I still love how OG children's books were like, "A little light murder, anyone?" Sometimes reading books from the 60's/70's is a masterclass in What Wouldn't Work Today.
ALSO??? I LOVE knowing that Edward Gorey was as weird as I thought he was. Even when I wouldn't watch the rest of "Mystery!" I would come out to watch the intro. This is so great.
Isn't it amazing?? It's so interesting, too, thinking about what would fly and what wouldn't. I just had a minor debate with a library patron about flammable children's nightwear from the Victorian Era (because these are the things that happen at my library??) and I pulled out a kids' nonfiction title from a few years back (Killer Style) to Prove The Correctness Of My Argument. The book is TOTALLY snarkily macabre and so on, but for some reason doesn't even make me blink, whereas these illustrations, for some reason, do? I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why.
Oh wow, what fabulous drawings. Those creepy twins! I agree that there's a hint of Yellow Submarine in there; maybe it's the grins? Also my mom used to be able to recite all of The Cremation of Sam McGee. She has a scary good memory.
I just remembered (from your links below) that I read the Keeper on your recommendation. And I did love it, but I found the ending to be SUPER WEIRD for specific GenX reasons and I had FEELINGS about it and nobody to discuss them with.
Yeah, I think it's the grins and that they're in profile? Either way, it's been too long since I watched that one. And that's amazing about your mother, that's such an amazing choice of poem to memorize. I used to know Jabberwocky by heart—I should dust it off.
If you remember what your FEELINGS were about The Keeper, I'd love to hear them!! (It's been a while since I read it, obviously, but I'm so curious!)
Mom has several long poems in her brain and has been known to perform the Housekeeper's Lament upon request. I don't know how she does it; my brain is only full of stupid jingles and pop songs.
Okay, but there are SPOILERS so people, don't keep reading if you don't want to know the ending of the Keepers. It turns out that almost everyone in the neighborhood is part of a hereditary black magic coven (which settled the village in the first place). For generations, they've been sacrificing a child every 25 years to ensure safety and prosperity for everyone else, not to mention magical control over the natural world. Even the sheriff seems to be in on it. This struck me as a very strange resolution. So, in this story, much of what people feared most back in the Satanic Panic was true?? I just find this very weird, to write a story set in the present, in which we pretty much have a scenario that echoes exactly what people worried about in 1987 -- that there are secret cabals of outwardly-respectable people practicing black magic and murdering children, and they're so good at it that nobody ever suspects a single thing.
Like I said, this is a very Gen X reaction, and probably only if you grew up kind of close to the SP as I did. Not that my family was evangelical or that my parents worried about Satanism -- they didn't. But we lived close to a city that was going through one of the big trials, and a lot of adults I knew did worry about it; as far as I knew (at 14) it was a reasonable thing to worry about. And because I'm from a town with a particularly high level of wackadooness, well, I have some particularly strange stories. A family I knew very well believed that their youngest daughter had been abused by underground Satanists, and they spent the next 20 years moving every so often because when the nationwide secret network found them, they'd have to move again. (I ran into the mom's elderly parents some 15 years later, asked how they were doing, and everything was fine until I asked where they were now. They clammed right up, and I realized I had committed a faux pas with that question.) These people were otherwise completely normal, intelligent folks and to this day I have NO IDEA what really happened there, but boy I sure do want to know. So you can see why this novel hit me kind of weird, right? Maybe it makes sense to process those fears through fiction? I don't know!
Ooooooh, interesting! I didn't even consider the parallels to the Satanic Panic--I'm a Gen Xer as well, but didn't have as close a relationship to it all as you did, which would certainly make a difference.
I read it more as general commentary on older generations being willing to sacrifice the younger generations in exchange for present-day comfort, so more of an allegory about the environment or about a few people amassing way more wealth/resources than they could ever possibly use, etc., etc. But holy cow, now that you say it, I kind of can't believe your read didn't occur to me as well? Thank you so much for laying it all out for me!!
