RAINER RILKE, KATE MILFORD, and THE READERS' SPIRAL

Maybe it's just me.  Does any other reader out there (of the few who actually read this) find that reading--the Reading Beast--is actually an autotrophic being?  I'm at a point in my life when I can't really spare the time or the money to casually head over to the book store and spend a couple hours parsing out a new author to approach, and if reading--or at least, my Reading--didn't manage to feed itself, I would quickly lose energy, atrophy, wind down, and just watch television (not that I don't do too much of this-the-latter anyway).  Thankfully, authors can't seem to help revealing their own inspiration for writing the very book I'm reading in the words of their characters and narrators.  While this has happened with likely half the books I've read in the last year (and if not directly then indirectly in narrators' and characters' word, with little research (thank Worldwide Web!) I learn who and what inspired these authors), I've been able to create, or locate rather, a whole network of authors and artists and poets and musicians that tie back to those authors, and aren't subsequently found creators so more so a sure thing (reading enjoyment-wise), since they inspired those of whom I already approve, than something I gamblingly picked up at the bookstore from some, say, bargain shelf?

I recently finished Kate Milford's YA The Boneshaker, a fantastic (and phantastic) little novel that successfully manages to combine American folklore, deals with the devil, steam-punk, crossroads, and bicycles.  I loved it.  I want to read it again.  If I were still teaching 7th grade English, I'd put it on my yearly book list and do up study questions and research projects and everything.  In the story--or the American of the story--are demons and angels.  Well, the angels are fallen angels, or, in this case, "jumpers," and one of comes out during a traveling medicine show and admits that he can't tell if he's alive or dead (this is before we know he was a "jumper").  When the protagonist, a spunky young teen by the name of Natalie Minks, approaches him and asks about it, the old--VERY old--man mentions a poet named Rilke who said something of the same think: angles can't tell if they're alive or dead.  

Rilke?  Sounded familiar.  Sounded like one I was supposed to read in college and maybe skipped to go play steel drums.

The next day, at the library (no home internet connection at this point), I looked him up (sadly, I couldn't post then, as per the library's stringent web security measures) and was delighted with what I found.  I expect there will be more posts on Rainer Rilke and, if nothing else, his elegies:

The Duino Elegies

The First Elegy

Rainer Rilke

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the Angelic

Orders? And even if one were to suddenly

take me to its heart, I would vanish into its

stronger existence. For beauty is nothing but

the beginning of terror, that we are still able to bear,

and we revere it so, because it calmly disdains

to destroy us. Every Angel is terror.

And so I hold myself back and swallow the cry

of a darkened sobbing. Ah, who then can

we make use of? Not Angels: not men,

and the resourceful creatures see clearly

that we are not really at home

in the interpreted world. Perhaps there remains

some tree on a slope, that we can see

again each day: there remains to us yesterday’s street,

and the thinned-out loyalty of a habit

that liked us, and so stayed, and never departed.

Oh, and the night, the night, when the wind full of space

wears out our faces – whom would she not stay for,

the longed-for, gentle, disappointing one, whom the solitary heart

with difficulty stands before. Is she less heavy for lovers?

Ah, they only hide their fate between themselves.

Do you not know yet? Throw the emptiness out of your arms

to add to the spaces we breathe; maybe the birds

will feel the expansion of air, in more intimate flight.

Yes, the Spring-times needed you deeply. Many a star

must have been there for you so you might feel it. A wave

lifted towards you out of the past, or, as you walked

past an open window, a violin

gave of itself. All this was their mission.

But could you handle it? Were you not always,

still, distracted by expectation, as if all you experienced,

like a Beloved, came near to you? (Where could you contain her,

with all the vast strange thoughts in you

going in and out, and often staying the night.)

But if you are yearning, then sing the lovers: for long

their notorious feelings have not been immortal enough.

Those, you almost envied them, the forsaken, that you

found as loving as those who were satisfied. Begin,

always as new, the unattainable praising:

think: the hero prolongs himself, even his falling

was only a pretext for being, his latest rebirth.

But lovers are taken back by exhausted Nature

into herself, as if there were not the power

to make them again. Have you remembered

Gastara Stampa sufficiently yet, that any girl,

whose lover has gone, might feel from that

intenser example of love: ‘Could I only become like her?’

Should not these ancient sufferings be finally

fruitful for us? Isn’t it time that, loving,

we freed ourselves from the beloved, and, trembling, endured

as the arrow endures the bow, so as to be, in its flight,

something more than itself? For staying is nowhere.

