The Writing Retreat

Content Warning: This section explores violent, abusive, sexual, and occult subject matter. It also replicates Bartz’s use of the adjective “queer” when analyzing her depiction of women’s sexuality.

This plot—a writer (Alex) pens a ghost story (The Great Commission) within the larger Gothic ghost story about ghostwriters who disappear (The Writing Retreat)—binds together the themes of duplicity and appropriation within a meta-literary framework. A good ghost story relies on its storyteller’s skill to deceive an audience. Similarly, good ghostwriting relies on a writer’s ability to appropriate the voice of the attributed author. Authority is destabilized by both creative acts, suggesting that truth and authenticity are tangential to the public’s assessment of creative work.

The purpose of a ghost story is to titillate the audience, stoking its latent fears and hidden horrors. The story must be believable enough that the fear it inspires is real, at least momentarily. Yet it must be distant enough that the audience can sleep soundly in the story’s aftermath. Alex understands the appeal of ghost stories: “they reminded me of long-ago sleepovers, whispering tales in the dark, the delicious fear that would climb up your spine as you snuggled in your sleeping bag” (114).