The Accursed

Joyce Carol Oates is one of the most acclaimed of American authors, and also one of the most prolific, but somehow I hadn't read any of her novels until The Accursed. I must say I was drawn to the subject because it is set in Princeton  (where she lives and teaches), where I lived near for almost twenty years, and a ghost story.

"The eruption of evil in Princeton, New Jersey, was but a single expression of a multiple Curse, or Horror--the eruption of Evil into the world of humankind, from which we must be saved by one stronger, more courageous, more 'inspired' than we are." So writes Oates about her tale of something weird and deadly going in the college town in the years 1905 and 1906, when a curse seems to fall upon the residents, especially the scions of one Winslow Slade, the (fictional) former governor and university president who harbors a dark secret.

The Accursed reminded me a great deal of E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime, which was set in the same time period and at its heart was about race, but his book had no ghosts or vampires. As with Doctorow, Oates uses many real-life characters, most prominently Woodrow Wilson, who was then the beleaguered president of the university; Grover Cleveland, the former president who lived in town; and Upton Sinclair, the socialist author of The Jungle, who lives in poverty in a farmhouse near the city.

The "curse" Oates writes of is really the curse on America--the curse of the treatment of blacks by whites. The book opens with a young seminarian pleading with Wilson to do something about the lynching of a black man in nearby Camden, but Wilson, southern by birth, racist by choice, says there is nothing he can do. Wilson is battling with another Princeton official, Andrew West, over the soul of the college, and given his propensity for strokes he is fretful about his health. There is a funny chapter on Wilson's visit to Bermuda, where he meets Mark Twain, and also has an affair with a woman named Cybilla Peck (I believe his mistress's actual name was Mary, but Oates has higher purposes with Cybilla).

The curse manifests itself in different ways, mostly on the grandchildren of Winslow Slade. His granddaughter is abducted during her wedding by a mysterious figure named Axson Mayte, a name so odd I thought it might be an anagram. She is taken to the "Bog Kingdom:" "The Bog Palace, staffed by 'servants'--and these creatures that seemed but part-human!--repulsive, yet piteous. They were misshapen, female and male alike; of greatly varying ages, but mostly older; their skins were ghastly-pale, like the underbellies of frogs or snakes; their grieving eyes were dark-shadowed and hollow; their manner craven and abashed yet sly, even furtive." She will die in childbirth, some saying that she gave birth to a large black snake.

All four of Slade's grandchildren will come to an untimely end, and at the funeral of one of them he reveals his secret, which has to do with the death of a black woman way before the Civil War, but even then he withholds his part in it. There are other manifestations--a Princeton professor goes balmy, thinks that Sherlock Holmes is real (and is visited by him) and attempts to kill his wife and infant. Another man kills his invalid wife. Yet another is done in after stepping on a jellyfish in that same Bermuda. And not one, but two vampires seem to be stalking the town.

The book is very much tongue-in-cheek, written in the florid Gothic style, with some funny lines like when Oates writes of Mrs. Cleveland: "It grieved the handsome dark-haired woman too, that her aged husband did everything so slowly. 'It will take him forever to die! He is so absent-minded.'"

Oates, with her use of Sinclair, also writes a great deal about socialism, and an entire chapter is devoted to his disappointment upon meeting Jack London in New York City, and frankly I didn't get the connection. Though I enjoyed this book very much, it never did tie together for me. The curse is never really "explained" to my satisfaction. One granddaughter is flung out of her bedroom window and over a wall, but we don't know who did it. We don't really know who Axson Mayte is, or the mysterious Count van Gneis, who also seems to be around whenever something creepy is happening.

By all means read The Accursed. If you have ever lived in or near Princeton, you will enjoy recognizing the places and some of the names of those whose names now mark streets. Those who enjoy Gothic novels, even faux ones like this, will also get a kick out of it. But I don't think it's quite the sum of its parts.