A Halloween Review: The Werewolf of Paris by Guy Endore

  A version of this article appeared in Knights of the Dinner Table #156 (October, 2009).

From 2006 through 2012 I was the "Off the Shelf" columnist for Knights of the Dinner Table, a magazine and comic book devoted to tabletop fantasy role paying games. I reviewed classic and
modern fantasy, horror, and science fiction novels. Every October I tried to review a work of classic horror in honor of Halloween. I am trying to continue that tradition with my blog. You can find previous Halloween Reviews here. 

When Halloween again rises from its grave to stalk the cool fall nights, one’s thoughts turn to the classic move monster of yore, that unholy triad of Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, and the Wolfman. The first two first appeared in classic gothic novels of the nineteenth century, widely read and beloved thrillers that often feature in high school reading lists. The werewolf’s historical and mythological roots are deeper than the other two; nearly every culture has some sort of lycanthropic legend. Werewolf tales are particularly widespread in Europe, where true stories of horrific wolf attacks were mythologized into fables such as Red Riding Hood. Despite this rich history, the literary antecedent of the Wolfman is less well known than his two companion classic horrors, in part because that 1933 novel, The Werewolf of Paris, remains under copyright.  

The Werewolf of Paris was written by Guy Endore, born Samuel Goldstein. Endore is best known today as a novelist and screen writer who was black-listed as a communist during the Red Scare. Endore was a communist (at least for a time), and was thoroughly immersed in the avant-garde intellectual movements of the 1930s. He was also educated in Europe.

Endore’s political leanings add a great deal to The Werewolf of Paris, a truly remarkable horror novel. Set in nineteenth century France, the novel tells the story of Bertrand Caillet as told primarily by his step-uncle, Aymar. Unlike later versions of the werewolf myth, Bertrand is not cursed by the bite of another werewolf but suffers rather from a family curse.  The novel tells the origin of this curse, and then details Bertrand’s sad life from birth to death.  The novel climaxes during the Franco-Prussian War, Bertrand is in Paris during the German siege, the Paris Commune, and the eventual retaking of Paris by the Versaillais troops. 

The descriptions of the Commune are vivid, and throughout the novel Endore’s Leftist sympathies leak through the text, yet this enhances rather than detracts from the experience, allowing the reader to immerse him or herself in the languid yet fevered atmosphere of France in the nineteenth century. The contrast between Bertrand’s bucolic home village and the beleaguered Paris, were Bertrand’s depredations are truly the least of horrors is particularly acute.

In addition to the politics, Endore’s novel reeks of sex, and the sex is both more blatant and more depraved than the bubbling under-currents of Victorian erotic repression found in Dracula. The werewolf tale has always had a direct connection to sex, again Red Riding Hood is the most obvious example. The Caillet family curse is born and perpetuated through sexual transgression down the ages. Bertrand’s own bestial urges expresses itself sexually as well as violently, and the only cure for his affliction appears to be a demented sort of true love. Though certainly not pornographic or particularly explicit, the sexuality is disturbing enough that I recommend parents read he book before their teenagers. I would only allow older, mature teens to read it myself. 

For gamemasters the novel is most fruitful as a background template, demonstrating how to design a memorable non-player character.  Bertrand makes an excellent tragic villain, and presenting the players with this sort of challenge, a monster that perhaps should not be killed yet must be stopped, is an excellent change of pace. Players may find less of immediate use, although Aymar’s investigations once he is in Paris itself may be instructive for Call of Cthulhu or other games involving supernatural investigations.

Despite its popularity, Endore’s novel was not filmed itself until 1962 when the famous British horror studio, Hammer Films, made Curse of the Werewolf. The novel’s psychological depth and overt sexuality was a deterrent to earlier dramatization. The filmed version moved the action to 18th century Spain, and was Oliver Reed's first starring role.

Bertrand’s rich, evocative prose makes the novel an engaging read despite the heavy subject matter.  Readers looking for a classic horror story with depth and resonance will be well rewarded his work. Read it late on a windy night with a window open and dogs howling in the distance… and don’t be surprised if you crave red meat and more the next day…

All views in this blog are my own and represent the views of no other person, organization, or institution.

A Halloween Review: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

 A version of this article appeared in Knights of the Dinner Table #168 (October, 2010).

