Bumping Geese The Final Chapter: A Tale of Two Novels

You may have noticed that I haven't enjoyed the last few Goosebumps Books I've read. I did something different, this week. I skipped the next Goosebumps book, something called 'Deep Trouble' and read book 20, 'The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight'. And then, to mix things up, I read another book. But more on that later.

This is a Goosebumps Book

Scarecrows, as I'm sure you know, are cool. And spoopy. They're not terrifying like human-plant monsters. They're not totally fuckin' rad like Werewolves. They're just cool. And, as a subject of horror, tragically underused. I don't know what 'Deep Trouble' is about. Hopefully the name isn't some kind of pun suggesting horrors in the depths of the ocean, because the depths of the ocean are also terrifying and maybe I shouldn't have skipped it. But, in any case, I did.

And I read this instead.

'The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight' concerns Jodie, who loves to visit her grandparents' farm. She and her brother Mark visit on the regular. They love their grandmother's pancakes for breakfast and they love their grandfather's scary stories by the fire in the evening. It does sound like a pretty sweet deal. Their farmhand, Stanley, is a little weird, but they don't mind him. The worst part might be Stanley's son Sticks, who isn't a bad person, they just don't get on so well. But this time, things at the farm are all wrong!

Their grandmother only makes cornflakes for breakfast, their grandfather claims he doesn't know any scary stories, both of them seem to be showing a weird deference or even fear towards Stanley. Sticks warns them that things at the farm are different now and tells them to leave. When they don't, Sticks starts dressing up as a scarecrow and jumping out at them, or moving the scarecrows around at night to try and scare them. Stanley, in his usual oddity, has become obsessed with a book of superstitions he owns.

The visit is, to say the least, a disappointment. And Sticks insists he's not dressing up as a scarecrow at all.

Now, at this point, I thought there were two twists that might be revealed in this book. Either Stanley has brought the scarecrows to life with his magic book and has taken the farm hostage to his whims, or Stanley has turned Jodie's grandparents into scarecrows and turned scarecrows into grandparent simulacrum and is ruling the farm as magical dictator for life. I hoped it'd be the second one, because that'd be a cool twist that the scarecrows weren't trying to hurt Jodie and Mark, but were really their grandparents trying to communicate.

Turns out it's the first one. Kind of. Stanley did bring the scarecrows to life, but started to lose control and had to undo his spell, but first he made Jodie's grandparents to do things his way - no more pancakes or scary stories - or he'd bring them back. Well, Stanley failed to undo the spell properly and then, worse, brings all the scarecrows to life again in a moment of panic. But Sticks had a plan for just this occasion, and saves the day by setting the scarecrows on fire and burning them to death.

All in all, pretty cool. And that makes sense. Scarecrows are pretty cool. Good use of scarecrows, R L Stine. Well done.

This is not a Goosebumps book

After reading Goosebumps #20, I decided to try out the first book in the Fear Street series. Fear Street was RL Stine's young adult horror series written in the 90s. Much like Goosebumps, they have cover art that I absolutely fucking love.

Fear Street #1 'The New Girl' is about Corey, a sixteen year old star gymnast and all around super boring protagonist. He is oblivious to the obvious romantic overtures his neighbour and long-time friend Lisa has been making towards him, but otherwise his life is going okay. Then he catches sight of The New Girl, a beautiful blonde girl with a classic beauty and old world fashion style... Which I think means she wears dresses.

Sure. Why not.

Anyway, Corey becomes so obsessed thinking about the New Girl and trying to find her, that his friendships start to fall apart and he pushes Lisa away and screws up all his gymnast routines in practice and during competitions. His obsession is compounded by the mystery surrounding the new girl. None of his friends have noticed her, she's often absent from school for days at a time, and when Corey does catch sight of her, she seems to vanish the moment he looks away. Only Lisa notices her. Lisa knows her name is Anna and they share a class together, but Lisa too notices Anna missing a lot of school.

Eventually Corey does talk to Anna, and the two begin to develop a relationship that isn't quite romantic but is kind of fucked up. Corey convinces a telephone operator to give him Anna's phone number and address, but when Corey calls (or shows up unannounced) he is told by Anna's family that Anna is dead. Corey breaks into the school's permanent records and finds no file for Anna. Then one night, Anna calls Corey and asks for help, asks him to come to her house. He does, and there they share their first kiss., but Anna also explains that her brother Brad is crazy and wants to kill her. Then she runs away. And shit continues to get weird. Soon, Corey notices Brad following him and/or Anna.

Then Lisa turns up an old newspaper article from last year with an obituary for Anna.

Things rapidly escalate after Lisa asks Corey to the upcoming school dance. Lisa finds a dead cat in her locker and at the dance, somebody pushes Lisa down a flight of stairs. Lisa is sure Anna is the culprit - jealous and possessive of Corey. Corey is convinced Brad, murderous and furious, is the culprit.

This pot of violence and romance and madness all boils over in the final chapters of the novel when Corey goes to confront Brad at Brad and Anna's home and arrives just in time to see Brad and Anna locked in battle. Corey knocks Brad out and tries to take Anna away, but Anna grabs a knife and insists they must finish Brad off.

Corey realises he done fucked up.

