istlin g The B eatles’ “Yesterday”. It is on ly a fter h e catches th e refrain b eing w histled again a day or so later th a t he is able to confirm th a t there are ind eed a group o f tw e n tie th -ce n tu ry tem poral em igres livin g in th is n in eteen th -cen tu ry London. They tu rn ou t to be D arrow ’s people, given th e ta sk o f h elp in g in the search fo r Dog-Face Joe. D oyle m eets w ith on e o f them , his form er stud ent, Benner, w ho b y n ow is a paranoid and g riz­ zled wreck, convinced th a t D arrow is ou t to k ill him . He and D oyle agree to m eet again a fe w days later, b u t w h en th e y do, D oyle finds his fo rm e r frien d ’s b eh aviou r is e v e n odder than before. Doyle discovers th e reason fo r this too late. B enner’s b o d y has b een acquired b y Dog-Face Joe. This becom es clear to Doyle o n ly w hen he finds h im self in B enn er’s body, a fte r it has been discarded b y Joe. E verything is n o w in place fo r th e revelation th a t shocks D oyle b u t w h ich is, b y now, no surprise at a ll fo r the reader: D oyle is Ashbless. O r rath er: th e re is n o A sh b less (except fo r Doyle). D oyle on ly begins to process th e fa ll im plications o f th is w h e n h e contem plates th e peculiar (a)tem poral sta tu s o f th e “Tw elve H ours o f th e N igh t” m anuscript: It hadn't [...] come to too m uth of a surprise to him when he'd realised, after writing down the first few lines o f ‘The Twelve Hours of the Night', th at while his casual scrawl had remained recognisably his o ^ , his new left-handedness made his formal handwriting different — though by no means unfamiliar: for it was identical to WiUiam Ashbless'. 42

C A U C H T IN T H E C O I L S O F O U R O B O R O S : T I M P O W E R S And now that he’d written the poem out completely he was certain that if a photographic slide of the copy that in 1983 would reside in the British Mus eum, they would line up perfectly, with every comma and i-dot of his version perfectly covering those of the original manuscript. Original manuscript? He thought w ith a mixture of awe and unease. This stack of papers here is the original manu­ script ... it's just newer now than it was when I saw it in 1976. Hah! I wouldn’t have been so impressed to see it th en if I'd known I had made or would m ^ e those pen scratches. I wonder when, where and how it’ll pick up the grease marks I remember seeing on the early pages. Suddenly a thought struck him. M y God, he thought, then if I stay and live out my life as Ashbless — which the universe pretty clearly means me to do — then nobody wrote Ashbless' poems. I’U copy out his poems from memory, having read them in the 1932 Collected Poems, and my copies be’ set in type for the magazines, and they’U use tearsheets from the magazines to create the Collected Poems! They’re a closed loop, uncreated! ... I'm just the ... Messenger and caretaker. Like his u n hap pier tim e-displaced fellow , Jack Torrance in The Shining, D oyle has always been the caretaker. The mise-enabyme here produces a charge o f the w eird , b o th because o f th e scan d al o f an uncreated th in g , and because o f the tw isted causality th a t has allow ed such a th in g to exist. (Perhaps a l paradoxes have a touch o f th e w eird abou t them ?) The A sh bless E nigm a th a t D oyle encounters is com ically deflated once he realises th a t - a t som e level - the solu tion is on ly him . “I w ouldn’t have been so im pressed to see it th en if I’d k no^ B I had m ade or w ould m ake th o se pen scratches.” But the deflation is im m ed iately follow ed b y a profou nd dread and aw e (the poem s are uncreated!) th a t far exceeds his original fascin ation w ith the poet. 43

T H E WEIRD Once D oyle realises th a t he is destin ed to be A shbless, w hich is to say, th a t he alw ays-already w as Ashbless, h e is faced w ith a dilem m a: does he act in accordance w ith w h a t he char­ acterises as the w ill o f th e universe (it is th e “u n iverse” th a t "w ants" h im to live in A sh bless’ shoes), or not? The problem th a t D oyle faces is th a t th e determ in ism is m uch m ore invar­ ia n t than a ^wil, even a th a t belon gs to “the universe". It is im possible fo r h im to process th a t ev eryth in g h e wwil do as Ashbless has already happened. The b arrier th a t m eans th a t this cannot be faced is transcendental: su b jectivity as such presupposes th e illusion th a t th in g s could be different. To be a subject is to b e unable to th in k o f o n ese lf as a n y ih in g b u t free — even if yo u k n o w th a t y o u are n ot. W h a t sustains D oyle’s presupposition is th e apparently sp ontan eou sly em erging h ypothesis o f an “altern ative p ast”: in order to h old open the po ssibility th a t th in gs m ig h t go again st th e already-recorded Ashbless biography, D oyle is forced to consider th e possibility th a t h e has som ehow crossed into a "different past" to th e one he has seen d ocum en ted . B ut th e fful paradox is th a t it is on ly D oyle’s p o sitin g o f such an “alternative past" th a t ensures th a t he acts in accordance w ith w h a t has already happened. Ashbless becom es th e hero he already w as, th e restorer o f an order th at was n ever threatened. E veryth in g is a t it always was; only now, as D oyle and the reader know, som ething weird has happened.

S im u la tio n s. a n d U n w o r ld in g : R a in e r W e r n e r F assb in d er an d There is an oth er P h ilip K . D ic k o f w eird effect th a t is generated b y strange loops. The strange loops here involve n o t ju st tangles in cause and effect o f the ^ p e w e discussed in th e last chapter in reference to th e tim e loop sto ry , b u t confu sions o f o n to ­ lo g ica l level. B rian M cH ale devotes m u ch o f his Postmodernist Fiction to a n a lyzin g th ese confu sions. W h a t sh ould b e at an on tologically “inferior” level su d d en ly appears one level up (characters from a sim ulated w orld su d d en ly appear in th e w orld generatin g th e sim ulation); o r w h a t should be a t an o n to lo g ica ly "superior” le v e l appears one level do'wn (authors interact w ith their characters). Escher’s im ages exem p lify th e paradoxical spaces o f th is strange loop. There is a definite weirdness in this Escher-effect, w h ich , a fte r all, is fun dam en ­ t a lly about a sense o f w rongness: levels are tangled, thin gs are n ot where th e y are supposed to be. A lth o u gh M cH aled oes refer to Dick, to w hom w e shall tu rn in a m om en t, m any o f th e texts th a t he discusses render this confusion o f worlds in a literary-m etafictional register. I w ant to discuss n ow tw o texts w h ich — on the edge o f th e science fictio n genre — deal w ith th e qu estion o f sim ulated o r em bed­ d ed worlds in a w a y t h a t em phasises weirdness. Let's tu rn first to Welt am Draht (World on a Wire), a tw op a rt production m ade for the W estdeutscher R undfunk public service television channel in 1973. It w as an adaptation o f D aniel F. Galouye’s science fiction novel Simulacron-3 b y none o th er th an R ainer W ern er Fassbinder. O ne o f th e op en in g scenes centres on a m irror: a s m a l hand-m irror th a t th e obviously disturbed head o f th e Simu- 45

T H E W EIRD lacron project, P rofessor VoUmer, fran tically w aves in the face o f his colleagues, saying, "‘Y o u are on ly th e im age th a t others h a ve o f you.” The project has created a com puter-generated w orld, populated b y “id en tity u n its" w ho b elieve them selves to be real people. Vollm er dies, and is replaced by th e program ­ mer S tile r , w h o soo n becom es obsessed w ith th e enigm a th a t drove V ollm er in to m adness — th a t th eir “real w orld ” is also a sim ulation, engin eered b y a “realer” w orld above. The am bien t social scene in th e film seems to confirm Vollm er’s idea that w e are w h a t w e are perceived to be. There is barely a scene th at doesn’t feature a reflective surface, and some o f th e m ost m em orable shots sh o w reflections o f reflec­ tion s, infin ite regresses o f sim ulacra. The background figures in crow d scenes h a ve a curiously agog im m obility, as i f th ey are spectators a t a stageplay. One early scene is lik e an extra p ­ olation from a B ryan Ferry album sleeve o f th e early 1970s: in an atm osphere o f louche decadence, th e business a n d cul­ tural elite linger like m odels or gawp like voyeurs as th ey stan d aroun d a sw im m in g pool, its reflected lig h t p la y in g on the th en -fu tu ristic in terio rs. M uch like Tarkovsky’s take on SF in Solaris and Stalker (which w e shall discuss later), it is Fassbinder’s d eviation from certain science fictional conven tion s th a t gives World on a Wire a special charge — e s p e c ia ly in th e w a k e o f Star Wars and The Matrix. W hile b oth th o se film s w ere defined b y th eir special effects, there are no visu al effects to speak o f in World on a Wire. The m ost conspicuous “effect” is the startlin g Radiophonic W orkshop-like squiggles and spurts o f electronic music, w h ich break into Fassbinder’s stylised naturalism like a crack in r e a lity itself. In World on a Wire, the strange loop is created b y “Einstein’’, th e id e n tity u n it in Sim ulacron th a t th o se in The In stitu te for C ybernetics and Future Science use to com m unicate d irectly w ith in th e sim ulated world. In order to perform th is liaising 46

R A I N E R W E R N E R F A S S B I N D E R A N D P H I L I P K. D I C K fun ction, E instein n atu rally has to be aware th a t he is a sim ­ ulation. B ut th is know ledge in e vita b ly produces th e desire to clim b up to the “real" w orld — a desire, it is im plied, th a t can never be satisfied. The on tological terror o n w hich World on a Wire tu rn s - is our o w n w orld a sim ulation? - is n o w v e r y fam iliar, via th e m a n y Philip K D ick ad ap tations and th e ir im itators. B ut, despite n o t actually b eing an a d ap tatio n o f D ick ’s fiction, World on a Wire has m ore in com m on w ith th e w r y m ord an cy o f D ick’s w o rk th an m a n y official D ick adaptations, n o t least in the w a y th a t it show s each o f its three n ested w orlds as b ein g equally drab. W e a ctu a lly see v e ry little o f th e w orld “b elow ” (the w orld inside th e Sim ulacron) and alm o st n o th ­ in g o f th e w orld "above” (the w orld one le v e l up from w h a t w e first too k to be reality). The w orld b elow w e see o n ly in s n a t A e d glim pses o f h o tel lobbies and inside a lorry-driver's cab. But it is th e revelation — o r n on-revelation — o f the w orld above a t th e clim ax o f the film th a t is m o st startling. Instead o f som e G nostic transfigu ration, w e find ourselves in w h a t looks like a m eetin g room in som e ultra-banal office block. A t first, the electronic b lin d s are dow n, m om en tarily h old in g open the po ssibility th a t there w ill be som e m arvel­ lous — or at least strange — w orld to be seen once th e y are up. But w hen th ey do even tu ally rise, w e see on ly the same grey skies and cityscape. S tille r— w h ose nam e now assum es a spe­ cial significance - h as a ttain ed his official go a l (clim bing up to the “w orld above”), b u t he has n o t “m oved ”. The Z en on ian condition rem ains in the form o f an on tological a n x iety th a t — in a pre-echo o f the to rm en t th a t destroys M al in Inception — foliow s the weird top ologies o f d rive: once Stiller's fa ith in his initial lifew orld is shattered, there is n o p o ssibility o f fuUy believin g in any reality. The differences b etw een the three w orlds is not accessi­ ble a t the level o f experience (of eith er the characters or the 47

T H E WEIRD audience), and i t as ifF a ssb in d e r produces in World on a Wire som eth in g th a t p erfectly fits Darko Suvin’s fam ous definition o f science fiction as th e art o f “cognitive estran gem en t”. Stiller’s m ou n tin g aw areness o f the sim ulated nature o f th e w orld th a t everyon e around hhim tak es for reality forces a cognitive estra n g em e n t so inten se th a t it constitu tes a p sych o tic break. The content o f his experience is th e same in every respect; b ut, because it is n o w classified as a sim ulation, it is psychotically transform ed. But, as is so o fte n in the fiction o f Dick, the posi­ tio n o f the psychotic is also th e position o f tru th . “C ogn itive estran gem en t” h ere takes th e form o f an un w orlding, an abyssal fa llin g aw ay o f any sense th a t there is any “fu n d am en tal” level w hich could operate as a foun da­ tion or a touchstone, secu ring and au then ticatin g w h at is u lti­ m ately real. The film generates w h at yo u m ig h t ccal a cognitive weird, in th a t the weird here is n o t directly seen or exp eri­ enced; it is a cogn itive effect, produced b y depriving th e film's form al realism o f any feelin g o f reality. Philip K D ick’s Time O ut of Joint, published in 1959, per­ form s a sim ilar estrangem ent o f realism , as w ell as present­ ing another version o f unw orlding. The novel is rem arkable, in fact, for the p ain stakin g w ay in w hich D ick constructs a "realistic” sm all tow n Am erica. Tw o years after th e first D is­ neyland p a rk opened — D ick w ould becom e a freq u en t visi­ to r to th e park in L A — th e n ovel treats literary realism as a kind o f D isneyfication. In a classic m om en t o f D ick on tologi­ cal vertigo, the novel’s painstakin gly described sm all tow n is revealed, in the end, to be an intricate system o f pasteboard fron tages, hypn otic suggestions and n egative hallucinations (we shall return to the question o f negative haUucinations later). The p ay-off can just as easily b e read in term s o f critical m etafiction as science fiction, for w h a t is any se ttin g in real­ ist fiction if n o t th e sam e kin d o f system ? H ow is any “reality 48

R A I N E R W E R N E R F A S S B I N D E R A N D P H I L I P K. D I C K effect” achieved except b y authors u sin g the literary equiva­ len t o f these sim u latory techniques? In Time Out o f Joint, the m achinery o f realism becom es, then, re-described as a set o f special effects. In the novel, th e feelin g of the w eird is not generated b y a collision o f w orlds, bu t b y the passage ou t o f a "realistic” w orld in to an “un w orld ”. A fte r it is dow ngraded to a sim ulation, the realistic world is not so m uch invaded as erased. In th e novel, the w hole sm all tow n scenario is constru cted as a ruse, a com ­ fo rta b le settin g in w h ic h th e p rotagon ist can u n dertake h igh pressure m ilitary w ork fo r the govern m ent w hile thinking th at h e is doing a trivial n ew spaper contest. Y et it is clear th a t the science fictional elements were for Dick the pretext that allowed him to w rite successfully in a naturalistic w a y about F ifties Am erica. They w ere the en fram in g devices th a t enabled Time Out o f Joint to succeed where Dick's purely realist fiction failed. In Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic o fL a te Capitalism, Jam eson captures the peculiar ache o f n ostalgia th a t Time O ut ofJoin t engenders, a nostalgia for the present, w hich Dick achieves b y constellatin g stereotypical im ages o f th e decade he w as w ritin g a t the en d of: President Eisenhower’s stroke; Main Street, U.S.A.; Marilyn Monroe; a world o f neighbours and PTAs; small retail stores (the produce tru ^ ed in from outside); favourite television programmes; mild flirtations w ith the housewife next door; game shows and contests; sputniks directly revolving over­ head, mere blinking lights in the firmament, hard to distin­ guish from airliners or flying saucers. (M onroe actually fea tu res as one o f the anom alies th a t leads to the un ravelin g o f th e sim u lated s m a l tow n , fo r she has n ot been in corporated in to th e recon stru cted 1950s w orld, and appears to the m ain character o n ly w h en h e discovers som e 49

T H E W EIRD ro ttin g m agazines, relics o f our Fifties, in a w aste grou n d “outside the city lim its”.) W h a t is rem arkable is th e w ay in w hich D ick was capable, in 1959, o f already id en tifyin g th o se stereotypical features of the Am erican Fifties w hich w ould com e to define the decade in retrosp ec t. It is n o t D ick’s skill in projectin g into th e future th a t is to be adm ired - the novel’s 1997 is confected out o f generic SF tropes, far less convincing than the osten sibly fake Fifties world it em beds — b u t rather his capacity to im agine how the futu re w ou ld see the Fifties. It is th e Fifties already envisaged as a them epark: an anticipated reconstruction . Dick's sim ulated sm all to w n is n o t en -kitsched as D isney’s m em ories o f his early tw e n tie th cen tu ry w ere, b u t precisely given w h at Jam eson c ^ k the “cabbage stin k ” o f naturalism : The misery of happiness, [...] of Marcuse's false happiness, the gratifications of the new car, the T V dinner and your favourite programme on the sofa - which are now themselves secretly a misery, an unhappiness that doesn't know its name, that has no way of teUing itself apart from genuine satisfaction and fulfilment since it has presumably never encountered this last. In this lukew arm w orld, am bien t discontent hides in plain view , a h a zy m alaise given o ff b y th e refrigerators, television sets and oth er consum er durables. The vivid ness and plausi­ bility o f this m iserable w orld — w ith m isery its elf contributing to the world’s plausibility — som ehow becom es all th e m ore intense w hen its status is dow ngraded to th at o f a constructed sim ulation. The world is a sim ulation but it still feels real. Som e o f the m ost pow erfu l passages in D ick’s w ork are those in w hich there is an on tological interregnum : a trau ­ m atic un w orlding is not y e t given a narrative m otivation; an unresolved space th a t aw aits reincorporation into another sym bolic regim e. In Time Out ofJoint, the in terregn u m takes 50

R A I N E R W E R N E R F A S S B I N D E R A N D P H I L I P K. D I C K the form o f an extraord in ary scene in w hich th e s eem ingly dull obj ects o f quotidian naturalism — th e gas station and the m otel — act alm ost like a n egative version o f th e lam p post at th e e dge o f the N arnian forest. U nlike Lew is' lam p post, these objects do n o t m ark the threshold o f a n ew world; th e y consti­ tute instead stagin g posts on the w a y tow ards a d ese rt o f the Real, a vo id b eyond a n y con stitu ted w orld. W h en the edge-oftow n gas station s com e into focus, th e b ackground furniture o f literary realism suddenly loom s into th e foreground, and there is a m om en t o f object-epiphany, in w hich peripheral vision -fam iliarity transform s into som eth in g alien: The houses became fewer. The truck passed gas stations, tawdry cafes, ice cream stands and motels. The dreary parade of motels ... as if, Ragle thought, we had already gone a thousand miles and were just now entering a strange town. Nothing is so alien, so bleak and unfriendly, as the strip of gas stations — cut-rate gas stations - and motels at the edge of your own city. You fail to recognise it. And, at the same time, you have to grasp it to your bosom. Not just for one night, but for as long as you intend to live where you live. But we don’t intend to live here any more. We're leaving. For good. It’s a scene in w hich Edward Hopper seem s to devolve into B eckett, as the natural(ist) landscape gives w a y to an emptied-out m onotony, a m inim al, quasi-abstract space th a t is de^pe opl e d b ut still industrialised and com m ercialised: “A la s t intersection , a m inor road servin g industries th a t had b een zoned out o f the c ity proper. The railroad tracks ... he n oticed an infin itely long freigh t train at rest. The suspended drums o f chem icals on towers over factories.” It is as if Dick is slow ly clearing a w ay the fixtures and fittin gs o f literary realism in order to prepare the w ay for the un w oriding w hich he had described a fe w pages earlier: 51

TH E W EIRD Hollow outward f o ^ instead of substance; the sun not actualy shining, the day not actualy warm at all but cold, grey and quietly raining, raining, the god-awful ash filtering down on everything. No grass except charred stumps, broken off. Pools of contaminated water... The skeleton oflife, white brittle scarecrow support in the shape of a cross. Grinning. Space instead of eyes. The whole world [...] can be seen through. I am on th e inside looking out. Peeking through a crack and seeing - emptiness. Looking into its eyes.

