Jim Rockhill's New Book on Sheridan Le Fanu

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A MIND TURNED IN UPON ITSELF: WRITINGS ON J. S. LE FANU, by Jim Rockhill. Swan River Press, Dublin, 2025.

Between 2002 and 2005, Ash-Tree Press released a three-volume set of stories by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, with introductory essays by Jim Rockhill. These can be ranked with the most important contributions to Le Fanu scholarship in our field since the Dover collections edited by the great E. F. Bleiler (BEST GHOST STORIES OF J. S. LEFANU, 1964; GHOST STORIES AND MYSTERIES, 1975), and the long essays on Le Fanu written by Jack Sullivan (ELEGANT NIGHTMARES, Ohio University Press, 1978 -- one of the best studies of horror fiction I've read).

Swan River Press has now collected revised and expanded versions of these Ash-Tree Press essays, along with supplementary articles, in a book essential for those with an interest in Le Fanu, in his place within the history of British ghost fiction, and in the aesthetics and techniques that he brought to the writing of horror stories.

Le Fanu remains a top figure in horror fiction, not only as a key influence on M. R. James and other British writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but as a living example of innovation within our field. Like Ambrose Bierce in the United States, Le Fanu was a pioneer of modern horror fiction. He brought a new control of tone and pacing, a new brevity and sensory specificity to the craftsmanship of horror fiction that took it beyond the influence of Gothic romance. In this way, he resembled the writers who succeeded him far more than he resembled those writers, like Poe, who came before. He emphasized atmosphere and psychology above mere sensationalism, and introduced a new type of ghost that was neither an external intrusion nor a clear manifestation of internal states; instead, the ghosts of Le Fanu were inextricably entwined invaders from within and without. Were the ghosts real? Were they hallucinations? None of this mattered. What was important, instead, was how the ghost was perceived, and how this perception destroyed the minds of witnesses.

This modern approach, with its claustrophobically-subjective emphasis on personal perception and secret anxieties, would go on to be developed by M. R. James, Walter de la Mare, and others who preferred the strangeness of the unknown to the clearly-motivated and often moralistic ghosts of the past. Le Fanu showed the way. And yet, as Jim Rockhill writes:

"For all the honour bestowed upon him over the decades by such percipient scholar-creators of supernatural fiction as E. F. Benson, Elizabeth Bowen, Glen Cavaliero, Gary William Crawford, Dorothy L. Sayers, August Derleth, Henry James, M. R. James, Rosemary Pardoe, V. S. Pritchett, Montague Summers, and others, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu is still given insufficient credit as a craftsman and often very little credit at all as a visionary in the field of spectral horror."

Part of the reason for this neglect in the early 20th Century was the unavailability of his books, especially in the United States. Le Fanu was ignored or dismissed by important surveyors of the field (like H. P. Lovecraft), because they could not find much of his work to read.

Recent decades have corrected this. Yet facts about the man's life have long remained elusive:

"Rumours concerning the man's life and death still run rampant. Many scholarly editions of his work still cannot even be bothered to provide the correct day of his death."

Jim Rockhill sets out to repair this:

"It has been the goal of this volume to provide a biographical context in which to help dispel any myths still distorting perceptions of the man, and offer commentary that might help liberate the works from those purely psychological interpretations and other limited critical pigeonholes into which they have been forced over the years. If any of this has caused the reader to linger and perhaps shudder a little longer over the terrors in Le Fanu's pages, we can count this project a success."

Jim Rockhill's book is indeed a success.

He begins with the unsettled political climate of Le Fanu's Ireland:

"Although [Le Fanu] has left no direct record of these events, it is difficult not to recognise it as one more factor contributing to the sense of instability, the visions of ancestral mansions tottering on their foundations, and the continual presence of something lying in wait just out of sight which haunt not only his ghost stories, but much of his other fiction as well."

A troubled life of political upheavals and family tragedies took its toll on Le Fanu:

"Grief-stricken and guilt-ridden, disaffected politically, saddled with debts and responsibilities related to his ventures in journalism, and attempting to raise four children on his own, Le Fanu retired to his home at 18 Merrion Square for the remaining sixteen years of his life. His thus virtually shutting himself off from society led Dublin to dub Le Fanu the 'Invisible Prince', an apt appellation considering the results of this isolation: a string of long, complex novels and a body of supernatural fiction remarkable in its atmosphere, intensity, and dark implication....

