Russell Kirk (October 19, 1918 – April 29, 1994)
Books At Open Library
The traditional religious
imagery – demons, heaven, purgatory – that animates his work is neither window
dressing nor a useful convention around which to stretch a yarn. “I venture to
suggest that the more orthodox is a writer’s theology,” he maintained, “the
more convincing, as symbols and allegories, his uncanny tales will be.” The
modern tale that “isolates itself from this authority drifts aimlessly down
Styx.”[2] The terror seems more real, after all, if damnation and
salvation are real possibilities, if angels and demons inhabit God’s universe,
not solely man’s imagination.
Kirk‘s short
fiction revolves around the Christian pilgrimage, often filled with hardship
and suffering, in this world and in the next. The path to salvation is not
easy. “This world,” as Russian Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann
insisted, “through all its ‘media’ says: be happy, take it easy, follow the
broad way. Christ in the Gospel says: choose the narrow way, fight and suffer,
for this is the road to the only genuine happiness.”[3]
As Kirk’s wayfarers
discover, this Lenten road is hard, but the destination, an eternal Easter,
will make the perseverance, suffering, and struggle worthwhile.
-Newman, R. Andrew. “Pilgrimages and Easter Destinations
in the Ghostly Tales of Russell Kirk.” Modern Age 40, no. 3 (summer
1998): 314-18.Found in Ancestral Shadows: An Anthology Of Ghostly Tales, (Sep 2004)
Old House of Fear (1961)
Ancestral Shadows: An Anthology of Ghostly Tales (2004)
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