Voices, voices. Hear then, my heart, as only

saints have heard: so that the mighty call

raised them from the earth: they, though, knelt on

impossibly and paid no attention:

such was their listening. Not that you could withstand

God’s voice: far from it. But listen to the breath,

the unbroken message that creates itself from the silence.

It rushes towards you now, from those youthfully dead.

Whenever you entered, didn’t their fate speak to you,

quietly, in churches in Naples or Rome?

Or else an inscription exaltedly impressed itself on you,

as lately the tablet in Santa Maria Formosa.

What do they will of me? That I should gently remove

the semblance of injustice, that slightly, at times,

hinders their spirits from a pure moving-on.

It is truly strange to no longer inhabit the earth,

to no longer practice customs barely acquired,

not to give a meaning of human futurity

to roses, and other expressly promising things:

no longer to be what one was in endlessly anxious hands,

and to set aside even one’s own

proper name like a broken plaything.

Strange: not to go on wishing one’s wishes. Strange

to see all that was once in place, floating

so loosely in space. And it’s hard being dead,

and full of retrieval, before one gradually feels

a little eternity. Though the living

all make the error of drawing too sharp a distinction.

Angels (they say) would often not know whether

they moved among living or dead. The eternal current

sweeps all the ages, within it, through both the spheres,

forever, and resounds above them in both.

Finally they have no more need of us, the early-departed,

weaned gently from earthly things, as one outgrows

the mother’s mild breast. But we, needing

such great secrets, for whom sadness is often

the source of a blessed progress, could we exist without them?

Is it a meaningless story how once, in the grieving for Linos,

first music ventured to penetrate arid rigidity,

so that, in startled space, which an almost godlike youth

suddenly left forever, the emptiness first felt

the quivering that now enraptures us, and comforts, and helps.

Alice in Wonderland VIII -- chapter 5: ADULTS ARE ALL WONDERFUL MONSTERS

While they skipped the quintessential "You are Old Father William," the scene with the caterpillar is, I think, one of the best moments in Disney's animated Alice in Wonderland.

Carroll said that the nose and
chin of the Caterpillar are actually
two of his legs; I don't know what
Tenniel might have said about it.

1. As seen in the previous chapter, Alice has constant problems with the "adult" creatures in Wonderland, and as said in a comment for that chapter, I believe Wonderland is indicative of Alice's, or any kid's, experience navigating the world of adults, and not that world as an adult will see it, but as as child sees it.
2. Alice's inability to recite poetry "correctly:" is it an issue of simple forgetfulness, a general lack of self control on her part, or the influence of the place upon her?
3. Robert Southey's "The Old Man's Comforts and How He Gained Them" is below (Southey also wrote "Goldilocks and the Three Bears").
4. Is there any deeper connection between the poem and Alice/Carroll/the narrative than the Caterpillar's apparently random request?
5. If the creatures of Wonderland are parallels for stuffy old grownups, why are they so easily offended?  Along those same lines, what of its advice, "Keep your temper"?
6. Does the caterpillar read Alice's mind when it says, "Of the mushroom," regardless of Carroll's belief that mind-reading and telekinesis were real?
7. Puzzle: how might Alice guarantee that she gets one piece from each side of the mushroom?
8. Her growth (both up and down) indicate that her changes are not always proportional.
9. What do you make, if anything, of Alice the Serpent?  And what of Alice's truthfulness, which always gets her in trouble here?
10. I wonder if Carroll's efforts to demean adults through his descriptions of them in the book (because if they're all adults, then so is the pigeon, and, excuse me, but the pigeon is an idiot: "but if they do, why, then they're a kind of serpent") are meant to show how very dissimilar he is to them, as if he's working mightily to denounce his obvious participation in their exclusive club.

The Old Man's Comforts

and How He Gained Them

by Robert Southey

You are old, Father William the young man cried,

The few locks which are left you are grey;

You are hale, Father William, a hearty old man,

Now tell me the reason, I pray.

In the days of my youth, Father William replied,

I remember’d that youth would fly fast,

And abused not my health and my vigour at first,

That I never might need them at last.

You are old, Father William, the young man cried,

And pleasures with youth pass away;

And yet you lament not the days that are gone,

Now tell me the reason, I pray.

In the days of my youth, Father William replied,

I remember’d that youth could not last;

I thought of the future, whatever I did,

That I never might grieve for the past.

