"Oddly Enough": The Writings of Bruce Coville

So, there seems to be a general outcry (mostly just Eric) for the lack of a Bruce Coville entry, as promised earlier. Mea culpa.

I promise I hadn't forgotten; I had taken the time to dig out my old Coville books and re-read them. It was quite enjoyable, let me tell you. I recommend you do the same - they're even better seen through an adult's eyes.

My best Coville-related moment (and there were many, many) is the heady anticipation of being old enough to read the My Teacher is an Alien series. They were fascinating things: a cover that pictured a glowing, radioactive looking alien peeking out from under its human mask; it's placement in the library in the YA section - big kids territory only! - and that wonderful, salacious title. Coville, if you haven't already guessed or had the pleasure of reading him, has a tendency to take the extraordinary and fantastic and make them tangible enough for children to grasp. He never explained away the otherworldly in that annoyingly cheerful Scooby-Doo kind of way when the zombie mask was pulled off to reveal Old Man Withers who owned the amusement park. No, Coville always made it clear that there were simply strange, unexplainable things in the world. His protagonists, often without of the help of parents (as, we all know, Will Smith put best: "Parents just don't understand"), are often thrown into crazy, dangerous situations with nothing but their good intentions to see them through.

You can see how that was appealing to YA crowd, as pre-teens found themselves deep in a world where the rules of adulthood are only just beginning to be employed and where they struggle to act in a society that is often oppressively acting upon them. His characters aren't without hope, however. Each - male and female - as Coville moves between each gender with ease, are gifted with the best tools a human being can be endowed with: good sense and decency. And, simply enough, that's all you really need to be successful in life.

I've made it no secret that I harbor a deep, unending love for Monster of the Year, sadly no longer in print, as Coville himself pointed out to me. Nor is it as popular, Coville went on to say, as the My Teacher is an Alien, Nina Tanleven, or Rod Albright Alien Adventures series, which is a pity.

But what makes Coville's work so damn entertaining, comes down to two important factors:

1. Coville's creative use of the vernacular.
What still amazes me is that the man can write a book with big enough words to challenge children's vocabularies, but as the same time use such funtastic words as "slopnuggets" (Nine and her father's slap dash cookies), multiple references to boogers (the best is when Grakker yells it when the good ship Ferkel won't enlarge in Aliens Ate My Homework) pooper-mucky, and other wonderful turns of phrase. And you always understand, no matter how weird and inventive, exactly what he means. Remarkable.

2. Coville's use of the fantastic.
I'll just list a few: Aliens, werewolves, witches, monsters of sundry types, taking toads, baby dragons, ghosts, unicorns, goblins, giants, etc. For fans of the fanastic, Coville is not only a treat, it's a well-written, knowledgeable, takes-his-horror-very-seriously kind of treat. It's obvious from his writing that he enjoys the hell out of his work and subject matter, which makes me like him and his writing even more.

Saying all that, it's still a mystery to me why none of Coville's books has ever been made into film. Anyway, if you haven't read him already, pick a couple books up. Also, feel free to drop Bruce a line on his website here. He loves to hear from his grown-up fans and talking about horror. And he's a super nice guy.

P.S. Anybody out there ever wished they lived in a Bruce Coville world? I was desperate one summer to visit Camp Haunted Hills, Elive's magic shop, rocket to planets strange and unknown with Madame Pong and Tar Gibbons, or have Nina Tanleven's ghost hunting skills.

I even named my cat after the man (well, him and Bruce Campbell, and Bruce Wayne, and Robert the Bruce) because he kicks all kind of ass. As of now, he's sitting next to the keyboard, desperately trying to lick me. Ferocious, right?

This is him:

"Lashings of Malice and a Slice of Humour": Roald Dahl

For those of you familiar with Bravo's "100 Scariest Movie Moments" program - usually aired every Halloween for the last few years, it's difficult to to forget the segment on Guillermo del Toro's The Devil's Backbone (2001). The commentators themselves waxed poetical on the images of the murdered child, "eerily beautiful" as John Landis puts it, in death. Nobody summed up his film better than the director himself (I feel the need to insert a huge DUH here) when he said something along the lines of how he dislikes Hollywood movies where children are portrayed as insipid and dumb, but rather how "dangerous it is to be a child".

Many of us forget the fear and constant insecurity one feels as a child, thrown by the overpowering wills of grown-ups in our incomplete understanding of the world like a ship in stormy waters. Those of us who won't (or are unable) to shake these childhood fears find ourselves at the shit-end of our peer's mockery (No, I'm not bitter at all). I'll admit, I'm still terrified of the dark, of dead things. While it can be a royal pain in the ass sometimes, I think - paradoxically - it allows me to see horror as a child does.

