Eric Hoefler

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“The Halloween Kid” is described as a “short, spooky Halloween fairy tale.” It premieres at the International Children and Young People’s Film Festival in Malmo, Sweden, in March. From what I’ve seen of the promotional shots, and now the teaser trailer, I love the look of this project and will be looking forward to seeing the full release.

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Posted in Genre

I just found out that the 30th anniversary edition of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark will replace Stephen Gammell’s iconic and nightmare-inducing artwork. There’s a good write-up about this, along with some comparison images, at Adventures in Poor Taste.… [Read More]

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Posted in Genre,Genre,Theory

There can be books where the zombies are zombies, and books where the zombies are metaphors, and books where the zombies are both, and that we as readers, and writers, and critics, ought to trust those books – rather than any of the labels that get put on them – to tell us how they ought to be read. ~ Fantasy Matters

Every new book has an obligation to teach us how to read it, and a good book does that without making us realize it.

Genre can be a helpful shortcut as a tool to help publishers and bookseller market a work, to guide readers toward a general set of characteristics in a work, or to provide writers with a structure to build on or deconstruct. But, as the author of the above quote suggests, they aren’t a very helpful tool for thinking about a work or assessing its value.

[With thanks to @jcarney for the link.]

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The essential ingredient for success seems to be to give the imagination something to feed on beyond the story ... the sense of a wider world, of which the author was giving you only glimpses ... room for you to wonder. ~ Tom Shippey

From a review in the Wall Street Journal of the book As If: Modern Enchantment and the Literary Prehistory of Virtual Reality by Michael Saler.

Saler identifies three major strains of popular imaginative fiction and cites the founders of each: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective, Sherlock Holmes; H. P. Lovecraft’s “Cthulhu Mythos”; J. R. R. Tolkien’s epic fantasy world of Middle Earth. One of Saler’s main points, as described in the review, is that the popularity of these works and others like them can be attributed to the use of “paratext”–material supplemental to the story itself, such as: maps of the fictional world, detailed descriptions of imaginary locations and legends, the inclusion of photographs and other imaginary “real world” items, and the addition of footnotes, glossaries, and appendices. Through these, the author creates a world that lives beyond the text, invites the reader’s participation, and leaves room for the reader to wonder.

I usually enjoy the paratextual elements in a work when I encounter them, but sometimes these additions can seem like a gimmick. I’m not sure what makes the distinction, but I suspect it comes down to the same elements that make any story engaging: whether or not it’s well-written, the characters believable, the plot interesting, and the fictional world richly imagined.

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Posted in Writing,Craft,Writing

The interesting truth about the stray suggestion, the wandering word, the vague echo, at touch of which the novelist’s imagination winces as at the prick of some sharp point: Its virtue is all in its needlelike quality, the power to penetrate as finely as possible. This fineness it is that communicates the virus of suggestion, anything more than a minimum of which spoils the operation. ~ Henry James

May your writing be sharp as a needle, spreading the virus of suggestion.… [Read More]

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“The Horror Portfolio” is a well-made montage of sixty-four films in a five-minute video, arranged into three broad categories: haunted houses and ghost stories, angels and demons, killers and slashers.

Lots of other films could have been included, of course, but I was glad to see The Orphanage, The Crazies, and Pontypool in the mix. The full list of films is provided on the YouTube page.

How many have you seen? Which are your favorites?

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Posted in Genre,Genre,Works/Creators

If you like comics and H. P. Lovecraft, then you should know about Lovecraft is Missing, a webcomic that creator Larry Latham has been publishing since 2008. It’s a mystery webcomic that asks: what if Lovecraft’s stories were real?

Besides regular updates to the comic, he also posts about weird-fiction related topics, works, and authors.

Here’s the first page of the comic.

