Our first glimpse of the house where Dr. Haggard drags out his days-a descendant of Manderley, the House of Usher and a zillion other Gothic manses-tells us we’re not in the world of experience but of artifice and convention. “Its steeply gabled roofs . . . its many windows, each one high and narrow, with lancet arches … What paint there was was … flaking off to reveal weathered, cracking woodwork … [It] stood close to the edge of a cliff that dropped a sheer hundred feet to black rocks and a churning sea.” As an emblem of the doctor’s spiritual state, this is neither subtle nor original; yet Gothic fiction, by definition, must traffic in such archetypes; that’s why “new Gothic” is ultimately a contradiction in terms. Unlike Stephen King, McGrath is too knowing a writer to believe for a second that creepy houses are anything but emblems for a spiritual state. Consequently, we read “Dr. Haggard’s Disease” with nods of appreciation but never a shock of recognition and never a chill.