You are old, Father William, the young man cried,

And life must be hastening away;

You are cheerful, and love to converse upon death,

Now tell me the reason, I pray.

I am cheerful, young man, Father William replied,

Let the cause thy attention engage;

In the days of my youth I remember’d my God!

And He hath not forgotten my age.

Jane Eyre XXVII -- chapter 27: FAREWELL THORNFIELD

1. What is the greater problem: the deceit or the first wife?
2. Why would she forgive him so quickly?  Is she is so subject to her own fancy, injected as it is by his supercharged rhetoric and emotion?  Why does such quick revolution say about Jane and/or her love for Rochester?  Finally, how can she consider it forgiveness here if in the end she leaves anyway?
3. Maybe I watch too many romantic comedies now that I'm married, but I can't help but wonder (and such supposition is, at its heart, ridiculous, since characters of a book or movie do not exist beyond their pages, film, or bits and bites and pixels) if Rochester had some nagging doubt that he might be found out and so planned only the smallest wedding to be as little publicly humiliated as possible.  Contradict me, please: It seems out of Rochester's character, especially in view of his efforts to flood Jane with all the typical aristocratic accoutrement, to not have the grandest of available pomp and circumstance for such an occasion.  
4. I don't get this: Rochester has houses all over the place, right?  France, elsewhere in England....  Why did he keep his monstrous wife in the abode as his "home base?"  Why not put her elsewhere?
5. Who is the antagonist of this chapter?
6. "Birds were singing in brake and copse: birds were faithful to their mates; birds were emblems of love. What was I? In the midst of my pain of heart and frantic effort of principle, I abhorred myself."  Birds were a motif early on with that book she read at Gateshead, which put them in grave- and churchyards, and islands and shipwrecks.  Is there any connection between those birds and these now?
7. "May you never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and so agonized as in that hour left my lips: for never may you, like me, dread to be the instrument of evil to what you wholly love."  But we all hurt those whom we love.

Sunday Poetry XI -- TIGERS: GRR

SIRENS, TIGERS, and DREAMS, OH MY! and monsters too.

thank you: Chelsea Art Museum

Yeah, yeah.  I know.  Corny.  Hackneyed.  Irresistible.  But if you disregard the first of the trio, then it's likely smackingly obvious where this post is going, and, well, since the sirens really don't have that much to do with it, probably it is.

Francisco de Goya said, or painted really, "THE DREAM OF REASON BEGETS MONSTERS," in his etching to the right, and certainly in his head it did, and he painted them for the world to see.  Monsters is not a new topic here at The Wall, and I am not (thank me later) going to bore you by getting into it again.  The point isn't the monster, but the dream that produces it.  Perhaps all of us, rational or not, yet beget monsters--more or less monstrous--through our dreams.

Consider the first four stanzas of Margaret Atwood's "Siren Song" (taking the poetry's intent likely far from its originally intended context):

This is the one song everyone

would like to learn: the song

that is irresistible:

the song that forces men

to leap overboard in squadrons

even though they see the beached skulls

the song nobody knows

because anyone who has heard it

is dead, and the others can't remember.

Shall I tell you the secret

and if I do, will you get me

out of this bird suit?

(I wonder if the deliberate removal from context and subsequent application of a quotation is anything like the deliberate and maligned censoring of an author's published words.  If so, I am guilty, guilty, guilty.)

Goya

Good poetry is like a dot-to-dot in one of those coloring/activity books I buy my kids to keep them quiet in church.  The dots, obviously as there but the connecting of them is left to the reader.  While I'm in no way claiming any of this (my words) as poetry, much less good poetry, I am leaving the majority of dot-connecting to you--one poem, quotation, and painting to the next--partially because I think the connections are more profound that way, but mostly because my kids just went to bed (which really means things are supposed to be quiet but they aren't--at all) and I'm having a really hard time focusing long enough to articulate the shortest and most menial of my thoughts.

One of my favorite poems to use in my English classroom, and quite a classic, is "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers" (below), by Adrienne Rich.  It's a great poem, and it's a perfect one to teach because of its abundant use of classic (and by "classic," here, I mean all the required stuff that shows up all over state boards of education English curricula) poetic devices.  All that aside, sure the poem is beautiful, but pay attention to the tigers, the dreaminess, and how, really, they're indeed monsters from the dreams of a rational or reasonable mind:

Aunt Jennifer's tigers prance across a screen,

Bright topaz denizens of a world of green.
They do not fear the men beneath the tree;
They pace in sleek chivalric certainty.

