THE BOOK
Valley of the Dead has as its premise that Dante's Inferno was inspired by the poet's encounter with the walking dead in Eastern Europe during the years of his exile. The novel includes some of the most haunting horror scenes I have ever read, alongside Dante's reflections on the nature of human suffering, human sin, and hope. The novel is scary, it's smart, and it demands that the reader gaze on the worst that humanity has to offer without either flinching or caving in. The author, Dr. Kim Paffenroth, is a professor of religious studies at Iona College. - Stant Litore.INTERVIEW
Stant Litore: Dante Alighieri undertakes a profound journey in Valley of the Dead. Can you talk about how his journey in the novel parallels Dante’s journey in the Inferno, and what both Dantes learn from the journey?
Kim Paffenroth: Well, I hope the Inferno framework isn't too noticeable or intrusive for those who haven't read the original - but for those who have, they'll notice immediately that each episode in Valley is based on some scene in Inferno (though I don't have every scene from Inferno in Valley). Of course, what and how I've changed each one is different, and varies a lot between episodes. So, for example, the Francesca (Dante uses Francesca as the epitome of Lust) scene is pretty close to the original, though the addition of a female interlocutor (who is based on Beatrice, Dante's idealized Love of his life) gives the scene a whole new twist: I was struck in the secondary literature about how Dante contrasts Beatrice and Francesca, and I wanted to have them actually meet and discuss. That was the huge rush I had as I wrote the novel - I really got into Dante's perspective, and what he was trying to say about each sin.
I think, ultimately, Dante is an oddball optimist (in either his own work, or my version of him). He's bitter and hurt, but he never gives up. And despite (or because of) everything he's seen, he comes away from the journey knowing that Reason and Love are very powerful indeed - very nearly as powerful as sin, and if (and he's hopeful) those faculties can just get the barest nudge from some Higher Power (IF!) then they'll prevail. But again - I say oddball optimist. He's never treacly, and at many points in his version or mine, he's all but overwhelmed with despair. There's just so much pain going on, while waiting for Grace to intervene, and he can barely stand it. And I know where he's coming from with that perspective - that didn't take any stretch or imagination on my part.
Stant Litore: As a writer who also does mashups of zombie fiction and theological fiction, I’m fascinated by the choice to blend Dante’s Inferno with zombie horror. In what ways did you find this a fortuitous and natural combination?
Kim Paffenroth: It all goes back to when I started this zombies and theology kick, back in 2005, with my nonfiction work, Gospel of the Living Dead. I was rereading Inferno, and I read the description of the Damned as "those who have lost understanding and made Reason slave to appetite" (quoting from memory, so it's not verbatim). Mindless humans, driven by insatiable, never-ending hunger? Those are zombies! And then, as I dug deeper, I saw in Romero's work, the same distinction as in Dante: sins of appetite (like the zombies commit) are less heinous than sins of perverted reason (like the living humans commit against one another in Romero's films). So it all came together for me with those two insights.
Stant Litore: What, to you, is the most frightening thing in Valley of the Dead?
Kim Paffenroth: For me, it was the ever-present idea that Dante would give up. Of course, he couldn't, and I wouldn't let him, but I had to make clear at each turn, he's right on the verge of just capitulating to all the horror, and either participating in some act of senseless slaughter, or just sitting down to die. I remember when I first read Elie Wiesel's Night - the frightening people there are neither the guards nor the "regular" prisoners: what frightened me in that real world Hell were the kapos (prisoners who cooperated with the Nazis), and the people who just sit down on the ground, pulled a blanket over their heads, and wait to die.
Stant Litore: From your perspective, why is our culture so fascinated with the hungry dead?
Kim Paffenroth: I think they have all the fascination monsters have always had - the threat of a horrible death, the threat of the unknown, the inability to control our lives and our environment. Then they combine that with peculiarly contemporary fears - the threat of sinking into an anonymous, pointless existence and becoming one of "them," the fear that our current world is meaningless and driven by meaningless appetites (like going to the mall). And then, in the most recent surge of popularity, you have all the extra fears of plague, terrorism, and the possibility that we'll destroy ourselves with one of experiments or weapons.
