Connor Coyne

The Ghost Pirates is an interesting early case of polished, ambitious, evocative literature hiding in the guise of pulp horror. Some reviewers have likened William Hope Hodgson to both Joseph Conrad and H.P. Lovecraft, and both comparisons are apt. With titles like Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer, Conrad expressed the confusion and peril of a hostile environment, the mystery, the potential for exploitation, and the psychic toll of a life lived in marginal, undelineated spaces. Such statements easily apply to The Ghost Pirates. As for Lovecraft, he was himself familiar with the novel, writing that “with its command of maritime knowledge, and its clever selection of hints and incidents suggestive of latent horrors in nature, this book at times reaches enviable peaks of power.”

The story, taking superb advantage of “nested narration” (in which a character tells a story about a character telling a story) — one of Conrad’s own favorite techniques — begins with a sailor named Jessop taking a position aboard an allegedly “haunted” ship. As the story progresses, he recounts, with concern for discretion and with little emotion, the incremental attacks visited upon the ship. The word “incremental” is key; for a book that is relatively short and moves so quickly, revelation is always (agonizingly) just out of reach. This is effective storytelling and effective horror largely because it incorporates enticing details — about the ship, about the sailors, about the attacks — while forcing the reader to interpret everything else. Even the final moments, which seem to play out in grotesque slow-motion, offers us a visceral look at the horror without defining it.

If you like Lovecraft, or Conrad, or any horror writers who value that early Gothic emphasis on murky shadows and ambiguity, then you’ll probably enjoy The Ghost Pirates. This one can be enjoyed both for its powerful emotional effects as well as for the care and skill in its craft and composition.

This week I’ve noticed that it’s cold and the weather has been changing rapidly. That’s not particularly “good.” This is January. In a more typical year, I would have long since noticed that it was cold, and the weather would not be changing much… at least not until I was surprised by a January thaw a week or two from now. The fact that it was “cold” would have long since have ceased being noticed.

This has already been one of the mildest (if not the mildest) winter I’ve experienced. There was scarcely any snow until Thanksgiving, and temperatures have been lingering in the upper 30s and 40s ever since. Today is only the fifth or sixth “cold” day of the winter, and in this case, “cold” isn’t a breath-puffing eye-watering 0 or 2 degrees Fahrenheit, but a nightly low in the mid-teens.

Global warming deniers get to trot out their placards every time it snows in January… I wonder if I should put up a sign every time the snow melts. If this weather keeps up, it would be visible pretty much year round.

Benjamin Franklin’s 306th birthday was yesterday, January 17th.

I’m not an expert on the subject, but, as Walter Isaacson’s essay “What Would Ben Do?” notes, “[Franklin] has been vilified in romantic periods.” The question is how do we separate the spirit and content of romanticism from the momentary tropes of the/any “romantic period.” It its roots, perhaps there is something to this vilification: Franklin was a famed Enlightenment thinker, he tended toward the secular side of the religious spectrum, and he favored egalitarianism and social mobility. The romanticism of the late 1700s and early 1800s, by contrast, typically expressed a sensual engagement to faith, the elevation of emotion, and the nostalgic adoration of antiquity and nature. This oversimplifies, but these are clear points of tension.

Any -ism changes over time, and a lot of that pious yearning and neo-medieval ideations have been easily replaced by everything from Masonic symbolism to trance music. What has remained essential to romantic descendants around the world is the ascendancy of emotion; the idea that the ultimate truths — the most valid and permanent truths — are not those which can be attained by “reason” but which are derived from intuition and feeling. If you consider this superficially, as opposed to Franklin’s empirical and pragmatic approach to science, politics, even daily habits, then yes, there is indeed an opposition.

