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Wiseblood Books End-of-Year Letter 2020

12/31/2020

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Dear Readers,

During this year of dramatic reorientation Wiseblood Books brought ten new books into being:

Duty, the Soul of Beauty: Henry James on the Beautiful Life, by First Things editor R.R. Reno. The essay, selected as a “critic’s pick” by The New Criterion, reexamines the moral reckonings of James’ late fiction. As James Panero wrote, “this forty-page chapbook with French folds is both beautiful and duty-bound.”

The Tragedy of the Republic, by the great Catholic political philosopher Pierre Manent, interrogates several of our current crises through a reading of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus and Julius Caesar. This essay includes an instructive preface by Notre Dame political philosopher Patrick J. Deneen, who situates Manent’s arguments in the American context and further elucidates the paradoxes of the republic.

Minor Indignities, a debut novel by Trevor Cribben Merrill. John Wilson called it “an extraordinarily accomplished first novel,” and Patrick Deneen wrote that Merrill “has written the best kind of novel, one that entertains without numbing and instructs without preaching." New Polity noted that “Merrill’s refreshingly honest tone is where the novel really shines, both as a work of art, and as an understated apologia. Profound lessons and cultural critique are gently peppered into a narrative that remains down-to-earth, unafraid to explore the levities, temptations and complexities of adolescence.”

Boundaries of Eden, the much-anticipated second novel by Glenn Arbery. William Bedford Clark wrote that this “stand alone” sequel to Bearings and Distances “offers an unflinching assessment of the postmodern present and frank acknowledgement of our shared, often malignant past.”

If Nobody Calls, I’m Not Home (an epistolary novel) and The Next Time We Saw Paris (a book of poems) by the prolific Samuel Hazo. The New York Times Book Review wrote that Hazo has "a gift for phrase-making and for incisive moral judgments," and the Pulitzer-prize winning poet Richard Wilbur said that "each of Hazo's poems is a spare sparkling flow of good talk . . . one relishes his jauntiness, his ever-varied grammatical attack and the witty surplus of his phrasing."

Jazz & Other Stories, short fiction and a novella by Dena Hunt. Joseph Pearce describes the stories as being “animated by the Christ-haunted spirit of Miss Hunt's native South. This is first-rate fiction from a storyteller who plumbs the depths of the human condition. Simply splendid.”

The Evening Sky, Charles Hughes’ second book of poems. Robert B. Shaw sees Hughes' new collection as showing "a sensitivity both to things of this world and things of the spirit, a compassionate shrewdness," and Stephen Gibson, winner of the Miller Williams Poetry Prize, says "this knockout collection is one to return to again and again—here, individual ambition and personal failure intersect with the literary and historical: as Lear misunderstands love for what it isn’t, so a father fails family in not understanding self.”

“Dense Poems & Socratic Light”: The Poetry of John Martin Finlay (1941–1991) and "With Constant Light”: The Collected Essays and Reviews, with Selections from the Diaries, Letters, and Other Prose of John Martin Finlay (1941–1991). Finlay, one of the lesser-known luminaries of the Catholic literary tradition, awaits rediscovery by many—all thanks to many years of meticulous labors undertaken by David Middleton, John P. Doucet, and Angela Cybulski, as well as full support from the Finlay Estate.

We hosted Katy Carl for our first annual Wiseblood Writing Residency (-without-a-Residence). Our residency offers authors of significant promise a stipend, a small library of paradigmatic novels and books on the art and craft of fiction, two weeks’ room and board, and intensive editorial and craft advice, as well as the prospect of a publishing contract. On account of Covid Katy joined us from a distance, but our time together generated many gains—not least a fully-realized draft of As Earth Without Water, Carl’s first novel, due out from Wiseblood in 2021. Katy found the Residency “an innovative, sui generis opportunity for writers. No other workshop that I am aware of integrates meticulous feedback, practical support, and intellectual and spiritual community in quite the same way.” It was pure joy to work with her!

