As part of Saturday's Three Rivers Arts Council presents "An Afternoon with Bryony" reading and writer's assessment, TRAC's program director asked me to include a few passages from books/stories that have resonated with me and molded my writing.
The problem is whittling those pieces down to a manageable number, as well as finding my copy of Alexis Tolstoy's Vampires; Stories of the Supernatural, which contains some of my favorite passages.
There's the party game in the Upyr (The Vampire) where the guests are fortunetelling by reading literature passages, such as, And the grandmother shall drink the granddaughter's blood. I certainly can't read The Family of the Vurkodlak without recalling Boris Karloff's performance in Black Sabbath (and that final creepy scene with the family looking in through the windows).
As a Christian, I especially love Amena's accusation of, Did you not choose? to the hapless ehro once he realizes his soul is lost. On another note, who can forget (certainly not me) E.F. Benson's, Jack will show you your room. I have given you the room in the tower or the sorcerer's grim warning in Johann Ludwig Tieck's Wake Not the Dead.
Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Good Lady Ducayne can wait until later books in the Bryony series, but there's no doubt the dream sequences in F. Marion Crawford's For the Blood is the Life left a literary impression on me. And need I mention Bram Stoker's held a permanent place on my lap during eighth grade?
Casting a wider storytelling net makes choosing more complicated. In high school, I read many translations of Alexandre Dumas' The Three Muskateers because the wording changed in the various retellings, so different versions appealed to me, depending upon my favorite passages. Mrs. Mike is just a wonderful read. Not only do the characters and storyline leap off the page, the cadence of the writing is just so cool.
Back to the supernatural, I love the layers and slow-tension, psychological build in Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby (which director Roman Pulanski so excellently captured) and the subtle horror (not to mention the psychological impression the characters' names obviously imprinted on me) of Ruth M. Arthur's A Candle in her Room.
In the meantime, I'm wondering if I can get a copy of Jane-Emily by Patricia Clapp from interlibrary loan in time for Saturday. The dialogue and characterization is so rich, that when Rebekah borrowed it a few years ago as a surprise for me, I fell in love with Adam all over again. Plus, his retelling of Emily's death in the dark rainstorm (And when she looked away she was crying, very softly) still creeps me out if I read it at night.
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