'At 12:10, still seven minutes before the gas-main explosion, the telephone exchange experienced a softer explosion: a complete jam of every town phone line still in operation. The three harried girls on duty stayed at their posts but were utterly unable to cope. They worked with expressions of wooden horror on their faces, trying to place unplaceable calls.
And so Chamberlain drifted into the streets.
They came like an invasion from the graveyard that lay in the elbow creek formed by the intersection of The Bellsqueeze Road and Route 6; they came in white nightgowns and in robes, as if in winding shrouds. They came in pyjamas and curlers (Mrs Dawson, she of the now-deceased son who had been a very funny fellow, came in a mudpack as if dressed for a minstrel show); they came to see what happened to their town, to see if it was indeed lying burnt and bleeding. Many of them also came to die.'
Carrie
(Page 197)
I must be desensitised or something because as much as i enjoyed one of King's most acclaimed novels, i wasn't creeped out or frightened at any point.
And i really wanted to be.
It's a little disappointing.
But i think to aspire fear in a reader is actually a significantly difficult act to master.
How often do words truly terrify the way a moving picture does?
Often but nowhere near as much.
Simply due to the fact that the image has been brought to life and becomes more tangible.
Fear is more easily accessed when the cause is placed in front of you.
Tell me a story about Oompa Loompas, i'll cover my ears and howl cacophonous nonsense until you stop but put an actual Oompa Loompa in front me?
I'll punch him in the face and run away screaming.
Idea vs Execution
The difference, my friends, is my fist in your face.
Just saying.
An example of this is in literature can be found in The Lord of the Rings.
There's a chapter dedicated to a place called The Dead Marshes - fairly self-explanatory.
My sister and mum were deeply unsettled by this chapter in the book.
The faces they make when we speak of it are both hilarious and inexplicable because i felt basically nothing whilst reading it.
Not even a flinch of fear.
Again with the appearance of Shelob, a giant bloodthirsty spider with a taste for short folk - hello!
And i felt nothing other than perhaps the sadistic desire for her to eat Frodo and stop his complaining.
But not frightened.
I don't recoil with the same shiver of disgust at the mere mention of Shelob like my sister does.
(i torture her often, i have little sister rights)
The same feeling occurred when i read Kafka's Metamorphosis for the first time.
My family as a whole are disgusted by Gregor Samsa and his transformation, whereas i only feel pity and empathy for the poor man.
Not his fault he's a bug.
How would you like it?
Maybe i'm defective.
Maybe i watch too many horror movies.
Or maybe i just haven't found my kind of horror-lit yet.
Suggestions?
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