052 - Gothic Horror with Jen From Literary Love 123 - Weird Reads

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
You're listening to the Weird Reader podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
An extension of Jason's Weird Reads found on YouTube.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
Welcome hello today.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
I am I am joined by one of my favorite
book tubers. I gotta I gotta be careful because I
when I go to say book two, book talk always
wants to come out. Yau TikTok is so huge, and
I watch a lot of book content on there too.
But uh so I want to welcome Jen Jen from
Literary Love one two three. I've been wanting to do

(00:52):
this topic with you, Jen, since you were on my
other podcast, Short Bites, a Stephen King podcast. Now that
episode is out at the time of this recording, but
we discussed the first short story in Stephen King's collection
of short stories, night Shift, which is Jerusalem's Lot. It's
a very Gothic and Lovecraftian story. And during that conversation

(01:13):
you really taught me about the gothic genre. Things I
didn't really like. I probably knew, but it didn't you know,
register until you talked about it. And so I really
appreciate you and for you coming on. I want to
pick your brain about this topic somewhere, and so thank
you for coming on and discussing this subgenre with me

(01:33):
here on weird Reads.

Speaker 3 (01:35):
I'm excited to be here. I'm looking forward to our discussion.

Speaker 4 (01:39):
Awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
So, just before we begin, I would like you if
you want to tell us about your YouTube channel, Literary
Love one, two three, and what it is you discussed there.

Speaker 3 (01:51):
I use my masters in English and my passion for
the horror genre to you talk about the books that
I read.

Speaker 4 (02:00):
Awesome. How long have you been doing.

Speaker 3 (02:02):
It a little over a year now, Nice?

Speaker 2 (02:06):
What do you do you like? First of all, do
you enjoy doing it? And if so, what do you
enjoy most out of doing your YouTube channel.

Speaker 3 (02:14):
I enjoy it, especially enjoy the community. I don't have
a large subscriber number, but I have built some real
relationships with people who watch my channel and I watched
their channel, and this past weekend I actually got to
meet two of the people I've met through book t
in person. So I have really learned to not focus

(02:38):
as much on the subscriber number, which is not to
say it doesn't get to me sometimes. I mean it does.
I'm human, but I am centering my you know, focus
more so on the building of community and connection and
just getting to talk about books with other people who
love books.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
I've fallen down that rabbit hole of like us sing
over subscriber numbers and how did you pull yourself out
of that?

Speaker 3 (03:07):
By telling other people what I was feeling talking to
other book tebers and saying, I feel like, why am
I doing this? Nobody cares and they just reiterated to
me about the community I've built and just trying to
focus more on that. And then one of one of
the book teevers that I actually met last weekend, Kat,

(03:28):
from Kat's novel Adventures. I believe she said this is
a quote from Mel Robbins, but Kat likes to quote
it too, and she'll say, don't swim in the toilet
bowl of comparison. So just that you know that statement there.
I keep telling myself that and literally thinking about I
don't want to be in, you know, the nasty toilet water.

(03:49):
So I'm going to quick compare myself to other people.

Speaker 2 (03:54):
Do you do you suffer a lot from comparisons? I
do a lot. I mean it's something I've had to
over and I think I have.

Speaker 3 (04:01):
Yeah, I used to. It got really bad for me
when I first got into my grad school program dealing
with bath you know, compare myself to other people and
then also imposter syndrome. But you know, again, I just
talked to other people about it, and I talked to
my therapist about it, and so she's, you know, also

(04:24):
given me some tools about just focusing on what I'm
doing and not letting myself look at other people, because
most of us, anyway, are going to tend to cast
ourselves in a less favorable way when we try to
compare ourselves with other people. So for my mental health,
I also have gotten very adept at saying nope, not

(04:47):
going to do it, Yeah, going to do it.

Speaker 2 (04:49):
That's a good point because you can slip into doing
that very very easily. I find myself doing it without
even noticing. But I have learned to catch myself and say,
you know, my own entity. I am my own thing,
and they're their own thing. I don't need to compare
myself to that. Do you find yourself catching yourself now
when you slip into it?

Speaker 3 (05:09):
I will, because it's that tendency is still there. But
I'm able to, you know, put it out of my
mind and say exactly what you said, I'm doing my
thing and nobody else is doing exactly what you're doing,
and nobody else is doing exactly what I'm doing, So
we have our area. You know, that makes us who
we are. And some people will get on board with

(05:32):
it and some won't, and that's okay.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
Yeah, I'm glad you're having fun with it. I've always said,
even when I was obsessing over the numbers, and that
I think the most important thing about doing videos or
podcasting or anything is you can't be you can't be
chasing the dream of you know, this being your main job.
You have to you have to be having fun. If

(05:56):
you're not having fun, then there's no point in doing it.
And I think I actually talk to people out of
doing their channels before by saying that, and it wasn't
like an intentional thing, but if they weren't having fun,
then then there's no point. If you're having fun doing it,
then you know the sky's limit. Just don't obsess over

(06:16):
that stuff exactly.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (06:18):
Now on the.

Speaker 2 (06:19):
Other side of the spectrum here, what's your least favorite
part of doing your channel Editing?

Speaker 3 (06:25):
Yes, editing, Like I am, I've still got a lot
to learn with editing, but I just get in there
and do the best I can. I feel most self
conscious about my vlogs. And I've done a lot of vlogs,
but I look at some other people's vlog footage and
it seems so seamless and very aesthetically pleasing, and mine

(06:48):
is not always those things. But that's that's like, if
I can hire somebody do my editing, I would do
I would do it in a second, because I hate
that part of things.

Speaker 4 (07:02):
Yeah me, you know what, me too?

Speaker 1 (07:03):
Uh?

Speaker 4 (07:04):
I hate.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
What I hate is putting the pictures in because it
takes so much time getting them the right size and
where you want them and everything, And it takes me
up to an hour to two hours to edit a video,
where editing a podcast takes me about maybe a half
hour depending. It's it's it's it's incredibly annoying. So moving

(07:30):
on here, What are some of the best books you've
read since you started your channel that you probably would
not have read if you weren't hosting literary love?

Speaker 3 (07:40):
That one is kind of a tough one for me,
but trying to think of like some book club books
I read and enjoyed that I might not have read
otherwise like in other people's book clubs. One of them
I read was I had no. Oh, no, I know.

(08:05):
It was for Elizabeth Sagewood's channel.

Speaker 4 (08:11):
I like, I love Elizabeth.

Speaker 3 (08:13):
Yeah, she's great. It was a it was a Hesser
Fox book, okay, and I cannot remember the name of it.
But it talked about, uh, this murder mystery and they
were all connected to different Edgar Allen Poe stories, and

(08:33):
so I liked it for that reason. But I never
would have necessarily picked up hester Fox. Even though she
is Gothic, she doesn't exactly fit into the horror gothic.
It might have been called the Widow of Pale Harbor,
but I am not sure. I am not sure. I
think it's Widow something.

Speaker 2 (08:53):
But yeah, you know what, I know exactly how you
feel in My brain always goes blank on me.

Speaker 4 (09:02):
I hate that.

Speaker 2 (09:03):
It's like an aging thing too. It never used to
happen quite this bad. But man, I even know what
it is I want to talk about, and then I'll
be like, oh, what.

Speaker 4 (09:10):
Was it again?

Speaker 2 (09:11):
Yes, So where do you see your channel going to?

Speaker 4 (09:15):
Say? Like the old five years from now?

Speaker 3 (09:18):
I am excited about doing more collaborations. I had my
first collaboration and that video is going up later today.
But there is a literary salon host. Her name is
Marissa and you can find her at Less Salon Literary Discussions,
and she lives in Canada, and she has a master's

(09:41):
in English too, and she hosts literary salons, which is
kind of diving deeper than a book club into the
books that you read. And so I joined a couple
of her literary salons. Joined hers for Frankenstein, which we'll
talk about more in a minute. I joined for The

(10:02):
Phantom of the Opera, which is what we're talking about
in our collaboration video that will be up later today,
and for We Have Always Lived in the Castle by
Charlie Jackson. And then I've done a couple of more
collaborations that should be coming out soon. So I really
enjoyed that aspect of having people to get on with
me and talk with them. So I'm hoping to do

(10:24):
more of that and also hoping to do more video
essays in the future too.

Speaker 1 (10:30):
Nice.

Speaker 2 (10:31):
Yeah, I remember you doing talking about Stephen King and
your in books that influenced you video for you turning
for your birthday right. Yes, I was like I want
some of these because you mentioned in that video You're like,
I could do some of these Stephen King books an
essay for him on like a video essay, and I

(10:52):
was like, yes, please do that.

Speaker 3 (10:54):
Yeah, I've got some in the work, so I'll prepare
everybody ahead of for my video essay about Beverly from it.
It's controversial to some, but you talk about.

Speaker 2 (11:07):
It controversy in the Stephen King world as an aside.
Here is okay because I think Stephen King fans are
the best fans in the world. You don't get too
many trolls.

Speaker 3 (11:17):
Yes, I agree.

Speaker 2 (11:18):
Now you throughout this little Q and A here just
getting to know Jen, You've You've brought up a lot
of Gothic stuff here, so you're like, this is the
one reason why I asked you to be here is
because you're steep deep into the Gothic literature, and so
I want to know what is it about Gothic fiction

(11:40):
that speaks to you most.

