Once the reader imagines the chair's legs visible where the ghost's legs fade away, the question "is this believable?" disappears. In practice, the reader believes.
Beyond masterful pacing and specificity of language, the story contains its own internal logic of signs and symbols. Repeated, incantory phrases and images, like the ghosts with their eyes marked out, provide a structure for the story even when the rational structure falls short. Perhaps this is why the tale works better with stock characters than it could with more fully realized characters-those stereotypes provide a framework that can resonate with the reader. If so, it's not this story that resonates with the reader but with the larger story.
But if Heart-Shaped Box is just a guitar pick, then what are the strings that Hill so expertly picks? In the promotional materials, Joe Hill writes that "almost every ghost story is really an expression of a very old-maybe ancient-idea about consumerism. That is, when you take possession of something, you're also taking possession of its past." That just might be one of the strings, but what really makes it all sing are the fundamental moral questions: If nobody's perfect, how do we choose sides? Is that only a function of who is telling the story? Isn't there a battle between good and evil? Don't we want good to win? At the least, the story's emotional effectiveness depends on the magical thinking that if we atone for the past, the future will be all right.
Beyond masterful pacing and specificity of language, the story contains its own internal logic of signs and symbols. Repeated, incantory phrases and images, like the ghosts with their eyes marked out, provide a structure for the story even when the rational structure falls short. Perhaps this is why the tale works better with stock characters than it could with more fully realized characters-those stereotypes provide a framework that can resonate with the reader. If so, it's not this story that resonates with the reader but with the larger story.
But if Heart-Shaped Box is just a guitar pick, then what are the strings that Hill so expertly picks? In the promotional materials, Joe Hill writes that "almost every ghost story is really an expression of a very old-maybe ancient-idea about consumerism. That is, when you take possession of something, you're also taking possession of its past." That just might be one of the strings, but what really makes it all sing are the fundamental moral questions: If nobody's perfect, how do we choose sides? Is that only a function of who is telling the story? Isn't there a battle between good and evil? Don't we want good to win? At the least, the story's emotional effectiveness depends on the magical thinking that if we atone for the past, the future will be all right.
In this, the tale's morality is conventional-at times it's unapologetically sentimental-but it has to be, because Hill's horror is rooted in the reader's sympathy with the narrator. Lovecraft's unconventional morality depends on the notion that the universe is more horrifying than any but the insane can perceive, and his eldritch syntax underscores his belief in our inability to understand the world around us. Hill's language strives for the same transparency as does Stephen King's-no reader should ever stop to admire the carefully honed sentences, because to do so takes one out of the story, and compromises however fleetingly our empathetic link to the tale's protagonists.
The illusion works, like so many illusions do, so long as it commands our attention. The reader who resists empathy, or who focuses on relentlessly logical deconstruction, will likely throw down Heart-Shaped Box and walk away, muttering that it's nothing but a conjurer's trick, some storytelling slight-of-hand but without real magic. But for the reader who doesn't mind playing the role of guitar in Joe Hill's capable hands, this tale contains more than a few pleasant shivers.
The illusion works, like so many illusions do, so long as it commands our attention. The reader who resists empathy, or who focuses on relentlessly logical deconstruction, will likely throw down Heart-Shaped Box and walk away, muttering that it's nothing but a conjurer's trick, some storytelling slight-of-hand but without real magic. But for the reader who doesn't mind playing the role of guitar in Joe Hill's capable hands, this tale contains more than a few pleasant shivers.
