Rachmaninoff's Ghost

Rating:
Summary: A Review
Review: A reviewer, June 26, 2003,
Review in Baton Rouge ADVOCATE Newspaper
Rachmaninoff's Ghost. M. F. Korn. Sliver Lake Publishing, 2003. 146 p.

Local author and pianist M. F. Korn combines two things he loves--classical music and horror--in his most recently published novel. Rachmaninoff's Ghost is a story of possession which is set mostly in Hammond, Louisiana, on the campus of Southeastern University. In this tale, Mark Connor forgoes his parents' dream that he study engineering at Louisiana State University to pursue his own of studying the piano. But alas, while Mark plays well enough, his talents only earn him conditional acceptance to a program at Southeastern. While finding his way around the university, Mark indulges in another passion of his, looking for obscure books on the occult in used book stores. He hits pay dirt when he finds a copy of the Necronomicon, the allegedly fictitious book of the dead mentioned in the writing of H. P. Lovecraft. Later he uses one of the spells found in the book to conjure the spirit of Sergei Rachmaninoff.

The problem is that Rachmaninoff doesn't just appear to Mark; he takes possession of him. Suddenly Mark's playing becomes inspired, and someone from Time magazine comes to hear him play. But doom ultimately awaits the person who believes he can channel the dead and emerge unscathed: when Mark conjured the spirit of his favorite composer in order to take advantage of his talent, he did not realize that there is a terrible price to pay, as a living body cannot successfully host two spirits at once. Ultimately Mark collapses into a shambling lunatic, thus ending his piano career.

Rachmaninoff's Ghost is Korn's first novel, written in 1984, soon after the author graduated from college with a degree in piano, but it was not published until 2003. The influence of the classic ghost story on his early writing is evident, and people wishing to read a relatively gentle tale of possession will be pleased. As a whole, this novel isn't very gory when compared with other works in the horror genre, and Rachmaninoff's Ghost is less subtle and atmospheric, more plot-driven, than Korn's later work. Unfortunately, anyone looking for local color will be disappointed, as Rachmaninoff's Ghost doesn't evoke a specific time and place as poignantly as does his previous novel, Skimming the Gumbo Nuclear. Skimming the Gumbo Nuclear, set in Baton Rouge in the early 1980s, accurately recreates the Chimes Street and LSU culture of that era, as well as evoking the malaise of that decade, leaving readers with the image of zombies running rampant through the now defunct Bon Marche Mall. Rachmaninoff's Ghost, however, doesn't do the same for Hammond.

---June Pulliam LSU Instructor, Horror Lit, English and Gender Studies