Earthbound | ||||||||
Richard Matheson | ||||||||
Tor, 223 pages | ||||||||
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A review by Kit O'Connell
In Earthbound, David Cooper, with his wife Ellen, have come to an isolated seaside cottage near the one where
they spent their honeymoon; they hope to repair the damage done to their marriage by David's recent infidelities. Almost
immediately, things start going wrong on their vacation as David discovers that the dilapidated cottage is haunted by
the spirit of Marianna, a dead girl whose evil, lust-filled ways have doomed her to becoming trapped on earth and
confined to the house where she sinned. Literally unable to control his male sexual urges, David again cheats on his
wife with the spirit and ignores the warnings of the mysterious, rich heiress on the hill who tries to send the
couple away to safety. As he grows deeper in his carnal knowledge of the ghost, their dalliances begin to literally
sap away at his health and energy but he is powerless to stop himself.
The ghostly affair continues until things go from bad to worse -- especially for readers tired of good girl/bad girl
clichés -- when Ellen is possessed by Marianna and begins acting like her; the behavior he found so pleasing
in his undead liaison is literally horrifying to him in his
wife: "He'd never, in his life, seen a woman making love to herself, least of all his own wife. The sight unnerved
and frightened him even though he was unable to suppress a tremor of distorted excitation." Fortunately, our hero
hurls himself and his wife through the window of the cottage, an act which places them out of reach of Marianna's
powers. Waking up predictably in the hospital, he realizes "now he had to discipline the beast [his sex drive] -- which
would not be simple because it had become accustomed to its license... it was his aspiration now to permanently
encage that animal within his mind." Happily for members of the moral majority everywhere, David has learned that
sex outside of a loving marriage is wrong because "anything less was, to varying degrees, mutual and self
destruction." Their passion is rekindled, though David vaguely mentions "there would probably be backslidings," as
if excusing himself in advance for whatever indulgences his uncontrollable sexual urges cause.
Horror as a genre is sometimes accused of having repressive attitudes towards gender and sexuality, and it is
sad to see such a sterling example in the work of a master. Although other work by
Matheson, such as "The Shrinking Man," certainly deal with sexuality and even reflect the prevailing attitudes of
the era in which they were written, I can't help but feel that those stories do so with far greater sensitivity
and awareness then Earthbound; whereas those stories placed the character's attitudes and ideals under
a microscope, this one instead places them in a Norman Rockwell painting. While this will appeal to a certain
segment of the horror readership, it certainly alienated this reviewer.
Kit O'Connell is a writer and bookseller from Austin, TX who enjoys seducing authors for their souls in his spare time. You can read about his spine-chilling exploits at todfox.livejournal.com. |
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