Brad wakes up, helps Corey subdue Anna, and then explains that Anna isn't Anna at all. Anna is Willa. The real Anna - Brad and Willa's sister - did die, and Brad has always suspected Willa killed her. Willa is just, apparently, batshit bananas, and has been pretending to be Anna to... Well, to be honest, I'm not sure what her end game was. Possibly to kill Brad and stop him from being the only thing stopping her reign of maniacal terror?

Honestly, it doesn't matter. She's deranged and dangerous and they call the police and Corey gets on with his life, finally recognising his mutual feelings for Lisa.

So the end is a bit vague. Or it's possible I just forgot. I read like five books this week, so it's possible those details didn't stick. I don't know. You read the book and tell me.

And if it sounds like an interesting book and you like young adult fiction and horror stories, then yeah, I recommend read it. It's fine. It has some of those stylistic choices of RL Stine's that I don't like. For example, he still repeats some scenes too much. They're not bad scenes or even pointless. I see what purpose they serve and they're written fine, it's just that I'm an impatient reader. I read these repetitions and think "Yeah, thanks, I get it. I know what you are saying."

So it's fine. And why wouldn't it be fine? RL Stine is a solid writer with an excellent grasp of horror conventions. Oh, and there are a couple of actual jokes in there. Funny ones. Given an older audience and, with it, the capacity for deeper characters, higher stakes, more complex plots, RL Stine delivers above expectation. Good stuff. Solid effort. Recommended for the teenaged horror fan in your life.

All right. Let's get to the meat of the issue.

Why am I talking about Fear Street? Why did I skip Goosebumps #19? Why is this blog called "The Final Chapter"?

Well, I'll tell you.

No more of this

I don't want to be the Nostalgia Critic.

It has always been my practice to not publicly review books. I make some exceptions when I absolutely love a book, but I hold this commitment as doubly important if I have nothing good to say about a book. I feel it is professionally inappropriate at best and deeply petty at worst. And if those fellow authors happen to be, by any metric, several thousand times more successful than I am, it's a real bad look.

It has always been my stance that authors have a responsibility to build each other up. It's kind of a hell industry and we need all the support and encouragement we can get, and the best place to get that is from each other. Bumping Geese has become a gross failure to live up to that ideal.

I genuinely thought I'd enjoy Goosebumps more than I have. The first couple of books really reaffirmed that expectation. But when more and more books are just not what I'm after, and I've committed to writing about it, the best I can do is try and make that writing entertaining. But I can only be performatively and irrationally angry at children's books in so many ways for so long before the joke gets old. For you and for me.

It's not even a great joke to begin with.

Plus, I run the risk of making you believe that a bad Goosebumps book actually matters, or that RL Stine is a bad writer.

Fuck, you know what, I'm going to stop saying "bad Goosebumps" because, really, who the fuck am I to judge?

I am in my 30s. I am a horror nerd who has been reading horror fiction and watching horror movies for years. I am not the audience for these books. The fact that I enjoyed any of them - that I found any of them genuinely frightening - should be seen as enormous praise for what RL Stine is capable of as a writer.

So this is it. The great Goosebumps experiment comes to an end. I liked most of them. I didn't like some of them. If you have children, they'll probably like them more than me. Hell, you might like them more than me. You can read them.

Or read Fear Street. I'll probably check out some more of those.

But you won't hear about it from me if I do.

So I hope you've enjoyed this experiment. I hope you learned a little about something - whether it was Existentialism, Marxism, the craft of story telling, or just that spoopy books for kids are pretty cool. And if you didn't... Well, you're probably not reading this, so I've no reason to keep justifying myself to you.

Bumping Geese 18: Monster Blood II

 You people sicken me.

Blog readers only want one thing and it's fucking disgusting.

Well it's not happening. The monkey isn't dancing for your entertainment today. You'll have to get your sick kicks somewhere else.

And you want to know why? Just look at this!

This is what you want, isn't it, you sick freak!

Do you see that? Do you know what that says? Right there?

It says 'Monster Blood II'.

And yeah, I read it. I read the whole thing. Cover to cover. And no, I'm not going to tell you about it. I'm not going through this again. Do you remember the last time I read a 'Monster Blood' book? The first really bad Goosebumps book. And now here we are again and you want to know, you're just chomping at the bit for me to say "Yes, Evan Ross returns as the protagonist in this book and yes, he's still the absolute worst."

But I'm not doing that. You'll just have to live in the knowledge that I resisted. I was too strong. And you'll say "Please please tell me the plot?" Hoping I'll say something like "Set some months after the first, Evan Ross is settled in his new home in Atlanta and is at a new school and he tried to tell everybody about Monster Blood and they all thought he was crazy and nobody likes him and the bully Conan Barber - nicknamed Conan the Barbarian - is very dull and trite bully stereotype ever invented hates Evan almost as much as his teacher Mr Murphy and about half as much as I do."

But that's not happening. That's not how this goes. I'm on strike. So you don't get details. You don't get to know about Andy making a sudden, barely justified return to the story, or that she brings Monster Blood with her under the most contrived and half-assed circumstances, or that she feeds it to Mr Murphy's pet hamster Cuddles, or that this - despite being the cover of the book - doesn't happen until literally half way through the book and that before that, for an entire half the novel NOT A SINGLE FUCKING INTERESTING THING OCCURS IN THE PAGES OF THIS SPOOPY CHILDREN'S NOVEL.