We also selected Sally Thomas as our 2021 Writer-in-Residence. Thomas is the author of a poetry collection, Motherland, a finalist for the 2018 Able Muse Book Award and published by Able Muse Press in 2020. She will shape her novel ​Works of Mercy (working title), which follows a woman who "was in many ways a more contented widow than I had been a wife" as she cleans the rectory "for the good of my soul" and travels through the tangled backroads of her mind, sorting out how it is that she got there. The Wiseblood editors found in Thomas's novel a "spare, ruminative style that somehow admits the lyrical without blushing and arrives at keen psychological insight through understatement or indirection." Read more about the Residency HERE.

Although the entirety of our 2021 publications calendar is not determined, I am happy to announce a number of forthcoming Wiseblood Books: Exegesis of Common Places, by Léon Bloy. This translation by Louis Cancelmi brings Bloy’s singular work to English readers for the first time; Padre Raimundo’s Army, short stories by Arthur Powers; Earth and Water, Katy Carl’s debut novel; The Disciple, by Paul Bourget (an out-of-print, lesser-known novel of the Catholic literary tradition). We are also striving to secure reprint rights for: Christ and Apollo: The Dimensions of the Literary Imagination, by William F. Lynch, S.J.; The Demons, by Heimito von Doderer (with a new introduction by Martin Mosebach); and several novels by Alice Thomas Ellis.

After several years of steady but quieter work, Wiseblood has gained considerable momentum; I am immensely proud (and therefore need to confess committing a deadly sin?) of the books we’ve brought out this past year. I am wholeheartedly devoted to seeing that these yields continue. Thanks to the unprecedented liberality of several major donors, I have reduced my academic load at Belmont Abbey College, where I remain Assistant Director of the Honors College, in order to increase my editorial, supervisory, and promotional work with Wiseblood Books. Our editorial team is stronger than ever, thanks especially to the all-around assistance of our Managing Editor Louis Maltese, as well as the excellent copyedits of Mary Lang and Kate Weaver. We are lean but able—and efficient! As ever, we rely on your monetary support, which underwrites our intransient commitment to publishing new books in the Catholic literary tradition. Please consider making a tax-deductible Donation of Constantine, or offering even a Widow’s Mite, HERE.

Thank you for reading, and for all you do to help us forge a new idiom for writers riddled by the Incarnation.

With great gratitude,
 
Joshua

Joshua Hren, Ph.D.
Founder and Editor of Wiseblood Books
 
 
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Wiseblood Books End-of-Year Letter, 2019

12/14/2019

1 Comment

 
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Dear Readers,

This past year Wiseblood Books brought four new books into being: Dana Gioia’s The Catholic Writer Today and Other Essays; Nathaniel Hansen’s Measuring Time and Other Stories; Ryan Wilson’s How to Think Like a Poet; and James Matthew Wilson’s The River of the Immaculate Conception. We partnered with TAN Books to give Gioia’s book wider distribution, and the Benedict XVI Institute provided extraordinary patronage of James Matthew Wilson’s long poem, including this beautiful video HERE.

We staffed a book booth at and participated in the Catholic Imagination Conference at Loyola University-Chicago and had a presence at events surrounding the Mass of the Americas in Washington, D.C. We offered local readings, lectures, and workshops, and selected our first Wiseblood Writer in Residence—Katy Carl—who will spend two weeks with us in July of 2020. Our residency offers authors of significant promise a stipend, room and board for two weeks, and intensive, daily, one-to-one editorial and craft advice, as well as the prospect of a publishing contract. Keep your eyes wide for our 2021 Wiseblood Writer in Residence Contest: call for contenders coming soon through Submittable.

Although the entirety of our 2020 publications calendar is not determined, I am happy to announce a number of forthcoming Wiseblood Books: Minor Indignities: Confessions of a None, a new novel by Trevor Cribben Merrill; Boundaries of Eden, the sequel to Glenn Arbery’s novel Bearings and Distances; Jazz and Other Stories, by Dena Hunt; the Collected Prose and Poetry of John Finlay; as well as a Wiseblood Essay in Contemporary Culture by R.R. Reno. PLEASE NOTE: for the past several years we have been accepting submissions through solicitation only. Next year we will establish a Submittable account, which will open seasonally for general submissions. 

