Mark Fisher

What exactly are the Weird and the Eerie? In this new essay, Mark Fisher argues that some of the most haunting and anomalous fiction of the 20th century belongs to these two modes. The Weird and the Eerie are closely related but distinct modes, each possessing its own distinct properties. Both have often been associated with Horror, yet this emphasis overlooks the aching fascination that such texts can exercise. The Weird and the Eerie both fundamentally concern the outside and the unknown, which are not intrinsically horrifying, even if they are always unsettling. Perhaps a proper understanding of the human condition requires examination of liminal concepts such as the weird and the eerie. These two modes will be analysed with reference to the work of authors such as H. P. Lovecraft, H. G. Wells, M.R. James, Christopher Priest, Joan Lindsay, Nigel Kneale, Daphne Du Maurier, Alan Garner and Margaret Atwood, and films by Stanley Kubrick, Jonathan Glazer and Christoper Nolan.

The Weird and the Eerie

Elena Zieser

Marcus Rosen

In an ontological conceit, The Weird and the Eerie is seemingly Fisher's least political, least real work, folding in on notions of dreams and metafiction, but it reveals itself in quiet slippages, mentions of capital and lost futures. Readers familiar with his writings will be unsurprised to find a prediliction for hauntings, especially those of The Shining. Where it diverges is an emphasis on other worlds, non-worlds, the possibility of the completely unexplained. This shift allows for a hopefulness where there once was none.

Lily

The emphasis of Fisher on both the "weird" and the "eerie" as not just affects (and "not quite genres"), but distinguishable modes is what endures long after finishing the book, and he establishes this quite early on. It is almost immediately followed by the disentanglement of both concepts from the feeling of fear and terror, which he illuminates further in his exploration of Lovecraft's writings. He then goes on to present various case studies in literature and cinema that illustrate the meaning and aspects of the titular terms, including works of David Lynch, Philip K. Dick, Margaret Atwood and H. G. Wells (as well as a wonderful exploration of The Fall's Grotesque album, which I love). As with his other works, the prose is sharp, concise and at times poetic. The usual wistfulness and political sobriety that roams in the foreground in most of his works also peek here, albeit subtly ("The perspective of the eerie can give us access to the forces which govern mundane reality but which are ordinarily obscured, just as it can give us access to spaces beyond mundane reality altogether"). It is always difficult to read Fisher and pin down the looming melancholy in my mind as an effect of his writings or the realization that he was gone too soon. Perhaps it's both.

The Weird and the Eerie

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