This week we read The Funeral by Richard Mathesen. A short story about a mortician who performs funerals for...well let's call them questionable monster types since it never says outright says what they are.
I'm not quite sure what genre this short story is supposed to be in. Because it certainly didn't feel like horror. In fact the campy nature of this short seemed almost like a kids story. It wasn't scary and at times seemed like it was written for people who don't read horror. I got serious Munsters feels from this short. Monsters as the quirky neighbors not as being scary.
It was super campy, and the monsters very cliche. I have no problem with campy monsters. I love camp....yet I didn't like this very much. I think that was for two different reasons.
The first being that I wasn't sure where or when it was set. The language made it sound old. The language also made it seem...British. I say that because through word choice it sounds way more highbrow and proper than an American song. Words like "pendium"(Mathesen, 261) "diffident" (Matheson, 263), "solicitude" (Matheson, 262), "Indeed" (Matheson, 264), and "felicitous" (Matheson, 266), among others made this sound both old a British to me.
The second thing that annoyed me in this short story was that it totally lacked character ark. Morton Silkline doesn't change at all. He's the same money grubbing guy of questionable repute on page 269 as he was on page 261. He had no ark and for me that left no real point for the story.
That said I did like the variety of creatures that appear in this short story. I'm not quiet sure what the last monster is but he's definitely unique. Which is always awesome and refreshing. I probably won't read it again. I'm glad I read it...even if I'm no quiet sure what genre is supposed to fall into.
Works Cited
Matheson, Richard. I Am Legend. New York City: Tom Doherty Associates, LLC, 1995. E-book.
It's interesting because some of the things you didn't like about this story, were exactly what made it awesome for me. The campy feeling, contrasted with the seriousness of the word choice to make something hilarious for me. This definitely isn't horror, not in the traditional sense anyway. But I found it nearly laugh out loud funny. Which perhaps says something about my sense of humor. After all, I find Sweeny Todd hilarious.
ReplyDelete"...well let's call them questionable monster types since it never says outright says what they are."
ReplyDeleteAha, I didn't really notice this until you mentioned it, but Matheson never really does come right out and tell us what these creatures are. That's interesting. Beyond the mirror thing and the bat flying out the window, there's not much else to signify to us that Asper is indeed a vampire. When you think of it, Asper could just as easily have been some crazy guy who thinks he's a vampire... and the bat was maybe just a coincidence? It's a stretch, but one I think is kind of cool. Hell, this whole funeral could've been some sort of CosPlay event.