And sure, if I told you any of that, you might understand my frustration. You'd say "It's okay, you've said enough. You don't need to go through this again." But it'd be lies, wouldn't it? You're so duplicitous. But I'm onto you. You'll smile and pat me on the back and say "There, there. That's okay. Let's talk about something else," but really you expect the dam to have broken by this point. Deep down in the black pit you have for a heart, you're hoping I'll say "No! No! I've started now, I might as well get it out!" and I'll tell you all about how Cuddles gets bigger, and Mr Murphy is angry and then excited and Evan wants to stop it and Andy thinks its funny and then Cuddles breaks free, gets bigger than a person, and tries to eat people, and Evan eats some Monster Blood, too, so he'll grow giant and then he wrestles Cuddles but Cuddles, the hamster, somehow out wrestles Evan.

So, no, I'm not playing into your hand. If I start now, if I tell you even a single thing about this book, it won't be long before I tell you that this terrible book has a terrible ending in which, when all seems lost, all the Monster Blood dries up and Evan and Cuddles pop back to normal size because THE MONSTER BLOOD REACHES ITS EXPERIATION DATE.

And maybe I'd remark that this twist - the one I'm not going to share with you - is a little funny, but requires you do not think about continuity at all, and isn't that just a massive implied insult to the reader?

So, you see, you might as well go about your day. You don't get your sick kicks, today. I'm not going to tell you a single thing about this book. You want to know so badly? Go read it yourself. Go write your own blog. You can call it 'Gumping Beese' or something. You can suffer for the cheers of strangers. And then, maybe you can use it as an opportunity to teach a literary or philosophical concept like, fuck, I don't know.

Dramatic irony.

You know dramatic irony? The literary technique in which the audience is granted more information than a character in the text. For example, a character might insist that they will not do a thing and remain stubborn in their refusal, but you as the audience, have the knowledge that the character is unwittingly doing all those very things they have sworn not to do. This would be an example of dramatic irony used for comedy, but the same basic idea could be used for horror or suspense or tragedy.

But that's up to you. Because I'm not doing it. I'm not doing any of it. That's it. I'm done. Maybe I'll tell you about the next one, but I will take the details of 'Monster Blood II' with me to the grave.

Bumping Geese 17: Why I'm Afraid of Bees

Albert Camus said, and I'm paraphrasing, the only important philosophical question is the question of suicide. Should we go on living?

I can't answer that for you. But here at the dawn of a new year, I pose a similar question. The great philosophical question of Goosebumps. Should we go on reading Goosebumps?

And at their core, they are the same question. Should one live or kill themself, should one read Goosebumps or... kill themself? For if life has no meaning, then surely the act of reading Goosebumps has no meaning, and if reading Goosebumps is meaningless, then it can only mean that Goosebumps books themselves are meaningless.

And yet the act of reading anything is the endeavour to find meaning. With each page, we search for a meaning that may or may not be there, just as we live each day frantically scrounging for a meaning in life that we may never find.

And this is what philosophers call the Absurd. The search for meaning in the absence of meaning - or, at the very least, the absence of the assurance of meaning, depending on whether you're more of a Camus or a Kierkegaard about it.

But is life and Goosebumps meaningless? Is our failure to find meaning the same as there being no meaning, or is that just a fault in our perceptions? Perhaps, in the absence of tangible meaning, we need to undertake a new exercise.

Let's not look for meaning, but instead, let's look for signs of the absence of meaning. Does life or Goosebumps present us with an absence of proof of meaning, or a proof of absence of meaning? Well, that's a big ask on the topic of life for one small blog, so let's instead focus on Goosebumps.

After all, as we've established, what is true of Goosebumps vis a vis meaning can be said to be true of life. The question of suicide is the question of Goosebumps.

So then, let's look at this week's Goosebumps, starting with the cover art and ask: does this confirm the Absurd?

Huh...

Yeah... I guess that kind of settles that.

Looks pretty definitive to me.

So here we are, at the start of January, the fresh faced year of our Lord 2022 asking the one truly, staring at the Absurd, forced to reason with the break-down of the illusion of meaning and purpose. And now that we have satisfied that all important philosophical question of Goosebumps, as Camus demands we must, we come naturally to the following great question of philosophy:

The fuck did I just read?

'Goosebumps #17: Why I'm Afraid of Bees' is perhaps one of the great works of Absurdist fiction. It is equal parts Kafka and Camus, presented as a horror by way of Cronenberg. A lesser critic might call it derivative, but such an approach would only misunderstand not only the intent of the novel but the context in which it exists - ie. a world devoid of meaning. To be derivative suggests that 'Why I'm Afraid of Bees' is taking from something that it does not own, but as the book demonstrates time and time again, nobody owns anything. Your life, your body, your feelings, none of them are you or belong to you.

Gary 'Lutz The Klutz' Lutz - the name no doubt a reference to the famous 'Amityville Horror' series, further cementing this as a work that bears its lineage like its heart on its sleeve - leads a miserable life. We see his day-to-day world as one of suffering. He is bullied, mocked, and isolated by his family and peers, and even animals routinely attack him. Gary does nothing to bring it on himself. There is no karma or cosmic order demanding his suffering. It is simply the life he lives. And since he can find no comfort anywhere in his existence, he only wishes to escape it. Gary wants out of life.

Gary, like many Absurdist protagonists, is faced with torment without reason and has recognised that there is nothing to be gained by enduring it. He has recognised the absence of meaning in his life.

