Transcript
Speaker: Hi, I'm Carly. And I'm Caroline. Welcome to the Book Club Podcast. This is our season one feedback episode. And we are in the same room looking at each other face to face. And this is the episode where we go back and review all the feedback that you've given us and share it with the rest of you.
Speaker: Yes, so we'll start with the first book, which was 99 Fear Street, the first horror. The feedback is from our audio editor, Alex. He says, I thought it struck a great balance between useful insights and observations from your separate reading experiences, while also not spoiling too much for those of us who haven't yet read the book.
Speaker: I loved when Caroline mentioned Stein's fake out moment in the book, because as a kid that practically bathed in goosebumps books, that's a total Stein move. It definitely is. And that was also part of why I loved goosebumps as a kid. Well, and I hope with our following episodes that we didn't spoil too much. Yes, I hope that continued to be true. Alex also says, I also enjoyed the brief discussion about the house itself being the haunted entity.
Speaker: It seems like that became a trend in some ways in movies, and it's interesting to see how writers and filmmakers experiment with how to handle that trope. Yeah, and I think that was true for most of the books we read too, that it's the house, the house is the entity, or it's not necessarily just a vessel for a human spirit, but there's something about the house itself.
Speaker: Yes. Yeah, I think that showed up in a number of the books, ultimately. So our next comment relates to The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. This is from a friend of the show, another Alex, a different Alex. He says, I enjoyed y 'all's reconciliation of the two prominent interpretations.
Speaker: that the ghosts were real, but that the governess was solely responsible for the murder. I found the idea of the ghosts being idle spectators, gawking at her descent into madness be amusing in a grim sort of way. It seems like ghosts are often portrayed as malicious or trying to right some wrong that occurred during her life, but in a way, apathetic ghosts might be scarier.
Speaker: Yeah. And I read something about the story that this is the first prominent ghost story where the ghost looks like corpses. Like it was sort of a new science to have
Speaker: a caretaker or a mortician, present the body and make them up. And I don't know, not remembering this completely, but that it was sort of a new thing for people to see bodies in this way. And so it was a new thing to see ghosts that looked like recently deceased bodies. So I wonder if that has something to do with it. Like why these ghosts are sort of gawking. Yeah. But they are dead. They're not trying to
Speaker: imitate life as spirits. Right. They were passive in a certain way in that story. Alex also said, something I appreciated about y 'all's analysis was how you described the multifaceted power dynamic at play between the governess and the boy. In a normal horror story, you would expect the governess to be in danger or at risk of bodily harm since she's the outsider and quote, lower status relative to those upper class children.
Speaker: But instead, she's the murderer. I always liked that subversion of expectations because there is horror in being the perpetrator of something awful just as much as being the victim. But horror stories rarely tap into that. That's a good point. I think we also talked about her as a victim as well, right? Because she is the victim of this class structure and this feeling of imprisonment. But she's also at least under one interpretation or murder. You have to keep those in balance, right?
Speaker: Yeah, like being afraid of what you yourself are capable of. That's an interesting concept. So Alex also said, so much of that story works due to the rigid class dynamics of Victorian England. Henry James was American, but set the story in England. Is a version of the story set in America possible? What differences would an American turn of the screw require?
Speaker: I don't know that in that time period, you would need a lot of differences. But I mean, the most obvious thing I can think of is what if it was set in the South when slavery was still happening, or even maybe just post slavery, where there's still maybe not not institutionalized slavery, but of course, still class and race dynamics. Yeah, I think
Speaker: I think there have been severe enough class dynamics in the United States in the past and currently that you could have this. I also think the gendered dynamics make a story like this possible, right? Because it's partly her feeling of limitation of being defined by children and having no other route to success for the world, to whatever she wants. And that, unfortunately, I don't think was specific to Victoria, England.
Speaker: And I think the yellow wallpaper touches on a lot of that and that was set in the United States.
Speaker: So our next feedback is on the house on Abigail Lane by Keelan Patrick Burke. And this actually came from a comment on Reddit by user anthelerdrabbit. Someone described the house on Abigail Lane as house of leaves for people who didn't like house of leaves. And as someone who absolutely despised house of leaves, I have to say that I agree because I loved house on Abigail Lane by Keelan Patrick Burke.
Speaker: It's almost what House of Leaves could have been without all the chaos. So that comment makes a lot of sense to me because the chief of books have some very similar formats, right? They are recounting what other investigators have experienced, what other people have experienced. It is like a compilation story in some ways.
Speaker: I preferred House of Leaves because I thought it warped my feeling of space and geometry in a more fundamental way. But I think there is definitely a similarity between the two.
