NHC professor edits next generation of tantalizing Gothic

 In 2000, Danel Olson, professor of English at North Harris College, introduced a new course, "Horror, Ghost and Gothic Fiction," that was as immediately popular as his next offering, "Survivors' Tales: Travel, Adventure, Memoir" in 2003.

Both these sophomore level, international studies courses succeeded in capturing the interests and imaginations of his students and, although offered only every two years, continue to attract capacity enrollments.

"These classes encourage students to think about the bigger picture, about literature, cultures, and obsessions outside the USA and Britain," said Olson, acknowledging many of his students go on to four-year universities to explore international opportunities. "In the ‘Horror' section, there's a huge amount of reading and, because the work is compelling, page count doesn't seem to matter. They read and are satisfactorily unsettled by what they read."

His own Gothic research, as well as the rapt interest of his students, led Olson to embark on an adventure that would bear a new book, Exotic Gothic: Forbidden Tales from Our Gothic World, available from Ash-Tree Press this October 31.

Although the professor modestly admits his writing experience, prior to working on the book, has been limited to literary criticism, this new book is a giant step from criticism. "My role has been to select emerging and established writers, and edit the stories," Olson explained. "The established writers include Joyce Carol Oates, T.C. Boyle, and Neil Gaiman, among others. The emerging voices are coming from those writers who have won some prizes but do not, as yet, have a huge body of work. When you read them, though, you will not forget them."

Olson's journey started during a sabbatical last fall, when after taking a walking tour of Transylvania and facing a gypsy-woman's curse, he began contacting presses. "I mailed my proposal for this book to 73 publishers," he said. "Four wrote back, but one-The Ash-Tree Press from British Columbia-was much more respected. I was excited by that," he admitted, "and once they said they were interested, I reached authors I admired and taught, inviting them to submit stories."

The Ash-Tree Press, started in Canada by the Arthur Conan Doyle scholars/editors Christopher and Barbara Roden in 1994, has continued to publish about a dozen books each year-handsome editions by major supernatural writers, often of books neglected or fallen out-of-print. "They are a small press, but they have made a big splash in the genre of uneasy literature and supernatural fiction. Out in a remote, misty corner of British Columbia, they conjure works where the impossible is seeping into the possible," Olson said. This November, Chris and Barbara Roden (who also contributed a new story, "The Wide Wide Sea," to the new book) will be the Special Guests of Honor at the World Fantasy Convention in Saratoga Springs, NY, where Exotic Gothic debuts. Sometimes, the Rodens find hidden or unpublished manuscripts by either a known or underground master, and print them, too. Olson hopes to do such a recovery later this year at the University of Texas Harry Ransom Center, which owns thirty boxes of unpublished writing by the travel writer Ann Bridge, a British diplomat's wife with Louisiana roots who sometimes wrote ghost tales.

As Olson's sabbatical ended and he returned to the classroom, the real work on the book began, from reading the stories that came in, to asking what the writer was attempting to do, and gauging how his comments could further their missions.

Driven by equal shares of confidence and ignorance, Olson confessed, "It was a big project. I didn't know what I was getting into," and he expresses thanks for the help, patience, and encouragement from his North Harris family, the Rodens, and his wife, Katie. "But, if any desire for an Exotic Gothic 2 is out there," Olson brightened, "I would love to compile it. The modern Gothic is so much more that just torn fishnets, velvet chokers, and spider tattoos on the small of our backs. I would expand the offerings set in Africa, Asia, and Australia for a sequel."

In his preface, the professor liberally gives credit to all the people who have done inspiring work in the genre. "Though they don't know it, so many editors guided me to gather a great collection-people like Chris and Barbara Roden, Ellen Datlow, Joyce Carol Oates, Martin Greenberg, and Alberto Manguel, as well as Michele Slung, editor of I Shudder At Your Touch, Shudder Again and Stranger. "Slung knows all about the land where terror and attraction hold hands," Olson mused, "and that's where Exotic Gothic travels." Olson confided "that most genre anthologies have only three or four stories that stay with you-but these five editors and the Roden team have proven that every story collected can be unnerving."

The professor adds this about the dark fiction chosen, "I think creative writing is a mirror to yourself, but editing a book is also a mirror that says a lot about taste-do you like subtle and elegant or do you prefer the graphic in-your-face fiction? What to you is unforgettable?"

What he discovered from managing drafts surprised him: "Editing has changed how I relate to the final version. The story comes from an imagination-in-turmoil, a huge gale, and there is so much beautiful wreckage no one else will ever see. Being there all the way reveals the tale's secret twists and original endings that now no one suspects. One horrifying surprise is that too much in some of these tales is true, that some could even be taught in my Memoir course."

Of selection, Olson said he looked for tales where there was something simultaneously seductive and frightening. Searching for the book's cover, he remained true to the same parameters.

"I chose a modern pagan of a photographer named Anne Brigman who was obsessed with light and shadow, in her own pictures as in her life. She was born in 1869 in Hawaii to missionary stock and died in California in 1950, along the way embracing female liberation and the wildest bohemianism," he explained. "The photograph was taken when it was dark-probably twilight. There's a woman, alone, in the middle of the California Mountains. She's twirling and you see her from the back. She's draped, dramatically, in a gauzy scarf, but her back is to you, so you don't know what she looks like. When she turns around, will you walk toward her or will you run away? Who is the vulnerable one? Turns out, when Brigman printed this photo around 1910, viewers back East carped it must have been done with props inside a studio. California was supernatural to them, and Brigman's camera just too fabulous."

"It's much the same for these tales. They're full of ambiguity ... and people love mystery, but sometimes it's best to let the mystery be. Aren't the best gooseflesh stories metaphors for our real fears, our worries that things could suddenly swing out of control?" Olson asked.

Olson ventured further, "When the terror isn't really named, then your individual imagination fills with it, and you can't merely set it down like a scary book upon a table. Chaos runs beside you now."

"Consider," the professor mentioned, "Stephen King. He once said in Danse Macabre that the difference between Horror and Terror is that you can see Horror with your eyes, even take a shotgun to it, but Terror is the increeping, yet invisible, irremovable thing: ‘It's what the mind sees that makes these stories'."

Until his spooky book is read, Olson is left to wait and wonder if his collection will achieve the impact he envisioned last fall. "Exotic Gothic: Forbidden Tales from Our Gothic World was designed to show our dark passions, taking us to places we don't belong and how we realize this only when it's too late," the professor said. "This hasn't actually been done before-there is no anthology of neo-Gothic tales from around the world-so I hope readers find it to be their perfect companion for Halloween."

North Harris College is located at 2700 W.W. Thorne Drive, one-half mile south of FM 1960 East, between Aldine-Westfield and Hardy Roads. Registration for fall 2007 is now in progress. For general information about the college, call 281.618.5400 or visit northharris.lonestar.edu.

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