Pardon This Intrusion: Frankenstein 200 Years Later

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Leslie Klinger, editor of the New Annotated Frankenstein, discusses When Literature Becomes Myth: Celebrating 200 Years of Frankenstein at CPCC’s Sensoria Festival. Monday April 9 at 10:30 am, Central Campus, Tate Hall.  Free.

Two centuries after Frankenstein first appeared, we need to remember how eloquently the creature speaks. Not the monster who debuted on stage in 1823’s Presumption, or the Fate of Frankenstein, the one whose film history began with the 1910 one-reel Frankenstein from Thomas Edison. Hundreds of films, TV shows, stage plays, even musicals have followed them, from James Whale’s 1931 classic through Universal Studios’ upcoming remake of The Bride of Frankenstein. Granted, they have given us some of our most enduring cultural tropes: the mad scientist, the grunting monster, the torch-wielding mob. But they have drowned out a remarkable voice, one we need to hear now more than ever.

That voice belongs to the creature of Mary Shelley’s novel, published anonymously on January 1, 1818, and never out of print since. It is the voice of an articulate autodidact conceived by a girl a few months shy of her nineteenth birthday, motherless herself, displaced from family and proper society because of her elopement with a married rakish flake, creating what she later called her “hideous progeny” while holed up under rainy skies darkened by the global ash-cloud from Mt. Tambora’s eruption.

It is the outcast who faces Victor Frankenstein on the sea of ice and speaks the most moving words in the novel, the one who has by then found an abandoned book satchel containing the essential Romantic Era reading list and uses Paradise Lost to plead a case that convicts us all to this day. Speaking to his creation for the first time, Victor greets him as “Devil,” but the creature is far ahead of him: “I expected this reception. All men hate the wretched.” He proceeds to tell his wretched tale, beginning with the night Victor brought him to life and promptly abandoned him.

“I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel,” he says, and Paradise Lost informs his tale and underscores the novel’s indictment of society. Steeped as she was from childhood in the great intellectual tradition, Mary Shelley knew very well the key scenes in Paradise Lost: Adam coming to life in the sun-drenched Garden of Eden, able to open his mouth and name every creature which presented itself to him, Eve so enchanted with her beautiful reflection that she almost refused to leave it. By contrast, the creature describes waking to darkness and cold. When he tries to imitate the sounds of night birds, the “uncouth and inarticulate” sounds he makes frighten him into silence. In contrast to Eve, the creature sees his reflection only after he has been admiring the De Lacey family from his hiding place. He has come to appreciate beauty, and with that understanding has come the recognition of how hideously he has been made.

Even Satan had his fellow devils, but the creature has no one; worse than that, he has read the great Miltonic explanation of the chain of being and found himself utterly excluded. When the creature makes his attempt to be included, when he approaches blind father De Lacey, his first words to another human being are “Pardon this intrusion.” Of course, at this point De Lacey’s children return, immediately assume a monster is attacking their father, and chaos typical of the movies ensues.

From that moment until the creature meets Victor, the series of mishaps and misdeeds that follow lead him to confront Victor and make the argument that he should have his own Eve. “I am malicious because I am miserable,” he says. He lays the blame for that misery at the feet of Victor, who created him and fled; that blame also lies on the man who shot him after the creature had saved his daughter from drowning (a scene turned around horribly in the Whale film), on the villagers who drove him away with stones and sticks, even on Felix De Lacey for assuming instinctively that because he was hideous he was evil. Give me a mate, he asks, and we will go to the wilds of South America. There, as he has learned from his reading, he and his mate will find the better Eden in each other’s arms. Victor is moved by the argument, at least until the moment when he aborts his second creation and puts the novel’s tragic conclusion into motion.

Jill Lepore’s recent New Yorker article points out how the creature’s story resembles a slave narrative, connecting it to Mary Shelley’s reading about slave rebellions in Haiti and the West Indies and also to the life of Frederick Douglass. The comparison is apt with regard to both the extraordinary way Douglass obtained his education and to his struggle to assert the full humanity of people of color to a society which considered them savage children. Lepore points out that in James Whale’s 1931 Frankenstein, the monster is lynched. I think it is even more telling that in Mary Shelley’s novel, the creature has internalized society’s condemnation and decides to immolate himself.

