A Response to Christopher Roden from S. T. Joshi
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salvo against me both for my review of Peter Ruber's ARKHAM'S MASTERS OF
HORROR and my old chapter on M. R. James from THE WEIRD TALE. I regret to
say that I
don't see much force in Mr Roden's screed; as Lovecraft himself said on a
similar occasion, "It refutes itself." And if Mr Roden thought to "get a
rise" out of me, I fear he fails again; as HPL said on another occasion, "I
am as offence-proof as the average cynic."
It is curious how Roden is under the impression that my sole goal in life is
to champion Lovecraft. I suppose he doesn't take any notice of my 4 books
on Ambrose Bierce, my 2 books on Lord Dunsany, my editions of many other
weird writers (including one that Roden himself has published), and numerous
other volumes I have written or compiled, not to mention other works
entirely
outside the domain of the weird. And yet, Mr Roden may be surprised that I
agree with him on one point: I am quite certain that my own work will not
last nearly as long as that of Lovecraft, James, Conan Doyle, and other
writers he cites, nor would it deserve to. Surely he doesn't accuse me of
such arrogance as that?
I took Peter Ruber to task because he committed serious errors about
Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and other writers. Roden does not seem to
question the validity of my comments. As for "vitriol"--well, Roden will be
interested to know that the review was actually toned down from an even
harsher one I had originally written. Roden then takes me to task because I
have "misinterpreted" M. R. James in that I fail to find a worldview in his
work. Now this is all very curious. Roden doesn't say that there is a
worldview in James's work; rather, he says that James merely wrote his
stories for his own (and others') amusement--which is exactly what I say in
my article! To be sure, James and Conan Doyle are widely read--but by whom?
Their rank as literary figures is, to be crudely honest, decidedly of the
third or fourth tier. They are popular writers--the equivalents of Stephen
King and John Grisham today. Surely Roden doesn't fall into what I call the
"democratic fallacy" of assuming that the number of readers is any indicator
of literary merit? In that case, Agatha Christie or Erle Stanley Gardner
would be superior writers to Homer and Milton.
The plain fact is that Lovecraft is now more highly regarded by intelligent
readers than James or Conan Doyle or Wakefield or any of the pulp hacks
Ruber champions in his book. There is no getting around this. Joyce Carol
Oates didn't edit a volume of James or Conan Doyle; she edited a volume of
Lovecraft. Penguin has published one volume of Lovecraft's stories under my
editorship (as part of its "Twentieth Century Classics") and another is on
the way. James, to be sure, is in the Oxford World's Classics, but I
venture that it is his popularity (in England) rather than his literary
stature that got him there.
There is no need for me to champion Lovecraft any more; his stature is
secure. The stature of James and Conan Doyle and Wakefield is equally
secure on his lower niche. All I intend in my work is to maintain some
literary standards. If Roden wants to count noses and derive his standards
therefrom, that is his choice. As for me, I will be happy to slink off,
forgotten and
despised, into my crematory urn, satisfied with the fact that Lovecraft no
longer requires me to assure him his place.
Christopher & Barbara Roden
brings activity to the newsgroup and encourages the thoughts of people who
are too infrequent visitors to this forum. One might hope that what he has
to say about M. R. James in this latest comment will draw response from
others whose presence here would be welcomed. And I apologise at the outset
for my 'charmingly clumsy way'. This is, after all , a newsgroup. Perhaps Mr
Joshi is not familiar with a forum that is less formal than the printed
word, and where discussion is, of necessity, more brief. I have made a note
to try to do better.
Let me begin by clarifying some points:
1. I do not defend Peter Ruber for his errors. There are certainly things in
the Arkham volume deserving of criticism. However, criticism and
annihilation, or humiliation, are two very separate things, and the vitriol
which poured from Mr Joshi's pen in the review under original discussion
quite clearly stems from his dislike of Ruber's treatment of Lovecraft.
Factual errors are not excused, but the fact that Ruber does not find
Lovecraft sufficiently enthralling to justify reading his complete oeuvre is
not worthy of the scorn given to it by Mr Joshi. I am delighted to learn
that this review is a watered down version of the original.
2. I am not grinding an axe against Lovecraft. Some of the material he wrote
is quite readable; other of it is quite informative. Great literature,
however, it is not. If I grind an axe at all, it is against the view that
others have to be compared against Mr Joshi's view of Lovecraft. To look for
a Weltanschauung in M. R. James, where none exists and where none was ever
intended to exist, and then to denigrate his work because, seemingly, a
Weltanschauung does exist in Lovecraft's work, is farcical - and totally
irrelevant.
3. I certainly do not overlook the many other volumes, on other authors,
that Mr Joshi has edited, though, as he knows, I do not always agree with
his choice of material worthy of republication.
Despite Mr Joshi's apparent cleverness in side-stepping my criticism of his
view on M. R. James, he does not succeed. It is not simply a case that Mr
Joshi insists that James's work should have a Weltanschauung, more his
insistence that James's work (or at any rate 75% of it) is invalid because
of the absence of such. He seems unable to come to terms with the fact that
writers such as James were producing material ONLY for entertainment
purposes (James to his college friends; Munby, for instance, to amuse
Prisoners of War). Heaven forbid that some poor incarcerated soul should
feel he had to include a Weltanschauung under such circumstances, even less
that he would contemplate a word from the vocabulary of his captors. Several
of them, of course, were producing material regularly as a means of earning
a crust - not least E. F. Benson, A. M. Burrage, and H. R. Wakefield. It may
show very high moral ideals to write simply to leave a literary legacy, but,
in Britain at least, at that time, the approach was somewhat different. And
let's be realistic - we are talking about THOSE times. America may have
suffered a late 1920's Depression, which certainly affected the fortunes of
many of its budding 'pulp' fictioneers, but Britain had already undergone
one major War, and circumstances were somewhat different from those
pertaining in the U.S.A. What those writers produced then may very well not
fit the template of Mr Joshi's view of literature, but I'll bet they
wouldn't have given a damn.
His facile comment regarding the number of readers equating to literary
merit really only plumbs the depths of an argument devoid of merit. However,
the arrogance he displays in his suggestion that the high regard for James,
Conan Doyle, Wakefield even, is held only by those who are NOT intelligent
readers cannot be ignored. Here, once again, we have Mr Joshi dismissing
anyone and everyone who does not share his viewpoint or his tastes - on this
occasion, as I'm sure many hundreds of James readers would agree, in a more
offensive manner than usual.
Too, consider his suggestion that James's inclusion in the Oxford World's
Classics series is as a result of James's popularity (in England) rather
than his literary stature that got him there. James, Mr Joshi, was one of
the foremost academics of his day;Provost of King's College and Eton
College; well respected, and deservedly so. Lovecraft, on the other hand,
from your own notes in the ST JAMES GUIDE TO HORROR, GHOST & GOTHIC WRITERS
was 'tutored at home, at a local elementary school, and at Hope Street High
School, Providence.' Their respective qualifications speak for themselves.
James wrote for enjoyment and for a release from his antiquarian
surroundings; Lovecraft seemingly wrote - extensively - for enjoyment, too,
but also for remuneration. That Lovecraft perhaps injected more of his self
into his writings is conceivably typical of someone from a more mundane
background. The Oxford series, strange as it may seem to Mr Joshi, does not
revive authors simply because they are 'popular'. And I can assure him from
personal experience that as much effort goes into producing a volume of
stories by so unworthy an author as Conan Doyle as does for producing a
volume of the Selected Letters of H. P. Lovecraft for Arkham House.
That Lovecraft has had a volume edited by Joyce Carol Oates is really of no
import. Presumably the publishers paid her to do it. We might present an
inverse situation: Thomas Hardy, Charles Dickens, and F. Scott Fitzgerald,
to name but three, have had volumes edited by Peter Haining. Are their
particular literary reputations diminished as a result?
Sadly, witty and sarcastic though it may have been, none of what Mr Joshi
had to say even addressed his charge of Wakefield's work being mediocre.
And, I hasten to add, that is not taken as an out of context remark. The
review called Wakefield mediocre, regardless of whomever else was discussed
in the same sentence.
Christopher Roden
paghat
Roden" <ash...@wkpowerlink.com> wrote:
> 2. I am not grinding an axe against Lovecraft. Some of the material he wrote
> is quite readable; other of it is quite informative. Great literature,
> however, it is not.
You speak to broadly. Some major pieces like AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS
(an unintentional parody of Poe) or "Call of the Nameless" (the excess
popularity of which has always puzzled me) are captivating & intensely
loved by many who have read it, so it must have SOMEthing going for it
just on the basis of ability to hold admiration for so many decades.
MADNESS nevertheless is a completely amateurish uncontrolled mess. "The
Outsider" & "The Rats in the Wall" are perfect little gems EASILY
comparable in excellence to the best of Wakefield or James though in very
different ways. Except for that vocal minority who dotes on Lovecraft
almost cultishly, almost anyone else would admit the majority of his work
is enjoyable junk, or worse. But the best most certainly IS "great
literature" & if it isn't then neither is any other weird writer including
James & Wakefield. If I had to chose the ONE best short story written in
the 20th Century, it would be a painful chore, but most assuredly "The
Music of Erich Zann" would be in the running, & I would ditch James' Best
"Oh Whistle" before I'd ditch "Erich" (though what would really remain at
the end of the ditching process I can't imagine). "Horror at Red Hook"
stands tall among the very best occult detective yarns & is outmatched by
none. "The Dunwich Horror" is likewise a great achievement & if some of
its ideas seem hoky now it's more because of all HPL's crappy imitators,
including even Derleth, deluting its effect.
Now I can see the faults in many imperfect yet meritorious tales like
"Charles Dexter Ward" "The Shunned House" or "Strange High House in the
Mist" -- favorites of mine though not absolute perfection -- & by focusing
on the faults rather than the merits HPL can be made to look cartoonish.
And, of course, there are many other stories that are outright lousy, not
only the usually-ignored ones but also some that have been praised like
the "Herbert West, Reanimator" wich more than any other storiy has
probably convinced many crappy imitators they're as good as their god HPL.
But even allowing for all that, I really can't imagine how anyone who
liked supernatural literature even a little bit could fail to see the
astounding excellence of "Rats in the Wall" & "Erich Zann" as among the
best American weird tales of all time. And I wonder if you don't fault HPL
on the basis of the annoyingly talentless stupidity of the greater portion
of his modern fandom.
[clips]
> Too, consider his suggestion that James's inclusion in the Oxford World's
> Classics series is as a result of James's popularity (in England) rather
> than his literary stature that got him there. James, Mr Joshi, was one of
> the foremost academics of his day;Provost of King's College and Eton
> College; well respected, and deservedly so. Lovecraft, on the other hand,
> from your own notes in the ST JAMES GUIDE TO HORROR, GHOST & GOTHIC WRITERS
> was 'tutored at home, at a local elementary school, and at Hope Street High
> School, Providence.'
Your first point here is good in that it shows the churlishness into which
Joshi occasionally descends, the brilliance of James both academically &
as a ghost story writer being really irreproachable. Your second point,
however, rather stinks. The larger percentage of the great American
writers, & nearly all the Victorian women writers, were educated at home,
often quite good educations too. By contrast the stultifying environment
that produces Professors RARELY also produces artists. Which is why the
truism "Who can write, writes, who cannot, teaches" sounds so accurate
despite that exceptions abound. So it could better be argued James
OVERCAME the negative factor of stultifying academe in order to write
stories that merely entertain.
Even you cited Lovecraft's opinion of James as evidence of James'
excellence -- that James did not have a like opinion of HPL is to James'
discredit, not HPL's, as HPL has proven (in his major tract on
supernatural literature) dead-on correct in identifying the best, whereas
James was not meritorious as a critic of the genre & as a critic often
comes off a bit like a crabby old biddy too proud of class position &
blind to whatever stands outside his particular caste.