From 2006 through 2012 I was the "Off the Shelf" columnist for Knights of the Dinner Table, a magazine and comic book devoted to tabletop fantasy role paying games. I reviewed classic and modern fantasy, horror, and science fiction novels. Every October I tried to review a work of classic horror in honor of Halloween. I am trying to continue that tradition with my blog. You can find previous Halloween Reviews here. 

The witch is on the broomstick and a chill is in the air as haunted old Halloween arrives. This year I review Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

Mary Shelley was a remarkable woman from a remarkable family; her father was a famous philosopher, her mother a famous feminist, her husband the renowned poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her early life was remarkable for the early 19th century, ‘radical’ even by today’s standards and colored by a remarkable amount of grief.  Aside from the creation of his monster, she in fact led a far more fascinating and interesting life than her novel’s protagonist. But a full accounting of her life would require a thick biography.

The story of the genesis of Frankenstein is well known. In 1816 she and Percy visited Lord Byron at a villa near Lake Geneva, Switzerland.  To pass the rainy days, Byron suggested they write ghost stories themselves, and from that summer came the story that she later worked into the novel: Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.

The plot of the novel is well know: Frankenstein, a Byronic figure, becomes infatuated with creating life through electricity and his obsessive studies and experiments allow him to eventually give life to a creature he has constructed from cadavers.  His reaction is not what he expects:

It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs. 

How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips.

Frankenstein violently rejects his creature and abandons it, returning to his home and trying to resume his life as though his demented escapade had never occurred. But of course one’s mistakes cannot be so easily buried or forgotten and tragedy stalks Frankenstein’s loved ones until finally he and the creature race to a final confrontation in the far north. The novel is narrated by the device of a framing tale to the captain of an arctic exploration vessel as Frankenstein recovers from exposure.

Frankentsein is a major influence for gamers, directly inspiring villains in various horror settings like TSR’s Ravenloft. Frankenstein himself serves as an excellent model for either PC protagonist or NPC antagonist, indeed stripped of his scientific trappings he makes an excellent wizard.  The Creature is equally fascinating, and gamemasters who study how he plots his actions and justifies his actions can model truly tragic and emotionally painful foes for their players on him. Of course, for those gaming in a ‘Steam-punk’ setting the novel is practically required reading.  

Frankenstein is a classic novel that fully deserves the attention it receives, but it has perhaps been over-exposed.  High school English teachers reach for it easily, since it grabs the attention of students and the author’s life touches on so many important themes: Romanticism, Feminism, Liberalism, and so forth. But few of us truly enjoy works we are forced to read as homework, and when our memories are tainted by dozens of movies which pay only a passing nod to the novel while employing its themes and characters with casual abandon, it is only natural the one begins to think of it as an anemic, unoriginal motif.

But Shelley’s novel is more than that, it is a rich, full-bodied gothic experience that induces in the willing reader a deep despair. Her prose is as carefully crafted as any other from that most literary period, and just as passionate as anything written by Byron or Shelley themselves. 

When the moon is full and you wish to delve into the soul of horror and despair, leave the urban vampire tales alone and revisit Frankenstein.  It will be time well spent. 

All views in this blog are my own and represent the views of no other person, organization, or institution.

A Halloween Review: Dracula by Bram Stoker

 A version of this article appeared in Knights of the Dinner Table #144 (October, 2008).

From 2006 through 2012 I was the "Off the Shelf" columnist for Knights of the Dinner Table, a magazine and comic book devoted to tabletop fantasy role paying games. I reviewed classic and modern fantasy, horror, and science fiction novels. Every October I tried to review a work of classic horror in honor of Halloween. I am trying to restart that tradition with my blog.

Cover of Dracula, 13th Edition, 1919
Held by the British Library.

The air is cool and pumpkins again litter the countryside.  As the leaves turn and fall, a young man’s thoughts naturally turn to witches, ghosts, and vampires. And, of course, one considers the grand-daddy of all vampire tales, Dracula. The Count is one of the most pervasive characters in popular culture, appearing again and again in books, movies, music, even poetry. What remains to be said about a fictional figure over whom so much ink has already been spilled?