Escape comes for Gary in the form of a 'Person-to-Person Vacation' service that allows him to swap bodies for a week with another person. Gary signs up for the service, and the service finds him a match who wants to swap bodies with him. But during the transfer process, one of Gary's neighbour's bees climbs into the mind-transfer machinery and Gary finds himself stuck as a bee.

Gary has many shenanigans as a bee, all driven by the need to return to his original body and the life he left behind. Along the way he interacts with his sister's pet cat, a variety of insects, his family, his neighbour, the bee hive he now belongs to, and Dirk, the child who has taken Gary's body. Almost all of these encounters are hostile and Gary is nearly killed a dozen times. Eventually Gary is able to communicate with Ms Karmen, the woman who works for the vacation service, but she explains that Dirk is refusing to give up Gary's body and so she cannot help him. She then accidentally locks Gary in her office where he may well starve to death.

Eventually Gary confronts Dirk and tries to force him to hand over his body by tricking the hive into swarming Dirk-Gary. Caught up in his rage and hatred, Gary commits the one bee act he had sworn never to do: he stings Dirk. This spells Gary's end. A bee cannot sting a person and live.

Dying slowly, Gary flies out into is back yard to die under the maple tree, in his favourite spot to rest as a human. But when Gary awakens, he is human again. Why? How?

Such pedestrian questions about continuity and reason rightfully go unanswered. One might engage with the dying-under-the-tree moment as a metaphor for Gary reconnecting with his humanity by finding the one thing that, in human life, made him happy.

But let me remind you:

This book has no meaning. 

There is no metaphor. And while the final moments see Gary rejoicing to be back with his family, showering them with affection, even befriending Dirk (who is back in his own body) before sticking his face in a flower to suck up some pollen, you will no doubt feel the temptation to see this as a parable about appreciating your life, do not give into that temptation.

There is no reason for Gary's change. The things that made his life torment as a human continued to make his life torment as a bee. Gary's arc defies narrative tradition. It defies reason.

Because there is no reason.

There is no meaning.

And do we ever learn why Gary is afraid of bees? No. The book begins with Gary afraid of bees. He is afraid of bees during the book - and the most genuinely frightening moment in the book is when Gary is forced into the hive and is crowded antenna-to-antenna with bees - and at the end of the book, he no longer fears bees, but feels kinship with them. As a bee, he failed to live as one of them, now comfortably emulates one as a human. He promises to visit them at the hive.

Gary isn't afraid of bees.

The book's title is a lie.

No matter what angle you try to view this novel, it defies understanding and rationalising. It has no purpose. There is no meaning beneath the words.

'Goosebumps #17: Why I'm Afraid of Bees' is the Absurd made manifest.

And so what do we do with that? How do we live in a world where Goosebumps - and thus life - has no meaning?

Well Albert Camus had an idea, and Gary Lutz lives up to Camus' ideal of an Absurd Hero. Without any impetus, without any reason, Gary at the end of the story is happy. He has embraced this wild random life of suffering and body horror and against all rationality, decided to be happy, decided to do what makes him happy. And in Gary's case, that's sticking his nose in flowers and slurping up pollen. Does it make sense?

No. But why would it? Why should it? Sense and reason are what demanded that we search for meaning in the first place, and the universe can only deny us that. So live senselessly. Rebel against your reason, rebel against the meaninglessness of your life, and live without purpose. Anything you might choose to define your life is ultimately, equally worthless, which only means they're all equally worthwhile. There are no right answers, so answer anyway you like. That is Camus' and R.L Stine's answer to that great important question of suicide.

The rational answer is death. The irrational answer is happiness.

Embrace the Absurd. Embrace meaninglessness. Embrace happiness.

Alternatively, it might just not be a very good book...

Bumping Geese 16: One Day At Horrorland

So, uh, I guess I'm feeling less charitable than usual... I apologise in advance to fans of this book and to the author.

This book is fucking terrible.

Above: A book not worth a witty comment

Are you familiar with the term "torture porn"? It was a criticism aimed at some big horror movies in that early 2000s that were allegedly hyper fixated on graphic gore and violence at the expense of the usual marks of film quality like plot, script, character, and theme. In the 20th century, horror fans referred to films like this as Splatterpunk, and they were generally a niche indie market that, yeah, were mostly about the gore and violence. But where as Splatterpunk acknowledges the genre as an art - or counter-art - in its own right, torture porn was intended pejoratively against both the films under its umbrella and the people who enjoyed them. They're not art, goes the allegation, nor are they entertainment in any reasonable sense of the word. They are merely graphic displays intended to titillate the basest urges of their audience. Film goers might see a horror film, but sickos get off on torture porn.

And, largely, it's a lot of crap. A bunch of the movies lumped into this genre, that were apparently so gut churning as to be unfit for consumption, according to these critics, are frankly laughable to anybody who has seen the classics of Mondo and Splatterpunk cinema. And look, I didn't particular care for 'Hostel' either - I don't know why you'd enjoy it, and there really wasn't much to the film other than flimsy, xenophobic justification for torture scenes.

Sometimes you gotta wonder if torture porn isn't a legitimate name, if not a legitimate criticism. It's not my trash, but if it's yours, whatever.

What does all this have to do with Goosebumps #16 'One Day at Horrorland'?

This book is basically torture porn for kids.

And I'd like to thank you all for coming along to my blog. Now that I've typed those words, I expect the AFP will be shutting me down in the next few days.

Okay.