Speaker 3 (11:43):
The themes of power and power dynamics, the present being
haunted by the past, the delve into the sublime that
I do of something that evokes both terror and all

(12:05):
you fill that pull towards it. There's something appealing or
beautiful about it, but at the same time there's also
something terrifying about it. I like family, secrets, drama, ghosts, vampires,
all the good good stuff.

Speaker 2 (12:26):
Whenever I see dead flowers, I can't help but think
of the gothic. Okay, before we get into the actual
fiction aspects that we break down a little bit, let's
discuss some movies because we're both movie buffs and I
rewatched one of these movies for this episode. So what

(12:46):
are some of your favorite gothic core movies?

Speaker 4 (12:49):
Now?

Speaker 2 (12:50):
Want to I want to bring this one up first
because we talked about this a little bit in messaging
Instagram messages, and it's the one I re watched. It's
not Sparatu. It's such a beautiful film, the four version
that time. Yes, yeah, I love that movie. So that
movie is is quite disgusting though, I mean it's slow moving,

(13:13):
but everything about it it's either beautiful or it's absolutely
gross and grotesque.

Speaker 3 (13:21):
I loved it, and I may get in trouble, but
my husband, if he hears me, he already knows count
Orlock being played by Bill Scarsguard. That's my hear me out,
if you know what I mean, that is my hear
me out. I absolutely loved Nosparati. I like the original

(13:44):
The Silent Film alle me too. And I just think
what Robert Eggers was able to deal with it, and
the way that we really got such a spotlight on
our main female protagonist, the way that she calls on
his presence and just it was just perfect.

Speaker 2 (14:06):
Yeah, that movie brings up a lot of really like
gothic themes in there. If you want to know what
gothic horror is, I think this movie is like a
poster child for that. It has like the family secrets,
it has the grotesquer y stuff, it has the insanity.
I mean, it's obviously it's an adaptation of sorts of

(14:30):
Dracula as the original was. I think the original nineteen
twenty film or whatever it was that was like an adaptation,
like one of the first adaptations of Dracula.

Speaker 3 (14:41):
Yeah, and they got in trouble for it too, because
it was not They did not get permission from the
estate of brown Stoker, and they were actually sued and
all of the copies were supposed to be destroyed of Nosvaratu,
but obviously they weren't.

Speaker 2 (15:00):
Well thank god, because that would have been a travesty. Honestly,
I get them wanting to you know, hey.

Speaker 4 (15:06):
You stole our story.

Speaker 2 (15:07):
But at the same time it's such a beautiful film too.

Speaker 3 (15:12):
It is and it does its own things. It really,
to me is one of those that transgresses the gender
dynamic because even though we have you know, I don't
want to give spoilers for an old movie from nineteen
twenty two, but I will say the main female has
more autonomy and more of a powerful role in subduing

(15:38):
the vampire Mina, and certainly not Lucy in the original Dracula.

Speaker 2 (15:44):
Yeah, what is it about Orlock that draws you to
him in this version?

Speaker 3 (15:52):
It's probably because he's Bill Scarsguard partially, but also he
just even though he is rotting and decaying, there's something
very appealing about him. His voice too, and some of
the things he says, like when he tells her I
am an appetite, I'm like.

Speaker 2 (16:12):
Uh huh, yeah, yeah. That voice and the breathing. The
breathing is like the I don't know being Jonathan Harker.
Was that his name in the in the book or
in the in the movie? I can't remember.

Speaker 3 (16:29):
The Mana's husband that goes first to the Yeah in
Dracula Jonathan.

Speaker 2 (16:36):
But in Nosferato, I don't know if that's his name
or not, but his I can't remember.

Speaker 3 (16:41):
I can't even remember what his name is. I think
they did change his name.

Speaker 4 (16:45):
Yeah, probably remember.

Speaker 2 (16:47):
But anyways, it's like, you know, he's he's he goes
there to sign off an a state because he's buying
an estate near where he lives, and he's like a
you know, he's a lawyer or whatnot, so he's officiating
it all for him, and I'd be questioning, are you
sure you can make it there?

Speaker 3 (17:04):
Right? Because he's like old, you sound a little unhealthy.

Speaker 2 (17:09):
Yeah, but when he gets angry, you sure know it.

Speaker 4 (17:12):
Yes, Yes, he's a little moody a.

Speaker 3 (17:15):
Little bit, and that's probably the appealing party, like the
bad boy appeal that some of us have.

Speaker 2 (17:24):
But yeah, like there's parts that are really just gross,
like the ending, although even though it's gross, uh, it's
still beautiful, like the very last shot of Dracula and uh.

Speaker 4 (17:39):
Mina is it Mina?

Speaker 2 (17:41):
I'm terrible with the name.

Speaker 3 (17:43):
It is in Dracula in Baratu it is Ellen Ellie.

Speaker 4 (17:48):
Something like that.

Speaker 2 (17:49):
Yeah, but that last shot of them is like it
looks like a painting by some Gothic artist and it's
just absolutely beautiful with the grotesque and the beautiful parts.

Speaker 4 (18:02):
It's just a it's an incredible film all around. Very dark.
Did you see it in the theaters?

Speaker 3 (18:07):
I did not. I had to wait for it to
come out on streaming, mostly because I was not sure
I'd be able to understand everything they said, because I
know with Robert Egger's films, a lot of times he's
going to use the very authentic, you know, language, and

(18:28):
so sometimes I would have trouble hearing it in a theater.
So I decided to wait till I could have my
closed captioning because I ran into that with The Witch,
which I know is one of your favorites, and that
is my favorite, so yeah, you know what.

Speaker 2 (18:43):
I had that issue with The Witch too, But this
this one is very like dark, like it's a dark
film mood wise, but it's also very dark visually, and
that was my biggest complaint. In the theater, you couldn't
really even in a dark theater, you couldn't really see
what was going on, so that that would be a
good reason to wait for the streaming. But you know,

(19:04):
having all the sounds and everything loud was just was incredible.

Speaker 3 (19:07):
I would have loved that part of it.

Speaker 2 (19:09):
Yeah, it was. It was a beautiful film all around.
So The Witch shuts another Robert Eggers film, That one
is really incredible. That that film just blew me away. Yes,
I just love that film, especially the Goat.

Speaker 3 (19:28):
Yes, Black Philip, absolutely, yes. You know there's a lot
of connection between Eggars Nosferatu and his The Witch when
you think about the main character. And I just kept
thinking about when Count Orlock said I am an appetite,
and I started thinking about what Black Philip said to Thomason,

(19:53):
dost thou like the taste of butter? Which thou like
to live deliciously? So that connected to like the the
woman's appetite and the desire to break away from the
oppressive society and pursue something that she chooses. Even though
some would argue that Thomasin was just going into another

(20:16):
subservient role, she had the choice. He didn't just demand
that she fit into this the way you know, patriarchal
society and the Puritan society had demanded she fit into this.
He asked her, dost thou like the taste of butter?
Would'st thou like to live deliciously? And she said yes,
And she called on him too. She called on Black Philip,

(20:39):
you know, and said, speak to me, and he did
in the same way that at the beginning of nos
Vatu Ellen and maybe that's her name, I don't know.
I can't remember her name, but she calls and says,
come to me, you know. So they both called something forth.

Speaker 2 (20:58):
M oh one thing. I like, well, I like that
aspect you said. There's the connection there where they're sort
of breaking away from the patriarchy and they're calling for it.
That to me is fascinating. It seems like maybe that
it could be like a mission of Robert Egger's movie

(21:18):
making is as I haven't I don't know if I've
seen all his films, but is that a reoccurring theme
in his films?

Speaker 4 (21:23):
Do you know?

Speaker 3 (21:24):
I have not seen The Northman. I have seen The Lighthouse,
which of course is just with Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson,
so you don't really have a main woman, like, you know,
starring in that film. I would have to go back
and rewatch The Lighthouse and see if I can catch,

(21:45):
you know, anything similar taking place than it.

Speaker 2 (21:49):
I love that film too. The one thing I find
about his movies is how slow moving they are, and
yet you're like captured by what's going on in the screen.
It's it's often very weird and very dirk and it
leaves you kind of questioning what it is you're watching often.
So what other films do you love in this genre?

Speaker 3 (22:10):
Oh, I didn't want to pick any of the same
ones you did, because I want to give you the
chance to talk about things. I love Crimson Peak. It's
not a perfect movie, but it definitely fits into so
much of the Gothic, including some family secrets, especially in
the form of incest, which is another common theme recurring

(22:32):
in Gothic words too. The Changeling from nineteen eighty that
stars George C. Scott. I love Jack b Yeah, it
is that red ball.

Speaker 4 (22:45):
Coming down the stairs yet.

Speaker 3 (22:48):
Bram Stokers. Dracula from nineteen ninety two. I do like
that one a lot, even though it's obviously takes some
liberty from the source material to have an actual love
interest and connect action between Count Dracula and Mina, But
I do love it. Some of it's over the top,
but I love the costumes. I love Lucy as the

(23:10):
vampire in that. Just absolutely loved that movie. And then
like we talked about before the Witch nos Varatu. There
is also a nineteen seventy something nos Varatu that I
have not watched yet.