C u r ta in s a n d H o le s : D a v id L y n c h D avid Lynch's tw o latest film s — Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire — present a kin d o f acute, com pacted weirdness. W h ile o ften perplexing, Lynch’s earlier w ork, in clu d in g th e & m Blue Velvet (1986) and the television series Twin Peaks (1990-91, w ith a third series cu rren tly in production), presen ted w h at at first glance could appear to be a superficial coherence. B oth th e film and the T V series w ere — at least in itia lly - con­ structed around the op position b etw een an idealised-stereotypical s m a ll- t o ^ A m erica (n ot d issim ilar from th e one depicted in Dick's Time O ut o f Joint) and variou s oth er- or under-w orlds (crim inal, occult). The division b etw een w orlds w as often m arked b y one o f Lynch's freq u en tly recu rring visu al m otifs: curtains. Curtains b o th conceal and reveal (and, n o t accidentally, one o f th e th in gs th a t th e y conceal and reveal is the cinem a screen itself). They do n ot on ly m ark a th resh ­ old; th e y con stitu te one: an egress to th e outside. In Mulholland Drive, released in 2001, th e stab ility o f th e op position w hich h a d stru ctured Blue Velvet a n d Twin Peaks begins to collapse. No d oub t th is is p a rtly because o f the sh ift away from the s m a ll- t o ^ settin g, and the n ew focus on LA. Lynch's custom ary preoccupation w ith dream s and the oneiric is now refracted and redoubled b y th e m ediated and m an ufactured dream s o f the D ream Factory, Hollywood. The HoUywood settin g proliferates em bedded w orlds - film sw ith in -film s (and possibly film s-w ithin-film s-w ithin-film s), screen tests, perfo rm ed roles, fantasies. Each em bedding contains the po ssibility o f a dis-em bedding, as som ething th a t was at a supposedly in ferior on tological level threatens 53

T H E WEIRD to climb up out o f its subordin ated p o sition and claim equal status w ith the level above: figm ents from dreams cross over into w akin g life; screen tests appear a t least as convincing as th e exchanges in th e su p posed ly real-w orld scenes th a t sur­ round them . In Mulholland Drive, how ever - rendered in the onscreen title as Mulholland Dr, w ith its su ggestion o f Mulhol­ land Dream — th e overw helm ing ten d en cy appears to m ove in th e op posite direction: it is not so m uch th a t dream s becom e ta k e n for reality, as th a t a n y ap p a ren t reality subsides in to a dream. But whose dream is it anyw ay? The "standard” in terp retation o f Mulholland Drive claim s th a t its first h a lf is the fantasy/dream o f failed tw o-b it actress D iane Sel^wyn (Naomi W atts), w hose actual life is allegedly depicted, in a l its quotidian squalor, in the second h a lf o f the film . In the first part o f the film , B e tty assists an am nesiac b run ette (Laura Haring) — the v ic tim o f a failed m urder p lot — to recover h er identity. The b ru n ette assum es th e nam e "Rita”, after R ita H ayw orth, a nam e she sees on a film poster, and she and B e tty becom e lovers. In th e second part o f th e film, "Rita" is n o w Cam illa, a successful actress, and th e object o f b itter jealo u sy from th e failed and jad ed D iane, w h o lives in a m iserable ap artm en t in H ollyw ood. Diane hires a hitm an to kiU Camilla, before apparently com m ittin g suicide. A ccording to th e standard in terpretation , aspirin g actress B e tty — w ho arrives in H ollyw ood seem ingly n ot on ly from a sm all tow n b u t from th e past (she has ju st w on a jitterb u gg in g com peti­ tion!) — is Selwyn’s idealised im age o fh e rse lf. The opposition b etw een th e idealised place and th e underw orld(s) th a t struc­ tured Blue Velvet an d Twin Peaks h as n o w becom e an oppo­ sition b etw een tw o personae: naive sm all-tow n B e tty versus h ard -b itten LA -resident Diane. In an online review , "D ouble D ream s in H ollyw ood”, T im o­ th y Takem oto p ointed ou t th a t one problem w ith th e standard in terpretation is th a t th e second part o f th e film is, in its ow n 54

CURTAINS AND HOLES: DAVID LYNCH way, as dream -like and as saturated in m elodram atic tropes, as the first. “W h at is som e w om an in a ru n -d ow n apartm en t in HoUywood doing having an affair w ith a m ovie star, th a t is about to get m arried to a fam ous director? W here does she get the m on ey to pay for a hitm an?” Takem oto’s view is th a t both the first and second part o f the film are dream s. Diane is not the dreamer; the “real dreamer is elsew here”, and Betty/D iane and Rita/Cam illa are all fragm en ts o f this (unseen) dream er’s disintegrated psyche. W hether or n o t this v ie w is correct, I th in k th a t Takem oto is righ t to argue th a t there are tw o scenes in Mulholland Drive w hich merit particular attention: the scene about dream s in the diner, and the scene in C lub Silencio (perhaps the m ost p o w erfu l sequence in the entire film). In the d iner scene, a m an called Dan is talkin g to som eone w ho appears to be a psy­ chiatrist about a dream he has had twice. The dream is set in the very diner in w hich th ey are currently sittin g (W inkie’s, on Sunset Boulevard). In the dream, D an is terrified b y a figure w ith a blackened, scarred face, w ho lurks in a hinterland space behind the diner. In a b id to defeat th e pow er o f th e dream, the tw o m en w a lk ou t to the b ack o f the diner — w h ere th e scarred figure is w aitin g, and Dan collapses, perhaps in a faint, perhaps dead. The paradoxically entran cin g Club Silencio scene acts as a gatew ay betw een the tw o sections o f the ^ rn . W ith its red cur­ tains, Club Silencio is evidently a thresh old space. B etty and Rita enter the dub, b u t th e y do not properly em erge from it; th e y are afterw ards replaced/ displaced b y D ian e and Cam illa. I described the scene as paradoxically entran cin g because it is ostensibly dem ystifying. Like som e cinem atic equivalent o f M agritte’s This Is N ot a Pipe, the C lu b Silencio perform ance tells us th a t w h a t we are w itn essin g is an iUusion, w h ilst at th e sam e tim e showing th a t we w ill be u n ab le to treat it as such. The h ost of C lu b Silencio, a kind o f m agician-com pere figure, 55

T H E WEIRD repeatedly tells the audience (those in Club Silencio, as weU as those w atch in g M ulholland Drive), “There is no band. It is all recorded. It is a l a tape. It is an iU usion ” A m a n em erges from b eh in d the red curtains, appearing to p la y a m uted trum pet; he takes the trum pet aw ay from his m outh, b u t the m usic con­ tin ues. W hen the singer Rebekah D el Rio appears to deliver an em o tion ally w racked version o f Roy Orbison's version o f “C rying", w e are seduced b y the pow er o f h er perform ance. So w hen Del Rio collapses b u t the m usic plays on, w e cannot help b ut be shocked. Som ething in us com pels us to treat the perform ance as if it w ere genuine. There is o f course n o th in g less m endacious, less dissim ulatory, in cinem a's h isto ry o f illu sio n th a n the scene in Club Silencio. W h at we are seeing and hearing — th e film itse lf — is indeed a recording and n oth in g but. On the m ost banal level, this is the m aterial infrastructure w hich the “m agic o f cinem a” m ust conceal. Yet the scene hau nts fo r reasons other than this. It points to the autom atism s a t w ork in our sub­ jectivity: insofar as we can not help b u t b e draw n into Silencio's iUusions (w hich are also th e illusions o f cinema), w e are like the ve ry recordings b y w hich w e are seduced. Y e t these iUusions are som eth ing m ore th an m ere deceptions. Like the scene w ith D an in the diner, the Club Silencio scene rem inds us th a t dream s and "illusions” are conduits to a Real th at can not ord in arily be confronted. Dreams are not on ly spaces o f solipsistic interiority: th e y are also a te rrain in w h ich the “red cu rta in s” to the outside can open up. Ultim ately, Mulholland Drive is perhaps best read as som e­ th in g w h ich can n o t be m ade to add up. That is n o t to say th a t the film should ju st be considered fair gam e fo r any possible interpretation . Rather, it is to say th a t a n y attem p t fin ally to tie up the film's convolutions and im passes on ly dissipate its strangeness, its f o ^ a l w eirdness. The w eirdness here is 56

CU RTAIN S AND HOLES: DAVID LYNCH generated in p a rt b y th e w ay th a t th e film feels like a "w rong” version o f a recognisable HoUywood film-^type. R oger E bert rem arked th a t “there is n o solu tio n . There m a y n o t e v en b e a m ystery.” It could b e th a t Mulholland Drive is th e illusion o f a m ystery: we are com pelled to trea t it as a solvable enigm a, to overlo ok its “w ron gn ess”, its intractability, in th e sam e w ay that, in Club Silencio, w e are com pelled to o v erlo o k th e iHusory nature o f the perform ances. In Lynch’s 2006 film, Inland Empire, i t is as i f th e k in d o f slippages, incoherencies and conundrum s w e saw in Mulhol­ land Drive are p ushed m uch further, to the p o in t w here there is no lon ger even th e prospect o f tractability. For all its m a n y film references, Inland Empire does n ot even seem to resem ­ ble any HoUywood tem plate. If the w eird is fun dam en tally abou t th resh old s, th en Inland Empire is a film th a t seem s to be prim arily com posed o f gatew ays. The b est readings o f Inland Empire have rig h tly stressed the film’s labyrinthine, rabbit-w arren anarchitecture. Y e t th e space involved is o n to ­ logical, rath er th an m erely physical. Eath corridor in the — and there are m an y o f Lynch’s signature corridors in Inland Empire — is p o ten tially the th resh old to a n o th er w orld. Y et n o character — the w ord seem s absurdly inappropriate w hen applied to Inland Empire's fleeting figu res, figm ents and frag­ m en ts — can cross into these oth er worlds w ith o u t them selves chan gin g their nature. In Inland Empire, yo u are w h atever w orld y o u fin d y o u rself in. The dom inan t m o tif in the film is an oth er kind o f thresh­ old: th e hole. A hole cigarette-burned in to silk; a hole in th e vagin a waH leading to the intestin e; a hole pu n ctu red into the stom ach b y a screw driver; rabbit holes; holes in m em ory; holes in narrative; holes as positive nuUity, gaps b u t also tu n ­ nels, the connectors in a heUish rhizom e in w hich any part can p oten tially collapse into a n y other. The cigarette burn

TH E W EIRD hole could serve as a m etonym for the film ’s entire psychotic geography. The hole in silk is an im age o f the cam era and its double the sp ectating eye, w hose gaze in Inland Empire is alw ays vo yeu ristic and partial. W ith Inland Empire, w orld-haem orrhaging has becom e so acute th a t we can no lon ger talk abou t tan gled hierarchies b u t a terrain subject to chronic ontological subsidence. The film appears at first to be ab ou t an actress, N ik k i Grace (Laura Dern) w ho is to play a character, Sue, in a film caUed On High in Blue Tomorrows. But there is no stab ility to th ese personae, n or to the hierarchy w h ich w o u ld tre a t Sue as “less real” th an N ikki. By the end, Sue appears to have subsum ed N ^ ik , and seem s n o t to be inside in a n y film th a t w ould be called On High in Blue Tomorrows. “R eflexivity w ith o u t su b jectivity”, th a t p erfect description o f the unconscious, is a phrase th at is exceptionally apt for Inland Empire’s convolutions and invo­ lutions. N ikki Grace and th e gaggle o f o th er personae w hich Dern plays/Grace hosts (or fragm en ts into) are like de-psychologised avatars: holes th a t w e can not help trea tin g as m ys­ teries, even th ough it is clear (to us, if n o t to them ) th a t there is no hope o f any solution. “Som ething go t o u t from inside th e sto ry ”, w e are told o f the P olish m ovie w h ich N ikki G race’s film -w ithin-a-film is rem aking. In Inland Empire — w h ich o ften seem s like a series o f dream sequences floating free o f a n y grou n d ing reality, a dream ing w ith ou t a dream er (as all dream s really are, since the unconscious is n o t a subject) — no fram e is secure, all attem pts a t em bedding fail. The tem ptation to resolve the film’s conundrum s psychologically (i.e. to attribu te the anom alies to phan tasm s issu in g from the deranged m ind of one or more of the characters) is no doubt great, but should be resisted if w e are to rem ain tru e to w h at is singular about the film. Instead o f lookin g inside (the characters) fo r som e 58

C U RTAIN S AND HOLES: DAVID LYNCH final key to the film, w e m u st atten d to the strange folds, bur­ rows and passageways o f Inland Empire’s w eird architecture, in w hich no interior space is ever secure fo r long, and gatew ays to th e outside can open up practically anyw here.

T H E E E R IE 6o

A p p r o a c h in g th e E erie W h a t is th e eerie, exactly? A n d w h y is it im p o rta n t to th in k a b ou t it? A s w ith th e w eird, th e eerie is w o rth reckoning w ith in its ow n rig h t as a particular k in d o f aesthetic experience. A lth o u gh th is experience is certain ly trig g ered b y p articu lar cultural form s, it does n o t origin ate in th em . Y o u could say rath er th a t certain tales, certain novels, certain film s, evoke th e fee lin g o f th e eerie, b u t th is sen sation is n o t a literary or a film ic inven tion . A s w ith th e w eird, w e can an d often do en counter th e sen sation o f th e eerie “in th e r a w ”, w ith o u t th e n eed fo r specific form s o f cultural m ediation. For instance, there is n o d oub t th a t th e sensation o f th e eerie clin gs to cer­ ta in k ind s o f physical spaces an d landscapes. The feelin g o f t h e eerie is v e r y d ifferen t fr o m th a t o f th e w eird. The sim plest w ay to g e t to th is difference is b y th in k­ in g a b ou t the (high ly m e ta p h y s ic a ly freighted) op position — perhaps it is th e m ost fu n d a m en ta l op position o f a l — betw een presence an d absence. A s w e h a v e seen, th e w eird is con stitu ted b y a presence — th e presence o f that which does not belong. In som e cases o f th e w eird (those w ith w h ich L ove­ craft w as obsessed) th e w eird is m arked b y a n exorb itan t presence, a teem ing w hich exceeds our cap acity to represent it. The eerie, b y con trast, is con stitu ted b y a failure ofabsence or b y a failure o f presence. The sen sation o f th e eerie occurs eith er w h en th ere is som eth in g p resen t w h ere th ere should b e n oth in g, o r is th e re is n o th in g p resen t w h en th ere sh ould b e som ething. W e can grasp th ese tw o m odes quickly b y m eans o f exam ­ ples. The n otion o f an “eerie cry” — o ften cited in d iction ary definitions o f the eerie — is an exam ple o f th e first m ode o fth e 61

T H E EERIE eerie (the failure ofabsence). A bird's cry is eerie if there is a feel­ ing th a t there is som eth in g m ore in (or behind) the cry than a m ere anim al reflex or biological m echanism - th a t there is som e k in d of in ten t at w ork, a form o f intent th a t w e do n ot usually associate w ith a bird. Clearly, there is som eth ing in com m on b etw een th is and the feeling o f “som ething w hich does not belong" th a t we have said constitu tes the weird. But the eerie necessarily involves form s o f speculation and sus­ pense th a t are n ot an essential feature o f th e w eird. Is there som eth in g anom alous abou t this bird’s cry? W h at ex a ctly is strange about it? Is, perhaps, the bird possessed — and if it is, b y w h a t k in d o f entity? Such speculations are intrin sic to the eerie, and once the questions and enigm as are resolved, the eerie im m ed iately dissipates. The eerie concerns the unknow n; w h en know ledge is achieved, th e eerie disappears. It must be stressed at this point th at not all m ysteries gener­ ate the eerie. There m ust be also be a sense o f alterity, a feeling th a t the enigm a m igh t involve form s o f know ledge, su b jectiv­ ity and sensation th at lie beyon d com m on experience. A n exam ple o f the second m ode o f the eerie (the failure o f presence) is the feelin g o f th e eerie th a t pertain s to ru in s or to oth er abandoned structures. Post-apocalyptic science fic­ tion, w h ilst n o t in itself n ecessarily an eerie genre, is never­ theless fu ll o f eerie scenes. Yet the sense o f the eerie is lim ited in these cases, because w e are an offered an exp lanation o f w hy these cities h a ve b een depopulated. C om pare th is w ith the case of the abandoned ship th e Marie Celeste. Because the m ystery o f the ship — w h a t happened to the crew? W hat m ade them leave? W here did th e y go? has n ever been resolved, n or is ever likely to be, the case o f the Marie Celeste is satu ­ rated in a sense o f the eerie. The enigm a here, evidently, turns on tw o questions — what happened and why? But structures w hose m eanin g a n d p u rp o se w e can not parse pose a different kind o f enigma. Faced w ith th e stone circle at Stonehenge, or 62

A P P R O A C H IN G T H E EERIE w ith th e statues on E aster Island, w e are con fron ted w ith a d ifferen t s e t o f questions. The problem here is n o t why the people w h o created these structures disappeared - there is n o m ystery here - b u t th e nature o f what disappeared. W h at kinds o f b e in g created th ese stru ctu res? H ow w ere th e y sim i­ lar to us, and h o w w ere th e y different? W h at kind o f sym bolic order did these beings b elon g to, and w h at role did th e m onu­ m en ts th ey constructed play in it? For th e sym bolic structures w hich m ade sense o f th e m on u m en ts h ave ro tte d away, and in a sense w h at we w itn ess here is the u n in telligib ility and th e inscrutability o f the R eal itself. C o n fro n ted w ith E aster Island or Stonehenge, it is hard n o t to speculate abou t w hat the relics o f our culture look like w h en th e sem iotic sys­ tem s in w hich th e y are cu rren tly em bedded have fallen away. W e are com pelled to im agine our o ^ w orld as a set o f eerie traces. Such speculations n o d o u b t account for th e eeriness th a t attach es to the ju stly fam ou s fin al im age o f the original 1968 version o f Planet o f the Apes: the rem ains o f th e Statue o f Liberty, w hich are as ile g ib le from the persp ective o f the film’s post-apocalyptic and indeed post-hum an fa r fu tu re as Stonehenge is to us now . The exam ples o f Ston ehenge and E aster Island m ake us realise th a t th ere is an irreducibly eerie dim ension to certain archaeological and historical practices. Particularly w hen dealing w ith th e rem ote past, archaeolo­ gists and historians form hypotheses, but th e culture to w hich th ey refer and w hich w ould vindicate th e ir speculations can n ever (again) be present. B eh in d all o f the m an ifestation s o f th e eerie, th e central enigm a at its core is the problem o f agency. In the case o f the failure o f absence, the question concerns the existence o f agen cy as such. Is there a deliberative agen t here a t aU? Are we being w atched b y an en tity th a t has not y e t revealed itse lf? In the case o f the failure o f presence, the question concerns the particular nature o f the agen t at w ork. W e k n o w th a t Ston e­ 63

T H E EERIE h en ge has b een erected, s o th e question s o f w h eth er th ere w as an agen t behind its con stru ction or n o t does n o t arise; w h a t w e h a v e to recko n w ith are th e traces o f a departed agen t w h ose purposes are unknow n. We are n o w in a position to an sw er th e question o f w h y it is im p o rta n t to th in k abou t th e eerie. Since th e eerie tu rns crucially on th e problem o f agency, it is a b ou t th e forces th a t govern our lives and th e world. It should be especially clear to th o se o f us in a g lo b a ly tele-con n ected capitalist w orld th a t those forces are n o t ^fuly available to our sen sory appre­ hen sion . A force lik e capital does not exist in an y su b stan tial sense, y e t it is capable o f pro during practically any kind o f effect. A t another level, had n ot Freud lon g ago show n th a t th e forces th a t go vern ou r psyche can be conceive d o f as failures o f presence — is n o t the unconscious itse lf n o t just such a fail­ ure o f presence? — and failures o f absence (the various drives or com pulsions th a t intercede w here our free w ill should be)?