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Posted in Writing,Craft,Writing

I invented nothing new. I simply assembled the discoveries of other men behind whom were centuries of work. Had I worked fifty or ten, or even five years before, I would have failed. So it is with every new thing. Progress happens when all the factors that make for it are ready, and then it is inevitable. To teach that a comparatively few men are responsible for the greatest forward steps of mankind is the worst sort of nonsense. ~ Henry Ford

This quote highlights the dependence of every creative endeavor on the work that precedes it, and it seems particularly relevant in light of yesterday’s SOPA/PIPA online protests.… [Read More]

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Posted in Genre,Genre,Theory

One of the seminal theoretical works on horror is Noël Carroll’s The Philosophy of Horror.¹ In this work, Carroll explores answers to two major questions related to the genre: Why are we disturbed by fictions?² And why do we seek out fictions that disturb us? Through the disciplines of philosophy, psychology, and literary theory, Carroll provides many satisfying answers.

However, before he addresses those questions directly, Carroll defines what he means by “horror,” beginning with a brief sketch of horror’s roots in Gothic literature, in which he distinguishes four types:

• Historical: set in an imagined past without suggestion of supernatural
• Natural: events appear to be supernatural, but eventually are given a rational explanation
• Equivocal: the presence of the supernatural is ambiguous, and often given a psychological explanation; this is the origin of modern-day “uncanny” or “fantastic” fictions
• Supernatural: unnatural forces are clearly asserted; this is the origin of modern-day horror fictions

For Carroll, the defining aspect of modern horror is our emotional response to it, which he terms “art-horror” (as opposed to our emotional response to “natural” horrors, such as the death of a child). In an excellent interview with Carroll at Senses of Cinema, he explains this emotional response:

I crafted my theory of the nature of horror by saying that horror is defined in terms of its elicitation of fear and disgust. Then I needed to say what the object of those two component emotional states were. For fear, there was a long history of analysis of the formal criterion as the harmful, and I drew on that. For disgust, I hypothesized the criterion was the impure … So the emotion of horror is elicited by beings not acknowledged to exist by science that are both harmful and impure

Therefore, the emotion of “art-horror” is elicited specifically by monsters: beings that are outside of the natural order and that are both threatening (physically, cognitively, psychologically, morally, or socially) and impure (categorically interstitial, contradictory, incomplete, or formless). Furthermore, the absence these characteristics moves the fiction into another genre: thriller, fantasy, etc.

Carroll also defines four major tropes for presenting monsters in art-horror, all of which may serve as corollaries to larger thematic concerns:

• fission – contradictory elements distributed over different physical/spatial or temporal categories (Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, werewolves, dopplegangers)
• fusion – contradictory elements conflated, colligated, or condensed (Frankenstein)
• magnification/massing – enlargement or grouping of aspects or entities already deemed impure within a culture (Arachnaphobia, Them, etc.)
• horrific metonymy – surrounding the horrific with aspects/objects already deemed impure (Dracula’s association with vermin and the “children of the night”)

As for why “art-horror” is a modern development, Carroll suggests this concept or genre emerges post-Enlightenment because the Enlightenment supplied the “norm of nature” necessary for their to be a violation of that norm. In some sense, then, a pre-Enlightenment monster is indistinguishable from a fantasy or fairy tale monster in that neither are considered “unnatural” to the worlds they inhabit, though they may still be threatening and undesirable.

This definition has some problematic implications for contemporary horror. For example, while Jason Voorhees, Michael Meyers, and Freddy Kreuger have obvious “super-natural” aspects to them that categorically take them beyond the norm … does Jigsaw? Certainly he is dangerous, and his delight in confronting victims with near-impossible choices is disturbing, and he’s obviously extremely intelligent, but there’s nothing “outside the natural order” about him. The same could be said for many of the serial killers that stalk recent slasher films. Or, again, consider Hostel: dangerous and disturbing, but nothing categorically beyond the norm there, either. Indeed, part of Hostel‘s horror is the suggestion that ordinary people are capable of committing gruesome violence against others, and are even willing to pay for the experience. The same could be said of Patrick Bateman in American Psycho.

One could argue that the extreme nature of the evil-doers in these films qualifies them as “outside the natural order,” providing the necessary second component of “disgust.” Yet, none of this seems beyond scientific imagining or like true categorical violations. And some fictions, like Hostel and American Psycho, rely on the audience’s understanding that the “monsters” as “not too different from you and me.”

