A Stir of Echoes
Much has been stated about poetry. "Poetry is what in a poem makes you laugh, cry, prickle, be silent, makes your toe nails twinkle, makes you want to do this or that or nothing, makes you know that you are alone in the unknown world, that your bliss and suffering is forever shared and forever all your own." Dylan Thomas "Poetry can be dangerous, especially beautiful poetry, because it gives the illusion of having had the experience without actually going through it." Rumi "Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance." Carl Sandburg "Poetry is a word-fed spring flowing from the consciousness of the poet's mind." Régis Auffray With "A Stir of Echoes" it is the author's hope that the reader will be able to appreciate and perhaps to identify with the various situations, dilemmas, conflicts, miseries, euphoria, etc. that are expressed and consequently shared through his verses. The verses offer a glimpse into the author's soul and thus a way to get to know him more intimately.
A Stir of Echoes
Madness is only a step away . . . Tom Wallace is happy with his suburban lot. Until an evening of casual entertainment turns reality into nightmare. Tom sees himself as a pragmatist, and when his brother-in-law challenges him to undergo hypnotism, he obliges to prove a point. So no one is more surprised than Tom when it works. But this cheap parlour trick unlocked something that now threatens his sanity, way of life and marriage. Suddenly he can sense his neighbours' darkest desires, and some are dark indeed. When shadows from the past and glimpses of the future are revealed to him, Tom tries to deny what's happening. But as his existence becomes increasingly unbearable, the biggest revelation of all awaits -- a message from beyond the grave.
Reading Richard Matheson
Richard Matheson (1926-2013) was a prolific author and screenwriter whose career of more than 60 years has shaped the horror and fantasy genres in literature, film, and television. This volume examines seven of Matheson’s full-length novels, a sampling of short stories, and several film adaptations. The chapters, which are arranged in three thematic sections, emphasize Matheson’s historical prominence, consider his precursors and successors, and situate him within narrative traditions of mythology, cinema, genre, and memory studies.
Fascism and Millennial American Cinema
This book examines a spate of American films released around the turn of the millennium that differently address the actuality or possibility of domestic fascism within the USA. The films discussed span a diversity of forms, genres and production practices, and encompass low- and medium-budget studio and independent releases (such as American History X, Stir of Echoes and The Believer), star and/or auteur vehicles (such as The Siege, Fight Club and American Beauty), and high-budget, high-concept science-fiction films and franchises (such as Starship Troopers, Minority Report, the Matrix and X-Men trilogies and the Star Wars prequels). Central to the book is the detailed analysis of the films, which is contextualized historically in relation to a period that saw the significant rise of the far Right. The book concordantly affords a wider insight into fascism and its various manifestations and how such have been, and continue to be, registered within American cinema.
Modern ghost melodramas
One of the most interesting but underexplored developments in recent cinema has been the international cycle of scary ghost movies stimulated by the success at the end of the 20th century of The Sixth Sense and the two Japanese Ringu films. In the wake of these films a series of ghost films has been made across a number of different countries, including the USA, Japan, South Korea, Spain, and Great Britain. This book looks at these films, but argues against the conventional view that they belong in the horror genre. Only a minority are horror films; the vast majority are more productively viewed as ghost melodramas. This opens the films up to analysis in terms of the theorisation of melodrama, in which psychoanalysis plays a central role. More than fifty representative films are discussed, many with close attention to textual detail, from a total of eleven different countries. Revealing narrative patterns, tropes, themes, and motifs, the book is a stimulating and insightful exploration of what is, in critical terms, a new generic area.
