Photo courtesy Noah Greenberg
In Clay McLeod Chapman’s latest novel, “The Remaking,” the Richmond native provides a meditation on the nature of storytelling, horrific or otherwise.
This literary branch — in which the kernel of truth that may be embedded in a myth or urban legend evolves into something far more elaborate, a ghoulish game of telephone — allows for a critique of culture in ways you can’t get to otherwise. Chapman’s narrative, too, is a ripping good yarn. “The Remaking” first takes you into its confidence and then makes you wonder if you are also cursed with and by this story.
Because, incidentally, you are.
And you can revel in this entanglement when Chapman reads from his book at 7 p.m. on Oct. 11, appropriately at the Poe Museum, presented by Chop Suey Books.
“The Remaking” is set in the scruffy town of Pilot’s Creek, Virginia, left to rot after its original industrial purpose dried up. There, in the 1920s, townsfolk are at first intrigued by Ella Louise Ford and her ethereal daughter Jessica, but their eccentric ways land them in the woods, where Ella becomes an herbal healer visited secretively by needy townies when medicine fails.
After a cure seems to go wrong, a group descends on the forest cottage. The fatal violence fuels a legend, The Witch Girl of Pilot’s Creek. The story undergoes transformation into a 1970s horror flick that alters the life of Amber Pendleton, the child actress who portrays Jessica. The story from there gets page-turningly eerier.
The horror genre is Chapman’s bailiwick; for 20 years he hosted the macabre storytelling event “The Pumpkin Pie Show,” which brought forth the collection “Nothing Untoward,” and prior to that, “The Tribe” series about the trials and difficulties of middle school, and before that “Miss Corpus.”
From his attic office in New York City’s Brooklyn borough, Chapman chuckles and cites one of the springs of the story in the Japanese horror movie “Ringu” (1998), remade by Hollywood as “The Ring” (2002). The story — from an 18th-century Japanese ghost story turned into an urban myth and expanded into a novel that begat a television film — concerns video cassettes that kill the viewers within a week.
“I came upon the movie naively and earnestly,” Chapman recalls. “For all those reasons it almost felt like I’d found the haunted video cassette.”
Chapman wanted to depict how a ghost might feel as its existence is transmitted by stories.
“In my Southern upbringing, the ghost lives in the tale. These urban legends span technologies and span generations. The best stories take on a life of their own with each telling. They have staying power.”
Likewise came his assignment from Marvel Comics to write “Absolute Carnage: Separation Anxiety,” a comic book that ties into the publisher’s popular miniseries “Absolute Carnage,” which features Spider-Man’s antihero nemesis Venom, a man who gains super powers by serving as the host for an alien symbiote, battling the titular Carnage, a symbiote who happens to be a serial killer. “With Venom and the symbiotes, Marvel gets their spandex dirty,” Chapman says. The “Separation Anxiety” comic, featuring art by Brian Level, went into a second printing in late summer.
Chapman’s now writing a monthly comic book for Marvel titled “Scream: Curse of Carnage.” Featuring art by Chris Mooneyham, the series tells the story of a female symbiote named Scream. “It’s taking on characters who’ve been on outer regions of the Marvel universe and getting a chance to crack them open,” Chapman enthuses. “Scream has some diehard fans for her, and I have to abide by the rules and laws thus far, but it’s always amazing to delve into the character and learn about what makes her work, and also finding the humanity in there.”
The stories change, but they never end.
Clay McLeod Chapman shares his novel “The Remaking” at 7 p.m. Oct. 11 at the Poe Museum. The event is free. poemuseum.org