In the same Senses of Cinema interview, Carroll welcomes these kinds of discussions:

Maybe, however, a filmmaker would want to undermine some of my generalizations. I think that’s fine; it’s part of the conversation of theory. In fact, I hope that happens, because I think that film theory should be closer to the practice of filmmaking and fiction-making in general.

So are these films instead merely very-bloody thrillers? Blood-soaked modern examples of the “Natural and/or Equivocal” Gothic? Cautionary tales about a culture disconnected from empathy? In any case, it’s possible to argue that these kinds of films don’t necessarily fit Carroll’s definition of “art-horror.” Instead, they portray themselves as extreme versions of the “natural” real-life horrors Carroll distinguishes from art-horror fictions. Yet contemporary audiences obviously consider them “horror” films.

Which definitions (if any) need revision? Am I misunderstanding Carroll in some way? Or am I being too rigid in how I apply the definition?

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The Booth at the End is a five-episode series, set entirely inside a diner, where characters come to visit a mysterious man always stationed in the rear booth. They tell him their desires, he gives them a task, along with the promise that their desires will be granted if they complete the task. The only other thing he asks for are the details of their experience (as in, “the devil is in the details”).

It’s well-written, and even though the eventual synchronicities are foreseeable, the execution is solid, the premise is intriguing, and it suggests interesting and sometimes-troubling questions. For more, see: Wikipedia, IMDb, an interview with the lead actor (Xander Berkeley) at the Wall Street Journal, and an insightful article on Patheos.com.

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From Why Are The Rich So Interested in Public School Reform?

In other words, more than good teachers, more than targeted testing, more than careful calibrations of performance measures and metrics that can standardize and quantify every aspect of learning, it’s the messy business of life — where a child comes from and what he or she goes home to at the end of the day — that really determines success in school.

I left the classroom in 2007, though I stay involved in the world of education through my work with the Northern Virginia Writing Project. I post education-related items here on occasion, but updates are infrequent.

From Mike Klonsky:

Suddenly, the entire test-and-punish crowd is explaining to us how test scores dont mean anything and how test scores are tied much more to out-of-school conditions.

Fire D.C. Rhee and her entire staff–or at least cut their pay

Matthew Yglesias » Spending on Sports vs Spending on Teaching.

There’s not much need to say anything here, is there?

Somewhere in here is an analogy for the modern education system:

Pet dogs failed basic intelligence tests that wolves and wild dogs passed with ease but proved more adept at social interaction, according to the research … Dogs are great at social tasks … wolves are much, much better at general problem solving.

Are we training dogs or raising wolves? Wolf pups need freedom to explore and learn the environment and to practice the skills they’ll need as adults. They also need plenty of play in which they can safely make mistakes.

There’s a balance, of course, like the one that exists between shepherds and coyote teachers, but the current system is shepherding our students into helpless domestic dogs, to mix the metaphors.

It’s a little lame to write a post that consists of one long quote, but I think the comment below, posted on Michael Gerson’s op-ed “Teach for America: Education reform in action,” deserves the attention:

Experienced journalist Michael Gerson enthusiastically supports the idea that a teacher in a troubled DC school, just “fresh out of college, with five weeks of training, was thrown into the deep end of the teaching profession in a low-income school.” Thus I propose a similar solution for the terrible state of newspaper journalism, which is losing readers in droves:

