Kitsch and Aesthetic Education

John Morreall; Jessica Loy

Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 23, No. 4. (Winter, 1989), pp. 63-73.

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Kitsch and Aesthetic Education

JOHN MORREALL and JESSICA LOY

Our seminar in aesthetics this year began with a discussion of a thirteen-

inch-high painted plaster head of a conquistador, bought in a Salvation
Army store. Kitsch objects like this might seem a bizarre choice for a class
devoted to the arts. If what we are trying to inculcate in our students are an
understanding of fine art and good taste, what could be the point of show-
ing them poorly designed objects in the worst taste? In this article we hope
to show the point. We begin with a historical analysis of kitsch and then
present a rationale for making it part of aesthetic education.

The Origin of Kitsch

The term "kitsch," like the phenomenon, is modern. Coming into use in the
1860s among Munich artists and dealers, for whom it meant cheap artistic
stuff, the term was in international use by the turn of the century. Several
sources have been suggested for the word, among them the German
kitschen, meaning to cheapen or to make do, and verkitschen, meaning to
switch-sell. Today the word is applied far beyond painting and sculpture to
furniture and interior design, to landscaping and television programs.
Perhaps the most often cited characteristic of kitsch is that it is in bad
taste, but that is not enough to make something kitsch. There must also be
an element of display. Kitsch objects call attention to themselves and their
owners, who think of them as artlike and stylish, as endowing them, in
Curtis Brown's words, "with an air of richness, elegance, or sophistica-
tion." 1
Most scholars reckon kitsch to be less than two centuries old, although a
few, citing Hellenic miniatures and medieval devotional pictures, have sug-
gested that there was kitsch in mass cultures of the distant past. But even if

John Morreall is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Rochester Institute of

Technology. His books include Taking Laughter Seriously and The Philosophy o f h u g h t e r
and Humor.
Jessica Loy received her MFA from the College of Fine and Applied Arts at the
Rochester Institute of Technology.

Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 23, No. 4, Winter 1989

01989 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
64 John Morreall and Jessica Loy
we admit these few early examples, it is clear that kitsch was not a wide-
spread phenomenon until the Industrial Revolution. Before modern times
there were painters and sculptors with little talent, but their work was not
kitsch. Nor were works of folk art, peasant art, and primitive art. Compared
to works in the high European traditions, some of these items may have
been simpleminded, even knick-knacks, but they lacked the pretentiousness
of kitsch. The people who bought kitsch had at least a little familiarity with
fine art and were looking for something equivalent to it, though not some-
thing involving the education and expense required by fine-art connois-
seurship. These people and the objects they sought came together in the
new manufacturing-commercial culture that followed the Industrial
Revolution.
Before manufacturing, only the wealthy and aristocratic had the means
to be well educated, cultured, and intellectual and so to participate in the
world of the fine arts. Most people were kept busy with the simple neces-
sities of life and had neither the education, time, money, nor interest to
patronize the fine arts. What art they had was folk art and grew largely out
of their craft traditions. (Indeed, "folk art" is still often used to mean the
crafts.) With the Industrial Revolution, however, thousands of people were
drawn into the cities to work in the new factories or to sell the products of
the factories. There they did not get an education in fine art, but they did
learn one of its features, a social rather than aesthetic feature, the use of fine
art by the rich to mark their wealth and status.
When factory workers and members of the middle class had a little extra
income, they often wanted to buy things to decorate their homes as well as
to give them a little status among their neighbors. The folk art traditions of
their ancestors had largely been lost, and they did not have the money,
time, or education for art patronage. But while they could not afford real
fine art, they could afford mass-produced copies of fine art and other artlike
objects-they could afford kitsch.
The lower classes bought kitsch in emulation of the rich. While the folk
art of their grandparents had been made by "the folk" themselves, kitsch
was designed by the upper classes to sell to them. It came from above.2
There were two ways in which the new industrial and commercial cul-
ture made kitsch possible. First, the new factories could mass-produce art-
like items at prices the lower and middle classes could afford. And being
able to afford kitsch was the only requirement for owning it. No involve-
ment in the art world was needed-kitsch owners did not have to know ar-
tists, learn about their techniques and reputations, or patronize the arts.
They didn't need to deal with artists at all; they bought the stuff from
retailers. While it was not possible to be a mere art consumer, at least before
the modern age, being a consumer only of kitsch was the norm.
But it was not only by mass-producing artlike objects that the new cul-
 Kitsch 65
ture made kitsch possible, it was also by producing the people who would
find these objects appealing, people who knew little about fine art, who had
not developed aesthetic sensitivity, but who wanted nonetheless to decorate
their homes and show off with artlike objects. These people were the aes-
thetically deprived lower class and a good proportion of the middle class.
Part of the aesthetic deprivation brought about by the Industrial Revolu-
tion was the drabness of the factory towns. The ancestors of the factory
workers had lived in villages and on farms, surrounded by the natural en-
vironment, which helped shape their aesthetic sensibilities. This influence
of nature was evident in the perennial use of natural designs and themes in
folk art and peasant art. But factory workers lived in a world of mostly
man-made objects. It is possible to develop aesthetic sensibility in a world
of artifacts, of course, if they have been made with people's aesthetic sen-
sibility in mind. But the factory towns were designed primarily for efficien-
cy, not to meet the aesthetic needs of their inhabitants.
Another important part of the aesthetic deprivation caused by the In-
dustrial Revolution was the loss of craft traditions. In pre-industrial cul-
tures most people learned how to make objects needed in everyday life.
Their skills-furniture making, weaving, house building, metalworking,
etc.-were important in shaping their sense of form, balance, harmony,
elegance, and their aesthetic sense generally. In their daily work people
learned what all these features felt like and looked like. And because of the
general awareness of the difference between well-designed, pleasing objects
and poorly designed, ugly ones, there was a natural process of weeding out
shoddy workrnanship and bad design. Apprentice artisans who did not get
good at their craft would not find a demand for their products and so
would drop out of the craft. That is why no living craft tradition produces
ugly objects.
None of this held necessarily in the new industrial-commercial culture,
however. Most factory workers did simple, highly repetitive tasks, requir-
ing little if any judgment or skill which would inculcate aesthetic sen-
sibilities. And in manufacturing there was nothing corresponding to the
gradual acquisition of judgment and skill in the crafts. While a craftsperson
cannot make a thousand ugly, poorly designed objects, a factory can stamp
out a million of them, all identical; and with the right advertising and
marketing, they will be bought by the public.
Craft traditions not only had nurtured aesthetic sensibilities and,
moreover, produced an environment of aesthetically interesting objects, but
they had also made craft skills and the sensibilities that went with them
part of people's personal identities. Craftsmen had so identified with their
skills that they often used them as their surnames-Weaver, Cooper,
Wright, Carpenter, Potter, Smith, and so on. Factory work, by contrast, did
not usually involve sophisticated skills by which workers might identify
66 John Morreall and Jessica Loy
themselves. Indeed, most factory labor was, to use Marx's well-known
term, alienating. The worker, Marx wrote, "does not affirm himself in his
work but denies himself, feels miserable and unhappy, develops no free
physical and mental energy but mortifies his flesh and ruins his mind."3

