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Supernatural Horror: Authors and Themes |
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THE GHOST STORIES OF FRITZ LEIBER Fritz Leiber (1910-92) was one of the most versatile writers in the fields of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. He won several major awards. Much of Leiber's work achieves classic status due to his unique and personal way of approaching the subject matter of his fiction. Yet by his use of satire, and subtle use of the categories of Jungian depth psychology, his work resonates with a universal subconscious which makes it possible to feel involved in his fiction, to take the same risks, and to share the moments of white-hot terror that appear throughout his horror fiction. (1) Leiber is not easily classifiable as a writer: his fiction ranges freely through the genres, mixing them. His writings in the field of horror are as likely to contain elements of science fiction, as any of the usual trappings of horror fiction. And when it comes to the sub-genre of the ghost story, few, if any, of the traditional ghost story ideas and themes are present in Leiber's output. It could be argued that an article on the 'ghost stories' of Fritz Leiber is a contradiction, unless the definition of what could constitute a ghost is accepted on his own terms. (2) Assuming this, I intend to survey the few stories in Leiber's fifty years as a published writer that could be said, however loosely, to fall into the sub-genre of 'ghost story'. Doubtless my selection will be open to debate and comment: it is bound not to be exhaustive! (3) As with the best traditional ghost stories, it certainly is a case of the quality of work, not the quantity! In Fritz Leiber's ghost stories, the actual 'ghost' is usually simply some sort of apparition or entity that rationally should not exist. This is the definition that I shall adopt here. The apparitions and entities do not seem to be ghosts in the traditional sense of a visible disembodied presence that nevertheless has some physical characteristics, and interacts with ordinary human characters. But then, Leiber's work is only traditional in that he often used artistic tradition (for example, the works of Shakespeare) as a starting-point for his own explorations into his own vision of the world -- a Leiberian world where warm personal intimate things can encounter the Other, and be changed irreparably in a fraction of a second. Leiber's most famous ghost story was first published in 1941. "Smoke Ghost" stands at the beginning of his publishing career, and in it he sets out his agenda of what a modern ghost would be like: I don't mean that [traditional] kind of ghost. I mean a ghost from the world of today, with the soot of the factories on its face and the pounding of machinery in its soul... Not something out of books. (4) Leiber's point in this story, and his others, is that modern conditions call for modern ghosts. In "The Hound" (1942) Leiber does the same with the idea of a sort of ghostly wolf, and the man who finds himself pursued and haunted by it. Using the title of a story by H P Lovecraft that also concerned a haunting by a dog-entity must have been a deliberate tribute by Leiber to his first mentor. (5) "A Deskful of Girls" (1958) involves ghostly entities - barely corporeal ectoplasmic skins that have become separated from the people who generated them. The 'ghosts' represent separate emotional aspects of the personality of the original owner. Here the ghosts are not connected with the dead, but are estranged aspects of the living. And they can be as destructive as the living, if they do not get their way. Leiber uses his background as the son of Shakespearian actor parents, and his own experiences in the theatre, in "Four Ghosts in Hamlet" (1965). This is an obvious choice for a ghost story, as Shakespeare's incomparable play contains a part for the ghost of Hamlet's murdered father, who though dead, intervenes in the play and influences the actions of the leading character Hamlet himself. The same is the case in Leiber's story. The actors of a touring Shakespearian theatre company have problems that need to be resolved, and are, after a performance of Hamlet in which no-one can be certain of who played the ghost. "Midnight in the Mirror World" (1964) contains what might be Leiber's most traditional ghost. The narrator, the Leiber-like Giles Nefandor, begins to see an apparition in the reflections caused by two mirrors facing each other in his house. The woman in black that he sees in the mirror seems to be advancing towards him at the rate of one reflection each day -- and she looks as if she has malevolent intentions. Once Nefandor realises who she must be, he realises that he is actually longing for their meeting, and her deadly embrace. Supernatural terror is accepted and tamed. To Nefandor death becomes preferable to his dull daily life alone. Apparitions in two other stories, "Richmond, Late September, 1849" (1969) and "Horrible Imaginings" (1982) turn out to be Death, personified as female. In the former story, Edgar Allan Poe is the protagonist who meets a woman in black, who claims to know his writings about the dead women in his life. Finally a drunken Poe tries to get the woman to meet him in New York -- but she replies that she will indeed meet him again -- except in Baltimore. (6) "Horrible Imaginings" concerns a lonely widower who begins to see the 'Vanishing Lady' in the corridors of his apartment block. He begins to focus all his now unfulfilled sexual longings onto her, although she still remains elusive. At last they meet and