"By all accounts he was a fascinating if cryptic individual, but if the details of his external life are scarce during these years, the products of his imagination are prodigal."

Jim Rockhill goes on to consider these works in detail, with accounts of their often complicated publishing histories, and their often complex narratives.

"The characters in his folkloric tales tread along the convergence of three lines linking this world with the world of fairy tale and the world of nightmare. In the other tales, his characters are tied to reality by the same dull occupations and concerns that dog us to this day. These characters are soon made to feel the presence of another world, impinging upon and inexorably intruding into their own, a world capable of affecting not only the individual, but even the world around him."

Like the narrators of several Walter de la Mare stories, Le Fanu's victims often seem haunted not merely by ghosts, but by crowded alternate realities: nightmarish, destructive, and without consolation. If Le Fanu believed in heaven, he offered no hints of it, but he clearly believed in the "machineries of hell."

Jim Rockhill takes a close look at the influence of Swedenborg on Le Fanu's work, at conflicting accounts of his legendary death-by-nightmare, at stories once attributed to Le Fanu without strong evidence, and at stories that appeared in multiple versions as Le Fanu developed and expanded their ideas. In effect, A MIND TURNED IN UPON ITSELF is a work of scholarship for scholars, a work of bibliography for bibliographers, a work of exploration for those who travel in the worlds of horror fiction, and, above all, a fine tribute to one of our field's greatest writers.

CONAN THE BARBARIAN, 1982.

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Now and then, a film not only exceeds my expectations, it leaps beyond them. If a film is older, this impact owes nothing to nostalgia, but shows how definitively the film has remained a living work.

This applies especially to CONAN THE BARBARIAN. I never saw the film in 1982; instead, I bought the MCA record album of the Basil Poledouris score. Despite the lousy sound of that vinyl pressing, despite the often-muddy recording of an under-rehearsed orchestra, the music stood out for me in its mood of melancholy introspection. I fell in love with it, and this love has endured.

Sometimes, good film composers write music not based on the films on screen, but on the films that play in their heads. Jerry Goldsmith did this often: no matter how wretched the film, he was able, time after time, to find something worthwhile in the garbage heap. For all that I knew, Basil Poledouris might have done the same with CONAN THE BARBARIAN, but I would not find out for certain until I had seen the film without interruption, at its full length of 130 minutes, just two or three years ago.

To my happy surprise, the film turned out not only to deserve its musical score, but to reflect it. The music was not glitter on a dull rag, not a pleasing mask on a bland face, but an accurate reflection of what the film showed and implied.

The 1980s brought a surprising number of brutally violent yet humanistic films, films that emphasized action without sacrificing human concerns. I think of THE ROAD WARRIOR, BLADE RUNNER, ALIENS, THE TERMINATOR, ROBOCOP: films of unexpected emotional resonance, "pulp" fantasies that somehow managed to convey something honest about human sorrows and human strengths. CONAN not only fits within this category, it defines the category.

What CONAN emphasizes even more than these other films is the melancholy, the isolation, of heroism, and this element shines out beyond the film's details of spurting blood and brutal deaths.

Much could be said about the technical excellence of this film. Its director, John Milius, might not be Akira Kurosawa, but he shows undeniable skill with the blocking of actors, the staging of action, the emotional and thematic values of lingering moments, the effectiveness of editing. His use of landscapes, of crowds, to support emotions and implications reveals a genuine vision.

In choosing his cast for their physicality, Milius ran the risk of poor performances. To counter this, he puts emphasis on eye gestures, on moments of stillness to convey suffering or sorrow. Even if someone like Sandahl Bergman lacks the voice of an actress, Milius ensures that her face, her movements, overcome this limitation. As a result, her character becomes not only convincing, but heart-breaking. Visual details make all of the difference.

The film is also less about well-rounded people than about the roles they serve. In moments like the introduction of the wizard, of Subotai, of Valeria, a character is not so much encountered by the hero, as recognized. This actually works in the films favour: these characters are not like us; they are mythic patterns, representations, within their own fantasy world.

All of this appears on screen, and is clear to anyone who pays attention, yet the meaning of CONAN, at least at first glance, can seem less clear, if only because the film would rather show its implications than spell them out. Some people have called this film a right-wing power fantasy, yet I doubt this, if only because the film adds layers to its apparent simplicity.

