I have mentioned several times how much I enjoy the Ballantine horror anthologies with the Richard Powers covers. Today I want to look at one story from this anthology, "The Graveyard Reader" by Theodore Sturgeon.
In his introduction, Conklin states, " I have always loved graveyards: country ones, in particular, but even city ones, too, if they are old and, to all intents and purposes, finished. These are the historic graveyards of the seventeenth and eighteen centuries, with their small green demesnes full of weathered and crumbling tombstones, city oases set in the midst of deserts of paved streets and of stone and glass anthills full of too many people. Of country graveyards, only this need be said: that in them is written the history that shall never be fully read: the history of simple people. And of all the graveyards this can always be said: that though they may be sad places, they are also peaceful."(7)
As a teenager in Windsor, Ontario a friend and I would occasionally end our nightly perambulations on a bench in the graveyard attached to a huge brick Anglican church. The area was old enough for sections of the original cobstone streets to be seen in spots where the asphalt had worn away. It was an extremely atmospheric spot; I should mention that it was this friend who introduced me to the works of H.P. Lovecraft.
Conklin goes on to thank Sturgeon "immeasurable thanks to Theodore Sturgeon, for being inspired by the title of this book to turn out an unforgettable original tale under the same name for me."(8) Fittingly enough, the story begins with a man visiting the grave of his newly deceased wife. The stone was included in the plot's price, and he is trying to decide what it should say. It is at this point that he backs up, inadvertently stepping on the foot of a man who has come up behind him. They stand side by side for a time, and then the man asks, "Mind if I read it?"(144) Since the stone does not yet have an inscription, the husband is angered, and the stranger agrees not to read it. He mentions however, that eventually, someone else will. The husband then asks what he is talking about, and the stranger replies, "I don't think you quite understand me. I didn't say I read gravestones. I said I read graves."(145) While the offer to read the grave seems like a good reason for the husband to dismiss the stranger, he is more alarmed by the thought that someone else could come to understand his wife when he was unable too. We learn that she had left home after an argument and that she died in a car accident while riding with a man he did not know three days later. Her death, however, is a symptom of the estrangement that has always haunted their marriage.
They continue to talk, and eventually, the stranger explains how one can read a grave and come to understand fully, what the occupant did, said or thought. When asked what he reads, he says, " A lot of things, The curve of the mound, the encroachment of growth on it-grass, weeds, mosses. The kind of vegetation that grows there, and the shape of each stem and leaf, even the veining in them, The flight of insects over it, the shadows they cast, the contours of rain-rivulets as they form, as they fill, as they dry." (149) "
"The Graveyard Reader" was a beautifully written story. It is the kind of story I would have expected from Jonathan Carroll or Ray Bradbury. Stories of this type seem to exist at the intersection of fantasy, horror and magic realism. Lately, I have come to see these stories as fabulism, which is described as a form of magic realism. Fabulists, however, are described as writers who compose or relate fables, and I am more comfortable with this description. I see these tales as akin to stories like "Bearskin Soldier" or "The Story of a Boy Who Went Forth to Learn Fear" from Grimms' Fairy Tales.
This is not a story where a lot happens. Sturgeon is relying on the setting, description, atmosphere, and narrator's memories and personal journey to structure the story. Fables often end with a moral lesson, here Sturgeon provides closure without excessive explanations or a predictable denouncement. Whether there is a moral lesson, I will leave to you. Conklin, in his introduction to this specific story, says. "This brand-new story is pure and lovely Sturgeon, Sturgeon at his understated best" (142), and I agree.