S o m e th in g W h e r e T h ere S h o u ld Be N o th in g: N o th in g W h e r e T h e re S h o u ld Be S o m e th in g : D a p h n e d u M a u rie r and C h ris to p h e r P riest Let's now te st ou t these prelim inary observation s in relation to tw o w riters w ho have rig h tly been closely associated w ith the eerie: D aphne du M aurier and C hristopher Priest. Du Maurier’s eerie tales often revolve around the influence o f entities or objects th a t should n o t possess reflective agency: anim als, telepathic forces, fate itself. The eerie effect in som e o f P riest’s novels, m eanw hile, depends u pon gaps in m em ory, gaps th at fatally underm ine the characters’ sense o f th eir o ^ identity. D u M aurier’s weU-known tale “The Birds” (1952) is an alm ost generic case o f th e eerie. A s I m en tion ed above, d ic­ tionaries frequ en tly cite an anim al’s “eerie cry” w h en th e y are g iv in g exam ples o f the eerie. "The Birds" builds upon the feeling th a t is triggered w hen we hear such cries — th e sus­ p icion th a t an en tity to w hich w e do n o t n orm ally ascribe it possesses a deliberative agency. In d u M aurier’s ta le, th e b ird s cease to be p a rt o f the natural background and assert an agen cy o f th e ir own, b u t th e nature o f th is a g en c y rem ains m ysterious. Instead o f co-existing w ith hum an beings, the birds collaborate w ith one another to launch a m urderous a tta ck on the hum an population. This collaboration am ongst d ifferen t bird species is one o f the first signs th at som eth ing unprecedentedly strange is happening: “The birds w ere cir­ cling still above the fields. M o stly h errin g gull, b u t th e blackbacked gu ll am on gst them . U sually th ey k ep t apart. N ow th ey w ere united. Som e bond had b rou gh t them together.” 65

T H E EERIE For th o se fam iliar w ith H itchcock's film adaptation, read­ in g du M aurier's origin al story w ill com e as som eth in g o f a surprise. (Du M aurier repu ted ly h ated H itchcock’s film.) In stead o f a su n lit C alifornian settin g , w e fin d ourselves in a grey and tem pestuous Cornw all, s t i l in th e g rip o f p o st­ w ar austerity. Instead o f a flirtin g couple in th e ea rly days of rom ance, w e fin d a fa m ily — th e H ockens — d efen d in g th eir hom e again st th e birds’ attack. In som e w ays, “The B irds”, w ith its focus o n a retreat in to a boarded-up house besieged b y anom alous en tities, reads like an anticipation o f G eorge R om ero’s Night o f the Living Dead (1968). The s to ry sees th e characters p itch e d ou t o f a pastoral com m u nal life in to th e k in d o f survivalist a tom isation th a t R om ero w ill depict. The sto ry ’s u n settlin g pow er depends on tw o levels of threat: the first, o f course, is th e bru te physical terror o f the birds’ attack. B ut it is th e second level th a t takes us in to the eerie. A s th e story develops, w e see residual w artim e certain ­ ties and a u th o rity structures d isintegrate. W h a t th e birds th reaten is th e v e ry structures o f explanation th a t had previ­ ously m ade sense o f the world. Initially, th e preferred account o f the birds’ beh aviou r is th e w eather. A s th e attack s in ten ­ sify, oth er n arratives emerge: th e farm er fo r w h om H ocken w orks says th a t th e idea is circulating in to w n th a t th e Rus­ sians poisoned th e birds. (This tu rn to th e readym ad e expla­ nations o f Cold W ar paranoia m akes a certain sense, w h en we rem em ber that the birds have se t aside th eir differences in order to develop a k in d of species consciousness, analogous to class consciousness.) BBC radio broadcasts assum e a cru ­ cial role in th e story. Initially, th e broadcasts are th e tru sted voice o f auth ority: w h en th e BBC announces th a t th e birds are am assin g everyw h ere, th e anom alous situ ation achieves a ^m d o f official validation. A t this point, th e BBC is sy n o n y­ m ous w ith an a u th o rity stru ctu re th a t it is assum ed “do som eth in g” to repel th e b ird s’ attack. But, as the broadcasts 66

D A P H N E DU M A U R IE R A N D C H R IS T O P H E R PRIEST becom e increasingly infreq u en t, it b ecom es d e a r th a t th ere is no m ore a stra teg y to deal w ith th e birds than th ere is an ad equate exp lan ation o f th eir behaviour. By th e end, th e BBC i s n o lon ger b roadcastin g a t ail, and its silence m eans th a t w e are definitively in th e space o f th e eerie. There w ill b e n o expla­ nation, for the characters or for th e readers. N or w ill there be any reprieve: at th e en d o f th e story, th e birds' siege show s no signs o f concluding. In another o f du M aurier’s w eil-know n sh o rt stories, “D on’t L ook N ow " (1971), th e “som ething w here th ere should be n othin g", th e forces th a t lie beyon d ordinary m odes o f explanation, are ex tra sen so ry perception an d fate. The sto ry is a b o u t th e w ay in w hich th e m isrecognition a n d disavow al o f th e pow er o f foresight ends up contrib u ting to th e v e ry event th a t w as foreseen happening. J o h n and Laura are a m arried couple v isitin g V enice as pa rt o f th eir grievin g process fo r th e ir y o u n g daughter, w ho has recently d ied o f an iUness. W h ile sittin g in a restaurant, th ey m eet a strange pair o f sisters, w ho say th a t th e y can see the d au gh ter sittin g b etw een the grievin g couple, laughing. Laura is delighted, and becom es fixated on th e sisters; John is skeptical and hostile, certain th a t th e sisters are exp loiting his w ife’s grief. Soon afterw ard s, the couple learn th a t their son at school in England is ill, and it is decided th a t Laura return hom e to be w ith him . W h en John is walalking around th e city, he th in ks he sees Laura w ith th e tw o sisters on a vaporetto. In a panic, he goes to the police, sure th a t the sisters have abducted Laura. Yet John learns th a t Laura retu rn ed as planned; a hum iliated John has to explain to the police th at he w as m istaken, an d to apologise to the sisters. .After h e has taken the sisters hom e, he sees w h at he th in ks is a y o u n g child b ein g pursued b y a m an. V enice is b eing m enaced b y a serial killer, and J o h n fears th a t th e child b e its n ex t victim . But w h a t he th o u gh t w as a A i l d tu rn s o u t to b e m urderous d w arf 67

T H E EERIE — presum ably the serial killer — w ho kills John. A s he dies, John on ly n ow realises th a t his seeing the sisters w ith Laura was a case o f foresight, a glim pse into th e near fu tu re w hen the three w ould be together a t his o ^ funeral: And he saw the vaporetto w ith Laura and the two sisters steaming d o ^ the Grand Canal, not today, not tomorrow, but the day after that and he knew why theyw ere together and for what sad purpose they had come. Tue creature was gibbering in its comer. Tue hammering and the voices and the barking dog grew fainter, and ‘Oh God,' he thought, ‘W hat a bloody silly way to die ... ' In som e w ays, th e structure th a t em erges here is sim ­ ilar to the tim e loop th a t we discussed earlier, b u t th e loop here is less tig h t, and the register is eerie rath er th an w eird, because the em phasis is on an obscured agent: fate itself. Fate here is certainly terrifyin g, but, as John realises in h is dying m om ents, the pattern s it w eaves exhibit a certain a rtistry th at in the end is ironic, and perhaps even m acabrely comic, as w ell as harrow ing. O ne irony is that, precisely because it is n o t recognised as such, John's foresigh t does n o t allow fate’s patterns to be foreseen. John shares the disavow al o f his o ^ pow ers o f extrasen sory perception w ith another m ale fatally defined b y self-blinding, The Shinings Jack Torrance, w ho w e shall discuss in a later chapter. As w ith Jack Torrance, extra­ sen so ry percep tion com prom ises John's m asculine sense of self-determ ination; like Jack, John ’s un derestim ating o f the forces th a t threaten this — u ltim ately illusory — self-posses­ sio n feed into th e pow er o f th o se v e ry forces, w hich in th e en d leads to h is destruction. N ic Roeg’s film a d ap tatio n (1973) (of w hich, this tim e, du M aurier approved) is an exercise in the poetics o f fate. Here as in so m an y o f his film s, Roeg w orks w ith parallels, pre-figura­ 68

D A P H N E DU M A U R IE R A N D C H R I S T O P H E R PRIEST tion s and echoes, in vitin g u s t o see tim e as a rhym in g struc­ ture. The redness o f the stain on a slide th a t Joh n is studying rh ^ n es w ith the redness o f the raincoat his d aughter is w ear­ in g w h en she dies; b u t his d au gh ter’s death is n ot so m uch a com pleted catastrophe as th e opening m om en t in a grim poetic p attern th a t wiU on ly be closed w ith John’s death, at the hands o f the d w arf w earing a near-identical red raincoat. A s Roeg h eightens our sen sitivity to th ese rh ^ n es, h e sug­ gests the eerie contours o f fa tefu l forces th a t never fu lly com e into view. R epetitions o f colour are supplem en ted by sonic doublings. In keeping w ith th e story, Roeg’s rendering of Venice is in ten sely eerie, and m uch o f this hhas to do w ith the use o f sound. Roeg too k advantage o f the w a y in w h ich Venice acts as a sound maze, its architecture generatin g “schizop h on ic” effects b y separating sounds from th e ir sources, pro­ d u cin g a duplicitous sonic space. Joh n and L aura o fte n lose their way, retu rn in g in ad verten tly to places th e y had ju st left, retracing their steps and d oubling back, w and ering arou n d a city th a t is a dubious labyrin th , and th e fragm ented im age o f a fa te th a t can on ly be recogn ised too late. If these tw o w orks b y du M aurier are abou t an agency th a t should n o t be there — the collective cunning o f birds; the poetic w eavin g o f fate — then C hristopher P riest’s novels The Affirmation (1981) and The Glamour (1984) are organised around absences, gaps w here agen cy should be. The tw o lead characters are defined b y gaps in the stories th a t th e y can tell about them selves, and one effect o f Priest's w ork {like th a t of A lan Garner, to w hich w e shall tu rn later) is to m ake us appre­ ciate the eerie pow er o f stories. The Affirmation appears at first to be the sto ry o f a youn g man, Peter Sinclair, w h o has had a breakdow n a fte r a relation­ ship has collapsed and he has lost his job. A m eetin g w ith an older acquaintance leads to Sinclair ta k in g up an offer to live in the older man’s second hom e, a r u n d o ^ cottage in rural 69

T H E EERIE H erefordshire, in exchange for decorating and renovating th e property. W hile he is a t th e cottage, Sinclair starts w rit­ ing w h a t he com es to th in k o f as an autobiographical w ork, a p iece o f w ritin g th a t w ill finaUy exp lain h is o w n life to him. W e do n o t a t first see th is t e x t - perhaps w e n ever see it on ly Sinclair’s a ltern ately euphoric and tortu red thoughts about it. Sinclair adm its th a t he has begu n to em bellish and in d eed w h o lly a lter elem ents o f th e n arrative — chan gin g rel­ atively trivial details such as the nam es o f places and charac­ ters, b u t also personality traits and k e y events, rationalizin g th a t these am endm ents m ean th a t th e n ovel ^wil have fid elity to a “h igh er tru th ”. This is w h a t m an y novelists w ou ld claim, and P riest is no dou bt havin g a self-m ocking jok e a t his own expense here. W h e n w e e v e n tu a ly see it, Sinclair’s “autobiographical" te x t appears to be n o th in g o f th e sort: it looks like a w ork o f extravagant fa n ta sy (indeed it appears to belong alm ost to the fan tasy genre). A ctually, w e are never certain th a t w h a t w e are reading is Sinclair’s autobiographical m anuscript; in at least one versio n o f w h a t happens, the treasured m anuscript w hich Sinclair carries around w ith him is n o th in g m ore than a sheaf o f em pty papers. But in th e m anu scrip t th a t w e read, Sinclair becom es the w inn er o f a special lottery, run on a place called Collago, an islan d th a t is p a rt o f a "D ream A rchipelago" — a vast island group that, as its nam e su ggests, appears to b e at least as m uch a state o f m in d as a geographical location. The lottery allows w inners to undergo a process called “athanasia”, w h ich w ill give th e m a lim ited k in d o f im m ortality — th eir bodies wiU be cleansed o f an y m orbidities and ^wil be im m une fro m con tractin g a n y fu tu re illnesses, b u t th e y m ay still die as a result o f accidents. H owever, th e ath anasia process involves th em losin g th eir m em ory entirely. Their perso n alities ^wil b e rebuilt on th e basis o f a detailed questionnaire w hich th e y com plete before the athanasia operation. However, Sinclair 70

D A P H N E DU M A U R IE R AN D C H R IS T O P H E R PRIEST insists th a t those conducting his rehabilitation use his o ^ autobiographical te x t instead (which cannot now, evidently, be quite th e same text as the one w e are reading: it m ust exist one level "down” from this n arrative abou t th e archipelago and the lottery). In the rem ainder o f The Affirmation, the relationship betw een the narrative lines set in real w orld locations and those w h ich take place in the D ream A rchipelago becom es increas­ ingly tangle d. It appears th at Sinclair — or some part o f Sinclair — is proliferating fractured n arratives in order to deflect from the traum a o f his role in the suicide o f his lover, G racia. A n epis o de from Sinclair’s childhood provides w h at m ight be th e k ey to the w hole novel. He recaUs an inciden t w here, after an accident, he retrospectively lost any m em ory o f the previous th ree days: During these three days, I must have been alert, conscious and self-aware, feeling the continuity of memory, sure of my identity and existence. An event that followed them, though, eradicated them, just as one day death would erase a l memory. Itw as my first erience of a kind of death and, since then, although unconsciousness itself was not to be feared, I saw memory as the key to sentience. I existed as long as I remembered. The iro n y is th a t th e Sinclair o f th e Dream A rchipelago u nder­ goes th e “d ea th ” o f am nesia in order to achieve im m ortality. A n d i f Sinclair exists “as long as he rem em bers”, the prob­ lem is th a t the differen t versions o f Sinclair do not rem em ­ ber: the "this-w orld” Sinclair because his consciousness has fragm en ted un der pressure from Gracia’s suicide; th e D ream Archip elago Sinclair because he has su b m itted to the athanasia process. W h a t is eerie here is the agen cy o f the un con scious itself. The Affirmation can be read as an extend ed reflection on the 71

T H E EERIE conundrum o f h o w it is possible to conceal som eth in g from ourselves, h ow a single en tity can be sim u ltaneou sly the one w h o is hiding som eth in g and the one fro m w h o m the th in g is hidden. This can only happen because the u n ity and tran s­ parency w h ich w e ordinarily ascribe to our m inds are iflusory. Gaps and inconsistencies are con stitu tive o f w h at we are. W h a t covers ov er these lacunae are stories - w hich th ere­ fore possess their o ^ agency. M em ory is already a story, and w h en there are gaps in m em ory, n ew stories m ust be confabu­ lated to fill in the holes. But w ho is the author o f these stories? The answ er is th a t there is n o t so m uch an a u th o r as a confabu latory process w ith o u t a n y “one” behind it. This process isn ’t a p athological deviation from the norm , b u t the w a y in w hich iden tity ordinarily fu n ctions. However, this fu n ctio n in g is usually obscured, and on ly com es into vie w w h en som eth in g goes w ron g — w hen the stories fail, and the question about the m achin ery th at produces th em becom es unavoidable. Priest's novel The Glamour returns to m a n y o f th ese pre­ occupations, particu larly the problem s o f am nesia and con­ fabu lation . Richard G rey is a cam eram an w h o has lost his m em ory as a result o f being cau g h t in a terrorist bom b blast. He is recovering in a h ospital in D evon, w h en he is visited b y a wom an, Susan Kew ley, w h o claim s to have b een his girlfriend. Like The Affirmation, the novel turns on the relationship betw een gaps and stories, w ith m em ory un derstood as a par­ ticular kin d o f story, susceptible to m anipu lation and recon­ struction. For instance, one o f the doctors w orkin g on Grey’s rehabilitation refers to the condition o f “hysterical param ­ nesia”, in w hich p atien ts confabulate a w hole “rem em bered” w orld on the basis o f a fe w fragm ents. The novel offers alternate versions o f h ow Richard and Susan m et. In the first version, the one th a t Richard in itially believes, and w hich he seem s to have recovered via hypnosis, th e couple m et w hile on holid ay in France. Their developing 72

D A P H N E DU M A U R IE R A N D C H R I S T O P H E R PRIEST relationship was overshadow ed b y the presence o f Susan’s m anipulative lover, N ia l, w ith w hom she w ants to break off, b u t w ho has a sin ister hold over her. Yet Susan u tterly rejects th is accoun t, claim ing th a t she has n e v e r b een to France, and th a t their affair - again w ith NiaH always in th e background - actu ally to o k place in London. There is som eth in g in ten sely eerie about the retrospective d o ^ g r a d in g of the episodes in France. To the reader — and presum ably to G rey — the even ts in France h ave a vividness w h ich m akes them “feel” at least as real, if not more real, than th e episodes in London narrated b y Kew ley. (This is som eth ing like a reverse o f the effect o f w hat happens in The A ffirm ation th e D ream Archipelago scenes appear at first to be a fa n ta sy or a fiction-w ithin-a-fiction, on tologically in ferior to the episodes w hich happen in the real-w orld locations, b u t th e y attain a vividness w hich exceeds that of the m ore “realistic” sections o f the novel.) If the French sto ry was not real, w e are confronted, as in The Affirmation, w ith the question o f the agent th at produced it. A t th e clim ax o f The Glamour, w e seem to receive an a n sw e rto this question: in a m etafiction al tw ist, NiaU claim s to be the n arrator of the w hole novel, and it is Niall w ho has “fe d ” Rich­ ard his false m em ories o f the France trip. If the overw helm ing effect o f this revelation is to som ew hat dissipate the sense of the eerie th at the novel has built up — w e n ow seem to know the precise nature o f the agent w hich has produced all these stories — w e are still left w ith th e problem o f th e scope of Niall’s influence: h ow m u ch o f w h a t we have read is NiaU’s contrivance, h ow m uch belongs to w hat Niall still c a ls Rich­ ard’s “real life", and to w hat extent can Niall’s fictions be sep­ arated fro m this “real life”? If Richard has a “real life ” b eyond N iall, th is im plies th a t N ia l is “only” the narrator, som eone w h o is telling Richard’s story, n ot his author-creator — despite N iall’s claim th a t “I have m ade you, Grey.” The m etafictional struggle b etw een NiaU and Richard can 73

T H E EERIE be read as part o f the n ovel’s core preoccupation w ith th e q uestion o f invisibility. If NiaU is the narrator, he is a “level u p” from the characters he is narrating, and therefore n ot fatty visible to them (th ey can interact w ith N iall th e charac­ ter, but not w ith N iall th e narrator). But the novel is about invisibility in a seem ingly m ore straightforw ard way. Niall, Susan and to som e ex te n t Richard him self apparently have “the glam ou r”. Glam our, the novel explains, is an old S cottish w ord, and [i] n the original sense a glamour was a spell, an enchantment. A young man in love would approach the wisest old woman in his viUage and pay her for a charm of invisibility to be placed on his beloved, so th at she could no longer be coveted by the other young men. Once she had been glammered, or made glamorous, she was free from prying eyes. The novel is am bivalen t a b ou t h o w th is disappearance is pro­ duced — is it an induced failure to see? Do som e people sim ply escape notice, and forever fa ll into th e background? O r is it som e form o f sorcery w h ich a lo w s N ia l and the others n ot be seen (b u t w o u ld th is u ltim ately be a n y differen t from an induced failure to see in a n y case)? D isappearance, alongside am nesia, is a d e a r case o f “n o th ­ ing w here there should be so m e th in g”. B ut th e tw o cases are ve ry different. W hereas am nesia generates a gap th a t is p er­ ceived and fe lt — a ga p th a t dem ands filling b y a story; dis­ appearance is a gap w hich conceals itself. It is an exam ple o f n egative h a lu cination, a concept w hich is in trod u ced in to the n o v e lw h e n , w h ile u n d er hypn otic suggestion, G rey is induced n o t to see a w om an w ho is in th e sam e room as him . N ega­ tiv e hallucination is a phenom enon th a t is in m a n y ways m ore in terestin g — and m ore eerie — th an “positive" hallucination. Not seeing what is there is b o th stranger and m ore com m on­ 74

D A P H N E DU M AU R IE R A N D C H R IS T O P H E R PRIEST place th an seeing w h a t is n o t there. Failure to see, th e invol­ un tary process o f overlooking m aterial w h ich contradicts — or sim ply does not fit in w ith — the d om inan t stories w hich w e tell ourselves is part o f th e ongoing “ed itin g process” throu gh w hich w hat w e experience as id en tity is produced. In n ega­ tiv e hallucination, objects and en tities are -typically registered b u t not see n . If, say, som eone is induced into n o t seein g a b ox lyin g on the floor, th ey w ill neverth eless sw erve to avoid the b o x w h en th ey w a lk across th e room , and w h at is m ore th ey w ill produce a rationale, a little story, explainin g w h y th e y have done so. It w as Freud w ho introduced th e concept of n egative hallucination, and, as w ith confabulation, the ph e­ n om en on illum inates th e eerie qualities o f th e unconscious, its n egative production. The unconscious, som eth in g w h ith is itse lf a gap, an invisibility, is also th e producer o f gaps w hich are not seen.