After several years of steady but quieter work, Wiseblood is gaining considerable momentum. This coming year promises more of the same, with a string of events (including the Windhover Writers Festival and several readings in collaboration with Houston-based Catholic Literary Arts), interviews, and speaking engagements already filling the calendar. One merits special mention: Wiseblood Books is a proud co-sponsor of Colosseum Books’ Summer Institute for Writers of Poetry and Fiction. In June I will travel to Villanova University to run the fiction portion of this Institute, which is dedicated to raising up a new generation of writers whose work is marked by artistic excellence and saturated with a Catholic vision.

​I am wholeheartedly devoted to seeing that these yields continue. Thanks to the unprecedented liberality of several major donors, I will be reducing my academic load at Belmont Abbey College, where I am Assistant Director of the Honors College, in order to increase my editorial, supervisory, and promotional work with Wiseblood Books. Our editorial team, which includes our excellent new copyeditor Mary Lang, is lean but remarkably capacious--and efficient! We need your monetary support to ensure that our stubborn commitment to publishing new books in the Catholic literary tradition continues to bear fruit. Please consider making a tax-deductible Donation of Constantine, or offering even a Widow’s Mite, HERE.

Thank you for reading, and for all you do to help us bring books into being.
With great gratitude,
 
Joshua
Joshua Hren, Ph.D.
Editor-in-Chief of Wiseblood Books
www.wisebloodbooks.com   
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Review of "Jennifer the Damned", by Karen Ullo

2/22/2018

4 Comments

 

Carolyn J. Watson
​

   I rode the Metaphysical Seesaw at the Fair of the Senses. Actually, I read Karen Ullo's Jennifer the Damned, which oscillates between the ordinary world of a teenaged girl and a world of Gothic bloodlust and murder. The plot swoops through wrenching events; the writing bursts with sensory-surround. Swinging dizzily from the quotidian to the fantastical, I flailed to make connections and find solid footing, until I was tumbled out at last into a place of resolution. On second reading I begin to see, within the chaotic seesawing world, a pattern of desire, belief, choice and consequences, and grace.

   Vampire lore, and horror in general, are territories of a foreign country I have no desire to visit. But Ullo folds the horrors forthrightly into her story and integrates the consequences of horrific acts into the mainstream of the narrative––no excuses, no evasions, no pleading of special circumstances. Life is deeply wounded and forever changed by criminal actions, but it does not grind to a halt, and the actions do not completely define the criminal. The joint between the heinous and the mundane is greased by humor that acknowledges the absurdities of Jennifer's situation. The grit of self-pity, however, is almost entirely absent from her character.

   In a dream, Jennifer Carshaw sees her soul dangling just out of reach. Vampires, Jennifer believes, do not have souls. But if this metaphysical proposition is a lie, then redemption is possible, even for a vampire. And bloodlust is not a fate but a temptation, very powerful but not irresistible. This revelation would open up a new possibility for the vampire, no longer doomed either to death by a stake through the heart or to an existence of hot, fatal impulse and endless, lonely exclusion. The finale might open into transformation of the vampire and of integration––or re-integration––into the human family. But if the vampire has agency, she must eventually assume responsibility for her blood murders, and the hour of reckoning looms along with the possibility of a new life of freedom. The reader is left to ponder at what point and to what degree someone traveling the trajectory from soul-enslaving lies to liberating truth is responsible for actions that issue from, and accompany, the former.

   Jennifer was not born a vampire; she was ripped from her mother's womb just before birth by the murderous vampire Helen, who takes and raises her after transforming her into a vampire-to-be. Despite this Ur-tragedy, Jennifer is an attractive character––perceptive, compassionate, equipped with a quirky, dry sense of self-assessing humor. The story opens on her 16th birthday, a fateful day when the long-incubating vampiric proclivities burst forth even as she tries to continue her life as a brainy teenager navigating a variety of relationships (including a first-ever romance) with her clueless classmates. Indispensible to Jennifer's existence––and indeed, to her salvation––is the unkillable love of a small group of religious sisters, in whose convent in Baton Rouge she lives. Helen left Jennifer with the sisters in the mistaken belief that exposure to their teaching about the love of God for humanity would throw into relief the unequivocal exclusion of the vampire from the community of human and divine love. Eventually, the temporary sensory euphoria and satiation of drinking victims' blood proves to be a tantalizing, empty promise. A pivotal moment occurs when Jennifer has a powerful realization of divine love and of the possibility of a new life, extended to her for the taking. Out of pride, she refuses the offer and commits a truly heinous act.  