Little, perhaps, but one can always find value in the original sources of cultural icons. Though many folks know the broad outlines of Stoker’s novel, the many movie and stage versions have been far from faithful adaptations. The classic’s original impact may be rediscovered and understood more deeply against the backdrop of so many variations on its themes.

Bram Stoker was an Irish novelist and playwright of modest success.  His primary occupation was business manager of actor Henry Irving’s Lyceum Theater, but he produced many novels both before the 1897 publication of Dracula and after.  Perhaps the best known of these later works are the horror tales: The Jewel of Seven Stars (1903), The Lair of the White Worm (1911), The Lady of the Shroud (1909), and the posthumous short story collection, Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Stories (1914).  Sadly, none of these later attempts match the power or style of his masterpiece.

Dracula may be examined as a work of three parts, though Stoker does not clearly organize it so. Each part is defined by Dracula’s victim, or prey. In the first, he preys on Jonathon Harker, determined to drain him of his knowledge of London, and more. The next phase shifts, so suddenly that Harker’s final fate remains unknown, to Lucy, Dracula’s most tragic victim.  Within this long section all of the principle characters are fully introduced as Lucy’s friends and suitors struggle to save her from the diabolical count. In the final part of the novel, the victim is now Mina, and action revolves around the struggle to free her, and destroy the Count.  

The novel is written in an unusual style, as it purports to be merely a collection of letters, newspaper clippings, and journal entries written or collected by the participants in order to record the terrible, fateful events they observed. It is an extremely effective literary device, which allows the authorial point of view to shift smoothly from character to character while increasing the sense of tension and the importance of time. And Stoker is quite aware of time, carefully knitting his plot together so that dates match up exactly. 

Yet the device does not lessen the power of Stoker’s prose.  Consider the following passage:

On the bed beside the window lay Jonathan Harker, his face flushed and breathing heavily as though in a stupor. Kneeling on the near edge of the bed facing outwards was the white-clad figure of his wife. By her side stood a tall, thin man, clad in black. His face was turned from us, but the instant we saw we all recognized the Count, in every way, even to the scar on his forehead. With his left hand he held both Mrs. Harker’s hands, keeping them away with her arms at full tension. His right hand gripped her by the back of the neck, forcing her face down on his bosom. Her white nightdress was smeared with blood, and a thin stream trickled down the man’s bare chest which was shown by his torn-open dress. The attitude of the two had a terrible resemblance to a child forcing a kitten’s nose into a saucer of milk to compel it to drink. 

The impact of Dracula’s appearance is heightened by the first person account, yet it is clear that unlike later writers, Stoker sees the vampire as a dangerous predator, a rapist. The love story between Mina and Dracula found in so many adaptations is completely missing from Stoker’s original tale, yet the novel is filled with love stories. First those between Lucy and her three suitors: Lord Godalming, Dr. Seward, and Quincy Morris, then later the love between Jonathon and Mina Harker. But these loves are the talisman against Dracula’s evil, not a means for his seductions.

Dracula’s mysteries, and subsequently his aura of fear and horror, are heightened by the literary device as well. Dracula leaves no journal entries, no record of his thoughts or feelings. We see him as the protagonists see him: a malevolent force of unfathomable evil. He appears rarely, aside from his initial introduction when Jonathon Harker spends considerable time in conversation with the Count. Then, when the introductory meetings have concluded, he becomes a shadowy figure of unknown whereabouts and means. The reader never knows more than the protagonists, and the tension increases accordingly. 

For gamers, Stoker’s novel is a must read. The characters are well formed and provide potent archetypes for players in horror campaigns. Dracula himself is the icon of the ‘big bad’ or main villain in a campaign and Stoker’s masterful handling of his villain provides a GM with both inspiration and specific ideas. And the lessons do not only apply to running vampire villains. Finally, the literary device of journals and letters can be gainfully borrowed by role playing campaigns regardless of genre.  Having your players write letters or journal entries between sessions is a certain way to increase roleplaying and atmosphere.

Stoker's novel has long been in the public domain and can be found in many places. Several versions are available on Project Gutenberg and on LibriVox.

Stoker’s original novel is a lush cornucopia of fear, lust, courage, and love. A rainy October day spent reading Dracula is time horrifically well spent.    

All views in this blog are my own and represent the views of no other person, organization, or institution.