O n V an ish in g Land: M .R .J a m e s and Eno A s I m en tion ed in th e in trod u ction to this b ook, m y th o u gh ts on th e eerie em erged from a collaborative project th a t I w orked o n w ith J u stin Barton, On Vanishing Land. The even ­ tu a l fo rm th a t p roject to o k w as a forty-five-m in u te audio-es­ say, b u t its origins cam e in a w ^ k th a t w e to o k in Suffolk, in th e east o f England, go in g fro m th e coastal to'wn o f Felixstow e inland to W oodbridge. W e w ere supposed to be scou tin g loca­ tion s fo r an oth er project, b u t th e landscape dem anded to be engaged w ith on its o ' ^ term s. The sym bolic m arkers o f the begin nin g and en ding o f th e jo u rn ey w ere Felixstow e con­ tain er port - an “u n visited vastn ess”, as J u stin p u t it in the script fo r On Vanishing Land — and Su tton Hoo, th e w orld-fa­ m ous site o f an Anglo-Saxon ship burial. The p o rt and th e b u rial grou n d offer tw o d ifferen t versions o f the eerie. The con tain er p o rt loom s o v er th e declining sea­ side to w n , th e p o rt’s cranes to w e rin g a b o v e th e V ictorian resort lik e H.G. W ells’ M artian T ripods. A pproached from th e countryside, from T rim ley m arshes, th e cranes preside over th e rural scene like gleam in g cybernetic dinosaurs eru ptin g out o f a C onstable landscape. V iew ed in this way, th e p o rt appears alm ost as a w eird ph enom enon, an alien and incom ­ m en surable eruption in the “n atural” scene. U ltim ately, h o w ­ ever, it is the fee lin g o f th e eerie th a t is dom inant. There’s an eerie sense o f silence abou t the port th a t has n o th in g to do w ith actual n oise levels. The port is fuU o f th e inorganic clangs and clan ks th a t issue from ships as th ey are loaded and unloaded; w h at’s m issin g, a t lea st fo r th e sp ectator w atch in g the p o rt from a van tage p o in t outside, are a n y traces o f language and 76

O N V A N I S H I N G LA N D : M.R. JA M E S A N D E N O sociability. W atching the con tain er lorries and th e ships do th e irw o rk , or s^ ^ e y in g th e containers them selves, th e m etal boxes racked up like a m aterialised version o f the bar ch arts in Gibson's cyberspace, their nam es rin gin g w ith a certain ^ a n snational, b^lank, B ala rd ia n p o e try - M aersk Sealaland, Hanjin, K -line - one seldom has any sense o f h ^ ^ m presence. The h ^ a n s rem ain o u t o f sight, in cabs, in cranes, in offices. I'm rem ind ed in stead o f th e m ute alien efficien cy o f th e pod dis­ trib u tio n site in Philip K aufm an’s 1978 version o f Invasion o f the Body Snatchers. The con trast b etw een th e con^tainer po rt, in w hich h ^ ^ a n s are invisible con n ectors b etw een autom ated system s, and th e ^clamour o f th e old London docks, w h ich the po rt o f F e ^ u to w e effectively replaced, teUs us a g r e a t deal abou t th e s ^ ft s o f capital and labour in th e last fo r ty years. The p o rt is a sign o f th e trium ph o f finance capital; it is p a rt o f the h ea vy m aterial infrfrastructure th a t facilitates th e ilu s io n o f a “dem aterialised” capitalism . It is th e eerie un dersid e o f contem porary capital’s m undane gloss. Sutton Hoo, m eanw hile, is eerie in a t least tw o different senses. Firstly, it con stitu tes a gap in know ledge. The beliefs and ri^tuals o f the A n glo-Saxon society th a t constructed the artefacts and buried th e ship are on ly p a rtly understood. (The sh ip its e lf and the a rte facts it con tain s — inclu d ing som e incredibly intricate jew ellery — w as lo n g a go m oved to th e B ritish M u s e ^ . Replicas n ow sta n d in th e V is ito r C entre at Sutton Hoo.) Secondly, Su tton Hoo — a b u rial m ound, stan d­ ing above the to'wn o f W oodbridge — is an eerie site in its o ^ right: desolate, atm ospheric, solitary. Another w ay o f m arking the beginning and en d in g o f our journ ey into the eerie is b y th in kin g abou t tw o figures: M.R. Jam es and B ^ an Eno. Jam es set on e o f his m o st fam ous gh o st stories, “Oh, ^Whistle, and I'U Com e to You, M y Lad" (1904), in a th in ly fictio^nalised Felixstowe, w hile Eno’s 1982 a l b ^ , Am bient 4: On Land, is in part an en gagem en t w ith S uffolk 77

T H E EERIE coastal territory. Jam es approached th e Suffolk landscape as a holidayin g antiquarian, v isitin g from Cam bridge. Eno, m eanw hile, cam e to the terrain as a retu rn in g Suffolk-born n ativ e (he was born in W oodbridge), recon stru ctin g in sound the "places, tim es, clim ates and m oods" o f landscapes he had w alke d th rou gh as a child. "Oh, W histle, and I’U Com e to You, M y Lad" concerns Parkins, a Cam bridge sch olar w h o has travelled up to East A n glia fo r a w alking holiday. It is set in Burnstow , a tran sparen t code for Felixstow e. Parkins is a close double o f James him self: James was a Cam bridge antiquarian w ho w as a frequen t visito r to Suffolk. The contrast b etw een the urban w orld w hich Parkin has left behind and the em p ty heathland over w h ic h he w anders is also a contrast betw een en ligh ten m en t know ledge and ancien t lore, and Parkins’ estrangem ent consists in large p a rt in his fin d in g th e m odes o f scholarly explanation w h ich w ork so weU in Cam bridge libraries suddenly h avin g no purchase on w h at he encounters in the Suffolk landscape. In “Oh, W histle, and I’ll Come to You, M y Lad" and "A W arning to the C u riou s” (1925), Jam es discovers a tem plate th a t later w riters such as H.P. Lovecraft, A lan Garner, N igel Kneale and D avid Rudkin w ill w ork from . The tw o stories tu rn on the un earthin g o f old objects - a bronze w h istle and an an cien t c r o ^ — w hich carry an cien t threats. B ut w h en the BBC adapted these stories, the film s becam e as m uch about the East A n glian landscape - “bleak and solemn", as James des cribed it in “A W arn in g to th e C urious” — as th e y did abou t the dem onic creatures caUed up b y the inorganic artefacts. Jon ath an MiUer didn’t use Felixstow e as a location in his 1968 ad ap tation o f "Oh, W histle, and I'll Come to You, M y Lad”, b ut the legen d ary Su ffolk to w n o f Dunwich and the tin y village o f W axham in N orfolk. The crucial scene in w hich Parkin (slightly renam ed in th e adaptation) com es upon the 78

O N V A N I S H I N G L A N D : M.R. JA M E S A N D E N O w histle w h ilst w andering am ong the graveston es on a crum ­ blin g cliff-side w ere recognisably film ed in D unw ich — a place, w hich as Jam es' nam esake H enry n oted w hile on a w a k in g tou r o f Suffolk, consists n ow ^ m o st en tirely o f absence. Dunwich, once a th rivin g sea po rt, w as n early d estroyed at a stroke b y a storm in 1328; m o st o f w h at rem ained was gradua l y claimed b y the sea, so th a t today only a. few houses and a single ch urch are still standing, them selves threaten ed by the slow ly voracious ocean. W axham is also a place govern ed b y absence. W ith its few cottages and dilapidated church, it feels like the skeleton o f a village. But M iller didn’t use a n y o f the village’s fe w lan d­ m arks, concen tratin g instead on the sem i-abstract terrain o f the beach. The largely featureless beach at W axham is an excellent version o f the landscape as described b y James: “a lon g stretch o f shore-shingle edged b y sand, and intersected at sh o rt intervals w ith black groynes ru n n in g d o ^ to th e water", a “b le a k sta g e ” on w hich “n o a cto r w as visib le”, and defined b y “th e absence o f a n y lan d m ark”. In M iller’s version, Parkin, played b y a splendid M ichael H ordern, is a crum bling logical positivist, his m ind eroding as surely as the threaten ed East A n glia n coastline, o n ly fa r m ore quickly. Hordern, w ho was n ever better, conveys Parkin’s w ithdraw al, his gestures and expressions su ggesting conver­ sation al gam bits and anecdotes th a t w ork far b etter w hen rehearsed in the theatre o f his m ind th an th ey ever w ould in any inter-personal context. This is a m an m ore at hom e w ith b ooks than people. In the m anner o f A.J. Ayer, H ordern’s P arkin is w o n t to dismiss the concept o f life a fte r death as devoid o f m eaning. Y et the strid en cy o f his philosophical position is belied b y the unsteadiness o f his m u m b lin g exp o­ sition. A t one level, the em p ty dunes and solitary heathland becom e an objective correlative for Parkin’s increasingly solipsistic m en tal sta te. Y e t the beach is also the zone w here Parkin 79

T H E EERIE encounters the outside, th e alien forces th a t fatally disrupt his interiority. There is a stron g affiu lty b etw een M iller’s television adap­ ta tio n o f "Oh, ^Whistle, and M Come to You, M y Lad” and Eno’s On Land: b oth in effect are m ed itation s on th e eerie as it m anife sted in the E ast A n glian terrain. W ith its lingerin g concen tration o n th e landscape, its b rood in g silences, an d its lon g scenes devoid o f m uch action, it w as as i f M iller produced so m e th in g lik e th e television equivalen t o f the am bien t m usic th a t Eno w ould later inven t. W ith On Land, Eno w rote in his sleeven otes fo r the album , “th e landscape has ceased to be a backdrop fo r s om eth in g else to happen in fron t of; instead, ev eryth in g th a t happens is a p a rt o f th e landscape. There is n o lo n g er a sharp d istin ctio n b etw een foregroun d and back­ ground.” The eerin ess o f M ile r's film com es from the w ay it treats the landscape as an agen t in its ow n right. The film captures a seductive s l o ^ e s s prop er to th e nearly-deserted heaths and beaches, su b ^ n e in th eir som bre desolation. Parkin underestim ates th e pow ers o f this archaic and arcane terrain a t his peril. For Jam es, w ho w as b o th a h o rro r w riter an d a conserva­ tive C hristian , th e fascin ation fo r th e outside is alw ays fate­ ful, as the title o f “A W arn ing to the C urious” made clear. But On Land is m o re open to the idea o f an ou tside th a t n eed n o t b e th reaten in g or destructive. W ith its gen tle, eddying m ove­ m en ts, its bubblings and babblings, its su su rratin g su gges­ tions o f nonorganic sentience, On Land up a dream ing landscape teem in g w ith detail. Eno’s biographer D avid Shep­ pard w ro te that, fo r a l its invocations o f Eno's childhood, the atm osphere o f On Land “w as less one o f sen tim en tal yearning and m ore one o f introverted , sensual intoxication." C ert^ u ly, On Land is sensuaUy intoxicating, b u t “introverted" seem s an odd w ord for a record th a t seems so lack in g in psych olog­ ical interiority. There is n o dou bt a sen se o f solitude, a w ith ­ 80

O N V A N I S H I N G L A N D : M.R. JA M E S A N D E N O draw al from the hubbub of ban al sociality in On Land b u t this em erges as a precondition fo r openness to th e outside, w here the outside designates, a t one level, a ra d ic a ly depastoralised nature, and, at the o u ter lim its, a different, h eighten ed en counter w ith th e Real. Eno recounts in th o se sam e sleevenotes th a t p a rt o f th e inspiration fo r On Land la y in his am bition to produce an "aural counterpart" to Fellini’s Amarcord (1973). The sh ift into soun d opens up th e eerie. There is an intrin sically eerie dim ension to acousm atic sou n d — sou n d th a t is detached from a visib le source — and one o f the m o st u n settlin g tracks on On Land is “Shadow", w h ich features a q u ietly distressing w him per th a t could be a h u m an voice, an anim al sobbing, or an aural h allucin ation produced b y th e m ovem en t o f wind. This suggests the w ork o f som e hostile agent, b u t p a rt o fw h a t m akes On Land rem arkable is th e w ay th a t it is open to the p o ssibility of an eerie th a t is n ot containable b y the horror or gh o st sto ry genres: an outside th a t — p u lsin g beyon d th e confines o f the m un dan e — is achin gly aUuring ev en as it is d isconcertin gly alien. For Jam es, th e outside is always coded as h ostile and dem onic. W h en h e read his g h o st stories to his Cambridge audience at Christm as, th e glim pses o f ex terio rity th ey offered no doubt b rou gh t a th rill to his listeners, b u t th e y also came w ith a firm w arning: v e n tu re outside th is cloistered w orld at y o u r peril. Y e t th e w orld th a t Jam es — a V icto rian figure in the tw e n tie th cen tu ry — sou gh t to defend had in m an y w ays already vanished, or was on th e b rin k o f van ish­ ing. The B ath H otel in Felixstow e — w here Jam es h abitu ally stayed, th e m od el fo r the h otel in “Oh, W histle, and I’U Come to You, M y Lad” — w a s b u rn ed d o ^ b y su ffragettes in 1914. Ultim ately, I w an t to em p hasise th e dim en sions o f th e eerie th a t Jam es foreclosed, b u t fo r th e m om ent, le t’s consider tw o w riters w h o fo llo w Jam es in to exploring th e m align ve rsio n o f th e eerie: N igel K neale and A lan Garner. 81

E erie T h a n a to s : N igel K n e a le and A la n G a rn e r Pulp-horror, archaic science fiction and the darker aspects of folklore share a preoccupationwith exhumation of or confrontation with ancient super-weapons categorised as Inorganic Demons or xenolithic artifacts. These relics or artifacts are generaEy depicted in the shape of obj ects made of inorganic materials (stone, metal, bones, souls, ashes, etc.). Autonomous, sentient and independent o f human will, their existence is characterised by their forsaken status, their immemorial slumber and their provocatively exquisite forms. [...] Inorganic demons are parasitic by nature, they [...] generate their effects out of the human host, whether as an individual, an ethnicity, a society or an entire ci^ isation . — R eza NEGARESTANI, Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials Reza N egarestani could be des cribing here th e stru ctu re that Jam es uses in “O h, W histle, and I’H Com e to You, M y Lad” and "A W arning to the Curious": bu t this p attern is also used by tw o o f Jam es’ successors, N igel Kneale and A lan Garner. In som e o f th e ir m o st im p ortan t w orks, K neale and G a m er show disinterred “inorganic dem ons”/artefacts operating as fatalis­ tic engines, draw ing characters into deadly com pulsions. B oth K neale and G a n e r explore the contours o f w h a t yo u m ight call an eerie Thanatos — a tran spersonal (and tran stem po­ ral) de ath drive, in w hich the “psychological" em erge s as the p roduct o f forces from the outside. 82

EERIE T H A N A T O S : N IG E L K N E A L E A N D ALAN GARNER Q u a t e r m a s s ’ 1ha n a t o s The television series Nigel Kneale is m ost fam ous for w rit­ ing are typically described as op eratin g on the interstices b etw een genres (especially horror and science fiction). B ut I w ould argue th at w h at is m ost characteristic o f Kneale's best w ork is its sense o f th e eerie. U nlike M.R. Jam es, Kneale does n o t take th e supernatural on its o w n term s. In fact, K neale’s stan dard m ove — m ade m ost ob vio u sly in Quatermass and the P it — is to offer a scientific rem otivatio n o f w h a t had p revi­ ously been taken to be supernatural. W h a t in one register can be apprehended as a “dem on” appears in another register as a particular kin d o f m aterial agent. It’s true, Kneale agrees, th a t science sin ce th e E nlightenm ent has m ain tained there is no supplem entary spiritual substance, b u t the m aterial w orld in w hich we live is m ore p rofou n d ly alien and strange than we had previously im agined; and rath er th an insisting upon the pre-em inence o f the hum an subject w ho is alleged to be the privileged bearer o f reason, K neale shows th a t an enquiry into the nature of w h at the w orld is like is also in ev­ ita b ly an unraveling o f w hat hum an beings had taken them them selves to be. A t th e h eart o f Kneale’s w ork is th e question o f agen cy and intent. A ccording to some philosophers, it is the cap acity for in ten tion ality w h ich d efin itively separates hum an beings from the natural world. In ten tion ality includes inten t as w e ordinarily un derstan d it, b u t reaUy refers to the cap acity to feel a certain w ay about things. Rivers m ay possess agen cy — th ey affect changes — b u t th e y do not care about w h at th ey do; th ey do not have any sort o f attitude towards the world. Kneale’s m ost fam ous creation, the scien tist Bernard Q u ater­ mass, could be said to b elon g to a trajectory o f Radical Enlight­ en m en t th in kin g w hich is troubled b y this distinction. Radical E nlightenm ent thinkers such as Spinoza, Darw in, and Freud continually pose the question: to w h a t exten t can th e concept 83

T H E EERIE o f in ten tio n a lity b e applied to hum an beings, n ever m ind to th e n atural w orld? The qu estion is posed in p a rt because o f th e thoroughgoing n aturalisation th a t Radical E nlightenm ent th o u gh t has insisted upon: if hum an beings fu lly belong to the so-called n atu ra l w orld, th en on w h at grounds can a special case be m ade fo r th em ? The conclusions th a t Radical E nlight­ enm ent th in k in g draws are th e exact opposite o f th e claims for w h ich so-caUed n ew m aterialists such as Jane B en n ett h a ve argued. N ew m aterialists such as B en n ett accept th a t th e d istin ctio n b etw een h u m an beings and th e natural w orld is no lon ger tenable, b u t th e y construe th is to m ean th a t m any o f the features p reviou sly ascribed only to hum an beings are actu ally d istributed th ro u g h o u t nature. Radical E nlighten­ m en t goes in th e opposite direction, b y questioning w hether there is any such th in g as in ten tion ality at a l; and i f there is, could hum an beings b e said to p ossess it? The answ er is com ­ plex: th e re m ay be som ething like in ten tio n a lity a t w o rk in hum an beings, b u t it does n ot correspond w ith w h at hum an beings, in their casual phenom enal self-reflections, th in k o f as their personality, conscious in ten tio n s or feelings. Here is where Kneale com es in. Q uaterm ass discovers the m echanical-autom atic-alien basis o f w h a t has been taken to be hum an. W h at em erges as the ev en tu a l object o f Q uater­ mass’ research is w h a t Freud, in “B eyond The Pleasure Prin­ ciple" (1920), calls Thanatos. By strikin g contrast w ith the new m aterialist idea o f “vib ran t m atter", w hich suggests th a t aU m a tter is to som e ex te n t alive, th e conjecture implied b y Freud’s p o sitin g of Thanatos is th a t nothing is alive: life is a region o f death. Freud’s later in vocation o f a dualistic struggle b etw een Thanatos and Eros can be read as a retreat from the forbid d ing m on ism o f “Beyond The Pleasure Principle”, w hich argues th a t all life is m erely a rou te to death. W h a t is called organic life is actu ally a k in d o ffo ld in g o f the inorganic. But th e inorgan ic is n o t the passive, in e rt counterpart to an 84

EERIE T H A N A T O S : N IG E L K N E A L E AN D ALAN GA RN ER allegedly self-propelling life; on th e contrary, it possesses its o w n agency. There is a death drive, w h ich in its m o st radical form ulation is n ot a drive tow ards death, b u t a drive o f death. The in o rgan ic is the im personal pilot o f everyth in g, includ­ ing th a t w hich seem s to b e personal and organic. Seen from the p ersp ective o f Thanatos, w e ourselves becom e an exem ­ p la ry case o f the eerie: there is an agen cy a t w ork in us (the unconscious, th e d eath drive), b u t it is n o t w here or w h a t w e exp ected it to be. B u t this is n o t the w hole story. The p o in t here is n o t th a t w e are the blind slaves o f the death drive, b u t, if w e are n ot, it is because o f an equally im personal process: science, w hich con­ sists in part o f discovering an d analysin g the ve ry processes th a t F reu d calls Thanatos. The figure o ft h e Radical E nlighten­ m ent scien tist, then, is som eone w ho understands th e Thanatoidal n ature o f their o ^ im pulses, b u t w h o — precisely because th ey understand this — offers som e po ssibility of escape from them . I w ill n ow explore th is b y considering tw o o f Kneale’s celebrated w orks — Quatermass and the P it (1958­ 59) and The Stone Tape (1972), an d one o f h is lesser regarded series — the final in stallm en t o f th e Q uaterm ass series, Qua­ termass, from 1979. Quatermass and the P it is abou t a n excavation in th e fic­ tional London tube station o f Hobbs End. W orkers uncover w h at turns out to be a M artian spaceship filled w ith the corpses o f repulsive quasi-insect beings. A lien s, w e thin k. Y e t the genius o f Kneale’s script is th a t th e M artians tu rn ou t n ot to be aliens — in the sense o f b ein g "different from us” — at all. Fleeing the destruction o f their ow n planet, the M artians had, five m illion years previously, interbred w ith proto-hu­ m an hom inids in order to perp etu ate th eir species. So the distin ction b etw een alien an d hum an is fatally unsettled. A s the Q uaterm ass sequence progresses, the alien has becom e increasingly intim ate: In the first instaUm ent, The 85

T H E EERIE Quatermass Experiment — th e aliens are ou t in space; in th e second, Quatermass II (a k in d o f B ritish equ ivalen t o f Invasion o fth e Body Snatchers) — th e aliens are already am ongst us; and in the third, Quatermass and the Pit — w e are th e aliens. W h en , a t th e end o f th e film , Q uaterm ass m akes a stand against th e M artian s and earn estly hopes th a t E arth does n ot becom e “th e M artian s’ second dead planet'', th is could look like a retreat fro m th e film 's pitiless m essage — th a t w e ourselves are M artian. Yet even if K neale has already decon structed the opposition b etw een Eros and Thanatos, hum an and M artian — unravel th e hum an, and you discover th a t it is on ly a fold w ith in the b od y o f an organic Thanatos - he is still en titled to place hope in th e science th a t has dis­ covered th is . A darker version o f the origin o f hu m an ity sto ry told in Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (to w hich w e retu rn in a later chapter), Quatermass and the Pit also shares m uch w ith J.G. BaEard’s The Drowned World (1962): m ost im p ortan tly the them e o f w hat Greil Marcus in Lipstick Traces calls “p h y­ logenetic m em ory”. In Quatermass and the Pit, th e m em ory is a “literal” m em ory, a deeply subm erged b u t still accessi­ ble m en tal trace (triggered, in the film , b y th e u n earth in g of th e spaceship); in The Drowned World, th e "m em ories” are encoded in the physical form o f th e h u m an b ein g itself, Bal­ lard's “spinal landscapes”. Quatermass and the P it is archaeo­ logical; The Drowned World is geological. B ut in b o th hum an nervous system s and m em ory are conceived o f as inorganic recordings — relics o f traum atic even ts th a t hum ans m ust eith er decode or repeat. Kneale foregroun ded th is th em e o f recording in The Stone Tape. Here, a group o f scien tists take u p residence in a n ew research facility. It quickly becom es apparent th a t th e b u ild ­ ing is haunted: one o f their num ber, a fem ale com puter pro­ gram m er, is particularly “sen sitive” to th e gh o st (a servan t 86