> Their respective qualifications speak for themselves.
> James wrote for enjoyment and for a release from his antiquarian
> surroundings; Lovecraft seemingly wrote - extensively - for enjoyment, too,
> but also for remuneration. That Lovecraft perhaps injected more of his self
> into his writings is conceivably typical of someone from a more mundane
> background. The Oxford series, strange as it may seem to Mr Joshi, does not
> revive authors simply because they are 'popular'. And I can assure him from
> personal experience that as much effort goes into producing a volume of
> stories by so unworthy an author as Conan Doyle as does for producing a
> volume of the Selected Letters of H. P. Lovecraft for Arkham House.
>
> That Lovecraft has had a volume edited by Joyce Carol Oates is really of no
> import.
I disagree. And Oates' fondness for the horror genre generally, with HPL
paramount, is evident in a great deal of her own writings. That Rendell
likes Wakefield & Oates likes Lovecraft identifies both these moderns as
pretty smart gals.
-paghat the ratgirl
Christopher & Barbara Roden
very valid. Now, if we could get the die-hard Lovecraftians to discuss
things in that vein, we'd really be getting somewhere.
CR
nbo...@my-deja.com
> Joyce Carol Oates didn't edit a volume of James
No, Ruth Rendell did.
David Anderson
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
jimrockhill
"Christopher & Barbara Roden" <ash...@wkpowerlink.com> wrote:
No arguments, just a few clarifications, though my prose may render
them more akin to obfuscations.
(Snip)
> 1. I do not defend Peter Ruber for his errors. There are certainly
things in
> the Arkham volume deserving of criticism. However, criticism and
> annihilation, or humiliation, are two very separate things, and the
vitriol
> which poured from Mr Joshi's pen in the review under original
discussion
> quite clearly stems from his dislike of Ruber's treatment of
Lovecraft.
> Factual errors are not excused, but the fact that Ruber does not find
> Lovecraft sufficiently enthralling to justify reading his complete
> oeuvre is
>
Actually what I think Mr. Joshi most objects to in these errors is
that, at least in the case of H.P.L. and C.A.S., these errors amount to
character assassination and could have been easily corrected with a
little more care. Again, Mr. Joshi's tone toward Mr. Ruber seems too
severe, but if someone today had repeated the libels of Rufus Griswold
against Poe as accepted facts, nothing but outrage would follow.
(Snip)
> To look for a Weltanschauung in M. R. James, where none exists and
> where none was ever intended to exist, and then to denigrate his work
> because, seemingly, a Weltanschauung does exist in Lovecraft's work,
> is farcical - and totally irrelevant.
James' characters exist in a comfortable turn-of-the-century world
where knowledge and culture are considered at their peak, but into
which the past has a nasty way of intruding. The past repeatedly
undermines the security and complacency of the characters, calling into
question the depth of their knowledge and sometimes even the status of
human beings, past and present, as civilized. Who says a Weltanschauung
has to be more than this?
(Snip)
> Britain had already undergone one major War, and circumstances were
> somewhat different from those pertaining in the U.S.A. What those
> writers produced then may very well not fit the template of Mr
> Joshi's view of literature, but I'll bet they wouldn't have given a
> damn.
It is not just a matter of entertainment vs. literature, commerce vs.
self-expression. During the late nineteenth century their faith in
religion had been called into question and during W.W.I. their
institutions seem to have failed them, much of this malaise appears as
a leitmotif in the supernatural fiction written during the inter-war
period. If not t is the very lack of a Weltanschauung in a world no
more fixed boundaries that gives many of these tales their power. To
look for a Weltanshaung and condemn such tales for not having one is to
miss the point.
Jim
--
jimro...@my-deja.SPAMENOSPAM.com
wwha...@my-deja.com
Not quite in the same league. However, I'm curious, which volume by
James did Rendell edit? Best, Scott
jimrockhill
Britain had already
undergone
> one major War, and circumstances were somewhat different from those
> pertaining in the U.S.A. What those writers produced then may very
well not
> fit the template of Mr Joshi's view of literature, but I'll bet they
> wouldn't have given a damn.
>
What I meant to write here in my earlier pst was, "It is the very lack
of a Weltanschauung in a world with no more fixed boundaries that gives
many of these tales their power."
Jim
--
jimro...@my-deja.SPAMENOSPAM.com
D. E. Kesler
To be quite honest, I am somewhat puzzled by this post. You seem to be
suggesting that those of us who admire Lovecraft are incapable of
finding fault within his work. This is a far cry from the truth of the
matter.
In fact, I found Ms. Salmon's post quite interesting and I was very
tempted to respond at great length. In fact, I think I will briefly
respond.
I'm afraid that I disagree with her high praise for "The Horror at Red
Hook." For me, as a die hard Lovecraftian, this tale is only of
interest as a precursor to some of Lovecraft's far more effective
efforts. Also, I feel very strongly that _At the Mountains of Madness_
has some very solid points. She and I are in agreement, by the way, on
the poor quality of "Herbert West: Reanimator," although I disagree with
her statement that it receives undue attention from those who seek to
emulate Lovecraft. I honestly can't recall ever reading anything
overtly positive about this particular piece. Instead, I would suggest
that it is "The Dunwich Horror" that has received too much attention
from those who unintentionally pastiche Lovecraft. But, as usual, I
digress.
I opted to refrain from responding at length to her post simply because
our disagreements on the relative merits of some of Lovecraft's work has
little bearing on the matter at hand. I only mention it now to
illustrate my point. Those who admire Lovecraft do discuss his faults
as well as his merits. For many, like myself, is a favorite pastime.
Of course, I would love for Ms. Salmonson and I to discuss our differing
views on another forum. Perhaps on alt.horror.cthulhu, where such an
exchange would not be considered off topic. But, once more, I am
straying from the matter at hand.
As I re-read your post, I am forced to conclude that you are suggesting
that it is S.T. Joshi who is only able to write praise for Lovecraft's
work. As one who has read just about everything that Joshi has ever
written on Lovecraft, I can assure you that this is simply not an
accurate portrayal of his efforts. To tell the truth, I am often forced
to wonder exactly what it is that Joshi does like about Lovecraft. He
finds fault, albeit an admittedly debatable one, even in "The Colour Out
of Space." This is the same tale that Joshi considers "an achievement
Lovecraft rarely, perhaps never, equaled."
Of course, S.T. Joshi really does not need me to defend him on this
point. His work on the matter speaks for itself. Consult any of
Joshi's books on Lovecraft and you will see for yourself that he is
quite candid about Lovecraft's shortcomings, both as a writer and as a
human being.
Regards and Best Wishes,
Donald Eric Kesler
nbo...@my-deja.com
> > > Joyce Carol Oates didn't edit a volume of James
> >
> > No, Ruth Rendell did.
> >
> > David Anderson
> >
>
It depends where you live. Rendell is a household name and highly
regarded in Britain, where Oates is virtually unknown. And Rendell's
Barbara Vine books are acknowledged (by Julian Symons, for example, who
was a difficult man to please) as novels of a very high rank indeed.
wwha...@my-deja.com
I fear I do not have the time right now to continue this debate with the
care and detail it deserves, but I will address a few additional remarks
to Christopher Roden's latest comment, and then will have to let the
matter rest.
> 1. I do not defend Peter Ruber for his errors. There are certainly
>things in the Arkham volume deserving of criticism. However, criticism
>and annihilation, or humiliation, are two very separate things, and
>the vitriol which poured from Mr Joshi's pen in the review under
original discussion quite clearly stems from his dislike of Ruber's
treatment of Lovecraft. Factual errors are not excused, but the fact
that Ruber does not find Lovecraft sufficiently enthralling to justify
reading his complete oeuvre is not worthy of the scorn given to it by Mr
Joshi. I am delighted to learn that this review is a watered down
version of the original.
1. It will have to be a matter of taste and judgment as to whether my
review of PEter Ruber's book goes beyond mere "criticism" and enters
into the domain of "annihilation or humiliation". Some people seem to
think it does, others seem to think it does not. I myself did not
envision it as such. I criticised the Ruber book on what I felt were
legitimate grounds, and nothing that anyone has said makes me think
otherwise. Possibly my recent absorption of such satirists as Bierce and
Mencken makes my writing a bit more tart than it need be, but I still
think the jury is out on this matter.
I also did not criticise Ruber merely because he does not have a
high regard for Lovecraft: I criticised him because his low regard for
Lovecraft is not based upon sound evidence (he admits that he has not
even read all of Lovecraft's work, and he has numerous misconceptions
about the scope and nature of that work), and his various comments on
Lovecraft's character are entirely out of line and similarly based upon
inadequate and erroneous information.
> 2. I am not grinding an axe against Lovecraft. Some of the material he
>wrote is quite readable; other of it is quite informative. Great
>literature, however, it is not.
2. I have just stated that I myself do not regard Lovecraft as "great
literature". I regard him as "good literature"--as I regard the work of
Poe, Bierce, Machen, Blackwood, etc. There are not many others in our
field beyond the ones I named previously who come up to this level. To
my mind, James does not.
> If I grind an axe at all, it is against the view that others have to
>be compared against Mr Joshi's view of Lovecraft. To look for a
>Weltanschauung in M. R. James, where none exists and where none was
>ever intended to exist, and then to denigrate his work because,
>seemingly, a Weltanschauung does exist in Lovecraft's work, is
>farcical - and totally irrelevant. Despite Mr Joshi's apparent
>cleverness in side-stepping my criticism of his view on M. R. James,
>he does not succeed. It is not simply a case that Mr Joshi insists
>that James's work should have a Weltanschauung, more his insistence
>that James's work (or at any rate 75% of it) is invalid because of the
>absence of such. He seems unable to come to terms with the fact that
> writers such as James were producing material ONLY for entertainment
> purposes (James to his college friends; Munby, for instance, to amuse
> Prisoners of War). Heaven forbid that some poor incarcerated soul
>should feel he had to include a Weltanschauung under such
>circumstances, even less that he would contemplate a word from the
>vocabulary of his captors. Several of them, of course, were producing
>material regularly as a means of earning a crust - not least E. F.
>Benson, A. M. Burrage, and H. R. Wakefield. It may show very high
>moral ideals to write simply to leave a literary legacy, but, in
>Britain at least, at that time, the approach was somewhat different.
>And let's be realistic - we are talking about THOSE times. America may
>have suffered a late 1920's Depression, which certainly affected the
>fortunes of many of its budding 'pulp' fictioneers, but Britain had
>already undergone one major War, and circumstances were somewhat
>different from those pertaining in the U.S.A. What those writers
>produced then may very well not > fit the template of Mr Joshi's view
>of literature, but I'll bet they > wouldn't have given a damn.
>
3. The point about James's weltanschauung, or absence thereof, continues
to be misunderstood. My point is that its absence indicates a lack of
depth or substance in James's work. The fact that he intended his
stories only for "entertainment" has nothing to do with this issue: one
is not obliged, as a critic, merely to regard authorial intention as the
sole criterion of judgment, and then to say that an author is "great" or
"good" merely because he happens to have achieved his aim. That aim
might be a despicable or contemptible aim. (I am not saying that James's
aim is such.) A pornographer presumably achieves his aim when he
titillates his readers, but we would not consider pornography good
literature as a result. Nothing that Roden or anyone else has said
confutes my position that James's work lacks depth and substance. Its
economic motive--and that of any other writer of that time, or
any time--has no bearing on the critical judgment we pass upon it now.
There is certainly a place for writers who "entertain" only. (My
query about such writers, however, is: "Entertain whom? And how?" How is
the entertainment they produce qualitatively different from that of a
crossword puzzle or a football game?) That place must, however, be
subordinated to those writers who deal seriously, profoundly, and
complexly with human beings and their relations to the cosmos. Lovecraft
is certainly not be on the same level as Homer, Shakespeare, or
Dostoevsky, but he is closer to it than James is.