Charlotte Gordon’s Romantic Outlaws, a parallel biography of Mary Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft, makes a fascinating case that both were hampered and unappreciated by the men in their lives: as thinkers, as writers, as full equals to the supposedly progressive and revolutionary men with whom they were intimately associated. Through her creature, Mary Shelley also speaks out against patriarchy, certainly against how the Miltonic chain of being justified the prevailing political and economic hierarchy—and hierarchy within families—as God-ordained.  Though the creature measures himself against Adam and Satan, I see him as similar to Eve, sent to gather food while the angel Raphael warned Adam of Satan’s designs. Like the creature eavesdropping on the De Lacey family (the pun is unavoidable) Eve is forced to obtain knowledge only by subterfuge, then judged as fallen by those who did not deign to teach her.

Mary Shelley’s novel has serious flaws: improbable plot devices, overwrought and silly dialogue, and a neophyte author’s attempt to make it everything from moral fable to philosophical argument to travelogue. But it is intricately and artfully presented through narrative framed within narrative, and at its heart the creature speaks what he rightfully calls the most moving part of the tale.

Today, even if the mob is carrying tiki torches or the stones are cast on-line, the creature still confronts us on behalf of anyone who is labelled Other, who is blamed, exploited, excluded or forced to assert that his or her life matters. Read the novel, or read it again, through the lens of the 21st century. Heed the voice of the creature.

Gastonia poet and writer David E. Poston taught for thirty years in public school, at UNC-Charlotte, and at Charlotte’s Young Writers’ Workshop. His work has appeared in journals and anthologies such as Broad River Review, English Journal, Pedestal, The Cape Rock, The Southern Poetry Anthology: North Carolina, and Kakalak. His poetry collections are My Father Reading Greek, Postmodern Bourgeois Poetaster Blues, and Slow of Study. He served on the steering committee for Charlotte Lit’s Carson McCullers centennial celebration in 2017 and currently serves on the boards of the Friends of the Gaston County Public Library, Gaston Literacy Council, and Charlotte Writers’ Club. He teaches writing workshops for Hospice and other venues and will talk about Frankenstein or Paradise Lost to any group that will listen.

How to be Kind to Your Reader: Some Thoughts on George Saunders

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George Saunders is big on kindness. When I read the convocation speech he gave at Syracuse University, which is now available to us in a book, Congratulations, By The Way: Some Thoughts on Kindness, which I highly recommend, it got me wondering: if you write fiction, as Saunders does beautifully, is there such a thing as being kind to your reader?

I happen to believe that there is. Kindness begins with respect, human being to human being. The writer of fiction should assume that the reader is an intellectual equal. Now, I know George Saunders knows more than I do, and when I read his Lincoln in the Bardo, I relished the challenge of keeping up. This masterpiece of a novel, about souls in a literal or figurative state of transition, tells the story—from a wildly original point of view—of Abraham Lincoln in the hours surrounding his beloved 11-year-old son Willie’s death from typhoid fever. Even though I wandered through some pages, disoriented as a blind squirrel looking for a nut, I trusted that Saunders would lead me to the light.

No one likes to be talked down to or treated with condescension. I used to tell my high-school English students, “In a three-page paper, you only need to say it one time. I know I’m old, but my memory is still intact. You don’t need to restate your thesis in the conclusion. Use that space and opportunity to tell me something related to your topic that I may not know.” Saunders taught me a lot, not only about American history, but also about tone and characterization and pacing and structure. Fiction writers are teachers, too. I choose to read writers whose ability level is far beyond mine so that I might learn from them.

Kind writers allow the love for their craft to show. When I read Saunders, I’m reminded of my ninth-grade geometry teacher who could not hide her admiration for the beauty of a geometrical proof. Her voice would change; her eyes would shine. I witness that same kind of joy in Lincoln in the Bardo. Imagine Saunders’ delight when he discovered that, in 1861, the President received a letter that read, “Mr. Abe Lincoln, you don’t Resign, we are going to put a spider in your dumpling….” (There’s more to that letter that made my mouth fall open in horror; see page 233 for details.) As I read these words a second time, I can almost see Saunders hopping out of his desk chair and jumping around like he’d won the lottery. Ali Smith is another awe-inspiring contemporary fiction writer easy to catch in the act of joy; her novel How to be Both is as inventive and challenging as Lincoln in the Bardo. I don’t know if Smith and Saunders have met, but I believe they’d become the fastest of friends.

