Stuff I Like: A Blog

Monday, June 29, 2026

BLACK GATE WRITINGS - THE WEEKLY POSTS 2013-2018

Wednesday, June 3, 2026

John Bellairs and Edward Gorey

I don't know if I read The House With a Clock in Its Walls or saw the Vincent Price-hosted tv show based on it first. Either way, I read the book when I was twelve or thirteen and thoroughly enjoyed it. Many years later, in my thirties, I think, I reread it along with its sequel and several of Bellairs' other juvenile supernatural adventure books. I also read his adult fantasy novel, The Face in the Frost, but I'll write about that some other time.

Bellairs wrote three series, all similar, all setting a boy against mysteries and supernatural dangers - mostly. The Johnny Dixon and Lewis Barnavelt books all feature spooky shenanigans. The Anthony Monday books start with a straight, mundane mystery but the following three books introduce ghosts and whatnot. I imagine it was a case of Bellairs and his publisher understanding what his audience wanted.

Having just finished the first book in each series, I'm looking forward to reading more. House holds up, but the other two are even better. The Anthony Monday book, The Treasure of Alpheus Winterborn is more sharply written than House and the Johnny Dixon book, The Curse of the Blue Figurine, is even better. The end is a bit rushed, but for a young adult book written for actual young adults, there's some depth to the characters and some very good atmospheric bits. Even when written in the seventies, they were period pieces, looking back to Bellairs' own Catholic childhood in the late forties and early fifties and Curse recreates that quite well.

Something I only recognized when I read the books in my thirties was that many of the covers and some interior illustrations were done by Edward Gorey. I knew him from his animated credits for PBS's Mystery anthology series, his War of the Worlds illustrations, and I had heard about his sets for the Broadway production of Dracula starring Frank Langella.

Apparently, Gorey and Bellairs never communicated. Gorey took on the illustrating as work-for-hire, would read the book, and then send his art to the publishers and Bellairs would review for any technical discrepancies. According to one article, the art for House came in late enough, the publisher told Bellairs he'd have to change his text as they were running to close to deadline to get Gorey to redo anything.

In an article by Matt Domino, he recounts how Gorey was more-or-less dismissive of his Bellairs illustrations and had them removed from his archives:

In fact, according to Brown, later in his life, Gorey wanted to disown his cover illustrations for Bellairs. “He called me up one day and said, ‘Let’s get all of the Bellairs work out of the archives.’ He just didn’t think it represented him and what he was trying to do. He saw it as his grunt work.”

Be that as it may, the illustrations, like most of Gorey's work are wonderful and evocative of the weird and spooky.

If you aren't familiar with Gorey's work, I recommend you find any one of his books or collections. His work is finely detailed and black & white, usually set in some sort of Edwardian or post-WWI setting, featuring strange characters and often disturbing rhymes. It's also wickedly funny.

Below are his illustrations for The House With a Clock in Its Walls. Not only are they wonderful, they're also so specific. He clearly had a good reader's instinct for the perfect moments in the story to illuminate.

Friday, May 23, 2025

Visualizing The Hobbit

Rankin and Bass' The Hobbit characters

The Hobbit is a children's book, written as one and presented as one. Part of why it holds up so well on so many rereadings for me as an adult is because it's charming. There's a delightful playfulness to most of the encounters. The trolls are Cockney yobs. The Great Goblin isn't terrifying, but imperiously ridiculous. Bilbo starts as wonderfully, ridiculously proper middle-class character, thrust, only mostly against his will, into a wilder and woolier world reacts in just the way most of us would in similar circumstances.

After I rewatched Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies, I set myself an even more onerous task: I watched all three installments of his version of The Hobbit. It is, in every scene and in every way, an utterly charmless movie. The slightly bumbling coal-mining dwarves of Tolkien's book with their colorful cloaks and hoods have been replaced with terrible looking characters who seem to have raided a Klingon arms locker for their weapons.

You can read the book in an afternoon. The theatrical versions of the movies are almost eight hours long. The extended versions - the ones I suffered through - add another two hours of terrible, made up elements. Every exciting moment in the books is turned into a bloated and very bad roller coaster ride. Everything is BIGGER and LOUDER and TERRIBLE. He took a short children's story and turned into a obnoxious video game that feels like it'll never had the decency to end.

My favorite film depiction of Tolkien's world is in the Rankin & Bass The Hobbit (1977). Directed by Rankin and Bass (creators of all those wonderful stop-motion Christmas specials), it was animated by Topcraft, a studio in Japan. Topcraft would go on to produce Hayao Miyazaki's first movie, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. When it folded, Miyazaki picked up some of its pieces to create Studio Ghibli.

The character designs were by Lester Abrams who had illustrated a chapter of the book, Riddles in the Dark, for Children's Digest (something I'd come across, probably in my dentist's office). Arthur Rankin had seen them and liked them well-enough to have Abrams do all the other initial character designs as well.