Early in the film, when Conan makes a name for himself as a gladiatorial slave, he is asked by a sponsor, "What is best in life?"

Conan replies, "Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women."

The sponsor approves, yet the film goes on to suggest better things in life. Subotai shows Conan the value of friendship and loyal companionship. Valeria shows him the value of love and a sexual relationship between equals. Osric shows him the value of family, of paternal devotion. And Thulsa Doom, ironically, shows him the value of purpose in life, of the strength and freedom to achieve this purpose.

All of this would suggest a film deeper and more nuanced than a simple power fantasy, and these layers become all the more clear at the film's ending. Unlike STAR WARS, with its final explosion and ceremonial medals, CONAN ends with a hero lost in thought, without purpose. After his defeat of Thulsa Doom, while surrounded and vastly out-numbered by the torch-bearing servants of Doom, Conan raises the broken sword of his father, and then drops it, discards it, as if to say, "Do whatever you like with me. My goal is completed. I'm finished."

Conan's moments of reflection, of isolation; Valeria's loneliness, her need for warmth and for someone who will not simply "pass by in the night;" Osric's realization, "There comes a time when the jewels cease to sparkle, when the gold loses its luster, when the throne room becomes a prison, and all that is left is a father's love for his child," these are not merely details. These are, I suspect, the foundation of what CONAN THE BARBARIAN means as a film.

A film that deals explicitly with violence and action can sometimes be misunderstood as being only about violence and action. Nobody would make this mistake while watching SEVEN SAMURAI, but many have been less willing to see nuance in CONAN THE BARBARIAN. I would urge them to take another look.

Neoliberalism, Oligarchy, the New McCarthyism: Can America Survive?

Walt Kelly, POGO, 1953. Click on the image for a better jpeg.

America has gone through this before, and survived. But will it survive this time?

The formation of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1938, The National Security Act of 1947, and the spectre of McCarthyism from the late 1940s to the early 1950s, all cast a cold spell on liberty and freedom of speech in the United States. These were terrible times, but certain features of American society allowed the country to endure:

-- A growing middle-class with increasing wealth and political influence, along with increased leisure time for thought, reflection, and civic participation.

-- The suddenly-opened doors of college and university education to people who could not have afforded such things before the introduction of the G.I. Bill (the Servicemen's Readjustment Act) of 1944, along with an explosion of affordable paperbacks that opened up worlds of thought and literature to the working class.

-- A strong civil society, formed of unions, churches, town halls, colleges and universities, fraternal organizations, and active public spaces where people could meet, mingle, and share concerns.

These pillars of democracy and civic participation no longer exist in post-1970s America. Neither Democrats nor Republicans consider such foundations important; what matters in their neoliberal non-society are transactions of the market, by the market, for the market. In such a world-view, merely human concerns are obsolete.

Over the course of decades, America has removed all of the defences that once protected the country from HUAC, from McCarthyism, from the power of oligarchs and demagogues. A crumbling, hollowed-out society must now face a neoliberal cliff, perhaps even fascism, but without organization, without solidarity, and without hope.

Can Americans prevail?

I want them to prevail. But I have my doubts.

Poetry Matters, But Why?

Why does it trouble me that poetry no longer seems to matter in our culture? What does poetry do, and why do we need it?

This question nagged at me for years, but recently, my thoughts have been clarified, thanks to a terrifying book by Iain McGilchrist, THE MATTER WITH THINGS. He writes at length about the different forms of attention provided by the two hemispheres of the brain. As human beings, we need both forms, but our societies often prioritize one form of attention above the other, or even pretend that only one form exists.

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To summarize badly what is, in McGilchrist's book, a detailed and nuanced argument: the right hemisphere of the brain is attentive to the broad scope of life, to time as flow, to experience as a shifting interaction with a living world. It recognizes that other people are as real as we are, and that they, too, harbour a concealed, subjective experience of life.

In opposition to this, the left hemisphere wields a set of specialized tools: it solves problems by turning living forms into abstractions or mechanisms, by reducing the flow of time to points on a graph, by transforming landscapes into maps. These reductive tools are essential to human survival, but the left hemisphere can lose itself in abstraction: then it mistakes abstract data for reality, living beings for machines, maps for terrain. It mistakes isolated moments of lifeless time as more objective and real than the flowing tangle of human experience.

