Gothic in Oregon?
I love living on the West Coast of the good ‘ol U. S. of A. I especially love living in the western part of Oregon where the weather is mild and the Pacific Ocean is just an hour’s drive away. If I were an anthropologist or a sociologist I might be able to give some sort of authoritative treatise on how the West Coast is different from the rest of the nation, and from the rest of the world (though it would be even more interesting to know what areas of the globe the West Coast culture is like). Alas I am but a poor Bible scholar cum author (seasoned with computer programming) so I’ll have to just conjecture and blather on.
Recently I’ve decided to try my hand at writing a gothic tale. Think Walpole meets Poe and you’ve got an idea of the tone I’m aiming for. I think I’ll have a good time with it, and I might actually write a story I would love to read. There is a bit of a problem though … I don’t have exposure to anything approaching gothic. Out here if a building is more than 100 years old its either a dilapidated barn or a farmhouse, and I don’t find those particularly haunting, chilling, nor gothic (though how odd would it be to have a barn with flying buttresses and gargoyles?).
I went “back East” once, when I was a child, to tour some of our great American points of interest, namely Revolutionary War locations, Civil War locations, and D.C. I didn’t go there on a writer’s holiday, so I fear my impressions are biased and skewed based on the historical nature of the visit. However, I do know there were a number of buildings, locations, and narrow streets that are a result of the original colonies. There are features of the landscape and architecture that are impacted from 200 years past. I know this is even more true in Europe.
So I’m trying to write a gothic story, and to get the feel and flavor I want I can’t just take a stroll downtown like Poe or Lovecraft might have been able to do. I’ll have to dig around picture books, troll the Internet for pictures and videos, and generally rely on not being there and creating a composite world for my story. So, can an Oregonian write a gothic tale that doesn’t involve a haunted barn? We’ll see.