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Post by dem on Oct 27, 2007 19:11:30 GMT
It just isn't Vault until we have a 'does anybody have any information on Alex White ?' thread, so I've cannibalised this from the old forum.
I've never come across any of Alex White's work outside the seven stories featured in the Pan Horrors, or rather, the one story she rewrote over and over. The plot is essentially this.
Man destroys woman in the most absolutely dreadful fashion imaginable.
That's about it.
Off hand, I can't think of any outbreaks of the "supernatural" in her work, but oh, is it effective. Never Talk To Strangers from #7 troubled me so when I first read it that it was ages before I could revisit it. And just when I thought Never Talk ... was the last word in grim I encountered The Clinic in #14.
White is the only author I can think of who writes as she's if consciously emulating Charles Birkin at his A Lovely Bunch Of Coconuts bleakest (I've been assured by none other than Mike Ashley that Birkin is innocent of all involvement) though like as not she'd never heard of him.
Anyhow, if you feel like cheering yourself up no end, here's the roll of shame.
Never Talk to Strangers (PH #7)
The Clinic (PH #14)
On The Box’ (PH #15)
To Fatima (PH #17)
Cynthia And Charles (PH #21)
The Dogs (PH #23)
Chatterbox (PH #26)
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Post by footeater on Feb 1, 2009 1:19:03 GMT
Yes... except it wasn't just a man who destroyed the girl in The Clinic, was it? The stepmother and stepsister and the nurse all had a hand in that atrocity. Haven't read the later Whites so I can't comment.
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Post by dem on Feb 1, 2009 9:00:53 GMT
This is very true, my hungry friend. Better if I amend that to:
woman is destroyed in the most absolutely dreadful fashion imaginable
- though I think The Clinic is the exception to the rule.
Whether by accident or design, Never Talk To Strangers was an inspired choice as closing story in Pan 7 as it ushers in the no nonsense, mindless sadism phase that many remember the books for. Some rather pompous fellow, reviewing/ slaughtering a Charles Birkin selection from Midnight House, compares the great man's work to Van Thal's "Pan Horror stories which we've all grown out of" or words to that effect and you can guess Alex White or Alan Temperley were there or there abouts in his thinking when he penned his unfortunate outburst.
Anyway, good to see Alex White rightly back in her rightful place at the top of the Pan Horror pile! A total Vault heroine if ever there was. I'm almost pleased that the 'who was Alex White?' puzzle has yet to be solved. It seems fitting that she remain a woman of mystery.
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Post by thecoffinflies on Apr 11, 2009 10:18:02 GMT
But why is it so sure Alex White is female?
I've looked around and all I can find is the agreement that it affects how you read the stories, whether a man or a woman wrote them. But where's the proof?
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Post by allthingshorror on Apr 11, 2009 10:28:50 GMT
But why is it so sure Alex White is female? I've looked around and all I can find is the agreement that it affects how you read the stories, whether a man or a woman wrote them. But where's the proof? Pick up the 14th Pan Book of Horror Stories and look at the acknowledgement pages. Then come back to us on that one Coffin  |
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Post by thecoffinflies on Apr 22, 2009 18:58:15 GMT
It's a strong argument.  But not completely conclusive, if 'alex white' is a pseudonym. Aahh, I'm just bein' silly now. In all honesty, the stories have a ring of female (rather than male) misogyny to them. Kind of Pat Highsmith to the Nth degree. Except better than Highsmith, naturally, but then most people are... |
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Post by cavalorn on Jul 25, 2009 22:56:10 GMT
Demonik, on rereading The Clinic just now, I thought Alex White's style was powerfully reminiscent of Tanith Lee. Imagine my surprise when I discovered her first pubished work was 'Eustace' from the Ninth Pan Book of Horror Stories!
Alex appears in Pan Horror only two years before Tanith. The themes of cruelty and persecution are very familiar.
The more I think about it, the more certain I feel that they are the same person. Phrases like 'a florid, paunchy man with spaniel eyes' are pure Tanith Lee. Even the name, 'Alex White', is androgynous and mask-like, which again reminds one of Tanith's work.
But if it is her, I'd just as soon not know for certain. I've just spent a rather sleepless night thinking this over, and perhaps Alex White should remain an enigma.