Speaker: Yeah. Looking for comments on these books, I did find more than one comment sort of comparing House of Leaves to Abigail Lane in favor of Abigail Lane. I read those, unfortunately, before I read House of Leaves. So I didn't quite know what to expect. Was there something about House of Leaves that didn't age well? Or now having read it and having discussed it, I'm wondering if people
Speaker: got sucked into the puzzles. We had talked about in that discussion of not wanting to go that route, but liking the idea that one could go deep into all of the puzzles and research. And so I'm wondering if looking at it too closely makes House of Leaves lose its charm in a way. I can see that. I think also just a heavier, longer book with weird dead ends and academic language. And House on Abigail Lane was
Speaker: Yeah, like a sit down and you read it and it's enjoyable sort of book. They're very different in terms of user experience, I think. Yeah. I thought Abigail Lane had more in common with House on the Borderland because in Borderland you have several different experiences that seem to be
Speaker: other dimensions, the way Abigail Lane dealt with other dimensions. That's true. I had forgotten about that. And there is really no mention of that in House of Leaves. Oddly enough, that's maybe the one interpretation that is never mentioned in House of Leaves. Yeah, not even when they were talking about Helians at one point in House of Leaves. That's right.
Speaker: when they did the analysis of the physical samples. The stories are definitely similar. They're both compilation stories, although actually written by one person. Right. And all three of these books, Abigail Lane, Borderlands, and House of Leaves, were a complete surprise. I never would have guessed that a haunted house book could touch on those things. So that was fun for the season.
Speaker: All right. Our next commentary was about the yellow wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman from friend of the show, Jenny. Thank you for reading the yellow wallpaper. I also read the short story in high school, but the image of the woman creeping through the patterns in the paper never left me. I think what I love most about this story is the number of perspectives that all seem to be true at once. Like standing between two mirrors and seeing reflections go out to infinity.
Speaker: or looking at a sketch of a cube where it is unclear if the box projects out to you or recesses away. It seems equally possible that the protagonist is in a room with a malevolent spirit
Speaker: or that we're watching a woman succumb to an episode of postpartum depression, or that the woman's society is sick, withholding her agency and leaving her nothing but a life of creeping confinement. Jenny continues, this story takes me to a place where, much like the protagonist, I cannot determine what is real, and all of the possibilities seem to be true simultaneously.
Speaker: The wallpaper assumes multiple identities throughout the story, the perfect metaphor for changing identity, social structure, and even social media over 100 years. No one intentionally designs ugly wallpaper, but as time moves on, what once brought joy now brings madness. So first of all, I love Jenny's description in this about the
Speaker: cube recessing and standing between two mirrors. I love that language. That's great. And I also like what she says at the end about no one designs ugly wallpaper, but time moves on and sort of styles fade, but it sticks around. I think that's true. That's kind of the essence of haunted houses, right? They contain time and history with all those burdens or horrors or whatever your personal relationship with history is.
Speaker: Yeah. And then what do you think about multiple perspectives that can all be true at once? So in this story, I thought that was certainly true. And we've seen that in a number of the stories, right? Is the house actually haunted or are the people haunted? It's kind of a recurring theme, right? And then if it's the people who are haunted, there's several ways in which that can be true. That can be
Speaker: sort of the more artistic or metaphorical madness, or that could just be what we would call postpartum or something with a more physical origin.
Speaker: And they're all true at once, right? Yeah. I really like thinking about with different ways of diagnosing problems, right? Like before mental illness was diagnosed and treated as illness, people had different stories around what would cause someone to not be able to be fully aware of reality.
Speaker: I think it's a general term. Mental illness is too general a term, but I think that there were different ways that people and ways that society treated folks with mental illness. And it's interesting to me to think about like sometimes maybe they weren't better or worse than what we have now. Like I think there's a modern attitude of
Speaker: Oh, those poor people didn't have modern medicine and the APA, right? But I don't know. I think in some cases you hear stories about people who, despite being ill, were loved and had a place in their community. And so not necessarily like everyone with this illness
Speaker: suffered the way our character in the yellow wallpaper suffered, right? Like there could have been, just because they didn't have modern medicine doesn't mean that they didn't have ways to care for folks who are struggling. Well, not just that. And, you know, maybe it was
Speaker: postpartum, but that's not a dismissal of what she felt and what her feelings reflected as true about society. So you take that story and you apply some sort of diagnosis that doesn't reduce it in any way to me. The story still has meaning for us to think about
Speaker: all the issues that we talked about in the podcast. That concludes this feedback episode. We really appreciate the feedback. As always, feedback can be sent by recording a voice memo and emailing openingquestion at gmail .com. Or you can send us an email with your thoughts. You can also complete the feedback form on our website at bookclubpod .com.
Speaker: Listeners, we hope you have enjoyed listening to these haunted house discussions as much as we have enjoyed having them. We ask that you support this new podcast by telling your friends and leaving a review on your podcast app.
