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Portrayal of the Weird Domain جامعة امللك سعود King Saud University كلية اﻵداب College of Arts جملة اﻵداب Journal of Arts ردمد )ورقي(:ISSN (Paper):1018-3620 1018 – 3620 ردمد )النرش اﻹلكرتوين(: ISSN (Electronic):1658-8339 1658-8339 جملة اﻵداب، مج )32(، ع )3(، ص ص 1-10، جامعة امللك سعود، الرياض )2020م/1441هـ( Journal of Arts, Vol. 32 (3), pp 1-10, © King Saud University, Riyadh (2020 /1441H.) Portrayal of the Weird Domain of David Mitchell’s Slade House Shaju Ouseph Nalkara Associate Professor of English Literature, Department of English, Faculty of Language Studies, Arab Open University, Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (Received: 10/2/1442 H; Accepted for publication: 7/ 5/1442 H) Abstract: David Mitchell’s Slade House (2015) transcends the tropes of Gothic fiction. The novel is structured as tales of paranormal occurrences experienced by five individual characters at the titular mansion. The events recur every nine years between 1979 and 2015. Mitchell uses gothic tropes like the haunted house, apparitions, occult rituals, hallucinations, mental degradation, and nightmarish dream sequences. Yet, on a deeper level Slade House is a narrative tackling the domain of the ‘Weird’ where human capacity to comprehend reality is questioned. Mark Fisher has called the Weird as something which generates a sensation of ‘wrongness’ in us. The wrongness or the certainty that the things we perceive should not exist in our plain of reality generates the experience of the Weird. This sense of wrongness, Fisher argues, is rooted in our inadequacy to comprehend all of reality. Weird fiction has its roots in the works of H. P. Lovecraft. His works dealt with articulating existential dread as an outcome of realizing our absolute insignificance in an indifferent cosmos. Slade House grapples with the problem of articulating this sense of the Weird. For this purpose it employs stylistic and thematic subversions of traditional Gothic and supernatural elements. This paper will examine how David Mitchell’s Slade House goes beyond the Gothic and evolves into a work of weird fiction. The paper will also probe into the novel’s portrayal of the inexplicable and the monstrous lurking in the realm of the Weird. Keywords: Gothic fiction, weird fiction, the Weird, supernatural horror, the Other. 1 2 Journal of Arts, Vol. 32, (3), King Saud University, Riyadh (2020 /1441H.) تصوير املجال الغريب ملنزل ديفيد ميتشل سليد شاجو أوسف نالكارا أستاذ مشارك يف اﻷدب اﻹنجليزي، قسم اللغة اﻹنجليزية، كلية دراسات اللغة، اجلامعة العربية املفتوحة، الرياض، اململكة العربية السعودية )قدم للنرش يف 10/2/1442هـ، وقبل للنرش يف 7/ 5/1442هـ( ملخص البحث: تتجاوز رواية منزل سليد - )سليد هاوس( للروائي ديڤيد ميتشيل املجازات املعروفة يف أدب اخليال القوطي؛ فهيكل الرواية مؤ َّلف من عدد من القصص أو احلكايات، عن ظواهر خارقة للطبيعة عاشها مخسة أشخاص فرادى يف قرص عتيق حيمل اسم صاحبه. استعمل ميتشيل يف بناء روايته العديد من الرموز واﻻستعارات املجازية القوطية، مثل: التدهور العقيل، واملنزل املسكون، والطقوس الشعائرية الغامضة، واهلذيان واهللوسات، واملشاهد التسلسلية لكوابيس ليلية. فبدت الرواية رس ًدا يستعني بانقﻻبات عىل مستوى اﻷساليب واملواضيع، التي كانت عر ًفا سائ ًدا يف اﻷدب القوطي التقليدي، وعىل عنارصه اخلارقة للطبيعة، ويتطرق إىل تناول مفهوم )الغرابة(، عندما يتم التشكيك يف قدرات العقل البرشي عىل فهم الواقع، وتصبح تلك القدرات حم ًط ا للتساؤل. حتاول هذه الدراسة اﻹجابة عن سؤال كيف متكن الروائي ميتشيل، يف روايته منزل سليد - )سليد هاوس( من خت ّطي حواجز القوطية؟ وحتاول ـ أي ًضا ـ الوقوف عىل الكيفية التي جعلت صور ومفردات الرواية قادرة عىل ما ليس باﻹمكان تفسريه، وكيفية تعامل أحداثها مع الوحشية القاطنة يف عامل الغرابة. الكلامت املفتاحية: خيال قوطي، خيال الغرابة، الغرابة، رعب اخلوارق، سيلد هاوس. Shaju Ouseph Nalkara: Portrayal of the Weird Domain of David … 3 Introduction at Slade House, a sprawling mansion. The events David Mitchell (1969- ) is a British author who span five episodes between 1979 and 2015, at the is widely acknowledged as a master craftsman of recurring interval of nine years. The first four fiction. He has authored eight novels: Ghostwritten episodes follow the fate of guests who are lured to (1999), number9dream (2001), Cloud Atlas (2004), the titular mansion in order to be consumed or Black Swan Green (2006), The Thousand Autumn’s annihilated by the immortal occupants, the twins, of Jacob de Zoet (2010), The Bone Clocks (2014), Jonah and Norah Grayer. The victims include a Slade House (2015), and Utopia Avenue (2020). His thirteen year old boy Nathan Bishop, in 1979; police works display a vast range in theme and scope and inspector Gordon Edmonds, in 1988; teenager Sally largely deal with the interconnected lives of humans. Timms, in 1997; and Sally’s sister Freya, a Even while being celebrated as a writer of literary journalist, in 2006. These victims are special for fiction, with two of his works being shortlisted for their psychic abilities and are categorized as the Man Booker Prize, he experimented with ‘Engifted’ people