So the plot of this book is that a family gets lost on their way to one amusement park and stumble upon a different amusement park called Horrorland. A theme park full of spooky monster mascots and spooky themed rides. At first, it sounds awesome. That's the kind of theme I'd love for a theme park near me. Except this theme park is TOO SPOOKY.

The family's car blows up (literally) when they arrive, and while the parents try to figure out how to get home, their children Luke and Lizzy, and Luke's friend Clay, explore the park and go on some rides. And all the rides are spooooooooky! And they are surrounded by spooky signs warning them of doom! And that there's no escape! And every ride goes for too long, and gets creepier and spookier as they go, and then it seems like the ride is going to kill them, except it doesn't! And then Lizzy and Clay talk about how scary it was, and Luke laughs about how fun it was, and Lizzy gets made that Luke is acting so brave and excited when he was clearly scared at the time, too.

And then you repeat that seventeen million fucking times and you have this book.

And it turns out the monsters at Horrorland are real monsters! And the chance of death is real! And nobody escapes! Except they do! But maybe they don't! Spooky scary ambiguous ending!

So I had a few ideas for this blog and how to make it more entertaining and interesting.

But fuck that.

This book isn't worth the effort. Frankly, I'm annoyed that I thought I might just put in the effort to read another book and write another blog, despite how awful I'm feeling, despite how much I'd rather crawl into a hole and hide away for the rest of my life, and my reward for trying is this shit.

It could have been another "Stay Out of The Basement" - a book which I love, and will praise eternally, and which genuinely rocks all manner of socks off, but instead it's another monster blood. Terrible under-baked characters, repetitive scenes, painfully contrived set ups, zero pay off. The only nice thing I can say is R.L Stine didn't try to be funny. 

And you know what the worst part is?

All through this fucking book the characters talk about a section of Horrorland called Werewolf village. Do they pass through Werewolf village? Yes. Do they hear howls? Yes. Is there a single fucking scene with a single damned werewolf in this whole arsing book? No.

Fucking cock tease, I tell you.

'Werewolf of Fever Swamp' kind of slipped through the cracks of my memory, but while the individual beats of the plot don't stand out in my mind, I definitely remember enjoying it and being glad to read a cool story about werewolves, because werewolves are fucking awesome. There should be more books about werewolves. And movies. And while we're at it, the world should also just have more werewolves.

'One Day at Horrorland' couldn't even get that right.

So it goes straight in the garbage with 'Monster Blood', lest it sully the good name Goosebumps earned through excellent books like 'Stay Out of The Basement' and 'Let's Get Invisible.' I'll probably keep reading so I can chase those 'Goosebumps' highs - I know RL Stine has got it in him. Everybody has their bad days and the stories that just don't work out, but I swear, the quality of this series is more bi-polar than I am.

Bumping Geese 15: You Can't Scare Me

 Yeah... It's pretty good.

This is the cover of a book I have read

You may remember back in the first review, I said this:

"So now I'm going to read every Goosebumps book, in order of release, one a week, until I finish them. Or get really depressed and give up on life. We'll see."

Well it's almost like I'm psychic because that happened. And so here we are, months without a review. But I had read one more book before that happened. 'Goosebumps 15: You Can't Scare Me'. And while I was starring numbly at my kindle a couple of days ago, trying to motivate myself to read anything at all, vaguely aware that once upon a time I experienced joy from books, I remembered that I had read this book and never written a review.

Well, you know how it goes. You have some caffeine at 1am, the world is quiet, and it's either stick your head in the oven... Or write about Goosebumps for a while. Whatever gets you through the night.

And so here we are.

This book - and the title is too long for me to bother writing out every time, so now it's just "this book" - is about some kids who experience spooky shit.

So there's this girl, Courtney, and she's basically the perfect human. She's smart, brave, pretty, friendly, and only occasionally kind of a bitch, but in that way that all 12 year olds are kind of a bitch because they're 12 and don't know any better.

And there's this kid Eddie - and his friends who don't matter, because nothing matters - who hates Courtney because he's jealous and feels inferior to her. He especially feels weak and cowardly every time he sees Courtney being brave. So this shit kid and his shit friends decide to dedicate their life to scaring Courtney.

Eddie and his friends try putting a fake snake in her bag, getting a big dog to chase her, and probably some other stuff I forgot. None of it works. So finally Eddie decides to enlist the help of his older brother. Eddie's brother is also shit, and I'm sure Eddie has to, like, agree to be his brother's slave for some amount of time before he helps Eddie. But he does agree and even gets his friends in on it.

You see, Eddie's brother and co. are making an amateur horror film about a local legend about monsters called mud people who live in the woods and... um... Do mud people shit, I guess. They're called mud people because they are people made of mud or covered in mud. And I think they were exiled into the woods because they were sick? But I might be getting them confused with the swamp fever stuff in the last book. I don't know. Nor do I particularly care. Nor should you care. Why are you even reading this? Go away. Leave me alone.

Fuck it, we're here, I've started, might as well finish.

So, um, Eddie's brother and his friends have these scary mud people costumes and they make a plan with Eddie and Eddie's friends to lure Courtney into the woods late at night and jump out at her in mud people costumes. And this all goes according to plan and Courtney does get afraid. Victory.

And as they're leaving the woods, Eddie and his friends run into Eddie's brother and friends in their costumes, who apologise for being late. But if they were late, who were the mud people in the woods scaring Courtney?