Yes, the elves, especially the wood elves, look awful, but they are strange and unworldly the way elves probably should be. All the other characters, though, I think are perfect. Bilbo is stout and slightly ridiculous, while the dwarves range from the the comical Ori and Nori to the wise-looking Balin and the imposing Thorin. The trolls and goblins are both gruesome and comical looking. Smaug, voiced by Richard Boone is far more regal and monstrous than Jackson's CGI creation.

John Houston as Gandalf is fantastic, as is Orson Bean as Bilbo, and, especially, Brother Theodore as Gollum (even though he looks more like a frog than a hobbit, it's still how I tend to imagine Gollum looking). I actually like Martin Freeman in the Jackson atrocities, but he's squandered among a host of mostly undistinguished performances and characters that lack much semblance to Tolkien's creations.

Something I really like about the animated Hobbit is the design of Laketown and the humans. Instead of a generic medieval town, it looks like something from the early dark ages in Northern Europe. The same goes for the look of the town's citizens. It's defenders are simple militia men withouth armor and it's a small town, not the sprawling, corrupt metropolis of Jackson's imagining.

As an adaptation of The Hobbit, the Rankin & Bass version is moderately successful. It doesn't eliminate too much, though it does condense what remains. Still, it's far truer in tone and spirit to Tolkien's book than anything Jackson put on the screen.

Thursday, May 8, 2025

The Sword of Shannara, again

I've written before about Terry Brooks' (or is it really Lester and Judy del Rey's?) The Sword of Shannara, largely a carbon copy of The Lord of the Rings. When I last read it a decade ago, I wrote I'd probably never read it again:

I don’t hate The Sword of Shannara, but I doubt I will read it again. It does suffer in comparison to The Lord of the Rings. As I’ve aged my readings of Tolkien have become deeper and his themes more resonant while Brooks’ first book seems shallower and less successful than it did when I was eleven. The golden cloak of nostalgia — for my youth, for the excitement of reading a big book so quickly, for all sorts of things I associate with Sword — is fading. I fear if I read it again it will vanish entirely, and I think that might be a very sad thing.

The thing, now, is, I might actually read it again as part of my series of articles about Prof. Tolkien's writing. Brooks' novel is inextricably tied to LotR, as is my old affection for it. Since the glow fade from Sword for me, I don't think I've ever read it in close conjunction with LotR and I'm curious to examine them side by side.

Now, I don't think my somewhat still warm feelings for Sword will fade after a reread. Those feelings were real, and I can never be less than grateful for the world of fantasy reading that it was instrumental in opening. The Lord of the Rings was and will always remain its own thing for me. It stands alone. Sword is part and parcel of the stacks of books I read in its wake, but it is and will always remain the first one.

I don't get the feeling Sword is anywhere near as popular as it once was. With the death of the Tolkien clones in favor of the GRRM clones, readers' tastes seemed to have shifted from the too-noble heroes to the too-amoral anti-heroes. Brooks has sold 25 million books over about fifty years, whild GRRM has sold over 90 million. That all makes me a little depressed. At least the Tolkien clones, even if poorly, stressed things like honor and courage.

I probably won't read it until the end of the summer, though, I will advise anyone to never rely on me saying when I'll read what.

PS: Aside from those of Glen Cook and Terry Pratchett, I don't think I've read more installments in a series than those of Shannara. I've definitely read the first trilogy, the four Heritage of Shannara books, and, I think, First King of Shannara. That's eight, big books.

There's a flatness to Brooks' writing - I said previously that Sword settled for talking when it should've been singing - and his characters never stray far from the standard fantasy/adventure stories tropes, but there's a compelling drive to his narratives that dragged me on to the next book. I actually planned to finish the series (I really wanted to get to the later books that bridge the gap between the demon-cause nuclear holocaust and the world of Sword). At this point, I doubt I will, but I might just skip nine (9!) books, and pick up some of those later ones.

Tuesday, May 6, 2025

Gandalf and the Witch King

Gandalf and the Witch King from Rankin and Bass' The Return of the King (1980)

Something I brought up writing about The Return of the King - the confronatation between Gandalf and the Witch King. It's one of the most striking moments in the book and Peter Jackson left it out of the movie. He sort of included it in the extended cut, but it's moved about and weak. I've castigated Jackson for always dropping nuance in favor of action. I can at least appreciate that for someone making a visual work of art. But, man, he's handed an utterly staggering scene and he doesn't do it. I remember sitting in the theater, waiting for the scene, and BAM, nothing! Sheesh.