   Four years later she is in Los Angeles, with a new identity, working as a make-up artist by day and killing by night when the need becomes urgent. Here she is presented with two offers of love: One is a self-sacrificing love resonant with redemptive possibilities but requiring painful truth; the other is a less demanding love based on shared, mutual emptiness.

   Jennifer's choices become clear, but other things are not so clear. The motivation for Helen's desire to experience motherhood remains murky. How Jennifer passed through childhood in the company of her redoubtable pseudo-mother without incurring debilitating trauma is also unclear. The psychological boundary between the persona of the vampire and that of the bright young woman is not quite convincing: She certainly feels guilt and regret but she is not crippled by denial and repression. There are painful problems but no intractable neuroses in the psyche of the blighted Jennifer. The faithful devotion and sexual self-control of her movie-star boyfriend, formerly a philanderer, is not entirely believable. Characteristics traditionally associated with vampires seem to be sorted for the convenience of the narrator: no disfiguring fangs, pointed ears, or empty mirrors, which would be too difficult to integrate into a story featuring much close social interaction. Aversion to sunlight is neutralized by sunscreen. But red lips, radiantly seductive appeal, super strength, and speed are retained and are used to good effect by the author. In the first half of the book the narrative voice seems a little too mature for the sixteen-year-old to whom it belongs. This problem is resolved in the second half, when Jennifer, working in Hollywood, is twenty. Jennifer retains her virginity in Babylon, a virginity entirely suited to her character and in the protection of which she can draw on the super-strength of a vampire, though the feat is managed almost too easily for someone so alone and so attractive. Here again the story's limits are served: What would happen downstream from sexual love with a vampire? What monstrous offspring?

   Much attention is rightly given to description of Jennifer's struggle with the urge to control blood-lust, which, when denied, grows over time into a raging torment. For this blood-lust the chief stimulus and organ of sensation is the olfactory; Ullo's descriptions of the lovely, tantalizing perfume of life-in-the-blood, a bouquet of aromas unique to each individual and bearing the imprint of his or her personhood and deeds, is a striking manifestation of the infinitely precious and unique beauty of each human soul (and beyond that, of the beauty of the Eucharist). The logistical difficulties inherent in concealing an alter identity are also well articulated.

   The style of writing suits the story. Whimsical, somewhat disjointed syntax correlates to the vampire's disconnects from the world. Adjectives, adverbs and phrases which float from one context into another, create a hovering veil of associations, not quite in contact with the nouns and verbs which they are called into existence to serve, and are analogs of the girl who hovers between worlds. Description and narrative are, in places, not stream-of-consciousness, but stream-of-sensation in character. This mode of writing serves to lift the reader over the abyss between vampire and human teenager.
​

   Ullo's story is not without difficulties, most of which are traceable to the uncertain metaphysical boundary between the human and the vampire. However, the story is boldly (not brutally) told, the main character is well worth knowing, and the writing is fragrant and creative. A luminous, common-sensical, and life-affirming Catholicism is a welcome inversion of a dark, superstitious Catholic quicksand caricatured in Gothic fiction.

 

Carolyn Watson is a medievalist by training and she has published one book and several articles on topics ranging from 4th-century ivories to 14th-century manuscripts. She is also interested in art theory, especially ideas of beauty and creativity. She teaches at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina. ​

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Writing Through The Curves: Stay Connected

11/2/2017

3 Comments

 

by Angela Cybulski 

 

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Tip #3: Stay Connected

When I was a teenager, I attended a (then) California Angels game and was both excited and surprised to see All-Star Angels catcher and one of my favorite players, Brian Downing, sitting not 20 feet away from us in a reserved section. His leg was encased in a heavy cast and rested high on the bleacher seat in front of him. He sat there, by himself, for the entire game cheering on his team. I never forgot this – Downing couldn’t play, and would be unable to for some time, but he showed up. He can't know the example he set for me in that simple act.

