TDSH: Witches on the Road Tonight

 

The new novel by Sheri Holman, Witches on the Road Tonight, is the first literary novel to feature a television horror host as a central character, and it makes an emotional impact as a story of  “lonely horror.” That’s the kind of horror that haunts Eddie Alley. Alley works as  “Captain Casket”, a monster movie host for an  independent television station. He has devoted fans but is deeply afraid of never being understood by his family. He describes his life as “a real ghost story,” which he sees as “colliding” with the lives of those close to him.

The first collision in the book is a literal one which happens early in the novel. Tucker Hayes, a writer driving through Depression-era rural Virginia as part of the Federal Writer’s Project, striking an eight year old Eddie Alley with his car. The boy is only bruised, and Hayes takes Eddie back to his ramshackle home. While waiting for the boy’s mother, Tucker brings out a hand-cranked projector from his car and shows him the 1910 Edison Studios version of Frankenstein, the first film version of Mary Shelley’s novel. This episode in the young boy’s life results in an emotional impression that stays with him into adulthood.

Taking place over several decades,  Witches on the Road Tonight shifts in time and place and point of view. Other characters include Eddie’s mother Cora, who may have been a murderous shape-shifting witch; Jasper, a sullen, homeless teenager who idolizes Eddie and helps him at the TV station; and Eddie’s daughter Wallis. Wallis grows up to work in television news, a source of horror more grounded in fact than fiction and folklore.

Wallis is haunted by her memories of Jasper, who was treated like a foster son by her parents. Wallis was the first to invite him into the Alley home, and this is the first step in the “fall of our family,” as Eddie describes it in a desperate letter near the end of his life. Adding in the complications and power of sexual desire,  Witches on the Road Tonight weaves a complex tale.

The novel’s power derives from charting that fall and may require two readings to be fully appreciated; the frequent change of POV, and place and time, distracts the reader and undercuts the power of Holman’s writing in a first reading. Also, the characters at times get short shrift with the sometimes staccato structure of the book, which lacks a straight-ahead dramatic trajectory. The prose style, though, is anything but rapid-fire; it’s best described as “thoughtful.” Reminiscent of more disciplined, softer Ray Bradbury mixed with John Cheever, the prose is never purple or heavy-handed.

Though quieter and slower than many novels present day genre fans are used to, and a little unusual for the Oprah set, it is a fresh work with many rewards for a patient reader. I highly recommend it. You can buy Witches on the Road Tonight on Amazon in a variety of formats here.

[Related Excerpt: ‘Witches on the Road Tonight’ (Google Books) ]

I was lucky enough to get an interview with Sheri Holman, author of this book and the well-received novels The Dress Lodger and The Mammoth Cheese. Here is our conversation, ranging in topics from the novel, to her background, to her fears.

Max Cheney: Where did you grow up? What ghost stories or superstitions were you told when you were young and who was the source of them most often?

Sheri Holman: I grew up out in the woods and swamps of rural Virginia and spent most weekends of my childhood with two old maid aunts who lived in a decaying old Faulknerian house, living only to snipe at each other. But the incredible stories they told! Not so much ghost stories as stories of human suffering and retribution.

Ghost stories came a little later at sleep overs and back yard parties. We kids would play a game (kind of like tag) called “Ghost in the Graveyard”, then eventually, the night would work its way around to ghost stories. Whoever could keep the other kids afraid commanded the audience, and of course, I always wanted to be that powerful young girl. To this day, my cousins still tease me about the ways I terrified them when we were children. I would make up all sorts of spooky stories of love and revenge and suicide, that always took place sometime long ago, but always on on this very night. Horror loves anniversaries and always returns to the scene of the crime.

MC: In the pre-Internet Age, we had a common literary culture. How are authors going to thrive in a TV, YouTube and Twitter age?