In rode the Lord of the Nazgul. A great black shape against the fires beyond he loomed up, grown to a vast menace of despair. In rode the Lord of the Nazguˆl, under the archway that no enemy ever yet had passed, and all fled before his face.
All save one. There waiting, silent and still in the space before the Gate, sat Gandalf upon Shadowfax: Shadowfax who alone among the free horses of the earth endured the terror, unmoving, steadfast as a graven image in Rath Dınen.
‘You cannot enter here,’ said Gandalf, and the huge shadow halted. ‘Go back to the abyss prepared for you! Go back! Fall into the nothingness that awaits you and your Master. Go!’
The Black Rider flung back his hood, and behold! he had a kingly crown; and yet upon no head visible was it set. The red fires shone between it and the mantled shoulders vast and dark. From a mouth unseen there came a deadly laughter.
‘Old fool!’ he said. ‘Old fool! This is my hour. Do you not know Death when you see it? Die now and curse in vain!’ And with that he lifted high his sword and flames ran down the blade.
Gandalf did not move. And in that very moment, away behind in some courtyard of the City, a cock crowed. Shrill and clear he crowed, recking nothing of wizardry or war, welcoming only the morning that in the sky far above the shadows of death was coming with the dawn.
And as if in answer there came from far away another note. Horns, horns, horns. In dark Mindolluin’s sides they dimly echoed. Great horns of the North wildly blowing. Rohan had come at last.

Gandalf and the Witch King (and Grond in the background)

by Ted Nasmith

Friday, February 21, 2025

The Two Towers: The Dead Marshes of the Somme

In my first Lord of the Rings article on Black Gate, a commenter described the book as "tasting of ashes" and attributed it to Prof. Tolkien's experiences during the First World War. I don't taste the ashes, but there are parts of the trilogy that reek heavily of them. He had managed to defer joining the army (as an officer) until he graduated in 1915. This meant he missed the early portion of the war - the Marne, Loos - but it meant he literally had his baptism of fire during the Somme Offensive.

Initiated to relieve the German pressure on the French at Verdun, the Somme Offensive lasted from July 1, 1916, thru November 18, 1916. Tolkien was there until nearly the end, only being invalided out in October after contracting trench fever. The opening day of the battle is the deadliest day in British history. There were 60,000 casualties with 20,000 killed. The final casualties of the offensive between the British, French, and German armies were over one million.

Tolkien's children said, "he would occasionally talk of being at the front: of the horrors of the first German gas attack, of the utter exhaustion and ominous quiet after a bombardment, of the whining scream of the shells, and the endless marching, always on foot, through a devastated landscape, sometimes carrying the men's equipment as well as his own to encourage them to keep going." Of his close friends, only one survived the war. The United Kingdom, with a population of about 42,000,000 when the war started, lost almost 900,000 dead. That all this might permeate The Lord of the Rings isn't surprising.

Crossing the Dead Marshes by Ted Nasmith
Presently it grew altogether dark: the air itself seemed black and heavy to breathe. When lights appeared Sam rubbed his eyes: he thought his head was going queer. He first saw one with the corner of his left eye, a wisp of pale sheen that faded away; but others appeared soon after: some like dimly shining smoke, some like misty flames flickering slowly above unseen candles; here and there they twisted like ghostly sheets unfurled by hidden hands. But neither of his companions spoke a word.
At last Sam could bear it no longer. ‘What’s all this, Gollum?’ he said in a whisper. ‘These lights? They’re all round us now. Are we trapped? Who are they?’
Gollum looked up. A dark water was before him, and he was crawling on the ground, this way and that, doubtful of the way. ‘Yes, they are all round us,’ he whispered. ‘The tricksy lights. Candles of corpses, yes, yes. Don’t you heed them! Don’t look! Don’t follow them! Where’s the master?’
Sam looked back and found that Frodo had lagged again. He could not see him. He went some paces back into the darkness, not daring to move far, or to call in more than a hoarse whisper. Suddenly he stumbled against Frodo, who was standing lost in thought, looking at the pale lights. His hands hung stiff at his sides; water and slime were dripping from them.
‘Come, Mr. Frodo!’ said Sam. ‘Don’t look at them! Gollum says we mustn’t. Let’s keep up with him and get out of this cursed place as quick as we can – if we can!’
‘All right,’ said Frodo, as if returning out of a dream. ‘I’m coming. Go on!’
Hurrying forward again, Sam tripped, catching his foot in some old root or tussock. He fell and came heavily on his hands, which sank deep into sticky ooze, so that his face was brought close to the surface of the dark mere. There was a faint hiss, a noisome smell went up, the lights flickered and danced and swirled. For a moment the water below him looked like some window, glazed with grimy glass, through which he was peering. Wrenching his hands out of the bog, he sprang back with a cry. ‘There are dead things, dead faces in the water,’ he said with horror. ‘Dead faces!’
Gollum laughed. ‘The Dead Marshes, yes, yes: that is their name,’ he cackled. ‘You should not look in when the candles are lit.’
‘Who are they? What are they?’ asked Sam shuddering, turning to Frodo, who was now behind him.
‘I don’t know,’ said Frodo in a dreamlike voice. ‘But I have seen them too. In the pools when the candles were lit. They lie in all the pools, pale faces, deep deep under the dark water. I saw them: grim faces and evil, and noble faces and sad. Many faces proud and fair, and weeds in their silver hair. But all foul, all rotting, all dead. A fell light is in them.’ Frodo hid his eyes in his hands. ‘I know not who they are; but I thought I saw there Men and Elves, and Orcs beside them.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Gollum. ‘All dead, all rotten. Elves and Men and Orcs. The Dead Marshes. There was a great battle long ago, yes, so they told him when Sméagol was young, when I was young before the Precious came. It was a great battle. Tall Men with long swords, and terrible Elves, and Orcses shrieking. They fought on the plain for days and months at the Black Gates. But the Marshes have grown since then, swallowed up the graves; always creeping, creeping.’