I still love how OG children's books were like, "A little light murder, anyone?" Sometimes reading books from the 60's/70's is a masterclass in What Wouldn't Work Today.
ALSO??? I LOVE knowing that Edward Gorey was as weird as I thought he was. Even when I wouldn't watch the rest of "Mystery!" I would come out to watch the intro. This is so great.
Isn't it amazing?? It's so interesting, too, thinking about what would fly and what wouldn't. I just had a minor debate with a library patron about flammable children's nightwear from the Victorian Era (because these are the things that happen at my library??) and I pulled out a kids' nonfiction title from a few years back (Killer Style) to Prove The Correctness Of My Argument. The book is TOTALLY snarkily macabre and so on, but for some reason doesn't even make me blink, whereas these illustrations, for some reason, do? I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why.
Re: Gorey: If you haven't read this, it's worth it: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2011/01/04/the-coats-of-edward-gorey/
Oh wow, what fabulous drawings. Those creepy twins! I agree that there's a hint of Yellow Submarine in there; maybe it's the grins? Also my mom used to be able to recite all of The Cremation of Sam McGee. She has a scary good memory.
I just remembered (from your links below) that I read the Keeper on your recommendation. And I did love it, but I found the ending to be SUPER WEIRD for specific GenX reasons and I had FEELINGS about it and nobody to discuss them with.
Yeah, I think it's the grins and that they're in profile? Either way, it's been too long since I watched that one. And that's amazing about your mother, that's such an amazing choice of poem to memorize. I used to know Jabberwocky by heart—I should dust it off.
If you remember what your FEELINGS were about The Keeper, I'd love to hear them!! (It's been a while since I read it, obviously, but I'm so curious!)
Mom has several long poems in her brain and has been known to perform the Housekeeper's Lament upon request. I don't know how she does it; my brain is only full of stupid jingles and pop songs.
Okay, but there are SPOILERS so people, don't keep reading if you don't want to know the ending of the Keepers. It turns out that almost everyone in the neighborhood is part of a hereditary black magic coven (which settled the village in the first place). For generations, they've been sacrificing a child every 25 years to ensure safety and prosperity for everyone else, not to mention magical control over the natural world. Even the sheriff seems to be in on it. This struck me as a very strange resolution. So, in this story, much of what people feared most back in the Satanic Panic was true?? I just find this very weird, to write a story set in the present, in which we pretty much have a scenario that echoes exactly what people worried about in 1987 -- that there are secret cabals of outwardly-respectable people practicing black magic and murdering children, and they're so good at it that nobody ever suspects a single thing.
Like I said, this is a very Gen X reaction, and probably only if you grew up kind of close to the SP as I did. Not that my family was evangelical or that my parents worried about Satanism -- they didn't. But we lived close to a city that was going through one of the big trials, and a lot of adults I knew did worry about it; as far as I knew (at 14) it was a reasonable thing to worry about. And because I'm from a town with a particularly high level of wackadooness, well, I have some particularly strange stories. A family I knew very well believed that their youngest daughter had been abused by underground Satanists, and they spent the next 20 years moving every so often because when the nationwide secret network found them, they'd have to move again. (I ran into the mom's elderly parents some 15 years later, asked how they were doing, and everything was fine until I asked where they were now. They clammed right up, and I realized I had committed a faux pas with that question.) These people were otherwise completely normal, intelligent folks and to this day I have NO IDEA what really happened there, but boy I sure do want to know. So you can see why this novel hit me kind of weird, right? Maybe it makes sense to process those fears through fiction? I don't know!
Ooooooh, interesting! I didn't even consider the parallels to the Satanic Panic--I'm a Gen Xer as well, but didn't have as close a relationship to it all as you did, which would certainly make a difference.
I read it more as general commentary on older generations being willing to sacrifice the younger generations in exchange for present-day comfort, so more of an allegory about the environment or about a few people amassing way more wealth/resources than they could ever possibly use, etc., etc. But holy cow, now that you say it, I kind of can't believe your read didn't occur to me as well? Thank you so much for laying it all out for me!!