Speaker 4 (23:26):
I've seen it, yeah.

Speaker 3 (23:27):
Yeah, I want to see it because it has Isabella
Johnny from Possession, and I will watch anything she's in.
I love her. I love that movie. But I need
to watch that one. Did you enjoy that one?

Speaker 4 (23:38):
I did.

Speaker 2 (23:39):
I watched it a couple of times about I think
about fifteen years ago now. I watched it a lot
in a row. And coincidentally, it was when I created
my Instagram account, and that's the picture for my Instagram account.
I just kept it there because I think it's cool
and I don't think I'll ever get rid of it.

Speaker 3 (24:00):
Why would you.

Speaker 4 (24:01):
Write, yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (24:05):
Some of my favorites are like Suspiria. I just love
the weirdness of that film.

Speaker 3 (24:10):
That is one of my favorites too. A lot of
the ones you put I was like, see, we're all
the same wave length. Yeah, I love Suspiria.

Speaker 2 (24:17):
Yes, Spiri is awesome. Yeah, I like both of them.
The remake even I thought it was good, although I
don't remember it much, but I've seen the old one,
like I don't know how many times, probably about ten times.
The new one I've only watched once, but I didn't
eat it like a lot of people did. Yeah, of course,
interview with the Vampire that that movie and the book

(24:40):
like called some serious special spots in my.

Speaker 1 (24:43):
Heart for me.

Speaker 2 (24:44):
And we'll discuss a little bit why down below.

Speaker 1 (24:48):
The Woman in Black.

Speaker 2 (24:49):
I've seen that movie, the one with Daniel Radcliffe, and
I've also seen the British, the BBC production that they
that was like eighty nine or something like that. They're
both very well done. I've seen the Daniel Radcliffe one,
like I don't know, probably five times, and I've read
the book like a good four or five times as well.

(25:10):
I just absolutely love that story. And of course, yeah,
Sleepy Hollow is another favorite. I just love the atmosphere
and Tim Burton's like set designs in that one. It's
just so much fun to look at and to watch.

Speaker 3 (25:26):
I love it too.

Speaker 4 (25:28):
Yeah, so good?

Speaker 2 (25:29):
All right, So, how was about we get into some
before we get into our top our honorable mentions in
our top three? How about we break down the the
subgenre here a little bit. I don't know it's a
genre all its own, or is it a subgenre because
Gothic isn't necessarily horror, right, I.

Speaker 3 (25:51):
Would like, the Gothic is a genre, but it's kind
of complicated because the Gothic really is an offshoot of Romanticism,
the Romantic movement that took place during the seventeen hundreds
as kind of a pushback against the Enlightenment, which was

(26:12):
the age of reason and science. And then you have
the Romantics coming along pushing back against that, wanting to
bring to the forefront the idea of individualism and emotion
and nature. So you started to have the Romantic poets
like William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and then your
second generation like Percy Shelley, John Keats, Lord Byron, and

(26:38):
so you could kind of look at the Gothic as
a subgenre of Romanticism. And then, like you said, you
have like the genre of horror, and then you have
that subgenre of Gothic horror. But then you have the
Gothic that kind of stands by itself too. So the
Gothic gets kind of complicated in some ways.

Speaker 2 (26:59):
Yeah, but it also fits really well in the horror genre.
You don't really get like any like crazy over the
top horror. In the Gothic fiction realm, you mostly get
like the slow burning, haunted house or castle, you know,
Dracula type stories. Yes, Now, what are some of the

(27:19):
aspects like broad overview of Gothic core, like just the
main general.

Speaker 3 (27:25):
Like a simple definition that it was put forth by
Fred Bodding and he said, the Gothic is the past
coming back to haunt the present. So that's kind of
like a real quick way of looking at the Gothic.
And then of course it's also connected to Gothic architecture,

(27:46):
which is why it's called Gothic in the first place,
because you had the you know, types of Gothic architecture
that we know we see, you know, we can kind
of tell the spires, the you know kind of ways
we look at something that's a that's a Gothic building.
So the literature kind of takes its name from that too.
But some of the common things that we see, like

(28:08):
you talked about our settings and these castles or mansions,
often they'll be you know, decaying, they'll be considered ruins.
So you've got again that idea of the past, you know,
still being in the present, but there's something not quite
right about it. It's it's decaying atmospheres of mystery and suspense.

(28:32):
You've got ancient prophecies a lot of times, omens something
again kind of showcasing that you you have something in
the past that's going to come back to to haunt you.

Speaker 4 (28:45):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (28:46):
You also have supernatural or some sort of inexplicable events.
So sometimes the question is is there really something supernatural
happening or is this psychological you know, kind of what's
going on a lot of times you have like very
high emotions, sometimes melodrama, right, especially some of the earlier

(29:09):
works of the Gothic, the damn Soul and distress. You
see that a lot too. You see two you have also,
I'm just trying to make sure I don't skip anything.
This kind of over arching metaphor of gloom you have
a lot of times. Of course, like you talked about

(29:30):
the fog, the storms, the rain, you just got this
atmosphere of darkness, doom and gloom. So those are some
of the things that you kind of notice when you're
getting like just a quick.

Speaker 2 (29:45):
Overview speaking of the the like the setting setting often
plays like almost like a character role. I was wondering
in regards to symbolism. You know how in when there's
a storm happening, like a thunderstorm appears in a book,
that often means that there's going to be a change

(30:06):
in the plot. Now, what does like decaying mansions, foggy moores,
and claustrophobic villages, what do they kind of represent within
this genre?

Speaker 3 (30:15):
So when we think about the decaying mansion, a couple
of words that kind of go with that are opulence
and decadence. So you had this mansion that was at
one time very opulent, very luxurious, but decadent is going
to be where that person kind of took their wealth

(30:37):
and they overextended it. They overdid it, right, it became
decadent to the point that it was too much. And
so when that starts to decay, it's just a symbol
of that decaying power structure and the way that eventually
everything and everyone decays.

Speaker 2 (31:01):
Awesome, Yeah, that's right there. The last five minutes is
the reason why I love Gothic core. Everything you just explained,
But not all Gothic stories take place with you know,
like the haunted Mansion, the decaying mansion. How does a
Gothic story still work without like any of the fog

(31:23):
or or the you know the foggy more is the
all the thunderstorms and and you know dark mansions.

Speaker 3 (31:31):
That is a great question. I'd love to talk about it.
So the idea again, if we think about just that
simple definition of the past coming back to haunt the present,
that can be seen in a lot of different ways.
And one way is the suburban Gothic. And that's something

(31:53):
I've become very interested in the past few years after
reading The Haunting of Bell Could going to lynk Heist
and then listening to your interview with her. But that
kind of subverbs some of your Gothic trope, because that
is a setting, you know, in suburbia when you started
to have suburbs, and they're in other places too, but

(32:16):
I think most of the time they're associated with the
United States, and they popped up, like in the nineteen
fifties after World War Two, these suburban communities, and so
they look cookie cutter. Everybody's house, everybody's lawn looks the same,
it's pristine. They were set up to welcome certain socioeconomic levels,

(32:42):
certain racial dynamics. You know, they're predominantly going to be
white neighborhoods and that was something that was intentional, and
so you have what appears to be perfect, you know,
so to speak, on the outside, but there can be
a lot of sinister things going on on the inside,
whether it is you know, something in the family where

(33:05):
traumatic things are happening on the inside, but everything looks
perfect on the outside. Then you have the underlying as
I mentioned, the you know, pushing out of certain groups
of people that don't fit into this middle to upper
class white, you know, family kind of ideal, and so
you have there the idea of something sinister link lurking

(33:31):
beneath the surface. Charlie Jackson is another really good one
with suburban Gothic, especially her novel The Way Through the
Wall and a lot of her short stories deal with
that and deal with women trapped and confined in these
suburban neighborhoods, like The Stepford Wives of all of that.

(33:53):
And then there's also like polar Gothic, which a couple
of books that really fit that would be Dark Matter
by Michelle Paver, The Terror by Dan Simmons. The idea
that you're in this sparse region of just ice and
cold and nature has the power over you. And that's

(34:17):
another thing that we see in the Gothic too, the
idea that the natural world is more powerful than we are.
And that also ties into this concept of the sublime
that Edmund Burke. Edmund Burke right about, and the sublime
is like that which evokes both terror and all. It's

(34:40):
something that we find appealing but at the same time
we are terrified of it. And he talked about that
in terms of nature a lot like if you're in
the Arctic, for example, and all you see are these,
you know, just sheets of ice surrounding you, and so
you feel very small, right and you think it's beautiful

(35:03):
in a way, but it's also terrifying. Same thing if
you look at the vast ocean or like a huge
tall mountain. So the Gothic can be seen in that
way too. And then you have like American or Southern Gothic,
which deals a lot with family secrets, trauma injustices, the
enslavement of people, fear the other, and those kinds of things.

Speaker 2 (35:30):
I think my life becomes a polar Gothic story. Every
time we get our first snowstorm.

Speaker 3 (35:40):
I can't imagine. I cannot imagine. We hardly ever get snow,
and we happen to get it this past January, like
six inches where I am on your mobile, Alabama. That's
a wild amount for us.

