Wednesday the 4th, the Sequel OT: Let's Take a Trip

A Wisconsin Death Trip, that is. Trip Advisor says "Don't Go." But they're not the boss of me. It is one of my favorite books from childhood. Right up there with Judy Blume, Virginia Hamilton, Marvel's Greatest Super-Hero Battles, and Lad, a Dog. Dad recalled I always had a book with me. But which book?

Her eyes follow you around the room

WDT was available at the local library, but I never had the nerve to check it out. I would sneakread it in the aisle and meerkatstartle whenever someone walked by. Anyway, I think he misremembered about books. Sometimes I had the Coleco Handheld Electronic Quarterback game.

The book documents events in Black River Falls, Wisconsin between 1885 and 1900, using photographs taken by town photographer Charles Van Schaick, which survive as glass plate negatives, and dozens of excerpts from news reports in the Badger State Banner, as well as insane asylum records, literary quotations, and local gossip. The texts form a grim catalogue of arson, cruelty, dementia, suicide, murder, business failure, incest, premature burial, and regular outbreaks of diphtheria and smallpox. Women kill themselves over grief at the death of their children. Men kill themselves for lack of work. Horror piles upon horror. A brother and two sisters go insane within weeks of each other; a woman poisons her baby with strychnine; another slashes her stomach with a butcher knife; and a man blows his head off with a stick of dynamite. In separate incidents, two elderly women douse their bodies with kerosene and set themselves ablaze.

~ Rick Poyner, "Wisconsin Death Trip: A Psychic History". From the Design Observer, 4/5/05

As terrible and morbid as the short newspaper clips were, the sometimes mundane imagery juxtaposed with them stuck with me just as much; like a breather from all the horror. Some other stories were just odd. I recall a short passage about missing potatoes. That never got resolved as far as I know.

"I fear one of us is dead, sister."
"Of course, sister, but which one? Which one today?"

You might notice that the aesthetic may have had an influence on some of the books and movies I write about here.

"No one's going to survive the winter," something in the dark whispered to the heirs of Sawney Bean.

Music too. Who would I be without the guidance of murder ballads? This picture was obviously taken in a studio or fairground. I imagine there were dozens just like it with different customers:

"The oar, like all useful instruments, is both tool and weapon, Alethea."

The image was used for the cover of Echo & the Bunnymen's album Flowers in 2001. Just Will and Ian from the original lineup on this one. Pete died in a motorcycle accident a long time ago and Les called it quits after Evergreen in 1997. None of the songs are murdery, disappointingly. This one could have been, but "Buried Alive" is metaphorical, which is fine I guess.

I did purchase a paperback copy in the last decade or so, but it's not the same. It needs time to acquire that moldering book scent, and the binding's still holding up fine. Still interesting and at times still delightful, but it no longer feels like a cursed object. Owning ivory scrimshaw or a monkey paw or stolen Native art or an ill-gotten gentleman's magazine kind of feeling, if you know what I mean. Weird thrills.

 

So what are you reading? Any childhood favorites you like to revisit? Read anything recently which triggered your gag reflex? Akin to the town rummy grabbing you by the lapel and shouting full in your face, breath still rank from last night's pickled onion and cheap whiskey. Keep the horrors flowing, comrades.