Myths and Legends: A Guest Post by Ivy Pochoda
Astute, incisive and sharp, this modern retelling of Euripides’ The Bacchae is all atmosphere, all the time. It’s mystery, horror and so much more on its way to exemplifying what it is to be a woman in the world today. Read on for an exclusive essay from Ivy Pochoda on writing Ecstasy.
Hardcover $28.00
Ecstasy
Ecstasy
By Ivy Pochoda
In Stock Online
Hardcover $28.00
A deliciously dark horror reimagining of a Greek tragedy, by Ivy Pochoda, winner of the LA Times Book Prize.
A deliciously dark horror reimagining of a Greek tragedy, by Ivy Pochoda, winner of the LA Times Book Prize.
Ok. Let me geek out for a second here. I am a classics nerd. From a young age, my friend Zoe and I would pore over myths and legends—the heroes were our crushes, the gods our heroes. When we were given the opportunity to learn Ancient Greek in eighth grade, we took it. Yeah, we went to that kind of school. We were those kids. (This was a few years before The Secret History would validate our entire existence.) By senior year we were pretty capable classicists and spent the entire year translating Euripides Bacchae—immersing ourselves so deeply and closely in the text, that the story and the language of the play were seared into my mind. A wild god. An arrogant king. And women who wanted to be free to, well, party. I loved the dancing and the depravity. I loved the story of revenge. And I loved Dionysus and his wild band of Bacchants.
Translating the Bacchae was a seminal experience for me, one that taught me story and structure, language and theme, one that taught me how to go deep inside a story and how deep you must go to truly understand—in essence, everything you might need if you were to become a novelist.
I fear the Bacchae taught me something else too. I have to wonder if spending so much time with Dionysus and his Maenads at a formative age gave me my hearty appetite for late nights, dancing, and debauchery. (I regret nothing!)
When my editor asked me to write a horror novella (that turned into a novel), the Bacchae instantly leapt to my mind. If you are familiar with the deadly, gory, and visceral denouement, you will know why. But there was something else too, something in the play that seemed to echo the themes of my most recent novels These Women and Sing Her Down.
Squint your eyes—look a little left of center—and Euripides’s play is almost a feminist clarion call, a manifesto that suggests (or rather almost demands) that women be left to their own devices to dance, cut loose, expand their minds and experiences through ecstatic revelry. Or if not that, then simply be allowed to choose their own entertainment without the oversight and constrictions men place on them. And Euripides nearly sticks this landing. But since he’s a white dude, writing a play performed by white dudes, in a city governed by white dudes, the Bacchae’s moral isn’t that, when your deny women their rights, deadly things happen, but rather when you are hubristic enough to deny a god’s divinity (male ego again) bad things happen.
So Ecstasy is my Bacchae. At its core, it’s a pretty faithful reimagining of the classical drama for modern times. But I’ve shifted the needle—sidelining the god and his ego—and instead focused on the women, the way they (we) are oppressed in macro and micro levels—the way our behaviors are scrutinized and reprimanded. The way we are thought not to be in control of our bodies, our minds, and our choices. Revisiting the Bacchae was a fabulous and fantastic playground to explore this unceasing oppression.
And I do mean playground. Because this is a fun book, just like the Bacchae is a fun play. There’s dancing and drugs, revelry and raves. There’s a luxury resort and electronic dance music. There are people who behave badly and others who behave worse.
But in between this party-down atmosphere is a real message about oppression and control, about how far a man is willing to go to maintain his authority and what happens when a woman has had enough.
Ecstasy is a wild ride with a twisted family. It might have some truly fantastical elements—but the emotions are downright real.
Buckle up.