Studies In Weird Fiction

Once again, when I should be studying I stumble upon a brilliant, terse piece of writing, in this case, in a review. In S.T. Joshi's review of Sherry Austin's "Mariah of the Spirits and Other Southern Ghost Stories" from the journal Studies in Weird Fiction, he remarks:

“A ghost is chiefly a metaphor—a symbol for some human drama whose plangency is enhanced by the evocation of the supernatural."

Magnificent, simply beautiful. I couldn't have said it better, though I wish I had. My brain is stirring with delight, almost giddiness--or delirium. I know I keep harping on the supernatural, especial to Hamlet, but I think it's important because these ideas resonate even with Shakespeare. There has always been a significant role for the supernatural, monstrous, aberrant, disabled, 'other' to play in literature. I can't shake it off for there is so much undiscovered truth in them. Even when I read The Tempest now I think of David William's groundbraking book Deformed Discourse and the lore of the monstrous whenever I read Caliban--but no one else sees it because they haven't read the book. I had a heated debate over this idea in Shakespeare tutorial a few weeks ago when a post-colonial slanted classmate insisted that Caliban HAD to be non-white after watching a dramatisation of the play. It was ludicrous in my mind to shoehorn a brilliant figure like Caliban into 'race', and even more ludicrous when she accused me of being racist after I argued that hers was a modern interpretation--which I found comical because she was the one being racist. Oh how ignorant people are of what they project in their thoughts, words and answers!

I'm under the impression that most people thought, especially my post-colonialist classmate, since I kept raising biblical issues found in Shakespeare's plays, I was obviously ignorant of post-colonial theories--oh how ignorant. While I admit post-colonial theory is not my field, I am well aware of the typical post-colonial take and/or mindset--especially of The Tempest. When I suggested we should examine what the words themselves written in SHAKESPEARE's play suggest rather than falling back on the simplistic (yes, simplistic) conceptions of genre (romance, etc.), most of my classmates got scared at the idea of thinking for themselves, i.e. without a crutch. Why do I feel like I'm in the Matrix? Probably because I feel like everyone is floating, enslaved in their protoplasmic tubes, happy as a pig in shit...

On that note, I'll end this rant now.