Gothic - Mediaclature

ROSETTA STONE – ADRENALINE [AGAIN] (1995)

March 23, 2023

In case you weren’t aware, I’m an old-school goth, firmly aware that early ROSETTA STONE was basically SISTERS OF MERCY mimicry.

But with -The Tyranny of Inaction- and the -nothing- E.P. they turned the corner and merged their sound with a more electro-infused sensibility and remixed some of their older work into far more invigorating pieces, such as -Adrenaline-.

I’m stupidly physically hyper-sensitive to a debilitating extent, but extremely percussive songs really help me cope for some reason, and I absolutely thrill to not just this song, but this very succinct remix. I visibly glow while listening to it and just want to launch myself around. It’s a very fun time.

WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE (1962)

October 14, 2022

THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE is arguably Shirley Jackson’s second-best known work next to THE LOTTERY — partially because of the film adaptation THE HAUNTING (which she was on set to consult) and, perhaps, because of Mike Flanagan’s wild deviation of a TV adaptation. (A fine series that, sadly, I feel has little to do with its source material.) However, I found WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE — her final novel before she sadly passed away — to be far more affecting.

WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE harbors many of Jackson’s tropes: gothic horror, family strife, New England iciness and societal rejection, agoraphobia, and decaying homesteads. However, it also feels like the apotheosis of her works, that this story of two sisters living together in their family’s house in Vermont, their mother and father, aunt and brother, dead due to poison before the youngest daughter, Mary Katherine “Merricat”, became a teenager. Only the uncle survived, barely, and they house and take care of him.

It’s a riveting, wild read, one that — while it received wide recognition and critical acclaim when it was released — appears to have faded into the stacks.

https://penguinrandomhousehighereducation.com/book/?isbn=9781101530658