K. Marvin Bruce

The other day I asked a friend to define “gothic.”  Heavy, dark, supernatural—these were a few of the words suggested.  When autumn comes my thoughts turn gothic, and I’m always looking for good gothic things to read. I have blogged in the past about how reading literature that isn’t great is good.  I’m serious about that.  You can learn a lot by reading poor writing.  Some gothic literature is more the former than the latter.  Like Dark Shadows novels. Dark Shadows was running on daytime television when I was a child.  As a teen I began to read the novelizations, by Marilyn Ross, whenever I could find them.  Belles lettres they’re not.  Gothic, most decidedly so.  That’s why I keep coming back to them.  They aren’t scary.  In fact, they’re formulaic and predictable.  But so, so gothic. Spooky mansions, the Maine woods, forlorn vampire, faded wealth.  Even, yes, dark shadows.  The stories crea...

A guilty pleasure, I’ll confess, is reading the Dark Shadows novels by Marilyn Ross.  As a child I found these stories tucked away in a paperback bin at the local second-hand store.  If I could find one I hadn’t read, I would snatch it up for a few cents and begin reading right away. Formulaic and predictable, the little books always evoked a stormy atmosphere of the Maine coast.  I’d never been to Maine, but watching the soap opera had cast an image in my young mind that would stay with me for life. When, as an adult, I grew nostalgic for the paperbacks I’d sold back so long ago, I found them difficult to locate.  ABE, the friend of lost treasures, led me back to most of them, followed by Bookfinder.  Re-reading them, however, I notice the lack that young eyes just couldn’t see. I’m not sure when I realized Marilyn Ross was actually a pen name for Dan Ross (or properly William Edward Daniel Ross).  I was, however, acutely aware that thes...