And that's the twist. Mud people are real. And scary.

It's predictable. And most of the characters are shit. And Courtney is less shit but she's also boring.

But, um... Well, I remember liking the book just fine. Not great, not terrible. The monsters are interesting, the set-up is unique, the delivery works. It's fine.

It's fine.

I guess something in this terrible world has to be okay. Might as well be a children's book.

Okay. Go away, now. We're done.

Bumping Geese 14: The Werewolf of Fever Swamp

 What can I say about Goosebumps 14 'The Werewolf of Fever Swamp'?

I'm not actually sure that's a picture of the werewolf

No, really, what can I say about it?

I read this book last week and I've basically forgotten everything about it. Let's see... Um...

'The Werewolf of Fever Swamp' is about a family who moves into a new home in... Well, there are swamps, and it is probably in the USA, so I'm going say Florida. Somewhere in Florida. In the small town of... I'm going to call it Dark Falls. Not because that's the name of it, but because I think that's the name of the town in 'Welcome To Dead House' and all Goosebumps towns are basically the same.

Uh... Where was I?

Oh right.

So this family moves into a new home in a new town, this time in Florida, and the house is near some swamps. And they've moved here because the father is a scientist studying swamp deer. There are no swamp deer in Florida, but he has brought some from... I want to say Africa? From somewhere with swamp deer. I definitely remember swamp deer because I'd never heard of swamp deer and after I write this I'm going to Google whether or not swamp deer actually exist.

I won't be surprised if they do exist. They're probably not from Africa, though. But nature has turned out some weird stuff, and a swamp deer totally...

Hold on. This isn't about swamp deer. This is about Goosebumps. Let's get back to whatever this book was.

So this family has moved to Dark Falls, Florida, to study how swamp deer will manage being moved from Swampistan, Africa to the swamp in Dark Falls, Florida. And I'm going to go out on a limb here and say the swamp is called Fever Swamp. Yeah, that sounds right. Something about a local legend of settlers going crazy with a fever? Oh! And the main character gets a fever... and that sub plot doesn't really go anywhere...

But anyway, this family moves to Dark Falls, Florida with their swamp deer, into a house at the edge of Fever Swamp, and the main character is the son and youngest child of the family... whose name is... Well, I'm going to call him Gabe, which is the name of the kid from 'The Curse of The Mummy's Tomb'. On the first day moving to Dark Falls, Gabe and his sister Lindy (not her real name, and I need not remind you who Lindy is...) go exploring in Fever Swamp, get lost, run into a swamp hermit... Is there a swamp hermit? Pretty sure there is a swamp hermit. For some reason Gabe and Lindy get scared and run out of the swamp and are fine.

After a few days, Gabe makes some friends... Their names are... Kim and Jerry. And it would be cool if they were the Kim and Jerry from the last book and this book finally confirmed the Goosebumps extended universe, but they're not. Pretty sure that's not even their real names. But they could be.

Because I don't remember anything about this book.

And speaking of things I don't remember, I don't remember how many times Gabe and Lindy and Kim and Jerry go exploring in the swamps, but it's a few times and in a few different combinations of the characters, but it's definitely one of those Goosebumps books where scenes kind of repeat a few too many times. At least I think it is. I can't remember. But on one of these occasions, when I think it's Gabe and Kim and Jerry, they get chased by the swamp hermit and Gabe gets bitten by a snake and he's fine but he also gets swamp fever and that doesn't really go anywhere, like I said.

Um... What else...

Oh! So I googled it and it turns out swamp deer are a real thing. But they're not from Africa, they're from south Asia, around the Indian Subcontinent. So that's cool. They're big and floofy but it sounds like they're a threatened species, which sucks. And I don't know if this part is true, but in the book they have these, like, webbed hoofs to walk on swamps, which...

Oh shit. The book. We were talking about a book. The Goosebumps book. Uh... Let's see... Where were we...

Oh yeah! Y'all, there's a werewolf! There's a werewolf in this book! 

So Kim thinks the swamp hermit is the werewolf and the swamp hermit claims to be the werewolf while chasing them, but then says he was just joking to scare them. And Gabe keeps hearing howling at night, and dead animals keep turning up, and Kim insists there is a werewolf in the swamp but Jerry doesn't believe her.

Oh, and Gabe finds a big stray dog and adopts it, and I don't remember what name he gives the dog, so I'm just going to call it Red Herring. So Red Herring is a big friendly boofer of a dog but one night he goes a bit wild and knocks over some furniture while trying to escape the house. After that, when animals start showing up dead, including one of the swamp deer, Gabe's father decides Red Herring must be the killer. And could it be true? Red Herring seems awful intelligent and there are dog shaped paw prints near all the dead animals. Is the real werewolf the pets we adopted along the way?

No.

Obviously not.

So Gabe sends Red Herring away before Gabe's Dad can take Red Herring to the pound. And then one night Gabe goes sneaking out into the swamp for... reasons. I think he wants to prove Red Herring isn't the werewolf. Jerry also sneaks out for... reasons. And off they go together to find the werewolf. And I assume I must be remembering this wrong in some way because this is a terrible plan.

Anyway, it turns out Red Herring isn't the werewolf, but surprise! Jerry is the werewolf! And Jerry attacks Gabe! But Red Herring intervenes and saves Gabe! And the Jerrywolf is driven back! Or maybe killed! I don't remember! But the story ends!

