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Last Halloween, the local PBS station broadcast the cult-favorite B-movie classic "Carnival of Souls," which was shot in the 1960s in a few days' time, with a budget that today would hardly buy you a Toyota. The director, Herk Harvey, found his only other cinematic work as a maker of industrial safety films, e.g., "The Eyes Have It: Abrasive Wheel Use In The Workplace."

The story of "Carnival of Souls" involves a car driving off a bridge into a river, and a woman passenger who may or may not be dead (she is). Of course, she doesn't quite realize she's taken this little turn for the much-worse until it dawns on her that, increasingly, people can't see her anymore. She tries to buy a dress, for example, and has a hell of a time with the sales help. In the climactic ending, other dead people -- ghoulish souls in pancake makeup who spend their spare time (they have lots) dancing at an abandoned amusement park -- welcome her to the dance, into the eternal carnival of souls. Having written a novel (Money, Love) that involves both carnivals and celebrity Death Cars, I am naturally drawn to this movie, as metaphor if nothing else.

This past summer, I turned 40. Now, as writers go, 40 isn't really that old -- but still, it got to me. I feel suddenly like that woman in the movie: Something in my life has altered; I'm becoming more and more invisible. In my small town, I'm increasingly known only as the dad to my children, another bleacher-sitter sipping coffee at soccer games. And you should have seen me in the mall CD store recently, trying to get the young salesclerk to understand what I meant in asking for the Guess Who. He and I did Abbott and Costello for a while, and then I gave up.

Having crossed over into this other life, the second half, I'm no longer youthful enough to be a hip, young professor, and my students -- who seem more and more to be disappearing backwards down some black hole of pop culture -- don't see me that way. I'm just old, as old as some of their parents. They see my pierced ear and ask if I attended Woodstock, even though I was barely in grade school at the time. My own youth haunts me, frightening 70s images of Lynyrd Skynyrd, polyester, CB radios, the powder-blue leisure suit my mother bought me in the eighth grade. I went to a local medical clinic recently and was treated, I swear, by a 14-year-old. News magazines are worried about my health, my HDL, my PSA, my trans-fatty acids. But only generically. Not one, I think, is actually worried about me personally. My friends and family members, almost uniformly older than I, are like those ghouls in the carnival: they can see me, a few of them scare me, but none of them sympathize. In fact, they are anxious for me to join the dance. Eternal misery loves eternal company, I guess.

So what to do? I find my comfort, as always, in books, having recently read Updike's entire Rabbit series, one after the other (note to others: if you are suddenly worried about your mortality, it may not be the best idea to watch a character age and die over the course of 10 weeks). I've enjoyed Susan Perabo's The Broken Places and Michael Parker's Towns Without Rivers. And finally, after a quick trip to the video store, I went back to "Carnival of Souls." Perhaps the source of these disturbing metaphors could also be a source of solace.

In one scene, the main character Mary, a church organist by trade, finds her way into the deserted church to play. She falls into a frenzied, death-induced trance of swirling, unearthly music. And therein I found my solace, my new metaphor: when death is pawing at your back, when you are slowly sinking into a quiet invisibility, then sit down. Put your hands on the keyboard. Start a new chapter, a new book. Fall into that familiar trance and listen to all that music you can make, your hands pulling terror and beauty out of the air while you sit -- watching, listening, playing.

Money, Love

Read an excerpt from Money, Love

Brad Barkley, a native of North Carolina, is the author of Circle View, a short-story collection. He lives in Frostburg, Maryland.

Further reading:

Tim Parrish
Fergus Bordewich
George Saunders
Lewis Shiner
Rick Bragg

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