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Post by dem bones on Jan 31, 2009 19:58:58 GMT
Roald Dahl’s Book Of Ghost Stories (Penguin, 1985: Originally Jonathan Cape, 1983)  cover illustration by Stuart Robinson
L. P. Hartley - W.S.
Rosemary Timperley - Harry
Cynthia Asquith - The Corner Shop
E. F. Benson - In The Tube
Rosemary Timperley - Christmas Meeting
Jonas Lie - Elias And The Draug
A. M. Burrage - Playmates
Robert Aickman - Ringing The Changes
Mary Treadgold - The Telephone
J. S. Le Fanu - The Ghost Of A Hand
‘Ex- Private X’ (A. M. Burrage) - The Sweeper
Edith Wharton - Afterward
Richard Middleton - On The Brighton Road
F. Marion Crawford - The Upper BerthBack cover blurb "Spookiness is the real purpose of the ghost story. It should give you the creeps and disturb your thoughts ..."Who better to hand-pick the ultimate in spine-chillers than Roald Dahl, a writer whose own stories have enthralled and teased and twisted the imaginations of millions?
Here are fourteen of his favourite ghost stories A selection of classic chillers, chosen by the master of the macabre - including The Corner Shop, In The Tube, The Telephone and The Upper Berth - each so tantalizingly terrifying that you might not have the guts to read them at allDrawn from a shortlist of 24 stories Dahl had compiled for a proposed television series, Ghost Time, in 1958, only for the show to be scrapped because the pilot episode - a dramatisation of E. F. Benson’s The Hanging Of Alfred Wadham - was “a disaster”. Having read “just about every ghost story that had ever been written” in researching the show, Roald was of the opinion that the vast majority are badly written junk so its perhaps worth noting the few he singles out for praise in his introduction: Clemence Dane’s Spinster’s Rest, Mary Oliphant’s The Open Door, Amelia B. Edwards’ The Four-Fifteen Express, Cynthia Asquith’s God Grante That She Lye Stille and unidentified stories by Charles Dickens and John Collier. For all his visits to the British Museum Library, Dahl, like Robert Aickman, seems to have resurrected most of his material from Lady Cynthia Asquith’s Ghost Book series.
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Post by jonathan122 on Feb 1, 2009 1:02:52 GMT
A fairly dull selection, made incomparably odder by Dahl's introduction, in which he implicitly declares that MR James is crap, tells us that there were no decent ghost stories written between 1958 (when the list was compiled) and 1983 (when the book was first published), ponders why it is that women are so good at writing ghost stories and children's books, but so bad at other branches of the arts, reveals his list of the top ten greatest female Russian artists, and expresses disbelief that a film implicitly criticising aspects of Catholic faith should be banned from 1950s American TV.
LP Hartley - WS: An odd choice to kick off a book so heavily indebted to "traditional" ghost story practices, but Hartley's tale of a writer haunted by his own creations is a forerunner of Beckett and Potter, and blackly comic fun in its own right.
Rosemary Timperley - Harry As good an example of the classic ghost story as has been written in the 20th century, you can tell why Dahl was so enthusiastic about this story. A definite classic.
Cynthia Asquith - The Corner Shop: Really boring. You've read it before, even if you don't think you have.
EF Benson - In the Tube: If you can get past the rambling intro, in which Benson tries to lay some sort of scientific background for his spooks, this is pretty great, and certainly easier to swallow than "The Hanging of Alfred Wadham", which informs us that it's perfectly ok to let an innocent man be hanged for murder, because God will sort it out in the after-life.
Rosemary Timperley - Christmas Meeting: A chilly, very short time-lapse story - excellent, and it would probably have adapted very well to TV, but I'm not convinced it's one of the 24 best ghost stories ever written...
Jonas Lie - Elias and the Draug: Dahl acknowledges that this Norwegian tale loses something in the translation, and I honestly don't see anything that great about it.
Robert Aickman - Ringing the Changes: I could spend all day on this. Aickman's zombie classic is probably one of his most accessible stories, and it holds the attention throughout. A small cast of characters is wielded expertly, and, in true Aickman style, the ending sends you back to the beginning to try and pick up on what you missed first time around.
Mary Treadgold - The Telephone: Don't know much about Ms Treadgold, but this is a fairly straight-forward, decently-done ghost story.
Edith Wharton - Afterward: I really hate this story, and indeed all of Wharton's work, whether supernatural or not. Obviously this should be enough to alert you to the fact that I don't know what I'm talking about, but any dissenters can send their messages to ihateedithwharton.com.
Richard Middleton - On the Brighton Road: A great little story, but I can't really see how it could have been extended to a full half-hour tv programme. Still, excellent stuff, from the criminally underrated Middleton, who probably deserves a Wordsworth collected edition.
F. Marion Crawford - The Upper Berth: Well, it's ok. Maybe I'm missing something...
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Feb 1, 2009 1:47:06 GMT
Can I be the first to say that's a great review
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Post by dem bones on Feb 1, 2009 16:33:59 GMT
Thanks for that, jonathan. To my mind, it's Dahl's curmudgeonly introduction that rescues the book, his selection being, if not exactly dull then disappointingly safe (i really don't believe he selflessly spent countless hours poring over obscure tomes in the British Library for our benefit: a quick run through some Cynthia Asquith anthologies and a Century book would've saved him a trip). Robert Aickman seems to have shared his 'everything post 1958 is awful' point of view and, according to Chetwynd-Hayes, it was Aickman's disdain for then contemporary spook stuff that saw Fontana replace him as editor of their Ghost books.
Richard Middleton is a terrific suggestion for the Wordsworth treatment, and as he died in 1911 (sadly by his own hand) the '70 years dead' rule shouldn't interfere. His posthumous collection The Ghost Ship from 1924, padded out with the best stories from Gawsworth's Thrills would be tidy.
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