• Bring in a bold, visionary leader who has three years reporting experience, during which time the person, like Michelle Rhee, claims to have increased circulation from 13% to over 90% (but has no data to support that claim).
• Support this leader’s plan to fire a significant share of reporters and replace them with energetic recent college grads from elite schools who become reporters for a few years before moving on to other, more lucrative careers. (No journalism majors need apply. Smart people already know how to write and they’ll be taught everything they need to know about reporting in a five week intensive summer course.)
• Chastise current reporters for recoiling when the new leader goes around the country blaming journalists for the shameful decline in circulation.
• Consider it perfectly reasonable when the leader says things like [borrowing from DC Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee], “As a newspaper reporter, you have to be willing to take personal responsibility for ensuring citizens read the newspaper daily, despite obstacles. You can’t say, ‘My readers are spending more time on the internet,’ or ‘Young people today aren’t in the habit of reading the newspaper,’ or ‘Their checks bounce, so their subscriptions are cut off.”
• Expect that the good reporters that print journalism needs to attract in order to remain solvent to come rushing to its doors upon hearing the leader’s claims of success with her readers during her own brief reporting stint [again borrowing from Rhee]: “Their reading habits did not change, their interests did not change, their commute did not change, their occupational demands did not change. What changed were the reporters writing articles for them every single day. And that made every bit of difference.”

If journalists discount this as a simplistic, misguided approach of someone who doesn’t understand the news business, please consider that Michael Gerson’s Teach-for-America approach to improving education is just as simplistic and even more misguided.

This comment was written by “efavorite.”

I raised this idea in an earlier post, but I want to be a little more explicit. When it comes to the controversy around merit pay for teachers, I think there are some definite bad ideas out there, like basing merit on student test scores. But the current system, where pay is based on seniority, also has drawbacks.

Some principles I start with:

• Evaluations of teacher performance should not be based on standardized tests taken by students. Instead, evaluations should match the primary work of the discipline. For example, English teachers should be evaluated on their students’ interest and confidence in reading and writing, their ability to read and write increasingly complex texts of a wide variety, their ability to present their ideas verbally, etc. This is messy.
• Certainly, students’ abilities should guide a teacher’s evaluation, but this should be based on a comparison between students’ abilities when they entered the class and their abilities when they left it. Extenuating factors should be taken into consideration where appropriate. This is also messy.
• Teachers should not earn pay increases due merely to perseverance. There may certainly be an expected yearly increase to match cost-of-living, etc., but this need not be required and teachers should have the opportunity for greater increases based on performance.
• Schools should continue to encourage teachers to be well-educated, which means keeping pay increases for degrees while providing additional monetary support in attaining those degrees.

Given these principles, it should be clear that any effective evaluation of teachers will be more complicated, nuanced, and time-consuming than a standardized test and will require more expertise in teaching and the subject area than most principals or assistant principals can reasonably be expected to have.

This is why I think we need to restructure “administration” in public education. A school will always need a principal: someone with a guiding vision for the school who can speak for it, be its public face, and be the deciding voice in difficult decisions. However, beneath this guiding position, the administration should split into two branches: operations and academics. The operations branch would handle concerns like budget, scheduling, school food, discipline, etc. The academics branch would be focused solely on training and evaluating teachers. The two branches would have to come to agreement on decisions that would impact both (such as scheduling, for example), but otherwise they would function independently.

The academics branch would be staffed only by teachers with proven expertise: a board of educators, if you will. These members would continue to teach in the school (perhaps two or three courses), but the majority of their time would be focused on working with and evaluating teachers. In schools with distinct subject areas, each subject area should be represented by at least one experienced teacher on the board.

This board would be able to pay close attention to teachers, offer guidance, and make substantive and informed decisions about teachers’ effectiveness and development. Effectiveness would be measured against the general collective wisdom of the board and the standards defined by the board for specific disciplines. This may or may not reflect larger district, state, or national standards, depending on the winds of the current political climate. At any rate, this board would decide on the pay increases of each teacher, whether or not remediation should be given to a teacher, and whether or not to recommend that a teacher be released.

This system would also benefit the operations side of the school because they would now be able to focus purely on operations.

As for costs, the division of these priorities would mean that fewer administrative staff would be needed for operations, which would free up some funds for the academic branch. Also, since each member of the academic branch would also continue to teach at least two courses, it’s not a net loss for the school. The bottom line is that schools will not become more effective unless we are willing to invest in that effectiveness: better pay more wisely distributed for teachers, reasonable class sizes, sufficient resources, etc.

I realize the gap between thinking about this idea and enacting this idea is massive, but so are the problems facing education.