> His facile comment regarding the number of readers equating to
literary merit really only plumbs the depths of an argument devoid of
merit. However, the arrogance he displays in his suggestion that the
high regard for James, Conan Doyle, Wakefield even, is held only by
those who are NOT intelligent readers cannot be ignored. Here, once
again, we have Mr Joshi dismissing anyone and everyone who does not
share his viewpoint or his tastes -on this occasion, as I'm sure many
hundreds of James readers would agree, in a more offensive manner than
usual.
4. I fear that the argument that popularity is not, in general,
equivalent to literary merit is so sound as to be irrefutable. If it
were not, then Agatha Christie, Erle Stanley Gardner, Stephen King, and
Danielle Steel would be greater writers than Homer, Shakespeare, and
Dostoevsky. A few popular writers (Shakespeare notably among them) did
indeed achieve literary greatness, but it was not *because* they were
popular--it was because their work had depth and substance. And literary
history is littered with innumerable instances of popular writers who
are now utterly and deservedly forgotten.
> Too, consider his suggestion that James's inclusion in the Oxford
>World's Classics series is as a result of James's popularity (in
>England) rather than his literary stature that got him there. James,
>Mr Joshi, was one of the foremost academics of his day;Provost of
>King's College and Eton College; well respected, and deservedly so.
>Lovecraft, on the other hand, from your own notes in the ST JAMES
>GUIDE TO HORROR, GHOST & GOTHIC WRITERS was 'tutored at home, at a
>local elementary school, and at Hope Street High School, Providence.'
>Their respective qualifications speak for themselves.
5. Surely Mr Roden is not suggesting that the relative level of formal
schooling received by Lovecraft and James has any bearing on their
respective literary merits! By this criterion, Thomas De Quincey
(remember the old joke about him: "Poor old boy! He knew too much")
would be the greatest writer in literature, and Shakespeare one of the
worst.
>The Oxford series, strange as it may seem to Mr Joshi, does not
>revive authors simply because they are 'popular'. And I can assure him
>from personal experience that as much effort goes into producing a
>volume of stories by so unworthy an author as Conan Doyle as does for
>producing a volume of the Selected Letters of H. P. Lovecraft for
>Arkham House.
6. That the amount of effort it takes to produce a volume of any given
author
has any bearing at all on that author's significance is a point that
escapes
me.
> That Lovecraft has had a volume edited by Joyce Carol Oates is really
>of no import. Presumably the publishers paid her to do it. We might
>present an inverse situation: Thomas Hardy, Charles Dickens, and F.
>Scott Fitzgerald, to name but three, have had volumes edited by Peter
>Haining. Are their particular literary reputations diminished as a
>result?
7. I am in a good position to know that Joyce Carol Oates received a
minimal fee for compiling her book on Lovecraft. She compiled it because
she thought Lovecraft worth publishing, a point she makes emphatically
in her review of my biography (NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS, Oct. 31, 1996).
Oates is one of the most astute critics we have, and her word counts for
something.
> Sadly, witty and sarcastic though it may have been, none of what Mr
>Joshi had to say even addressed his charge of Wakefield's work being
>mediocre. And, I hasten to add, that is not taken as an out of
>context remark. The review called Wakefield mediocre, regardless of
>whomever else was discussed in the same sentence.
8. H. Russell Wakefield is, I regret to say, generally mediocre. He
probes no depths of human emotion, and does not deal seriously with
human beings and their relations to the universe. His early volumes of
ghost stories contain some clever items, but that is all; the later
ones, to my mind, are quite dreadful and almost unreadable. Of course,
Mr Roden has a vested interest in promoting Wakefield, but that should
not affect his general assessment of his work.
S. T. Joshi
Christopher & Barbara Roden
<wwha...@my-deja.com> wrote in message news:8nhrlj$2gh$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> Mr. Joshi has asked me to post these comments to the group:
>
Unfortunately, they tell us no more of Mr Joshi's views on the matter than
we already knew.
> 8. H. Russell Wakefield is, I regret to say, generally mediocre. He
> probes no depths of human emotion, and does not deal seriously with
> human beings and their relations to the universe. His early volumes of
> ghost stories contain some clever items, but that is all; the later
> ones, to my mind, are quite dreadful and almost unreadable. Of course,
> Mr Roden has a vested interest in promoting Wakefield, but that should
> not affect his general assessment of his work.
Suffice to say that on the first point I disagree, as, too, do many other
critics. Possibly we live on a different planet.
As to my having a vested interest, I assume Mr Joshi is referring to
Ash-Tree's having published Wakefield's complete supernatural fiction. In
that respect I do, though I hope Mr Joshi would not suggest that my critical
judgment is hampered by having done so. I might suggest to Mr Joshi that he
has a vested interest [i.e., wishing to sell the books he has written]
because he has devoted so many hours to H. P. Lovecraft and others. I
suspect he would find such a suggestion as offensive as I find his.
Christopher Roden
Christopher & Barbara Roden
And if his off the cuff
> remarks on Wakefield offend them, I do not want to hear their screams if
> they have "inspired" him to devote sufficient attention to Wakefield for
> an article, since it would be detailed, well-reasoned, showing a command
> of the subject material--and devestating
As Mr Joshi has already stated that he finds much of Wakefield 'almost
unreadable' (for what reason he does not say, perhaps he has difficulty
understanding some of the dialect that Wakefield uses in his stories), and
in view of his aberrant remark that Wakefield is 'mediocre', I suspect that
such an article would be as wide of the mark as that he presented on M. R.
James.
paghat
> On a personal note, what irritates me about this exchange is that I
> have been working on changing Joshi's opinion on James, discussing it
> quietly and in detail, and now this exchange has knocked everything back
> to square one--possibly even further.
You make Joshi sound like some sort of nutball who can't on his own tell
excellent tales when he reads them, but can be cajoled into recognizing
excellence via careful "handling", versus turning him into a crazed
killer-reviewer of great works not out of his misguided but heartfelt
personal opinion but due to feeling pettish about certain fans of the
given author.
I'll have to take your word for that!
-paghat the ratgirl
Christopher & Barbara Roden
> I think that Joshi is using a little hyperbole here
Ah, that's hyperbole as in 'mediocre', is it?
(or perhaps an
> allusion to Barthes's distinction between readerly and writerly texts),
> since he has read all of Wakefield's collections.
And so have I. And in my judgment Wakefield does not deserve to be called
'mediocre'. Mr Joshi's criticisms on the other hand . . .
CR
Christopher & Barbara Roden
> rbadac, really enjoying STRAYERS FRON SHEOL
Or even STRAYERS FROM SHEOL, rbadac! <g> (or, did you find the title
unreadable?)
CR
wwha...@my-deja.com
nbo...@my-deja.com wrote:
>
> > > > Joyce Carol Oates didn't edit a volume of James
> > >
> > > No, Ruth Rendell did.
> > >
> > > David Anderson
> > >
> >
>
> It depends where you live. Rendell is a household name and highly
> regarded in Britain, where Oates is virtually unknown. And Rendell's
> Barbara Vine books are acknowledged (by Julian Symons, for example,
who
> was a difficult man to please) as novels of a very high rank indeed.
>
As you will. However, I'm still curious as to which collection of James
Rendell edited.
Best, Scott
wwha...@my-deja.com
> Joshi's books on Lovecraft and you will see for yourself that he is
> quite candid about Lovecraft's shortcomings, both as a writer and as a
> human being.
>
This is of course the problem with the anti-Lovecraft crowd: they
haven't consulted any of Joshi's writings on HPL, let alone those by
others. They feel that it is perfectly permissible for them to express
ex cathedra pronouncements upon his work without having read much, let
alone all, of his fiction (and let's not get into the matter that his
letters are as important as the stories are--possibly more),let alone
the considerable body of meritorious secondary literature, and react
with indignation when called upon the matter. Joshi, on the other hand,
read all of James, plus a considerable body of secondary material,
before he wrote his chapter on James and the limitations of the ghost
story for THE WEIRD TALE. His opinion at least is an educated one, for
all that I may disagree with parts of it, and must be respected by all
intellectually honest persons--I said "respected," not "agreed with." I
find it hilarious that they dismiss us as fanatics when we are all too
willing to find fault with Lovecraft where he deserves to be faulted,
and most of us are eclectic enough in our tastes to take in works by
Blackwood, Bierce, Hodgson, Machen, and yes, even James into our
personal "best of."
On a personal note, what irritates me about this exchange is that I
have been working on changing Joshi's opinion on James, discussing it
quietly and in detail, and now this exchange has knocked everything back
remarks on Wakefield offend them, I do not want to hear their screams if
they have "inspired" him to devote sufficient attention to Wakefield for
an article, since it would be detailed, well-reasoned, showing a command
problms with "The Red Lodge" when I reread it recently; let's say that
some childhood memories don't travel well to adulthood. They should
remember Joseph Hutchinson's warning to Curwen: "Do not raise up what
you cannot put down." (Oops! They probably didn't read CHARLES DEXTER
WARD.) Best, Scott
rba...@hotmail.com
wwha...@my-deja.com wrote:
> Mr. Joshi has asked me to post these comments to the group:
>
> I fear I do not have the time right now to continue this debate with
the
> care and detail it deserves, but I will address a few additional
remarks
> to Christopher Roden's latest comment, and then will have to let the
> matter rest.
Oh darn. Just when we were starting to have fun.
rbadac, really enjoying STRAYERS FRON SHEOL
wwha...@my-deja.com
>
> As Mr Joshi has already stated that he finds much of Wakefield 'almost
> unreadable' (for what reason he does not say, perhaps he has
difficulty
> understanding some of the dialect that Wakefield uses in his stories),
and
> in view of his aberrant remark that Wakefield is 'mediocre', I suspect
that
> such an article would be as wide of the mark as that he presented on
M. R.
> James.
>
I think that Joshi is using a little hyperbole here (or perhaps an
allusion to Barthes's distinction between readerly and writerly texts),
since he has read all of Wakefield's collections. Best, Scott
William Allison
>As you will. However, I'm still curious as to which collection of James
>Rendell edited.
>Best, Scott
Hi Scott,
Here's the info via the Locus site:
A Warning to the Curious: The Ghost Stories of M.R. James
Hutchinson 0-09-170080-9, Feb '87, £9.95, 257pp, hc
Ghost story collection, selected and edited by Ruth Rendell.
Introduction * Ruth Rendell
Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book
The Tractate Middoth
The Mezzotint
The Treasure of Abbot Thomas
The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral
The Ash-Tree
A Warning to the Curious
Casting the Runes
Number 13
The Uncommon Prayer Book
Count Magnus
"Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad"
Mr. Humphreys and His Inheritance
Bill A.
William Allison
>Of course, I would love for Ms. Salmonson and I to discuss our differing
>views on another forum. Perhaps on alt.horror.cthulhu, where such an
>exchange would not be considered off topic. But, once more, I am
>straying from the matter at hand.
Hi D.E.,
I think it's safe to say you could very well discuss it here, seeing
as it would tie into this thread (and it's not like we're overrun
with posts here). There is a healthy percentage of regulars here that
are HPL fans as well as fans of "classic" ghost fiction. Speaking for
myself, it was HPL and his "Supernatural Horror in Literature" that
led me to broaden my reading into James, Hodgson, etc...
It's not uncommon to see a good bit of crossover between a.b.g-f,
a.h.c, and rec.arts.horror.written; as most (or many) fans of
supernatural literature will read/collect a variety (such reading
and collecting sometimes extending into other genres as well) of
stuff- from Potocki to PZB. (It could be argued that with the
creation of r.a.h.w, there is no longer a need for either of the
two alt groups- beyond it being handy to have a group for "mainly
HPL" and one for "mainly old stuff".)