For a baseball player, getting placed on the DL (disabled list) for an injury is a serious curveball that literally upsets his entire game. The player has been operating on a set routine day in and day out, practicing his skills and working in community with the rest of the team to perfect his game. His success depends upon his active participation in the routine and consistent practice. But an injury sets his whole routine off balance, effectively severing it along with the player's accustomed role in the team community. A new routine is necessary to deal with the curve – often slow recovery from the injury and then physical therapy before a gradual return to practice, with the hope of eventually returning to the original routine and communal role. In Downing’s case, his recovery from that injury brought with it an additional curveball: he was unable to return to his position as catcher – instead, he needed to work and train up to lead the outfield in the starting lineup. Through these life-altering, game-changing curves, Downing and other injured players stay connected -- they make the effort required to participate in the team community to the extent they are able and to the best of their ability, and even move into all new territory, if that is what is required.

When the curves come in fast and hard for writers and other artists, they can leave us feeling disoriented and out of the loop, maybe even completely out of commission. This can be especially hard and discouraging, especially if you were writing regularly and now are finding it extremely difficult or even impossible to sustain the kind of work or level of commitment you have been used to demonstrating. As you work to weather the curves and figure out how to deal with them, it is important to stay connected to both the craft and practice of writing, as well as to the larger community of writers.

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One way to keep your hand in the game while you manage the curveballs is to read a book on writing that speaks to where you’re at now, or maybe re-read an old favorite. Perhaps there you’ll find an idea that speaks to you in your current situation, which helps you make better sense of the thing you are struggling with. Or maybe the book serves as inspiration to continue on at all, even in the smallest, most seemingly insignificant way. Choose carefully, however; not all books on the craft of writing are appropriate sources of inspiration and encouragement if you are struggling with life-changing issues. You don’t want a book that discourages you by setting up impossible expectations which you can’t hope to achieve right now. Rather, you need ideas and options, encouragement and support. I mentioned one of my favorite books in my first post to this series, Pen On Fire, by Barbara DeMarco-Barrett. One other book that I find inspiring and nurturing is If You Want To Write, by Brenda Ueland. Bird by bird by Anne Lamott is also a favorite. These books are humorous and encouraging, fully aware of the curveballs LIFE can let fly at you, and they offer practical inspiration and workable ideas to help keep you writing and staying connected when things get really hard. Or perhaps you might consider keeping an actual record of an authentic writing life close at hand to help give you courage and support when things seem particularly difficult to navigate in your own writing life. I love The Habit of Being, by Flannery O’Connor and A Writer’s Diary, by Virginia Woolf. Both writers recount, through letters and personal diaries, the highs and lows, joys and sufferings of daily life and how they do – or do not – write through it and what helps them stay connected and inspired through it all. I find these two books are especially good when dealing with my own suffering, whether physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual. They demonstrate that art can survive, and even be born through, suffering, and illustrate positive and negative ways of dealing with both.

Another way to stay connected is through craft publications like Poets & Writers and The Writer. These magazines provide articles about what a real writing life looks like and offer many different ways of approaching your craft and working with and through life-changing situations. For example, one article in Poets & Writers dealt with a writing couple whose child has severe special needs and examined the ways they both manage to stay connected to their craft, while also managing the challenges their child’s disability presents and making their marriage a priority. Other articles have dealt with figuring out how to write while dealing with the death of a family member, experiencing divorce, or navigating serious illness. Staying connected to the larger writing community through articles like these have provided invaluable encouragement to me since some of my curveballs have recently made it impossible for me to write consistently. Reading craft publications also helps to keep your project front and center, even when you can’t get to it right then, by providing ample inspiration and food for thought during those times when you can’t practice.

