"Movie Night at Phil's" by Don Webb (2012) is a story about watching TV. "A Ghost Story for Christmas" by Paul Cornell, from the Cosmic Horror Issue of Weird Tales (2023), is also about watching TV. Watching TV is not an activity. It's actually the opposite of an activity. A person can descend into himself, as he would like, by watching TV. Watching TV can also lead him to a descent into himself without his seeking it. As with loneliness, nothing happens while a person is watching TV. Nothing can happen. Driving on the other hand is an activity. I suppose it's possible, but I'm not sure that anyone has ever descended into himself by driving, by actually going somewhere in the world. He might descend into himself at the end of his journey, in some small, dark, and enclosed space, but while he's there, on the road, the road goes on.* The road is a straight line into the future and not a descent into a figurative parking garage, into the hollow, cave-like, concrete gyre of the self. The road is a ribbon stretched out before you, in the sun, in the sun. Walker Percy wrote a novel called The Moviegoer (1961).** His novel is about a lot of things, including watching movies in the dark, on a big screen. If you're Walker Percy, you can write about watching movies on a screen. If you're not Walker Percy, you should probably write about something else. Joseph Conrad wrote about a journey into the heart of darkness. If you watch TV and think of that as an activity of interest to anybody but yourself, you may be on your own journey into a heart of darkness. But that heart is only in your own bottomless, cramped, empty, cave-like interior. In short, nobody wants to hear about your TV-watching "experience."
There are two stories about cars and driving in the Cosmic Horror Issue. First is "The Traveler" by Francesco Tignini. Although "The Traveler" is partly about driving, we don't know the make or model of the car. All we know is that it has both an airbag and a cigarette lighter. In other words, it's a car of the imagination, dreamed up so as to meet the requirements of the author and his plot. He can't alter his plot to fit the real world. Oh no. The world has to be altered instead, thereby making his story inauthentic. Mr. Tignini works in television and movies, and it shows. He, like many of the writers in the Cosmic Horror Issue, has what essayist Lincoln Michel calls "TV brain." He and they are not principally writers of prose. In this issue they're only slumming. TV is where the bread is.
Mr. Tignini lets us know that his narrator is listening to the radio as he drives. A Chuck Berry song plays, and he lets us know that, I think because he wants us to know that he's cool and knowing and with it. Chuck Berry sang one of the most famous of car songs, "Maybellene," released in 1955. Here are the words of the first verse:
As I was motorvatin' over the hill
I saw Maybellene in a Coupe DeVille
A Cadillac a-rollin' on the open road
Nothin' will outrun my V8 Ford
The Cadillac doin' 'bout ninety-five
We was bumper to bumper, rollin' side to side
There is more excitement and color in the brief lyrics of "Maybellene" than in the whole of "The Traveler," which isn't very much longer. But then there's a difference between good writing and the other kind.
I think modockin must be the Indiana version of motorvatin'.
"The Traveler" is a warmed-over version of the alien contact/alien abduction story told so many times in the history and culture of flying saucers. There is almost nothing original in its very meager contents. And it is written under the influence of TV brain. "Radar Love" by Golden Earring (1973) is a not entirely authentic driving song. Even so, I'll take it over a story written by a TV-influenced keyboard operator. In fairness to him, though, I will lay the blame for his story at the feet of his editor, who should have sought out a better story or nursed his friend along in the development of his own. Anyway, the singer in "Radar Love" is also listening to the radio as he drives. His driving song is Brenda Lee's "Coming On Strong." He lets us know that not because he's trying to be cool. It's simply to add a concrete detail to his story and to give a backdrop to his quest. Mention of Brenda Lee and her song is not product placement nor a case of namedropping, two literary offenses that are becoming all too common these days. I guess in the minds of contemporary authors, every story has to have its commercial breaks, for they have been conditioned to be that way by a lifetime of TV-watching. It's probably automatic and unavoidable for them because they lack imagination. A mind free of commercials and brandnames is probably inconceivable to them, maybe even frightening, for it would leave them naked and alone, without things--physical objects--around them. They have to have and display their stuff, and they have to let you know about their expertise when it comes to their stuff. My advice to every aspiring or practicing author: turn off your TV and pick up a book. And it's probably best to make it a book published before the year 2000.
The second car-and-driving story in the Cosmic Horror Issue is "The Last Bonneville" by F. Paul Wilson. I'll write about that next.
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*There were genre authors who ended up that way, including L. Ron Hubbard (1911-1986), whose end is a study in extreme decadence. I remember also the female character who kills herself (does she double back on herself?) in the dark and suffocating bedroom in the rear of an apartment in David Lynch's Mulholland Drive (2001). By the way, there is a character in that movie named Camilla. That fact will become pertinent in a matter of seconds . . .
**The mother of the narrator in The Moviegoer has as her maiden name Castagne. I would not be surprised if David Lynch had read The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers (1895), but was Walker Percy also a reader? The spelling is different, but maybe that doesn't matter very much. On the other hand, maybe it's just a coinkydink.
Original text copyright 2026 Terence E. Hanley
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