Postindustrial Culture
Today, of course, we are far beyond the Industrial Revolution. The vast
majority of workers are now in the service sector, using their hands and
eyes to enter data into computers, drive trucks, and put cheeseburgers into
paper bags. And because few work with materials such as wood, fabric,
and metal, and fewer still do anything artistic, most are unable to ap-
preciate or evaluate things aesthetically, or in many cases even functionally.
As a simple example, let us consider our relation to wood. For millennia
human beings have used it in countless ways, as fuel, lumber, weapons,
tools, bowls, furniture, wagons, and so on. People in many different crafts
worked with wood and so knew hard woods from soft, straight-grained
from gnarled, and pliable from brittle. Even those who used only firewood
knew quite a bit about different woods from chopping it and burning it.4
But people today who spend their working hours in an office or store have
lost those occasions to become familiar with wood. And their ignorance
shows in the marketplace of inferior wood products we have today. People
buy flimsy furniture made of particle-board (sawdust held together with
glue) covered with "wood-tone" plastic. When they buy furniture made of
solid wood, they accept cheap pine stained dark as equivalent to oak or
walnut, not knowing that a "solid-pine chair" won't hold up as a hardwood
chair would.
At least some people today feel a nostalgia for the knowledge and satis-
faction their ancestors had in craft traditions, and a few learn woodwork-
ing, pottery making, or other crafts. But many fall prey to the commercial
forces which market "creativity" in the form of "craft kits." We discuss one
of them in class, a "precut, easy-to-assemble, Tiffany-style stained-glass-
look sun-catcher kit," made, of course, of colored plastic. Such kits come
with "complete step-by-step instructions" that leave no decisions about de-
sign or technique up to the purchaser and inculcate few if any of the skills
of a real craft process. All they allow people to do is assemble their own
kitsch.
The self-deception purveyed by the "craft stores" is bad enough, but
most people today don't even get as far as feeling a need to make anything
with their hands. Nor do they see the connection between the general lack
of such skills in our culture and the prevalence of bad taste. Indeed, they
don't see the taste all around them, especially their own, as bad taste. What-
ever the advertisers say is in vogue, they simply accept as in good taste.
 Kitsch 67
Their choices of home furnishings, for example, do not spring from any
knowledge of how such things are made, nor even from any personal set of
preferences. The furnishings in their homes are mere purchases dictated by
advertising. Their "taste" comes from magazine articles and catalogs or, if
they have more money, from a decorator. When next year new items, styles,
and colors are declared in vogue, they are only too happy to replace the
current contents of their home. Indeed, if their supply of money permits,
they may buy a whole new house.
Most people today don't see planned obsolescence as a marketing gim-
mick; they embrace it, for it gives them a chance to make new purchases,
and a good part of their identity lies in the act of purchasing. The bumper
sticker "Born to Shop" and the Bloomingdale's motto for sales "Shop Till
You Drop" are only partly ironic. For many people who make nothing
themselves, shopping represents at least some connection to the world of
material things and-perhaps a greater boon-some structure to their daily
lives. They can shape their identities, too, of course, by their association
with what they buy, the Rolex watch, the Calvin Klein jeans, the BMW.
The lack of taste so prevalent today results not only from people's lack of
skills in making things, but also from their lack of skills in any of the per-
forming arts. Consider music, which used to be something that ordinary
people did-they played instruments, they sang, they danced. In the last
half-century music has become less an activity and more a commodity to be
passively consumed. Manufacturers and advertisers know that they can
make more money by selling us records, tapes, compact disks, concert tick-
ets, and all the T-shirts and other paraphernalia that go along with today's
music business than by selling us musical instruments and sheet music.
And so that's what they sell us. Instead of getting together to play music
and sing, we go to a concert to hear someone else play and sing, or worse,
we clip the miniature tape player to our belts, the earphones to our heads,
and we listen individually. The producers of popular music, and mass
entertainment generally, of course, have a vested interest in a public that
cannot play music or sing and has no fixed standards or personal taste; that
is just the kind of malleable people who will buy whatever they are told to
buy.

Kitsch as "Instant Art"