The Dead Marshes by Alan Lee

‘But that is an age and more ago,’ said Sam. ‘The Dead can’t be really there! Is it some devilry hatched in the Dark Land?’
‘Who knows? Sméagol doesn’t know,’ answered Gollum. ‘You cannot reach them, you cannot touch them. We tried once, yes, precious. I tried once; but you cannot reach them. Only shapes to see, perhaps, not to touch. No precious! All dead.’
Sam looked darkly at him and shuddered again, thinking that he guessed why Sméagol had tried to touch them. ‘Well, I don’t want to see them,’ he said. ‘Never again! Can’t we get on and get away?’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Gollum. ‘But slowly, very slowly. Very carefully! Or hobbits go down to join the Dead ones and light little candles. Follow Sméagol! Don’t look at lights!’

from The Passage of the Marshes

Friday, January 24, 2025

Scenes from the Fellowship

He lifted his heavy eyes and saw leaning over him a huge willow-tree, old and hoary. Enormous it looked, its sprawling branches going up like reaching arms with many long-fingered hands, its knotted and twisted trunk gaping in wide fissures that creaked faintly as the boughs moved. The leaves fluttering against the bright sky dazzled him, and he toppled over, lying where he fell upon the grass.

He turned, and there in the cold glow he saw lying beside him Sam, Pippin, and Merry. They were on their backs, and their faces looked deathly pale; and they were clad in white. About them lay many treasures, of gold maybe, though in that light they looked cold and unlovely. On their heads were circlets, gold chains were about their waists, and on their fingers were many rings. Swords lay by their sides, and shields were at their feet. But across their necks lay one long naked sword.

The dark figure streaming with fire raced towards them. The orcs yelled and poured over the stone gangways. Then Boromir raised his horn and blew. Loud the challenge rang and bellowed, like the shout of many throats under the cavernous roof. For a moment the orcs quailed and the fiery shadow halted. Then the echoes died as suddenly as a flame blown out by a dark wind, and the enemy advanced again.
'Over the bridge!' cried Gandalf, recalling his strength. 'Fly! This is a foe beyond any of you. I must hold the narrow way. Fly!' Aragorn and Boromir did not heed the command, but still held their ground, side by side, behind Gandalf at the far end of the bridge.

'Behold the Argonath, the Pillars of the Kings!' cried Aragorn. 'We shall pass them soon. Keep the boats in line, and as far apart as you can! Hold the middle of the stream!'
As Frodo was borne towards them the great pillars rose like towers to meet him. Giants they seemed to him, vast grey figures silent but threatening. Then he saw that they were indeed shaped and fashioned: the craft and power of old had wrought upon them, and still they preserved through the suns and rains of forgotten years the mighty likenesses in which they had been hewn. Upon great pedestals founded in the deep waters stood two great kinds of stone: still with blurred eyes and crannied brows they frowned upon the North. The left hand of each was raised palm outwards in gesture of warning; in each right hand there was an axe; upon each head there was a crumbling helm and crown. Great power and majesty they still wore, the silent wardens of a long-vanished kingdom. Awe and fear fell upon Frodo, and he cowered down, shutting his eyes and not daring to look up as the boat drew near. Even Boromir bowed his head as the boats whirled by, frail and fleeting as little leaves, under the enduring shadow of the sentinels of Númenor. So they passed into the dark chasm of the Gates.

Then Boromir had come leaping through the trees. He had made them fight. He slew many of them and the rest fled. But they had not gone far on the way back when they were attacked again, by a hundred Orcs at least, some of them very large, and they shot a rain of arrows: always at Boromir. Boromir had blown his great horn till the woods rang, and at first the Orcs had been dismayed and had drawn back; but when no answer but the echoes came, they had attacked more fiercely than ever.