Stant Litore: I found Bogdana – the pregnant, Romanian woman who travels with Dante – to be a particularly well-drawn and moving character. Can you talk a little about her role in the story and what she brings to the ethical or theological questions that are important in Valley of the Dead?
Kim Paffenroth: I love my female characters the most (as I love women in real life more, and differently, than I do men). And I hardly claim to understand women better than other people do - but I do spend some time observing how they relate to me and to other men, and I think that comes across with my female characters as a believable, authentic dynamic. (And hence, why my descriptions of her are always from the perspective of the Dante character - a male describing the effect this female has on him.) So what I wanted with her, as an analog to Beatrice, is to provide an emotional, subjective counter-balance, to the male characters' over-reliance (almost parody, I'd say) of (what they claim to be) rationality and objectivity. At several points (inlcuding the Francesca scene, as I said, which just makes me cry every time I reread it) she puts the men in their place, by either showing how their rationality is wholly inadequate to the rather incredible (in the literal sense) situation they face - OR, their rationality is really just a ruse and an excuse and they're not being honest about their real motives. So, in a way, this is one of the points at which I could go somewhere Dante choses not to: he doesn't have Beatrice appear until the end of the Purgatorio, but I wanted to see what a Beatrice-like woman would bring to the analysis and experience of human sin and misery.
Stant Litore: Kim, what current projects are you working on?
Kim Paffenroth: I'm working on a theological study of why and how I think my fellow Christians needn't worry so much about evangelizing their atheist brothers and sisters: if there is a God, and if He's as great as we claim, He's probably got something better in mind for all of us than anything our meager minds could fathom, or our meager acts could accomplish, so we should just do with our atheist brothers and sisters what we're commanded to do with all people - love them. And I' halfway through a novel which I used to describe as a zombie version of Moby-Dick, though that sends the wrong signal of "OMG - A ZOMBIE WHALE! I LOVE IT!" No, they're just humanoid zombies, but I am trying to take Melville's idea of a man obsessed with the unfairness, meaninglessness, and brutality of life, and transposing it into a post-apocalyptic zombie world.
Stant Litore: I would love to read that. Thanks for joining us, Kim!
Kim Paffenroth: Well, I hope the Inferno framework isn't too noticeable or intrusive for those who haven't read the original - but for those who have, they'll notice immediately that each episode in Valley is based on some scene in Inferno (though I don't have every scene from Inferno in Valley). Of course, what and how I've changed each one is different, and varies a lot between episodes. So, for example, the Francesca (Dante uses Francesca as the epitome of Lust) scene is pretty close to the original, though the addition of a female interlocutor (who is based on Beatrice, Dante's idealized Love of his life) gives the scene a whole new twist: I was struck in the secondary literature about how Dante contrasts Beatrice and Francesca, and I wanted to have them actually meet and discuss. That was the huge rush I had as I wrote the novel - I really got into Dante's perspective, and what he was trying to say about each sin.
I think, ultimately, Dante is an oddball optimist (in either his own work, or my version of him). He's bitter and hurt, but he never gives up. And despite (or because of) everything he's seen, he comes away from the journey knowing that Reason and Love are very powerful indeed - very nearly as powerful as sin, and if (and he's hopeful) those faculties can just get the barest nudge from some Higher Power (IF!) then they'll prevail. But again - I say oddball optimist. He's never treacly, and at many points in his version or mine, he's all but overwhelmed with despair. There's just so much pain going on, while waiting for Grace to intervene, and he can barely stand it. And I know where he's coming from with that perspective - that didn't take any stretch or imagination on my part.
Kim Paffenroth at his studies
Stant Litore: As a writer who also does mashups of zombie fiction and theological fiction, I’m fascinated by the choice to blend Dante’s Inferno with zombie horror. In what ways did you find this a fortuitous and natural combination?