Aunt Jennifer's finger fluttering through her wool
Find even the ivory needle hard to pull.
The massive weight of Uncle's wedding band
Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer's hand.

When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie
Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by.
The tigers in the panel that she made
Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid. 

Now put that together with “Dreamtigers,” by another of my all-time favorites, the great Jorge Luis Borges (seriously, if you like any of the stuff we talk about here at The Wall and you haven’t read this guy yet, get with the program!):

In my childhood I was a fervent worshiper of the tiger—not the jaguar, that spotted “tiger” that inhabits the floating islands of water hyacinths along the Parana’ and the tangled wilderness of the Amazon, but the true tiger, the striped Asian breed that can be faced only by men of war, in a castle atop an elephant.  I would stand for hours on end before one of the cages at the zoo; I would rank vast encyclopedias and natural history books by the splendor of their tigers.  (I still remember those pictures, I who cannot recall without error a woman’s brow or smile.)  My childhood outgrown, the tigers and my passion for them faded, but ther are still in my dreams.  In that underground sea or chaos, they still endure.  As I sleep I am drawn into some dream or other, and suddenly I realize that it’s a dream.  At those moments, I often think: This is a dream, a pure diversion of my will, and since I have unlimited power, I am going to bring forth a tiger.

            Oh, incompetence!  My dreams never seen to engender the creature I so hunger for.  The tiger does appear, but it is all dried up, or it’s flimsy-looking, or it has impure vagaries of shape or an unacceptable size, or it altogether too ephemeral, or it looks more like a dog or bird than like a tiger.

***

There is another piece of lit that I think qualifies, potentially, as part of this dot-to-dot, but it's bigger than I've got space her to include, a children's story, frequently banned, entitled, Little Black Sambo. Here’s the link (HERE – scroll down to the story), and then here, too, is the old movie.

*

East of Eden XVIII -- chpt17: Of Meteors and Monsters

"When I said Cathy was a monster it seemed to me that it was so.  Now I have bent close with a glass over the small print of her and reread the footnotes, and I wonder if i was true.  The trouble is that since we cannot know what she wanted, we will never know whether or not she got it.  If rather than running toward something,g she ran away from something, we can't know whether she escaped.  Who knows but that she tried to tell someone or everyone what she was like and could not, for lack of a common language.  Her life may have been her language, formal, developed, indecipherable.  It is easy to say she was bad, but there is little meaning unless we know why."

Reading Questions
Chapter 17.1

1. Deconstruction: Is Steinbeck just making this up as he's going along?  If this is really Olive's son narrating, then he already knows the story from the end to the beginning and he would have known from his first word--and dwelled on it for a decision--whether his opinion of Cathy was that she was indeed a monster or just a misunderstood alien.  Suddenly, from the quotation above, the first paragraph of chapter 17, she is no longer Cathy Ames the devil, but a Frankenstein's monster without the outward monstrosity, save empty, goatish eyes.  Should Steinbeck have gone back to alter that earlier chapter, held to his monster approach without deviation, or this just right?

Chapter 17.2

1. Lewis Carroll wrote in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, "Why is a raven like a writing desk?"  I think it's an aptly applicable question here: "Why is a buried meteorite like a monster's baby?"  Carroll's riddle never intended an answer, at least according to his own claims, but that hasn't stopped people from coming up with their own.  Similarly, maybe Steinbeck didn't intend metaphor (though I doubt it).  So take this is one of two possible directions--or both: 1, Just answer the second question; 2, compare the two questions in context of EoE.

