The Ghost of Literary Past

Sorry I haven't written in, whoa, a really long time, but I've been busy growing a human.  Yeah.  Put your adoption process on hold, and you'll get pregnant! :)

Last night, I was thinking about all the books I used to read when I was younger and how my particular writing style developed. 

The first think I remember really captivating me was mythology.  Yeah, if you think that's weird, just wait.  I had found some mythology book for kids at my elementary school's library and could not get enough.  I read stories about Eros and Psyche, Narcisuss and Echo, Athena, and many others.  I think I got this love of mythology from my mom.  She took Latin in high school and knew all about the origins of words.  When she would explain a word's meaning, like narcissism, she'd tell me the story of Narcisuss.  I enjoyed learning that there are so many stories behind words.  I think reading mythology helped develop my imagination.  They were more interesting to me than Grimm's Fairy Tales. 

But I do love Grimm's Fairy Tales--and on an unrelated note, I love the show Grimm.  If you haven't seen it, you should watch it.  One Thanksgiving, my Uncle Wyatt gave my sister and I a giant book.  It was a collection of Grimm's Fairy Tales.  At first, I was thinking "Um, thanks for the big ass book," but on the car ride home, I actually started reading it, and it was awesome.  I found "Cinderella" (a.k.a. "Aschenputtel"), a story that I thought I was familiar with, and began reading.  Dude, Disney did not do this story justice.  Those Germans were brutes.  For instance, did you know that the evil step-sisters' mother made them cut off their toes and heels so that their giant man feet would fit into the glass slipper?  Morbid, right?  I loved it.

One day, I got my hands on an Edgar Allan Poe collection.  I really enjoyed dark literature.  In elementary school.  Yeah, I told you I was weird.  I thought the "Tell Tale Heart" was wickedly creepy.  I stole my sister's copy of Jane Eyre and began reading it.  I loved the Gothic undertones and the subtle ghostly presence that existed in the Bronte sisters' books.  Of course when I read the book again in my British Literature class, the feminist in me was appalled by how Rochester kept his crazy ex-wife locked in the attic.

I also enjoyed stealing my sister's R.L. Stine books and reading the murderous ghost tales.  Goosebumps was just not scary enough for me.  In fifth grade, I bought a book called Time Windows by Kathryn Reiss at a library sale.  It was a non-traditional ghost story about a doll house and dealt a little with time travel.  I had always been interested in time travel, but I had never seen it in literature until I read this book.  I also read some tales by Lois Duncan and other young adult mystery writers.

I was not introduced to the fabulous works of J.K. Rowling until I was nearly out of high school.  It was the best literature I had read up to that point.  Arguably, the best literature I had read ever.  I'm a bit of a fan, if you haven't noticed.

What is interesting to me is that the dark, Gothic literature I used to love now creeps the buhgeezes out of me.  I had to read Dracula for the first time in my Brit Lit class.  We had about a week to read it, and I don't think I slept all week.  I couldn't even finish it.  I was a married, 20-something college student, and this book gave me nightmares. 

I think there is something about having the innocence of a child when reading Poe and other scary tales.  When we are young, we are taught that these stories are completely make believe.  Evil doesn't exist anywhere but in literature, and the world is full of good.  Now that I'm an adult, I know that people really do chop up other people and hide them in their walls and floor boards.  There are people who actually believe they are real vampires, and they kill people and drink their blood.  Psychos and crazies don't exist only in literature.  They are real.  If you noticed, the "vampire" novel I've been entertaining does not and will not glorify vampires.  After reading Dracula, vampires will always be evil to me.  I knew I was "team Jacob" for some reason....

Well, now you know a little more about me and from where a lot of my inspiration stems.  Feel free to share your past literary encounters with me!  I don't hate comments. :)

-JGP