Kim Paffenroth: It all goes back to when I started this zombies and theology kick, back in 2005, with my nonfiction work, Gospel of the Living Dead. I was rereading Inferno, and I read the description of the Damned as "those who have lost understanding and made Reason slave to appetite" (quoting from memory, so it's not verbatim). Mindless humans, driven by insatiable, never-ending hunger? Those are zombies! And then, as I dug deeper, I saw in Romero's work, the same distinction as in Dante: sins of appetite (like the zombies commit) are less heinous than sins of perverted reason (like the living humans commit against one another in Romero's films). So it all came together for me with those two insights.
Stant Litore: What, to you, is the most frightening thing in Valley of the Dead?
Kim Paffenroth: For me, it was the ever-present idea that Dante would give up. Of course, he couldn't, and I wouldn't let him, but I had to make clear at each turn, he's right on the verge of just capitulating to all the horror, and either participating in some act of senseless slaughter, or just sitting down to die. I remember when I first read Elie Wiesel's Night - the frightening people there are neither the guards nor the "regular" prisoners: what frightened me in that real world Hell were the kapos (prisoners who cooperated with the Nazis), and the people who just sit down on the ground, pulled a blanket over their heads, and wait to die.
Stant Litore: From your perspective, why is our culture so fascinated with the hungry dead?
Kim Paffenroth: I think they have all the fascination monsters have always had - the threat of a horrible death, the threat of the unknown, the inability to control our lives and our environment. Then they combine that with peculiarly contemporary fears - the threat of sinking into an anonymous, pointless existence and becoming one of "them," the fear that our current world is meaningless and driven by meaningless appetites (like going to the mall). And then, in the most recent surge of popularity, you have all the extra fears of plague, terrorism, and the possibility that we'll destroy ourselves with one of experiments or weapons.
Stant Litore: I found Bogdana – the pregnant, Romanian woman who travels with Dante – to be a particularly well-drawn and moving character. Can you talk a little about her role in the story and what she brings to the ethical or theological questions that are important in Valley of the Dead?
Kim Paffenroth: I love my female characters the most (as I love women in real life more, and differently, than I do men). And I hardly claim to understand women better than other people do - but I do spend some time observing how they relate to me and to other men, and I think that comes across with my female characters as a believable, authentic dynamic. (And hence, why my descriptions of her are always from the perspective of the Dante character - a male describing the effect this female has on him.) So what I wanted with her, as an analog to Beatrice, is to provide an emotional, subjective counter-balance, to the male characters' over-reliance (almost parody, I'd say) of (what they claim to be) rationality and objectivity. At several points (inlcuding the Francesca scene, as I said, which just makes me cry every time I reread it) she puts the men in their place, by either showing how their rationality is wholly inadequate to the rather incredible (in the literal sense) situation they face - OR, their rationality is really just a ruse and an excuse and they're not being honest about their real motives. So, in a way, this is one of the points at which I could go somewhere Dante choses not to: he doesn't have Beatrice appear until the end of the Purgatorio, but I wanted to see what a Beatrice-like woman would bring to the analysis and experience of human sin and misery.
Stant Litore: Kim, what current projects are you working on?
Kim Paffenroth: I'm working on a theological study of why and how I think my fellow Christians needn't worry so much about evangelizing their atheist brothers and sisters: if there is a God, and if He's as great as we claim, He's probably got something better in mind for all of us than anything our meager minds could fathom, or our meager acts could accomplish, so we should just do with our atheist brothers and sisters what we're commanded to do with all people - love them. And I' halfway through a novel which I used to describe as a zombie version of Moby-Dick, though that sends the wrong signal of "OMG - A ZOMBIE WHALE! I LOVE IT!" No, they're just humanoid zombies, but I am trying to take Melville's idea of a man obsessed with the unfairness, meaninglessness, and brutality of life, and transposing it into a post-apocalyptic zombie world.
Stant Litore: I would love to read that. Thanks for joining us, Kim!
2 comments:
This is a fascinating interview. I do think there is something spiritual, religious in nature, about our current fascination in zombies and a zombie apocalypse.
Great stuff. Getting the books!
Julia, I'm glad you enjoyed the interview! You won't regret looking into VALLEY OF THE DEAD. I can honestly say Paffenroth's novel is one of the books I put on my top shelf.
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