DO Supplementary: "Pickman's Other Model"

"Pickman's Other Model" by Caitlin R. Kiernan

Discussion begins September 6.

First published in Sirenia Digest #28 (2008).

ONLINE VERSIONS

None found to date.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1130935

SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS

Black Wings of Cthulhu
New Cthulhu

MISCELLANY

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caitl%C3%ADn_R._Kiernan

I have this in Black Wings. I'm on vacay this week, so I should be able to get it in.

Excellent. I've got it in New Cthulhu.

New Cthulhu for me.

New Cthulhu for me as well.

Bump! Remember that the bonus DEEP ONES discussion of this "Pickman" tale begins tomorrow.

Guess I'll go ahead and start.

Well, this certainly benefited from a recent rereading of "Pickman's Model". I think it had been a few years since I had read it the first time I read this story.

Ms. Kiernan certainly can write, can't she? There is a lyricism and a seeming effortlessness to the long sentences in this story that is the envy of most writers, weird or otherwise. The passages describing the narrator's dream are particularly effective, and the story's ending evokes a feeling of existential dread that (fittingly) recalls the best of Lovecraft's work.

Mentioned in the story:


Pola Negri


Theda Bara and the skeleton

It's interesting to note that October 24, 1929 (the date of the narrator's last entry), "Black Thursday", was the beginning of the US stock market crash that precipitated the Great Depression:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_Crash_of_1929

Musidora:

Unlike "I Had Vacantly Crumpled It into My Pocket . . . But By God, Eliot, It Was a Photograph from Life!", Joanna Russ's rather cryptic homage to HPL's original story, Caitlin Kiernan here provides a welcome counterpoint by providing more of a direct sequel. Her prose style has a steady forcefulness to it that compels the reader to keep plunging forward - despite the depravity! I though it was genius to continue the tale in another artistic community, this time in the early days of the movie business, which certainly had its share of mystery, death and scandal. The perfect setting! Additionally, I'm always a sucker for stories which feature research involving grim old newspaper articles that point the way to certain dreadful conclusions. Kiernan handles that nicely! I'm happy to hear that Centipede Press will be releasing her novel The Drowning Girl this year:

http://www.centipedepress.com/horror/drowninggirl.html

Yes, a story I liked a lot even on this, my second reading.

>7 artturnerjr: Thanks for the pics, Art. I'd never seen any pictures of Pola Negri.

I don't think it's just the writing that's impressive. I liked how carefully Kiernan mixes her real cinema history (not that I'm in any way that informed about the subject, I just recognized some real titles) with her fictional one and does the same with blending her story with Lovecraft's. And I even liked the metafictional aspect of the narrator reminding us how unreliable even honest narrators are.

The scene with the skeleton made me smile because of Kiernan's precise vocabulary no doubt helped by her formal training as a paleontologist. I also liked how she wasn't afraid to allude to the Piltdown Man (not widely accepted as a hoax in 1929).

I like the characterization of Fort's writings. I don't agree with it entirely, and I'm not sure Kiernan does, but it's one way of looking at Fort.

The central aspect and mystery of the story for me didn't involve cosmic horror but Vera and her motives. We are, after all, just dealing with Lovecraft's hidden race of ghouls. It was the mystery and complexity of Vera that I thought most intriguing. Victim or monster or both? Her fate, killed as an "apostate", and being involved in pornographic films and modelling for Pickman suggests she is ensnared in the underground world she was born into. However, her regret at Pickman's drawings of her may be from later years. She could have sat for him and done her film willingly. And what of her deeds at Durand Drive?

I suspect the answer is in the bit of poetry from Blackman's dream: But yet she knows not, who it is she fears;\In vain she offers from herself to run\And drags about her what she strives to shun." Vera is doomed by her heredity like some Lovecraft heroes. But Kiernan inverts Lovecraft's plot pattern from "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" where a hero learns of the existence of an alien race in our midst, that he is of it, and reluctantly embraces the siren call of heredity. Vera knows from the beginning what she is and tries, in some way, to flee it. The story ends with her being shunned by that race as an apostate.

Incidentally, I thought the placement of that dream sequence and relevant poetry was surprisingly front-loaded into the story. I suspect less confident and skilled writers would insert this thematic statement further towards the end. Lovecraft, of course, did the most extreme example of this thematic front-loading with "The Call of Cthulhu".

While it is only a dream, I thought the imagery was eerie and the story passage most in tune with "cosmic horror". Even the laws of physics seem different in this world.

And Kiernan also has a nice bit of conspiratorial and social horror in the charges being dropped against Vera. Just how pervasive is ghoulish influence in society? Is it asserted directly or via blackmailed confederates or willing acolytes? I say "acolytes" because there is a sense that the ghouls may be the subject of worship. There is Pickman's interest, the rites at Durand Drive, Blackman's dream, and the word "apostate" all convey something more than Lovecraft's race of human eating ghouls.

The films mentioned:

, , , ,

Search out restored restored editions on dvd or blu-ray, although London After Midnight remains a lost film with only stills left behind. There is nothing to be found on either The Necrofile or The Hound's Daughter, both of which seem to be lost to the ages. ;-)

Forgot to mention that the revelation of Vera/Lillian's tail reminded me of Charles Burns' hypnotically disturbing graphic novel Black Hole, which I highly recommend to anyone here that hasn't already read it.

***

>10 RandyStafford:

I like the characterization of Fort's writings. I don't agree with it entirely, and I'm not sure Kiernan does, but it's one way of looking at Fort.

Well, one of Kiernan's short story collections is entitled To Charles Fort, with Love, so I suspect that her feelings toward Fort are somewhat warmer than those of her narrator's.

>11 gwendetenebre:

Great images, Kenton. Thanks for sharing. :)

>12 artturnerjr: Exactly. I knew of that Kiernan title. Haven't read it though.

I'm rather fond of Mr. Fort.

I appreciated how Kiernan pitched the narrator's voice here - evoking Lovecraft without doing a straight impersonation. It was something like the experience of hearing one well-known classical work orchestrated by another composer.

The story itself was constructed as a variation on "The Call of Cthulhu", I thought, using many of the same elements :found documents, even down to the products of a clippings service, prophetic dreams, the threat of murderous cultists.

Forgot to add - also appreciated the bringing in of elements of popular and underground culture that Lovecraft (I assume) either disregarded or didn't know about, without it jarring in any way with the fictional world of the Mythos.

Apologies for my late arrival; I was camping this last weekend, and I'm just now catching up to my interests on the 'net.

This may be the most impressive HPL pastiche I've read. Not only is it an in-period direct sequel to "Pickman's Model," it has more than a hint of "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," and even the conspiracy-stylings of "The Whisperer in Darkness." The scope and the pacing are spot-on for Lovecraft's own Yog-Sothothery, and besides Pickman, Thurber, and Eliot, there's no indulgence in "mythos lore."

The details of the dream sequence, while very well done, and perhaps the best part of the story, stylistically exceeded what I would expect from Lovecraft, and could be classed with other latter-day weird horror like that of Ligotti.