Recently, I had the chance to be re-introduced to some of the literature I read as a kid. I was genuinely shocked by how much of it was horror-related....and how I could ever have ended up studying anything else, no longer a mystery. With this in mind, I wanted to pick two of my favorites: Roald Dahl & Bruce Coville, and dig around to see what I'd find. Dahl is on the docket today, Bruce tomorrow.

Roald Dahl's stuff can be downright terrifying; this coming as no surprise to anyone who's read The BFG, The Witches, James and the Giant Peach, or his screenplay for Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang (now THAT's some terrifying stuff!). No doubt because of the horrors witnessed in WWII.




Like the Brothers Grimm, Dahl manages to capture the essence of powerless and vulnerable children are - and how they're often mistreated at the hands of adults. Parents abuse their children (Matilda), orphans are placed with terrible guardians and forced to labor for them (James), children are snatched out of their beds (Sophie), even turned into mice by a coven of witches. Not to mention the other unspeakable horrors perpetrated in the world: plans to kill children, giants that eat humans in sickening detail, marauding rhinoceroses intent on maiming. The horrors in Dahl's work - never imaginary - makes it clear that giants, witches, magic, and talking bugs DO exist, though the silly, unimaginative masses might have you think otherwise. And they are out to get you.

This is, of course, terrifying. And while their are terrible things, there is love and friendship (often found within the realm of the fantastic) and the simple knowledge of knowing evil exits in the world is enough to give an advantage. Texts such as these provide important outlets for children - giving them the psychological tools for dealing with the big, scary world and the powerful adults that populate it (Matilda's torment towards the Trunchbull is still hilarious) with a humor that says, "Laugh. Or you'll never get through it."

Dahl also wrote for adults. One particular short story, "Lamb to the Slaughter" tells the story of a "woman who beats her husband to death with a frozen leg of lamb" and then cooks the murder weapon, serving it to the officer investigating the man's death. One the subject, Dahl says,

"It wasn't nasty...I thought it was hilarious. What's horrible is basically funny. In fiction."

Maybe, as adults, we have the same fears and deal with them in the same way. Only with more blood. And guts. And intestines. But it's all the same.

Images & Iconoclasm

So, today's earlier post got me thinking about the images fantastic cinema burns into the collective unconsciousness' brain and how, ergo, horror plays an important role in regulating the psyche. It's an issue many a film scholar, social critic, cultural anthropologist has written about (my favorites are Freud's essay on The Uncanny and Noel Carroll's The Philosophy of Horror), so I will blessedly leave the issue where it stands, merely stating that something with as much endurance as the horror genre must have some sort of social and psychological significance, despite what conservatives might say to the contrary.

So I decided to compile a list of horror images that have been burned irrevocably into my mind, for better or for worse, as well as urge others to submit their lists.

• Walt Disney's The Skeleton Dance: A Very Interesting look at the danse macabre theme from a child's standpoint. As a child, I remember such things being deliciously frightening but just as deliciously enticing - the exact feelings terror narratives seek to bring forth. It wasn't until I was older (having had the urge for "scary stuff" as my mother put it, taken permanently out of my mind by The Man), that I was able to distance myself from the grown-up barriers adults build in their brains, so that I could enjoy horror for simply being what it is.
  
• Tim Burton's early work, especially Vincent: My first example of a man (and by extension, Vincent) who not only liked horror, but had incorporated it into his worldview.
  
• The Universal Monsters: What I credit as the first springboard into film appreciation. I remember checking out a monster fan book (the kind you saw a lot of in the 80's, along the lines of Monster Squad) almost weekly during a difficult adjustment to moving in grade school. I can now see that obsession with the otherwordly as a little girl's desperate attempt to gain some control over the only thing she could: her reading material. I really owe Bela, Boris, Lon, Colin, Elsa and the gang a hearty thanks.
• Bruce Coville's book, Monster of the Year: Same concept, only Coville's obvious love of the genre and excellent YA writing made the monsters lovable, kind, and most of all, human (kind of). From then on I always remembered the everyone - people and monster alike - had a backstory that contributes to their monstrousness.
• Sugar Hill & Her Zombie Hitmen: A more recent favorite, I saw this 1974 film while doing research for a paper on women in zombie film for the 2007 National Conference for Undergraduate Research. Commonly termed a "cheesy blaxpolitation" film, I didn't have high expectations. Not only was I proven wrong, but delighted by the powerful feminism. It was unforgettable, especially the tagline, "Sugar is sweet, but Revenge is Sweeter!" Classic!