La Bibbia gotica

by Nancy Kilpatrick

"La Bibbia gotica" spazza via senza pietà tutte le false credenze sull'universo dark e grazie a centinaia di interviste con musicisti, artisti e stilisti di tendenza ci aiuta a capire un'autentica cultura, dalle origini medievali (la tribù dei Goti, per l'appunto) alle più recenti ramificazioni che hanno portato alla nascita di molti apprezzati miti contemporanei: la cinematografia di Tim Burton e Dario Argento, ma anche la musica dei Cure e degli Evanescence, passando per gli ormai indispensabili Batman e Sin City. Da H.P. Lovecraft ad American Psycho, da "La sposa cadavere" a "Il corvo", da Sandman a Dylan Dog alle "ghost lolitas": le atmosfere gotiche hanno oramai contagiato ogni forma d'arte e in questo libro vengono rianalizzate e ricontestualizzate per comporre un quadro che diventa al contempo una guida e una roadmap dedicata a tutte le forme espressive rigorosamente tinte di nero.

Genres: Nonfiction, Goth, Gothic, Reference, Cultural, History, Art

Paperback

First published October 4, 2004

About the author

Nancy Kilpatrick was a Canadian author who wrote stories in the genres of dark fantasy, horror, mystery, erotic horror, and gothic subculture.
She is most known for her vampire themed works.

Reviews

[Maryann · Rating 2 out of 5]

If this is The Goth Bible, then what goth needs is a New Testament.



Sometimes a snappy title indicates an author’s talent. Often, however, it obscures a mediocre effort by piquing interest with a promise that will never be delivered. What I had hoped for was an authoritative compendium of all that is goth. At the very least, a worthy reference guide.

I suspected I was going to be disappointed from the moment I read the gem that is the first paragraph of the foreword:

“When my agent, Lori Perkins, said a publisher was interested in me writing a book about the gothic culture I thought, Hey, that’s cool! I’m a writer, with twenty-six published books under my black and leather chain belt. And I’m goth. As several of my friends said, ‘Who better?’”



Firstly, no, Nancy Kilpatrick, you did not think that. Nobody (at least I hope nobody) thinks in language that stilted and self-congratulatory. Secondly, if I were you I wouldn’t pose the question, “Who better?” You might not like the answer.

Personally, if I were to choose “Who better?” I’d say any of the number of the people who should probably be credited as co-authors of the book. Kilpatrick uses quotes so long that they’re no longer mere quotes. There are entire sections of this book written by random and sundry people from whom Kilpatrick was able to extract the content she needed.

The segment that stands out in particular, as it’s arguably the most important part of any book about goth, is the piece on the history of goth music ― and by extension, the history of the goth scene. The second section of chapter five (Music of the Macabre: In the Beginning...) is entitled And Then There was Goth Music. Kilpatrick wrote almost none of it. The segment is written, in pages-long quotations, by Deacon Syth, Thomas Thyssen, Pee Wee Vignold, and Joshua Gunn, who occasionally contradict one another. In twelve pages, Kilpatrick writes only eight paragraphs, which are mostly about Syth, Thyssen, Vignold, and Gunn.

This section ends with one of Kilpatrick’s eight paragraphs, “What does [Marilyn] Manson think of goth? He tells us in his autobiography, The Long Hard Road out of Hell.” The segment ends here. She never tells us what he thinks of goth, merely that it’s somewhere in his autobiography. (Unless the title was meant to be the answer, in which case, “he tells us in the title of his autobiography,” would have been more helpful.)



This same chapter begins with a brief history of how music that could be described as gothic began. There are humongous holes and shifts in Kilpatrick’s narrative, which for mysterious reasons culminates in an indictment of Richard Wagner (who is described as having possibly been an anarchist, socialist, and proto-fascist ― three demonized philosophies of governance too disparate to coexist) and Adolf Hitler. That’s followed by a very truncated history of WWII and the Holocaust. (What the flying fuck does this have to do with goth?) It segues into why German goths sometimes catch crap about being goth. As some kind of odd afterthought, Kilpatrick finishes the chapter’s opening segment with, “Other classical composers speak to goths, especially Handel’s ethereal tones.”