who have a stock of narrative techniques. He treaded into the realm of ‘psychovoltage’ which the twins need to consume genre fiction through his work The Bone Clocks for their immortal existence (Mitchell, 2015, pp. where he used the tropes of fantasy fiction. The 173-174). A ritual of luring a compliant guest to an work won him the World Fantasy Award in 2015. In aperture in the form of a black iron door to Slade his 2015 work Slade House Mitchell turned again to House is initiated every nine years. Once the guests the conventions of genre fiction; this time his focus cross the aperture they enter a suitably scripted was on horror fiction. Mitchell’s Slade House (2015) dream sequence, called the ‘orison’, involving them developed as a companion work to his 2014 novel experiencing horrifying events at the House. This The Bone Clocks (Thomas, 2015). While The Bone dream sequence is constructed using the Clocks was an expansive novel following a large set subconscious memories of the victims. Nathan of characters through jumps in time and space, Slade Bishop’s orison consists of his mother, Rita, a debt House is grounded in a single setting, the titular ridden, aspiring musician being invited for a musical mansion. It shares thematic content with Mitchell’s soiree at Slade House. Gordon Edmonds is lured by 2014 novel, yet functions as a novel exploring the an orison of sexual fantasies he harbors as a realms of horror fiction. But the brand of horror divorced man. Sally Timms’ orison showcases her pervading the pages of Slade House evades easy insecurities as an obese teenager craving a romantic definition. The novel boasts of a Gothic relationship. While Freya’s orison finds her temperament with the portrayal of a ‘haunted’ investigating the disappearance of her sister Sally. house, ghostly revenants, abductions, occult rituals, This ritual also requires the victims to consume food gristly deaths, and nightmarish dream sequences. inside the orison, food which has been laced by a Yet Mitchell’s novel goes beyond the mere drug called ‘banjax’. This is the penultimate trap categorization of Gothic or horror fiction by which when secured seals the fate of the guest grappling with the portrayal of the unknowable and whose soul will be extracted and consumed by the the incomprehensible. The dread radiating out of twins. The final episode, set in 2015, involves a Slade House is not predominantly of the showdown between the twins and a powerful supernatural but that of a sense of wrongness which immortal arriving in the guise of an Engifted guest can only be clearly defined by placing it in the Dr. Iris Marinus-Fenby (Garner, 2015). domain of the Weird. According to Mark Fisher, It could be argued that Slade House is detailing “the weird is a particular kind of perturbation. It classic tropes of vampirism associated with Gothic involves a sensation of wrongness: a weird entity or fiction. On numerous occasions the novel object is so strange that it makes us feel that it categorizes the twins as “soul vampires” who feed should not exist, or at least it should not exist here” on their unsuspecting guests (Mitchell, 2015, p. (2016, p. 15). The foremost practitioner of the Weird 176). The final episode of the novel can also be read was H.P. Lovecraft, whose stories explored as a kind of exorcism where the evil entities are existential questions pertaining to a cosmos which vanquished. But Mitchell’s novel turns such Gothic proved indifferent to the plight of mankind tropes on their head by radically subverting them. In (Moreland, 2018, p. 19). Weird fiction writers Slade House, the supernatural or the ghostly are including Lovecraft, Arthur Machen, Robert E. minimal. Jonah and Norah Grayer have a modus Howard, China Mieville, Jeff VanderMeer, and operandi which transcends the vampirism of a Thomas Ligotti transcended Gothic conventions by Gothic tale. The ‘haunted’ mansion in question turns exploring further the idea of reality hiding out to be an elaborate vision, a kind of simulation of incomprehensible truths which when confronted Gothic tropes. Nightmarish sequences involving generated the experience of the Weird (Carroll, monstrous entities have ontological roots beyond the 2015). This sense of the incomprehensible realm of the supernatural. Above all, Slade House encroaching into normal reality is given emphasis in foregrounds the utter helplessness in comprehending Slade House even while it masquerades as a haunted a reality which is not what it seems to be. The novel house Gothic tale. asks existential questions regarding good and evil, The novel follows the lives of characters whose rationality, and the afterlife. It answers those perspective of reality is altered by their experiences questions by refuting clichéd Gothic conventions 4 Journal of Arts, Vol. 32, (3), King Saud University, Riyadh (2020 /1441H.) and bringing into the limelight the limits of human response of dread.
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