The problem with such a verdict, even from a historical point-of-view (that doesn’t consider the evolution of romantic tropes) is that it presumes the binary opposition of romanticism to empiricism, of the Romantics to the Enlightenment. Things are seldom that cut-and-dried. Many members of the Enlightenment later embraced romantic concepts, and it was a largely Enlightenment vocabulary that allowed thinkers, writers, and theorists like Immanuel Kant, Victor Hugo, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau to explore key romantic dilemmas. At its most direct and essential, the relationship could be summarized as follows: the human mind and its powers of reason are our most valuable tool to develop an understanding of the universe, but such an approach almost inevitably reveals the insufficiency of the human mind to understand everything. Self-styled “romantics” then took the further step of allowing emotion and intuition to occupy this mysterious, enigmatic place that is impervious to reason. Romanticism might be seen not as a refutation of reason, but as ancillary to it.

Which brings me back to Benjamin Franklin. Allowing that we believe in the contemporary relevance of both romanticism and of Franklin, there is just as much room for their cohabitation today as there was in the 18th century. If a utilitarian, pragmatic outlook — if useful day-to-day strategies — enables us to accomplish the most and the best of what our abilities allow, then we are not diminishing our presence in the world, but enhancing it. If such an approach is opposed to intuition, to the appreciation of the sublime, etc. etc., then yes, it is “unromantic.” But Franklin doesn’t strike one as being emotionally sterile or spiritually uninformed. He clearly embraced the validity of a wide variety of viewpoints, in philosophy, religion, and so forth… doing so is consummately “pragmatic.” If a pragmatic orientation to the world embraces romantic concepts — if it is a strategic orientation to actual problems as opposed to the dogmatic refutation of ideals — then it can be actively romantic. More, if such an orientation allows the accomplishment of great deeds — deeds which require the activation of emotional and intuitive resources — say, participation in the establishment of a new form of government — then it is actively romantic.

There are a lot of nice things I could say about The Mosquito Song, written by fellow-U of Cer and Mathewsnik M.L. Kennedy.  It’s short and fast, which will make it nice for plains and trains and brief reprieves from wrestling a squirming toddler.  It’s cackle-inducingly funny, which is fine if you’re at home and only slightly awkward if you’re at a diner.  While the plot has a few hiccups — the ending seemed abrupt and a little baffling — the unique voice and fast-paced action make such complaints trivial by comparison.  Oh, yes, and the prose manages to be both spare and distinctive, as in that most economical of statements: “I do that thing.”  In the book, this phrase encompasses everything from opening a door to aggravated battery.  Also memorable: “I am too stupid to live.” A peculiar case for a vampire to make.

Ah!  But that’s the most important nice thing I’d like to say about The Mosquito Song.

It rehabilitates vampires.

If you’re anything like me, you grew up thinking vampires were badass.  From the time I read Dracula in 7th grade to the college course I took on “The Slavic Vampire,” I was something of a vampire nut, though I never went full goth over it.  There was no need to.  Vampires are lethal yet romantic, seemingly immortal and yet achingly vulnerable.  Their niche within the pop cultural supernatural is one of pain and paradox and self-conscious limitation.  As such, vampire stories are perfectly suited for the pathos (and bathos) of adolescence and young adulthood.

In the end, two things happened to me (and maybe to you, too).  First, I grew up and all those vampire stories just started looking a little… corny?  Overwrought?  They started to look like the things I disliked about myself as a young adult.  Second, the Twilight books came out, and oh, that hurt. How can a vampire sparkle?  And look like Justin Bieber?  And appeal to the same set of kids who buy Lisa Frank folders at RiteAid?  Gary Oldman’s Dracula was revolting and nauseating but it was Twilight that really made me sick to my stomach.  Vampires: I thought I had lost you forever.

The Mosquito Song or, more specifically, its vampire narrator is a solid antidote to Twilight overkill. The narrator strikes a tone I’ve never heard in a vampire story before. His acerbic, cynical voice is already a reprieve from all that vampiric self-loathing and earnesty… but this vampire is also playful.  He flirts his way across the Midwest, more bemused than outraged by his attackers, cheerfully amoral and yet never atavistic. When this refreshing voice is complemented by Kennedy’s distinctive prose, the end-result is a tongue-in-cheek pulp novella that nods to its debts while moving beyond them. It’ll appeal to readers who’ve outgrown the last pangs of puberty, and is an effective tonic chaser to those Stephanie Meyer wine coolers.