embrace in the lift; and Death claims her latest recruit who desires release from an empty and mundane life. A completely alien and non-human apparition or entity is possibly encountered by the characters in "A Bit of the Dark World" (1962). In what is perhaps Leiber's single most mysterious and frightening story, there is an encounter with -- ...half-dozen or so thin close-placed stalks of what I can only describe as a more gleaming blackness... I followed them up with my eyes as they mounted against the starfields, almost invisible, like black wires, to where they ended -- high up -- in a bulb of darkness... The black bulb swayed and there was a corresponding rapid joggling in the crowded black stalks -- though if they were free to move at the base I ought to call them legs. (7) Something utterly Other is at work, something that perhaps has connections with the depths of the subconscious, rather than from space or from the dead. The Other here is a new sort of super natural, that manifests itself in another, blacker, sort of darkness. The female principle as an apparition comes to the fore in another story with a terrifying climax, "The Button Molder" (1979). Again, whether or not the entity can really be called a ghost is open to question. Told simply in the first person singular, Leiber uses H P Lovecraft’s device of stating at the outset of the story what happened at its climax. Like Lovecraft, Leiber then proceeds to build up slowly to the shattering finale of the encounter by the means of accumulated personal details and inner thoughts. Leiber's character (never named) comes to consider that the apparition could be 'perhaps an archetype of the unconscious mind somehow made real? the Anima or the Kore or the Hag who lays men out (if those be distinct archetypes)? Possibly, I guess.' (8) With a similar setting and eventual ending to "A Bit of the Dark World", "The Ghost Light" (1984) concerns a small boy's unusual nightlight and the fact that it could be attracting trouble rather than keeping it at bay. Unresolved incidents from the past, and the subconscious, seem to cause consequences in the present, and are manifested when an oil painting is enabled to play a role very different from that for which it was created. Leiber's novel Our Lady of Darkness (1977) harks back to "Smoke Ghost" in its adaptation of traditional ideas of apparition and entities, but for modern settings and situations. Franz Westen, another Leiber-like narrator, stumbles across the possibility, first raised during the early part of the century, that large modern cities might create and conceal their own kind of 'ghosts' -- 'paramental entities' as the novel calls them. In a story that uses and transforms the experience of modern city living in the way that Arthur Machen and H P Lovecraft had already done, Leiber has his alter ego slowly encounter a web of old intrigue and barely survivable horror. By the time that Westen discovers his modern place in the old drama, it seems that the Jungian feminine principle is at work again, given power -- and animated to destroy him. Despite the use of secondary narratives to expand the original magazine novella "The Pale Brown Thing" (1977) to novel length, these do add to the feelings of unease and terror that grow inexorably throughout the book, and allow Leiber to explore in greater detail his uses of the female 'Anima' principle as symbols, both good and evil, of uncertainty and otherness in life. The feminine and Other can be terrifying. They can also be magical, bewitching, and a giver of strength to endure, and win out with human values against the powers of darkness and chaos. Despite the title of this article, Leiber wrote no ghost stories in the traditional meaning of that sub-genre. He did write several stories and one novel that use entities and apparitions -- however generated -- to explore and to come to terms with his own concerns and experiences. And what is more, unlike so many 'ghost stories', Leiber's are truly frightening, as the reader confronts the truly unknown -- not just the dead, but the living: the self and other people.
NOTES 1. I am indebted to the insights given by Bruce Byfield in his Witches of the Mind: a critical study of Fritz Leiber, West Warwick, R.I.: Necronomicon Press 1991 2. For
example, as defined by the narrator in "The Button Molder"
The Leiber Chronicles, 3. See the correspondence in The Ghost Story Society Newsletter, March 1991, p 18 4. Night's Black Agents, Sphere ed., p 11 5. Byfield, op. cit.,pp ll-13, goes into more detail 6. Where Poe died, on 7 October 1849 7. Night Monsters, Panther ed., p 178 8. "The Button Molder" The Leiber Chronicles, pp 534-5; see also Byfield, op.cit., pp 66ff
BIBLIOGRAPHY -- of first appearance and most accessible collection
"A Bit of the Dark World" Fantastic, Feb. 1962; Night Monsters, Panther 1975 "The Button Molder" Whispers, Oct 1979; The Leiber Chronicles, Dark Harvest 1990 "A Deskful of Girls" Fantasy & Science Fiction, Apr 1958; Changewar, Ace, 1983 "Four Ghosts in Hamlet" Fantasy & Science Fiction, Jan 1965; The Leiber Chronicles "The Ghost Light" The Ghost Light, Berkeley, 1984 "Horrible Imaginings" Death, ed. Stuart D Schiff, 1982; The Leiber Chronicles “The Hound” Weird Tales, Nov. 1942; Night's Black Agents, Sphere ed., 1977 "Midnight in the Mirror World" Fantastic, Oct. 1964; Night Monsters Our Lady of Darkness Fontana 1978 “Richmond, Late September, 1849” Fantastic, Feb. 1969; Heroes and Horrors, Pocket Books, 1982
A slightly different version of this article first appeared in All Hallows 4, published by the Ghost Story Society Copyright (c) 2001 John Howard |
