Having spent three years in Bloomington getting drunk with fiction writers, I feel that I came dangerously close to losing my ability to appreciate trash. But, thankfully, not so! _The Castle of Otranto_, by Horace Walpole, is not only trash, but ground-breaking, historical, trend-setting trash. It is lauded as the first Gothic novel in English (published, anonymously at first, in 1764). And what a remarkable heap of words it is!

_The Castle of Otranto_ is preposterous, both in content and structure: nearly half of the "action" occurs in dialogue, much of which is Walpole's apparent attempts to capture the extreme reluctance of one nobleman, through speech, to trouble another nobleman, even if lives hang in the balance. A common interchange might run thusly:

Diego (a manservant): Oh, it was awful!
Manfred (lord of Otranto): What sawest thou?!
Diego: I didn't see anything!
Manfred: What?
Diego: Jaquez saw it.
Manfred: Where is he?
Jaquez (another manservant): Right here, my lord!
Manfred: What did you see?
Jaquez: It was horrible!
Manfred: What was it?
Jaquez: It was incredible!
Manfred: What was incredible?!
Jaquez: What I saw!
Manfred: Tell me what it was!
Jaquez: I can't! Holy crap!
Diego: I can tell you!
Manfred: But, I thought you didn't see it.
Diego: I didn't, my lord.
Manfred: Then how can you tell me what it is?
Diego: I heard it! Oh, awful!
Manfred: What did you hear, then?!
Diego: It was really, really loud!

And so on. The plot itself is ridiculous, full of stock characters, ridiculous reversals of fortune, and supernatural curses. But, I found I couldn't put it away - I put it down, absolutely, and frequently - but I couldn't quite put it away.

Manfred, the count of Castle Otranto, has arranged a marriange between his son, Conrad, and Isabella, a "virtuous virgin"-type from the next principality. The marriage has been hastily arranged at Manfred's behest, and nobody is sure why. But here, around the bottom of page 1, is where we get conflict: Conrad becomes crushed beneath a giant metal helmet that seems to have fallen from the sky. The man Manfred believes is the criminal (or necromancer, if you prefer), is imprisoned beneath the helmet. Then, Manfred tries to seduce the fair Isabella, in order to produce a new male heir. But wait! Didn't I mention that Manfred is married already, to the fair and virtuous Hippolita? What's to be done?

That brings you up to about page three. What unfolds from there is ridiculous, the kind of story a man hopped up on crack might shout to passersby from beneath a bridge. But it is, well, interesting, and though poorly written, and full of tropes, pretty inventive at the same time. It won't change your life, but if your tired of books changing your life, this might be a nice pick for a rainy day.