EERIE T H A N A T O S : N IG E L K N E A L E A N D ALAN GA RN ER girl from the n in eteen th cen tu ry w ho died in a m ysterious fall). Inevitably, the scientists go from sceptical dism issal to a m anic need to exp lain and m ap th e p h enom enon w ith o u t m uch o f a pause for breath. Kneale's thesis is th a t hauntin gs and gh osts are particu ­ la rly intense phenom ena th a t are literally recorded b y m atter, b y the stone o f the room . (Hence the “stone tap e” o f th e title.) W h a t the scientists h ad been look in g for, apparently coin­ cidentally, w as a n ew , m ore com pact and durable recording m edium . But w h a t the hau ntin g p h enom enon offers is the possibility n o t on ly o f a n ew recording m edium , b u t o f a new player: the hum an n ervous system itself. In th eir m om en t o f exultant bliss (before the in evitab ly bleak denouem ent), the scientists laugh and joke abou t the prospect o f a totaUy w ire­ less com m unication system : tran sm ission s beam ed d irectly in to your head (like W illiam G ibson’s cyberspace, b u t w ith ou t even the ‘ trodes). B ut the scien tists' obsessive activity ends up w ipin g the tape — o r a t least w ip in g a w a y th e th in g la s t recorded on to it. Som ething else, som eth in g m ore ancient, stirs beneath, ter­ rify in g th e fem ale com puter program m er in to literaHy fallin g into th e fo o tstep s o f th e n in eteen th -cen tu ry girl, plunging to h er d eath in a state o f to tal terror. So w h a t K neale im plies in the end is the b r e a k d o ^ o f the distin ction b etw een th e player and w h a t is being played. To begin w ith , it seem s th a t the gh ostly scream s are passive and in ert, as incapable o f exerting agency as th e d ry ro t th a t afflicts the haunted room ; y e t in the end, it is th e h um an beings w h o are revealed to be cau ght in a terrible com pulsion to repeat. It is as i f th e room — the site, it is ev en tu a lly im plied, o f some u n im agin ably an cien t place o f sacrifice — solicits the scientists into precipitatin g y e t another death, in to playin g ou t th e sam e old sequence once again. The h u m a n players are th em selves p a rt o f an aeon s-old p a ttern o f senseless rep etitio n . Eerie Thanatos, again ... 87

T H E EERIE Thanatos loom s large in the final, under-rated, Quatermass serial. K n eale saw this as a requiem fo r th e Sixties: a dark parable a b ou t th e th an atrop ic drives w h ich y o u th m essianism co u ld n u rture. In p lace o f th e h ip p ie d ream o f a ren ew ed E arth, his tran ce-intoxicated p ost-pu n k p ro to -cru sties the Planet People - lon g for an escape in to another world, another solar system . Quatermass’ landscape w as projected d irectly o u t o f th e anxieties o f th e 1970s: th e choking eco­ sphere, th e fu el sh o rtages, th e p ow er-cu ts, the disintegration o f th e social contract in to a H obbesian w ar o f all-against-all - it w as Sixties u topian ism in ruins. Those barricaded streets, th e rovin g arm ed stre e t gangs (inspired b y B aader M ein h o f and th e Red and A n g ry Brigades) could equally w ell have w alked o ff a K illing Joke record cover or from a C on servative p a rty election broadcast. Such w as the w a y in w hich im aginaries and im pulses - reactionary, neoarchaic, revo lu tion ary - becam e coUapsed in to one an oth er (collapsed like th e abandoned vehicles fro m w h ich th e ger­ iatric colony in the serial con stru ct th e ir b olth ole rhizom e) in 1979. If y o u w a n t to th in k o f analogues for th e 1979 Quatermass, look to some o f the m ajor post-pu n k records o f th a t y ear — Tubew ay A rm y’s Replicas, J o y D ivision’s Unknown Pleasures — rather th a n to th e cinem atic blockbusters (Star Wars and Close Encounters o f the Third Kind (both 1977)) to w hich it was inevitably, and unfavourably, com pared at the tim e . That said, th e early, obsessive scenes o f Close Encounters o f the Third Kind could alm ost be K nealeian — b u t a l o f th a t is dissipated a t th e en d b y th e Jarre-like ligh tsh o w and th e appearance o f th e rath er cute aliens. W h a t disappears is n o th in g less th a n th e eerie itself, as th e early au tom atism o f th e m ain charac­ ters, and m an y o f th e q u estion s about th e aliens (indeed, the q uestion o f w h eth er there are aliens at all) gives w a y to w hat has since becom e standard in blockbu ster science fiction: 88

EERIE T H A N A T O S : NIG EL KNEALE AN D ALAN GARNER the com pulsory spectacle o f conspicuously expensive FX. W h a t Close Encounters o f the Third Kind h as in com m on w ith Quatermass is its v isio n o f hum an populations entranced in to unconscious com plicity w ith th e alien pow ers. B u t Qua­ termass is consum m ately able to resist th e te m p ta tio n to w h ich Spielberg m ust succum b - th a t o f anthropom orphizing the aliens. The purposes o f th e aliens in Quatermass rem ain u n fath om ab ly opaque, like th eir physical form s. A n y th in g w e “learn ” about them is conjecture, inference, speculation. They are, in every sense, lightyears aw ay from us. Kneale’s great them es — the intim acy o f the alien; th e lu st for ann ihilation in organic beings — th is tim e em erge in a n analysis o f y o u th miUenarianism . His rend ition o f y o u th cul­ ture is, predictably, m ore to do w ith J eff NuttaU’s Bomb Cul­ ture (1968) th an it is Age-of-Aquarius utopian. The urge to herd together into crow ds is interpreted sym ptom aticaH y as the fo llo w in g o f a program m e seeded deep into th e u n con ­ scious o f the young. Kneale’s usual cybergothic m eth o d o lo g y — disinterring the presen t in the relics o f the Deep Past — th is tim e focuses on N eolithic sto n e circles. Q uaterm ass h ypothesises th a t th e m egalithic sites are traum a records, th e stones arranged as com m em orations o f m ass exterm inations: th e E arth’s scar tissue. (The paraUel b etw een astro-apocalyptic even ts and stone circles h a d actually b een m ade th ree years earlier, in ITV’s m em orably eerie children’s program m e from 1976, Chil­ dren o f the Stones.) The stone circles w ere th e sites o f w h a t Q uaterm ass om i­ n ou sly refers to as previous "harvestin gs" o f the hum an race. W ho can say w h a t th e species reaping h u m a n ity is like and w h a t their m otivatio n s are? A lu st fo r p rotein? E nergy vam pirism ? Q uaterm ass can only guess. Here, K neale draws upon the eerie affect w h ich stone circles typically produce. A s I n o ted above, sto n e circles co n fro n t us w ith a sym bolic 89

T H E EERIE structure th a t has en tirely ro tte d away, so th a t the deep p ast o f h u m an ity is revealed to be in effect an illegible alien civili­ sation, its rituals and m odes o f su b jectivity u n kn ow n to us. K neale w as disappoin ted w ith th e casting o f John M i l , w hich was forced on him b y th e Euston pro duction com pany th a t in sisted on a big-nam e star; he preferred A n dre MoreU and A n d re w Keir (who had p layed the scien tist in, respec­ tively, th e T V and th e film versions o f Quatermass and th e P it). He sup posed ly fou n d M ills insu fficien tly heroic, scarcely rec­ ognisable as th e sam e figure MoreU and Keir had portrayed. Y e t M ills' quiet anger, his com passion and d isgu st for hum anity, his slighted b u t enduring dignity, m ake h im w hat could be th e definitive Q uaterm ass. M ills brings a terrible a u th ority to th e cosm ic Spinozism o f th e show ’s ethical p ay­ off. W h en the you n g astronom er Joe Kapp — ju st thaw ing from the shock o f losing his entire fam ily — talks o f “evil", Q uaterm ass corrects him : "M aybe evil is alw ays som eone else’s good. Perhaps it’s a cosm ic law." T h e M y th ic T im e o f Red S h ift It is said th a t A lan G arner’s extraord in ary n o v e l Red Shift (1973) w as trigg ered b y th e a u th o r seeing a piece o f graffiti at a railw ay station w h ich read “n o t really n ow n o t a n y m ore”. There is som eth in g so eerie, so crryptic, so su ggestive abou t th a t phrase, especially w h en w ritten as an anonym ous graf­ fito. W hat did the nam eless auth or o f this vagabon d p o e try m ean b y it, and w h a t did it m ean to them ? W h a t even t — w as it a personal crisis, a cu ltu ral event, a m ystical revelation o f som e kind? — p ro m p te d th e m to w rite it? A n d d id anyone else b u t G arn er e v er w itn ess th e ph rase graffitied on to th e rail­ w ay station wall? Or was it only G arner w h o saw it? N ot th at I am su ggestin g he im agined it — b u t the phrase so p erfectly captures the tem poral vo rtices in G arner’s w ork th a t it seem s as if it could have b een a special m essage m ean t o n ly fo r him . 90

EERIE T H A N A T O S : N IG E L K N E A L E A N D ALAN GARNER Perhaps it was, w hatever the “in ten tio n s” o f the graffiti w riter happened to be. If the m ost fam ous anonym ous source in the w orld is to be believed, the w ords “not really n ow n ot any m ore” were scrawled in lipstick, beneath two lovers’ nam es th a t had b een chalked on to the wall. In w hich case, the explanation fo r the phrase seem s — on th e face o f it — to be som ew hat prosaic. Som eone — one o f the tw o lovers, or one of their friends, enemies or rivals, or a stranger — was m a k in g a com ­ m en t — sarcastic, m elancholic, an gry? — abou t the status o f the lovers’ relationship. A phrase th at is n o t quite banal, bu t w hich is certainly transparent, conversational — “n o t r e a ly now not any m ore" — acquires a poetic opacity b y virtue o f the om ission o f a com m a. Yet, even th a t apparently d eflation ary explanation cannot conjure a w ay th e eeriness o f the phrase: “n o t really n o w n o t any more". To say there was som ething fated about Garner's en counter w ith this g ra ffiti is to redouble the phrase's intrinsic, ind elible eeriness. For w h at does the phrase point to if not a fatal tem porality? N o now, n o t any m ore, n o t really. D oes this m ean that the presen t has eroded, disappeared — n o now a n y m ore? Are we in the tim e o f the always-already, w here the fu tu re has been w ritten; in w hich case it is not the future, not really? But w e are gettin g ahead o f ourselves. W hat, exactly, hap­ pens in Red Shi^? The “n ovel” — a label w hich scarcely seem s adequate for a te x t w hose cryptic d en sity m akes it resem ble a prose poem — juxtap oses three tim e periods: Rom an Britain, the English C ivil W ar and th e then-present day. The contem porary episode centres on the torm ented, asphyxiatin gly inten se relationship b etw een Tom and Jan. Their en tan glem en t has a blocked, fru strated qu ality seem ­ ingly from th e start. E xternal obstacles — the h o stility of T om ’s parents to the relationship; the ph ysical distance betw een the couple, now th a t Jan has m oved to London — 91

T H E EERIE are doubled b y internal obstacles, m ost p o w erfu lly and dis­ tressin gly th o se gen erated b y T om ’s obsessive jealo u sy and possessiven ess, w h ic h b ecom es m alevolen t — ev en d ead ly — after h e discovers th a t Jan h ad an affair w ith an older m an. It is Tom's v e r y desire to p ossess Jan, to claim ow nership over h er v e ry being, w hich u ltim ately drives Jan away. This quickly becom es more self-destructive to Tom th an it is d estructive o f Jan, as Jan increasingly asserts her au ton om y and ultim ately ends the relationship. The C iv il W a r episode involves a y o u n g epileptic, Thom as Rowley, an d his w ife M argery, w h o live in th e C heshire v ila g e o f Barthom ley. He and th e otherviU agers are barricaded u p in the church b eh in d d efences th e y h a v e im provised to repel Royalist troop s, w h en Row ley has a fit and accidentally fires a m usket, causing th e R oyalists to b ru ta lly attack. The w om en are raped, and all th e m en b ar Rowley are kiUed. B u t R ow ley and his w ife are h elp ed to sa fety b y one o f the m ost savage o f the Royalist soldiers, Thom as Venables, w ho is also M argery’s form er lover. The Rom an occupation episode focuses on Macey, one o f a num ber o f Rom an soldiers from th e destroyed N in th Legion. The childlike M acey befriend s a Celtic priestess th a t the sol­ diers h a ve raped and captured. U ltim ately, th e priestess kills the soldiers b y poisonin g their bread, and escapes w ith Macey. The relationship am ongst these periods is enigm atic, if not outright unintelligible. W h a t all three episodes h ave in com m on — besides certain d ifferen tly repeatin g traum atic elem ents — is an inorganic object: a N eolithic vo tiv e axe, w hich assum es sym bolic significance fo r a l three o f th e cou­ ples. This axe serves m a n y fu n ctio n s — it seem s to m ark, at one and th e sam e "tim e”, co n tin u ity and sim ultaneity, as w ell as op eratin g as a k in d o f trigger (causing, fo r instance, Rowley and M acey to fit). W h at Red Shift discloses is n ot, evidently, a linear tem poral­ ity , in w h ich th e different h isto rical episodes sim ply succeed 92

EERIE T H A N A T O S : N IG EL KNEALE AN D ALAN GARNER one another. N or does it presen t th e episodes in a relation o f sh eer juxtap osition — in w h ith no cau sa l con n ection a t a l is asserted am on gst th e A ffe re n t episodes, and th ey are offered to u s as m erely sharing som e sim ilarities. Nor do w e have the idea — fam iliar from science fiction or fa n ta sy conventions — o f a causality op erating “backw ards" and “forw ards" th rou gh tim e, so th a t past, p resen t and fu tu re h ave influence u pon one another. This latter p o ssib ility is th e closest to w h a t Red Shift seem s to b e doing, b u t th e n ovel’s scram bling o f tim e is so com plete th a t w e are n o t le ft w ith any secure sense o f “past”, “present" and “futur’e" a t a l: not really now any more. Is there, then, n o n ow because the p a st has consum ed th e present, reduced it to a series o f com pulsive repetition s, and w h a t seem ed to be new, w h at seem ed to be now, is on ly the p layin g o u t o f so m e out-of-tim e pattern ? This f o ^ u la t io n , perhaps, is closest to th e cold fa ^ ^ ty th a t seem s to (un)ravel in Red Shift: Y et if differen t histo rical m om en ts are in som e sense s y ic h ro n o u s, w ould th is n o t m ean, n o t th a t th ere w as no now, but th a t it is all now? A w hole oth er le v e l o f eerie rep etition com es in to focus w h en w e consider Red Shift in its relationship b o th to Gar­ n er’s other novels and to the w ork o f oth er w riters. The n ovel is a k in d o f repetition -w ithout-origin . It can be read as an exten sio n and inten sification o f the m od el established by G am er's o ^ earlier novels, Elidor (1965) and The Owl Service (1967). In his 1975 lecture “Inner T im e”, G^roer explained th at h is n ovels could a l be seen as an “^expression” o f a particular m yth, so th at his Elidor w as an “eexpression” o f the ballad of “Childe Rowland and Burd Ellen”, w hile The Owl Service w as an “expression" o f th e m y th o f Lieu, Blodeuedd and Gronw, from the W elsh m yth -system the Mabinogion. For Red Shift, th e source m aterial w as the baUad o f Tam Lin. W ith each suc­ cessive novel, the relationship b etw een Garner's fiction and th e m y th w h ich is “expressed” becom es m ore oblique, to the 93

T H E EERIE degree th at, b y th e tim e o f Red Shift, as Charles Butler notes in an im p o rta n t essay o n the novel, ‘'.Alan G arner’s Red Shift and th e S h iftin g B allad o f ‘T ^ Lin'", m a n y w ere w o n t to dism iss the conn ection w ith th e Tam Lin m y th as fan cifu l or strained. B utler sum m arises the T a m Lin m yth — or perhaps it w o u ld be b e tte r referred to as a series or com plex o f m yths — as follows: The ballad of'Tam Lin' exists in numerous versions. There are nine in Child’s English and Scottish Popular Ballads alone, and that is certainly not an exhaustive collection. Many of the differences between versions are quite significant, as we shall see, but the narrative can be broadly summarised thus: a young woman called Janet (in some versions Margaret) goes to Carterhaugh (or Kertonha, Chaster's Wood, Chester Wood, etc.) against the injunction of her parents, who fear she w ill lose her virginity to Tam Lin, a fairy youth who haunts the place. There she plucks a flower and thus summons Tam Lin himself. He chalenges her presence, but she replies defiantly that Carterhaugh is her own property and that she has as much right as he to be there. On her return home, it becomes apparent that she is pregnant. Her family (variously her mother, sister, brother, or a family retainer) is shocked. She asserts that Tam Lin is the child's father and returns to Carterhaugh, either to find Tam Lin or else (in some versions) to find a herb to cause an abortion. Tam Lin appears and explains that he is not a fairy at all but a young man of human blood who was stolen away by the Fairy Queen when he was a b oy. Although his life with the fairies is pleasant, every seven years on HaHoween the fairies must pay a ‘tithe to hell', and this year he is likely to be the victim. If Janet wishes to save him (and therefore give her baby a father), she m ust execute a complex procedure that involves pulling Tam Lin from his horse as he rides past with the fairy troop, holding fast to him while he undergoes a series of frightening transformations, 94

EERIE T H A N A T O S : N IG E L K N E A L E A N D ALAN GA RN ER and finaUy covering his naked body with her green mantle. She achieves a l this and thus wins Tam Lin from the Fairy Queen, who is bitter at her loss. B utler convincingly argues th at, despite th e lack o f m any explicit references to Tam Lin, there are m an y intricate ech­ oes o f the m yth (s) in Red Shift. The m ost obvious -- an d m ost superficial — m irroring is in th e nam es o f som e o f th e char­ acters — Tom/Thomas and Jan /M argery as variation s on Tam a n d Janet/M argaret - b u t th e d eeper resonances a re at th e level o f them es: th e idea o f p ossession (w hich in stead o f tak in g a supernatural form m anifests itse lf in epileptic sei­ zures, traum atic vo id in gs o f personal id e n tity th a t are — fo r th a t v e r y reason — also ecstasies); and th e n otion o f “h old in g on” (M argery and th e priestess savin g Thom as/M acey). More broadly, Tom and Jan are pitched ou t o f linear tim e into a m ythic tim e; or, rather, the illusion o flin e a r ity is sh attered b y the eerie repetition s and sim ultaneities o f a m yth ic tim e. This is essen tially w h at happens to the three central characters in The Owl Service, w ho becom e engaged in a kind o f deadly erotic struggle, as th e y assum e th e roles o f th e m y th ic figures Lleu, B lodeuedd and Gronw. It is as i f the com bination o f ado­ lescen t erotic en ergy w ith an inorgan ic artefact (in th is case a tea set decorated w ith an o w l m otifs) produces a tr ig g e r for a repeatin g o f the an cien t legend. It is not d ea r th a t "repeat­ ing” is the righ t w ord here, thou gh. It m igh t be b e tte r to say th a t the m y th has been re-instantiated, w ith th e m y th b eing un derstood as a kind o f structure th a t can b e im plem ented w hen ever th e conditions are right. B ut th e m y th doesn ’t repeat so m uch as it abducts individuals ou t o f lin ear tim e and in to its "ow n" tim e, in w h ich each iteration o f th e m y th is in som e sense always th e first tim e. Here th e m y th w ou ld be som eth in g like th e fatal com pulsive p attern in to w hich th e scientists in The Stone Tape fall. 95

T H E EERIE W ith Red Shift, G arner in effect tran sform s w h a t he had narrated in The Owl Service into som eth in g th a t is perform ed. The reader is abducted into m ythic tim e, as Garner’s use o f com pression and eHipsis p u ts linear tim e and n arration under so m uch stress th a t th e y a l b u t disappear. The im pression we form is th a t it is not th a t linear tim e percep tion or experience h as been corrupted b y traum a; it is th a t tim e “its e lf” has been traum atised — so th a t w e com e to com prehend “h isto ry ” n o t as a random sequence o f events, b u t as a series o f traum atic clusters. This broken tim e, th is sen se o f h isto ry as a m align repetition , is “experienced” b y th e three m ajor male charac­ ters (Tom /Thomas/M acey) as seizure an d breakdow n; I have placed “experienced” in in verted com m as here because the kind o f vo id in g in terru p tion o f su b jectivity th at the three tharacters undergo seem s to obliterate the v e ry conditions th a t allow s experience to happen. For th is reason, I th in k B utler m oves too quickly w h en he argues th a t th e "three m en becom e, in effect, a single supra-historical personality, a l o f w hose experiences are contem poraneou s”. Y o u could equaHy w ell argue the reverse — th a t rather th a n th e three m en in som e sense b ecom in g the “sam e” ind ivid u al, w h a t th e y all lack is any coherent or u n itary sense o f selfh ood . Equally, you could say that rather than sharin g the “sam e” m om ent, Macey, Tom and Thomas subsist in a broken tim e — a tim e from w h ich sam eness, u n ity and presence have b een subtracted. Like Kneale, then , G arn er’s w o rk endlessly w orries aw ay at the question o f agen cy and in ten t. Free w ill is m issing, or at least ra d ic a ly com prom ised. Hum an freedom is v e ry different to “free and can o n ly be asserted if it reckons w ith agen­ cies th a t b elon g prim arily in stead to (unconscious, m ythic) structures th a t d raw pow er from th e people th a t th e y abduct in to them selves. Landscape — th e landscapes o f Cheshire in m an y o f his novels, including Red Shift, and the landscape o f n orth W ales in The Owl Service — are a crucial elem ent o f these 96

EERIE T H A N A T O S : N IG E L K N E A L E A N D ALAN GA RN ER m ythic structures. R epeatedly th ro u g h o u t his fiction, Garner points to the eerie pow er o f ^ n d scap e, rem in d in g us o f the w ays in w h ich p h ysical spaces condition perception, and o f the w ays in w hich particu lar terrains are stained b y traum atic events. The m ythic, as G am er understands it, is som eth ing more than the m erely fictional, ju st as it cannot be reduced to the fantasm atic. Rather, th e m y th ic is part o f th e virtu al infrastructure w hich makes hum an life as such possible. It is not the case th a t first o f a l there are hum an beings, and the m ythic arrives afterw ards, as a k in d o f cultural carapace added to a biological core. Hum ans are from the start — or from before the start, before the b irth o f the ind ivid u al — en m eshed in m ythic structures. N eedless to say, the fam ily itself is ju st such a m ythic structure. Louis Althu sser, em pha­ sizing the w a y in w hich the hum an b eing is n ever m erely a biological creature, refers to the virtual cultural infrastructure as ideology, and argues th at it is not possible to live outside it. W e co u ld ju st as easily sh ift to the register J u stin B arton uses, how ever, an d ta lk o f dream ings and stories. G arner’s fictions exceed the lim itatio n s o f b oth naive realism and fa n ta sy by virtu e o f their com plex reflections on the pow er — the eerie pow er — o f dream ings and stories.