If you are able to get out -- which might do you good -- perhaps you can find time to attend a writing event or conference in your area. Professionals in all fields take time for development, networking, and meaningful conversation with colleagues. Poets & Writers has an app you can download on your phone. Based on your location, the app provides current listings of readings, book-signings, author events and writing-related everything that might be offered in your area. Bookstores and libraries are also great resources for discovering local literary events; often they host writers and workshops, even book fairs and writing conferences. Local newspapers and community magazines may also have listings for literary events. I recently attended a Q&A session with a literary agent through a local writer’s salon, which was both informative and relaxing. It also provided a great opportunity to network and socialize with other writers, and was a much-needed break from the issues I am juggling at home.

If your curveballs prevent you from leaving the house or committing much time to extra-curricular events, consider staying connected through some of the great places for writers on the web. Visit LitHub, The Writing Café, The Paris Review, and Aerogramme Writers Studio. Podcasts on writing are a wonderful way to stay connected. Download the Stitcher app or use iTunes and look for Writers on Writing, Between the Covers, The NY Times Book Review, Ampersand, Bookworm, and The Guardian Books Podcast are some of my favorites -- I can listen while I'm folding laundry, cleaning the house, making dinner, or running errands in the car. I love listening to these interview shows with authors and agents, discussing every aspect of living a literary life. They provide great inspiration and encouragement, especially when you hear how other writers have worked through the curveballs in their own lives.

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Staying connected to the larger writing community via these various avenues reminds me that I am not alone in my struggles to sustain an authentic writing life even amidst some pretty brutal curveballs. These resources remind me that I can still find a way to work on my art in a manner that works for the way my life is NOW, that I need to stay hopeful, and that I need to persevere to whatever extent I am able. Staying connected ultimately means showing up, even if I can't play, and showing that I am part of the team, part of the community. This is the life-lesson I learned by the example set for me by that beloved all-star who, though he wasn’t able to play down on the field, still showed up for the game, no less committed. In his quiet example, Brian Downing left a legacy he isn’t even aware of. And after all these years, I’m still grateful for the gift of his example.

This is part three of a six-part series. You can find previous entries here:

Writing Through the Curves: Series Opener
Tip #1: Let go of the pressure
Tip #2: Find a place apart


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The Spiritual Purpose of Horror Stories: Part 2 of 2

10/25/2017

7 Comments

 

by Karen Ullo

Read Part 1 here

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Horror stories are inherently metaphorical, externalizing inward truths, and as such they also function very readily as fables or parables. Mary Shelley hit us over the head with this fact in Frankenstein:

“I am by no means indifferent to the manner in which whatever moral tendencies exist in the sentiments of the characters shall affect the reader… [especially] the exhibition of the amiableness of domestic affection, and the excellence of universal virtue.”  — Mary Shelley, Preface to Frankenstein

Then, just in case you missed that she told you she’s writing a parable:

“Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be his world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow.” ― Frankenstein (Victor Frankenstein to Robert Walton)

And then, Shelley ups the ante:

“Like Adam, I was apparently united by no link to any other being in existence; but his state was far different from mine in every other respect. He had come forth from the hands of God a perfect creature, happy and prosperous, guarded by the especial care of his Creator; he was allowed to converse with, and acquire knowledge from, beings of a superior nature: but I was wretched, helpless, and alone. Many times I considered Satan as the fitter emblem of my condition; for often, like him, when I viewed the bliss of my protectors, the bitter gall of envy rose within me.” – Frankenstein (spoken by the monster)

Mary Shelley did everything but tattoo the words “spiritual metaphor” on the monster’s head. Yet many critics still insist on reading Frankenstein as anything and everything but a spiritual story. How could Mary Shelley, daughter of an outspoken atheist who ran away with a married man who was also an outspoken atheist, a woman who bore a child out of wedlock before her eventual marriage, who lived anything but a model Christian life, write a story rooted in Christian symbolism about a struggle of the soul against virtue? Surely, she couldn’t have really meant it?

Jesus himself answered that question: "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick." (Mark 2:17)

“I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on,” says the monster. Frankenstein is a story of and for the sick of soul.

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But even if all genuine horror stories grapple with the reality of sin, there does seem to be a general distinction between stories written by believers and those written by people who have fallen away from belief. Believers tend to infuse one crucial element that is often missing from stories told by unbelievers. That element is, simply, hope.