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Post by carolinec on Jul 26, 2009 12:46:08 GMT
Isn't Tanith Lee going to be one of the guests of honour at next year's World Horror Con in Brighton? Might be a good question to ask her: Are you Alex White? ;D
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Post by allthingshorror on Jul 26, 2009 15:09:37 GMT
I interviewed Tanith last year and asked her if she was responsible for any other PBoH stories, and she said that she wasn't. Eustace was and is her only story for the series as far as she is concerned.
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Post by thasaidon on Oct 6, 2020 13:50:04 GMT
I don't know how interested people still are in Alex White, but it's been something that's been bugging me for a while, so I can now clear up most of the mystery. I have the text of all the stories in Pan Horror 7 and Pan Horror 14 that I put through stylometric analysis, and to cut a long story short, Dulcie Gray comes out as the best match for both of the Alex White stories (Never Talk to Strangers and The Clinic) by several measures. That was further confirmed when I noticed similar phrasing in several of the stories. A description of Henry from Fur Brooch by Dulcie Gray A description of Ellen from The Clinic A description of Peter from Never Talk to Strangers. I hadn't realised that Johnny Mains had published some of his own research in "Back from the Dead", so I read that next and found out that he had spoken to Dulcie Gray who had confirmed that she wrote one of the stories but that Alex White was a house name used by several different authors and that he thought Conrad Hill wrote The Clinic. The Conrad Hill attribution surprised me, because to me it seemed that they were in very different styles and I had already thought of it as being written by Gray. I went looking for more information, and found that Boston University holds a collection of Gray's manuscripts, mentioning that there are some written under the pseudonym of Alex White: archives.bu.edu/collections/collection?id=121864and on looking at the itinerary of the collection archives.bu.edu/finding-aid/finding_aid_121864.pdfI found the following I still have yet to confirm anything about "On the Box", "Cynthia and Charles" or "Chatterbox", but I would guess that she wrote those as well, and that the group authorship theory is incorrect.  In memory of Dulcie Gray, a.ka. Alex White, queen of the sadistic horror short. |
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Post by Swampirella on Oct 6, 2020 14:00:56 GMT
Thanks for an informative post; I'm a fan of Dulcie Grey, under whatever name she writes.
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Post by andydecker on Oct 6, 2020 17:02:33 GMT
Thanks for the work! Very good literary detective effort. I like Gray's stories a lot, and "The Clinic" is a classic.
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Post by dem on Oct 6, 2020 19:31:13 GMT
Very well done, Thasaidon!
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Post by johnnymains on Oct 7, 2020 7:21:50 GMT
This is excellent news. I'm thrilled that I got the authorship of Alex White completely wrong for 'The Clinic' and a part of me really wanted it to be Conrad Hill - and when he didn't correct me when I sent his contributor's copy of Back From The Dead to him in 2010 - I thought I was correct in my assumptions. I'm very happy to have another hunch proven right and that I managed to wheadle some of the truth out of Dulcie during a phone call where she was very frail and unable to remember a lot. I did suspect that she might have written more than one but - and this next error is on me, I asked Dulcie a leading question: "Do you think Alex White was used by other authors apart from you?" and she said "Yes." That was the reason I always thought 'Chatterbox' was Rosemary Timperley as she had 2 stories in that volume already.
Brilliant research on your part - and this is what it's all about, isn't it? I'm glad to have part of my research proven right and some proven wrong. I was starting out from nothing back in those days - no academia, no research skills and mainly winging it - but I'm still very proud of that essay. Have learnt a lot since then!
Thank you very much for putting to bed Alex White once and for all. And I'm bloody kicking myself that I didn't think about going to Dulcie's papers myself although I suspect I would have got finally round to it in the next twenty years on a rainy day. If I ever update the Herbert van Thal biography, I'll make sure that your sterling detective work is mentioned.
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Post by johnnymains on Mar 11, 2022 19:53:07 GMT
Well, I am updating the van Thal biography. I say updating - am completely gutting it and re-writing it. Have found his archives in about three or four locations. So it got me to thinking, what did the MS for the Clinic look like? I got in touch with Boston University, and a few months later...
If further proof were ever needed
The name change.
and a sample of Dulcie's handwriting
Thanks to Ryan H at Boston University Library
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