I n s i d e O u t : O u t s i d e In : M a r g a r e t A t w o o d a n d J o n a th a n G la z e r Woman sawn apart in a wooden crate, wearing a bathing suit, smiling, a trick done w ith mirrors, I read it in a comic book: only w ith me there had been an accident and I came apart. The other half, the one locked away, was the only one that could live; I was the wrong half, detached, terminal. I was nothing but a head, or no, something minor like a thumb; numb. Pleasure and pain are side by side they said but most of the brain is neutral: nerveless, like fat. I rehearsed emotions, naming them: joy, peace, guilt, release, love and hate, react, relate; what to feel was like w hat to wear, you watched the others and memorised it. But the only thing there was the fear I wasn’t alive: a negative, the difference between the shadow of a pin and what it’s like when you stick it in your arm, in school caged in the desk I used to do that, with pen-nibs and compass points too, instruments of knowledge, English and Geometry; they've discovered rats prefer any sensation to none. The insides of my arms were stippled with tiny wounds, like an addict's. They slipped the needle into the arm and I was faOing down, it was like sinking from one level of darkness to a deeper, deepest; when I rose up through the anesthetic, pale green and then daylight, I could remember nothing. I didn’t feel awful; I realised I didn't feel much ofanything. I hadn't for a long time. Perhaps I'd been like that aO my life, just as some babies are born deaf or without a sense of touch; 98

MARGARET ATW OOD AND JONATHAN GLAZER but if that was true I wouldn’t have noticed the absence. At some point m y neck must have closed over, pond freezing or a wound, shutting me into a head ... -Surfacing, Margaret Atwood M argaret A tw ood ’s 1972 n ovel Surfacing and Jon ath an G lazer’s 2013 film Under the Skin offer com plem entary cases o fth e eerie. In Su facing, w e m ove from a p o sitio n am biguously “in sid e” to one outside; in Under the Skin th e inside is apprehended from outside. The tw o lead characters’ problem atic relationship to w hat Lacan called th e Sym bolic order (th e stru ctu re th rou gh w hich cultural m eaning is assigned, and w hich, Lacan said, is secured b y th e nam e o f the fath er) is un derscored b y the fact th a t neither is named. The n arrator o f Surfacing com es to feel as if she is an alien w h o has b een play-acting th e role o f a w om an; th e lead character in Under the Skin is an actual alien, w h o seeks to sim ulate hum an behaviour. Surfacing tu rn s on the enigm a o f a m issing father. The n arrator has return ed to her childhood hom e in Q uebec to look for her father, w ho has disappeared in th e Canadian w il­ derness. The question what happened? hangs over the novel, and th e ultim ate lack o f resolu tion to th e m ystery — n ot only is the fa th er n ever found, b u t th e n arrator h erself becom es lost, unm oored, operatin g w ith o u t co-ordinates — m eans th a t th e eerie atm osp h ere is n e v e r dissipated. A s w ith Garner, in Surfacing there is a trem endous sen sitiv ity to th e pow er o f terrain — n ot n ow th e B ritish countryside, w ith its va stly overdeterm ined histo ry o f civil war, atrocity and struggle, b u t th e depopulated space o f th e C anadian bush, w ith its prom ­ ises and threats, its openness and its te rrifyin g em ptiness. It is n o t the spectres o f h is to ry w h ich h a u n t Surfacing, b u t the spaces outside or a t the edges o f th e h u m an itself. It seem s, so fa r as w e can m ake o u t, th a t th e fath er h a s fa llen p rey to 99

T H E EERIE a fatal fascin ation w ith the w ilderness, its anim als and asso­ ciated lore. W h e n th e n arrator en ters h is cabin, s h e finds th a t h er fa th er has filled his papers w ith im ages o f strange hum an-anim al creatures: signs o f m adness, or preparations for a sham anic passage ou t o f w h a t passes fo r m od ern civilisa­ tion? A s the anti-psychiatric rhetoric o f th e tim e m igh t have had it, is there actually a difference b etw een th ese tw o p ossi­ bilities? D oes not any real rejection o f civilisation n o t en tail a m ove into schizophren ia — a sh ift into an outside th a t can not b e com m en surated w ith d om in an t form s o f subjectivity, th in kin g, sensation? In som e respects, Surfacing could be seen as registerin g the b itte r aw ak en in g after the m ilitan t euphoria o f th e Six­ ties; A tw o o d ’s fam ou sly cold prose freezin g over th e S ixties’ heated loins, and draw ing, fr o m th e sem i-desolation o f th e Canadian bush, a n ew landscape as alluring and forbidding as an y in literature. A conservative reading suggests itse lf — w h a t surfaces here, it m ig h t seem , are th e consequences th a t Sixties perm issiven ess im agined it had dispensed w ith . The repressed — w hich in th is sense w ou ld m ean th e agencies o f repression them selves — retu rn s in th e spectral form o f th e un nam ed n arrator's aborted child, en countered in a dark lake space where excrem ent and jellyfish-like fo e tal scrapings float, the abjected and th e a borted com m ingling in a sew er o f the Sym bolic. Far from en abling h er to “regain" som e “w hole­ n ess”, the rein tegration o f th is lost object d estroys th e frag­ ile collage o f screen m em ories and fan tasies the narrator’s unconscious h as a rtfu lly constructed, projecting h er from the fro zen poise o f d ysphoria in to p sychosis — w hich, in th e con­ servative reading, w ou ld con stitu te a proper punishm ent for h e r licentiousness. There’s a great deal a t stake in resisting th is conservative reading, and th e concep t o f the eerie can help us in th is task. A tw ood 's n arrator in creasin gly finds th a t there is n o place 100

MARGARET ATW O OD AND JONATHAN GLAZER fo r her. She lacks th e capacity to feel th a t is supposedly con­ stitu tive o f “o rd inary” subjectivity. She is outside herself; a m ystery to herself, a kin d o f reflexive gap in the dom inan t structure: an eerie enigm a. The p o in t is n o t then to tooquickly resolve th is enigm a, b u t to keep faith w ith th e q u es­ tions th a t it poses. The narrator experiences the counterculture as little more than a sham, its libertarian rhetoric n ot on ly servin g as a legitim ation o f fam iliar m ale privilege b u t o fferin g new rationales for exploitation and subjugation. By 1972, the coun ­ tercu ltu re’s dream s o f overthrow ing and replacin g d om inan t structures have d evolved into a series o f em p ty gestures, a congealed rhetoric. If Surfacing rejects the facile gestures o f an exhausted counterculture, there is no question o f its endors­ ing the (apparently) safe and settled w orld w h ich th e counter­ culture repudiated. That w orld o f supposedly organic solidity — h er paren ts’ w orld, w here people h ave children w ho grow like flowers in their back garden, the narrator im agines — is gone, A tw ood's narrator notes, w ith an edge of w istfuln ess th at nevertheless stops som ew hat sh o rt o f n ostalgic longing. The question th a t Surfacing poses, and leaves hanging, is how to mobilise her d iscontent rath er th an tre a t it as a p athol­ ogy th a t requires a cure — eith er b y successful reintegration into the S-ymbolic/civilisation or b y som e pu rifyin g jou rney out beyond the Sym bolic into a pre-linguistic N atu re. How, in oth er words, is it possible to keep faith w ith, rath er than remedy, the narrator’s affective dyslexia? In some respects, Surfacing belongs to th e same m om ent as such te x ts as Luce Irigaray's Speculum: O fth e Other Woman, and Gules D eleuze a n d Felix G uattari's Anti-Oedipus. These w orks a ttem p t to rise to the challenge o f trea tin g discontent, abjection and p sychop ath ology as traces o f an as y e t un im ­ aginable outside rather than as s-ymptoms o f m aladjustm ent. A t her m om en t o f sch izoph ren ic break-rapture, th e n arrator’s 101

T H E EERIE vision resem bles the “nonorganic life" and “becom ing-anim al" D eleuze and G uattari w ill describe in A Thousand Plateaus: “th e y th in k I should be filled w ith death, I should be in m ourn­ ing. But n o th in g has died, ev eryth in g is alive, everyth in g is w aitin g to becom e alive.” Yet th is febrile delirium is m ore in tune w ith w h a t Ben W oodard has term ed “dark vitalism ” than w ith D eleuze, and w h a t flow s and stalks in th e body-w ithout-organs zone o f anim al- and w ater-becom ings is som e­ th in g lik e W oodard’s sin ister “creep o f life”: “I hear b reath in g, w ithheld, observan t, not in th e house b u t a l aroun d it.” The place beyond th e m o r tific a tio n o f the Sym bolic is n ot only the space o f an obscene, non-linguistic “life", b u t also w here everything deadened and dead goes, once it has been expelled from civilisation . “This is w here I th rew th e dead th in gs...” B eyond the livin g death o f th e Sym bolic is th e kingdom o f the dead: “It w as b elow me, d riftin g tow ards m e from the fu rth est level w here there w as n o life, a d a rk o v a l trailin g lim bs. It w as blurred b u t it h a d eyes, th e y w ere open, it w as som eth in g I kn ew about, a dead th in g, it w as dead.” Surfacing can be situ a ted as p a rt o f a n oth er fin-de-Sixties/ early-Seventies m om ent: th e post-psychedelic oceanic. A tw ood ’s lake, viscous w ith b lo od and oth er b od ily fluids, has som eth in g in com m on w ith the “b itch es b rew ” th a t M iles Davis plunges in to in 1969, em ergin g, catatonic, o n ly six years later; it approaches the deep sea terrains John M artyn sounds ou t on SolidAir and One World: Pale green, then darkness, layer after layer, deeper than before, seabottom: the water seemed to have thickened, in it pinprick lights flicked and darted, red and blue, yellow and white, and I saw that they were fish, the chasm-dwellers, fins lined w ith phosphorescent sparks, teeth neon. It was wonderful that I was do'wn so far... 102

MARGARET ATW OOD AND JONATHAN GLAZER B ut these spaces o f dissolved id en tity are n o t approached fro m th e angle o f a n o w tortu red , n o w lulled m ale on a vaca­ tion from th e Sym bolic, b u t from the p ersp ective o f som eone w h o w a s n eve r fu lly in tegrated in to th e S;ymbolic in th e first place. Surfadng, like A tw o o d ’s la ter O ryx and Crake, is a k in d o f rew ritin g o f Freud’s Civilisation and its Discontents — th e te xt w ith w hich a l th a t early Seventies radical th eory h ad to w res­ tle, and reckon. Just as a t the end o f O ryx and Crake, Surfacing concludes w ith a m om en t o f suspen sion, w ith th e narrator, like Oryx’s Snowman, poised b etw een th e schizophrenic space beyon d th e Sym bolic an d som e retu rn to civilisation. P erhaps w h a t is m ost prescient abou t Surfacing is its accept­ ance th a t civilisation/the b ig O ther/language cannot in the en d b e overcom e b y m eans o f libid o, m adness or m ysticism alone — yet, despite all th is, Surfacing does n o t recom m end an acquiescence in th e reality principle. “For us, it’s necessary, the intercession of w o rd s’’, the n arrator concedes — b u t w ho is this “u s”? It seem s at first to encom pass o n ly th e n arrator and th e lover w ith w hich she m ay be abou t to be reconciled. Then w e m ight be tem pted to rea d th e “u s” as hu m an ity in general, a n d th e novel w ou ld b e en ding w ith a fairly cheap reconciliation b etw een civilisation and one w h o was discon­ ten ted w ith it. Yet it’s m ore in terestin g to th in k o f th e "us" as indicating those, lik e the n arrator, w ho do n o t properly belon g to h u m an ity a t all — what k in d of language, w h at k in d o f civilisation, w ould these discontents m ake? Under the Skin probes som e o f the sam e areas, b u t from a d ifferent direction. The film could be a case stu d y in h o w to produce the eerie out o f unprom ising resources. Its source m aterial, the novel b y M ichael Faber, is effective enough, b u t it doesn’t possess m uch o f an eerie charge. Or, rath er, the w ay the n arrative develops progressively elim inates a n y trace o f 103

T H E EERI E the eerie un til it disappears entirely. The novel soon becom es recognisable as a literary-science fictional satire on m eat-eat­ ing and the m eat industry, w ith the inconsistencies in hum an ^ ^ alv o re ethics ^exposed and m ocked when hum an beings becom e the prey o f alien m eat-traders. It is a fable com plete w ith talkin g anim als (alth ou gh o f course the p o in t o f the satirical-fabular reversal is that, from th e alien perspective, it is the hum ans w h o are “ta lk in g an im als”, w h o m u st h ave their tongues rem oved w h en th e y are forced in to captivity). The film is a v e ry d ifferen t beast. Effectively, it is extrap­ olated from the early part o f the n ovel — alone in a car, d riv­ ing along the A-roads o f Scotland, a you n g w om an, or w h at appears to be a you n g wom an, stalks m en. In the novel, we soon learn th a t the “yo u n g w om an ” is Isserley, a surgical­ ly-altered extraterrestrial in the em ploy o f an in terp lan etary lu xu ry m eat business. The m en she lures into her car and sedates h a ve been targeted because th e y lo o k like prim e cuts. The film denies us a n y o f this inform ation (in fact, it’s far from clear th a t the film retains any o f these n arrative com ­ m itm ents; w e n ever learn if th e lead character is called Isser­ ley, or if she w orks for a m eat corporation). Crudely, w e could say th at the q uickest w a y to produce a sense o f the eerie is to restrict inform ation in this w ay. But, as I argued above, n ot any m ystery w h a tso ever ^ 1 be eerie; th e re m u st be a sense o f alterity, an d th is sense o f alterity is som eth ing th a t G lazer adds to Faber's source m aterial. There is a curious q uality to these additions, o f course, because w h a t is added, effectively, are gaps in the view er's know ledge. The ten d en cy in Faber’s novel is to elim in ate the alienness o f the extraterrestrials, to m ake an equivalence b etw een them and us — under the skin, w e are the same (som ething reinforced b y Faber's havin g th e aliens calling them selves “h u m an s"). B y contrast, the film n ot o n ly em phasises th e differences b etw een the aliens and hom o sapiens, it also denudes h u m an culture o f its casu al fam iliar­ 104

MARGARET A TW O OD AND JONATHAN GLAZER ity, show in g the taken-for-granted from an u n determ ined y et exterior p ersp ective. In term s o f its generation o f a sen se o f th e eerie, th e fifilm is at an advantage over th e novel because it is not required to give th e lead character (played b y Scarlett Johansson) any in terio r life . This m eans th a t it is n o t only the nature o f her interior life that is left op en: so is the ve ry question o f w hether she has an yth in g like “in terio r life” in any recognisable sense. The Johansson character is seen only from th e outside (just as, reciprocally, h e r illegible behaviour a n d m otives, h e r lack o f “ordinary” em otional respo n ses, give us an outsider perspec­ tive on the social world through w hich she moves as a preda­ tor) . Her dialogue is bare, fu n ction al — perhap s lim ited b y her com petence w ith lan guage and accent (as the film begins, we hear her learn to pronounce a series o f w ords in an English accent). In any case, she speaks o n ly enough to draw m en into h er vehicle - and th is, in a passin g m ordant com m entary on a certain k in d o f m ale sexuality, does not usuaUy entail m uch talking. She is n ever required to give any b u t the m ost m ini­ mal account o f herself, and alm ost ev eryth in g she says is in a n y case a deception. She never gives voice to a n y feelings. W hen she liaises w ith a n oth er alien, th ey do n o t speak. Do th ey have their ow n language - or is language som ething th a t th e y m erely acquire in order to trick hum ans? Do th e y have feelings in the same sense th at w e th in k w e do? The film tells us practically n o th in g about w h at th ese creatures are, or w hat th e y w ant - or indeed, i f w h at drives th e m can be construed as “desire” a t all. Perhaps Glazer's m ost significant additions are the scenes in w hich th e hum an p r e y is captured. In th e novel, th e cap­ ture is a sim ple m atter o f the m en b ein g d ru gged in their seats. The capture in th e film takes place in som e u n deter­ m ined interzone, a sem i-abstract space, in w hich th e m en, as th ey approach the half-clothed Johansson character, find 10 5

T H E EERIE them selves slow ly su ck ed in to cloyin g b lack ooze. Are these scenes - glacially oneiric, darkly psychedelic - a representa­ tio n o f the in to x ica ted m en’s state o f m ind as th e y slip into some state o fh a lf-d ea th ? O r is th is an actu al interspace, w ith th e black oo ze an exam ple o f alien tech n ology? O r could it be, as one com m en tator has suggested, th a t th is is w h at sex fee ls lik e to th e alien ? The film p rovides us w ith n o answ ers, and fu rth er scenes o n ly add to th e n igh tm are opacity. W e see som e o f th e captured m en, n o w en tirely subm erged in the ooze, b arely conscious and bloated (perhaps in a reference to the fa tten in g o f th e hum an p rey th a t happens in th e novel). A s th e y pathetically reach o u t fo r each other, one o f th e bodies is subjected to a h o rrib le sucking and sluicing action. There is a cut to an im age o f w h a t looks lik e ru sh in g blood, as i f th e b o d y has been liquidised. It could b e th a t th is is a sem i-ab­ stract im age o f th e m eat processing described in th e novel; or it could be su g gestive o f som e oth er (barely im aginable) m ode o f en ergy transfer. These fragm ents — so m an y eerie ellipses — m ake th e extra­ terrestrials, i f th a t is w h at th e y are, as alien as a n yth in g w e have seen in cinem a. But the scenes o f th e Johansson char­ acter in her van, picking up m en on lon ely side-roads and in crowded clubs, or sizin g up p o ten tia l victim s on crow ded streets in Glasgow, generate som eth in g like a reverse eerie effect. Here, con tem p o rary cap italist culture is estranged, seen through an outsider’s eye. The J oh an sson character’s ton al flatness m akes h er lo o k from th e outside as th e n arrator o f Surfadng describes h er o ^ in n er state — num b, detached. Y e t th is seem in g n u m bness m a y o f course be a w hole differ­ ent affective com portm ent; o r it could su ggest a typ e o f b ein g th a t has n o cap acity fo r w h a t w e u n derstan d as em otions. It cou ld be, a fter all, th a t th ese k in d s o f creatures have m ore in com m on w ith insects th a n w ith hum an beings. There is a k in d o f ^ . n i t y b etw een Johansson's flatn ess and 106

MARGARET ATW OOD AND JONATHAN GLAZER th e naturalistic style in w hich m uch o f th e film is sh o t. She is th e figure th rou gh w h o m th e film is focalised — the audience’s point o f id en tification - b u t since there is precious little w ith w hich w e can identify, she fun ctions as a kin d o f analogue o f the cam era itself. In the im provised scenes w ith passersby and non-actors in particular, w e are in vited to experience hu m an behaviours, interaction s and culture w ith o u t th e associations th a t w e habitu ally b rin g to them , and w ith o u t th e form s o f m ediation s th a t usuualy in tercede in m ain stream cinem a. Since th e scenes are stripped o f m uch o f th eir standard generic, n arrative and em otion al fu rn itu re, the naturalism b ecom es denaturalizing, as the cam era effe ctively sim ulates the gaze o f an alien anth ropologist. A s th e film goes on, th e Johansson character sh ifts from b eing a predator into b ecom ing an increasingly vulnerable figure. N ot accidentally, th is coincides w ith h er becom ing more im m ersed in h um an culture, as she engages in w h at m igh t be an attem p t to un derstan d hum an affection and relationships. There is a disturbing sex scene, in w hich she passively and seem ingly un com prehen din gly subm its to h er m ale p a rtn e r, and afterw ards exam ines h e r s e lf w ith a flash­ light, as if she h as b een badly w ounded. H um an sex becom es estranged, th e object o f panicked alien atten tion . The u u n ervin g qualities o f th is scene are retrospectively inten sified w hen , in an oth er con trast w ith the n ovel, w e lea rn th a t th e alien’s h u m a n b od y is a k in d o f prosthesis. W e discover this on ly in th e distressing clim actic scene, w hen a passerby attem p ts to rape her. A s he attacks her, p a rt o f th e p rosth etic b o d y com es away, lea v in g a g a p in g hole in h er back, like a rip in a dress. The alien th en casts aside th e destroyed hum an prosthesis, and another figure — a sm ooth b lack hu m anoid form , lacking m a n y defin ing features - em erges from inside the w reckage. W e see the exposed alien b od y n o w studying th e Scarlett Johansson face as i f it is a latex m ask - a n echo o f 1 07