A Halloween Review: The Lancashire Witches

A version of this article appeared in Knights of the Dinner Table #195 (September, 2013).

One of my greatest joys as a reader is discovering a good book that I have not read before. When it is an old book, an antique book, which I have not only not read but not even heard of, this joy is much greater. Back in 2013,  I found that joy while searching for books about witches when I discovered The Lancashire Witches: A Romance of Pendle Forest (1848), a novel written by William Harrison Ainsworth.

Ainsworth was trained as a lawyer in London, but never pursued the profession, instead entering into publishing with his first novel, Rookwood, in 1839.  His work was popular, and he was extremely prolific; taking English history as his source he went on to write forty or so historical novels covering centuries of English history. He was a friend and contemporary of Charles Dickens, as well as popular writer whose works sold very well, but his novels have generally not stood the test of time well and he is often forgotten by all but literary historians these days.

The Lancashire Witches, first published in serial form in 1848, is Ainsworth’s best known novel and the

"The Incantation." Illustration by John Gilbert.

one which has remained in print the longest. It is a fascinating work which tells a fantastical version of the historical trial of the Pendle Witches. Ainsworth begins the tale with a Catholic uprising against Henry the VIII a couple generations before the Pendle Witch trials, using a conflicted bishop and a fallen priest as a fascinating back drop to the tale, encompassing a quite long introduction.  The plot of the novel proper is then contained in three books.  Ainsworth builds his plot around a historical account of the trials, The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster by Thomas Potts, and makes Thomas Potts himself a wonderfully slimy character in the work.  Many of the characters names come from the historical event, but their relationships, roles, characters, and actions are not remotely historical; magic is distinctly real, devils and ghosts make regular appearances.

The novel’s protagonists are the tragic lovers, Richard Asheton and Alizon Device. The witches are quite real, and quite devoted to the devil, yet the witch hunters (save the king, James I) are depicted as venal money-grubbers, anxious to accuse others in order to gain benefits. Alizon’s purity is never in doubt, but her unfortunate relationships to witches make her a target of the witch hunters, even as the witches themselves try to sacrifice her to the devil for her purity. 

The novel’s presentations of Lancashire country life in the 1600s may not be perfectly historically accurate, but it is quite enjoyable, and anyone who has attended a Renaissance Fair will quickly recognize it as the source of so many tropes of Elizabethan games, it is self-consciously a depiction of “Merry Olde England.”

"The Ride Through the Murky Air."
Illustration by John Gilbert.

For gamers, this book is chock full of excellent examples and characters to steal. All of the various witches can be lifted whole-cloth for use as village healers, villains, or hedge witches in most roleplaying campaigns. Wonderful examples of spells and material components abound, as well as a great example of the internal politics of a witches' coven. Gamemasters can also see the workings of local versus national political leadership when the king visits in the last book of the novel, as well as some excellent plot ideas and concepts for properly using ghosts to push characters along. But the best steal from the novel is Nicholas Asheton, Richard’s cousin and a splendid character that gamemasters can lift whole-cloth and place in their campaigns as a local squire or other minor nobleman. Most of the funniest scenes in the novel center on his exploits.

Ainsworth was a friend of Dickens, but I found myself constantly comparing his work to a French contemporary, Alexandre Dumas. The Three Musketeers depicts the life of impoverished minor gentry in 16th century Paris, The Lancashire Witches does the same for 17th century rural England: both romanticize the time and place, but do so charmingly.   

The Lancashire Witches is still in print, you can find several reasonably priced paper editions easily, and it is also available for free from Project Gutenberg and as an audiobook from Librivox. If you ind a printed version, be sure to get one that includes the original illustrations by John Gilbert, they add immensely to the tale and are just plain fun. 

If you enjoy a touch of comedy in your melodrama, and some historical spice in your tragedy, or if you just love witches, give this old book a read. It is rather remarkable. 

All views in this blog are my own and represent the views of no other person, organization, or institution.

A Halloween Review: Edgar Allen Poe

 Portions of this article appeared in Knights of the Dinner Table #180 (October, 2011).

Gustave Doré, 1883

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore —

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

"'Tis some visiter," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door —

       Only this and nothing more."

