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Post by Knygathin on Mar 23, 2012 22:27:55 GMT
I don't respond well to cruelty and sadism, so I think I'll leave Charles Birkin alone.
I think my perspective on horror and ghostliness is more romantic. I want beauty, beauty tinged with creepiness. It's fantasy.
Besides, I already have a very long reading list ahead of me. Of "ghostly", subtle stories; And that's fine, it's an aesthetic pleasure leading to transcendental experiences with the best writers's work. I only wish there had been some good explicit monsters too!, of the Cthulhu variety that cosmically warps your perspective and makes your mind swim and nauseaous with horror. But I intend to reread Lovecraft, so I think it's alright. I will never have a lack of reading material anyhow.
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Post by Knygathin on Mar 23, 2012 22:45:49 GMT
Unfortunately I am a slow reader. Unlike most of you, I would guess. So I am very selective and careful in deciding what to read. I must be. I can't possibly "read them all", let alone revisit my favorites. Some of you may recognize a certain frustration: www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVioeJFiUoU
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Post by monker on Mar 24, 2012 2:19:00 GMT
However, why should horror be the only 'genre' divorced from the very term? Why is 'horror' the only genre (apart from the dubious notion of the 'love' story) to be based on an emotion, and if so, why restrict yourself to just one? The only thing I agree with for sure is that a 'horror' story should never be benign but by the same token, there are subtle forms of malignancy that you couldn't really call 'horrific'. In essence, I'm more interested in non-horrific supernaturalism than I am in 'horror' as a specific emotion. Horror fiction, as I see it, has more to do with a slightly more sophisticated version of that fantastic 'childhood' fear than it has to 'appreciating' that I might develop a terminal illness or be obliterated in an atomic war. I'm not interested in nastyness for its own sake, I'm interested in strangeness. Certainly one key element is the inexplicable. Developing a terminal illness or being vapourised in a nuclear attack are certainly nasty, but they nevertheless make some sort of sense, at least on some level. One of M R James' five key ingredients for a good ghost story is "no explanation of the machinery", although I'd extend this to the horror genre generally. The sense of things happening that are not just malign but also happening for no readily apparent reason gives them a kind of relentlessness that increases the feeling of threat. BUT... A sense of things hanging together in some way as well as a sense of being able to exercise a reasonable degree of control over events (and hence that there's at least the possibility of influencing them) are both pre-requisites for mental equilibrium. If these are removed, particularly by something malign & threatening for no reason at all, then some very existential emotions can emerge. What shrinks term "psychotic anxiety", namely the thoughts & feelings related to the fear that the very fabric of reality (external &/or internal) is dis-integrating. And that's where Horror is... Very well put but I guess my point was a bit simpler than that; I just tend to balk whenever someone indigently hints that 'horror' is an emotion and you can find it in SF and the non-supernatural. That is fair enough, in one respect, but in practice that usually means that the perfectly 'rational' idea of the supernatural as a genre in itself gets neglected. This is why you get these discussions about 'horror' versus 'ghost' stories and accusations of 'why isn't my horror collection horrific enough' or 'why does my ghost story book contain things that aren't ghosts'. I find that large, one-themed anthologies can outstay their welcome if you attempt to read all in one go, you need a change of pace, however, the reverse of that is that if I want to read a SF story I'll seek an anthology with that label or if I want to read a story about someone who murders his wife because she cooked his cakes the wrong way, I'll go to the 'crime' section. I find such things intrusive in my 'horror' collections. All in All, horror seems to be the most insecure and apologetic genre that there is.
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Mar 24, 2012 10:27:37 GMT
You know horror when you read it. It makes you go 'oh no!' Other things often have horrific elements but they are not horror.
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Post by monker on Mar 24, 2012 11:02:23 GMT
Point taken but which one of these is horror - The Silence of the Lambs or The Twilight Zone episode 'Walking Distance'?
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Post by pulphack on Mar 26, 2012 9:49:13 GMT
Either or both... by which I mean that because 'horror' fiction is about something that connects more directly to the emotions that say, a crime or SF text (as discussed above) it's actually much more to do with the inner workings of the individual mind than any other genre which can be broadly defined and has sets of characteristics that can be used as a template.
To me, The Birds (either story or film) is horror because I have a huge thing about birds, particularly pigeons. To someone else it may be nothing more than diverting.
Recently I said that it was odd I was on this board as I didn't like a lot of horror...let me qualify that. I don't find a lot of it horrifying, but I do like a lot of 'supernatural' and ghost stories as the idea of something other has always fascinated me. This is why I tend to find gory stuff dull (beyond a 'how did they manage that?' thing with movies). Mrs PH, who is not a horror fan per se, finds the gory stuff really horrifying as she has a thing about blood (which doesn't explain why she atches 'Embarrassing Bodies' but there you go...).
Shrink Proof explained what I'm tryign to say more concisely, I think, but my point (and I do have one) is that more than anything else 'horror' is about what's buried in your head (an axe?) and so is much more personal and therefore open to argument and interpretation than any other fictional genre that has a set of tropes to guide it.