With the lack of developed taste in our society goes an inability to make
subtle discriminations and a tendency to evaluate things by their most ob-
vious features. What sells today are slickness, gaudiness, flashiness, and
sentimentality-in general, whatever elicits a quick automatic response
from a passive perceiver. We want things to trigger a momentary "Wow!"
and then let us go on to something else. We don't want anything that calls
68 John Morreall and Jessica Loy
for attention to detail, interpretation, analysis, or any reaction other than "I
like it." This love of simple passive experiences explains the popularity of
not only kitsch but also alcohol, nicotine, cocaine, and our many other
drugs.
In films, television, and now video, we like spectacle-people in flashy
clothes chasing each other in expensive cars. In our domestic life we seem
to value convenience above all-the TV dinner which, if spilled on the no-
wax vinyl floor, can be wiped up in a second with the superabsorbent
paper towel. Where convenience and flashiness converge, we have gadgets,
which as a culture we crave. The same person who has kitsch sculpture in
the garden may also own a golf cap with a little solar-powered fan in it or a
telephone in the shape of a duck that quacks instead of rings.
Kitsch is perfectly suited to most people's passivity, short attention span,
and shallow understanding, for it promises them immediate gratification
requiring no special background knowledge or activity. It offers itself as in-
stant art.
The fact that kitsch can aim for only a passive response explains why so
much of it is sentimental, achieving its effect by evoking simple emotions-
love of children, patriotism, religious devotion, and nostalgia-in utterly
obvious and predictable ways. A good example here is the use of cuteness
in kitsch. Cuteness is a group of features that evolved in mammalian infants
as a way of making them attractive to adults. These "releasing stimuli" for
nurturant behavior, as ethologists refer to cute features, include a head
large in relation to the body, eyes set low in the head, a large protruding
forehead, round protruding cheeks, a plump rounded body shape, short
thick extremities, soft body surfaces, and clumsy b e h a ~ i o r The
. ~ manufac-
turers of dolls, children's books, and greeting cards exaggerate all these fea-
tures to get a positive response from customers. Now to portray a cute child
in a painting, for example, is not by itself aesthetically objectionable, but to
do so by painting the child's eyes four times the size of real eyes, with
three-ounce tears in their corners, is objectionable. For it hits viewers over
the head with its message; it tells them just how to react to the painting and
so leaves them with no cognitive steps to go through.
A basic feature of great art, we think, is that it challenges the audience to
interpret it and react to it. Within limits, aesthetic value is proportional to
the effort needed to process the work cognitively. That's why we prefer
works which have subtlety and multiple meanings and which cannot be
taken in at a glance. By eliminating these features, kitsch eliminates the
potential for aesthetic experience of any worth.
The effortless response kitsch aims for is manifested in kitsch's lack of
risk taking and genuine novelty. Kitsch always uses representation, for ex-
ample, in a straightforward way; there is no questioning of the relation of
 Kitsch 69
the representation to what is represented, as there is in so much twentieth-
century art.
Aesthetically, politically, and religiously, kitsch is always conservative.
Aesthetically, it looks for images from traditional art that have already be-
come icons, such as the Mona Lisa, the Last Supper, and the Eiffel Tower. It
tries to tap their established acceptability and value to get a predictable
reaction. In this way, kitsch is the opposite of avant-garde art, which tries to
break with tradition and be appreciated in new ways. The political conser-
vatism of kitsch comes out in its celebration of uncritical nationalism and
nostalgia for the good old days. The past is seen as understandable, safe,
and morally superior; that is why so many kitsch objects are, as the ads say,
"antique style," e.g., the smoking stand designed as a miniature colonial-
style, potbelly stove, with an American eagle insignia on it. Religious kitsch,
too, tries to tap feelings of satisfaction with tradition rather than, say, feel-
ings of moral outrage at hypocrisy. People who love kitsch want no cogni-
tive challenges and no social or ethical challenges. They want to live in an
unambiguous world where each thing has one obvious meaning and is im-
mediately recognizable as either likeable or not likeable.
This lack of an interest in novel and challenging experiences shows u p
graphically in a pastime that is closely related to kitsch and which supports
the sale of many kitsch objects-tourism, travel sold as a commodity. The
tour guide takes groups of tourists through "15 cities in 9 days," showing
them sights familiar from postcards. They travel with people who speak
their language, and the tour guide makes sure they never have to use the
language of the countries they're visiting. Their prearranged meals are
taken at restaurants that can serve them the kind of food they have at home,
and nothing happens that the tour company can't handle for them. Indeed,
they are treated much like spoiled children at summer camp. What they are
paying for are easy, passive experiences with just a hint of the exotic to
them, but not anything really strange and difficult to understand. The roar-
ing mechanical hippos at Disney World are about their limit.
Just as tourists need do nothing but get on and off the bus, eat the food,
take the standard photos with their instant cameras, and buy the souvenirs,
so kitsch consumers in general do not have to meet any experience half-
way-it comes all the way to accommodate itself to them, predigested and
ready to be assimilated.