Nowhere in her classical musings does she mention Saint-Saëns (composer of Danse Macabre, although he is mentioned in an unrelated segment of the book), Grieg (In the Hall of the Mountain King), Mussorgsky (Night on Bald Mountain), Beethoven (composer of a variety of dramatic and melancholic pieces dear to goths, such as Moonlight Sonata), Bach (notable due to his infamous pipe organ piece Toccata and Fugue in D), Orff (O, Fortuna ― a selection so popular with goths and related subcultures that it’s been sampled and covered), or any of the other composers widely enjoyed by goths for their gothic ambiance. Ignoring Carl Orff in a book about goth, in a chapter about gothic music, in a segment about pre-modern gothic music, in favor of a rant about the horrors of WWII is, in my opinion, unjustifiable.



The book rambles and jumps along like this endlessly and unrepentantly. Kilpatrick surveyed a panel of ninety-five goths, whom she’s dubbed “The † Section,” and relies on them for much of the book’s content. A substantial amount of what she couldn’t squeeze from the panel, she appears to have simply snatched from anyone who would grant her an interview or even just send her a coherent e-mail. She resorts to printing (mostly long-dead) web addresses for further information.

Not that I can really complain. The book is better when exploited amateurs are writing it. When she’s writing for herself, Kilpatrick sometimes slips into simply listing things goths like with no further information, such as the list of authors she didn’t feel like profiling but did feel the need to mention. (Still better than what she did with the composers.) Even more questionable is her list of artists, which appears to simply be a list of notable artists, rather than only those relevant to gothic art. (Monet, O'Keefe, Picasso, Warhol and... Yoko Ono?) She manages to give more real estate to gothica on the internet than to the rich tradition of gothic literature, and much of gothic art is given short shrift in favor of her own preferred schools. Architecture, and the ancient history that led to the gothic movement, is barely mentioned.

Insultingly, the book is also poorly edited. (All the more galling in light of the fact that Nancy Kilpatrick is an editor.) I’m tempted to imagine a publisher who was literally so afraid that goth was going to go out of style before the book got printed that they simply cranked it out as quickly as humanly possible. There are errors all over the place, from simple things like “then” instead of “than” to the admittedly rather amusing description of Vampire Beach Babes as being “gothability.” (They are, of course, gothabilly.) And Kilpatrick is prone to an error I outgrew in elementary school; the overuse of exclamation marks to make her prose seem exciting.



Some of Kilpatrick’s portions are relatively satisfactory. Her profiles of Poe, Baudelaire, Lovecraft, Burton, Gorey, and Brite are relatively comprehensive. (Although how she managed to give Anne Rice two paragraphs and Poppy Z. Brite two pages is beyond me.) And, to her credit, Kilpatrick touches on BDSM/fetish without dwelling on it. (The photo of a man chained up with whip welts on his back that precedes the chapter on domesticity makes promises that the chapter doesn’t keep.) There’s crossover with goth, but the two are often wrongly conflated.

There are a few gems in the book, unsurprisingly mostly from outside sources. Several editions of the comic Writhe and Shine by Robert Tritthardt are a rather delightful illustration of goth’s cheeky nature. Personal photos of “The † Section,” especially the painfully sexy Sire Cedric, are a fun peek at everyday goths. And occasional tidbits like how to make absinthe-flavored wine, and a graphic on how to dance goth, make skimming the volume worth the time.



The one section ― written entirely by Kilpatrick and seasoned with photos by her partner, Hugues Leblanc ― that transcends the mediocre effort that is the rest of the book is the second segment of chapter ten (Visiting the Vaults), which she calls Wicked Holidays. I can’t help but suspect that this is the book that Kilpatrick really wanted to write, as it’s the one piece that isn’t thrown together using whatever ephemera she could get her hands on. It’s highly researched and written with a passion and authority that could only have come from the world travels that Kilpatrick and Leblanc have undertaken.