I'd say let it rip...
Bill A.
--
alt.books.ghost-fiction FAQ
http://home.epix.net/~wallison/abgf_faq.html
D. E. Kesler
I think I see what you mean. I recently went poking through some of
alt.books.ghost-fiction more recent posts and ran across an enjoyable
exchange between Robert, Jim and Mark, "Considering HPL." I'm sorry
that I missed that one. Had I been posting here at the time, I would
have mentioned that the laundry list of names that Lovecraft tossed into
"The Whisperer in the Darkness" was probably inspired by a fan letter
that appeared in the Eyrie. I'll be happy to transcribe the thing if
anyone is sufficiently interested.
In any event, I thank you for the kindly welcome.
Regards and Best Wishes,
Donald Eric Kesler
rba...@hotmail.com
>
> unreadable?)
>
> CR
Blast! TWO typos in one week!
rbadac, wondering how he could spell "Sheol" correctly and screw
up "from"
jimrockhill
SPAM-pagh...@my-deja.com (paghat) wrote:
> In article <399b64b0$0$9...@fountain.mindlink.net>, "Christopher &
Barbara
> Roden" <ash...@wkpowerlink.com> wrote:
>
> You speak to broadly. Some major pieces like AT THE MOUNTAINS OF
MADNESS
> (an unintentional parody of Poe) or "Call of the Nameless" (the excess
> popularity of which has always puzzled me) are captivating & intensely
> loved by many who have read it, so it must have SOMEthing going for it
> just on the basis of ability to hold admiration for so many decades.
> MADNESS nevertheless is a completely amateurish uncontrolled mess.
"The
> Outsider" & "The Rats in the Wall" are perfect little gems EASILY
> comparable in excellence to the best of Wakefield or James though in
very
> different ways.
(Snip)
(Snip)
> -paghat the ratgirl
>
When Robert had asked about H.P.L. on a different thread, I was sure I
had forgotten a few titles in my haste to get something down on the way
to work. I believe you are too harsh to MOUNTAINS and "Call," but agree
with your other choices. "The Music of Erich Zann" and "The Outsider"
should have made it onto my list if I had not (too) long ago started
taking them for granted. Both are wonderful read aloud.
"The Horror at Red Hook" also strikes me as a better tale than many
make it out to be. The whole "Snobbery With Violence" thing (as one
study of the espionage calls it) has been part and parcel of the
private investigator genre since its inception. Who says supernatural
fiction has to be politically correct?
Jim
--
jimro...@my-deja.SPAMENOSPAM.com
paghat
<jimro...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>
> When Robert had asked about H.P.L. on a different thread, I was sure I
> had forgotten a few titles in my haste to get something down on the way
> to work. I believe you are too harsh to MOUNTAINS and "Call," but agree
> with your other choices. "The Music of Erich Zann" and "The Outsider"
> should have made it onto my list if I had not (too) long ago started
> taking them for granted. Both are wonderful read aloud.
> "The Horror at Red Hook" also strikes me as a better tale than many
> make it out to be. The whole "Snobbery With Violence" thing (as one
> study of the espionage calls it) has been part and parcel of the
> private investigator genre since its inception. Who says supernatural
> fiction has to be politically correct?
>
> Jim
> --
> jimro...@my-deja.SPAMENOSPAM.com
My comments on "Red Hook" meant to imply it is one of the great occult
detective stories per se, but that's a rarified sub-genre & I would not
include "Red Hook" as more broadly one of the best weird stories, as I
would "Outsider" & "Zann" & "Rats in the Wall" which are not only the best
of HPL but the best of weird fiction overall.
I happen to have a weak spot for the occult detectives, but as a
generality such tales are not objectively great fiction. For example,
Carnaki takes much "forgiving" for goofiness to be enjoyed, whereas the
same author's sea-horrors need no excuses. The Carnaki story about the
whistling room is a really great story & it's one of the great occult
detective stories, & "Red Hook" is even better than the whistling room,
but these judgements have to be made within the context of occult
detective tales exclusively. I also don't think the John Silence stories
are the equal of Blackwood's more broadly mystical nature-will-get-you
stories, but in their own smaller way the John Silence stories are also
classics that stand tall within the context of occult detectives. To some
extent enjoying occult detectives is like enjoying space opera which has a
tendency to look weaker if critical expectation is heightened.
-paghat the ratgirl
wwha...@my-deja.com
over the Oxford edition that Michael Cox edited, except for the
inclusion of "The Ash-Tree." Anyway, I guess that this, my copy of
Haining's James tribute, and my COLLECTED GHOST STORIES will hold be
over until the Ash-Tree edition next year.
wwha...@my-deja.com
>
> > On a personal note, what irritates me about this exchange is
that I
> > have been working on changing Joshi's opinion on James, discussing
it
> > quietly and in detail, and now this exchange has knocked everything
back
> > to square one--possibly even further.
>
tell
> excellent tales when he reads them, but can be cajoled into
recognizing
> excellence via careful "handling", versus turning him into a crazed
> killer-reviewer of great works not out of his misguided but heartfelt
> personal opinion but due to feeling pettish about certain fans of the
> given author.
>
> I'll have to take your word for that!
>
> -paghat the ratgirl
"A touch, a veritable touch!" No, what I meant was that Joshi is an
open-minded, intelligent adult who can respond to logical disagreement,
and who can be induced to change his mind if presented with a strong
argument (in the rhetorical sense, mind you), but who, like most people,
digs his heels in if attacked personally. This last is a common trait
among us human beings, after all; how many minds are changed through
invective?
What really amuses me is that essentially Chris and S. T. are in
agreement==there is no coherent world view in James' fiction; the
difference is that Chris says, so what? they were meant to entertain,
and S. T. says, that isn't enough to make them good literature, they
also have to tell us something about ourselves and the world we find
ourselves in. I happen to disagree with both of them: I think that
there is a coherent Weltanschauung in James. Basically I think that
James is sort of like T. S. Eliot would have been if he wrote ghost
stories. All three of them--Lovecraft, James, and Eliot--saw the
importance of maintaining tradition as a grounding in an unstable,
chaotic and ever-changing world. Eliot retreated into Anglo-Catholicism
as a reaction against the Abyss, HPL stared into it fearlessly, and
James made an outward show of conformity to the religious status quo
while depicting in his fiction the eruption of that chaos into the neat
little world into which his academic bachelors cocooned themselves,
Simon MacCulloch's excellent article "The Toad in the Study" (which
Joshi published in the US in STUDIES IN WEIRD FICTION, mind you) is on
the right track, I think, but at the root I think that James is a lot
more in agreement than he would like to admit (he's basically into
big-time denial, though), and that both MRJ and HPL have more in common
with literary modernists that has been suspected.
Anyway, that is the gist of the discussion I'd been having with
Joshi, and I was making some progress. Is that wheedling? If so, then
is it possible for two people to have an exchange of views without it
being wheedling? Are the only forensic options capitulation or
annihilation? I would certainly hope not!
Incidently, I was impressed with your posts on HPL. I thought at
first you were a bit off-base when you rated "Red Hook" so high, but
when I saw that you were rating it as an occult detective story, I can
see the merit of your argument. I don't care much for occult detectives
as a genre==you basically know that they're going to win, or at least
survive--but there are some effective stories in the genre ("Ancient
Sorceries" and "Secret Worship" by Blackwood, "The Whistling Room" by
Hodgson).
wwha...@my-deja.com
>
>
> > allusion to Barthes's distinction between readerly and writerly
texts),
> > since he has read all of Wakefield's collections.
>
called
> 'mediocre'. Mr Joshi's criticisms on the other hand . . .
>
> CR
No, "mediocre" is a value judgement; calling Wakefield "unreadable" when
he has plainly read everything from THEY RETURN AT EVENING up until
STRAYERS FROM SHEOL (I don't think he has read REUNION AT DAWN; for that
matter neither have I, although it is on my list and I have a copy) is
hyperbole. In the meanwhile, why can't you just agree to disagree with
Joshi on the merits of Wakefield? Does the difference in your
respective tastes justify the invective you have unleashed? I can only
judge that the effectiveness of Joshi's argument in THE WEIRD TALE, a
volume which has been on the shelves of every university library I have
done research in for the last six years and thus is going to be seen by
scholars doing work on James, has really maddened you. You may disagree
with Joshi on the issue, but he has an absolute right, as do you, to
your opinion. Is it the ease with which he finds publishers what
irritates you? (For instance, he will be bringing out a huge volume on
THE MODERN WEIRD TALE next year, plus his HPL biography is coming out in
an abridged edition from Liverpool University Press, who is also doing
his book on Ramsey Campbell.) Or his acceptance by mainstream critics
as a peer? I can tell you that he didn't take any gleeful pleasure
from pointing out James' limitations, as he saw them. After all, this
put him at odds with no less a figure than Lovecraft himself.
As I mentioned to Paghat and Kessler, this rather futile argument
(since Joshi really doesn't care to continue it) has probably hardened
his opinion towards James, since he has been forced to defend himself
against some personal attacks. Reading through my copy of THE WEIRD
TALE, I find that he says a lot of nice things about James' work, but in
relation to the central thesis of his book--that weird fiction can be an
expression of a coherent philosophical position--James falls short.
Let's not forget that you have also stated that there isn't such a
position, or world-view (Weltanschauung) in James, but then you say that
it isn't needed. Well, Joshi was closely associated with Harold Bloom
for many years, and if you look at Bloom's book HOW TO READ--AND WHY,
you will see that Joshi is indeed a disciple not of Lovecraft, but of
Bloom: Bloom also urges readers to look for what a book can tell us
about ourselves and our world in determining its merits.
As I told Paghat, I disagre with both of you: I think that there is
indeed a coherent philosophical position in James' fiction, and if I
weren't tied up with my Clark Ashton Smith researches I would probably
start a monograph on the subject. However, once I am finished with my
current "vacation" from CAS (an essay on Blackwood's "The Willows" in
relation to Jung and Rudolf Otto), perhaps I will tackle the subject. I
do think that James is "good literature."
As for Wakefield, I honestly have to reread him. I have your last
three collections plus Dalby's BEST GHOST STORIES OF, and will probably
start throwing them on my nightstand, after I am done with the Benson
volumes. I did reread "The Red Lodge," one of my childhood favorites,
recently, and I was a bit disappointed.
Best wishes, Scott
Christopher & Barbara Roden
that Joshi is not an original thinker? Your use of the word 'disciple'
disheartens me somewhat, I have to say.
CR
<wwha...@my-deja.com> wrote in message news:8nkck2$v0i$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> In article <399cc773$0$9...@fountain.mindlink.net>,
> "Christopher & Barbara Roden" <ash...@wkpowerlink.com> wrote:
> >
> > > I think that Joshi is using a little hyperbole here
> >
> > Ah, that's hyperbole as in 'mediocre', is it?
> >
> > (or perhaps an
> > > allusion to Barthes's distinction between readerly and writerly
> texts),
> > > since he has read all of Wakefield's collections.
> >
> Best wishes, Scott
Kenneth Waters
>the 20th Century, it would be a painful chore, but most assuredly "The
>Music of Erich Zann" would be in the running, & I would ditch James' Best
>"Oh Whistle" before I'd ditch "Erich" (though what would really remain at
>the end of the ditching process I can't imagine). "Horror at Red Hook"
>stands tall among the very best occult detective yarns & is outmatched by
>none. "The Dunwich Horror" is likewise a great achievement & if some of
>its ideas seem hoky now it's more because of all HPL's crappy imitators,
>including even Derleth, deluting its effect.
Paghat,
I was going to stay out of this, actually I still am. I became
curious when reading this post because of the omission of Blackwood's The
Willows, then the thought ran around some unplugged axon terminals that I
was not correctly remembering the publication date. I thought 1907 ? However
it could be you did not care for the story to same degree I did.