T H E EERIE an earlier rem arkable scene in w hich Johansson exam ines her o w n n aked b o d y in a m irro r in a strangely dispassionate b u t appreciative w ay. It is n o w d e a r th a t th e m irror scene redou­ bles the "o rd ifi^ y " self-objectification th a t happens w hen we look in the m irror: th e alien is n o t lookin g a t herself, b u t at th e hum an b o d y she is w earing. B ut th is disjuncture betw een alien subject and hum an bod y-object on ly b rin gs to th e fore th e fan tasm atic structures th a t underlie “ord in ary” h u m an subjectivity. The clim actic im age o f th is alm ost featu reless fi^gur throw in g aside its h ^ a n form corresponds to a certain persisten t fa n ta sy o f the relationship o f subject to body. This fa n ta sy w as codified b y D escartes in to the ph ilosophical doctrine k n o w n as sub­ stance dualism (the b e lie f th a t r n n d and b ody are radically differen t kinds o f th in gs). According to Lacan, however, D es­ cartes’ erro r w a s m ore th an a sim ple ph ilosophical m istake, since a certain k in d o f dualism is em bedded in th e stru ctu re o f lan guage, particularly the language o f th e subject. The I which speaks and th e I which is spoken o f are stru ctu rally different. The I which speaks possesses n o po sitive predicates, it is som e­ th in g lik e the speakin g p o sition as such, w hile determ inate features (height, age, w eight, etc.) can o n ly be a ttrib u ted to the I which is spoken of. The featureless figu re in those final scenes o f Under the Skin, then, is som eth in g llike a physicalisation o f this soul-subject, I which speaks: lacking in positive physical predicates, it d w e ls som ehow “inside” the body, but it is ultim ately d etath ab le from body-housing. The fflm 's final contribution, then, is to rem ind us o f th e sense o f eeri­ ness intrin sic to our u n stable accounts o f subject an d object, m ind and body. The eeriness of the relationship b etw een b od y and m ind w as the subject o f A n d y de Em m ony's 2010 BBC adaptation o f M.R. J ^ e s ' “O h, ^ foisd e, and I'U Come to You, M y Lad“, w hich was discussed in an earlier th apter. In ^ us ra d ic a ly 108

MARGARET ATW OOD AND JONATHAN GLAZER rew orked version o f the story, Parkin is torm en ted b y the dem entia th a t has reduced his w ife to a catatonic shell: “a b od y th at has outlasted the existence o f the personality: more h orrifyin g than a n y spook or gh oul”. “There is n oth in g inside us”, the Parkin in this version m ord an tly declares. “There are no gh osts in these m achines. M an is m atter, and m atter rots.” Y e t Parkin's o w n statem en t establishes th a t th e re are gh osts in th e m achine, th a t a certain k in d o f sp ectrality is intrin sic to th e speaking subject. M te r a l, who is it w h o can talk o fh a v in g no inside, of m an being ro ttin g m atter? Not any su bstantial subject perhaps, b u t the subject w h o speaks, the subject, th at is to say, com posed out o f the undead, discorporate stu ff of language. In the ve ry act o f ann oun cin g its ow n nullity, the subject does not so m uch engage in perform ative contradic­ tion, b u t points to an ineradicable dualism th a t results from subjectivity itself. The condition o f m aterialists such as Parkin (our condition in other words) is o f knowing th a t a l subjec­ tiv ity is reducible to m atter, th at no su b jectivity can survive the death o f the body, but o f neverth eless being unable to experience on eself as m ere matter. Once the b od y is recog­ nised as the substrate-precondition o f experience, then one is im m ediately com pelled to accept this ph enom enological dualism , precisely because experience and its su b strate can be separated. There are gh osts in th e m achine, and w e are they, and th ey are we.

A lie n T r a c e s : S ta n le y K u b r ic k , A n d r e i T a r k o v s k y , C h r is t o p h e r N o la n Under the Skin presents us w ith one version o f an eerie en counter w ith the alien: the alien-am ong-us. (Nic Roeg's The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) is an oth er take on this kind o f encounter, and D avid B ow ie’s N ew ton is a cinem atic ancestor o f sorts to Johansson ’s alien, even th ou gh N ew ton ’s h om e­ sick exile exud es a rom antic p ath o s th at is a b se n t fro m Under the Skins more opaque and unreadable extra-terrestrial.) I touched upon anoth er version o f the alien-eerie w hen I dis­ cussed th e final Q uaterm ass serial earlier. In this version, the alien is n o t en countered directly; its ph ysical form , as w ell as its on tological an d m etaphysical features, is n eve r disclosed, and th e a lie n is perceptible on ly b y its effects, its traces. We m ust n ow exam ine this kin d of en cou nter w ith the alien in its ow n right. A consideration o f ou ter space quickly engenders a sense o f th e eerie because o f th e question s abou t agen cy th at co n ­ tem plating it can not b u t pose. Is there an yth in g o u t there a t all — a n d if there a re agents, w h at is their nature? It is th ere­ fore surprising th a t the eerie is disappoin tin gly absent from so m uch science fiction. Stanley K ubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey is perhaps the m ost fam ous exam ple o f a science fiction film w hich bucks this trend, resisting the p o sitivistic pressure to bring the aliens ou t into the open. The enigm a o f alien agen cy is posed b y th e film's totem , th e m onolith, w hich is som ething like the paradigm case o f an eerie object. (Throughout the film, the feeling o f the eerie is reinforced b y the association of the m on olith w ith L igeti’s m usic, w ith its sense o f aw e and 110

STANLEY KUBRICK, ANDREI TARKOVSKY, CH RISTO PH ER NOLAN alterity.) The m on olith’s “unnatural" qualities — its rectilinearity, its flatness, its opaque gloss - force the inference th a t it m u st h a ve been produced b y a h igh er intelligence o f som e kind. The logic here resem bles a secular version of th e so-called argum en t from design, w hich m aintained th at th e functionality, pu rposiven ess and sy ste m atid ty o f m any aspects o f th e n atural w orld com pel us to p o sit a supernatu­ ral designer. There is little trace o f the theological in Kubrick’s hand ling o f these them es, and no a ttem p t to p o sitively char­ acterise w h at k in d o f en tity m igh t have produced th e m on ­ olith . The n atu re o f th e intelligence w h ich has interven ed in hum an history, and th e pu rposes o f th is interven tion , rem ain undisclosed. The film leaves us on ly som e quite m in­ im al resources on th e basis o f w hich w e m igh t speculate. In addition to th e m on oliths them selves, there is th e sim ulated h o tel room — u n n ervin g in its v e ry b an ality — in which, at the end o f the film, astronau t D avid Bo'^man is prepared for his am bivalent tran sform ation into the so-called Star Child. The hotel room m ight su ggest th a t the intelligence w ants Bow m an to feel at hom e, th ou gh even if this is the case, its ultim ate m otives rem ain obscure: is it care for this hum an creature, so far from an yth in g fam iliar, th a t m otivates the constru ction o f this dw elling place, or have these inscrutable intelligences calculated th a t this w ou ld be a b ette r space in w h ich to experim entally observe him ? (The scenes involving the sen tien t com puter HAL, w hich m aintains the system s on the Discovery One spacecraft, pose questions about agen cy on a sm aller scale. HAL does n o t have a body, even if it has an organ — a red light-sensor — and a voice th a t is pretern atu rally calm. It certain ly has agency, how ever, and the nature and scope o f th a t agen cy — w h at drives HAL to rebel against the Discovery’s crew — becom es the crucial m ystery in this section o f the film. In the scenes w here w e see Bow m an slowly, rem orselessly dism antle HAL, and we 111

T H E EERIE h ear HAL b egin to audibly m entaUy deteriorate, w e are con­ fronted w ith the eerie disjunction b etw een consciousness and the m aterial hardw are th a t m akes consciousness possible.) K ubrick’s other maj or con trib u tion to the cinem a o f the eerie is an oth er “m eta-generic” in terven tion , The Shining. The gen re here is h o rro r or th e g h o s t story, so we un derstan d th at the un disclosed beings here are spectres rath er th an aliens (although it is p e rfe ctly p ossible th a t th e y are in fact som e k in d o f alien inteUigence). In th e sh ift from science fictio n to horror, there is also an im plied sh ift from the su ggestion th at the eerie forces a t w ork in the film are benign, or at least neu­ tral — as we are likely to conclude w ith 2001 — to th e hyp othesis th at the presiding entities are m align. M alignancy and b en ign an cy are o f course relative to the interests and perspec­ tives o f particular en tities, as N ietzsche’s parable o f the eagles and th e lam bs rem inds us. For the lam bs, N ietzsche tells us, th e eagles are evil; the lam bs im agine th a t th e birds o f prey hate them . In fact, there is no qu estion o f the eagles h a tin g the lam bs — actually, their a ttitu d e tow ards th e lam bs is closer to affection, even love: a fte r all, the lam bs are ve ry tasty. W hat N ietzsche renders in a comic m ode, The Shining poses as an eerie enigm a, w hich remains unresolved, in the film , ju st as it was in the novel. The O v erlo o k H otel in The Shining is a m assive versio n o f th e room in The Stone Tape: a k in d o f recording system in w hich the violence, a tro city and m isery th a t has happened in the b uildin g is stored u p and played back b y the sensitive psychic apparatuses o f th o se — like Jack Torrance and his son D anny — w h o have th e ab ility to telepathically “shine". Increasingly, Jack is d r a ^ o u t o f th e presen t — w h ich he shares w ith h is w ife W endy a n d w ith D anny — into an aeonic tim e in w hich various h isto ric m om en ts are con flated and com pressed. (This tim e o f sch izo-sim u ltaneity is perhaps 112

STANLEY KUBRICK, ANDREI TARKOVSKY, CH R ISTO PH E R NO LAN som ew hat akin to th e tim e in w hich Tom, in G arner’s Red Shift, finds him self.) But the su ggestion is th a t th e appari­ tions w hich altern ately seduce and m enace Jack are creatures like him self, hapless individuals w h o h ave been drawn into the O verlook’s fatal influence. W h a t rem ains un disclosed is th e nature o f th e forces th a t actually co n tro l the hotel. Jack probes this in a scene w ith th e spectral barm an, Lloyd: Lloyd: No charge to you, Mr Torrance. Jack: No charge? Lloyd: Your money is no good here. Orders from the house. Jack: Orders from the house? Lloyd: Drink up, Mr Torrance. Jack: I’m the kind of man who likes to know who's buying their drinks, Lloyd. Lloyd: It's not a matter that concerns you, Mr Torrance. At least not at this point. W ho or w h a t is the “h ou se”, and w h a t does it w a n t? J ack asks no fu rth er questions, and the film — like the n ovel — offers no definitive answ ers. W e n ever see the O verlook’s real m an­ agem ent. In the novel, the O verlook’s revelin g entities keep rep eatin g th e injunction “U nm ask!” (a referen ce to one o f the novel’s m ajor in tertex ts, Poe’s “M asque o f th e Red D eath”). But neither in the novel, nor in the film, do the creatures that have seized hold o f the h otel ever fully reveal them selves. It is n ot so m uch th a t th ey do n ot show th eir faces as th ey do not seem to h ave faces to show. The im age in th e n ovel th at seem s to com e closest to defining their m ost fu n dam en tal fo rm is th e sw arm ing, te em in g m u ltiplicity o f a w asps’ nest. As Roger Luckhurst suggested in his recent b ook on The Shining, the w asps’ nest im age is m issing from the film , bu t w as perhaps translated into sound via the inclusion o f the m icropolyphonic b u zzin g o f Ligeti’s Lantano. 1 13

T H E EERIE But w hat do these creatures w ant? We can only conclude th a t th e y are beings w hich m u st feed o n hum an m isery. This w ould m ake them appear "evil” from a certain p o in t o f view - b u t th is is essen tially the perspective o f N ietzsche's lam bs. A fter a l , m o st hum an beings are hard ly in a position to judge oth er en tities on the basis o f w h at th ey feed on. A n oth er eerie dim ension o f The Shining is opened u p b y th e fatefu l pow ers o f th e O verloo k H otel. J a c k is to ld th a t he “has always b een th e caretaker” o f the h o tel. In one sense, this po in ts to the “aeonic” tim e o f the hotel itself, the tim e beyond lin e ar clock-tim e into w hich Jack in creasin gly finds h im self draw n. B ut it could also refer to th e chains o f influence and causation th a t led J ack to ta k in g on th e position o f th e care­ ta k er at the O verlook: his ow n abuse at the hands o f his father, his failure as a writer, his alcoholism , his drunken injuring o f D an n y... h ow fa r back does the h o tel’s in flu en ce go? Andrei Tarkovsky’s tw o great film s from the 1970s — Solaris (1972) and Stalker (1979) — are extended engagem ents w ith the alien-eerie. In b o th cases, Tarkovsky’s versions w ent against the grain o f the source m aterial from w h ich th ey were adapted: Stanislaw Lem ’s Solaris (1961) and Boris and Arkady Strugatsky’s Roadside Picnic (1971). W h at Tarkovsky subtracts from the novels are their satirical, ironic and absurdist ele­ m ents, in fa vo u r o f his h a b itu al focus on questions o f faith and redem ption. B ut he retains the n ovels' core preoccupa­ tions o f encounters w ith the unknow n. Solaris concerns a so-caUed sen tien t ocean planet. Tark­ ovsky dow nplays the science o f "Solaristics”, which plays a large part in Lem’s novel: the va st range o f speculations and hypotheses th a t have been advanced about the planet. Instead, he concentrates on th e im pact o f th e planet on p sy ­ chologist Kris Kelvin. W hen K elvin arrives on the space sta ­ tion o rb itin g Solaris, he finds th a t his frien d Dr G ib arian is 114

STANLEY KUBRICK, ANDREI TARKOVSKY, CH R ISTO PH E R NOLAN dead, and the tw o rem aining onboard scien tists are furtive, sp ending m ost o f their tim e skulking in their ow n quarters. He quickly learns the reason fo r th eir w ithdraw al, w hen a sim ­ ulacrum o f his late w ife Hari, w ho had com m itted suicide a few years previously, appears, in a state o f great confusion, n ot rem em b erin g anythin g and n o t k n ow in g w h ere she is. The scientists have come to call these apparitions "visitors”, and each has his ow n to com e to reckon w ith - m essages o f a sort sen t by Solaris, th e ir purpose and in ten tion u n k n o ^ . In panic and disgust, K elvin forces “Hari" into a space capsule, w hich he sends o ff into th e cosm os. However, Hari — or rather another version o f Hari — returns. In one o f th e m ost u n set­ tling scenes in the film, w e see th a t "Hari” has no zip on her dress. W h y not? Because the planet has constru cted "Hari” on the basis o f Kelvin's m em ories, and the m em ory o f th at dress (hazy and incom plete in th e w ay th at m em ories are) did n o t include a zip . W h at does Solaris w ant? D oes it w a n t anythin g, or are its com m unicat ions b etter thou gh t o f as autom atic em issions o f som e kind? W hat is the purpose o f the visitors th a t it sends? You could alm ost see th e p la n e t as a com bination o f exter­ nalised unconscious and psychoanalyst, w hich keeps sending the scien tists undischarged traum atic m aterial w ith w hich to deal. Or is the planet gran tin g w h at it "thinks” are the w ishes o f the hum ans, grotesquely “m isun derstan ding” the n ature o f grief, a lm o st as if it is an in fa n t gifted w ith g rea t pow ers ? The film turns on the eerie im passe th a t arises w h en m ism atching modes o f intelligence, cognition and com m unication confront one another — or, it w ould be b etter to say, fa il to confron t one another. The sublim e alterity o f the Solaris ocean is one o f cinem a’s great im ages o f th e unknow n. In Tarkovsky’s Stalker, the alien trace is the Zone, a space in w hich physical laws do not seem to apply in th e same w a y as th e y do in the outside world. The fa iry tale them e o f gran tin g !15

STANLEY KUBRIC K, ANDREI TARKOVSKY, C H R IST O P H E R NOLAN b le w a y s. T h eau d ien ce com es to appreciate the q uality o f this terrain n o t so m uch th rou gh w h a t it acthaliy sees, b u t from w h a t it intuits via th e a rtistry o f th e stalker. C autious, always ale rt to p o ten tia l dangers, draw ing o n his p a st k n ow led ge b u t aware o f th e w a y in w h ich th e Zone's m u ta b ility so o ften ren­ ders previous ^experience obsolete, th e statalker invokes a space b ristlin g w ith unseen m enace and prom ise. Hum ble in the face o f the un kn ow n , y et d ed icated to explorin g the outside, th e stalker o ffers a k in d o f ethics o f th e eerie. For Tarkovsky, th e Z o n e is approached largely as a space in w hich fa ith is tested . He avoids th e idea, m o o ted in th e title o f th e S trugatskys’ n o vel, th a t the Zone could be n oth in g more th a n an accident. Instead o f being a m iraculous sign o f som e k in d o f providence, th e S tru gatskys su ggest, th e Zone and a l its “m agical” properties, could b e n o m ore th a n the trash u n in te n tio n a ly le ft b eh in d a fte r th e alien equivalent o f a roadside picnic. Here, th e eerie becom es an absurdist joke. The q u estio n o f providence is cen tral to C hristoph er N olan’s Interstellar (2014), a film th a t offers a w elcom e retu rn to som e o f the terrain staked o u t b y K ubrick and T arkovsky in a tw en ty-first cen^tury cinem a landscape th a t has so fa r had little space for th e eerie. The film depends upon the providen­ tial in terven tion o f a group o f seem ingly ben eficen t beings — referred to as “They”- w h o appear to b e aidin g h u m an ity in its escape from a dying p la n e t. In itia ly , "They” produce a wo^rmhole, w hich m akes travel into another gal^ ty feasible. B y the end o f th e ^ m , w e learn th a t ^"They" are n o t aliens as suth; rather, th e y are fu tu re hum ans who have evolved to access a “fifth dim ension” w hich a lo w s them to step outside the fo u rth dim ension, tim e. But th e a lterity o f "They" is n o t com prom ised b y th e revelation th at th e y are fu tu re hum ans, because th e n ature o f th es e hum ans is n o t disclosed. In evita­ bly, th e y m u st be v a stly differen t from us — th e fu tu re is an 117

T H E EERIE alien country. W e apprehend th is fu tu re species on ly b y som e o f its traces — th e con stru ction o f th e w orm hole and o f th e m ysterious five-dim ensional “Tesseract”, in w hich tim e is laid ou t as i f it w ere space, and w h ich C ooper en ters a t th e clim ax o f th e film. The providential in terven tion is th u s revealed as a tim e loop, in w h ich future hu m ans act on the past to produce the conditions fo r th eir ow n survival. W ith in th is tim e loop, th e re a re oth er tim e anom alies — m o st notably, th e anom ­ a ly in w h ich Cooper, th e astron au t w h o leads the u ltim ately successful space m ission, “h a u n ts” his daughter, M urph. In the five-dim ensional Tesseract, Cooper desperately contacts M urph, in a:n a ttem p t to g e t h is past se lf to stay a t hom e rath er th a n b egin n in g th e m ission th a t m eans he m iss m ost o f his d aughter’s life. There’s som eth in g stra n g ely fu tile abou t th is tim e anom aly. If C ooper w as successful in persuad­ in g his past s e lf to stay, th en the m ission w ould n o t h a ve g o t o ff the groun d (or at least he could n o t h a ve led it); b u t the v e ry fa ct th a t h e is in the Tesseract and able to com m unicate w ith M urph in th e p ast, means th a t he m u st have failed, in th a t he has en ded up leading the m ission. The m ission th a t C ooper leads is an a ttem p t to flee an earth th a t is literally b lig h ted — crops ^ 1 n o t grow, th e population is declining fast, it ^ 1 n o t be v e ry lon g before earth is n o lon ger habitable a t a ll for hum an beings. Cooper is recruited to w o rk fo r a NASA th a t h a s n o w becom e an undercover organisation, operatin g in secrecy. NASA’s leader, Joh n Brand, has ap p aren tly com e up w ith tw o plans to save the h um an population: Plan A is to la u n th a cen trifuge into space to form a space station; Plan B is to popu late one of three p o ten tia lly habitab le planets, accessible th ro u g h the w orm hole n ear Satorn . These three plan ets w ere discovered on a m ission a decade earlier. Actually, tw elve ships w ere se n t out, b u t o n ly th e three piloted b y th e astronauts Miller, 118