It consists mostly of a listing of cemeteries worldwide, with a few other gothic hotspots ― such as macabre museums and Lithuania’s Hill of Crosses ― also profiled for variety. The graveyards are described in detail, with their architecture, histories, lists and tales of notable “residents,” and various other pertinent facts. In the ample margins ― used throughout the book for asides ― are useful notes, such as a list of the different types of cemeteries and how best to make a tombstone rubbing.



This could have and should have been expanded into a whole book. Kilpatrick’s writing is far more focused here, and her tendency to go off on tangents morphs into the recalling of detailed, on-topic anecdotes. Did she know this was the non-fiction book she ought to be creating, and her publisher demanded a book about goth? Or did she want to do a book about her subculture, only to find herself too indifferent to create an entire volume of content of this quality?

I’ll probably never know. What I do know is that Nancy Kilpatrick is only particularly good at writing what she cares about. That’s the thing about writing a non-fiction book on a broad topic. A successful volume is written by someone who can muster, or at least feign, interest in all the points necessarily covered. The greatest sin of The Goth Bible is that it is largely dispassionate, literally outsourcing the writing to people who give a damn. Kilpatrick might have had real credibility if she’d chosen a narrow topic she was capable of covering.

Which brings me to my final criticism. This unbelievable abortion of non-fiction, found in chapter eleven (Subscribing to the Dark Arts), is called Modern Gothic Writers on Their Art. It begins, “Sèphera Girón, a goth, and a writer with several horror novels to her credit, talks with the top-four goth writers in the world about being goth, and about their work.”

After introducing Storm Constantine and Caitlín Keirnan, but before introducing Freda Warrington, this clusterfuck appears: “Nancy Kilpatrick, born in the United States, now living in Canada, has published twenty-six books since the early 1990s, including novels, collections, and anthologies she has edited. Her popular contemporary Power of the Blood vampire world has a large goth following. Her most recent work of fiction is the horror novel Eternal City.”



So we’re clear here, Nancy Kilpatrick called herself one of the top four goth writers in the world (even while highlighting that much of her work has been as an anthology editor rather than a writer), wrote a glowing paragraph about herself... in the third person... and had herself interviewed by another author for her own book.

Kilpatrick’s final statement of this roundhouse kick to the face, I mean roundhouse interview, begins, “I’m so grateful that goth exists ― otherwise I would have had to invent it!”



Thank Cthulhu we didn’t have to rely on the great Nancy Kilpatrick. I’m betting goth would have gone un-invented. She concludes the interview, “May the power of darkness continue to permeate our souls!”

Oh, for Christ’s sake.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this book. Nancy Kilpatrick wrote an entertaining and informative book about the goth subculture and about interesting, creepy, esoteric, haunting things in general. I learned quite a bit.

To start, I had no idea my husband's new Doc Martins made him so cool!

I learned quite a bit about music - punk, post punk, new wave, old stuff, new stuff. Looked up some of the bands online and listened to some of the music.

I learned about absinthe - history, current usage. The author has a chapter on famous cemeteries around the world. Art and literature were discussed - old authors, new authors. There are some authors in here I'd like to check out.

There's a section about the history of vampires in folklore, literature, and movies. The same with werewolves and other supernatural creatures. Also a section about goths and religion. Quite a few interviews with goths, many of them elder goths.

This book was full of fun and interesting things and was an enjoyable read.

This book is almost 10 years old, though. There are many, many links to websites in here and I haven't looked up too many (yet) but they may be outdated. I am not sure about that. Would be nice to have an updated one from 2015. If there is one, my library didn't have it.

It was definitely a good book to finish up on Valentine's Day.

