A Familiar Face

I gave a writing competition a shot, for the recent Summer 1816: Creativity in Turmoil at Sheffield Gothic. The rules were simple: 500 words max, beginning with their preselected line from Shelley’s Frankenstein. My entry won 3rd prize, which is pretty cool since they were judged by some of the leading Gothic academics I’m studying. The winning entry was absolutely fantastic, which is no surprise – a romanticist scholar, published poet and playwright, Dr Monika Lee’s parody had the whole audience laughing.

So here’s my effort, with some edits – I’ve actually removed the Frankenstein opening, and adjusted my imitations of Victor’s grandiosity to fit more with the overall tone. It’ll do!

 

I stood back, admiring the silence that we shared. The folds of her dress crumpled together under the moth-struck flicker of the lamplight. The lank length of her hair feathered the pillow, ruffling at the crown of her head in the breeze from the open window. Her eyes – distant, deep, still pensive – looked up to the ceiling, and her parted lips were left on the verge of a word she could no longer whisper. Even so, within that expression I read a strange accusation that I had not come across before. She was saying, ‘I know you.’

I turned away and lit a cigarette. She had left a packet of Malboro on the cabinet, where the lamp hummed to the transfixed moth. I needed the air to still me, so I might savour the taste of the night: perfume and salt and smoke, thickly coating my tongue. I exhaled smoke. The blood in my temples clapped like applause; in the absence of an audience, my body congratulated itself. How strange it felt. I breathed in. Stranger still was the lingering picture of her lips etched into my eyelids as she was saying, ‘I know you.’

I looked back over my shoulder and breathed out. I wanted to alter her face, to pick up the pieces and smooth the hard line of her jaw. Make those eyes less familiar, those lips less talkative. She was saying, ‘I know you.’

Breathed in. I paced to the window, breathing out through the small crack. I gripped the window ledge, leaning my forehead against the cool glass. The streetlight outside glared at me, orange and burning and smeared in my weary vision. The cold of the night breeze clung, viscous, to my skin. At my back: ‘I know you.’

A faint shuffling sound cut my ears. Inhaling the smoke, I faced her. She had moved her left leg, I think. It had been turned outward at the knee, only slightly, curling her hip upward as if to close herself. Now it was open. Not dead. To my face: ‘I know you.’

I clung to my breath until my compressed lips pulsed against each other; I could feel my teeth penetrate the fleshy coil of my lips’ insides. Every inch of her body fell under my gaze. The moth-struck flicker of the lamplight danced along the folds of her dress. Her crown of hair ruffled in the kissing breath of air. Her eyes – distant, deep, still pensive – looked up to the ceiling. Her opened mouth, with that faint crinkle of blood in the lace of her chapped lips, clung to the words that choked me.

‘I know you.’

‘On Terror’: PDP

It’s been a long while. Battling imposter syndrome has kept me away, but seen as though I’ve got to review my progress, here’s the shortened, parody version.

Supervisors are the new Inquisitors, and they want me to study my own innards which are, for the most part, full of wine and chocolate. Take a look at the withered, wrinkled and loathsome visage of a PhD researcher half way in their first year.

So let me tell you the most significant discovery of my research process. I am not, nor will I ever be, original. I may eventually find new ways of saying old words, or discover a new hue of black with which to stain the Gothic, but I’m not promising anything. I’ve got to the Castle of Udolpho, looked upon its frowning defiance, and I’ve refused to invade its solitary reign I’m more apathetic and anxious than Emily St Aubert and the whole swooning crew of Gothic heroines.

The whole problem is the terror of self-actualisation. Maybe. It’s like Victor Frankenstein, digging up dead bodies to make a new one, and loathing the result because it makes you realise you’re a puny, hubristic human creating a monster from the parts of everyone else’s research. So instead of visiting the graveyards and charnel houses, I’ve virtually hibernated these last nine months. I’ve spent so long imagining the achievement that the process has vanished from the dream and appeared in reality, and now I’m facing a seven-foot corpse that hates me for being too frightened to love it.

I’ve emerged only to fulfil my teaching contract. At least that went reasonably well. I’ve been teaching vampire literature: of course I get to say vagina and penis like a proper grown up. So there I am, pointing at a picture of a woman’s red mouth with her tongue poised to lick the lips, enthusiastically explaining that here’s a visual representation of vagina dentata, but that phallic tongue looks like she’s already castrated her latest morsel. I showed them an extract of Penny Dreadful, too, so they could see what a Gothic petite mort looks like in action (whenever Vanessa casts a spell, there she blows!) Module evaluation forms, mostly, refer to me as “cool” and “fun” (don’t worry, I am also supposedly “helpful”).

