Decidedly Grim

Rev. Syung Myung Me also has an excellent recommendation on the comments for the Signal 30 post. I had to share this on the front page too – because it sounds like a must-have to me!

“On a similar tip to the Car Crashes book, have you ever seen Negativland’s book/CD Deathsentences of the Polished & Structurally Weak? It’s one of my favorite things they’ve ever done, and, well, I just about adore almost everything they’ve ever done. The CD isn’t the thrust of the project — though it’s not bad, it’s not sample-based, and really noisy, so something different than you’d expect from them — the book is.

“The book is a collection of photos; they went to junk yards, and took photographs of car wrecks, then looked in the wrecks for detritus of their previous owners. The layout is the car on the left page of the spread, the item on the right, along with a transcription of what it says (as random people’s handwriting is often hard enough to read when it’s not on crumpled paper taken from old, wrecked cars). It’s REALLY cool — I highly recommend checking it out.”

Sounds like the kind of project I might dream up! Great stuff – and the website has a few samples. I just ordered a copy of it for myself. They are available for purchase from the website.

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skat has a book recommendation for us:

“It’s not really ‘morbid’ but sort of sad and interesting if you’re a ‘voyeur’ into people’s lives like I am.”

Oh, and you KNOW that I am a voyeur into people’s lives too… so this is a must-have!

The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic
by Darby Penney

Here’s the fascinating synopsis: “When New York’s 120-plus-year-old mental institution Willard State Hospital was closed down in 1995, New York Museum curator Craig Williams found a forgotten attic filled with suitcases belonging to former inmates. He informed Penney, co-editor of The Snail’s Pace Review and a leading advocate of patients rights, who recognized the opportunity to salvage the memory of these institutionalized lives. She invited Stastny, a psychiatrist and documentary filmmaker, to help her curate an exhibit on the find and write this book, which they dedicate to ‘the Willard suitcase owners, and to all others who have lived and died in mental institutions.’ What follows are profiles of 10 individual patients whose suitcase contents proved intriguing (there were 427 bags total), referencing their institutional record-including histories and session notes-as well as some on-the-ground research. A typical example is Ethel Smalls, who likely suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of her husband’s abuse; misdiagnosed and institutionalized against her will, she lived at Willard until her death in 1973. While the individual stories are necessarily sketchy, the cumulative effect is a powerful indictment of healthcare for the mentally ill. 25 color and 63 b&w photographs.”

Available from The Library Eclectica astore and currently the paperback is only $10.17 too! I am snatching one for myself. More books about mental illness can be found at the Insanity! aisle of The Library Eclectica. (All proceeds from sales go towards keeping The Asylum Eclectica and the Morbid Fact Du Jour running.)

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YannaHay has a film recommendation for us:

Perfume – The Story of a Murderer (2007)

“I came across this movie by accident, but really enjoyed it. Just thought to share.”

Product Description
Based on the bestselling novel, “Perfume” is a story of an obsession so overwhelming that it leads to murder. In 18th-century France lived Jean-Baptiste Grenouille (Ben Whishaw), who was born with a phenomenal sense of smell. But as his gift becomes an obsession, he strives to create the most intoxicating perfume in the world by murdering young women to capture their essence.

More film recommendations can be found at The Library Eclectica’s Fearful Footage aisle.

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Morticia has some book recommendations for us:

“If you haven’t read them already, I recommend Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air (multiple deaths on Everest, including a man freezing to death while he talks to his wife in New Zealand via satellite phone); also Into The Wild (young man seeks enlightenment in the wilderness, freezes and starves, skeleton found in sleeping bag). Also by Krakauer, the gruesome and blood-soaked Under the Banner of Heaven, all about Mormons, today and yesterday. Massacres! Blood atonement! Murdered mothers and babies! Heartwarming!”