Nonetheless, it is only an opinion,and you did of course only indicate a
nomination-not a short list.
Kenneth Waters
Pressure makes diamonds
Luc
some original thought be questioned?
I though it was the natural way for human thought and knowledge to progress:
you build on the work of past generations, sometimes getting further,
sometimes standing still or finding yourself in a dead end (you can even
jettison the past entirely if you wish, but that does leave you in a
vacuum).
------
Luc
> De : "Christopher & Barbara Roden" <ash...@wkpowerlink.com>
> Groupes : alt.books.ghost-fiction
> Date : Fri, 18 Aug 2000 16:00:21 -0700
> Objet : Re: A Response to Christopher Roden from S. T. Joshi
wwha...@my-deja.com
"Christopher & Barbara Roden" <ash...@wkpowerlink.com> wrote:
> Ah, Harold Bloom. Is this where all this stems from? Are you telling
us now
> that Joshi is not an original thinker? Your use of the word 'disciple'
> disheartens me somewhat, I have to say.
>
> CR
It was more of a teacher-pupil relationship, I think. And how few
original ideas are there?! Was Vergil ripping off Homer? Blake,
Milton? Shakespeare, Marlowe? Perhaps you should look at another of
Bloom's works, THE ANXIETY OF INFLUENCE, for some insight into how
creative thinkers do influence one another. After all, we all learn
from our teachers, and then hopefully take their lessons and expand upon
them. Bloom does have a bit of a blind spot concerning the weird--in
his book on THE WESTERN CANON he only grudingly admitted Poe--and while
he admits that he couldn't sleep after reading "The Rats in the Wall" he
really doesn't care for Lovecraft, but at least he's read Lovecraft.
Joshi has taken what he learned from Bloom--who is the most respected
literary critic in the United States today--and applied it to our field.
And as much as you may dislike the fact, his work is well-respected by
people outside of our little fish-bowl.
As I remarked earlier, you wouldn't have gotten so worked up by
his comments if you didn't realize that his opinion matters (at least so
much as many of ours matters, since essentially we're all wormbait)
since it will be seen by people outside of the field when they look at
what we have to offer. Why not give the matter a rest? If Joshi doesn't
care for Wakefield and you do, then just pity him for what he's missing
and get on with things, like that eagerly awaited James omnibus (by me,
if not by Joshi). After all, Joshi had had his say and has left the
field. Consider yourself the victor, since you are now in sole
possession of that field!
Incidently, I just re-read "The Red Lodge" again. It held up much
better this time. I was re-reading "He Cometh and He Passeth By" when I
decided to check email.
D. E. Kesler
Thanks, Ms. Salmonson. I really had not considered "The Horror at Red
Hook" in this particular context. It is a notion that is certainly
worth mulling over.
Part of me is surprised that Lovecraft did not write more material along
the lines of the John Silence stories. After all, he was very fond of
both Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, particularly during his teenage
years, and Blackwood.
I suspect that he chose not to write more tales of occult detectives
because the genre really did not fit in with his world view.
The classic detective story, generally speaking, works along the
following lines. An ordered environment is disrupted by an intrusion of
chaos, usually a murder. Using logic and erudition, the detective pulls
together seemingly unrelated pieces of data together in order to restore
the state of order that existed before.
Well, this is in many ways the antithesis of Lovecraft's fiction. In
Lovecraft's work only the illusion of an ordered environment exists.
The whole notion that we humans are at the center of the universe is a
man made construct. An event transpires which tears away a portion of
this illusion, revealing the true tenuous nature of mankind's existence
in a vast, uncaring cosmos. In response to this, Lovecraft's
characters, like the University scientists in "The Colour out of Space,"
will sometimes act like detective; unfortunately, the very tools of the
detective, erudition and logic, often only serve to further destroy the
illusion of a homocentric universe. Once the true nature of reality is
revealed there really can't be any return to the ordered reality that
existed before. After all, it was all a lie to begin with. It is this
realization that has driven all too many of Lovecraft's characters to
seek refuge at the Arkham Sanitarium.
Regards and Best Wishes,
Donald Eric Kesler
paghat wrote:
(snip)
Dan Clore
[...]
> As I told Paghat, I disagre with both of you: I think that there is
> indeed a coherent philosophical position in James' fiction, and if I
> weren't tied up with my Clark Ashton Smith researches I would probably
> start a monograph on the subject. However, once I am finished with my
> current "vacation" from CAS (an essay on Blackwood's "The Willows" in
> relation to Jung and Rudolf Otto), perhaps I will tackle the subject. I
> do think that James is "good literature."
[...]
"The Willows" in relation to Jung and Otto -- I'm looking forward to
that. I recall that there was a book on "The Gothic Numinous" or
somesuch that had a chapter on "The Willows".
For those who haven't read it, Rudolf Otto's _The Idea of the Holy_ is
one of the most relevant works to the field of the weird, since he
identifies the weird as one of the basic forms of the numinous (the
subject of the work). Good, interesting reading.
--
---------------------------------------------------
Dan Clore
The Website of Lord We˙rdgliffe:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/index.html
The Dan Clore Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/necpage.htm
"Tho-ag in Zhi-gyu slept seven Khorlo. Zodmanas
zhiba. All Nyug bosom. Konch-hog not; Thyan-Kam
not; Lha-Chohan not; Tenbrel Chugnyi not;
Dharmakaya ceased; Tgenchang not become; Barnang
and Ssa in Ngovonyidj; alone Tho-og Yinsin in
night of Sun-chan and Yong-grub (Parinishpanna),
&c., &c.,"
-- The Book of Dzyan.
Dan Clore
> paghat wrote:
> (snip)
> > My comments on "Red Hook" meant to imply it is one of the great occult
> > detective stories per se, but that's a rarified sub-genre & I would not
> > include "Red Hook" as more broadly one of the best weird stories, as I
> > would "Outsider" & "Zann" & "Rats in the Wall" which are not only the best
> > of HPL but the best of weird fiction overall.
> >
> > I happen to have a weak spot for the occult detectives, but as a
> > generality such tales are not objectively great fiction. For example,
> > Carnaki takes much "forgiving" for goofiness to be enjoyed, whereas the
> > same author's sea-horrors need no excuses. The Carnaki story about the
> > whistling room is a really great story & it's one of the great occult
> > detective stories, & "Red Hook" is even better than the whistling room,
> > but these judgements have to be made within the context of occult
> > detective tales exclusively. I also don't think the John Silence stories
> > are the equal of Blackwood's more broadly mystical nature-will-get-you
> > stories, but in their own smaller way the John Silence stories are also
> > classics that stand tall within the context of occult detectives. To some
> > extent enjoying occult detectives is like enjoying space opera which has a
> > tendency to look weaker if critical expectation is heightened.
Hello all. I talk about this issue in Necrofile #30, where I reviewed
Blackwood's Complete John Silence. I start with these comments:
"The true lover of mysteries is not likely to feel any lasting interest
in detective stories. Not the least proof of Poe's genius is that he
abandoned this genre of writing as soon as he had mastered it."
-- Clark Ashton Smith, _The Devil's Notebook_
From its beginnings in the mid-eighteenth century Gothic fiction
contained contrasting elements. On the one hand, ghosts, witches,
demons, and other spectral monstrosities contributed an atmosphere of
supernatural horror and the weird. On the other hand, acts of purely
human crime such as rape, torture, kidnapping, and murder frequently
took center stage. An uneasy synthesis of the two was found in the
"supernatural explained" subgenre, in which criminals are inevitably
discovered to have been faking the various apparitions that have kept
the main characters in a state of shock for several hundred pages, in
order to cover their mundane misdeeds.
Given this tension, it was perhaps inevitable that the genre should
split in half and beget, on the one hand, the ghost story and horror
novel, and on the other, the crime story and its most fully developed
form, the detective story or "tale of ratiocination" as Poe had it. And
perhaps it was just as inevitable that the two should once again fuse
together into that ungainly hybrid, the tale of the psychic detective.
The two forms do not mingle together in a harmonious fashion: the horror
story requires a mounting level of excitement and intensity of
atmosphere, which requires that the author maintain the sense of mystery
and menace, of the unknowable and uncontrollable bursting into view; the
detective story's hyper-rationalistic, know-it-all protagonists swiftly
reduce the occult threat to a solved equation.
The genre reached the pinnacle of its popularity and the nadir of its
literary quality in Seabury Quinn's infamous tales of Jules de Grandin,
which continued ad nauseam in the pages of _Weird Tales_. H.P. Lovecraft
once parodied them thus:
"Sacrebleu!" cried de Grandin, "the ghost, it is here! Name of a little
blue pig, Friend Trowbridge!"
It was night in the old house.
In the corner was a bit of mist shaped like a decomposed corpse with
dripping eye-sockets. De Grandin fired at it, but it did not cease its
advance.
They grappled. (5 column-inches of tussle -- Formula B1796341-m)
"Friend Trowbridge," cried the victorious Frenchman, "this is almost
uncanny. It is the spirit of a very evil being who lived in the
continent of Shalmali 900,000 years ago. Not for many years have I seen
such a Thing. We must oppose it. But first, let us have some coffee
prepared by your so-excellent Nora, after which we will enlist the aid
of brave Sergeant Costello."
(_Selected Letters IV_)
Fortunately most items in the genre do not sink to this level.
jimrockhill
wwha...@my-deja.com wrote:
> In article <399dc01e$0$27...@fountain.mindlink.net>,
> "Christopher & Barbara Roden" <ash...@wkpowerlink.com> wrote:
> > Ah, Harold Bloom. Is this where all this stems from? Are you telling
> us now
> > that Joshi is not an original thinker? Your use of the word
'disciple'
> > disheartens me somewhat, I have to say.
> >
> > CR
>
> It was more of a teacher-pupil relationship, I think. And how few
> original ideas are there?! Was Vergil ripping off Homer? Blake,
> Milton? Shakespeare, Marlowe? Perhaps you should look at another of
> Bloom's works, THE ANXIETY OF INFLUENCE, for some insight into how
> creative thinkers do influence one another.
Jorge Luis Borges' short essay "Kafka's Precursors" also has
interesting things to say about "influence."
Jim
--
jimro...@my-deja.SPAMENOSPAM.com
jimrockhill
rba...@hotmail.com wrote:
> In article <399ccc82$0$9...@fountain.mindlink.net>,
> >
> > unreadable?)
> >
> > CR
>
> Blast! TWO typos in one week!
>
> rbadac, wondering how he could spell "Sheol" correctly and screw
> up "from"
>
not omit an essential 'not' when discussing REUNION AT DAWN elsewhere
on this site, as Jim did."
Jim
--
jimro...@my-deja.SPAMENOSPAM.com
bob mcarthur
detective story should, for the very reasons you write, how can you
return to normalcy when normalcy depends on ignorance and a constructed
self delusion? However I believe it works as a typical HPL story along the
lines of someone pulling the top off the world to understand a small bit
of it and having the basis of reality knocked out when the enormity
of what is implied is exposed.
The detective novel is a literary statement of naturphilosophie, the
romantic movement with many ramifications. The belief that the universe
is a whole, and the only way to understand it is to come into tune with
the whole. The detective seeks to understand the elememts in a crime,
the evidence left behind, and how people exist within the world.
In HPL's version, though, doing this leaves you with your
brains leaking out of your ears.
Bob McA
D. E. Kesler
For about a year and a half now, I have been making periodic efforts to
read this book. I know. It is not that long. Also, the writing is not
that dry. Nevertheless, the work simply does not hold my attention.
It is odd, really. I have read some very dry academic material before
and since the day I bought this book. I did not have this kind of
trouble with any of those other books.
