THE DEEP ONES: "Nor the Demons Down Under the Sea" by Caitlin R. Kiernan

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THE DEEP ONES: "Nor the Demons Down Under the Sea" by Caitlin R. Kiernan

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2gwendetenebre
Mar 13, 2015, 9:48 am

3elenchus
Mar 13, 2015, 10:31 am

I read some of the MISCELLANY since I don't have the story available, and found this under the second link:

"A Redress for Andromeda” is the first of three stories that together form the Dandridge Cycle. It is followed by “Nor the Demons Down Under the Sea” and “Andromeda Among the Stones.” Both of these stories take place before the events of “A Redress for Andromeda.” They delve into the history of the Dandridge House, connecting it with violent events in this world and the next, and revealing the Faustian bargain that led to its haunting. If this is a dream, it is the kind of dream that encompasses the world.

4paradoxosalpha
Mar 13, 2015, 11:55 am

>3 elenchus:

Man, I've got it in both The Children of Cthulhu and The Book of Cthulhu II. If our neighborhoods were just a little closer, I could loan it to you for this week.

5elenchus
Mar 13, 2015, 12:02 pm

Now and again, I think about running up there and meeting for coffee. Damned if I can figure out how to open up my schedule though.

For this one, I'm going to see if I can swing by the library and check the shelves. If it works out, might just get it. Kiernan seems like an author I'd appreciate: her allusions to Alice in Wonderland are a good sign, she seems to do it right (where so many just use Carroll's absurdism to distract from the banality of their own ideas).

6RandyStafford
Mar 13, 2015, 2:10 pm

7gwendetenebre
Edited: Mar 18, 2015, 9:05 am

I liked the manner in which what seems to be a standard haunted house tale, including a requisite "Addams Family" mansion, suddenly takes a turn into the absolute unknown. That's what makes it "weird", as far as classification and intent goes.

I was really intrigued by Anna and Julia's relationship, but I don't think that Kiernan makes much of an effort to evoke 1957 here, beyond having the couple drive a Bel Air. What about some background music, politics, etc? I know it's only short story length, but still...

I really liked this imagery:

Waves to wash the greenbrown mats of seaweed one onch forward and one inch back; Like the hair of drowned women, she thought and then pushed the thought away.

I recently finished Kiernan's novel The Drowning Girl, making this sentence a nice echo of that book.

8paradoxosalpha
Mar 18, 2015, 9:51 am

>7 gwendetenebre: I don't think that Kiernan makes much of an effort to evoke 1957 here, beyond having the couple drive a Bel Air.

Funny, I just criticized the abundance of such "efforts" at period detail in my review (posted minutes ago) of McNeill's "Arkham Horror" novel Dweller in the Deep. For me, "Nor the Demons" hits just the right note by informing the reader of the year, and just treating that as the time that can be taken for granted.

Julia is an interesting character, a "coward" who can briefly contemplate committing a sort of passive homicide ("How easy, ... how perfectly satisfying"), sensitive to the point of being completely incapacitated by her imagination and/or the the influences of/in the house.

9gwendetenebre
Mar 18, 2015, 10:11 am

>8 paradoxosalpha:

Julia reminded me a bit of Eleanor in The Haunting of Hill House for similar reasons.

I thought that the Dandridge story was interesting. I'd like to read the two tales that bookend this one, as mentioned up in >3 elenchus:. Is the thing on the ceiling Dandridge's "murdered" daughter?

10elenchus
Mar 18, 2015, 10:24 am

I didn't manage to snag the story at the library this weekend. Instead of reading, I found myself painting a bedroom Saturday and Sunday. I'm confident I'd have preferred reading the story.

11paradoxosalpha
Mar 18, 2015, 11:01 am

>9 gwendetenebre: Is the thing on the ceiling Dandridge's "murdered" daughter?

That didn't occur to me. I thought the thing in the ocean was Dandridge fille. She could be both, I guess.

12paradoxosalpha
Edited: Mar 18, 2015, 11:49 am

The Lewis Carroll allusions seemed to work pretty well here. I'm leery of the use of Alice's Adventures just to signify "madness" and/or childhood, but the Mock-Turtle's Song is really apposite.
"You can really have no notion how delightful it will be
When they take us up and throw us, with the lobsters, out to sea!"
In another odd bit of synchronicity, my review this morning also mentioned liking the use that was made of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in the context of a Cthulhvian apocalypse.

13RandyStafford
Edited: Mar 18, 2015, 1:22 pm

What does everyone make of Anna's line about "It's my job to read everything."? (Or words to that effect. I don't have the book with me.)

I thought maybe Kiernan was trying to link her to the image of Dandridge's daughter as a subsuming Mother Hydra that absorbs life into her. (At least that's how I took it after only one reading.)

But the story seems to end on a relatively calm note of re-established affection between Anna and Julia.

14paradoxosalpha
Edited: Mar 18, 2015, 2:31 pm

>13 RandyStafford: Anna's line about "It's my job to read everything."

"I read everything, Julia," Anna said. "It's what I do."
Life of a grad student; nothing more, I think.

15RandyStafford
Mar 18, 2015, 4:55 pm

>14 paradoxosalpha: Good point. I've heard it's the trap of grad students that they always need to read "just one more thing".

16gwendetenebre
Mar 21, 2015, 12:48 pm

>4 paradoxosalpha:, >5 elenchus:

We WT members are scattered all over the place, aren't we? Too bad - we could start our own version of HPL's Kalem Club. I am in eastern PA. Of course, if anyone was interested, we could possibly meet up at the next Providence Necronomicon!

17JeromeJ
Edited: Mar 25, 2015, 10:10 pm

This member has been suspended from the site.

18paradoxosalpha
Edited: Mar 26, 2015, 12:10 pm

>17 JeromeJ:

We just read a story from 2014 that is available (primarily) online. So there is no "cut-off" of the kind you suppose.

Our selection process is pretty transparent: see the planning threads. I think it's distinctive and valuable that our reading lists have maintained a through-line including works from the 19th century through the 21st. While Sturgeon's Law ("90% of everything is crap") remains true of recent weird fiction, you're really missing out on some wonderful stuff by curmudgeoning away the last 65 years.