I have personally read two of the books and can vouch for their excellence (the one I haven’t read, Into The Wild, is on my “to read” list). Here are my original reviews of them:

Into Thin Air
I picked this up at the San Francisco airport when I was sitting through a long-delayed wait for my brother and his family’s arrival, and I was absolutely annoyed when their plane landed and I had to put the book down. I’d never given much thought to Mt. Everest or the conditions that those who climb it must endure, but this book, about the doomed 1996 Everest expedition, had me hooked from the first page to the last. Of course, I wouldn’t necessarily take Krakauer’s word at face value (see Anatoli Boukreev’s book The Climb for an alternative perspective on the tragedy), but that doesn’t make his story any less compelling. Anyone want to join me in a climb of Everest to look at the bodies???

Under the Banner of Heaven
I’m ashamed to admit my naivety, but I never knew that Mormons could be so morbid! I mean, I’ve always thought of them as quite insane, but in a happy-happy-joy-joy wholesome Osmond holy underwear “no caffeine please” kind of way. But after reading this fascinating book, well, I’ve gained an entirely different perspective! Jon Krakauer exposes the grim truth behind Mormon fundamentalism, which (like most fundamentalist beliefs) basically amounts to a group of selfish men figuring out that when it comes to endulging in their darkest fantasies, there’s no better scapegoat than God.

You want to kill your brother’s wife?
“God told me to do it!”

You want to screw around with as many women as possible without guilt?
“God told me to do it!”

You want to slaughter people who don’t share your beliefs who happen to be passing through your territory?
“God told me to do it!”

You want to impregnate your 12-year-old daughter?
“God told me to do it!”

There’s literally NOTHING that you can’t get away with!

And sadder still are the women who have been indoctrinated into this cruel sub-culture which teaches little girls that obedience is the supreme virtue. This naturally results in brainwashed girls like Elizabeth Smart feeling that she must willingly submit to her kidnapper “husband” without any attempt to escape, and it makes a 12-year-old girl feel that she is “sinful” if she resists her father’s incestuous advances because God told him to do it. There are some truly sickening stories within these pages.

More than anything else, “Under the Banner of Heaven” is a compelling warning against the very real dangers of blind faith, regardless of what particular belief a person may ascribe too. A chilling read.

(These books and more can be found at my Amazon store, The Library Eclectica.)

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Aimee has a Wretched Recommendation for us – of the fiction variety:

In the Rogue Blood by James Carlos Blake

“About two brothers named Edward and John who run away from home in 1840’s-ish Florida, travel around and end up on opposite sides in the Mexican War. Incredibly graphic and violent, but once you start reading, it just pulls you in and you can’t put it down even when you want to. Amog many other things, you’ll meet a minister who’s fitted out his wife with a scold’s bridle, killers of every kind, the darkest underbelly of New Orleans, and you’ll see Edward lose his entire scalp and live to fight another day.”

More Fiction recommendations can be found at The Library Eclectica

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There is nothing that I love better than a good ghost movie, but, sadly, a good ghost movie is the rarest of all crown jewels in the Horror film canon. Over the past decade there have been a few very good ghost films (What Lies Beneath, The Sixth Sense, Stir Of Echoes) and some very poor, overproduced pieces of crap (The Haunting, The House On Haunted Hill). However, there has only been one film that I would consider a masterpiece of the genre: The Others.

The Others is not only my favorite ghost movie, it’s also one of my favorite films of any genre.  In the grand tradition of The Innocents, The Others contains all of the essentials of a good ghost film, and then some:  a lonely, misty atmosphere; a huge, gothic estate; hauntings that are subtle instead of blaring (when will big budget horror movie directors learn that it’s what you DON’T see that is most frightening?); arcane 19th century morbid touches such as the “Book of the Dead” scrapbook of post-mortem photographs; and exceptional acting, especially by the creepy children.  All this, and a devastating twist at the end as well.  Sheer gothic perfection!

The other night I saw another film that almost rises to the same lofty heights: the Italian film The Orphanage (Il Orfanato).  Like The Others, The Orphanage is set in a huge gothic estate – this time a former orphanage – and centers around a mother and child.  There are lots of creepy urban exploration touches (hidden rooms and morbid secrets), freaky costumes, and another great plot twist at the end.  Even better, it’s one of those films that can be interpreted as either a ghost story or a psychological study, depending on your perspective.  A highly recommended masterpiece of the genre.

The Orphanage (Il Orfanato) (2007)

More film recommendations can be seen at The Library Eclectica.

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