[Sam · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'll be honest, I was kind of disappointed by this book. While Kilpatrick does give a thorough although not entirely in depth look into the goth culture, its origins and influences, I found a lot of it aimed at disproving assumptions made by the mainstream or by showing those who think they're goth why they're not goth. It was this latter trend that I found rather excluding, which is not what the goth movement is all about. It doesn't matter how much of the lifestyle you do or don't follow, if your a little bit goth then you should be allowed to consider yourself as such, which is not the view Kilpatrick takes. As far as this book seems to be concerned, it is either all or nothing, which as with any style, lifestyle or cultural choice is a load of tosh (IMHO), as long as you as an individual are happy with your choices, that is the important thing. I did find the background and development of the goth scene very interesting but as Kilpatrick delved into the consumer goth culture, the book seemed to turn into an advert for all those who have established themselves in the industry rather than about the unique variations that can be created within the scene and how you can achieve these, either through purchasing the designer trends of the goth world or with a little creativity at home. Overall an interesting read but very biased and off putting to those 'on the outside' (whether they consider themselves to be or not).

[Rachel Pollock]

A sort of "insider guide" of sorts, full of relevant information but poorly copy-edited. And general editing could have been better as well, as many of the chapters read like they had been compiled from C&Ps from websites, which judging by the list of relevant websites at the end of each chapter, may have been the case. The book also suffers from the obsolescence of a lot of print media of its time (early 2000s) that relied on web links as if they were going to be eternally relevant. Many of the sites mentioned are defunct, out of date, or totally gone.

[Lára · Rating 3 out of 5]

This year I'm mostly doing the thing that, until 2014, I thought is not going to happen: rereading books, so I was looking at one of my home bookshelves and Goth Bible caught my eye. It's been years since I bought and read that one!

Once I settled in my bed, listening to Peter Murphy's new album, I started reading it and it's been so entertaining - for the 2nd time! I've haven't had that much fun in a whole year, at least not yet.

It's not a manual, but a book purely for entertainment. Lots of great photographs, nice words put together and lots of humour!

[SAWthegirl · Rating 4 out of 5]

It has some good recommendations for magazines, music, and other entrainment. It offers in-sight to why some things or ideas are important to the goth social movement from the perspective of early 2000's . I probably going to re-read this, because it's also entertaining with bits humor woven into the informational text.

[Cheryl Valentine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was disappointed to discover that a large number of the referenced independent shops and/or magazines no longer exist.

[Viv · Rating 3 out of 5]

An excellent book to take to bingo to reinforce the idea that you're a bit weird

[K.S. Trenten · Rating 4 out of 5]

How much has changed since 2004 when this book came out! How many people I’d regarded as goth said the very same thing I’ve said; time and again; I don’t really feel like I’m goth. All the while they contribute art, literature, music, and fashion which become part of what I and others envision as goth. Many voices offered their own perspective of what was goth. Often those voices were mingled with fury for what they refused to acknowledge as goth. In the end, I felt the message this goth bible gave was there is no bible. A bible is contradictory to the independent spirit which questions, laughs, and challenges what is. At the same time, this gave the reader a sense of what the fashion, music, gathering places, literature, rituals, and spirituality was for many a goth. A variety of arts and crafts which catered to goth tastes or indulged the artist’s own creative vision were described; along with the conundrum of trying to be unique while running a business with all the attendent pressure to conform. I learned a lot I didn’t know about the history of certain artists and customs; while recognizing with a shiver of delight many an artist I loved who’d received a mesure of recognition. It was painful seeing how a unique expression of fashion or art would get swallowed by trend, conformity, and franchise again and again. I did spot a few mistakes in the references offered, but overall this was a generous sample of goth thought, philosophy, history, and references. If any of these things intrigue you, check this out.

[Bonnie Farley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although the goth bible does contain a variety of interesting titbits (mainly explaining historical events, traditional customs, key people who helped form the 'goth' culture) I did feel an overwhelming sense of familiarity, like this has all been said before.

As with all art forms, the goth culture is very much subjective. I can look past the goth bible's repetition of the name Marilyn Manson, I can even comfortably disagree with Hot Topic being branded as THE place to shop. What I do struggle with is the offering to be a ready made goth.