Kitsch in the Arts Curriculum

Having said something about the origins of kitsch and its place in our cul-
ture, we can now explore its role in the arts curriculum. Perhaps the
simplest reason for including it is that students learn negatively as well as
70 John Morreall and Jessica Loy
positively, from artistic failures and aberrations as well as successes. In criti-
ques in studio courses, for example, they learn to spot the weak features as
well as the strong in artworks. And the institution of art criticism in general
is possible just because works of art fail in various ways. As driver educa-
tion covers tailgating and drunk driving and English classes review gram-
matical errors, arts education should show students aesthetic mistakes. And
what better examples are there than kitsch objects, which fail systematical-
ly, on practically all aesthetic criteria?
Not only are kitsch objects rich examples of aesthetic botching, but they
are familiar to students and so can be readily worked into class discussions.
The junk mail that comes to our houses each week probably includes at
least one catalog with several pieces of kitsch in it-lawn sheep (to replace
the plastic flamingos, perhaps), urinating Cupid liquor decanters, "collec-
tor-quality" statues of Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tinman, and the
Cowardly Lion, and on and on. These ads can be shown in class with an
opaque projector, and actual pieces of kitsch can be borrowed from neigh-
bors and colleagues.
Students' familiarity with kitsch objects and the aesthetic awfulness of
these items together provide another reason to use them in class: they can
be easily criticized even by beginners in the arts. And that criticism is usual-
ly fun for students; once they adopt a critical eye, they find kitsch entertain-
ingly absurd. Indeed, David Letterman, a favorite among college students,
has built a television career largely on his ridicule of kitsch and the other
shallow, tasteless aspects of our culture. Nothing can replace the examina-
tion of great works of art in aesthetic education, of course, but if we use
them exclusively, there is a danger that students may come to have too
much reverence for all works of art and feel uncomfortable criticizing any
of them, positively or negatively. If along with great works we also use ex-
amples of kitsch and lesser works of art, that danger is greatly reduced. The
students can usually spot quite easily what's aesthetically bogus in kitsch
items, and that ease allows them to gain confidence and sensitivity in talk-
ing about more important works. By realizing what is wrong with, say, the
painted plaster head of the conquistador, they'll be better able to see what is
right in, say, Veldzquez's portrait of Juan de Pareja (The Moor). Indeed, the
two are usefully shown side by side.
Because of the pervasiveness of kitsch in our culture, too, it serves as an
important example of the relation of aesthetic sensibility to culture as a
whole. More clearly than museum and gallery art, kitsch reflects our times,
our value systems, and our vision of life in general. A trip to Disney World
or Las Vegas reveals much more about our culture than a trip through an
art gallery.
Besides the cultural lessons to be learned from kitsch, there are many les-
sons more directly related to the arts curriculum. Let us briefly consider six.
 Kitsch 71
Perhaps the most important thing that the student can learn from kitsch
is that there is no such thing as instant art. We are used to the idea that it
takes training and effort to make art, but students need to see that that's
also true of appreciating it. Like the creation of art, its appreciation requires
noticing and judgment and interpretation. A completely obvious work that
is swallowed like an oyster is of little value. Aristotle in the Rhetoric pointed
out the value of using enthymematic arguments in speeches-they involve
the audience by making them fill in implied premises or conclusions. Some-
thing similar holds in the arts: great art leaves cognitive work for the
audience to do. Students should learn not to be afraid of challenging their
audiences-in painting, for instance, with visual allusions that only some
viewers will understand, with puzzling designs, with colors that almost
clash, and so on.
A second lesson is closely related: the triteness and predictability of
kitsch show students the need to experiment with new ideas and take chan-
ces in their artwork.
The third lesson of kitsch is that great art is often ambiguous-it allows
for different, and sometimes opposite, interpretations. Although like lan-
guage in some ways, art is usually not weakened but strengthened by am-
biguity, as most nonartistic uses of language are not. In clobbering the
audience with a single obvious meaning, kitsch shows its aesthetic in-
feriority.
Fourth, from the indiscriminateness of kitsch, students can learn to pay
attention to the properties of the various media. Kitsch frequently engages
in what Gillo Dorfles calls "transposition," recklessly translating works of
art from one medium to another.6 When Leonardo's Last Supper is executed
as a five-inch glow-in-the-dark sculpture, for example, it is destroyed.7
The fifth lesson to learn from kitsch is that aesthetic value is not cumula-
tive-putting together an interesting decal and a well-designed plate, for
instance, does not necessarily add up to a more interesting plate.
Sixth, the popular appeal of a work is no guarantee of aesthetic value.
The best-selling poet of the twentieth century is Rod McKuen. The prices
commanded by artworks, similarly, do not mean much. With today's art
world driven by commercial more than aesthetic motives, students need to
evaluate works by David Salle and Julian Schnabel, say, without looking at
their price tags or their publicity campaigns.
With this understanding of what students can learn from kitsch, we can
close with a few examples of how it can be incorporated into the cur-
riculum.
1. In a discussion of form and function, use slides of American cars from
the late 1950s (the Edsel is the most famous), contrasted with today's more
aerodynamically designed cars.
72 John Morreall and Jessica Loy
2. In a discussion of innovation in music, contrast pieces of today's high-
ly formulaic popular music with classical compositions.
3. In literature classes, analyze what's wrong with weakly constructed,
inartistic short stories and poems. Many teachers already have a file of dog-
gerel and weak writing from former students. There are also published col-
lections of bad prose, the most notable It W a s a Dark and Stormy ~ i ~ h tThe
.*
field of poetry has always attracted writers of kitsch mentality; their work
often appears in local newspapers. A good exercise here is to compare a
standard poem with a kitsch counterpart. Carl Sandburg's "Chicago," for
instance, can be read alongside Howard Hosmer's "I Am America." "This is
what I am-America," Hosmer begins; he goes on with twenty-five stanzas
of what can most charitably be called a list. Here are some of the more
memorable lines:
I'm Washington and Jefferson,