The Raven, by Edgar Allan Poe (1845)

Halloween is one of my favorite times of the year, I love the spookiness, the colors, the chill in the air, and the sense of expectant gloom. I tend to favor old school horror -- Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolf Man, and the Mummy, without the "new" spin on these old monsters that they so often have. Along with that, I love Edgar Allen Poe.  

The United States in its first century produced several men of literary genius, but (albeit with all do respect to Washington Irving)  I believe Poe is our greatest literary contributor from those earliest days of the Republic. He is remarkable, so often imitated that many stumbling on Poe feel his work is hackneyed and over-done, not realizing that is only so because others have followed in his well-trod footsteps..  Poe reads so modern it is hard to recall he wrote before electricity, phones, space travel, computers, ect. indeed, even his ideas on poetry predate the modernist school!

And Poe was prolific, as befits a man who lived off of his writing, and he produced many lesser known works beyond his more famous compositions. These works contain all of the classic Poe touches, and truly capture Poe’s macabre mannerisms and writing style.

Recently, a collection of Poe's more famous short works, read by legendary actors Basil Rathbone and Vincent Price, have come out for and our available to download and listen to for free. I cannot recommend these collections enough; Rathbone's reading of "The Raven" and Price's reading of "Morella" are particular highlights.  You can read more about this collection here. Or go directly to Spotify to download them. 

“The Fall of the House of Usher" is perhaps my favorite Poe work, primarily because it employs one o my favorite literary devices, the library. Although the Usher library listed in the tale is comprised of real works, the climax involves reading from a fictional tome, the “Mad Trist” of Sir Launcelot Canning. Both the fictional tome and the library influenced many later writers to include such in their own tales.

“Not hear it?—yes, I hear it, and have heard it. Long—long—long—many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard it—yet I dared not—oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am!—I dared not—I dared not speak! We have put her living in the tomb! Said I not that my senses were acute? I now tell you that I heard her first feeble movements in the hollow coffin. I heard them—many, many days ago—yet I dared not—I dared not speak! And now—to-night—Ethelred—ha! ha!—the breaking of the hermit’s door, and the death-cry of the dragon, and the clangor of the shield!—say, rather, the rending of her coffin, and the grating of the iron hinges of her prison, and her struggles within the coppered archway of the vault! Oh! whither shall I fly? Will she not be here anon? Is she not hurrying to upbraid me for my haste? Have I not heard her footstep on the stair? Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her heart? Madman!”—here he sprang furiously to his feet, and shrieked out his syllables, as if in the effort he were giving up his soul—“Madman! I tell you that she now stands without the door!      [Edgar A. Poe, “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839)]

Of course, “The Masque of the Red Death,” feels incredibly timely these days. It's difficult to find a tale more on the nose for our current predicament in 2020. Have I mentioned how modern and timely Poe usually feels?  

Harry Clarke, 1919

And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.  [Edgar A. Poe, _The Masque of the Red Death_ (1842)]

"The Casque of Amontillado" is a classic revenge tale, a murder told from the perspective of the murderer. It might remind the reader of similar Poe tales such as “The Black Cat” but its Italian Renaissance setting makes it particularly good inspiration. 

 "A Descent into the Maelström" is one of Poe’s nautical tales, describing a disastrous Norwegian fishing trip. The image of vast, over-powering nature is inspiring in itself, I believe it heavily influenced the final climatic scene in Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. 

Then there is Poe’s greatest nautical tale, and his only completed novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. An adventure tale at first, it degenerates from shipwreck to cannibalism, to rescue and then shipwreck again, and ends with eldritch discoveries and bizarre happenings on Antarctica. Very few have read this strange work, which ends in an abrupt, magical manner. Nonetheless it inspired Jules Verne to write an unofficial sequel, An Antarctic Mystery and H.P. Lovecraft to write At the Mountains of Madness.

My favorite poem of Poe's isn't The Raven, as a fine a work as that is, but rather The Bells. I just love the way that Poe is able to get across so much mood and sound with just careful and inspired word choice, few poems take the reader from joy to profundity to dread in so few bars, it is a true master-work, in my opinion. 

And a perfect ending for this short essay!

Hear the tolling of the bells —
                 Iron bells!
What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!
        In the silence of the night,
        How we shiver with affright
      At the melancholy menace of their tone!

All views in this blog are my own and represent the views of no other person, organization, or institution.