No ROOPHLOCH, and my October Gothic
Just a general status update. I didn't manage to do ROOPHLOCH this year. Partly, I was busy, but a bigger part is maybe just that I didn't have anything new to do. Post from my phone, post from a modern but obsolete computer tethered to my phone, post in a park, post in a nature reserve. It just feels like I've done the easy levels, but the next level up is unreachable for me. People posting over LORA, people posting over tin cans and string, the bar is set too high. So I didn't do it. Nothing stopping me except not wanting to do the same low-effort thing again.
On to better things, now that it's October. Every year, I read or re-read a classic Gothic novel during the month of October. I started with the 19th century classics that remain popular today, /Dracula/ and /Frankenstein/. Then I went back to the 18th century origins of the genre, /The Castle of Otranto/, /The Mysteries of Udolpho/, and /The Monk/. This year, I haven't been quite as sure what I wanted to read, but it's a week in, and high time to pick. Let's look at the candidates.
Some more early choices
From the 18th century, I'm looking at 1786's /Vathek/, and from the first half of the 19th, I'm looking at 1820's /Melmoth the Wanderer/. Both of these have been very influential on fantasy and horror, perhaps more so than many more 'core' Gothic novels. Vathek is a pseudo-Arabesque tale of magic and a depraved king, while Melmoth treats on an undying antihero or sympathetic villain, wandering the world under a curse.
From the English Literature canon
A couple of works from the canon of English and American literature made it onto my list this year: /Wuthering Heights/ and /The House of the Seven Gables/, both from around 1850. For both of them, I'm interested because so much Gothic literature is, like modern genre fiction, considered non-literary, and these are major exceptions. Wuthering Heights is getting a new film adaptation soon, and came to my attention because for some reason, the filmmakers have chosen to cast a white actor as Heathcliff. The House of the Seven Gables was a major influence on H.P. Lovecraft, as an example of New England Gothic.
Decadent and occult delights
My last couple are fairly late, from the decadent 1890s. The first is /Là-Bas/, by Joris-Karl Huysmans, and dealing with the subject of Satanism. The second is /The Great God Pan/ by Arthur Machen, about occult experiments and their consequences. I'm deeply interested in decadent literature and the Yellow Nineties, and both of these would be fun.
Decision
I had planned on putting this up for a vote on the Fediverse, but time has been ticking away, and I'm now disinclined to do so. I think that I'll read /Vathek/, simply because the name has for many years haunted me, as an influence on some of my favorite writers. If it turns out to be a pretty quick read, I'll probably try to add /Là-Bas/, to get my hit of decadence. /The Great God Pan/ should be a short read, and I can get to it without a special occasion.
Links
Reading /The Mysteries of Udolpho/
Source