Speaker 2 (35:53):
That's a horror story for you guys, because you guys
don't have the equipment can take care of it.

Speaker 3 (35:58):
No, we did, and everything shut down for two days
because we don't have like like snowplows or the right
kind of vehicles or any I don't even know salt trucks. Yeah,
none of that. So it was funny because I was
also reading The Terror at the same time, and I
was like, well, the book gods and the weather gods

(36:19):
have smiled down on me because now I feel this
and it got really really cold too, and I was like,
this is amazing.

Speaker 2 (36:29):
I have a somewhat similar experience with The Terror. I
was listening to it on audiobook, and I had to
treat well as you do travel back and forth to work.
But my travel to this job was like a half
hour long, and it was often at night when the
sun was down and it was winter, and there was
a few more than a few times because the audiobook's
quite long, where I was driving through a storm. And

(36:51):
so you're listening to this book, well, like you're seeing
snow fly sideways down the road and it just looks
like you're in you know, the Arctic while you're listening
to it. It was, it was, It was beautiful in
a sense, the.

Speaker 3 (37:06):
Book and weather gods were smiling on you too.

Speaker 1 (37:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (37:09):
Yeah, I mean it was quite the experience for sure.
Yeah awesome.

Speaker 1 (37:14):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (37:15):
Now, you know, the polar Arctic stuff interests me because
of what I just said about winter.

Speaker 1 (37:20):
I hate winter.

Speaker 2 (37:23):
It dredges up like serious dread within me. And but
there's also the aspect of isolation that I like. It's
like being on another planet. If you're way up north
like that, there's nobody to help you, and that that
that terrifies me. Yes so, but going on with isolation,

(37:49):
isolation and madness are often themes in uh in Gothic fiction.
I was wondering about the aspect of an ill or
insane aunts or cousins, sister, mother, et cetera locked away
in the attict This plays a big role in some
Gothic fictions, such as Jane Eyre, which is one of
my favorite of the classics. Why does this exist and

(38:11):
where does it come from?

Speaker 3 (38:13):
The root of the mad woman in the attic? Right,
A lot of it has to do with hysteria, if
you know that term originally is connected to a woman's uterus,
And there was the belief by doctors that anytime a
woman experienced anxiety, depression, even physical you know, problems.

Speaker 2 (38:39):
That it was or even just basic human emotions.

Speaker 3 (38:42):
Yes, yes, how dare this woman be irritable today? She's hysterical.
So it was like the idea of the traveling or
wandering womb, which is even why now you have hysterectomies.
All those hysteriere things connected to that. So a lot
of it had to do with the treatment and the

(39:04):
view of women that if they were acting any sort
of way, even things like disagreeing with their husbands, oh
like of them in the attict, that's it. You have
no autonomy. Get out of here. So hysteria and you
also had in the patriarchal societies, especially in England, but

(39:25):
also this would go to other parts of Europe and
even other parts of the world, this idea of the
angel in the house versus the new or fallen woman.
So the Angel in the House was a poem by
Coventry Patmore, and it idealized this so called perfect Victorian
wife who is just the angel in the house. She

(39:49):
makes sure the husband is happy, she makes sure the
kids are happy, she makes sure the house is clean,
she makes sure everything is perfect, and she smiles while
doing all it and doats on her husband. And so
if she didn't do that, then she was considered to
be this other extreme, a fallen or a new woman

(40:10):
if she dare to speak her mind or leave the
house too. That's another idea, the angel in the home.
They weren't supposed to leave their homes. They were supposed
to be happy and do everything in their homes and
not be anywhere else. But don't get upset about that,
right because then you'll be hysterical and you could end
up and then Sana solomn or you could end up

(40:31):
in the attic. And they also had this like Madonna
versus horror complex. You can really see that in Dracula
with Mina, she would be considered more of the Madonna
type and Lucy would be considered more of the whore
because she has three men interested in her, and she
even says at one point, well, I wish I could

(40:51):
just marry all three of them. And then of course
she's the one who is you know, really pulled into Dracula,
seduced by Dracula, ends up being staked at the end
of course state there's phallax stuff there, but we won't
get too Freudian today. But you know, anytime a woman
transgressed those boundaries, she you know, would be put away.

(41:16):
And I especially get very upset about Bertha Mason and
Jane Eyre and Lucy too, speaking like we did a
moment ago. Gwendolen Kist this if you know me, I'm
like a huge fan of gwendolen Kaist. If she has
her novel Reluctant Immortals where she retold the stories of

(41:38):
Bertha and Lucy. And I was so moved by that
novel that I wrote a paper in grad school about
this so called bad women, you know, Bertha and Lucy.
But when you dive deeper into Bertha and Jane Eyre,
she did not fit into what Rochester wanted. She came

(42:02):
over with her own ideas, her own culture, her own
way of doing things, and she didn't want to fit
in and be this perfect, you know, angel in the house.
And so that's a lot of the reason why he
locked her away and then said that she, you know,
was a mad woman, But I would have been mad too.

(42:22):
She didn't want to talk about the things he wanted
to talk about. So a lot of times it is
just that, just that transgression and not fitting into that
ideal of patriarchy. And I probably got real passionate about
that because I get real, I get real mad about it.
I'm the mad woman, honestly, not put me in an attic.

Speaker 2 (42:44):
Yeah, it angers me too. It's just it's a crazy way.
I mean, the way we live now I think is crazy,
but with her, you know, power.

Speaker 4 (42:54):
Obsession.

Speaker 2 (42:56):
But back then it was so much worse. And there's
people to bring that kind of thing back, and it's
it's insane and it's frustrating.

Speaker 3 (43:05):
Yes, unfortunately all of that. I would have been passionate
about it for a long time. But the past few years,
especially this year, absolutely it feels very much gothic. The
past is coming back to haunt the present and absolutely
very very relevant right now.

Speaker 1 (43:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (43:27):
Yeah, And it's enraging. It's enraging. It's happening every It's
not just in America, it's in Canada too, It's in
European countries. All the first world countries are facing like
a serious dilemma.

Speaker 3 (43:41):
And the recent UK like ruling too just has me
absolutely enraged.

Speaker 2 (43:46):
Also, yeah, absolutely, it's just disgusting.

Speaker 3 (43:52):
It is it is.

Speaker 2 (43:53):
So, how are gender rules reinforced or subverted in Gothic chor.

Speaker 3 (44:00):
Like we kind of talked about a moment ago with
Lucy versus Mina that really reinforced the idea of Mina
is the one who gets saved right, and Lucy, because
she had the three men interested in her, and she
kind of was interested in all three of them, she
gets staked. There's no hope for her. Bertha gets you know,

(44:25):
in the attic, and then you know, spoiler dies so
that Jane and Rochester can end up together. So there's
one book, I would say a classic that subverts that
kind of gender role, and that is Carmela by Joseph
Sheridan Lafaneu, which actually predates Dracula. Ram Stoker drew a

(44:47):
lot from that novella for the character of Dracula and
the elements of vampirism. But in Carmeila you have a
woman vampire who is doing the seducing, and not only
is she doing the seducing, but she's seducing another young woman.

(45:08):
So that really pushed back against heteronormative and patriarchal ideals.
And then, like in a recent book that I read
that's like a reimagining of Carmela called Hungerstone by Kat Dunn,
I recommend that totally because that takes Carmela's character and

(45:29):
pairs her with a woman who has more autonomy than
Laura did and Carmela and the way that those two
end up, you know, in a passionate affair and taking
the reins back from patriarchy is very, very empowering. So
that's a recent a recent book I've read that really

(45:53):
subverts those gender roles.

Speaker 2 (45:56):
I'm pretty sure. I recently put Hungerstone on my wish
list for my Cobo, but I have to double check
that just in case it's not there.

Speaker 1 (46:05):
I want to go out.

Speaker 3 (46:06):
I think you'll like it.

Speaker 2 (46:07):
I love Carmela. I forgot to add it, and I'm
glad you brought that up because I forgot to add
it into at least my honorable mentions. But there it is,
right there. It's very I mean, I don't know if
people maybe didn't understand it back then, or maybe we
look at it differently now, because there was never as
far as I'm that, I know there was never an outrage.

Speaker 3 (46:29):
No that book was there, No, not that I know
of either.

Speaker 2 (46:34):
You think there would have been, like way back in
the eighteen hundreds, right, I mean today it would probably
be banned in some places.

Speaker 3 (46:42):
I guess I'm thinking, like maybe the way they possibly
got around it was by casting Carmilla as a vampire,
making her the bad so to speak, person in it
and saying, look, this is this is what happens with
female sexuality. You know, if they transgress, they're vampires.

Speaker 2 (47:03):
Right.

Speaker 3 (47:04):
But at the same time, you would still think it
would have possibly caused more controversy than it did.

Speaker 2 (47:10):
Maybe it's because it wasn't looked at in a positive
light on their end, like this is all poisoned, right,
and so that's the point of the novel, right right.

Speaker 4 (47:20):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (47:21):
Speaking of vampires though, I there's a lot of vampires
and not all of course, I mean, there's some vampires
in Gothic fiction, and so I'm I'm curious. I think
we covered a lot of it because vampires are often
the grotesque and whatnot, But why are vampires often considered gothic?