I would love to see others critique, expand, or refine this idea (besides just telling me I’m a foolish dreamer). Is this a good idea? Has it been tried somewhere already? What new problems does it raise? Is it worth the effort to try it? What would it take to make the experiment a reality?

This mock questionnaire from Ecology of Education highlights the typical misconceptions about teaching in a point-appropriate format. For example:

5. In your professional opinion, the best way to improve public education is to…

A. Privatize it.

B. Siphon money away from it to strengthen teachers’ and students’ will to survive.

C. Reduce benefits for teachers.

D. Villanize unions & scapegoat teachers, while simultaneously pandering to big business lobbyists.

E. All of the above.

This quote, from Tim Daly, president of The New Teacher project, is the heart of the problem with tenure, I think:

Tenure says you can’t be dismissed unless you are shown to be incompetent through the evaluation process … but the evaluation process doesn’t work at all, so tenure is seen as an ironclad guarantee of a job.

One of the main reasons that process doesn’t work, at least in my experience, is that many of the people responsible for doing the evaluating know less about teaching and/or the subject matter than the ones being evaluated.

On the other hand, perhaps removing the protection of tenure, or extending the time required before tenure is possible, will have the effect of shifting the burden to the ones doing the evaluating. In other professions, an incompetent boss may get rid of valuable employees for bad reasons. However, if that behavior continues for long, either the company will fail because of its inferior work force or someone higher on the chain will correct or remove that incompetent boss. In either case, the blame falls on the leadership, not the employees. Could the same thing happen in education?

If so, perhaps we’d see a greater push on the part of leadership to identify the real factors contributing to the failure and to find ways of addressing them. Certainly, incompetent teachers are a problem, but incompetent teachers aren’t the only problem, and don’t even seem to be the largest problem. Instead, home life and socio-economic status seem to be the largest factors in predicting success. School resources and overall philosophy and approach to education are also significant.

But even if we restrict the focus to teacher incompetence, there are still two major hurdles to clear before we can start stripping away tenure and tying salary to performance: how we assess teacher performance, and who does the assessing.

Right now, the push is to tie teacher performance to a few standardized tests … mainly because the people responsible for evaluating teachers have no better ideas about how to do it. And that’s the second problem: a lack of leadership. In my opinion, there needs to be two branches of school leadership: one that deals with logistics and discipline, and one that deals with academics and instruction. Right now, these fairly different sets of priorities fall on the same shoulders, with the emphasis usually placed on the former.

I would suggest that the academics/instruction branch consist of experienced educators who have proven themselves (by whatever methods) to be effective teachers. These teachers would work side-by-side with the logistics/discipline branch to guide the school forward. However, teachers would be evaluated by and accountable to only the academics/instruction branch. In other words, the ones who have proven they know how to effectively educate children in a given subject matter are the ones guiding and evaluating teachers trying to reach the same level of skill. If teachers, over time, display a reluctance or inability to improve their teaching in a manner deemed appropriate to the panel of experienced educators, then they’re released.

This idea isn’t very new. It’s modeled on apprenticeship, and I’ve already seen it expressed to some degree through the National Writing Project (who’s motto is “teachers teaching teachers”) and the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (which were developed by experienced teachers).

Errors and abuses could still occur in this model, of course, but I think it would be much more reliable than our current system because it would be based predominantly on proven educational methods and research. I suspect it would also engender less resentment from teachers and would provide a career step that didn’t involve leaving the classroom completely. It would also make the job of dealing with the logistical/disciplinary issues easier because those leaders wouldn’t have to worry about teacher performance and academics (as they currently do).

Finally, greater pay and professional respect would go a long way to improving the appeal of the profession (and therefore, improving the level of applicants), and a model that placed professional success and experience as a guiding force in the leadership of a school could command both.

If you have an interest in education reform and its historical, political, and global context, this video is well worth your time. “What Type of School Reform Do We Really Want?” comes from the NYU Radical Film and Lecture Series. Please also see Doug Noon’s notes, partial transcription, and additional resources in his post. As Lois Weiner says and Doug quotes: “We are in deep doo-doo.”