Why This Horror?

It’s a Lovecraftian question: why this un-penetrable (impenetrable) horror and from where did it arise? What does it do to the people who have knowledge of it, and what depths in their psyche spawned such terror? Students ask this question all the time, except they rephrase it: How come you have an interesting course that I can use for my liberal arts requirements? [What? Our other courses are boring? We don’t employ that riposte, but we have thought it.]

Avoiding the interesting-dull aspect which is not about literature at all, and more about the willingness to learn and grow, we put the blame on King and communication. “King!” say half the questioners. “He’s my favorite.” “King,” mutter the other half of the questioners, “he’s ruined good horror. One-plot-King.” Good teachers that we try to be, we follow-up on each line of thinking, asking for supporting details and noting that while King may or may not be everyone’s favorite writer, he’s certainly made the subset of horror more visible. He was also the impetus for creating the course.

The reader for our English 1 course has been for time immemorial (doesn’t this sound Lovecraftian?) Models for Writers. Faithfully, they create a new edition; faithfully we grumble about changing texts and the student grumble about not being able to resell their books. Consistently, they also grumble about many of the readings, with the general exception of King’s essay “Why We Crave Horror Literature.” We want catharsis, King argues, and we also need the counterbalance of horror to keep us civilized. Our students anticipate that essay (What? A good read?) and were mostly disappointed that it was literary analysis rather than a rollicking bloodbath. “This is what we do in English 2,” we said, “we read good stories and then analyze them.” They sniffed. Their discussions though were eager commentaries on their favorite gore and horror, as they dodged the critique and analyze aspect of King’s essay in favor of the specific examples (body count, blood baths and rephrasing of villains).

That student enthusiasm was a major theme in our teacher-walk-and-talk discussions when Tom and I would argue our favorite readings and our current semester students. “We should have a course just in horror literature; the students would love it,” I said. But it was easier proposed than accomplished.

Department Approval

Offering a new course means meeting the many requirements the department, the school, the state have in place to safeguard quality of education and their own interests in education. We needed to balance our desire to offer a student-enticing course with the department’s desire to have courses fill, with our colleagues desire not to have our course fill at the expense of theirs, with the state regulating office’s edict to maintain standards and level of instruction.
Getting all these departments, divisions, and individuals to agree is not easy.
Our first task was to get discussion for the course onto the department meeting agenda. We were already full-up with talk of computer carts, classroom keys, enrollment, artifact assessment, how to committee the department, the Sunshine Fund, and training classes. The department spent forty-five minutes deploring the state of the hallways and restrooms, and trying to find a solution (physical plant denied any knowledge of dirt, or claimed they were understaffed). It took two months to get us on the agenda. Why did we need to be on the agenda? We needed to convince the department members to give us permission to develop the outline for a course. Once we had the outline, we were to come back to them for review and (we hoped) approval.
And we understood their points. Last semester, my teaching schedule was changed 7 times during the first week of classes. No instructor likes coming to the first class unprepared. No student enjoys having instructors switched out on him. The last week before the semester begins as well as the first week of the semester is a collection of cancelled classes, split classes (42 people sign up for a class; the size limit is 24), and room changes. We had all arrived at our classroom to find a note taped to the door telling us to re-locate to a room in another building. Adding a class to the offerings complicated an already stressed class master list.