SH: This is all authors talk about! Writers are scared, publishers are scared. They are less likely to take risks, especially on fiction. They don’t know how to market anything anymore because they see the internet as a vast swamp into which all their books might sink. It’s hard, because while I love playing around on Facebook, etc. if I spent too much time on it, I’d never write another book. YouTube was enormously helpful in the research of this novel. I practically lived on George Chastain’s fabulous E-Gor’s Chamber of TV Horror Hosts. The clips fans sent in let me see how hosts in other markets behaved. It’s amazing how similar so many were, even springing up without knowledge of the others. I’ve read that many come out of the Spook Show tradition, which probably accounts for a lot of it.

In this new age, I think a lot more voices will be heard, but the audience for any one voice will get smaller as the world fragments into little niches of interest. My goal with this book is to bridge the gap a little between people who love stories that are a little more supernatural and spooky and those who crave a good, meaty read that touches on human vulnerability. That’s why it was important for me not to just send this book to all the usual suspects (New York Times, etc.) but to introduce myself to this community since we share so many interests.

MC: Witches on the Road Tonight is not strictly a genre or pulp novel–there’s no plot-heavy, face-paced narrative line, but it does have horrific and supernatural elements. Will that make it harder for it to find its readership?

SH: My fears are exactly as you’ve described: it’s too literary for one crowd, too pop-culture for another, but I keep hoping it will appeal to those who give it a chance and are looking for something to take them out of their comfort zone a bit (on both sides). I wanted to get at the existential horror of human relationships and interactions — from the personal to the political. It was a pretty big gamble for me.

This book has lots of elements of horror in it, but one reviewer called it “A thoroughly modern ghost story, [it] is also a tale of the ghosts of real life: the ghosts we cannot shake, the memories and choices that haunt us.” I don’t think I could have described it better. Basically, I don’t think we have to look very far out of ordinary human experience to find our witches.

MC: We see into the inner life of everyone but Cora and Jasper. Comment?

SH: Cora and Jasper are the most vulnerable characters in the book, the ones the others project onto, and, not coincidentally, the ones the others most fear. They’re basically mirrors for all the others and reflect back the monsters they hold inside. Tucker sees what he wants to see in Cora about his own bravery and cowardice – which is what I think we all have a tendency to do to each other. We want to see our best selves reflected back in the eyes of those we love or admire, but what we sometimes see is our worst. And then we want to destroy the one that shows that to us.

MC: One of the themes of the book is secrets. Without giving too much away, the character of Eddie has a secret that, if known, would have made him an outcast to his  fans.

SH: I wanted to write about the ways we hide from ourselves, and the danger of not being able to face who we really are or what we really want. Most people are good people who honestly want to please each other, but often do so at the expense of their own needs and desires – resulting in a weird power dynamic. Who is giving up more? Who is keeping score of all the little sacrifices we make and the resentments that build up over time? Eddie has a part of himself that even he can’t bear to acknowledge, because if he does, it will mean losing everything he has built up over the years and still loves, even if imperfectly. So the “dishonesties” accrete and create their own monster in the form of Jasper, a creature ultimately out of Eddie’s control.

MC: We live in an age where we learn an awful lot about a celebrity’s personal life. Is this generally better than the old days, with all the made-up publicity, or a bad thing?

SH: How we treat our celebrities today! I personally find it really distasteful and harmful. They are not allowed to be real people. Fans project their own hopes and dreams on to them, building them up to inhuman proportions, and then are surprised and disappointed when public figures act out or break down. A lot of people want to be famous, but I think fame is a heavy burden and when taken to extremes very dangerous to the soul.

MC: Cora and Wallis are both interested in the power of magic. I found them to be fascinating characters. Any personal similarities with either of them?

SH: I was also a very witchy little girl. My next door neighbor had a crush on Shawn Cassidy (remember him from the Hardy Boys?) I thought he was dumb and I’m sure I was jealous, so I went out to the woods and carved his face into a tree with a nail, then hammered that nail between his eyes. The next day I read in the newspaper that he’d been performing at a concert when he was attacked by a group of fans who pulled out all his hair. Who would have known I was so powerful!? I wish I could say I swore off spells after that, but I cast my fair share all through my adolescence. Mostly on boys. It’s what we do to try to feel in control at times of great powerlessness.

