F E A T U R E
ROB JOHNSON AND THE HAUNTED VALLEY OF FANTASMAS
b y   t a m a r a   k a y e   s e l l m a n   ~   m a r g i n

IV. BREAKING THROUGH BOUNDARIES
DESPITE THESE challenges, Fantasmas appears, from day one, to have been a wholly satisfying project for Johnson. The first manuscript he received was Stephen Gutiérrez's "Cantinflas," and right away he thought the story was "a perfect example of what I was looking for: a Chicano story that combined elements of horror, the supernatural and magical realism with pop culture."

The story was also two things at once, Johnson realized: experimental and traditional, "practically a chesnut: the puppet that comes to life, a Mexican-American Chucky!" Gutiérrez's submission made for an auspicious beginning for Johnson's book.

He also thinks of Kelley Jácquez's story, "Michelle's Miracle," as a perfect example of a border story for its portrayal of people looking for signs of the miraculous. "She sets that story in a bar, and a Freddy Fender concert is going on, and still, she makes us want to believe in the miracle that occurs," Johnson says.

It could be a story told anywhere -- after all, looking for miracles is a universal practice in every culture, making Jácquez's story a fitting candidate for a collection aimed at a mainstream readership. (I have to admit this story was one of my favorites. It has the important effect of capturing life "the way it is.")

Johnson equally appreciates having the opportunity to include two gay-themed stories ("La Del Sapo" by Karleen Pendleton Jiménez and Calderón's "Day Ah Dallas Mare Toes"), citing Gloria Anzaldúa -- of Borderlands/LaFrontera fame -- as saying, "It is outsiders who are always most sensitive to what is going on behind the scenes, under the surface, and are thus more sensitive to the supernatural elements in life."

And then there is the matter of publishing David Rice.

David Rice is an emerging Valley writer who relates in his cuento, "The Devil in the Valley," that "all this Devil stuff is great, but don't forget about the really scary guys out there -- the evil packing shed owners," says Johnson, referring to Rice's labor-related urban legend.

Johnson admits, "Rice is friend of mine, and I think I like his story better than he does -- it's not a typical David Rice story."

Probably not, when you consider that Rice is also the creator and director of a short film called Odyssey One: Chicanos in Space (currently under consideration for feature-length production by a major cable network).

Former NASA brat Johnson eagerly outlines the plot: "It's about a supersecret pre-Mercury astronaut program testing the effects of space on human beings. Of course they couldn't send up a White guy, so they sent up two Mexican Americans from Edcouch, Texas (Rice's home town)," he explains. "They are swallowed up by a black hole, but they crash land back on earth 40 years later -- right back in Edcouch."

Johnson jokes, "I told David he had re-told the archetypal Valley story: no matter how far you run from The Valley, you always come back."

(Which in truth is no laughing matter: Mexican Americans from The Valley have difficulty leaving the region because of the dramatic absence of comparable Mexican American neighborhoods elsewhere, and in a country which still harbors deep prejudices and stereotypes about the Mexican American population.)

One can see how political and social concerns find their way into border stories; Rice, in particular, easily intuits these undercurrents in his stories. As a result, he is well known for his realistic portrayals of life in The Valley, however fantastic they may be perceived by the outsider.

Not all of the work in Fantasmas heralds from The Valley, however; some stories originate from other border towns in the American southwest (New Mexico, Arizona, the west coast of California). But Johnson cannot help favoring the Valley stories, for the obvious reason that he lives there.

JOHNSON'S BOOK is being read by a wide and varied audience: from patrons of public library systems nationwide to surfers of obscure "Spenglish" webzines like El Toque, "A Chiclit Fix for Webones."

Which means Johnson has met one of his objectives quite well. He wanted the book to "find an audience with the general reader and the college instructor teaching supernatural fiction (it's already being used in a couple of classes) and readers of border fiction, Southwest fiction, etc.," he says. "I like the idea of a lot of different kinds of people enjoying the collection on different levels."

Though it's probably his local audience which has best defined the success of Fantasmas. "The enthusiasm for the book among local readers here in The Valley has taught me that people who grew up on the border (I didn't) are the ideal readers for this book," he says. "Several local people have told me the book is truly frightening to them, and they won't read it at night. For me, the effect is less of fright than of a kind of unsettling disorientation I felt when reading the stories all at once. They are strange stories -- but also very funny at times, and entertaining in other ways."

FANTASMAS IS a refreshing break from the usual haunted collections, no doubt due to its unique border connection. Other North American ghost story anthologies, no matter how well the individual stories are written, have become -- at least for me -- a bit dull in vision, and at worst, hackneyed and overfamiliar. The genre could use some rejuvenation. A book like Fantasmas provides some welcome relief.

But, there seems to be a blind spot in American publishing surrounding minority writers' contributions to genre, at least beyond a gritty variety of realism that seems to pass muster.

