Welcome to the April 2016 Literary Meeting!
The theme this month was werewolves.
As always, I’ve made informal references in text, with full references listed at the end .
Aromatic Accompaniment: Black Birch by Chesapeake Bay Candle.
The April literary meeting was somewhat shorter than usual on account of a busy academic term (I actually don’t think we even broke out the wine!), but we were happy to have it after the tumultuous start to the year (I had an internship in DC for all of January, during which time my apartment flooded, and I didn’t even get to move back in until March 1st, upon which time I was decidedly NOT prepared to play host for some weeks). For the same reason I don’t have much analysis, but I wanted to get it posted to at least preserve the reading list.
The theme this month was werewolves. In a future meeting I intend to examine the origins of our werewolf tales, both European and (especially) Native American, but that time is not now. This time, the focus was on contemporary expression.
Our two works were “Cold, Hard Silver” by Juanita Coulson (1994) and “Comparison of Efficacy Rates for Seven Antipathetics as Employed Against Lycanthropes” by Marie Brennan (2015).
“Cold, Hard Silver,” might be familiar to anyone who might have been a huge TSR buff back in the 90’s. It was published in Tales of Ravenloft, an anthology of stories that I so desperately want to love but cannot bring myself to. I’ve been running a weekly Ravenloft AD&D game for about five years now, so I have a soft spot in my heart for canonical in-universe stories. They help me instantiate the setting in my imagination, making it possible for me to render that setting to my players every Sunday. And these stories do that extremely well. Unfortunately, with few exceptions, they do not also succeed at being well-written fiction. I am currently rereading The Lord of the Rings, and Tolkien’s beautiful prose illustrates so richly the standard that genre fiction can achieve, which make adverb-heavy passages like
Towering trees, leafless silhouettes against the hazy, moonlit sky, swayed overhead. The glow of the travelers’ torches cast eerie, wavering shadows, and creatures hidden in the surrounding blackness cried out sharply, startlingly. A thickening mist crawled like a serpent through frost-rimmed brush and deadfalls, obscuring the steep path. (Coulson, 190)
seem utterly dull; what few concrete details are given provoke no new understanding of what they describe, there is no re-presentation. Likewise, what few metaphors and similes Coulson draws are about as cliché as they get. Compare Coulson’s “creatures hidden…cry[ing] out sharply, startlingly” to Tolkien’s “They heard the wind hissing among the rocks and trees, and there was a howling and wailing round them in the empty spaces of the night” (297) and “At a gap in the circle a great dark wolf-shape could be seen halted, gazing at them. A shuddering howl broke from him, as if he were a captain summoning his pack to the assault” (298), and Coulson’s “[a] thickening mist crawled like a serpent…obscuring the steep path” to Tolkien’s “The night was clear, cool, and starry, but smoke-like wisps of mist were creeping up the hill-sides from the streams and deep meadows. Thin-clad birches, swaying in a light wind above their heads, made a black net against the pale sky.” (71).
That’s about all that needs be said about “Silver,” especially in light of the fact that it turns out not to be a werewolf story at all, it’s a banshee story. Oops! I judged that story by its title for sure. It’s actually a demonstrative Ravenloft story, in that it is a tale of a bad man who was doing bad things before getting captured by the mists and brought to Ravenloft, who continues doing those bad things until his evil actions lead him to ruin once the demi-plane gets its fingers in him. So, fun to read, since one of the Society members is also in my Ravenloft game, but otherwise a bit of a let-down.
Not so with “Comparison.” We listened to it in audio format via the ever-enjoyable Psuedopod podcast. The tale chronicles seven experiments conducted to test the effectiveness of various means of dispatching lycanthropes—performed by field test, since laboratory conditions were unobtainable. The story is presented in the form of a scientific study, complete with abstract, introduction, materials, methods, results, and discussion. For a taste, here is an excerpt from the abstract of the paper:
Abstract
This study seeks to establish a hierarchy of efficacy for various antipathetic materials and delivery mechanisms thereof as used in the extermination of lycanthropes. Pre-existing data on this issue consists solely of folkloric narratives and unsubstantiated anecdotes on Internet communities, neither of which are based upon suitable experimental trials. It is hoped that this study will be only the beginning of a proper body of scientific literature, which might be expanded to include hyena men, were-jaguars, and other therianthropes. (Coulson)
The narration is outstanding. The narrator has a perfect BBC British voice, which gives the report a sterility of tone that clashes so uncomfortably with the brutality of the content, thus producing the horror. There were one or two technical errors related to firearms, but these mistakes were minor and were not enough to damage the effect in any meaningful way. If you’ve ever wanted to hear a scientific breakdown of different werewolf-killing methods, this is an excellent story.
Content References from the April 2016 Literary Meeting (in the order in which they were read)
Coulson, Juanita. “Cold, Hard Silver.” Tales of Ravenloft. Ed. Brian Thomsen. TSR, 1994. Print.
Brennan, Marie. “Comparison of Efficacy Rates for Seven Antipathetics as Employed Against Lycanthropes.” Pseudopod 439 (22 May 2015). Podcast. <http://pseudopod.org/2015/05/22/pseudopod-439-comparison-of-efficacy-rates-for-seven-antipathetics-as-employed-against-lycanthropes/>
Additional Works Cited
Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings: 50th Anniversary One-Volume Edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2004. Print.
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