Chapter 17.3

1. One of my favorite parts of this section is the little bit of Liza that creeps up in Samuel's behavior as he takes over the delivery of the baby.  Notice how there seem to be two babies he has to deliver: the neonate, and Adam.
2. Which of the many sensations of birthing are bringing the anger, and perhaps evil, into Cathy?  (And don't say "all," because that's lame and a cop-out.  Which are most significant?  And when it comes down to it, I wouldn't ask if the answer were typical.)
3. Okay, let's let the cat out of the bag: whose are the twins, and what kind of twins are they?
4. Have you ever felt fear as an adult that caused you to wish you were a child with readily available and excusable foolishness and comfort?
5. Samuel: "Lee, men are fools.  I guess I hadn't thought about it, but Chinese men are fools too." // "What made you doubt it?" // "Oh, maybe because we think of strangers as stronger and better than we are." // ... // Samuel: "Maybe the foolishness is necessary, the dragon fighting, the boasting, the pitiful courage to be constantly knocking a chip off God's shoulder, and the childish cowardice that makes a ghost of a dead tree beside a darkening road....  I feel wings over this house.  I feel a dreadfulness coming."  (I believe the "wings" Samuel mentions are much like the image of a great black bird hanging over Danny in Tortilla Flat or the crow that comes over Alice after her encounter with Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum, that is an evil omen--a pall, a type of goose on a grave.)
6. How is it exactly that Samuel thinks Liza will be able to help?
7. As you get on to the end of this section, tell me--I dare you--that Liza and Samuel don't love each other; but you'd better back it up if you do.
8. Maybe it's just me--my family's little predicament right now--but Samuel's attitude is enviable: ""Samuel looked up at Tim with clear eyes and said, 'I'll have to get up,' tried it and sat weakly back, chuckling--the sound he made when any force in the world defeated him.  He had an idea that even when beaten he could steal a little victory by laughing at defeat."

Chapter 17.4

1. "Lee she used like a slave since she didn't quite believe in him.  Adam she ignored since she couldn't use him for anything.  She did make him wash the windows and then did it again after he had finished."

Chapter 17.5

1. Cathy to Adam: "I can do anything to you.  Any woman can do anything to you.  You're a fool."
2. Why didn't she finish him off?
3. Will this bring him to the point of hitting bottom, like was discussed earlier?

Abiyoyo: A Monster in the True Etymological Sense of the Word

The revelations of child propaganda songs:

Where does Abiyoyo fall on the spectrum?

East of Eden X -- Nature versus Nurture

In comments to the Monster post, James brings up the issue, though not with these particular words, of nature versus nurture.  I guess I don't have my thumb adequately enough pressed upon the pulse of world discussion to know how hot-or-not this discussion is, but it crops up all the time in lit-talk.  Obviously, this applies directly to East of Eden, chapter 8 inasmuch as Cathy is a monster by nature.  Maybe that's another issue that needs to be addressed on the "Continuum of Monstrosity" -- a third dimension, or z-axis, showing whether the monster became so in its life and by influence of its surroundings or happens to be innately monstrous.

May I recommend a side project?  I think we should compile a manner of classification for monsters in literature and accurately project them on the continuum, including the third axis for nature/nurture.  I could probably draw it up by hand, but computer imaging would work better.  Stephen, are you reading this?  How hard would this be?  In the meantime, anyone reading this, we would need to compose questions and tiers delineating degrees of monstrosity in order to grid them on the image....  Thoughts?

So what do you think (back to nature/nurture and Cathy's monstrosity)?  Can you really be born monstrous, evil, terrible?  This is a big deal for many religions.  Are we born pure?  Are we born evil?  This is the dilemma--or perhaps point of contention--of, or between, many religions regarding baptism.  Where does the evil come from then, if not inborn?  Was Satan, Lucifer, the Son of the Morning, eternally evil, or did he become so?  I'm not trying to create a theological discussion or debate here.  When it comes down to it, in order to keep the discussion truly applicable to the source text, we need to tend within Steinbeck's own demonstrated belief system.  However, I don't think we need to limit ourselves!

So, chapter 8.

***

Reading Questions
Chapter 8.1, 8.2

1. Simple and direct: if you want evidence that Steinbeck intends Cathy to be evil by nature, these two sections are loaded!  Consider how she, and entirely passive-aggressively, frames the two boys for sexual assault.  Sure, they're not innocent, but holy cow!  Can a person be that horrible and from that young?  Her father doesn't think so.  Does his passivity--or, at best, though still, I think, guilty by omission, silence--incriminate him?  Could he have NURTURED his daughter into something wholesome, or at least less evil?  Is a person born like Cathy capable of gaining some sort of purity?

Chapter 8.3

1. I read this first paragraph and, forgive me, can't help but think of young Tom Riddle of Harry Potter fame requesting a teaching position from Dumbledore.  Why does she really want to be a teacher? (Do you suppose Rowling was in any way influenced by Steinbeck?)
2. James Grew reminds me of Kurt Cobain. 
3. Mr. Ames just ticks me off.  Maybe he reminds me of me.  Like him, I'm not confrontational.  Might it be also within me to ignore such impressions and cause, inadvertently and by laziness or cowardice, such destruction?  I hope not.  And is this not the great power of great literature, to reflect us upon ourselves?
4. Steinbeck writes in the last paragraph of 8.3, "That was Cathy's method."  WHAT?  What is it that is Cathy's method?