Speaker 3 (47:41):
They also really embody this idea of the sublime in
that they evote both your fear but also you're a
little bit in awe you fill that pull towards them.
That's something that romantics actually wrote about a lot too,
is that I do of the vampire as a sublime

(48:03):
in poetry like Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Crystabelle, which has some
influence on Carmila, and you also have John Keats Lamia,
and you have another the vampire type poem, but I
can't think of it at the moment, But that idea

(48:24):
of embodying both something beautiful and seductive but something that's
terrifying to And also because folklore ties a lot into
the Gothic with the idea of the past haunting the present,
and there was a great deal of vampire folklore and
mythology from different parts of the world. So pulling up

(48:46):
those kind of ancient elements of folklore and bringing them
into the present also is connected to the Gothic. And
then of course they also embody forbidden desire and destruction
of in a sense. Right, if we think about the
damsel in distress, we have, you know, endraculated damsel on distress.

(49:07):
You have the woman that's being pursued by this evil vampire.

Speaker 2 (49:14):
Now, is there any elements of like repressed sexual desire
like things that you know, because like back in the
eighteen hundreds, women weren't supposed to be having these thoughts
that was uncouth right now, But is there maybe an
element of that, like a vampire awakening those repressed desires.

Speaker 3 (49:36):
Yes, exactly. It was a way to explore the taboo
right to let a woman feel those things. But then
they could also blame it. Well, you know, it's because
of this influence of this evil creature, and that's why
this woman gave in to those sexual desires. But like thinking,

(49:57):
like we've talked about with the Nosfarati of twenty twenty four,
she called on something, right, She was pushing back against
the patriarchy and calling on that, so to speak, forbidden.
And there's a really great image in the movie too
of that idea of pushing back against that when she

(50:18):
literally like rips, you know, rips her dress and her
course at saying you know, here I am, I'm not
gonna be repressed anymore. Come and even at the end
when everything's happening, she tells, you know, count orlock more.
More so, there's definitely something about exploring the sexuality that

(50:40):
women feel.

Speaker 2 (50:42):
Yeah, and you know, we've touched upon this before and
I'm dumb, so I don't get it.

Speaker 4 (50:50):
But what is it?

Speaker 2 (50:51):
What is it about the grotesque such as rotting vampire bodies,
seducing young women. It's like, I just don't understand the
desire when I when I translate it to my own desires,
it's well, I guess there's a big difference, but yeah.

Speaker 3 (51:11):
It I think it has to do with power too,
because if you're looking at a vampire, they are powerful,
they're immortal, they have been around for quite some time,
which that sometimes brings up an issue that people have
with you have a two hundred year old man and
this twenty year old you know. But I think it

(51:33):
all ties into that forbidden and at the same time
that threat of death and destruction, but it also is
offering the potential for eternal life. So I think there's
that push pull that we have of what would I

(51:53):
do for immortality? And also just I don't know, there's
part of me that can't explain it, Like I don't
even know if I can exactly explain, Like we talked
about earlier, Well, I can't overlock, is my hear me out?

Speaker 2 (52:14):
Yeah, I guess maybe it's the authoritativeness. Maybe there's comfort
in that, like he would take care of you. Mm hmm,
like you wouldn't have to worry about a damn thing exactly. Okay,
I have a silly question here, and mostly because I
was obsessed with this when I was a teenager. But
when I was a teenager, a late teenager, I was

(52:34):
reading on racist vampire chronicles and I seriously wanted to
become a vampire.

Speaker 4 (52:39):
Did you have this too?

Speaker 3 (52:41):
Oh? Yes, I still do. To be honest, I still do. Yes,
I would. I would love it. I would love to
be a vampire. Actually, this past weekend, when I was
in New Orleans, I went to the Vampire Cafe and
sometimes they'll give you a little card and you can
take it like later that night and get into the

(53:02):
secret vampire speakeasy. So we did that and we were
let in by a vampire. I mean he was like
he went all out. He had the file teeth for fings,
he had long fingernails that were I'm pretty sure those
were actually his. He had contacts in he was dressed

(53:23):
all in black and just looked very vam vampire and
very appealing. So when we got up to the speakeasy,
we could have drinks in blood bags, so like a
red Sangria and a blood bag. So, yes, I have

(53:43):
wanted and still want to be a vampire that has
not gone away.

Speaker 4 (53:48):
Yeah, I guess I still do too.

Speaker 2 (53:50):
Yeah, but I'd want to be a younger body again
at least.

Speaker 3 (53:55):
Yeah, I should have done it if you were in
years earlier, since I just started faking.

Speaker 2 (54:00):
Yeah, welcome to the club. By the way, I turned
fifty in September, so happy birthday. Yes, all right, So
we talked a lot about vampires and that was one
reason for that. I'm I used to be and still
I'm obsessed with vampires. But there's also a lot of
ghosts in Gothic Corr I said here in my notes.

(54:23):
Got the horror fiction is filled with ghosts, even in
the vampire stuff, even in the non horror stuff. There's
like John Irving story that's somewhat Gothic and it has
ghosts in it. So what do the ghost What do
ghosts represent? Do they represent something internal like guilt, grief,
unprocessed trauma, that past coming back to haunt you.

Speaker 3 (54:45):
Yes, definitely, they do all all of those things. Again,
like you said, with that idea of the past coming
back to haunt the present, whether it's literal or figurative.

Speaker 4 (54:57):
Awesome.

Speaker 2 (54:58):
How do the ghosts tie in to the history of
stories or setting of family?

Speaker 3 (55:04):
A lot of times with that setting, of course, we
know will have haunted spaces, whether it's a haunted house
or whether it's a haunted neighborhood, like in the Haunting
of Elkwood. Again, just that idea of ghost being a
representative of a haunted space. You think about spaces where
horrible things happened, the idea that that setting itself can

(55:27):
be evil because it's holding on to something from the past,
or someone had a secret, something happened to them there,
and so in that setting, when you go in it,
you feel that past whatever occurred there. And then like
with family, of course, you have ghosts being the embodiment

(55:50):
of some sort of ancestral curse or like a lingering
presence of injustice, especially when we think about Southern Gothic
and the green presence in the South of enslaved people
and oppression, trauma, repressed emotions, hidden truth, the inability to

(56:11):
reconcile with the past, something that happened in the past,
and you're still dealing with it, so it's still very
much present. Can be you know, embodying in a ghost.
Then also like psychological horror, and then the fear, like
your existential fear of death for yourself. And then explorations

(56:35):
of the uncanny are unsettling that which is familiar, but
there's something not quite familiar about it, something's a little
bit wrong.

Speaker 2 (56:47):
And one thing I love about horror, and this seriously
applies to gothic fiction of all sorts, is and I
I forget who said this the first time. I didn't
come up with this myself, but somebody said that reading
horror is often like a suburban town where everything looks perfect,

(57:08):
but there's a rock in somebody's front yard and you
lift that rock up and beneath it there's worms and
gross things, right, and some people like me become kind
of obsessed with what's beneath that rock. Yes, I'm wondering
what is Gothic horror's obsession with mortality, decay and the
boundary between life and death.

Speaker 3 (57:28):
A lot of it is like the inevitability of decay,
Like if you see a castle, for example, that's decayed.
Then you know you yourself, you know you're going to decay too,
So you kind of are processing the fear of death
and the fear of rotting, you know, in your own again.

(57:53):
Kind of back to that existential fear and existential dread,
the idea of like the resurface of the dead, those
kind of things with the decay part of it.

Speaker 2 (58:07):
I love that. I absolutely love that. All right, So
I think we've made it. I think we've dissected this.
Is there anything else about the Gothic genre that you
would like to express that maybe we didn't touch upon.

Speaker 3 (58:22):
One of the things I like to talk about too,
is this idea of the liminal space, this in between space.
That's why a lot of times nature versus civilization you
see that and the Gothic because you are kind of
bordering sometimes on what civilized and then over here this

(58:42):
is the wooded area, it's not civilized yet. Dracula does
that very very well at the beginning brown Stoker when
he writes about Jonathan leaving England to go to Transylvania
and see Count Dracula when he's traveling through the Carpathian

(59:03):
Mountains Bramstoker is continuously talking about how now he you know,
Jonathan has left the city and now all he's seeing
are woods and mountains, and he also has things written
in there like the trains don't run exactly as well
as they do in England, and everybody over here is

(59:26):
all superstitious and uncivilized. So that kind of a pushback
from civilization versus barbarianism as they would have termed in
that day, people who weren't you know, Western European.

Speaker 2 (59:44):
Yeah, it's interesting, like the paranoid village, you know, the
villagers in Dracula, they try to warn Jonathan Herker off,
you know, going to that castle. The same thing happens
in Susan Hills. The woman in black Y something I
wanted to ask, but I didn't know how to ask it.
But I think this is the perfect time to ask.
I think that slasher fiction, like slasher movies, especially like

(01:00:08):
Friday the Thirteenth and whatnot, I think they borrowed and
their kind of gothic stories in their own because you
get you often get the gas station attendant in that
small town that warns them off, like don't go down
in them woods. You won't take it back and they're
all like a crazy old.