After the attack, Gabe tries to explain all about what happened and how Jerry was secretly a Jerrywolf and Gabe's Dad goes to visit Jerry's house to find out what's up and it turns out the house is empty and nobody has lived there for years.

Oh, and Gabe becomes a werewolf. Yeah. He gets bitten by the Jerrywolf in the climax and so the big twist is that even though Jerry is now gone, Gabe is now the werewolf of Fever Swamp and likes to go hunting on the full moon with Red Herring.

And rather than a shocking horrible twist, it actually sounds like kind of a sweet deal to me. I don't know why the Jerrywolf attacked Gabe, but when Gabe is a Gabewolf he seems to be pretty much in control and just likes hunting with Red Herring and isn't out to hurt anybody. I can only assume Jerrywolf was just always a Jerkwolf.

Anyway, I don't remember much of this book but what I do remember, I remember liking. It's definitely one of the more generic Goosebumps books. All the characters and the premise and the locations feel a bit like a re-tread, and it doesn't do anything exciting with werewolves as a concept. But like with ghosts, I'm just always on board for a werewolf story. Werewolves are cool.

So, yeah. Even though it all kind of slipped through the cracks in my brain as soon as I started reading the next book, I can confidently say this one was fine and I enjoyed it.

Plus, it gives me an opportunity to talk about werewolves from a Marxist perspective. Usually when it comes to a Marxist analysis of the world, vampires are the go to monster metaphor. But I think it's worth looking at how the werewolf mythos gives us an all together different and unique take on...

Um...

A unique take on...

Wait.

What was I talking about?

Bumping Geese 13: Piano Lessons Can Be Murder

 Last time on bumping Geese...

"Well you know what I wish?  

I wish I had a better Goosebumps to read.

And somewhere, a monkey's paw curled its finger..."

I'm going to be honest, I really wanted to have some kind of pay-off to that setup, some kind of monkey's paw answer to my wish. But I don't. Did it come true? Yeah. But it was bound to happen eventually. There's a lot of books to go...

There is an unfathomable amount of books to go...

You have no idea how many books there are to go...

My God, there are so many Goosebumps books...

But is the sheer number of Goosebumps books I have to read the wish's down side? Nah. I already knew I'd be doing this until I or R.L Stine die. Sooo... Yeah... Kind of a failed joke.

Which, when talking about Goosebumps, is entirely appropriate!

The next book.
Presented without segue.

Goosebumps 13: 'Piano Lessons Can Be Murder' is a return to creative creepy shit for this series.

This book follow Jerry Hawkins who moves into a new house and discovers a piano left in the attic. But that night, he is awoken by the sound of sad piano music. Jerry investigates and follows the sound to the attic, right to the old piano, but when he reaches the attic, there's nobody in sight. It would seem the piano was playing itself.

Jerry's parents take his fascination with the self-playing piano as a sign that he would like to learn to play piano and Jerry is like "sure, why not." And in typical Goosebumps parents fashion, when Jerry mentions his concerns that this piano plays itself in the middle of the night, they ignore his concerns and rationalise his experiences as some kind of anxiety to do with moving house.

Jerry's parents hire Dr Shreek to be his piano teacher, and he's a friendly but odd sort of chap who is just a little too obsessed with the quality of Jerry's hands. But he's a decent teacher and Jerry enjoys learning piano, even if he wishes he could learn more interesting music and skip boring stuff like learning scales. Eventually, Dr Shreek invites Jerry to come practise at his private music school at the edge of town, rather than having lessons in his home. Jerry's parents are very proud and Jerry is like "sure, why not."

Meanwhile, weird stuff is still afoot. Jerry mentions to his neighbour and new friend Kim that he is being taught by Dr Shreek and Kim immediately runs away from Jerry and the conversation. Later he coaxes out of her the reason: stories that Dr Shreek's school is home to monsters, and that children who enter are never seen again. Spooky stuff, but not enough to scare Jerry. He has been to the school by now and knows the "monsters" are just the large automatic cleaning machines the school's janitor, Mr Toggle, has built. And Jerry has been to the school and obviously hasn't disappeared, so that can't be true.

Although there was that one time he was in Mr Toggle's workshop and walked by a large metal cabinet and heard somebody inside cry out for help. But Mr Toggle says it's just malfunctioning machinery and Jerry is like "Sure, why not."

After all, he has much bigger concerns. Like the piano in his home which keeps playing itself every night. And the discovery that the piano isn't playing itself but is actually being played by a ghost. And the ghost is angry and doesn't want anybody to go near the piano, and every time Jerry tries to play it, the ghost sabotages his performance. Jerry tries to tell his parents but they don't believe him, and he tries to tell Kim, and she thinks he's lying. After all, ghosts don't exist. Not like the monsters in Dr Shreek's school. Which are real. Monsters are real. But I guess ghosts don't count as monsters. Because they're not real.

Kim's world view is inconsistent and she needs to sort her shit out.

Anyway, after one-too-many run ins with the angry ghost at the piano - who, in one encounter, is revealed to have no hands - Jerry decides to quit playing piano and his parents tell him that's fine, but they've paid for one more lesson at the school and he needs to tell Dr Shreek, so he should go to one more lesson and Jerry is like "sure, why not." So he does. And after the lesson he tells Dr Shreek he's quitting, but Dr Shreek won't have it. He explains he needs Jerry's hands, so Jerry cannot leave. They get into a scuffle and a chase, and Jerry runs into an auditorium full of pianos, all being played by floating hands. Jerry calls for help and Mr Toggle arrives to aid him. Mr Toggle turns off Dr Shreek and explains that Shreek is also a machine of his creating. So, it happens, are the hands. You see, Mr Toggle, for all his genius, cannot make good hands to play piano, so he takes them from children and then turns them into automatic piano playing hands.

