Now you guys know I like H.G. Wells, but not for the strict purposes of this forum. Brilliant though he may have been in the field of science- fiction, visionary in social conscience, a very fine writer in general-- he could not write a proper ghost story to save his life. Sad but true. He dances around it often enough, gives it a peck on the cheek a couple of times, but he never quite gets the nerve up to take it home. There must have been something innately repellant about the whole concept to him.Fantasies come much easier, but even there he does not come across as comfortable with the framework for its own sake. Inevitably they become springboards for this or that idea of morality, symbolism, psychic science, or human frailty, legitimate concerns certainly, and something all the great fantasistes do, but in Wells' hands they usurp the narrative at every turn. One gets the impression that he was ever bursting with something else to say quite beyond the bit of supernaturalism he picked up dripping on the end of a stick as it were, and didn't know what to do with afterwards.
These forays could run the gamut from sublime ('The Apple') to thought- provoking ('A Vision Of Judgement', 'The Door In The Wall', 'The Plattner Story') to whimsical ('The Man Who Could Work Miracles', 'The Truth About Pyecraft') to just plain silly ('The Inexperienced Ghost'), but the only time Wells is actually scary is when he's writing a straight horror story ('The Cone', 'Pollock And The Porroh Man'). His ghosts are simply incapable of delivering fear, and this strange inability to reconcile the two is nowhere more evident than in 'The Red Room' (THE PLATTNER STORY AND OTHERS, 1897).
Wells' "I" (he used first person a great deal, and it's only apt that he should use it here) is determined to stay in the haunted Red Room at Lorraine Castle, over the admonishing judgements of the baleful geezers who are affording him this privilege. 'This night of all nights !' says the old woman, so we know we've got the time right, at least. The young duke who last tried to lay the ghost of the room fell down the stairs exiting it, the timid wife of bygone days either died of fright or went mad, it is unclear which. Percipient readers will realize that this is all deliberate Gothic crinkum-crankum on Wells' part anyway.
Naturally the room is cold, shadowy, and thoroughly uninviting. Wells lights the fire and every candle in the place, even goes to get more, and soon the room looks like Methuselah's birthday cake. It doesn't help. Round midnight the candles begin to go out of themselves, and Wells is hard-pressed to keep from being plunged into the forbidding dark.
Wakefield did it a *lot* better in 'Blind Man's Buff'. Besides, any ghost story told in first person by the sole character involved only has a limited number of possible endings, most of them lame. 'How I came to escape', 'When I awoke...', and 'My hair has been white ever since' are not going to win any Fantasy awards, and 'I realized then that I was dead' will just get you a personal ass-kicking from me if I ever see you. I'm too old for that crap. Wells, having painted himself into this particular corner, takes a flat-footed jump straight up in the air and comes down hard on the # 1 notion that makes the literary ghost worth seeking out, its capacity to scare. It's a cheap shot and it flunks as satire and as philosophy simultaneously. To his credit, Wells must have had an inkling that it did, for, with the exception of 'The Stolen Body' from TWELVE STORIES AND A DREAM (1903), which is more along the lines of a possession, he never attempted the malign spectre again. While restating 'The Red Room's theme to much better effect in THE CROQUET PLAYER (1936), he abandons the idea of the specific haunt entirely.
Perhaps the author so famous for the wealth of his imagination in everything else was actually satisfied with the explanation his rational mind had created, which made this story the only thing he had to say on the subject of the terrifying ghost: to effectively make it a non-subject. Never able to truly wed himself to the dystopian universe of rawhead and bloody bones, he can only be considered a well-meaning bachelor.
http://www.users.mis.net/~starr99/Halloween/RedRoom.html
http://directory.google.com/Top/Arts/Literature/Authors/W/Wells,_H._G./O
nline_Text_Archives/Specific_Texts/rbadac
oOo
rbadac (April 17, 2000)
rbadac wrote:
>
http://directory.google.com/Top/Arts/Literature/Authors/W/Wells,_H._G./O
nline_Text_Archives/Specific_Texts/
Medic !! I broke my link !!
Owww !!
rbadac, clutching his link
ooOoo