condenses the obsession of the creature; it is a hallucinatory presence
manifest from the first sentence to fascinate the reader, to make him
lose contact with the dull reality that surrounds him, submerging him
in another that is more intense and compelling.
I think it is vanity to want to put into a story anything but the story
itself.
For me the thing that signals a great story is what we might call its
autonomy, the fact that it detaches itself from its author like a soap
bubble blown from a clay pipe.
- Julio Cortázar, Around the Day in Eighty Worlds
The one test of the really weird (story) is simply this--whether or
not there be excited in the reader a profound sense of dread, and of
contact with unknown spheres and powers; a subtle attitude of awed
listening, as if for the beating of black wings or the scratching of
outside shapes and entities on the known universe's utmost rim.
- H.P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror in Literature
 |
| By Hengki Koentjoro |