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Post by Knygathin on May 10, 2012 19:36:11 GMT
After this thread, for some reason, annoyingly, I think of Robert Aickman and Charles Birkin in the same breath, bundling them together. Is there any rationale for that?
I guess it's because they are of the same generation, both educated into another profession than that of writing, and both had, more or less, a provocative anti-social personality.
Is one a greater writer than the other?
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on May 11, 2012 8:18:06 GMT
After this thread, for some reason, annoyingly, I think of Robert Aickman and Charles Birkin in the same breath, bundling them together. Is there any rationale for that? I guess it's because they are of the same generation, both educated into another profession than that of writing, and both had, more or less, a provocative anti-social personality. Is one a greater writer than the other? Have you read them?
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Post by Knygathin on May 11, 2012 10:49:01 GMT
Only one story by Aickman, which I enjoyed ultimately. I will continue with him after other books on my reading list. I am currently engulfed in masterful Nathaniel Hawthorne. Reading criticism, and listening to suggestions from readers on the Internet, has led to some of the best reading experiences of my life. And, after a round of suggestions well considered, each time, this approach has never failed me. When I was younger and had no similar guidance, I had to wade through piles of hogwash, gaudy garbage, to find a few glimmering genuine nuggets here and there. If possible, I wish to avoid wasting more time like that. You Jojo Lapin X led me, perhaps indirectly, to Robert Aickman. Thank you! He was an unlikely prospect, that I wouldn't have touched, if not overcoming my initial lack of attraction, and repellence to his aura. I imagine, if meeting him, that a heated, and possibly nasty conflict of personalities would have started immediately. Not so much a case of differing opinions, as of his eccentricity and emotional high-strung. My previous habit has been to choose authors with personalities I like, or whose opinions and perspectives I sympathize with and share. But it is exciting to overcome such primitive barriers, and widen the horizons. Read the ones you "dislike". It will temperate one's opinions, and even deepen them. I recently discovered a female author, feminist, communist, homosexual. Far from me. But she is interesting. In the case of Charles Birkin I don't know. I want quality literature, by great minds. That's the most important guideline for me. Not light or speculative entertainment; then I might as well turn on the abominable TV.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on May 11, 2012 11:09:42 GMT
In the case of Charles Birkin I don't know. I want quality literature, by great minds. That's the most important guideline for me. Not light or speculative entertainment; then I might as well turn on the abominable TV. It is unlikely that you will see anything on television that resembles the work of Birkin, unless it is a public safety message. Nevertheless, Birkin and Aickman are about as far apart as is conceivable, which shows that the rubric of "horror" is probably too broad to be useful.
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Post by Dr Strange on May 11, 2012 14:04:01 GMT
Only one story by Aickman, which I enjoyed ultimately. Which story was it? Others might disagree with me, but I find Aickman to have written many different kinds of stories (not all of which I've enjoyed) - some are relatively straight-forward, some are (to me) extremely obtuse. It is unlikely that you will see anything on television that resembles the work of Birkin, unless it is a public safety message.
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Post by cauldronbrewer on May 11, 2012 14:59:21 GMT
Which story was it? Others might disagree with me, but I find Aickman to have written many different kinds of stories (not all of which I've enjoyed) - some are relatively straight-forward, some are (to me) extremely obtuse. Agreed, though maybe you mean "obscure" there? I generally prefer the more straightforward Aickman stories. Among the ones I'd include in that category are "Ringing the Changes," "The Inner Room," "Wood," and "The Swords" (kind of hard to miss the subtext in that one, eh?). Having said that, I also liked "The Trains" even though I found it baffling.
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Post by Dr Strange on May 11, 2012 15:43:44 GMT
Agreed, though maybe you mean "obscure" there? Maybe. Maybe not. (That's me being obtuse... Or is it?) I generally prefer the more straightforward Aickman stories. Me too. There's often an added suspense when I read an Aickman story for the first time... as I wonder whether I am going to "get it" at the end.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on May 11, 2012 17:04:36 GMT
I generally prefer the more straightforward Aickman stories. I tend to prefer the "obtuse" ones. The thing about Aickman is that he was in total control of his craft and could have written anything he liked. What he frequently chose to do was to use his mastery of style and narrative to tell elegant, measured, conventionally civilized tales that just have something subtly wrong with them. This undermines the reader's sense of equilibrium so much more effectively than the approach of authors who think that to disturb, every aspect of a story has to be freaky and out there. I will mention no names. Oh well, Thomas Ligotti then.
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Post by cauldronbrewer on May 11, 2012 17:23:24 GMT
The thing about Aickman is that he was in total control of his craft and could have written anything he liked. What he frequently chose to do was to use his mastery of style and narrative to tell elegant, measured, conventionally civilized tales that just have something subtly wrong with them. This undermines the reader's sense of equilibrium so much more effectively than the approach of authors who think that to disturb, every aspect of a story has to be freaky and out there. I will mention no names. Oh well, Thomas Ligotti then. I grant everything that you've said. At the same time, I (like Dr. Strange, I'm guessing) feel a need to "get it," even if that's not the point--or even if it's actually impossible. I sometimes get the sense that Aickman's stories possess layers of meaning accessible only to him (or at least not to me).
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