Speaker 3 (01:00:25):
Man, right, the Harbinger, Right.

Speaker 2 (01:00:28):
Yeah, but then you also have the past coming back
to present with these killers like represented as the killers. Yeah, yeah,
that's interesting. I love that idea.

Speaker 3 (01:00:38):
And then the wooded area too. If you think about
Camp Crystal Light, right, the camp, they're out there out
in the woods, kind of left everyday civilization to be
out in nature.

Speaker 1 (01:00:49):
Absolutely.

Speaker 4 (01:00:50):
All right, So we've reached the end of that. Now
how about we get into our favorite books.

Speaker 2 (01:00:57):
Yeah, before we get into a top three, I limited
at top three because we could probably talk for it,
like when I did the Vampire episode, I could have.

Speaker 4 (01:01:07):
Went on and on and on, and.

Speaker 2 (01:01:08):
You know what, picking just three is hard because next
week this list could be different. But yes, there's a
bunch of honorable mentions here. I have four, and you
said you had more than four, which is fine, But
I thought we'd discussed maybe a little bit of the
honorable mentions too, So if you would like to go first,
that would be good.

Speaker 3 (01:01:28):
All right. One of my honorable mentions is The Good
House by an Honorie.

Speaker 1 (01:01:32):
Well, that is so good.

Speaker 4 (01:01:33):
I should have added that.

Speaker 3 (01:01:34):
Yeah, it's so good. So you have your main character
who is going back to her childhood home where she
experienced trauma. Her grandmother was kind of a magical sort
of woman who took care of for you know, you
took care of a lot of things in the village.
And then also our main character's son died in a

(01:01:59):
very tragic way in that house. So she goes back
to confront her own past, but also this evil entity
which is coming back not only to haunt her family
but other people in that town.

Speaker 2 (01:02:16):
I absolutely love that that story. I didn't even think
of it, but you can add that to my honorable
mentions as well. One of mine is Inheriting Her Ghosts
by s. H.

Speaker 4 (01:02:26):
Cooper.

Speaker 2 (01:02:27):
And one reason why I love this story so much
is it really reminds me of The Woman in Black
by Susan Hill. It has it's a different story altogether,
but it has some of the same elements, which are
just Gothic elements, but it's presented in a sort of
Woman in Black sort of way. It's a by a
young woman who's I forget if it's her mother or grandmother.

(01:02:50):
I think it's like a distant relative who dies and
leaves her the house, and it's a giant mansion, and
she doesn't initially want to go there, but she decides
to move in because it's bigger and it's more spacious,
and she has these two giant dogs. I don't know
if you've seen the cover, but it shows the two
giant dogs on it. Anyways, so when she moves in there,

(01:03:13):
Inheriting Your Ghosts quite literal to the story because the
house is haunted and these ghosts, they're not shy, they're
gonna try.

Speaker 4 (01:03:19):
To destroy you.

Speaker 2 (01:03:22):
And also there's a secret room that she can't get into.
It's just it's fun, first of all, and it's got
like all the elements. And I absolutely adore this story.
I think more people need to talk about Inheriting Your
Ghosts by a She Cooper.

Speaker 3 (01:03:38):
Well, I'm glad you put that one on my radar
because I have not heard of that, but it is
going right to the top of my TVR.

Speaker 4 (01:03:44):
It's good. I think you'll like it. What do you got?

Speaker 3 (01:03:49):
We talked about Carmela already and that that's one of
my honorable mentions. Dark Matter by Michelle Paver And now
I'll let you go before I talk about other ones,
because those we are already talked about.

Speaker 2 (01:04:01):
I have Dark Matter, but I haven't read it yet.
I want to read it. My next one is I'm
not going to talk too much about this because I
talked about it already and at least the movie version,
and I talked about it in the Vampire episode, and
that's of course the Vampire Chronicles. I'm adding all the
books here, but you know, it's just that it's a

(01:04:23):
different sort of vampire. They're still creepy. Theyre's still kind
of grotesque in areas, depending what state that vampire is in.
But there's also like the drama, the family drama and whatnot,
the friendships, the relationships. It just it completely seduced me
when I was younger, and I recently reread them, not
all of them, but like the main ones, and it

(01:04:47):
still did that to me. You know, It's like you
kind of wish you had that kind of rush and
rich history. Never mind, you know, the blood sucking. I
would probably be like Louis, you know, feeding on the rats.

Speaker 3 (01:04:59):
Yes, but.

Speaker 2 (01:05:01):
But that's another aspect I love about it.

Speaker 1 (01:05:04):
It's like the.

Speaker 2 (01:05:05):
Overall melancholy of it speaks to me because I have
depression and it's something I've had pretty much my entire life,
and those books, without ever saying the word, are really
steeped in that.

Speaker 4 (01:05:22):
State of mind. Yes, and.

Speaker 2 (01:05:26):
I absolutely adore those books. They're some of my favorite
vampire books altogether. I didn't add them to my top
three because of the whole Vampire Episodes episode that I
did previous to this one, so I just put it
as an honorable mention.

Speaker 3 (01:05:41):
I love Interview with a Vampire very much, like you said,
identify with Louis because I too have depression and just
so much of what he feels as a vampire and
like not want to live that way. Like you said,
it does just feel it feels very cathartic to go

(01:06:03):
through that with him.

Speaker 2 (01:06:05):
I remember when I was first reading it, I read
Interview with Vampire first, of course, and then I went
to read The Vampire Less stat and.

Speaker 4 (01:06:12):
Louis hardly in that.

Speaker 2 (01:06:13):
He's like maybe maybe twenty pages somewhere in the later parts, and.

Speaker 4 (01:06:18):
I was like, Oh, that's no.

Speaker 2 (01:06:20):
Where's I want my Louis.

Speaker 4 (01:06:25):
What else do you have?

Speaker 3 (01:06:27):
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde's one of
my favorite classics, and it really dives into this idea
of youth versus old age and what makes a person beautiful,
is it their outer appearance or is it what is
taking place on the inside. Because you have a young

(01:06:49):
man who is told you, should you wish to stay
the way you are now because you're so beautiful, and
one day you're going to be old, and so he just,
you know, kind of makes this wish about I wish
somebody would just paint my portrait and it could grow
old and I could stay young. So that's what happens.

(01:07:12):
It's only that as time goes on, he really starts
to delve into some deep desires and to act in
some very unsavory ways, and every time he does, his
portrait shows all that ugliness on it. And it's just
a really fascinating study of human nature and desire and

(01:07:36):
what it means to grapple with those things.

Speaker 2 (01:07:41):
I love that story too, but I haven't read it
in about fifteen years. I got to remedy that and
give it a reread. Going back to an end, I
just read this one. It's another indie book and its
a Shadow Manner by Candice Nola. This this story is interested.
I didn't like it at first because it was kind
of weird. It's about this young woman who her jerk

(01:08:02):
of a boyfriend leaves her stranded in the middle of nowhere.
So she's walking in the rain is pouring out, so
she comes across this old mansion and she decides to
take refuge in there. And that was the part I
didn't like. It just didn't seem overly realistic to me
about her, just like getting into the mansion and deciding
to stay there. But you know, thinking when I say it,

(01:08:25):
it's like, yeah, of course you would, right Like, you're
in the middle of nowhere, you don't know where you are.
You going to stay in this abandoned place and try
to contact your mom to come pick you up. And
what she doesn't realize is that the place is seriously
haunted and it's haunted by secrets and of what happened there.

Speaker 4 (01:08:43):
And it's a really good book.

Speaker 2 (01:08:46):
I was surprised by it's very short too. It's a novella,
and it's by Candas Nola. Candace Nola is pretty hot
right now. I would recommend it.

Speaker 4 (01:08:57):
It's it's a lot of fun.

Speaker 3 (01:09:00):
I haven't read that one either, so I'm so excited
to add that one to my list.

Speaker 2 (01:09:05):
Absolutely what else you got?

Speaker 3 (01:09:08):
The Haunting of Belkwood. I know I've mentioned it a
few times, but it is by gwendolen Kist and it
is about an entire neighborhood that's haunted, and it is
so unique in the way that it explores the past,
and it explores this idea of being trapped in the
past because our main character and two of her best friends,

(01:09:31):
they grew up in this suburban neighborhood and they are
leaving for college one night, and this veil encapsulates the
entire neighborhood and no one can get out of the
neighborhood and no one can go back into it except
for the main character and her two friends, and so
she eventually goes back to it and has to confront

(01:09:55):
her past and come to terms with who you know,
who she is and who she wants to be, and
just the way that gwynol and Kiss writes about different
ways of dealing with trauma. Because one of the main
character's best friends has completely shut down because of what happened,
her other best friend has pushed forward in life, almost

(01:10:19):
repressing everything that happened and just moving on with it.
And it's like our main character kind of has her
feet in both of those ways of dealing with trauma,
because she deals with some repression, but she also deals
a little bit with trying to move forward, but she
neither fully you know, represses and moves forward, and she

(01:10:43):
doesn't fully break down. She just kind of stagnant. But
she goes back to deal with all of that and
may or may not have a happy ending. I wouldn't
want to spoil it for anybody, but I just love
that book so much. But it was my favorite book
of twenty twenty four.