In his foreword to Fantasmas, Johnson refers, in particular, to an oversight on the part of Joyce Carol Oates, who edited American Gothic Tales in 1996. It's a book that includes no cuentos de fantasmas at all (despite the fact that the cuento is the classic Mexican American gothic form); other groups were ignored as well, including Asian Americans and Native Americans (though one African American author managed to make the cut).

Johnson explains how Oates apologized for the omission. Her response: "I would have liked to include more stories by African Americans and other American ethnic writers, but the gothic has not been a popular mode among such writers, for the obvious reason that the real -- the America of social, political, and moral immediacy -- is irresistibly compelling at this stage of their history."

Johnson gently asserts that Oates' apology "is right-hearted but wrong-headed." Of course, supernatural themes have historically provided minority writers with plenty of devices for creatively and safely exploring the social, political and moral realities that are immediate to them.

So it's puzzling that Oates should overlook the clear connection between the cuento de fantasma and the gothic form. As Johnson puts it: "The stories in Fantasmas vary greatly in approach and style, but they all make the same strong claim: that the supernatural must be seen as a part of reality, not as separate from it."

It's hard to imagine how a story along these lines could be all that different from a gothic classic like, say, Jane Eyre, except perhaps in the obvious differences in setting. Put Jane, Rochester and his insane wife together on a hacienda near the border -- during Díos de los Muertos? Even better! -- and see if the story itself works out all that differently from the original.

Johnson ultimately blames Oates' oversight on simple regional bias: "I have no doubt that if Joyce Carol Oates lived in a place like Houston or San Antonio for a year, she would have had a different table of contents for her American Gothic."

NOW THAT Fantasmas is complete, Johnson has returned to work on his William S. Burroughs biography, Tiger in the Valley. There are other projects he'd like to start someday, including a 100-year follow-up to F.O. Matthiessen's The American Renaissance, illustrating the "inclusiveness that characterized the canon in 1951 (compared to 1851)," and a book about "vision and perception and phenomonology and literature -- a book about how writers see in words," a project Johnson admits appeals to "the NASA scientist" in him.

As for the future of Fantasmas and its celebrated story form, Johnson offers a variety of visions:

"There is not the equivalent of the drugstore novel or the supermarket novel kind of market for Mexican American literature," he points out. "I'd love to see Fantasmas for sale in a grocery store or drugstore," he admits, referring to publisher Arte Público's rotating book racks displaying Mexican American literature in the Fiesta grocery chain.

But he also thinks that film and television could provide excellent exposure for his story collection, suggesting "a multi-story film not unlike Trilogy of Terror" in format. He also mentions that Carlos Suarez's 12-part series, Fotonovelas, might be a good prototype for a Fantasmas television program.

Ultimately, Johnson imagines the cuento de fantasma will move beyond oral tradition and past the pages of his book to have its day before mainstream audiences.

In fact, the form has already broken into feature film. One recent example: Alfonso Arau's Picking up the Pieces (1999, starring Woody Allen, David Schwimmer and Sharon Stone) is an obvious rendering of the cuento for the silver screen. It's the story of a butcher who murders his philandering wife, chops her into pieces, then loses her hand in his attempt to get rid of the body. The errant body part ends up being found by a blind woman, who in turn, regains her sight. The hand, in turn, continues to bless the town in which it was found with miracles that ultimately draw worldwide attention. A significant vestige of popular culture, among many in the film, happens to be an obscene hand gesture -- a kind of universal vernacular? -- and its prominence in the storyline lends to the film's madcap and macabre sense of humor.

(This movie, like Being John Malkovich or Joe Versus The Volcano, is one that moviegoers either "get" or "don't get," an indication more of the sophistication of viewers than of the quality of the movie itself.)

Doubtless there will be more movies, commercial television programming and cable television specials to celebrate the cuento de fantasma as the Mexican American population and its cultural tastes continue to expand and influence more and more of America's mainstream media.

"Will la llorona end up in Pepsi commercials?" Johnson muses. His answer: "Probably."

SO BRING on the cuento, I say. And with it, new approaches to genre, and in new media. Give mainstream America the chance to experience new urban legends, new images of Mexican America, new ways for seeing and experiencing the world. And while we're at it, let's see the Mexican American vision in nonfiction, film and television. There may be no better way for mainstream America to get to know its fastest growing cultural community than through the eyes of its creative ambassadors living astride the borderlands.

"I think what [Alcalá] says about these cuentos as border stories is very useful," Johnsons says. "Imagine if you created a similar book of science fiction stories, how important the idea of border would be: what would an alien mean in a Mexican American sci-fi story?"

Well, if you trust the local angle, and you're an X-Files fan, you could always start with an investigation into -- what else? -- the chupacabra, to solve that mystery.

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