About once a month, I will pick it, telling myself that I am firmly
committed to reading it the whole way through this time. Usually,
around thirty pages into the thing, I realize that I am reading the
text, but thinking about something else entirely. For a few more pages,
I will struggle to keep my mind focussed, usually by mentally going over
what I have read up until this point. After another ten or twenty
pages, I will once again discover that I am not at all in tune with this
work. So, I say to myself, it is not going to happen today. At which
point I set the book to one side and read something else. So much for
firm commitments.
Regards and Best Wishes,
Donald Eric Kesler
Dan Clore wrote:
(snip)
>
> For those who haven't read it, Rudolf Otto's _The Idea of the Holy_ is
> one of the most relevant works to the field of the weird, since he
> identifies the weird as one of the basic forms of the numinous (the
> subject of the work). Good, interesting reading.
>
wwha...@my-deja.com
Really? I rather enjoyed the book myself; read it during my lunch
breaks one week, plus maybe an hour at night before bed. But then I
read Thomas Mann's DOKTOR FAUSTUS in one memorable sitting (48 hours
long!).
Hey Dan: What was the name of the book with the article on Otto
and "The Willows"?
rba...@hotmail.com
jimrockhill <jimro...@my-deja.com> wrote:
> If it will make you feel better, just tell yourself, "At least I did
> not omit an essential 'not' when discussing REUNION AT DAWN elsewhere
> on this site, as Jim did."
>
> Jim
Ha! Have you ever seen the list of (undoubtedly collectable) Bibles in
the READER'S ENCYCLOPEDIA? Copies printed have acquired names like "The
Adulterous Bible" and "The Sinner's Bible," simply by leaving that
same "not" out of certain of the Ten Commandments.
Which just goes to show, you ought not believe everything you read,
even if it tells you to go ahead and do what you were going to do
anyway.
rbadac
Dan Clore
> Hey Dan: What was the name of the book with the article on Otto
> and "The Willows"?
Here's the info: S.L. Varnado. Haunted Presence: The Numinous in Gothic
Fiction. Tuscaloosa & London: Alabama UP, 1987.
That's from a review at:
http://www.uiowa.edu/~sfs/bir49.htm
jimrockhill
> Regards and Best Wishes,
>
> Donald Eric Kesler
>
> paghat wrote:
> (snip)
Very interesting. I agree with you.
I am sure that you used the term "classic" detective story knowingly,
since, if we remove a few cosmic references,
"The classic detective story, generally speaking, works along the
following lines. An ordered environment is disrupted by an intrusion of
chaos, usually a murder. Using logic and erudition, the detective
pulls together seemingly unrelated pieces of data together in order to
restore the state of order that existed before.
Well, this is in many ways the antithesis of (Chandler's) fiction. In
(Chandler's) work only the illusion of an ordered environment exists.
The whole notion that (human society possesses anything more than a
semblance of order) is a man made construct. An event transpires which
tears away a portion of this illusion, revealing the true tenuous
nature of (human justice) in a vast(ly), uncaring (world).
(U)nfortunately, the very tools of the detective, erudition and logic,
often only serve to further destroy the illusion(...) Once the true
nature of reality is revealed there really can't be any return to the
(illusion of)ordered reality that existed before.
your statement reminds me of what occurs in Raymond Chandler's
fiction,which has been characterized by W.H. Auden as portraits of The
Great Bad Place.
Jim
--
jimro...@my-deja.SPAMENOSPAM.com
D. E. Kesler
Which translation do you have? I own the John W. Harvey translation
published by Oxford.
Regards and Best Wishes,
Donald Eric Kesler
wwha...@my-deja.com wrote:
>
> In article <399EC456...@fantasm.org>,
> "D. E. Kesler" <er...@fantasm.org> wrote:
> > Hello Dan,
> >
> > For about a year and a half now, I have been making periodic efforts
> to
> > read this book. I know. It is not that long. Also, the writing is
> not
> > that dry. Nevertheless, the work simply does not hold my attention.
> >
> > It is odd, really. I have read some very dry academic material before
> > and since the day I bought this book. I did not have this kind of
> > trouble with any of those other books.
> >
> > About once a month, I will pick it, telling myself that I am firmly
> > committed to reading it the whole way through this time. Usually,
> > around thirty pages into the thing, I realize that I am reading the
> > text, but thinking about something else entirely. For a few more
> pages,
> > I will struggle to keep my mind focussed, usually by mentally going
> over
> > what I have read up until this point. After another ten or twenty
> > pages, I will once again discover that I am not at all in tune with
> this
> > work. So, I say to myself, it is not going to happen today. At which
> > point I set the book to one side and read something else. So much for
> > firm commitments.
> >
> > Regards and Best Wishes,
> >
> > Donald Eric Kesler
> >
> > Dan Clore wrote:
> > (snip)
> > >
> > > For those who haven't read it, Rudolf Otto's _The Idea of the Holy_
> is
> > > one of the most relevant works to the field of the weird, since he
> > > identifies the weird as one of the basic forms of the numinous (the
> > > subject of the work). Good, interesting reading.
> > >
> > > --
> > > ---------------------------------------------------
> > > Dan Clore
>
> Really? I rather enjoyed the book myself; read it during my lunch
> breaks one week, plus maybe an hour at night before bed. But then I
> read Thomas Mann's DOKTOR FAUSTUS in one memorable sitting (48 hours
> long!).
> Hey Dan: What was the name of the book with the article on Otto
> and "The Willows"?
D. E. Kesler
I have read some of Chandler's work, but admittedly not too much - one
of his novels and a smattering of short fiction. To be honest, I was
too swept away be his use of the language to actually pay too much
attention to the plot. I picked up the fact that Chandler certainly
wasn't following the classic detective formula, but I did not consider
it with the depth that I should have. I think I still have something of
his around here. I'll reread it and let you know what I think.
Regards and Best Wishes,
Donald Eric Kesler
jimrockhill wrote:
>
> In article <399E3977...@fantasm.org>,
> "D. E. Kesler" <er...@fantasm.org> wrote:
> > Regards and Best Wishes,
> >
> > Donald Eric Kesler
> >
SRHarbin
>review of PEter Ruber's book goes beyond mere "criticism" and enters
>into the domain of "annihilation or humiliation". Some people seem to
>think it does, others seem to think it does not. I myself did not
>envision it as such. I criticised the Ruber book on what I felt were
>legitimate grounds, and nothing that anyone has said makes me think
>otherwise. Possibly my recent absorption of such satirists as Bierce and
>Mencken makes my writing a bit more tart than it need be, but I still
>think the jury is out on this matter.
> I also did not criticise Ruber merely because he does not have a
>high regard for Lovecraft: I criticised him because his low
>regard for
>Lovecraft is not based upon sound evidence (he admits that he has not
>even read all of Lovecraft's work, and he has numerous misconceptions
>about the scope and nature of that work), and his various comments on
>Lovecraft's character are entirely out of line and similarly based upon
>inadequate and erroneous information.
>
While I have not read Mr. Joshi's original review of Arkham's Masters of Horror
which apparently sparked the responses and counter responses which lead to this
thread, I have read the book itself, and feel that there is some truth in Mr.
Joshi's criticism of Mr. Ruber's views re: Lovecraft and some other authors.
Let me hasten to add that I greatly enjoyed reading the book, more so for
Ruber's lengthy introductory essay on each author than for the stories
themselves in most cases. Ruber is refreshingly honest in stating up front
where he's coming from (The Un-Demonizing of August Derleth, for example) and
is pretty clear when he's stating opinions, as well as his sources and
limitations. He does state that he hasn't read much of Lovecraft's work, for
example, because he just can't get into it. However his usage of books such as
L. Sprague De Camp's Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers for his information on
both Lovecraft, and Robert E. Howard, was especially troubling to me, as I know
that there are more recent works on both writers that have discredited some of
De Camp's conclusions. I know that Ruber came in for some criticism of this
over on one of the Robert E. Howard lists.
Having said all that, I was glad to see Arkham House publishing this book, as
sort of a return or a homage to their roots, and welcomed Ruber's part in that,
as well as the various insights he presented on Arkham's history, Derleth in
particular.
Hopefully I'm not off topic in wishing that Ruber or someone else connected
with Arkham House will soon write a history of that august (no pun intended)
publishing firm, as well as reprint some more of the works of the many varied
and talented authors who have appeared under it's imprint.
But I do think that Joshi is probably correct when he states that Ruber's
"various
comments on Lovecraft's character" (and Robert E. Howard's as well) are "based
upon inadequate and erroneous information."
Steve Harbin
wwha...@my-deja.com
"D. E. Kesler" <er...@fantasm.org> wrote:
> Hello Scott,
>
> Which translation do you have? I own the John W. Harvey translation
> published by Oxford.
>
> Regards and Best Wishes,
>
> Donald Eric Kesler
>
HOLY]. I guess that I was prepped for it by reading lots of Jung and
Freud before hand, plus I was totally immersed in German culture for a
year at the University of Salzburg. As a result, I don't have a lot of
trouble dealing with the more, shall we say, **detailed** forms of
German, even in translation. (Actually, I can't read German all that
well anymore, but I can still handle the rhythms of the original in the
translation.) Anyway, hang in there, you will find it a valuable
book once you wade through it. Best, Scott
jimrockhill
everyone to commit adultery was quite a popular item when it first
appeared.
Jim
--
jimro...@my-deja.SPAMENOSPAM.com
jimrockhill
"D. E. Kesler" <er...@fantasm.org> wrote:
> Hello Jim,
>
> I have read some of Chandler's work, but admittedly not too much - one
> of his novels and a smattering of short fiction. To be honest, I was
> too swept away be his use of the language to actually pay too much
> attention to the plot. I picked up the fact that Chandler certainly
> wasn't following the classic detective formula, but I did not consider
> it with the depth that I should have. I think I still have something
of
> his around here. I'll reread it and let you know what I think.
>
> Regards and Best Wishes,
>
> Donald Eric Kesler
>
Welcome to abg-f. I did not mean to call into question your knowledge
Chandler's fiction, which is decidedly not "classic" detective fiction.
I just thought it was interesting that what you said also fit so
closely, minus the cosmic references, with the world Chandler describes.
Jim
(Who was relieved to see that D.E. stands for "Donald Eric" rather than
"Diatomaceous Earth" as he first feared it might.)
D. E. Kesler
Fear not. I read your message in the manner in which it was intended.
One soul sharing his insights with another. They were genuinely
appreciated and I should have stated as much.
The bulk of detective fiction that I have read has been the classics;
Poe, Doyle, Chesterton, Christie, Sayers, Queen, Macdonald. My favorite
would have to be Rex Stout, whose Nero Wolfe is the model of stability
and order. One may set the clock by the events that transpire within
the walls of his handsome brownstone on West Thirty-fifth Street in
Manhattan. In fact, in Stout's work, the intrusion of chaos is not even
normally allowed to disrupt Wolfe's orderly abode unless he allows it to
enter, usually when his funds start to run low.
Regarding Chandler, I skimmed through some of the notes I had taken when
I read the _Big Sleep_ in college. I have not been able to locate my
copy of the novel itself. I probably loaned it to someone who failed to
return it. I hope, at the very least, that they are enjoying it.
Aside from various sundry notes on Chandler's use of the English
language, I made a brief comparison between the use of forbidden tomes
in both Chandler's work and in Lovecraft's fiction. Having Cthulhu on
the brain, I tend to see the Necronomicon lurking everywhere regardless
of the author's intent.
Both the Necronomicon and the untitled pornographic collection (A real
pity that Cabanes snagged the all too apt title, Erotikon) serve a
similar function in that they act as textual evidence of the true nature
of reality. One who delves into the pages of the Necronomicon comes
away with the knowledge that humans are not the first or last of earth's
masters. Those who delve into the pornographic collection are
confronted with the fact humanity has a nasty, dark side that is kept
hidden beneath an all too flimsy facade of civilized conduct.