A kind fiction writer embraces economy of language. One of the mantras of the editor and publisher should be, “No self-indulgence allowed.” A writer flaunting his flair with intricate similes or veering off on an unrelated tangent reveals a selfishness, not to mention a startling lack of awareness, that someone other than he will be reading the words. With their enlarged empathy genes, kind writers know better than anyone that there are plenty of other A+ novels their readers could have chosen instead. “Kindness, it turns out, is hard,” Saunders told the student body at Syracuse, where he teaches creative writing—also hard if done well, and worth all the precious time and emotional energy and sleepless nights when one reader says, “Those words on that page: I am pretty sure that you wrote them just for me.”

Jenny Hubbard lives in the town of her childhood (Salisbury, NC) and works at the public library where she first learned to read. Her two novels, Paper Covers Rock and And We Stay (Delacorte Press, Penguin Random House), feature teenage protagonists who come to rely on poetry as a way to order the chaos. An English teacher for seventeen years, Jenny believes she learned more from her students than they ever learned from her. She is currently under the tutelage of her rescue dog, Oliver.

Read to Understand: CML’s Black Lives Matter Reading List

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When I arrive on the second floor of Charlotte’s Main Library, I notice the usual activity. Two librarians seated behind the reference desk, ready to answer questions. A couple of individuals shuffling through the bookshelves. A cluster of people seated at computer work stations.

But there is also the sound of a soft quiet here—not silence, but quiet. The type of quiet I think floods a place where people have respect for the many ideas percolating in the presence of so much information.

I take in these observations in a quick sweep of the room. Then words in the corner of my eye pull my gaze to the space near the elevator. “Unrest,” “K(no)w Justice, K(no)w Peace,” and “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot,” read the signs hanging on the wall. Interspersed with the words and phrases are black and white drawings of Walter Scott, Eric Garner, Philando Castile, Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin, and Sandra Bland. Just above each of their names are the words, “Justice For.”

One sign frames the familiar phrase, “Black Lives Matter,” and rises above a book display. I pause and I stare. I stare at the words on the wall and the drawings of people no longer alive. I read their names in a hushed voice, barely above a whisper. Then I walk around the book display, nodding at titles I’ve already read, like Men We Reaped and The Fire This Time, and also noting the many books I don’t know.

Enlarged, photocopied book covers form a column at the edge of the wall. Recommended reading for those wondering where to start. Yellow call-out bubbles explain who might want to read each book suggestion.

“Feel defensive?” says the first call-out bubble. Then read What Does It Mean to be White by Robin DiAngelo.

“Think racism is a thing of the past?” Then read Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates.

“Think you are ‘color blind’?” Then read Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria by Beverly Daniel Tatum.

“Think anyone can get ahead if they work hard enough?” Then read The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander.

Last autumn Angel Truesdale and her co-workers curated this display and created a reading list in response to the one-year anniversary of Keith Lamont Scott’s death—and also to support the new exhibit at the Levine Museum entitled, K(no)w Justice, K(no)w Peace. The library will keep the display up until the end of February. However, the suggested reading list is online now and will remain available.

The presence of this book display in the Main Library sends a powerful message to our community that these issues are important and we must engage. These voices and these stories matter, and we must not turn away despite the possibility of missteps and pain. If we want to seek authentic, genuine healing in our broken society, then we must understand the places our society came from and how those places gave birth to where we are today.

I am a black woman who often writes about the topic of race. When I look at this library display and read the suggested list, I experience a thrill at knowing I add my words to the words of many.

These curated books and other materials offer invitations to all of us. For some, these are invitations to find affirmation that people are using their voices to tell our stories. For others, these are invitations to discover another experience. In the act of accepting these invitations, we open ourselves up to the possibility of reimagining the future.

