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Less Sharp Edges, More Smoke, and Definitely No Ceiling Lights
Some spooky smokey books for you
Godfried Schalcken, Young Girl with a Candle (detail), 1670–1675.
The dark feels different in November, writes Nina MacLaughlin:
“In November, you’re winding down… It means incorporating less sharp edges, more smoke.”
Which is maybe to say more mystery, more potential. The sharp edges of fact give way to the blur of the question mark, the uncertainty, the quiet.
She also quotes Jeanette Winterson, who I’m assuming would never turn on an overhead light:
I have noticed that when all the lights are on, people tend to talk about what they are doing—their outer lives. Sitting round in candlelight or firelight, people start to talk about how they are feeling—their inner lives. They speak subjectively, they argue less. There are longer pauses.
I won’t be sending an email every week, but as a Scorpio I felt compelled to share some spooky, smokey books to read by candle or lamplight this fall.
My favorite spooky books
My girl Sylvia Townsend Warner
Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner — If you also dream of escaping to a cozy cottage and spending your days wandering in a forest alone, this one’s for you (though I know most of you are married lol). I’d say it’s in my top 5 books I’ve ever read. Every paragraph is a treat for me. An interesting pair with Lady Chatterley’s Lover, tbh.
Carmilla by J. Sheridan Le Fanu — A sapphic (#wlw) vampire story from 1872! I recommend the edition edited by Carmen Maria Machado from Lanternfish Press.
The Membranes by Chi Ta-wei — This one legit gave me nightmares. Taiwanese LGBTQ literature from the ‘90s is pretty wild — Notes of a Crocodile by Qiu Miaojin is a slightly more accessible novel from that era (like a queer Sally Rooney?).
The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington — Like Lolly Willowes, this is a 5-star, top 10 book for me. A surreal dream of gender, disability, and death offering a view into how the world might be otherwise. Recommend the NYRB edition, with afterward by Olga Tokarczuk, which is on sale this weekend.
The Memory Police by Yōko Ogawa — A quiet, creeping dystopia; a terrifying and claustrophobic lullaby that I can still transport myself back to years after reading it.
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier — Fun fact: When I asked an older man working at Alabaster Bookshop for help finding this book, he asked if my girlfriend was making me read it. I’ve never been back there! Peak gothic vibes.
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Süskind — Apparently Kurt Cobain’s favorite book?! and was hot on BookTok for a minute. A bit darker — trigger warning: predator-y, murdering women.
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë — Reader, I’ve been loving pale imitations of this book for years. If you haven’t, you should! (Wuthering Heights didn’t do it for me, but not here to kink-shame!)
Or how about a non-fiction, Leftist history of witches? I loved Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation by Silvia Federici, which pairs well with Lolly Willowes.
New-to-me spooky books for this fall
The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers Guild by Mathias Enard — Update: Didn’t like it!
The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk — A new one from the author of Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead, which I loved. (Both are available from Fitzcarraldo if you’re feeling fancy.)
Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology, edited by Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. — Fuck me up, other cultures!
Slewfoot by Brom — My Social Algorithm put this in front of me more than once, so I ordered it without looking into it too much.
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson — I loved We Have Always Lived in the Castle (society is scary!), and I’ll forever be jealous of this headline Jackson’s letters got.
Twelve Feminist Lessons of War by Cynthia Enloe was an interesting if poorly organized look at war through a feminist lens. I was particularly struck by the idea of militarization creeping in not just through recruitment ads and political debates, but through pop-culture and our day-to-day metaphors as well.
She also has a nice riff on masculinity and rationality that struck me:
Naivete is deeply feminized in most cultures. A man who is ridiculed by other men for his alleged naivete is being tarred with the brush of femininity. In a patriarchal society, most men work hard not to be feminized. A feminized man, it is patriarchally imagined, is a man who lacks the character to be trusted with public authority.
Naivete and rationality are typically treated as opposites. A naive person, it is claimed, refuses to face uncomfortable realities. A rational person looks at reality without blinking. In many cultures "rationality" is masculinized. That is, it is seen to be a natural accompaniment of trustworthy manliness. When feminists challenge militarized ideas, they necessarily question commonly supposed naivete and conventional criteria for rationality.
How to Kill a City: Gentrification, Inequality, and the Fight for the Neighborhood by P.E. Moskowitz coincided nicely with a recent trip to New Orleans. A first lesson: Do not confuse the signs of gentrification (coffee shops and cute boutiques patronized by white men with mustaches) with the causes of gentrification.
[G]entrification is not a fluke or an accident. Gentrification is a system that places the needs of capital (both in terms of city budget and in terms of real estate profits) above the needs of the people.
Connecting gentrification with capitalism seems obvious to me now, but Moskowitz does a decent job taking us through it (cities no longer cater to people, but to capital/businesses now, eager/desperate to grow their tax base, ever conscious of their credit rating from Moody’s, just like a large business).