On a related note, let's take a look at _Psycho_. It has been commonly
assumed that the nondescript and poorly bound books in Norman Bates'
bedroom was a collection of pornographic images, similar to the type of
books described in _The Big Sleep_; however, as I have argued before, I
contend that Bloch cleverly constructed the paragraph in which Lila
discovers Norman's collection so that it allows the reader to fill the
book with whatever he wishes (or fears) between those untitled covers.
Sharing the bookcase with these nameless volumes are both occult titles,
such as _The Witch Cult in Western Europe_, and erotic titles, such as
_Justine_. The reader is left free to chose the exact contents of the
untitled books.
I think the latter reading has been the preferred interpretation because
of the following. It is the only description that we have of the
contents of Bates' book. "The illustration that leaped out at her was
almost pathologically pornographic."
Certainly, Lila gazed upon some sort of depiction of a sexual union;
however, this fact does not necessarily rule out a Lovecraftian
reading. After all, consider Lovecraft's "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" or
"The Dunwich Horror," to say nothing of Bloch's own, "Unspeakable
Betrothal." Bear in mind that the pornographic image is described as
being pathological, therefore it was definitely some sort of diseased or
unnatural union.
Also, consider the appearance of "The Witch Cult in Western Europe."
Lovecraft dropped this title on a couple of occasions in his fiction;
"The Call of Cthulhu" and "The Horror at Red Hook." Since that time, it
evolved into something of a standard prop in the fictional works of
various Mythos Writers.
Now, I am not saying that Bloch intended for us to see the Necronomicon
in Bates' bedroom. All I am saying is that he left the contents of the
book ambiguous. This allows us, the readers, to fill the book with
whatever unsettling contents our twisted little hearts desire. But, as
usual, I digress.
Regardless of what Lila observed when she gazed into Bates' book, the
end result is the same. The illusion is stripped away to reveal a dark
and loathsome reality.
"She replace the volume hastily and stood up. As she did so, the
initial shock of revulsion ebbed away, giving place to a second stronger
reaction. There _was_ something here, there must be. What she could
not read in Norman Bates's dull, fat, commonplace face was all too
vividly revealed here in his library."
One more note on Chandler, in his introduction to _The Hastur Cycle_,
Robert M. Price makes the following observation. It is a length quote,
but quite interesting.
"Another tale that must be mentioned at this point, though it is not
included here, is Raymond Chandler's detective story "The King in
Yellow." The hero, something of an early precursor to of Chandler's
famous Philip Marlowe, is a house dick attached to a fancy hotel. He
has the misfortune to find murdered in his rented bed a famous jazz
trumpeter, King Leopardi. This "king" is deposited inelegantly on his
bed wearing his trademark yellow silk pajamas. The detective takes one
look at him and mutters, "The king in yellow," noting that it reminded
him of a book he had once read. Which book do you suppose that was?"
"Of course Chandler may simply have meant that the hero had once read
Chambers. But I wonder, on second thought, if this hard boiled
detective story is meant to be set in the fictive universe in which "The
King in Yellow" was a notorious play of decadent tendencies. Had it
blasted the once-idealistic naiveté of Chandler's typically hard-boiled
protagonist? The raw-nerved realism of Chandler's detectives seems to
me an authentic twentieth-century version of the illusionless clarity
imparted by reading the infamous play."
"And, whether we are thinking about the book Chambers did write or the
play he did not write, the mention of _The King in Yellow_ in Chandler's
story functions exactly as the allusions to the play in Chamber's own
tales. They punctuate by precedent. The actions and the characters
attain their authenticity by conforming to the dramaturgical prototypes
of "The King in Yellow." (Price, iv)
Regards and Best Wishes,
Donald Eric Kesler
jimrockhill wrote:
>
> In article <399F7FE0...@fantasm.org>,
> "D. E. Kesler" <er...@fantasm.org> wrote:
> > Hello Jim,
> >
> > I have read some of Chandler's work, but admittedly not too much - one
> > of his novels and a smattering of short fiction. To be honest, I was
> > too swept away be his use of the language to actually pay too much
> > attention to the plot. I picked up the fact that Chandler certainly
> > wasn't following the classic detective formula, but I did not consider
> > it with the depth that I should have. I think I still have something
> of
> > his around here. I'll reread it and let you know what I think.
> >
> > Regards and Best Wishes,
> >
> > Donald Eric Kesler
> >
> Dear Donald,
>
> Welcome to abg-f. I did not mean to call into question your knowledge
> Chandler's fiction, which is decidedly not "classic" detective fiction.
> I just thought it was interesting that what you said also fit so
> closely, minus the cosmic references, with the world Chandler describes.
>
> Jim
> (Who was relieved to see that D.E. stands for "Donald Eric" rather than
> "Diatomaceous Earth" as he first feared it might.)
jimrockhill
intended.
> One soul sharing his insights with another. They were genuinely
> appreciated and I should have stated as much.
>
> The bulk of detective fiction that I have read has been the classics;
> Poe, Doyle, Chesterton, Christie, Sayers, Queen, Macdonald. My
favorite
> would have to be Rex Stout, whose Nero Wolfe is the model of stability
> and order. One may set the clock by the events that transpire within
> the walls of his handsome brownstone on West Thirty-fifth Street in
> Manhattan. In fact, in Stout's work, the intrusion of chaos is not
even
> normally allowed to disrupt Wolfe's orderly abode unless he allows it
to
> enter, usually when his funds start to run low.
Thanks, Donald. I really do not read that much detective fiction,
either classic, hard-boiled or psychic. As you intimated in an earlier
post, one's attraction to Chandler is based mainly his prose (including
the dialogue), followed by his characters, and so on down the list,
with the plots themselves playing a fairly minor role. I enjoy his
letters as much as his fiction.
It has been a while since I read PSYCHO, but I think you are correct.
When first published, the stack of black books kept by the supplanted
owner of the house in T.E.D. Klein's "Petey" sounded like a collection
of Arkham House books, but the revision leaves it more open to the
reader to imagine what those books might contain.
> I think the latter reading has been the preferred interpretation
because
> of the following. It is the only description that we have of the
> contents of Bates' book. "The illustration that leaped out at her was
> almost pathologically pornographic."
It reminds me of a scene in the odd film AFTER HOURS, in which Griffin
Dunne begins leafing through Rosanna Arquette's extensive collection of
graphically illustrated books devoted to burns, amputations, etc.
Having read Chambers long before I started reading Chandler, I too was
struck by the mysterious manner in which Chandler handles his allusions
to The King in Yellow. Price's assertions cannot be proven, but they
are certainly with the realm of possibility. It is a shame that
Chandler's output of fantastic fiction is so slight.
Jim
>
> Regards and Best Wishes,
>
> Donald Eric Kesler
>
(snip)
jm...@webtv.net
decide what to read! I read books for enjoyment - I'm not looking for
anything profound.
I've never paid much attention to the opinions of critics. They go to a
lot of trouble to point out what isn't there - elements they feel are
missing which were never intended to be there in the first place. They
could at least admit that some people might enjoy a certain work, even
if they themselves didn't.
moderan
jimrockhill <jimro...@my-deja.com> wrote:
> In article <39A02B03...@fantasm.org>,
> "D. E. Kesler" <er...@fantasm.org> wrote:
> > Hello Jim,
> >
<delurk>
Hi People,
Can't help chiming in on this one-we've had some exchange of these
ideas both at alt.horror.cthulhu and in my writers' workshop...
> > The bulk of detective fiction that I have read has been the
classics;
> > Poe, Doyle, Chesterton, Christie, Sayers, Queen, Macdonald. My
> favorite
> > would have to be Rex Stout, whose Nero Wolfe is the model of
stability
> > and order. One may set the clock by the events that transpire
within
> > the walls of his handsome brownstone on West Thirty-fifth Street in
> > Manhattan. In fact, in Stout's work, the intrusion of chaos is not
> even
> > normally allowed to disrupt Wolfe's orderly abode unless he allows
it
> to
> > enter, usually when his funds start to run low.
Chandler, and his antecedents such as Jim Thompson, have worldviews
which seem to parallel that embodied within horror fiction, rather than
the ordered universes of the older forms of detective fiction, which
are largely derived from the "drawing-room" school of mysteries.
Film noir, or the literary equivalent serie noir, in my mind have more
parallels to the atmospherics and settings of weird fiction than they
do to those works of the genre in which they are supposed to reside...
Chandler's, Thompson's, David Goodis', and Cornell Woolrich's desperate
characters are similar to those in modern horror...
>
> Thanks, Donald. I really do not read that much detective fiction,
> either classic, hard-boiled or psychic. As you intimated in an earlier
> post, one's attraction to Chandler is based mainly his prose
(including
> the dialogue), followed by his characters, and so on down the list,
> with the plots themselves playing a fairly minor role. I enjoy his
> letters as much as his fiction.
Chandler's intent was apparently to make that his readers' viewpoint.
He paid less attention to the plots, letting them grow more or less
organically according to the characters' growth, than he did to the
elegant descriptive language and mood-setting, feeling that that
technique told half (or more) of the tale.
One might be referred to Chandler's seminal essay "The Simple Art Of
Murder", in its own way as telling a description of Chandler's
techniques as HP Lovecraft's "Supernatural Horror In Literature".
> >
> > Regarding Chandler, I skimmed through some of the notes I had taken
> when
> > I read the _Big Sleep_ in college. I have not been able to locate
my
> > copy of the novel itself. I probably loaned it to someone who
failed
> to
> > return it. I hope, at the very least, that they are enjoying it.
> >
> > Aside from various sundry notes on Chandler's use of the English
> > language, I made a brief comparison between the use of forbidden
tomes
> > in both Chandler's work and in Lovecraft's fiction. Having Cthulhu
on
> > the brain, I tend to see the Necronomicon lurking everywhere
> regardless
> > of the author's intent.
The Necronomicon IS everywhere. It only exists in people's brains...
> >
<snip comparison study of Necronomicon and Erotikon among other books,
for space>
>
> It reminds me of a scene in the odd film AFTER HOURS, in which Griffin
> Dunne begins leafing through Rosanna Arquette's extensive collection
of
> graphically illustrated books devoted to burns, amputations, etc.
Or the film "Crash", which deals at length with the same type of
subject matter. These are all so-called "taboo" areas, circumscribed
and lumped together by that definition.
Indeed it is a shame that Chandler's ouevre stays within certain
boundaries. His narrating characters are to a man individuals who are
somewhat later in years, world-weary because of having seen too much,
lived too much, in the manner of those who have gazed upon the abyss
and come back alive, but with something of their spirit destroyed. This
doesn't stop them from taking up the cause of others who might run the
same risks (ie that which doesn't destroy you makes you stronger). And
there is a certain element of moral ambuguity in the serie noir story
that also echoes the elements of "cosmic horror". The events within
these tales are not judged, they are simply depicted.
(I read Chandler years before Chambers, in fact read Chambers in the
first place because of Chandler's story.)
>
> Jim
>
> >
> > Regards and Best Wishes,
> >
> > Donald Eric Kesler
> >
> (snip)
>
>
For those who wish to see a short piece combining the elements of noir
and Cthulhuoid fiction, there is a piece called "Malone" at
http://www.planetmoderan.com/malone.html
More to come in that vein. Many thanks to the individual that
crossposted this thread to ahc (Scott, I suspect).
</delurk>
--
Duane Pesice
http://www.planetmoderan.com
"...common human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or
significance in the vast cosmos-at-large."
H. P. Lovecraft
Randy Money
Bloom doesn't entirely dislike the fantastic, apparently, since works by Le
Guin, John Crowley and others appear in his list of works in _The Western
Canon_.