I again read the words taped to the wall. I look at the drawings of people who should still be alive. I touch the spines of books. The soft library-grade quiet present in the room allows me a moment of reverence as I stand before these books and this wall.

And I think this display whispers to me, “Your life matters.”

Patrice Gopo is a 2017-2018 North Carolina Arts Council Literature Fellow, and her essay collection about race, immigration and belonging will release this summer. Please visit patricegopo.com to read more of her work and sign up for updates about her book.

Park Road Books’ Best Books of 2017

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Whether you’re looking to curl up with a good book or still need to round out your gift list, there’s no better source for book recommendations than from the people who sell them all year long. The booksellers from Park Road Books, Charlotte’s independent book store, share their 2017 favorites with us here.

From James: 

The Last Ballad by Wiley Cash. This historically accurate account of the Loray Mill Strike in 1929 Gastonia features an indomitable heroine who takes on mill owners, abusive bosses, and corrupt police officers while trying to provide for her family. A beautifully written book that will open the most hardened heart.

The Driver by Hart Hanson. A thriller set in modern LA where a veteran with PTSD  named Skellig opens a limousine service and hires other vets suffering their own wounds from battle. A millionaire skateboarder, Bismark Avilla, recruits Skellig to drive him around, a task made more difficult by the people trying to kill Avilla. Great pacing in this first novel from the creator of the TV series “Bones.”

Goat Castle: A True Story of Murder, Race, and the Gothic South by Karen L. Cox. UNCC history professor Karen Cox deftly describes one of the most famous murders of 1929 and its cover-up that takes place in Natchez, Mississippi.

From Shauna:

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. This National Book Award finalist inspired by Black Lives Matter is a must-read for all. With nuanced discussions on race and a relevant storyline with relatable characters for a YA audience, Angie Thomas’ debut has earned its spot on the #1 NYT Bestseller’s list.

Her Body & Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado. A dark, bloody, vicious short story collection perfect for women who are completely fed up. This collection features a multitude of queer women characters, an overtly feminist message, and stories that are both brand new and familiar, like a dream you cannot quite recall.

From Chris:

The Mirror Thief by Martin Seay. A kaleidoscopic mix of history, religion, mysticism, and good old-fashioned page-turning suspense that creatively uses historical fiction to challenge readers to see the underlying connections that shape their world. Manages the intricate feat of telling three stories that are all equally compelling in their own unique ways. Should be a great read for anybody who enjoyed David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas.

Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero. One of the most unabashedly fun reading experiences I’ve had in a long time. A great nostalgic love letter to the stories of yesteryear that simultaneously pays tribute to modern America’s pop cultural landscape while building a wholly original tale of madness, adventure, love, and the costs of growing up. Alternately hilarious, horrifying and heartwarming.

From Trudy:

The Jersey Brothers: A Missing Naval Officer in the Pacific and His Family’s Quest to Bring Him Home by Sally Mott Freeman. Remarkable story of a family of three brothers during WWII. Their love, courage, and the will to survive makes it a fantastic read.

Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II by Liza Mundy. Skillful women outwitting the Japanese by code breaking during WWII. Well researched and beautifully written.

From Sally:

Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan. Fascinating historical fiction that recalls the best noir thrillers, Egan does not disappoint with her account of a young girl, her father, and a gangster in Manhattan between the Depression and WWII.

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann. After oil was discovered on their land, the Osage Indians in the 1920’s were some of the richest people in America. One by one they were murdered and after the death toll reached 24, local officials turned to the newly formed FBI for help. A riveting work of non-fiction that keeps you turning pages long after you should be asleep!

Righteous (hardcover) and IQ (paperback) by Joe Ide. Joe Ide is my new idol. He writes about a young African-American growing up in one of South LA’s toughest neighborhoods who solves crimes the police won’t touch. Sherlock Holmes would be proud!

Located in the Park Road Shopping Center, Park Road Books has been independently owned and operated for 40 years, and today is the only independent bookstore in Charlotte carrying only new books. Winner of Creative Loafing’s Best of the Best awards on a yearly basis, Park Road Books hosts author events and local bookclubs.