Speaker 4 (01:11:03):
I love that.

Speaker 3 (01:11:04):
Twenty twenty three, No, twenty twenty four.

Speaker 4 (01:11:07):
I think it was early twenty twenty four.

Speaker 3 (01:11:09):
Yeah, yeah, twenty twenty it was.

Speaker 4 (01:11:10):
Just last year.

Speaker 2 (01:11:11):
I'm pretty sure when I talked to her about dex
and if anyone listening wants to check that out, it's
in an earlier episode. I don't have the number, but yes,
I talked to gwendolen Kist about that, and it was
such a awesome reading experience. I have a bad memory, and
a lot of books after I read them, they kind
of disappear, but that one doesn't. I still think about

(01:11:33):
it occasionally.

Speaker 3 (01:11:34):
Uh huh.

Speaker 4 (01:11:35):
I love that.

Speaker 2 (01:11:36):
I love gwendolen Kist. She's one of my favorites, and
I'm glad you mentioned it because that's another one i'd
like to add to my You know what, I made
my own mind go blank when I was like, Okay,
what are my favorites here?

Speaker 4 (01:11:50):
That one it's hard.

Speaker 2 (01:11:52):
Yeah, that one could actually be in the top three.
Like I said, though, if we were to do this
again next week, my top three in my honorable mentions
would probably have additions that I forgot or whatnot and
and or be real organized. So there you have it.

Speaker 3 (01:12:09):
No, it's hard. It's hard.

Speaker 4 (01:12:13):
Now there's one.

Speaker 2 (01:12:14):
My last honorable mention here is one that kind of
confuses me because I don't understand the intention behind it,
because well, it's Rebecca by deaf Neeed de Maurier. Now
there's I don't know if I want to go into
what it's about. Okay, spoiler alert for anyone who hasn't
read it, maybe move ahead ten ten five to ten

(01:12:37):
minutes in the future. But in deaf need Damury de
Maurier's Rebecca, it's about a young woman who kind of
falls for a rich dude and they decided they're going
to get married, and along the way they learn that
he killed his ex wife and uh, you know, disposed
of the body, but the past is coming back to

(01:12:57):
haunt them, and they both work together to try to
hide this. And that's that's what confuses me. It's like,
who am I like? I get it, you don't always
have to root for the main character, but this one
confused me because I felt like I should be rooting
for them, you know.

Speaker 4 (01:13:13):
What I mean? Have you read that book? And yes,
can you? Can you teach me.

Speaker 1 (01:13:20):
It?

Speaker 3 (01:13:21):
You know it is it's kind of complicated. I mean,
we do find out that, you know, at least according
to mister Dewinter, that his ex wife Rebecca is a horrible,
horrible person. Uh. And so I think getting that kind
of view of her and then following the protagonist, the

(01:13:41):
second Missus do winner the rest of the time that
you you just tend to want to see her be victorious.
And you also have that really wicked, wicked housekeeper, Missus Danvers,
who was very much in league with the with ba.
We don't ever get the name of our main character

(01:14:03):
is just the second Missus de Winter. So I think
that's why it's easier to pull for, you know, them
to be able to cover up what they did, and
the language in that book is just absolutely beautiful. I
love Dafneed beautiful. Yeah, fantastic.

Speaker 2 (01:14:22):
I was listening to a podcast that discussed that book recently.
It was kind of a surprise because it wasn't like
part of the title. They were just talking about books,
a bunch of different books, and that one came up,
and one of the person who brought it up as
a woman, and she was like, you know, I read
this when I was a kid, like teenager, and when
she read it then she was like, oh, to be

(01:14:44):
you know, the second Missus Winter, that would be great, right,
But then she reread it as an adult and she
was had a completely opposite reaction.

Speaker 4 (01:14:53):
She was like, why did I ever think that?

Speaker 3 (01:14:58):
Yeah, it's it's kind of it is similar to Jane
Eyre when you think about Jane and her ending up
with Rochester and you kind of have different views of
these men and women when you get older.

Speaker 2 (01:15:13):
Yeah, it's it's interesting how that happens, just like reading
pet cemetery before you have children. Yeah, all right, do
you have any more you'd like to discuss?

Speaker 3 (01:15:25):
Just quick honorable mentions I could not ignore Stephen King,
I do you want to talk about just a little
bit about the Shining because that is Gothic. You've got
the haunted hotel, the past haunting the present in both
the events that have taken place at the hotel, but
also in Jack himself, his past haunting him, haunting his family.

(01:15:48):
And another Stephen King novel, Delores Claiborne, that can be
read as Gothic, and I had never thought about reading
as Gothic, so I want to give the proper credit.
But Willow over at her book TIF channel Willow Talks Books,
she did a video about reading Dolores Claiborne as Gothic,

(01:16:09):
and it was fantastic because she brought out points about
the past haunting the present, family secrets like I won't
give away what those are, but there are some heavy,
heavy family secrets in Dolores Claiborne. And you also have
isolation and confinement, which is another part of the Gothic
because there's the island that the story takes place on,

(01:16:32):
which is isolated from the rest of the world. And
then Dolores in her experiences with an abusive husband and
what she finds out about him that makes her very
isolated and confined. She's a damsel in distress. Her daughter's
a Damsel in distress, and I was just like, that's

(01:16:53):
fantastic to read Dolores Claiborne as Gothic. So I was
really excited when Willow did that video. So those are
just two quick things I want to mention, and.

Speaker 4 (01:17:03):
That's Willow Talks Books.

Speaker 3 (01:17:05):
Willow Talks Books.

Speaker 2 (01:17:06):
I'm going to check that out because holy cow, I
didn't know.

Speaker 3 (01:17:09):
She will blow you away with her stuff. I mean,
every time I watch one of her videos, I feel
like I've attended a grad school session but had a
lot of fun with it. She's great.

Speaker 2 (01:17:21):
Yeah, you know, you bring up Stephen King, and I
think a lot of Stephen King books could be discussed
as Gothic, not all of them entirely, but like, have
you reads novella nineteen twenty two? Yes, that's like very gothic,
and oh my god, I love that story.

Speaker 4 (01:17:40):
Have you seen the movie adaptation for that?

Speaker 2 (01:17:42):
I have many talk about a movie having where you
have trouble hearing what they're saying. Yeah, all right, So
is that it for the honorable mentions?

Speaker 3 (01:17:56):
Just a couple more. You want to read the novel
that's considered to be the first Gothic novel, The Castle
of Otronto by Horace Walpole is absolutely ludicrous. It's ridiculous.
It's way over the top. If you want to have

(01:18:16):
your little bingo card or or a drinking game or
something to do something every time a Gothic trope comes on,
I wouldn't advice to do the drink it game. You'd
be smashed. But it's ridiculous, complete with like a giant
knight's helmet falling out of the sky and landing on people.
But Wild, Wild and other earlier Gothic what is it hallucinatory?

Speaker 1 (01:18:41):
Almost?

Speaker 3 (01:18:42):
Yeah, it's it's it's wild. Anne Radcliffe The Mysteries of
Udolpho is another early early Gothic, and she has a
really great quote about terror versus horror, and I'm just
gonna paraphrase that, but she talks about how terror is

(01:19:03):
the anticipation, the dread, the build up of the feeling,
whereas horror is when the horrible thing happens, and it's
more of your visceral reaction. And she talks about your
emotions being heightened and awakened when you experience terror, but
when you experience horror, that is an annihilation of your

(01:19:25):
emotion and you just cringe or you just shriek or whatever.
But it's just interesting to me the way that she
talks about terror versus horror.

Speaker 4 (01:19:37):
Awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:19:37):
I got to check those out because I haven't. I
haven't read those. Yeah, so thank you so much for that.
So if you're ready, I'm ready. We can go into
our top three here, Yes, would you like to lead
us off?

Speaker 3 (01:19:52):
I will. We'll start with Weathering Heights by Emily Bronte,
which some people would say, oh, that's just God, that
not horror, but I would advise you to think about
that and read it again, because I say, yes it is.
You have the sublime and the form of nature, you

(01:20:13):
have the wildness of the moors, you have the tragedy
of Heathcliff and Catherine. These are not people that you
will like. You will not necessarily root for them. But
it is a romantic story in the terms of like
upper case romantic. It's not a romance like people. I

(01:20:35):
don't read romance, but I know that romance books are
supposed to have a happy ending. It's not that kind.
But it will rip your heart out. It has just
some of the greatest lines of literature where you know
spoiler alert for one hundreds and hundred years old. But
Catherine after she dies and Heathcliff is mourning and he

(01:20:59):
says something like you killed me, you say, or you
say I killed you will haunt me? Then you have
just it's just so good, so good weather heights.

Speaker 4 (01:21:10):
Awesome choice.