STANLEY KUBRICK, ANDREI TARKOVSKY, CH RISTO PH ER NOLAN M ann and Edm unds sen t b ack a signal ind icating th a t th ey h ad reached a viable planet. The film tu rn s o n the con trast b etw een a vision o f an ind ifferen t u n iverse and one shaped b y a kind o f m aterial providence (m aterial in th e sense th a t it involves hum an-te chnological, rather th an supernatural, agen cy). Some o f the m o st p ow erful scenes in th e film — those on “MiUer’s P lan et” — show the sublim e bleakness o f an in d ifferen t nature. This ocean planet, its surface en tirely covered b y w ater, is som e­ th in g like the insensate tw in o f Solaris. W hile Solaris prom pts unansw erable speculations - w h a t purposes and desires does th e p la n e t harbour? - MiUer’s P lan et presents th e m ute determ inism o f a w orld devoid o f in ten t. The tsu n am is and stillnesses o f th e planet's endless oceans are so m an y actions w ith o u t purpose, th e product o f causes w ith o u t reasons. The v e ry absence o f a purposive agen t provokes a fee lin g o f the eerie (how can there be n o th in g here?). The term “indiffer­ en t” is perhaps u ltim ately inadequate, since it suggests an in ten tion al capacity that is not b ein g used. M ute nature, you could say, is not even indifferent: it lacks even th e capacity fo r indifferen ce. Even so, it is som eth in g like th e degree-zero o f agency, if agen cy is defined sim ply as th e capacity to m ake th in gs happen. MiUer’s Planet is fu ll o f cause and effect; w h at it lacks is any de signing or purposive intelligence. The desperate scenes on th e planet — th e crew ’s realisation th a t the planet is a kin d o f ocean o f sterility, incapable o f supp or tin g life; th e ir m istak in g o f a tsu n am i fo r m ountains; th eir struggle to avoid b eing crushed under th e m onstrous w ave — are given added force b y the fa ct th at th ey are aware that — because o f the d isto rtin g effects o f a n ea rb y b lack hole — each hou r on the plan et is equivalent to seven years o f earth tim e. W e k n o w th a t th is is especially p ain fu l fo r Cooper because o f his desire to retu rn to his children. W h e n C ooper retu rns to th e ship , he learns there h as been a m iscalculation — in fact, 119

T H E EERIE tw en ty-th ree earth years have passed w hile th ey have b een on M iller’s Planet. In a w renchin g scene, C ooper w atches his children’s lives pass in to adulthood o v er th e course o f a few short m inutes, as he w atches the m essages th ey have sen t to the ship over the course o f tw o decades. Love - particularly love b etw een parents and children is a m ajor them e o f the film. The love b etw een Cooper and his daughter, M urph, is w h at u ltim ately a lo w s Brand’s Plan A to w ork — this conn ection betw een the tw o o f them is w h at enables Cooper, w h en he is in th e Tesseract, to send M urph the data she needs to solve the equation on w h ich th e plan depends. A lth o u gh the love betw een the tw o is the central affective thread in th e film, it is trag ically thw arted. The tw o are on ly re-united on M urph’s deathbed. Because o fth e effects o f relativity, C ooper looks m uch the sam e as he did w h en he le ft earth; M urph is b y n ow an elderly wom an, h er life over, and C ooper has m issed m ost o f it. D uring a scene onboard Endurance earlier in th e fifilm, A m elia Brand (John’s daughter) m akes a case fo r lo v e as a force from a “h igher d im en sion ”: Cooper: You’re a scientist, Brand. Brand: So listen to me when I say that love isn’t something that we invented. It's ... observable, powerful. It has to mean something. Cooper: Love has meaning, yes. Social utility, social bonding, thild rearing... Brand: We love people who have died. W here’s the social utility in that? Cooper: None. Brand: Maybe it means something more — something we can't yet understand. Maybe it's some evidence, some artifact of a higher dimension that we can't consciously perceive. 12 0

STANLEY KUBRICK, ANDREI TARKOVSKY, C H RISTO PH ER NOLAN I'm d r a ^ across the universe to someone I haven't seen in a decade, who I know is probably dead. Love is the one thing we’re capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space. A m elia Brand’s declaration abou t love is far from disinter­ ested. She m akes it w h en the crew is abou t to decide w h eth er to travel to M ann's planet or Edm unds’ planet. Brand w ants to go to Edm unds' planet, b u t her choice is driven b y th e fact th a t Edm unds was her lover. Hence her m o tiv e fo r believin g th a t love is a m ysterious force, w ith its ow n occult powers and capacities. Yet it turn s out, in th e end, th a t she is correct, a t least about Edm unds’ planet. It is th e o n ly via b le environ ­ m ent: as we have seen, M iller’s plan et is a d esolate ocean, w hile M ann's is an icy w asteland. The im m ediate tem ptation here is to dism iss this as n o th ­ ing m ore th a n k itsch sentim entality. Part o f th e pow er of Interstellar, how ever, com es from its readiness to risk appear­ ing naive, as w ell as em otionally and c o n c e p tu a ly exces­ sive. A n d w h a t the film opens up here is the po ssibility o f an eerie love. Love m oves from b eing on the side of the seem ­ in gly (over)fam iliar to the side o f the u n k n o w n . O n Brand’s account, love is u n k n o ^ b u t som e th in g th a t can be investi­ gated and quantified: it becom es an eerie a g e n t.

" ...T h e E e r m e s s R e m a in s " : J o a n L in d s a y They see the walls o f the gymnasium fading into an exquisite transparency, the ceiling opening up like a flower into the briUiant sky above Hanging Rock. The shadow of the Rock is flowing, luminous as water, across the shimmering plains and they are at the picnic, sitting on the warm dry grass under the gum trees... — Joan Lindsay, Picnic atHanging Rock The la st w ord m ust go to Joan Lindsay’s 1967 novel, Picnic at Hanging Rock. N o t o n ly because Picnic a t Hanging Rock is practically a te xtb o o k exam ple o f an eerie n ovel — it includes disappearances, am nesia, a geological anom aly, an in ten sely atm ospheric terrain — b u t also because Lindsay’s rendition o f the eerie has a positivity, a lan guorous and delirious allure, th a t is absent or su ppressed in so m an y o th er eerie texts. Lindsay is th e opposite case to M .R. J ^ e s . W here Jam es, as w e saw, always codes th e outside as dangerous a n d deadly, Pic­ nic at Hanging Rock invokes an outside th a t certain ly invokes awe and peril, b u t w h ich also involves a passage b eyon d the p etty repressions and m ean confines o f com m on experience in to a h eigh ten ed atm osphere o f oneiric lucidity. Picnic a t Hanging Rock show s th a t som etim es a disappe arance can b e m ore h a u n tin g th an an apparition. You could say that, in Picnic atHangingRock, n o th in g happens. N othing hap­ pens, n ot in the sense th a t there are n o e v e n ts — a lth o u g h the n ovel is about an u n resolved enigm a. No: n othin g happens, in the sense th a t an absence erupts in to em pirical reality: the 122

" ... T H E E E R I N E S S R E M A I N S " : J O A N L I N D S A Y n ovel is about the gap th a t is open ed up and th e perturbations it produces. The disappearance at th e h ea rt o f the n ovel happens on a V alen tin e’s D ay picnic a t H an gin g Rock, in V ictoria, A u s­ tralia. H anging R ock broods over the novel lik e one o f O scar D om inguez or M ax E rnst’s decalcom ania spinal landscapes; it is a geological relic fro m d eep tim e, a tim e th a t preceded th e arrival o f h u m a n bein gs b y m a n y m illennia. It can only be seen in fragm en ts, its lab yrin th ine spaces as inten sively treacherous as those o f a n oth er alien picnic site, T arkovsky’s Zone. By the end, it seem s th a t certain o f th e Rock’s terrains — psychic as m uch as physical spaces — are on ly navigable b y th e attain in g o f a delirium state. This calm delirium is th e dom i­ n an t m ood in Peter W eir’s faith fu l 1975 adaptation, w here tim e (and narrative) are h eld in an aching suspension, and a dream y fatalism dom inates. The picnic is a day-trip organised fo r th e stu d en ts o f Appleyard College, a private boarding school fo r girls. The College, an attem p t to sim ulate a sm all part o fV icto ria n E ngland in condi­ tions th a t could hard ly be m ore d ifferen t from Britain, squats in the surrounding landscape like som e M agritte non-sequitur. In th e con trast b etw een th e Rock and th e elegan tly stifling absurdity o f the College’s clothes and rituals, we are made aware o f the in h eren t surrealism o f the colonial project: Insulated from natural contacts with earth, air and s^unlight, by corsets pressing on their solar plexuses, by voluminous petticoats, cotton sto^ckings and kid boots, the drowsywellfed girls lounging in the shade were no more a part o f their en^vironment than figures in a photograph a l b ^ , arbitr^aly posed against a backcloth o f cork rocks and cardboard trees. D u rin g th e course o f th e picnic, fo u r o f th e stu d en ts — Miranda, Edith, M arion and Irm a — and th e CoUege's m athe­ 123

T H E EERIE m atics teacher, G reta McCraw, decide to clim b the R o d e The trip up th e R ock seem s a t first to be n o th in g ou t o f th e ordi­ n ary — there is idle chatter, gossip, some discussion o f th e vast age o f th e Rock. Initialiy, o n ly a curious sta tem en t b y M arion breaks w ith th e m ood. “^ ^ a te v e r can those people b e doing d o ^ th ere lik e a lot o f ants? A su rp risin g n um ber o f people are w ith o u t purpose. A lth o u gh it’s probable th a t th e y are per­ form in g som e n ecessary fu n ctio n u n k n o w n to them selves.” It is as i f M arion is a lread y detached from th e w orld below , as if she has already crossed a threshold. It is after th e fo u r see a m o n o lith — “a sin gle ou tcrop o f pock-m arked stone, som e­ th in g like a m on strou s eg g p erch ed above a precipitous drop th e plain” — th a t th e atm osphere decisively sh ifts. A l fo u r are im m ed iately overcom e b y lassitude, and fa ll in to a deep sleep. The focus n o w m oves to E dith’s p o in t o f view. She aw akes in a panic, dem anding to retu rn home. B u t the oth ers seem n ow to all h a ve passed over into som e altered (trance) state: 'Miranda,' Edith said again. ‘I feel perfectly awwful! When are we going home?' Miranda was looking at her so strangely, almost as if she wasn't seeing her. When Edith repeated the question more loudly, she sim ply turned her back and began w ^H ng away up the rise, the other two foUowing a little way behind. W e l hardly walking— sliding over the stones on their bare feet as if they were w ^ ^ n g on a drawing-room carpet. M iranda, M arion an d Irm a slip away, disappearing ou t o f sig h t b ehin d the m on olith . Edith flees d ow n th e rock, scream ­ ing. B y th e tim e she returnns' to th e picnic, “cryin g and lau gh ­ ing, and w ith her dress to rn to ribbons”, she is unable to giv e a n y indication o f w h ere she p a rted com pany from the oth er students. The R ock is searched, b u t neither th e three stu d ents n o r M iss M cC raw are found. (A fe w days later, E dith claim s to rem em ber seein g M iss M cC raw o n th e rock, inexplicably 124

" ...THE E E R I N E S S R E M A I N S " : J O A N L I N D S A Y stripp ed dow n t o h er underw ear.) In itial searches in subse­ q u en t days yield n o th in g. H ow ever, a fe w d a ys later, Irm a is discovered at th e Rock, her clothes to m and her corset m iss­ in g . Suffering from am nesia, she is unable to o ffe r a n y expla­ n ation o f w h a t happ ened on th e rock. In th e rest o f th e novel, w e learn n oth in g m ore abou t w h a t happened. A t th e end, w ith th e College coUapsed because o f th e scandal associated w ith th e events at H anging Rock, th e disappearances rem ain un ex­ plained. A lon gside — and I th in k con trib u tin g to — th e n o vel’s feel­ in g o f eeriness is its capacity to generate “reality-effects”. A lth o u gh th e n ovel w as en tirely fictionalised, it w as widely, th ough m istakenly, believed to be based on a true story. Lind­ say in v ite d th is reception: she w ro te th e n ovel as if it w ere a factu al account, u sin g real locations (including H anging R ock itself, an actual geological form ation). The novel’s trick involved re-tellin g a classic F aery sto ry — y o u n g w om en abducted into another w orld — using th e conventions o f real­ ism. O n e o f these conventions w as g i^ n g th e ev en t a precise date. A ccording to th e n ovel, the th ree w om en disappeared on February 14th, 1900. 1900, significantly, is th e year w hich Freud w anted The Interpretation ofDream s d ated (this dating is, fam ously, fictional: Freud’s te x t w as a c tu a ly published in 1899, b u t he w anted it to b ear a m ore epochal date). B u t Picnic at Hanging Rock is n o t s e t in our 1900, in w h ic h F eb ru ary 14 th feU on a W ednesday, not a Saturday. A b ove a l else, though, th e iUusion o f fa ctu ality is produced b y the.lack o f a n y solution to th e m ystery. The sto ry about th e painters Zeuxis and Parrhasios, referred to b y Lacan, o ffers a parable. Zeuxius p ain ted a b u n ch o f grapes so con vin cin g th a t birds a ttem p ted to ea t them . Parrhasios, m eanw hile, painted a curtain , w h ich Zeuxius asked him to p u l aside to reveal w hat he had painted. The lack o f explanation m akes Picnic at Hang­ ing Rock into an analogue o f Parhassios’ painting. It becam e a 125

T H E EERIE veil, an enigm a w hose v e ry irresolu tion produced the iUusion th a t there m u st be som eth in g behind the curtain. The novel seem s to ju s tify the idea th a t a sense o f the eerie is created and sustained sim p ly b y w ith h o ld in g inform ation. In the case o f Picnic at Hanging Rock, this literally happened: the form in w h ich the novel w as published was the result o f an act o f excision. In her original m anuscript, Lindsay provided a solution o f sorts to the enigm a, in a concluding chapter th a t her publishers encouraged her to rem ove from the published version o f the novel. This "Chapter Eighteen" w as published separately, as The Secret ofHanging Rock. There is no doubt th a t th e origin al C hap ter E ighteen w ould have som ew hat underm ined the novel's “reality-effect”. The excised ch ap ter is m arked b y a clear change in tone. The su g­ gestiveness th a t has characterised the earlier parts o f th e n ovel — the hin ts o f an outside, o f som eth in g beyond the ordinary w orld — gives w a y to w h a t is b y n o w quite clearly an account of an anom alous experience. The chapter begins a t more or less the p o in t th a t Edith runs away. M iranda, M arion and Irm a feel th a t th ey are b eing “pulled from th e inside” b y the m onolith. They fall asleep, and w hen th ey awake it is w ith a heightened, hallucinogenic sen sitiv ity to th eir sur­ roundings. A n older w om an appears, in her underclothes — it seem s to be Greta McCraw, bu t she is n ot nam ed as such in the novel, nor is she recognised b y th e other characters. W hen the older w om an faints, M iranda loosens h er corset. This prom pts M arion to su ggest th a t th e y all “g e t o u t o f these absurd garm en ts” — so th e three stu d ents rem ove th eir cor­ sets and th row them from th e Rock. In w h a t is perhaps the m ost arresting im age in Chapter Eighteen, the corsets do n o t im m ed iately fall to the ground, b u t float in m id-air at the side o f the Rock. Has tim e stopped? Certainly, w e are beyond clock-tim e now: perhaps in dream -tim e. (In her essay “A Com ­ m en tary on C hapter Eighteen" — included in The Secret o f 126

“ •.•THE E E R I N E S S R E M A I N S " : J O A N L I N D S A Y HangingRock — Y von ne Rousseau p o in ts to a pu n — a dreamw ork-com pression — involved in the im age o f the corsets h anging in the air, arisin g from the fa ct th a t th e alternative name for “corset” is “stay"”) A “hole in space” appears: “A bou t the size o f a fatty rounded sum m er m oon, com ing and going. She saw it as painters and sculptors saw a hole, as a th in g in itself, giv in g shape and significance to oth er shapes. A s a pres­ ence, n o t an absence ...” A fte r th is hole fades, th ey see a snake crawl into a sm all hole. The older w om an says th a t she follow it; som ehow, she tran sform s into a crab and passes into the tin y space. A fter a signal, M arion follow s (there is no m en­ tion o f a n y anim al-becom ing here, n or a n y account o f how she is able to fit h er b o d y in to the hole). W h en it is M iranda’s tu rn to cross over, a frigh ten ed Irm a begs h er not to go, b u t M iranda does n ot understand her fe a r and reluctance, and she too passes in to the hole. Irm a is le ft on her ow n, waiting. A fter an indeterm inate period o f time, a bou ld er rolls over the hole. The fin a l im age in th e ch ap ter is o f Irm a — presum ably n ow aware th a t she w ill n ot be able to m ake the crossing — desper­ a te ly tearin g a t the boulder. The published version o f the n ovel — the one w ith o u t Chap­ te r E ighteen — n o t on ly leaves the enigm a w ith o u t solution; it also leaves open the question o f the n ovel’s genre (does it belong to literary realism? To m urder-m ystery? To fantasy? To science fiction?). The inclusion o f Chapter E ighteen w ould n o t have settled the question o f genre, b u t it w ould have elim inated certain possibilities. It w ould not n ow seem p o s­ sible to, say, read th e n ovel as a m urder-m ystery. B u t Chapter Eighteen produces as m a n y enigm as as it solves. W h at is the status o f the experiences on the Rock? Are th e y to be taken literally, such that, for exam ple, Greta M cCraw actually turns into a crab? Are th ey to be understood as a consequence of some state o f intoxication? (If this is the case, th en the events could still be recuperated for a realist reading o f sorts.) The 127

T H E EERIE su ggestion th a t th e w om en have p assed th rou gh a gatew ay to th e outside in vites us to read Picnic at Hanging Rock as a w eird tale, and th e inclusion o f C hap ter Eighteen pushes th e n ovel into som e space b etw een the w eird and th e eerie. W h a t is cer­ tain is th a t Chapter E ighteen does n o t offer a n y sim ple kind o f solution to th e puzzles th e n ovel poses. A s Y von n e Rousseau p u t it, “Joan Lindsay’s origin al in ten tio n is fin a lly disclosed b u t her in ten tio n w as not to dissolve the m ystery. The Picnic geography is clarified, b u t the eeriness rem ains." The eeriness is p a r tly a question o f th e affective atm os­ phere th a t h an gs over th e experiences on the Rock. Ju stin B arton has caUed this atm osphere “solar tran ce”, and it is m an ifested in a k in d o f po sitive fatalism . Initially, th is fatal­ ism registers as a seem ing lack (there is n othin g w here there should be som ething). A s th e y f a l under th e thrall o f the Rock, the characters seem to be denuded o fth e ir passions. Yet these passions, w hich very much include fear, are attachm ents to the everyd ay world. It is Irm a’s fear, h er in ab ility to let go o f these everyd ay attach m en ts (Lindsay’s final description o f Irm a refers to h er sk ill a t em broidery), w h ich u ltim ately prevents her from m akin g th e crossing. She is unable to see through w h a t w as prom ised in th e a c t o f th e casting aside o f th e corsets. M arion an d M iranda, how ever, are-^.ful prepared to ta k e th e step in to th e u n k n o ^ . They are p o ssessed b y the eerie calm th a t settles w h en ever fam iliar passions can be overcom e. T h ey have disappeared, and th e ir disappearances wiU leave h a u n tin g gaps, eerie in tim ation s o f th e o u tsid e. 128

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BIBLIOGRAPHY F ilm s 2001:A Space Odyssey (1968), din Stanley Kubrick Amarcord (1973), dir. Federico FeUini The Birds (1963), dir. ^fred Hitchcock Blue Velvet (1986), dir. David Lynch Close Encounters ofthe Third Kind (1977), <lir. Steven Spielberg Don’t Look Now (1973), dir. Nicolas Roeg Inception (2010), dir. Christopher Nolan Inland Empire (2006), <lir. David Lynch Interstellar (2014), dir. Christopher Nolan Invasion ofthe Body Snatthers (1978), dir. Phhilip Ka^ufman The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), dir. Nicolas Roeg The Matrix (1999), dir. The Wachowski Brothers Mulholland Drive (2001), dir. David Lynch Night ofthe Living Dead (1968), dir. George Romero Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), dir. Peter Weir Planet ofthe Apes (1968), dir. Fra^^^ J. Sch^afer Quatermass and the Pit (1967), dir. Roy Ward Baker The QuatermassXperiment (1955), dir. Val Guest The Shining (1980), dir. Stanley Kubrick Solaris (1972), dir. Andrei Tarkovsky Stalker (1978), dir. Andrei Tarkovsky Star Wars (1977), dir. George Lucas Under the Skin (2013), dir. Jonathan Glazer Welt amDraht (World on a Wire) (1973), dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder The WickerMan (1973), dir. Robin Hardy 133

T H E W EIR D AND T H E EERIE T e le v is io n P r o d u c t io n s Children ofthe Stones (1976), ITVproduction, written by Jeremy Burham and Trevor Ray, dir. Peter Gr^am Scott Quatermass (1979), Euston Films production for ITV, written by Nigel Kneale, prod. Trevor Childs Quatermass II (1955), BBC production, created by Nigel Kneale Quatermass and the Pit (1958-1959), BBC production, created by Nigel Kneale The Quatermass Experiment (1953), BBC production, created by Nigel Kneale The Stone Tape (1972), BBC production. written by Nigel Kneale, dir. Peter Sasdy Twin Peaks (1990-1991), dir. David Lynch Whistle andVU Come to (1968), BBC production, dir. Jonathan MiUer Whistle and I'l Come to You (2010), BBC production, dir. Andy de Emmony

R e p e a te r B o o k s is dedicated to the creation o f a n ew reality. The landscape of tw en ty-first-cen tu ry arts and letters is faded and inert, riven b y fashionable cynicism , egotistical self-reference and a nostalgia for the recent past. Repeater intends to add its voice to those m ovem en ts th a t w ish to enter h isto ry and assert control over its currents, gatherin g together scattered and isolated voices w ith those w ho h ave already called for an escape from Capitalist Realism. O ur desire is to publish in every sphere and genre, com bining vigorous d issen t and a pragm atic wiUingness to succeed w here m essianic a bstraction and quie scen t co-option have s ta le d : absten tion is n o t an option: we are alive and w e d o n 't agree. Repeater