Randy
Randy Money
moderan wrote:
> In article <8npj0d$djt$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,
> jimrockhill <jimro...@my-deja.com> wrote:
> > In article <39A02B03...@fantasm.org>,
> > "D. E. Kesler" <er...@fantasm.org> wrote:
>
>
> Chandler, and his antecedents such as Jim Thompson, have worldviews
> which seem to parallel that embodied within horror fiction, rather than
> the ordered universes of the older forms of detective fiction, which
> are largely derived from the "drawing-room" school of mysteries.
> Film noir, or the literary equivalent serie noir, in my mind have more
> parallels to the atmospherics and settings of weird fiction than they
> do to those works of the genre in which they are supposed to reside...
> Chandler's, Thompson's, David Goodis', and Cornell Woolrich's desperate
> characters are similar to those in modern horror...
Just to throw in an actual title: Woolrich's _The Night Has a Thousand Eyes_
seems to me to be the one work I've read where Gothic visibly moves toward
(serie) noir. Brian MacNaughton and I talked briefly about this a few
months ago on, I think, this forum. He suggested that maybe the dark alleys
and mean streets stand in for Gothic castles and shadowed dungeons. I think
there's some merit to the thought. As Dan Clore mentions in another part of
this thread,
From its beginnings in the mid-eighteenth century Gothic fiction
contained contrasting elements. On the one hand, ghosts, witches,
demons, and other spectral monstrosities contributed an atmosphere
of
supernatural horror and the weird. On the other hand, acts of
purely
human crime such as rape, torture, kidnapping, and murder
frequently
took center stage.
It seems a small step to consider that the source of horror and crime
fiction could influence the latter to mutate into noir.
> Chandler's intent was apparently to make that his readers' viewpoint.
> He paid less attention to the plots, letting them grow more or less
> organically according to the characters' growth, than he did to the
> elegant descriptive language and mood-setting, feeling that that
> technique told half (or more) of the tale.
> One might be referred to Chandler's seminal essay "The Simple Art Of
> Murder", in its own way as telling a description of Chandler's
> techniques as HP Lovecraft's "Supernatural Horror In Literature".
Good description.
> Indeed it is a shame that Chandler's ouevre stays within certain
> boundaries. His narrating characters are to a man individuals who are
> somewhat later in years,
Not quite. I was rereading a fair amount of Chandler recently and realized,
to my surprise, that Marlowe was 33 in _The Big Sleep_ and 42 in _The Long
Goodbye_. Not really later in years, at least not at 33. That aside, this
...
> world-weary because of having seen too much,
> lived too much, in the manner of those who have gazed upon the abyss
> and come back alive, but with something of their spirit destroyed. This
> doesn't stop them from taking up the cause of others who might run the
> same risks (ie that which doesn't destroy you makes you stronger). And
> there is a certain element of moral ambuguity in the serie noir story
> that also echoes the elements of "cosmic horror". The events within
> these tales are not judged, they are simply depicted.
... strikes me as dead on.
Randy
(in the interests of shameless self-promotion, I have an article on Chandler
about to appear on-line at www.conspire.org in the next few days. I'll plug
it more when it actually appears.)
paghat
<rbm...@library.syr.edu> wrote:
> Just to throw in an actual title: Woolrich's _The Night Has a Thousand Eyes_
> seems to me to be the one work I've read where Gothic visibly moves toward
> (serie) noir. Brian MacNaughton and I talked briefly about this a few
> months ago on, I think, this forum. He suggested that maybe the dark alleys
> and mean streets stand in for Gothic castles and shadowed dungeons.
Not only in noir mysteries but also in some traditional weird horror. One
of the things that drew me to Lovecraft was certainly NOT goofy names of
goofier evil gods, but night-time saunters through narrow streets that
seem not to exist by day, with crumbling architecture impinging from
either side, looming over the protagonist & blocking out the sky, with now
& then a dim-lit window with what might be only a marionette propped up
against the glass. This setting combines nostalgia with terror in such a
manner that whether the setting disguises supernatural evil, or a mundane
murderer, one MUST continue down that throughfare as though entranced.
I have a collection of European postcards from the 1910s that show just
such actual streets in Paris, London, Prague, which I'm sure were produced
due to quaintness, but which weird fiction has forever imprinted as spooky
to me. One picture post card shows an cobbled street with a gutter & two &
three storied & dormered buildings to each side. Wandering through the
unpeopled street is a group of spotted hogs. I started a story set in that
postcard -- as I wondered why the hogs didn't have any human with them &
were they feral hogs roaming the streets at random, did they eat all the
crap from pisspots emptied in the gutters, were there no people in sight
because they knew the hogs would kill & eat them. To anyone who hadn't
read horror fiction I guess they would've been cute piggies on a quaint
village street.
In my own weird tale "Blind Man on the Bus" which Charles Grant printed as
"The Bus," symbols of impending doom are garbage cans & newspaper vending
machines, the hissing of the opening bus door, the whirring rumble tires
racing along blacktop, & the silence that fills spaces that should've had
replies to simple queries. The terror of the ordinary can be genuinely
paranoia-inducing, whereas the Iron Maiden in a dungeon of the gothic
castle on the Rhine is distantly fantastical with a dark aesthetic charm
but nothing to compare emotionally to finding oneself on a dark city
street with the only other person in sight a tall man in a duster
silhouetted in the sickly yellow light a flickering sodium streetlamp.
Indeed, I found myself standing in just such a scene several years ago,
downtown Seattle waiting for the Two A.M. bus that'd take me up Madison,
intentionally working myself into a dither over the silhouette of the tall
man when I looked to my left & saw an often-reused wrinkled paper bag on
the lid of a garbage can with the dark point of an enormous butcher knife
sticking out of it. No shit. The world's really more gothic than most will
ever notice.
I still have that knife & use it to trim brodarts.
-paghat the ratgirl
moderan
>
> > In article <8npj0d$djt$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,
> > jimrockhill <jimro...@my-deja.com> wrote:
> > > In article <39A02B03...@fantasm.org>,
> > > "D. E. Kesler" <er...@fantasm.org> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Chandler, and his antecedents such as Jim Thompson, have worldviews
> > which seem to parallel that embodied within horror fiction, rather
than
> > the ordered universes of the older forms of detective fiction, which
> > are largely derived from the "drawing-room" school of mysteries.
> > Film noir, or the literary equivalent serie noir, in my mind have
more
> > parallels to the atmospherics and settings of weird fiction than
they
> > do to those works of the genre in which they are supposed to
reside...
> > Chandler's, Thompson's, David Goodis', and Cornell Woolrich's
desperate
> > characters are similar to those in modern horror...
>
Thousand Eyes_
> seems to me to be the one work I've read where Gothic visibly moves
toward
> (serie) noir. Brian MacNaughton and I talked briefly about this a few
> months ago on, I think, this forum. He suggested that maybe the dark
alleys
> and mean streets stand in for Gothic castles and shadowed dungeons.
> there's some merit to the thought. As Dan Clore mentions in another
part of
> this thread,
>
> From its beginnings in the mid-eighteenth century Gothic fiction
> contained contrasting elements. On the one hand, ghosts, witches,
> demons, and other spectral monstrosities contributed an
atmosphere
> of
> supernatural horror and the weird. On the other hand, acts of
> purely
> human crime such as rape, torture, kidnapping, and murder
> frequently
> took center stage.
>
> It seems a small step to consider that the source of horror and crime
> fiction could influence the latter to mutate into noir.
thanks for the summary, I'll see if Deja has preserved that thread...
>
> > Chandler's intent was apparently to make that his readers'
viewpoint.
> > He paid less attention to the plots, letting them grow more or less
> > organically according to the characters' growth, than he did to the
> > elegant descriptive language and mood-setting, feeling that that
> > technique told half (or more) of the tale.
> > One might be referred to Chandler's seminal essay "The Simple Art Of
> > Murder", in its own way as telling a description of Chandler's
> > techniques as HP Lovecraft's "Supernatural Horror In Literature".
>
Thanx!
>
> > Indeed it is a shame that Chandler's ouevre stays within certain
> > boundaries. His narrating characters are to a man individuals who
are
> > somewhat later in years,
>
realized,
> to my surprise, that Marlowe was 33 in _The Big Sleep_ and 42 in _The
Long
> Goodbye_. Not really later in years, at least not at 33. That
aside, this
> ...
>
> > lived too much, in the manner of those who have gazed upon the abyss
> > and come back alive, but with something of their spirit destroyed.
This
> > doesn't stop them from taking up the cause of others who might run
the
> > same risks (ie that which doesn't destroy you makes you stronger).
And
> > there is a certain element of moral ambuguity in the serie noir
story
> > that also echoes the elements of "cosmic horror". The events within
> > these tales are not judged, they are simply depicted.
>
checked through my Chandlers, and you're right about the ages...
>
> Randy
> (in the interests of shameless self-promotion, I have an article on
Chandler
> about to appear on-line at www.conspire.org in the next few days.
I'll plug
> it more when it actually appears.)
>
>
And thanks also to paghat for neatly evocative piece about gothic
horror in everyday life-where might one find "The Bus"?
rba...@hotmail.com
You'd better! Shameless self-promotion is all some of us have!
rbadac, featured in The Weird Review-- never mind those things over in
alt.sex, he was drunk at the time and frankly that sheep looked pretty
cute
Robert Lee
SPAM-pagh...@my-deja.com (paghat) wrote:
>Your second point,
>however, rather stinks.
Why on earth?
>The larger percentage of the great American
>writers, & nearly all the Victorian women writers, were educated at home,
>often quite good educations too.
Well, Lovecraft's wasn't, and it shows. His writing is precious, forced,
flowery, verbose, occasionally painful, and tends to slide toward the outright
amateur. Were it not for his almost accidentally tying together a number of
loose threads in turn of the century weird fiction and coming up with the
Cthulhu stuff, he'd be remembered about as well as Robert Chambers today. (Who
is only remembered, pretty much, for his influence on Lovecraft's mythos.)
It's not Lovecraft's writing that matters, for the most part, as much as it's
his ideas and their instant hold on horror fans and writers, and more so, his
long-ranging impact. (I suspect Mr. Joshi and I have no parted ways.) He is
important, whether anybody likes it or not, simply because his works have a life
beyond him, and continue to influence other artists, many of them superior to
their influence, in the same way "The Call of Cthulhu" is superior to "The
Yellow Sign."
>By contrast the stultifying environment
>that produces Professors RARELY also produces artists.
Be sure to tell C.S. Lewis, T.S. Eliot, J.R.R. Tolkien or E.F. Benson that.
Never mind James and umpteen other writers whose names didn't immediately pop
into my mind.
--Robert
vonj...@hotmail.com
Robert Lee <rober...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 16 Aug 2000 22:03:40 -0700, in alt.books.ghost-fiction,
> SPAM-pagh...@my-deja.com (paghat) wrote:
> >The larger percentage of the great American
> >writers, & nearly all the Victorian women writers, were educated at
> >home, often quite good educations too.
> Well, Lovecraft's wasn't, and it shows. His writing is precious,
>forced, flowery, verbose, occasionally painful, and tends to slide
>toward the outright amateur.
I'd disagree - many of the qualities you name are in fact the
result of Lovecraft's self-education, which involved reading a
great deal of 18th-century works, and fewer works (aside from
non-fiction and pulp magazine stories) from his own time.
> >By contrast the stultifying environment
> >that produces Professors RARELY also produces artists.
> Be sure to tell C.S. Lewis, T.S. Eliot, J.R.R. Tolkien or E.F.
>Benson that. Never mind James and umpteen other writers whose
>names didn't immediately pop into my mind.
We can cite counter-examples, true, but the truth of the matter is
that academic disciplines train for a style of writing largely
inaccessible to outsiders. Some are able to negotiate their
way past this, others are not.
--
Yrs.,
Daniel Harms
http://www.necfiles.com/