Chapter 8.4

So I'm writing these questions and discussion points as I'm re-reading the book for the first time in three or four years (has it been that long?), and HOLY CRAP! I forgot about this brilliant exchange and cross-textual reference:

• "What's that book you're hiding?" [her mother asks.]
• "Here!  I'm not hiding it."
• "Oh!  Alice in Wonderland.  You're too big for that."
• Cathy said, "I can get to be so little you can't even seen me."
• "What in the world are you talking about?"
• "Nobody can find me."
• Her mother said angrily, "Stop making jokes.  I don't know what you're thinking of.  What does Miss Fancy think she is going to do?"
• "I don't know yet," said Cathy.  "I think I'll go away."
• "Well, you just lie there, Miss Fancy, and when your father comes home he'll have a thing or two to say to you."  (Yeah, right!  That coward?)

1. Keep this exchange in mind as you learn more and more about Cathy.  Is she really just a girl lost down the rabbit hole?
2. Is Cathy without love or empathy?  Consider just the page or so since the Wonderland dialog.  Was it foresight that prevented evidence of childhood in her bedroom or careful erasure that left it empty after he departure?
3. Interesting about Mr. Ames: the very thing that makes him a coward in confrontation is also--or is it? -- the very thing that makes him "a very good man in a crisis."
4. The whipping scene makes me think--or, I guess, it's Cathy's reticence and utter control throughout the ordeal--of Denzel Washington's character in the movie Glory.  Thoughts?  Certainly, she's no martyr; there's no glory in her resistance, but still....

chapter 8.5

1. "We've all of us got a little of the Old Nick in us," says Cathy's father.  Who is Old Nick?

chapter 8.6 

• "Now look here, Mike," he said, "you shouldn't do a think like that.  If that poor fellow had been just a little smarter you might have got him hanged."
• "He said he did it."  The constable's feelings were hurt because he was a conscientious man.
• "He would have admitted to climbing the golden stairs and cutting St. Peter's throat with a bowling ball," the judge said.  "Be more careful, Mike.  The law was designed to save, not to destroy."

Podcast #1: MONSTERS (though not for their own sake)

So here it is: my very first podcast.  I'm sure it's clumsy.  I'm sure I'll get better with the next one.  And true to form, I'm probably way wordier than I need to be.  Pass on the feedback, the thoughts, the questions. 

Enjoy.

(Man, it's weird to watch yourself like this!)

part 1

***

part 2

The Continuum of Monstrosity,
original

(Did I always look bug-eyed while teaching, or is it just the camera angle?)

In case you can't read it on the video (and I don't know how you could):

MONSTERS APPROACHING!

The MONSTER DISCUSSION cometh.  If you'd like to be prepared for the discussion, brush up on your Beowulf chops.  Check out the full text, either text or audio.

by Rockwell Kent

I NEED MONSTERS

In preparation for chapter 8 (East of Eden), an introductory "podcast" (yep, I'm going to do it!), the and discussion on the woman who began as Cathy Ames, I need your input on MONSTERS.

Classic monsters, but not by category--vampires, werewolves, zombies, Inferno, etcetera--I mean specific, individual monsters with names.  These can be from movies, they can be from books, they can be from comic books, songs, folk tales, family, whatever. 

some generic image of Grendel I found

There is one specific type of monster (though all monsters are needed!) I'm looking to focus on (the others I need for contrast's sake):

The TRICKSTER.  In Native American folklore, he's often called Coyote.  In European folklore and tales, he's often labeled Puck.  The problem I have with Puck--or pucks in general--is their general lack of deep malice.  The best example I can think of is Coyote himself, from Chabon's Summerland.  On the other end, there is Grendel, from Beowulf (from which a terribly awesome book, Grendel, was written by John Gardner).

The trickster is a liar.  A Father-of-all-Lies kind of character.  Who lies just to lie, or just to mess people up, or because it screws things up and that what he loves most.  Screwing things up. 

So, Folks, I need a LIST.  Monsters, people.  Movie fans, book fans, aficionados of horror:  Monsters.  Comment with the names of monsters.

And don't forget to sign up as follower and get your picture over there.  I'm doing a drawing soon.  That means free stuff, and as well all know:  FREE STUFF GOOD.