The New Weird
I read The Unnamable and What the Moon Brings. I must admit I found both of these short stories pretty difficult to read; I'm better at reading things that are much more straightforward and less up to the imagination. I do have a very active imagination, I've just found that when I'm reading I certainly don't mind if not prefer when things are described in very in depth detail so an image is drawn in my head that I don't have to fill in all the blanks.
I suppose both of these stories are pretty creepy, at least that's their purpose though it's pretty hard to legitimately creep me out or affect me with something scary enough to give me nightmares. I think I could've been more creeped out if I had been able to tell what was going on more. I feel like that's ironic because I think the lack of clarity and fear of the unknown is supposed to be the kicker and scary factor, though for me it didn't seem to work very well, I just ended up confused and trying to figure out what I was reading. I'm absolutely not knocking the works, I can tell they're well written and I enjoy the author, if anything I feel bad for not enjoying it more or understanding it as well.
I agree that these two stories definitely qualify as "weird," though like I mentioned above I just wish I had grasped them better so I could appreciate the weird. I felt like the writing style didn't help my struggle either, a lot of it felt like run-on sentences that were full to the brim with unnecessarily large and inflated language. Again this isn't a bad thing per se, I just found it a bit much and distracting from the main point of the stories.
On the topic of the actual stories, What the Moon Brings was harder for me to follow than The Unnamable. For most of the moon story I had no idea what was going on, though as I read I realized the narrator was talking about what he sees when the moon is out, which I suppose I should have gleaned sooner considering the title of the work. By the end when it was describing some kind of monster, I thought I knew what was finally going on but thinking back on it now I'm not sure I do actually get it. I recognized the "sea" of dead bodies, I think, and when the narrator willingly went into this sea of bodies I found it more funny than weird. This is my own fault because I'm one of those people who laughs during horror movies and the more violent and gory the death the harder I laugh. This in itself often takes me out of horror and weird stories a bit, and it doesn't help when I don't really know what's going on like with this story.
As for The Unnamable, I was able to follow this story a bit better. I was still a bit lost and confused and overwhelmed by the writing style for maybe the first half of the work, but I definitely was able to catch onto what was happening in the second half... I think. I can certainly see why this concept of something that can't be named or even described thoroughly could be terrifying, though to be honest I was just waiting for the creature or whatever it was to come attack the two men who were talking, and luckily my wish was granted which I enjoyed. Even after they're attacked, they still are not entirely sure what happened, which I think would be much more terrifying if it happened to me for real, though I might actually just be more confused after the fact than scared. All in all these two stories were confusing to me but again definitely fall into the "weird" category. I would like to perhaps read more stuff like this, I just hope I can get into it more in the future.
I suppose both of these stories are pretty creepy, at least that's their purpose though it's pretty hard to legitimately creep me out or affect me with something scary enough to give me nightmares. I think I could've been more creeped out if I had been able to tell what was going on more. I feel like that's ironic because I think the lack of clarity and fear of the unknown is supposed to be the kicker and scary factor, though for me it didn't seem to work very well, I just ended up confused and trying to figure out what I was reading. I'm absolutely not knocking the works, I can tell they're well written and I enjoy the author, if anything I feel bad for not enjoying it more or understanding it as well.
I agree that these two stories definitely qualify as "weird," though like I mentioned above I just wish I had grasped them better so I could appreciate the weird. I felt like the writing style didn't help my struggle either, a lot of it felt like run-on sentences that were full to the brim with unnecessarily large and inflated language. Again this isn't a bad thing per se, I just found it a bit much and distracting from the main point of the stories.
On the topic of the actual stories, What the Moon Brings was harder for me to follow than The Unnamable. For most of the moon story I had no idea what was going on, though as I read I realized the narrator was talking about what he sees when the moon is out, which I suppose I should have gleaned sooner considering the title of the work. By the end when it was describing some kind of monster, I thought I knew what was finally going on but thinking back on it now I'm not sure I do actually get it. I recognized the "sea" of dead bodies, I think, and when the narrator willingly went into this sea of bodies I found it more funny than weird. This is my own fault because I'm one of those people who laughs during horror movies and the more violent and gory the death the harder I laugh. This in itself often takes me out of horror and weird stories a bit, and it doesn't help when I don't really know what's going on like with this story.
As for The Unnamable, I was able to follow this story a bit better. I was still a bit lost and confused and overwhelmed by the writing style for maybe the first half of the work, but I definitely was able to catch onto what was happening in the second half... I think. I can certainly see why this concept of something that can't be named or even described thoroughly could be terrifying, though to be honest I was just waiting for the creature or whatever it was to come attack the two men who were talking, and luckily my wish was granted which I enjoyed. Even after they're attacked, they still are not entirely sure what happened, which I think would be much more terrifying if it happened to me for real, though I might actually just be more confused after the fact than scared. All in all these two stories were confusing to me but again definitely fall into the "weird" category. I would like to perhaps read more stuff like this, I just hope I can get into it more in the future.
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