Weird Fiction and the Landscape of the Soul

Thoughts on the relationship between surface narrative and understory

A quick note before proceeding to this week’s main offering:

Last week saw the publication of my latest book, Matt Cardin, Journals, Volume 1: 1993-2001. This is the first of two volumes collecting thirty years of my private journals entries. The publisher is Sarnath Press (S. T. Joshi’s micro-imprint). Kindle, trade paperback, and hardcover editions are available. The second and final volume, encompassing 2002 to 2022, is currently in the works.

Here is the ’s back cover copy:

For more than two decades, Matt Cardin has been one of the most dynamic writers of contemporary weird fiction. In addition, he has been a perspicacious commentator on weird literature, horror films, and related subjects. Now he presents the first of two volumes of his journals, which he began keeping years before he contemplated a career as a writer. In these journals Cardin wrestles with profound philosophical and religious issues, absorbing the work of thinkers ranging from Plato to Nietzsche to Alan Watts; at the same time, he speaks of his fascination with such writers as H. P. Lovecraft, Ray Bradbury, and Thomas Ligotti, whom he has made a special subject of study. Throughout these compelling journal entries, Cardin reveals his own shifting philosophical and psychological state, presents early drafts or synopses of his weird tales—including many partial drafts and plot germs for stories that he never went on to complete—and speaks with affecting candor of his personal relationships. Cumulatively, this journal reveals Matt Cardin to be one of the most intellectually challenging authors associated with horror literature.

In next week’s installment of Living into the Dark, I’ll share the full introduction and index to Volume 1. But for now it’s on to the business at hand, which is to meditate on a certain striking quality of weird fiction as its own distinct form of storytelling.

Recently Steven Pressfield, writing at his blog, made a compelling observation about the nature of narrative understory and its relationship to surface story. What he said got me to reflecting on the special case of weird fiction, where I think a unique dynamic is in play.

In “Does Your Novel/Movie Have an Understory?”¹ Pressfield defines understory as “the unspoken story-beneath-the-story” and acknowledges the fiction maker’s maxim, commonly taught in MFA programs and creative writing classes, that understory is actually more important than surface story. Since understory is the tale of the protagonist’s inner journey, which gives meaning to the outer one, understory is “what REALLY pulls the reader/viewer through the drama.”

By way of example, Pressfield points to the famous case of Huckleberry Finn, in which the novel’s surface story of Huck and Jim’s journey down the Mississippi River rests atop an understory in which the real villain is not the people who pursue them but Huck’s culturally inculcated belief in White racial superiority, along with the accompanying belief in a divine mandate that Blacks should be enslaved by Whites. In other words, as Pressfield puts it, “the deeper villain, the Understory Villain, is inside Huck’s heart.”

Pressfield’s deep point is that in this or any other narrative, “the Understory plays out on the landscape of the soul” (his emphasis). In Huckleberry Finn, this means

the beats of the Understory are the moments in real time when Soul Reality, i.e. Jim’s trueness of heart, his kindness, his integrity, and his love for Huck give the lie to this notion that is embedded in Huck’s very cells.

The dramatic climax of the novel’s understory comes, of course, in the iconic scene where Huck, instead of sending the letter he has written to Miss Watson turning Jim in as an escaped slave, tears it up and decides that if helping Jim means he will burn in a fiery hell for all eternity, “All right then, I’ll go to hell.”

As I read Pressfield’s post and really grooved to it, it occurred to me that in my own favorite type of fiction — namely, weird fiction — there’s a very special relationship going on between understory and surface story. At first I thought I wanted to say that understory is more important in weird fiction than in other types. But no, that’s not really it, as understory is crucial to pretty much all narrative fiction. Instead, what’s special about weird fiction is simply this:

In weird fiction, understory is surface story. The two are identical. The distinction is collapsed. It is not just on a submerged or subliminal level that there is a story playing out on the landscape of the soul. In weird fiction, the very surface of the narrative is the landscape of the soul.