Victor Frankenstein and his monster end their story in a war of mutual destruction.

Quasimodo, the half-man, seeks and seems to find his wholeness in the Church, only to have his sanctuary destroyed by the betrayal of his father-priest, Claude Frollo.

Contrast such stories against A Christmas Carol. G. K. Chesterton wrote that “the tone of Dickens towards religion, though like that of most of his contemporaries, philosophically disturbed and rather historically ignorant, had an element that was very characteristic of himself. He had all the prejudices of his time. He had, for instance, that dislike of defined dogmas, which really means a preference for unexamined dogmas.” Dickens was, nevertheless, a Christian believer, who felt it necessary to write a simplified version of the Gospels for his children. From even this inexact sort of faith, we get the rejection of the Ghost of Christmas Future’s bleak prophecy and the salvation of Ebenezer Scrooge.

Then look at Dracula, written by a member of the Church of Ireland. Dracula is a bit of a theological mess, subject to charges of Manichaeism, and—as every good Catholic knows—Van Helsing would never have been granted a dispensation to use the consecrated Host as a putty for sealing vampiric tombs. But Dracula remains unabashedly a story not only about good defeating evil, but about loving the sinner in order to save him from his sin. As the final battle approaches, Mina Harker convinces the band of vampire hunters that they must not kill Dracula out of hate, but out of love.

“I know that you must fight–that you must destroy… but it is not a work of hate. That poor soul who has wrought all this misery is the saddest case of all. Just think what will be his joy when he too is destroyed in his worser part that his better part may have spiritual immortality.” – Dracula (Mina Harker to her friends)

Then, when the deed is accomplished:

“I shall be glad as long as I live that even in that moment of final dissolution there was in the face a look of peace, such as I never could have imagined might have rested there…. The sun was now right down upon the mountain-top, and the red gleams fell upon my face, so that it was bathed in rosy light. With one impulse the men sank on their knees, and a deep and earnest ‘Amen’ broke from all…” – Dracula (Mina Harker narrating the death of Dracula)

The death of Dracula is not merely the end of his reign of terror; it is his redemption.

This is the spiritual foundation of horror stories built for us by some of the greatest writers of the nineteenth century. However, this tradition was all but obliterated in the twentieth, when Good and Evil fell so far out of fashion in literary circles that horror—which is built upon the premise that these two words have solid, legitimate meaning—never stood a chance. Even believers shied away from horror, turned off by the slate of senseless bloodshed that stepped in to fill the abandoned literary niche. The Exorcist seems to have marked the genre’s last great spiritual hurrah, an entertaining book that secularists can enjoy because they have the luxury of believing that demons are fictional. However, despite the book’s flaws, Catholics must acknowledge that its underlying premise—the existence of a spiritual sickness that cannot be cured by medicine or psychology, whose only remedy is found in the Church—is the very real truth of our own lives.

If we have the courage to let them, horror stories can force us to face the most difficult truths of our human existence: that we are fallen, we are sinners, we are all plagued by demons real or metaphorical, and we, by ourselves, are powerless to chase them out. But Christians are specially positioned to know how and through Whom the battle against the monsters can be won. The truth of evil is accessible to all, inherent in our fallen nature; the truth of Jesus’ victory over sin and death belongs to Christians alone. Horror is a genre that incarnates sin; in the hands of a skillful Christian writer, it can also dramatize how sin is conquered by Incarnate Love. Horror is a genre custom-made to the be the playground of Christian storytellers, and it is long past time we set our squeamishness aside to embrace its spiritual possibilities. Jennifer the Damned represents my own humble entrée into reviving the genre, but I sincerely hope it will be only a footnote to the great twenty-first century blossoming of Catholic Christian horror.

    

Karen Ullo is the author of two novels, Jennifer the Damned (Wiseblood Books)  and Cinder Allia, as well as the managing editor of Dappled Things, a quarterly journal of Catholic art and literature. She holds an MFA in screenwriting from the University of Southern California. You can find her on the web at karenullo.com.

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