Shop Talk#4: The Back Trails of Research (Part of a Series)

No "fun" for Writer Tom, This Time

I have just returned from four days in Alpine County, California. “Gee,” you might well ask, “doesn’t this call for another episode of ‘Them Thar Hills’? Another hapless Laurel-and-Hardyesque escapade about being pursued by bears and burning down campsites—no, entire national forests ala Edward Abbey in Desert Solitaire?” No, not this time. My primary goal had little to do with basking in Nature’s Glory and divining Her Secrets (though a little divination did go on). This time it was all about research. The collection and absorption of information about the people of Alpine County. All in preparation for the approaching conclusion of my work on that fabulous, sure-to-be bestselling novel all of my readers are Morally Obligated to purchase or face the Onslaught of Various Rashes and Bizarre Deformities: The Vampire of Alpine Canyon. People live in the country, often close to, and within, wilderness itself. I know this is strange to many of my readers who are probably mostly urban dwellers. Maybe one or two of you feel the same way about the country as H.L. Mencken: Nature “is a place to throw empty beer cans on a Sunday.” It’s a funny thing about the supernatural tale. The more realistic, the more grounded in quotidian detail it is, the stronger the sense of surprise, awe and terror at the appearance of the fantastic. Nathaniel Hawthorne seems to be the first to notice this, and, no one’s proven him wrong yet. (Fantasy horror efforts, like the awful awful The Mummy and Van Helsing don’t even deserve the term ‘horror.’ They’re action comedies, and bad ones at that.) I need enough of those everyday details to make my story, its characters and the world it takes place in, believable, to you, my loyal readers, who will make yourself twenty-to-thirty bucks poorer to fulfill your solemn duty to me, your hard-working author (unless you wait for the paperback). And to get those details, and get ‘em right, I had to return to the scene of my original inspiration. Now, as you might imagine, the Alpine County of quotidian reality has, in the rich soil of my mind, morphed into another place that resembles the magical place I love, but is still very different. Firstly, it was missing a couple of significant geographic features I want for my book—one of them the titular canyon. But I knew that things would have to really change when, on a trip I took a couple of years ago, I learned from a curator at the County Museum, that Alpine County completely lacked a certain kind of Rural Professional, who had become central to my tale. (Apologies for my coyness here, but I really don’t want to spoil it for you.) At that point, I realized I could no longer use real-world Alpine County as my backdrop. I would have to “make a place up,” a normal practice among novelists of all genres (read Joyce Carol Oates’ Bellefleur, another great Gothic, which is set in an imaginary Upstate New York.) First off, I changed the name of the county. Next, I doubled its land area and its smallest-in-the-state population of around 1,200. Increasing the population meant creating another whole new town and actually demoting the remote, charming, bucolic county seat of Markleeville (population 150) to a remote, charming, bucolic village, also bearing a new name. Still, I need a realistic baseline to build my new fictional world from and there is still plenty that Alpine County can teach me. (Another note: The next biggest California county in population, Sierra County, is around 3500, which is way too much. In fact, Alpine County is so small, California's state government considers it “unclassifiable” in terms of state funding.).

My Front Yard (See last week's posting for back yard.)

I arrived on Sunday afternoon and camped in Grover Hot Springs State Park, a place I’d hiked around on a couple of occasions, but this trip, as a camper, I found myself falling stoned in love with: I decided to make it my base for my entire stay. (With a four-square mile golden meadow surrounded by the towering looming Sierras as my front yard, what fool am I to sneer?) In my previous posting on this subject, I shared a profound dread of the hostile resistance I might face in response to my questions. I couldn’t have been more wrong, I’m grateful to say. From the County Health Services, through the Washo (Southern Band) tribal headquarters, on to the Sheriff’s Department and the County Library, all my questions were answered with patience, utter politeness and everyone’s best effort (though the Sheriff’s spokesperson did worry about whether if they would be reading about yet another crooked, spineless, inept small-town sheriff; I assured her not). Not all questions, of course, could be answered and correspondence with a couple of the people I spoke to will continue. One insight I did gain that I can share: not all the facts I learned about how things are done in Alpine County, will become facts in my book. By now, my fictional location has taken on a shape of its own. Practices regarding say, law enforcement, vary, from county to county. In Alpine County, the California Highway Patrol handles all traffic matters on all roads . . . but that will not be the case in my story. Still, just that scrap of info helped to clarify a few things. Still, I have to be careful. Critics complain, often rightly, how genre writers blithely ignore reality just to keep our fanciful plots moving. Fair point, but too much attention to too much detail can create a doorstop book: a kind of Á la Recherché du Temps Perdue Meets Edgar Rice Burroughs that doesn’t get moving until page 300, because I’ve spent too much time describing how the deputy cleans what kind of pistol while reflecting on his latent transexualism and problems with his pregnant wife: I’m not doing either Tom Clancy-ville or Marcel Proust, here. I returned home on Thursday with over a dozen pages of chicken scratching and a tremendous case of exhaustion—I hardly slept the whole time I was there—part of the reason I did very little hiking around. I’m still catching up. Sleep? Oh yes, more please . . . . Nevertheless, this time, I crossed one of the biggest mountains. I’m well into the Valley of the Third Draft (the Reader’s Draft.) of The Vampire of Alpine Canyon. Despite all the work that remains, I do believe I see a little light up there, just over those peaks, yonder.

