Care For a Scare?

I certainly don't at this point. The evening started off innocently enough. I fended off an ill-conceived idea to watch the trailer for The Hills Have Eyes 2 (the first gave me wretched nightmares...the first trailer that is: I'd never voluntarily watch a horror film), and settled down to a bout with Sherlock Holmes (as portrayed by Jeremy Brett; inestimable and peerless), surrounded by younger siblings and the best beloved. The Eligible Bachelor, as will be related in a separate post, was anything but calming and indeed has left me casting about for some kind of philter to slow the fearsome phantoms of my imagination now writhing out of every corner (I haven't had to cast very far, since I'm intimately acquainted with the liquor cabinet). Before consulting with the bottom of a bottle, however, I took to the information highway, rolled down the window and tried to let the wind ruffle my hair. This is what blew in:

When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old man-servant--a combined gardener and cook--had seen in at least ten years.

It was a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies, set on what had once been our most select street. But garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated even the august names of that neighborhood; only Miss Emily's house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps-an eyesore among eyesores. And now Miss Emily had gone to join the representatives of those august names where they lay in the cedar-bemused cemetery among the ranked and anonymous graves of Union and Confederate soldiers who fell at the battle of Jefferson.

Yes, William Faulkner's, "A Rose for Emily," somehow managed to hit me square in the face.

Don't ask me how it happened, I'd rather not remember. It's really just the thing to settle jangly nerves, you know? A little light reading to bring out the Annabel Lee in us all, right?

For those unfamiliar with the story (a caste that included me ever since the day I walked out of AP English IV, hence my curious rereading of the story tonight), follow the link or, if time is of the essence (say, a terrorist is threatening to unleash biological weapons on unsuspecting Poughkeepsie unless you can briefly list the divers interpretations offered for the a Faulkner short story), then I commend you to the grande jeune dame of internet resources, Wikipedia.

What do I think it's about? Well, the experience of looking under the hood of this story isn't much different than observing the internal combustion engine at rest (for me, anyway). You get the general point (engine moves the car, Emily makes sure Homer isn't moving), but how the pieces work together (what on earth does a carburetor do anyway, and what on earth is the gray hair on the pillow bit supposed to imply)? You got me. I've got plenty of hypotheses, but my theses are like cow feces on a farm: they stink and they're all over the place.

P.S. If you really want to know what the hell the carburetor does, the magic of the internet allows to scratch that itch here. Tell if you liked the article; I didn't read it (and still don't know what the carb is for).