Speaker 2 (01:21:12):
You know, I do have a classic on mine, but
I'm thinking I probably should have. I mentioned one like
the Jane Eyre that's one of my favorites of the classics,
and that could definitely go in an honorable mention, And
if I were to reread it, because I don't remember
it too well, it could end up in my top three.
But the first one I have is one I've probably
reread the most, and that's The Woman in Black by

(01:21:33):
Susan Hill. This kind of this story kind of reminds
me a little bit of Dracula itself in regards to
the protagonist going to take care of the affairs of
the old house where the woman recently passed away, and
you have the villagers who are like, yeah, don't go

(01:21:54):
in that house. It's terrible house, and they kind of
turn on them too, right like they did in Dracula,
And I just love that aspect about it. But I
al still love when he's in the house. You know,
it's just it's a very haunting story and it's full
of secrets, and it's uh, it's it's quite dark, and
it's very lyrical. The book itself is very lyrical, and

(01:22:14):
I love all the adaptations I've seen of it so far.
It's just one of my favorite stories of all time.
And that's The Woman in Black by Susan Hill.

Speaker 3 (01:22:24):
It's so good. I love it too.

Speaker 4 (01:22:26):
Yeah, what do you got next?

Speaker 3 (01:22:29):
Of course I had to mention my man Poe. Uh,
I have I have an entire stran to him over there.
I'm not kidding. I have a life size cut out
of Poe. So really, any and you know, any of
Poe's stories. But I'm gonna go with the fall of
the House of Usher because you have the decaying Usher Mansion,

(01:22:54):
you have nature encroaching upon the Usher Mansion, you have
family secrets, family drama potential like doppelganger or doubling of
Roderick and Madelon questions about their psyche's Is something supernatural happening?

(01:23:17):
Is this just Roderick's illness, Madeline's illness, And it's just
got all of those lovely, lovely Gothic elements that pay
was known for.

Speaker 2 (01:23:29):
Yes, I love Poe. I haven't really read them though
since like my twenties, and so I need to. I
need to fix that again too. I even have like
an Edgar Allan Poe shirt where it's just like a
picture of his face on it. I just absolutely love
that shirt. But I love his work though. It was
funny once I was at the beer store. I was
buying some beers like ten years ago, and I was

(01:23:51):
wearing my po shirt and the cashier started quoting Poe
to me, and it was from a story that I
hadn't read, and so I was just like looking at him,
like what And he was like said, girl, and Poe
like your shirt. I'm like, oh, okay, which one? And
then he told me which one. I don't remember what
it is now, but I felt like such an idiot.

Speaker 1 (01:24:11):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:24:12):
Yeah, I'm the poser wearing the Edgar Allen poecher.

Speaker 1 (01:24:17):
The pose er.

Speaker 4 (01:24:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:24:22):
Yeah, it's total favorite of mine too. My next is
that classic I was talking about, and that's Dracula by
Bram Stoker. I think we covered a lot about that
story with Nosferatu and whatnot, but you know the story
has been redone over and over again, but it never
seems to capture what the what the novel has.

Speaker 4 (01:24:41):
And I adore this book. It's beautiful.

Speaker 2 (01:24:45):
I like the epistol pistolatory style of it, and uh,
but everyone knows what the story is, so I'm not
going to go too much into that. But yeah, Dracula
by Bram Stoker.

Speaker 3 (01:24:57):
Absolutely, it's a classic for reason. I love it to you.

Speaker 4 (01:25:02):
Very well done, very well done. And what is your number? One?

Speaker 3 (01:25:07):
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Adore Frankenstein. I have like I
collect different editions when I see them, so I have
like seven now, and every time I see an addition,
I don't have them, like gotta get that one. But
I just I love Frankenstein. I love that Mary Shelley

(01:25:29):
was only nineteen when she wrote.

Speaker 4 (01:25:31):
It, and which is incredible it.

Speaker 3 (01:25:33):
Is she won the contest, you know, she beat out
Lord Byron, the bad boy of you know, of the
Romantic era, she beat out Percy, her husband, and just
wrote the scariest story. But I love it for it's

(01:25:54):
depth and richness that goes beyond just the surface, like
if you've only seen the movies which they're you know, hey,
they're great, and they're they're fun. But the novel goes
into so much more about the creature and about creators
and leaving you know, creating something and then leaving it

(01:26:16):
to flounder on its own, questions about nature versus nurture,
about what makes someone human. Just there's so much there,
and I just love love Frank.

Speaker 2 (01:26:29):
Has Son and talk about existential crisis. Yes, this book
is filled with that, and that's one thing I like
about it most. I identify with Frankenstein Monster mostly in
the movies because I've always been somewhat of a you know,
that person that nobody really It's different now than I'm adult.
Now that I'm an adult, I'm in like the workforce

(01:26:51):
and whatnot. You know, I'm fifty. People seem to like
me a lot more than when I.

Speaker 1 (01:26:55):
Was a kid.

Speaker 2 (01:26:55):
But when I was a kid, nobody talked to me,
nobody was really my friend, and sometimes they just outright
hated me for no reason. Right, And so I always
identified with Frankenstein Monster in the movies. Maybe not so
much the book, But I love the book too. It's
absolutely beautifully written and.

Speaker 4 (01:27:14):
It's incredible.

Speaker 2 (01:27:14):
Like you mentioned, she was only nineteen when she wrote
that it seems like it's way far older like most
nineteen year olds I know, which admittedly aren't many, but
the ones I do know there they could not possibly
write this kind of book with the depth and the
wisdom that's it. It's incredible.

Speaker 3 (01:27:35):
And she had been through so much with you know, miscarriages,
loss of babies. You know, her mother died, Mary Wolstoncraft,
who was a feminist writer, died when Mary was only
a few days old, and so she's grappling with all that,
and then with Percy, who was very moody and temperamental.

(01:27:57):
So possibly in the character Victor Frankenstein, she's working out
some of her issues with the creative, genius, moody, Romantic
era husband of hers. There's just so much in there
when you really start to unpack it. And I don't
even know how many times I've read it, and I

(01:28:17):
know this is cliche to say, but every time I
read it, I do find something new or see something
in a different light. And that also is one of
the things that makes me pick something as one of
my favorites is that it can always bring something new
to me.

Speaker 2 (01:28:35):
Awesome, all right, So my number one is The Haunting
of Hillhouse by Shirley Jackson. Shirley Jackson is one of
my favorite authors, and this I was debating between this
one and what's the other big.

Speaker 3 (01:28:48):
One that she is We have always lived in the castle.

Speaker 1 (01:28:51):
That's it.

Speaker 2 (01:28:52):
I was debating between those two. But when I thought
about it, I don't really remember castle very well, like
what happens in that, So this one I do remember.
And it's just one of those stories that it's got that,
you know, unreliable narrator. You don't know if what she's
experiencing is real or not as they go into this

(01:29:14):
house for their little experiment, and it doesn't end happily.
But I like the character of eleanor she that's her name, right.
She's a very interesting character. She's been through a lot
in her life and she's basically a prisoner to her
to her family, her mother, I believe it was, and
now she's finally free of her and she almost doesn't

(01:29:36):
know what to do, and she's you can kind of
believe that maybe what she's experiencing in this house is
a figment of her imagination because of how frail she
seems mentally. And like I said, it doesn't end well
and it's just it's one of those like Shirley Jackson
has a way of hypnotizing you with her writing, and

(01:29:58):
there's I wouldn't s say there's no other writer, because
there's other writers I feel the same about. But her
style is like completely her own, and she just blows
me away every time I read a new story by her,
and so that one will probably remain in the top
three forever for me. I need to reread We Have
Always Lived in the Castle because I need to remember it.

(01:30:22):
I only remember the sisters and the question of whether
or not they poisoned their family, and that's that's all
I remember.

Speaker 4 (01:30:31):
But but this book.

Speaker 2 (01:30:32):
It for some reason, it sticks and.

Speaker 4 (01:30:37):
I love it.

Speaker 2 (01:30:38):
It's an all time favorite of mine. And that first paragraph, Yeah,
it's it's that that first paragraph is immortal. Even after
the our son becomes a red giant engulfs the earth,
that sentence is going to survive.

Speaker 3 (01:30:54):
That, I agree, because I mean, just everything that she
packs into that opening, it just is the perfect like
example of a place that's haunted, a place that is off,
something's a bit wrong with it.

Speaker 2 (01:31:13):
Yeah, it's especially that last part of it. Whatever walked
in there walked alone? Yes, it's like, my.

Speaker 4 (01:31:18):
God, that just hits you know, like what it does?
All right, So that's it, we did it.

Speaker 2 (01:31:26):
I want to thank you Jen so much for coming
on and discussing this with me. I knew it was
going to be good and fun, but I didn't think
it was going to be this much good and fun,
and so thank you so much for bringing your expertise,
your education, and your intelligence to this one of my
favorite topics.

Speaker 3 (01:31:46):
Well, thank you, Jason. I've had a lovely time every
time that we've conversed, So thank you so much for
asking me to come on and talk about the GOTHE
with you.

Speaker 2 (01:31:57):
Is there any anything you'd like to.

Speaker 4 (01:32:02):
Pimp before we go? Anything you want people to know?

Speaker 3 (01:32:06):
You can follow me on YouTube, Instagram, and threads at
Literary Love one two three, and I'm occasionally on Blue Sky.
You may find me there if I figure out more
about how to work it. But that's about it, all right.

Speaker 2 (01:32:25):
Well, thank you again and we will talk to you
again soon.

Speaker 3 (01:32:29):
Thank you, Jathon

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052 - Gothic Horror with Jen From Literary Love 123

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}052 - Gothic Horror with Jen From Literary Love 123