There. See it? Yonder . . . .

Old Media Department: Mailer and His Demon

As a genre fiction enthusiast and sometime World War II buff, I couldn’t help but be intrigued to find that yet another highbrow mainstream author has swum through the dark pool of the horror genre. This time, from these deeps, rises an interesting hybrid of historical novel and Gothic tale, this one excavating the childhood of Adolf Hitler. That book is The Castle in the Forest. The author is Norman Mailer.

Before you litterateurs wince, here’s a plain fact: Practically every major literary writer (except maybe Hemingway) has at least one horror tale lurking in their oeuvre. Young Tennessee Williams wrote for Weird Tales. Truman Capote spun several contributions to the genre. No less a novelist than John Updike, in The New Yorker awhile back, picked James Joyce’s The Dead as the finest ghost story ever. (We may disagree, but we won’t argue.) One of my favorite gothic horror novels is Bellefleur by Joyce Carol Oates: a perennial Pulitzer and Nobel Prize nominee and winner of the National Book Award and the Bram Stoker Award.

If you know Mailer’s work or reputation (I’ve only read The Naked and the Dead, An American Dream, and his very useful book on writing, The Spooky Art) it might be as one of the most ultra-macho of American writers. Mailer has gone to extremes few would dare, often at serious costs to his reputation (Supporting Jack Henry Abbott. Stabbing his wife. Head-butting Gore Vidal. Mailer has never seemed to need a full moon to become a werewolf in his long public career.)

The Castle in the Forest is told by a wandering demon who occupies the body of one Dieter, an S.S. man under the stick of Heinrich Himmler. But the Demon’s true Fuehrer is a certain “Maestro” who may—or may not—be Satan Himself.

Hitler’s roots have always been mysterious, even to Hitler. Fearful that “Jewish blood” might swirl through his veins (likely not, per the best evidence), he orders “Heini” Himmler to investigate. Himmler is passionately curious about the origins of his beloved “Superman” (and is one of the best pointers for the theory that Nazism was primarily a religious movement.)

It so happens that, once upon a time, Little Dolfie was a “client” of the Demon’s who was given this job by the Maestro. It is this Demon who sweeps us back to misty nineteenth century rural Hapsburg Austria and into the brutal humble life of Hitler’s father: one Alois Schicklgruber (and don’t we all wish he’d kept that name!? Say it out loud: “Heil Schicklgruber!” O, for the want of a nail!)

Through his Demon, Mailer points the finger of blame, not at Alois’ parenting skills (which, while often harsh in the manner of his time, appear mostly inconsistent and fumbling), but at his marriage to Anna Ploezl, Adolf’s mother. History has documented this kind, naïve and devout woman as Alois’ blood niece, but, claims the Demon, the couple was actually much much closer than that. He concludes that it was their incest that created the monster who stirs our nightmares still.

This theory of the origins of Hitler's evil is as plausible as others. (The sole source for the myth that it was all Hitler’s Daddy’s Fault is Hitler: like we can believe him!) But once this revelation passes, Mailer’s narrative seems to lose traction, though it’s always interesting and superbly written. It’s full of interesting ruminations: swipes at “popular writers;” a long treatise on apiculture; an eventful side-trip to the chaotic coronation of Tsar Nicholas II; and Satan’s love for all fundamentalists, religious and secular.

I like how Mailer handles the supernatural elements: Demonic power is purely psychic. Demons prefer to worm their way into the troughs dug by dreams where they plant their nefarious notions. (Since he’s a sociopath born of incest, little Dolfie has the richest soil.) Mailer conjures many disturbing and chilling moments. He’s a little less successful with the setting: much of the best horror writing is deeply evocative of place, and landscapes like this—the ground of Grimm’s Fairy Tales—beg for more vivid treatment.

Much of the narrative follows Alois’ and Anna’s hard struggle to make a life together; how the taboo they share remains buried in their subconscious, while shaping their lives as they innocently shelter the child of evil they have borne together. It makes for a story of strong pathos, but its true horror can only be found beyond this tale’s end. Stirring traditional horror into real history is a difficult recipe to pull off, but Mailer comes closer than most.

Copyright 2015 by Thomas Burchfield

Thomas Burchfield’s latest (yet to be published) novel is Butchertown, a ripping, 1920s gangster shoot-‘em-up. He is also the author of the contemporary Dracula novel Dragon's Ark, winner of the IPPY, NIEA, and Halloween Book festival awards for horror in 2012. He’s also author of the original screenplays Whackers and The Uglies (e-book editions only). Published by Ambler House Publishing, those three are available at Amazon in various editions. You can also find his work at Barnes and Noble,  Powell's Books, and Scribed. He also “friends” on Facebook, tweets on Twitter, reads at Goodreads and drinks at various bars around the East Bay. You can also join his e-mail list via tbdeluxe [at] sbcglobal [dot] net. He lives in Northern California with his wife, Elizabeth.