So if you're looking for a 'how to' guide on how to dress, what music to listen to, know which magazines to buy, even how to dance like a goth, I would recommend the goth bible as a good foundation. If you're looking to be your own individual person then maybe take the contents with a pinch of salt. Also try to ignore the copious typos and misprints littered throughout the book.

[Your Common House Bat · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really liked this book, especially the chapters on goth music and goth reads. NGL I added a lot of things to my bucket list after reading this xD and got an idea for an activity to do when I visit the Netherlands.

I think that this book is great for seasoned goths as well as people who are interested in joining the scene and just people who are looking to learn about a subculture that they aren't a part of. Kilpatrick discussed a wide array of topics and I think that her book is a good place to start.

[Regulus · Rating 2 out of 5]

No, just no. I don't know who thinks this represents the goth subculture but they're wrong.
The amount of slurs who Kilpatrick put in her book and her shameless use of the adjective "transgendered" to refer to a trans person are the main reasons I didn't like this book; Other ones including mentions of dressing up as a Romani person for Halloween (needless to say the word used wasn't "Romani") and historical inaccuracies (please don't criss-cross your corsets you'll hurt your ribs).
Extremely boring read with a lot of infodumps, but hey, it does resemble a Bible!

[Nicole Woolaston · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading this. I especially liked all of the links for online resources. There's a lot of info here. If you're already familiar with the Goth lifestyle, then reading this is like reminiscing. If you don't know anything about Goths, this book will answer your every question. I also learned a few things I didn't know, such as the meanings of certain colors. I've always been a little Gothic, so this book was definitely for me.

[Lilies Remain · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun, while very dated, read. I enjoyed the recommendations as well as the commentary from the "cross section" (they can be rather elitist). I think it would have been more enjoyable had I read it when it was published in 2004.

[Heather Forensky · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book as a teen and opened up my world to the knowledge and construct of culture and this iconic transitional word that has changed over course of time.

[RecensioniVere · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book explores the many facets of the Gothic subculture, from its musical and literary roots to its visual and stylistic aspects. Kilpatrick provides a good overview of the historical and contemporary influences that have shaped Gothic culture, including interviews with musicians, artists, writers, and members of the Gothic community. The guide also covers the fashion, traditions, and beliefs that characterize this dark tribe. With a respectful and informative approach, "The Goth Bible" is an indispensable reference for anyone interested in understanding and appreciating the complexity and depth of Gothic culture.

Short: https://youtube.com/shorts/Uc_rgGZBMWM

Keep in mind that it is an older book, many references are outdated, and some new self-proclaimed Gothic subgenres might find certain parts of the book offensive.

[Denise Monegato · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good browsing Goth read. I like the way the book is organized; it's 'consumer goth' culture, but the author provides historical background on gothic influences across different mediums. Kilpatrick uses language well. so far, so good, only halfway through.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a good introduction to the goth scene. It offers the basic information about goth music, fashion, and culture. It is by no means the most in depth source, but it can be a good reference to curious baby bats who want to get a good start on their own journey into the subculture.

[Claudia]

anyone who has it i will but it!

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't fully read it but did enjoy the bits I read :)

[Dex · Rating 4 out of 5]

Currently reading this wonderful book, which is very well-written. I hope it knocks some of the misconceptions of the culture, of which there are many.

[Ella · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great resource on the Gothic subculture. . .

[SheRa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't really know what to expect when I picked this book up. Once I read a few chapters I realized this was a kind of gothic history book. It's kind of a dull read really. I couldn't finish it.

[Danni · Rating 4 out of 5]

I LOVED IT. LOVE IT. IT WAS REALLY COOL! I DIDN'T KNOW THAT THE goth SUBCULTURE WAS SO VARIED AND ELABORATE... I REALLY ENJOYED THIS BOOK A LOT.

[Princesschaos Brutile · Rating 3 out of 5]

this is ok i thought it was going to be as good at gothic charm school but it just is not

[Raven Luscas · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was an interesting read. Mostly testimonials, short facts and interviews but it was still fun to read. This is certainly one small type of view of the culture.

[Renee · Rating 4 out of 5]

very informational :)