The right hemisphere is able to integrate the abstract conclusions of the left into a broader, living perspective. The result is a back-and-forth communication between two necessary modes of responding to the world, but sometimes, this communication becomes one-sided. While the right hemisphere accepts a need for the reductive problem-solving tools of the left, the left often disregards the integrations, the reminders and insights, of the right. It assumes that its created abstractions are the real thing, that its reductive tools are the only valid ones for existence.

When societies grow in complexity, when they face more and more technical challenges, they rely more and more on left-hemisphere methods. They teach the methods in schools. They reward the methods with money. They often reach a point where they consider these methods the only "realistic" approach to life, and they dismiss the second thoughts, the warnings, the broad perspectives of the right hemisphere, as unprofitable distractions.

Iain McGilchrist argues that Western society has trapped itself within a cage of reductive left-hemisphere attention, that it disregards or dismisses the troubling yet living perspectives of the right.

In his own words:

"Public discourse in a culture can accentuate some ideas, concepts, beliefs and values at the expense of others. And when this happens, it is not as if these ideas, concepts, beliefs or values are atomistic; they bring with them a largely coherent world-picture, which gradually forms itself in the culture, and over time is expressed in a myriad of ways. I believe our own culture is unbalanced in the degree to which the left hemisphere’s take predominates. And, unfortunately, the left hemisphere is decidedly imperceptive -- and so is unaware there is a problem."

The result is a world of machine systems fit only for machine-people, of algorithms considered more intelligent than human consciousness, of a natural world increasingly exploited and poisoned, of human relationships and political systems rapidly falling apart. It often seems that our entire way of life has been designed to ignore the wider, deeper, empathetic awareness of the right hemisphere.

We still have right hemispheres, but many of us ignore them, or distrust them, or consider them irrelevant to our consumer-capitalist, oligarchic present. The cost of our denial is human misery.

How can we escape from this trap?

For a start, we can, each of us, begin to pay attention to our forsaken right hemispheres; we can begin to communicate with our own selves. One form of communication is complex melodic music; another is poetry.

Poetry and music are akin: both rely on sound, on complex yet regular rhythms, on suggestive and fleeting moods, on things not quite understood yet felt in the bones.

I would suggest that we no longer value poetry because we no longer value the broader, living perspectives of human attention. If we immerse ourselves in poetry, if we begin to appreciate its visceral impact, then we can train ourselves to recognize and to heed the promptings of the right hemisphere.

This argument for utility ignores an important truth: poetry, like music, is beautiful. Poetry, like music, can move us in ways hard to explain yet impossible to disregard. Poetry, like music, cultivates an aesthetic and emotional appreciation of life, and this appreciation can make us more complete, more aware, more human.

Poetry belongs to us in the way that webs belong to spiders, that hives belong to bees and hornets. We create poetry, we read and recite poetry, because we need it. Here in this appalling century, we have been taught to believe that poetry no longer matters, because we have been taught to believe that human lives no longer matter.

Both assumptions are wrong; both can be corrected, if we have the will to confront them.

Sometimes, When I Dare Myself To Read Robinson Jeffers

Photo by Edward Weston, 1929. Click for a better jpeg.

Sometimes, when I dare myself to read Robinson Jeffers, I think, "No no no, what if he's right?" But then I read him again, and think, "No no no, he's right." Either notion appalls me.

Rearmament
by Robinson Jeffers.

These grand and fatal movements toward death: the grandeur of the mass
Makes pity a fool, the tearing pity
For the atoms of the mass, the persons, the victims, makes it seem monstrous
To admire the tragic beauty they build.
It is beautiful as a river flowing or a slowly gathering
Glacier on a high mountain rock-face,
Bound to plow down a forest, or as frost in November,
The gold and flaming death-dance for leaves,
Or a girl in the night of her spent maidenhood, bleeding and kissing.
I would burn my right hand in a slow fire
To change the future... I should do foolishly. The beauty of modern
Man is not in the persons but in the
Disastrous rhythm, the heavy and mobile masses, the dance of the
Dream-led masses down the dark mountain.

-- From
THE SELECTED POETRY OF ROBINSON JEFFERS.
Random House, New York, 1938 (Eighth Printing).

Originally appeared in
SOLSTICE AND OTHER POEMS.
New York: Random House, 1935.