But he could make Dr Shreek's and the other instructor robots' hands and presumably they play the piano at least a bit as part of their lessons with the children before Mr Toggle does his kidnapping and murdering. But sure. Why not.

Anyway. Mr Toggle still plans to take Jerry's hands, but before he can, the piano ghost appears and summons all the ghosts of the handless children Mr Toggle has murdered and they attack him. The ghost tell Jerry to leave and never return and Jerry is like "sure, why not" and legs it. Never to return.

His parents sell the piano. Jerry gets a new hobby. Life returns to normal. And the twist is the most unique of twists in Goosebumps for some time. The twist is...

There is no twist.

And that's fine. This one doesn't need a twist. It's good enough as it is.

I like this book. It isn't great, but it has a lot going for it. In particular, it has ghosts. I always like ghost stories. It also has some creepy shit R.L Stine has made up and those are always the best kinds of Goosebumps books. When a Goosebumps twist, or a whole book, is built around a well trodden trope or idea, R.L Stine rarely brings something new to the table. And that's understandable. His target audience probably hasn't read 'The Monkey's Paw' or 'Third From The Sun' or seen their adaptations, so why bother spicing them up? Big snobby literary nerds like me aren't who these books are for. But since I am reading them and since I am a big snobby literary nerd and since I do recognise these ideas, they read as a little lazy.

But when R.L Stine does put in the effort, or when the horror is very much his own creation, not only are they often fresh and unique ideas for horror, they're effective. They're exciting. They're scary. And Mr Toggle, with all his horrific tinkering and child-murdering, is unsettling. It's R.L Stine doing what he does best. That's not to say this is 'Stay Out of The Basement' quality, just that it's a decent entry in the series and I appreciated return to form after how dull the last book was.

I also appreciate that this book gives me a handy example of good foreshadowing and bad foreshadowing.

Allow me to do my own return to form and discuss something I used to talk a lot about on this blog: what makes for good writing. And I'll do that by presenting a couple of passages from 'Piano Lessons Can Be Murder'.

"'Okay, Jer,' he said, patting my shoulder. 'Remember - in a few weeks, you'll know I'm right. In a few weeks, this ghost business will all seem silly to you.' Boy, was he wrong!

This shit. This shit is lazy.

Foreshadowing is, partly, the art of enticing your audience to keep paying attention with hints of excitement to come. One way of doing that is to just tell the audience what is coming. When a story starts in medias res, then tells the previous events in flashback, that's this kind of foreshadowing. A recent example of this is the Sonic the Hedgehog movie.

And it can work. It's not an innately bad way of enticing the audience to keep watching or reading, but R.L Stine frequently does it in possibly the worst way. He will have a character suggest things are going to happen, or not happen. Usually it is somebody saying everything will be fine. Then the narrator will say "But it actually wasn't going to be fine!"

And the problem is that this doesn't actually foreshadow anything. It foreshadows a negative. He tells the audience "actually, what we just said will happen, is not going to happen!"

Okay. But that means the possibility of what will happen is literally everything else. There's nothing to be excited about here. And I can just assume things wont be fine because the book has more than one page left after this point. If everything was going to be fine, the story would be over.

On the other hand, good foreshadowing is a little more specific. It poses interesting questions to the audience and promises to fulfil them (pro tip: asking your audience a question and promising an answer is literally all good story telling). R.L Stine can do good foreshadowing. I know he can. He does it in this book.

"Her mouth dropped open in horror as she sated at me. 'You're doing what?' she cried. 

'Taking piano lessons with Dr Shreek,' I repeated.

'Oh!' She uttered a soft cry, spun around, and began running toward her front door.

'Hey, Kim!' I called after her. 'Kim -- what's wrong?'

But she disappeared out the door."

This passage hints at some terror in the future. Just the mention of Dr Shreek's lessons is enough to frighten Kim and make her run away. Presumably she knows something we and Jerry do not. What does she know? Why is it frightening? Will we find out? What will happen at the piano lessons?

This is a different kind of foreshadowing. It doesn't tell you what will happen exactly, just hints at what is to come, and it gives you a reason to care. And the possibilities are not infinite (or infinite minus 1), the possibilities are constrained by the foreshadowing. What will happen is frightening, what will happen involves Dr Shreek. Kim might tell us what she knows. And since we also know Jerry is going to take those lessons with Dr Shreek, we know he is in some kind of peril. That is something that will definitely happen, but there is a frightening shadow hanging over the specifics, a shadow we have been promised will be lifted.

R.L Stine isn't a bad writer. Like I said last time, he's inconsistent, but he was working to an incredibly demanding schedule, and so I'm not surprised he doesn't give every book his all. Buuuuut I find it hard to overlook the sort of laziness in his foreshadowing when I know he can do better. When he does better in the same book. Even young readers deserve better than that.

Still, it's a fine book. And I always enjoy a ghost story.

You know what else I enjoy?

Werewolves. And speaking of werewolves...

See you next time.*

*This was foreshadowing. The next book is about werewolves.