Hamilton and Burr,

Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck,

Shirley Temple, Fred Astaire.

..............................

I am Martin Luther King.

I am the land of whom I sing.

I'm Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays,

Garfield, Cleveland, Jackson, Hayes,

Bobby Jones and Arthur Ashe,

Eisenhower and Ogden Nash.

I am the amber waves of grain,

An alligator, whooping crane.

I am Sacco and Vanzetti:

I'm ticker tape and I'm confetti.

I'm the Presidential Mountain,

A hamburg stand, a soda fountain.

I'm Paul Revere and Sitting Bull,

Wounded Knee, a taffy pull

N.B.C. and C.B.S.,

A.B.C. and wilderness,
Appalachia, Hamburg Hill,
Manhattan Island, flour mill.

Teddy Roosevelt, Sammy Davis:

I am Hertz and I am Avis.
4. Have the students give presentations on the kitsch appeal of such con-
temporary institutions as professional wrestling, funerals and weddings,
greeting cards, TV evangelism, Musak, and rock videos.
 Kitsch 73
Conclusion
In examining the nature of kitsch and its prominence in late twentieth-cen-
tury America, it is hard not to become discouraged about the aesthetically
inhospitable environment in which we and our students live. But ignoring
this environment will not make it go away. We cannot pretend that what
students get in our classrooms and studios is all that shapes their aesthetic
sensitivity or is even what dominates it. We need to face the fact that aes-
thetic education in our culture is an uphill battle, for the same factors that
have made our country an industrial and commercial success also tend to
make most people philistines. Our students need to see that compared with
cultures of the past, and even "less developed" cultures today in which
craft traditions flourish and there is an intimacy with nature, they begin at
an aesthetic disadvantage. We may be able to compensate for this problem,
but first we must realize its nature and scope. And there is no better way to
bring about this realization than by taking a close look at the kitsch in
which we are all drowning.

NOTES

1. Curtis Brown, Star-Spangled Kitsch (New York: Universe Books, 1975), p. 9.

2. Dwight MacDonald, "A Theory of Mass Culture," in Mass Culture: The Popular
Arts in America, ed. Bernard Rosenberg and David M. White (Glencoe, Ill.: Free
Press, 1957), p. 60.
3. "Alienated Labor," in Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society, ed. and
trans. Loyd D. Easton and Kurt H. Guddat (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books,
1967), p. 292.
4. For a presentation of the aesthetics inherent in h.aditiona1 uses of wood, see Eric
Sloane, A Reverencefor Wood (New York: Funk, 1965).
5. Konrad Lorenz, Studies i n Animal and Human Behavior, vol. 2, trans. Robert Martin
(Cambridge, Mass.: Haward University Press, 1971), p. 154.
6. Gillo Dorfles, Kitsch, The World of Bad Taste (New York: Universe Books, 1969), pp.
87-97.
7. One of us once visited the expensive suburban home of an academic colleague
who had on his walls picture puzzles of Van Gogh's Sunflowers and other famous
paintings, which he had glued onto cardboard and framed. It was hard to take the
man seriously after that.
8. Scott Rice, ed., It Was a Dark and Stormy Night (New York: Penguin, 1984).