I fear they’re delusional. I’m a PhD student. Cool and fun has nothing to do with it. I say these words in seminars like they’re burning my mouth: they have to be said, so I can’t stifle their smoke. The urgency and necessity of delivering lectures had enabled me to excuse myself from conducting research like a professional; there’s always the summer. Well, here it is: the Longest Day. What do I have to show for it?

I’ve got a minus £250 printing credit. At 3p per page, that represents 833 pages (note: despite the use of a calculator, it took a good few attempts to get to this answer). If the average journal article is 20 pages, that’s 40 journal articles, which doesn’t include those I haven’t printed (part of the ‘oooh, this looks interesting, but not yet’, pile). At present, I have reached the 25 book max at my university library, got another 5 from a different library, 22 primary and secondary books from Amazon, 10 from OUP, 10 secondary books already in my ownership, and 20+ Gothic books I’ve gathered since undergrad. So that’s 82 books. Therefore, in 9 months, I should have read roughly 9 books, and 5 journal articles, each month. Not, actually, that bad – if I hadn’t also been teaching and marking for 5 of those months. Of course, I didn’t teach every hour of everyday, but considering this is my first teaching experience, and in some cases I was teaching books not even I’d read (curse you, Homer!), the planning and preparing took twice as long as delivering lectures.

Let’s be lenient with myself for a change, then. Four months to read 82 books and 40 articles: 21 books and 10 articles a month. A book a day. Maybe a pro can handle it. But I’ve realised doing a PhD has nothing to do with reading. It’s about wandering and meandering, fumbling in the dark catacombs – mostly of my own head, entirely of my own making – until I can speak the language of dead authors. Maybe.

The best and most uplifting task when I’m feeling like Mr Hyde is on the brink of taking over is to update my bibliography. Its size may come to rival the complete Varney the Vampire, and I’ve read more than I suppose. Remembering it all is the problem, and establishing an efficient note-taking system, and filing system to match, requires skills I simply did not acquire at MA level. Nothing prepares you for Mount Blanc. It’s either climb it, navigate around it, or knock the damn thing down.

I am chipping it away, stone by stone. Somewhere in there, I’m sure, is Eblis. I’ve slowly got into the habit of reading two recent journal articles whenever I finish a novel, and I colour code them according to some typical criteria. That makes it sound like everything is neatly filed away, but I confess I have covered my home study floor in papers I have no idea how to group. I also read, and make post-it notes on, two reviews for the secondary books I’ll be evaluating – I just can’t settle on which to read first. I’ve got three on the go at the moment, and there’s not much difference between them, if I’m honest.

Analysing novels is a different beast to battle. I’ve been trying to at least get through as many as I can before my upcoming paper for VPFA, so I’ve been listening to some humorous Librivox recordings while brushing my teeth in the mornings and cooking in the evenings. When it comes to analysing and picking out quotes, I have to read the book from cover to cover, slowly, scrupulously, with sticky tabs and post-it notes and notebooks. Or, I will be. Only just started the second reading. A third will come later, when I have a particular topic to hunt down. Sometimes, though, even an avid reader has to watch TV. The conferences I’ve been to so far are as wearisome as they are informative; everyone loves everything Victorian, an army of academic ants marching with the same stride. Am I allowed to admit I can’t read Victorian, Victorian, Victorian? Give me a bit of Atwood, or McCarthy, or someone whose name I don’t even know – pretty please!

It’s a guilty pleasure, and of course I don’t indulge. Which can mean I don’t read anything whatsoever. Same goes for writing. I’m a far better writer than speaker; this is my skin, but I shed it whenever I try to settle down and wade through the dreary monotone of academic language. It simply reminds me of some old grouchy man who likes to tell me what to say, and what to think, and how to be. A Manfred or Montoni demanding submission.

I do get to sneak in a few more exuberant phrases of expression in some of my academic writing. The good thing about writing about the Gothic is how easily the language bleeds into the explanation of its purpose; one can hardly justify how Lucy Westenra’s vampiric death is reminiscent of a petite mort without reverting to the exciting language of sex. Ironically, the genre that is most preoccupied with death is alive with vivid images that makes the reader breathe and beat with the pulse of the books – as should the articles that exhume the psychosis haunting it.

So where do I want to be in the near future? In three weeks I’m going to speak about sensation and the Gothic at the VPFA in London, my very first paper. It would be a good idea to write it, I guess. Ultimately I need to sustain a better rhythm of research, and develop one for writing. The PhD cohort at LTU is, thankfully, a supportive community. We’ve been talking (we’re exceptionally good at talking) about holding ourselves accountable to each other, by vowing to write 500 words a week and exchange it among the group. This, I think, would be best; but without them, I will write 500 words a week. I have 100,000 words to go in the next three and a half years, but I need to learn to appreciate the small victories. Like actually getting up in the morning, sometimes.

Facing my own inadequacies is as difficult as facing my own ambitions, but overcoming the former ought to lead to realising the latter. Maybe. We’ll see what Victor has to say.