MC: Cora and Wallis both have very violent urges, but both seem to deplore that urge in men. Comment?

SH: Hmmm. That’s a very interesting observation. I’ll have to take that up with my shrink.

Wallis is a modern woman, and probably the most like me. (Though I try not to behave so badly!) She’s conflicted about her career and motherhood. She is a news anchor whose ratings (and salary and fame) rise with the amount of panic she creates. She is the inevitable offspring of ghost stories in the mountains, because fear, like a drug, must always be ratcheted up to feel the rush. She no longer knows the difference between what she is reporting versus what she is creating by the fear she calls into being. She is a modern, media Doctor Frankenstein. And of course, this is the world she is creating for her own daughter.

MC: Your character of Eddie is a performer–a horror host. Who was the horror host from your childhood? Some writers have described themselves as frustrated performers. Ever bitten by the acting bug? Any theater in your background?

SH: I started watching Bowman Body at about age 8, staying up past my bedtime when my parents were out. Later, I studied Theatre at William and Mary, but when I got to New York, I found myself going to more poetry readings than auditions.

Those ghost stories and horror hosts never left me and after a period of pretty profound personal anxiety (one of my twin boys was diagnosed with cancer at 3 months — he’s fine now, thank god) I started thinking a lot about how we as a country had gone from one that “had nothing to fear but fear itself” to one determined to keep itself perpetually panicked. It seemed to me those horror show hosts made their careers by de-fanging terror, not cultivating it, and I decided to explore that power dynamic through Eddie — where his family came from and where it was headed. I took a lot more risks with narrative structure in this one.

MC: Do you believe in a literal power to witchcraft, or only a figurative and psychological power?

SH: I believe human beings have the power to shape their own realities, and I believe that psychological phenomena often manifest themselves literally. If you’re asking whether or not I believe in agents of the Devil, I really can’t say. I have had enough weird stuff go down in my own life not to discount it. My young daughter has even seen ghosts in our house. My kids and I have just moved out of that huge old house and into a manageable 3 bedroom apartment in a really peaceful and pretty neighborhood. I’ll miss my fireplaces and pocket doors but I won’t miss the ghosts and rats.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve learned not to discount the power of evil, but I tend to think of it more as an abyss in the human psyche – usually put there by inhuman parenting and abuse that has been passed down from parent to child through generations. This is one of the reasons I’m so passionate about issues of education and poverty. We create our own witches when we ignore suffering or tell ourselves those in trouble have only themselves to blame, or alternately, “they like it like that.” What is visited on the father passes down to the son, and a cycle of violence and neglect is almost impossible to break. It’s what I meant in the book by the line, “Once witches slip in, they’re hard to get rid of…”

MC: Could you have written this novel at 21?

SH: Absolutely not. I thought I was quite sophisticated at 21 but I was completely clueless. I did write the first draft of a novel around that age. It had a lot of similar themes: mythology and stories within stories. Standoffs between men and women, how impossible it is to ever know what is “real” when perception shifts so greatly with understanding. In some ways, the seeds of Witches were probably there way back then, but that first book was a mess. And anyway, I was too busy trying to get dates. Which is what all self-respecting 21-year-olds should be doing!

MC: Is there a significance to the fact that “Wallis” is a gender-neutral name? You balance your cast of characters in regards to gender very well. I think your novel’s real “witchcraft” is the way each gender can use sexual and psychological need as a form of power.

SH: It’s very perceptive you picked up on that! I chose Wallis for that exact gender-neutrality. I also liked the echo of Wallis Simpson, a very sexually dynamic woman whom some considered a witch for luring King Edward VIII off the throne. Wallis (and Sonia for that matter, and Cora, too) are all very aggressive, independent women. They wield their sexuality almost as a weapon, both to dominate and to insulate themselves. And yet, they are all quite vulnerable. Everyone in this book is vulnerable – the extent to which they feel powerless, determines the ways they seek to control their situation and the people around them.

It’s that old truth that a bully at school is often a victim at home. People act out when they feel threatened, and the opposite sex (or I should say the objects of our desire) always produce the strongest feelings of both yearning and anxiety. We give those we let deepest inside the power to take us down. That’s more terrifying to me than all the vampires and werewolves in the world put together!

MC: What writers in the fantasy and horror genres do you enjoy?

SH: I love Shirley Jackson, Ray Bradbury, Neil Gaiman. I just bought Kelly Link’s new collection of short stories and can’t wait to dive in. I’m drawn mostly to psychological horror, and while not genre books, there are few novels more disturbing than Mishima’s The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea or Hans Fallada’s The Drinker. These are books of internal horror surrounding the madness of World War II.

MC: You’ve said you “drew heavily on Mary Shelley…” in writing this novel. Can you describe that a little more?

SH: I became obsessed with the Shelleys (Mary and Percy Bysshe) through Richard Holmes’ brilliant biography, Shelley: The Pursuit. He writes their lives almost like a ghost story, vividly conjuring that Year Without a Summer that saw Mary Shelley’s conception of Frankenstein.

Understanding the power dynamic between husband and wife (including her mother’s death, his first wife’s suicide, the death of their young son William, the sexual iconoclasm of their whole set) deeply informed my reading of Frankenstein and Mary’s early work.

Real loss is almost always at the center of any writer’s life. That’s why they are so often compelled to keep searching.

MC: What horror films shaped your preparation for this novel? And tell us about choosing the 1910 Frankenstein as the film that shapes Eddie’s imagination?

SH: I watched a lot of early, silent horror movies like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, which references the madness of the first World War and how the government sought to control young men.

I can’t even remember when I first learned about that original Frankenstein and its creepy history. (Alois Dettlaff, who hoarded the one extant copy, died alone in his apartment, undiscovered for weeks.) As most of your readers probably know, the film is now in the public domain now and available on YouTube. When I watched it, I was especially struck by that mirror image you describe. The maker and monster reflect each other, so that you can’t say who has created whom.

I found the parallel in our current media fear-mongering – by our demonizing, we help to create our own enemies, whom then we learn to fear so that the whole cycle can repeat itself. In Edison’s silent Frankenstein, there is never any attempt at understanding between the monster and the man who called him into being. There is only fruitless wrestling until ultimately “The Creation of an Evil Mind, Overcome by Love, Disappears.” The monster is reabsorbed back into the mirror, but we’re under no illusion he’s not still there, waiting to be seen whenever we have the courage to look fully at ourselves.

MC: Have you imagined your book as a film? If so, any casting ideas?

SH: With three little kids at home, I hardly ever go to movies! I have a good friend, Michael Emerson, who played Ben Linus on Lost. I need to talk him into playing Eddie. Wouldn’t that be fun? I did watch Winter’s Bone on Netflix and loved the way Debra Granick brought the Ozarks to life without cliché. But don’t ask me about modern movie stars – I’m hopeless!

MC: Best comment or question you’ve gotten on the book tour so far?

SH: An old, toothless man in a CVS in Atlanta, Georgia: “Pardon me, young lady, but those are some kick-ass tights you’re wearing.”

No, really – I had a great conversation with an early reader about the challenging structure of the book (it moves between different eras which some might find jarring). I have characters disappear in this novel and I wanted to leave their whereabouts unresolved, because when people really drop out of your life, you don’t have any answers. You’re left with only tortured, nagging questions and projection and hope and dread. To me, that Unknown is the essence of horror, and what makes it so compelling. But for a reader to feel it, the writer must be willing to let some questions hang in the air.

And of course, everyone doesn’t like that. Some people demand answers. After our talk, that early reader said to me: “You’ve changed the way I read books forever.” What more could an author ever hope to hear?