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Post by andydecker on Nov 22, 2015 14:40:55 GMT
I loved Sara's blog. A pity that she stopped writing.
Maybe Jojo has there something. Systematicly collecting something seems to be more of an thing for men.
And in the case of Gothics I suspect this genre was even more ridiculed than vintage SF. There are still a lot of romantic novels published in the US, even for YA. But Gothics? Just noticed the odd one. Also Ebooks. There a few, especially from bestseller writers like Victoria Holt. But compared to the flood of reprints in other genres this is not much.
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Post by dem bones on Nov 22, 2015 14:58:30 GMT
Would you say they are average women? I think not. Too right I wouldn't. There's no such creature. Maybe Jojo has there something. Systematicly collecting something seems to be more of an thing for men. That does often seem to be the case, but it isn't true in my family.
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Post by pulphack on Nov 22, 2015 17:42:24 GMT
I dunno, Dem, Jojo may have a point - certainly I have met very few women, even amongst the land of punk rock and paperbacks, that have been as anal as their male counterparts. It may be nurture as much as nature (especially for our generation), but as a generalisation I've found that so. Which is possibly a good thing, actually.
Andy - the lack of internet presence for romance and gothics generally may be partly due to the male/female thing, but I also suspect that as genres they have had a more diffuse presence and content, which inspires less devotion. SF and its ilk were minority interests with a strong focus in their day, and in a different way you can say this of crime fiction, which has very specific aims in its story telling (and is also packed with female writers and devotees, thus blowing my first paragraph out of the water! Oh well...). Every bloody book going has a romantic sub-plot or storyline going on somewhere - Dickens, Austen, etc, through to modern lit and general fiction.
As regarding the diffuse nature of gothic lists - imagine being an editor and having X amount of slots to fill per year and no bloody books that fitted unless you tweaked what was on your desk! Bet it was like that... after all, what exactly IS a gothic??
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Post by pulphack on Nov 23, 2015 8:36:13 GMT
Record collectors and dealers, too - hardly ever a female face to be seen at those few fairs that survive the internet age. I used to know quite a lot of dealers and collectors, and they put me off being a serious collector of anything. I can think of one in particular who should have had his picture next to the definitions of 'anal' and 'autism spectrum' in any dictionary. There is definitely something odd about certain sorts of bloke... Christ, what have you started, Jojo - some awful buried memories of the 1990's coming back...
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Post by dem bones on Nov 23, 2015 10:30:52 GMT
Record collectors and dealers, too - hardly ever a female face to be seen at those few fairs that survive the internet age. I used to know quite a lot of dealers and collectors, and they put me off being a serious collector of anything. I can think of one in particular who should have had his picture next to the definitions of 'anal' and 'autism spectrum' in any dictionary. There is definitely something odd about certain sorts of bloke... Christ, what have you started, Jojo - some awful buried memories of the 1990's coming back... I bow to your superior knowledge of the record fairs, Mr. Hack, and will throw in that there were very few female faces to be seen at the Pulp & Paperback equivalents we attended. But I can think of one glaring anomalie; the vampire "scene" of the 'nineties (no fringe involvement now, so don't know if it's still the case). Of the scores of 'zines I'm aware of, vast majority were founded, edited, written and illustrated by women. And, trust me, those ladies could collect. The wonderfully named Jules Ghoul, editor of Vampire Archives, obsessively catalogued every bit of vampire related tat that hit the market, be it film, video, CD, novel, short, zine, scary skull (it glows in the dark), hilarious 'Count Dracula - Available for Blood drives!' bumper sticker, Ingrid Pitt "Fangs for the Mammories!" greeting card, blood red vampire soap (still have mine), Bela Lugosi key-fob, Anne Rice bogroll, etc., etc. Then there was Margaret L. Carter's state-of-the-art bibliography, The Vampire In Literature (UMI, 1999), as royally plundered by Daniel Seitler for his own listing at back of Otto Penzler's The Vampire Archive[/i] (Quercus, 2009). Should anybody be interested in a crash course, maybe the nearest we have to a comprehensive listing of the day's vampire-goth-fetish-pagan publications is Mick Mercer's The Hex Files: The Goth Bible (Batsford, 1996).
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Post by andydecker on Nov 23, 2015 18:46:06 GMT
As regarding the diffuse nature of gothic lists - imagine being an editor and having X amount of slots to fill per year and no bloody books that fitted unless you tweaked what was on your desk! Bet it was like that... after all, what exactly IS a gothic??
Now THAT is a good question. I don't have a clue. The term has been hijacked so often - like Southern Gothic - that this is a broad field.
I find the evolution of the Gothic Romance particulary fascinating. From Gas Light the stage play to DuMauriers Rebecca to the flood of 70s paperbacks. Aside the romantic subplot and the woman in peril you can't pinpoint the plot.
Writers like Victoria Holt were often on the NYT-Bestsellerlist, these books outsold a lot of other pulp.
Same goes for the coverart. Why these tons of covers with a woman, a hulking house and a light in the window? Of course there used to be trends in cover motives, but even westerns didn't have that formulaic covers. (Or maybe they did, a horse, a colt a cowboy, still it feels different.)
And in comparison with the crime novel the gothic (like the western) couldn't adapt enough to succeed. When exactly did the market die? Remarkedly here in Germany the gothic kind of survived. The mostly translated paperbacks died a long time ago, but there used to be half a dozen heftromane with original novels. Hundreds of titles. There are still two lines in this dying market, doing mostly reprints.
I think you are right, pulp, that those editors had the be a lot more flexibel like their collegues across the hall doing sf or something.
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Post by pulphack on Nov 24, 2015 5:39:33 GMT
Dem - that's interesting about the Vampire scene; it casts a whole new light on the argument, and I can see why you don't see it the same way. What was it about vampires that inspired women and yet not picking up a mint copy of Atomic Rooster's 'In Hearing Of'? I am, of course, aware that I have answered my own question... So is it simply that women's autistic spectrum comes out in things that generally blokes don't notice? At the risk of stereotyping (which I am, but it's that nuture/social thing) do blokes notice obsessions with shoes, Barbie and perfumes, whereas cluttering up the house with old bound copies of 'Gaiety - A Magazine Of Humour' (it is, but only vaguely) and as many Vertigo spirals as the bank balance will stretch to is somewhat more intrusive on the soft furnishings?
Andy - well, indeed! Apart from the woman in peril and possibly a historical angle (which I suppose takes up back to the the likes of Monk Lewis, etc as a source), gothic is such a broad church that as long as you can feasibly shoehorn a cover with a flimsy-nightie attired model, a house and only one working light bulb, then you're away. I can see it originating with some editor trying to fashion a line that his salesman could get into stores with a recurring order similar to that enjoyed by SF and Crime, with similarly identifying characteristics for the rushed and casual shopper, only to find that he's made a rod for his own back as his cigar chewing chairman (who, like all comics and paperback chairman, has no links whatever to Italian/American societies with an interest in the black economy) demands more of the same, and he finds that his invented genre has no writers but a host of other editors being pressured to repeat his success? Which is why, I guess, some writers who were less obviously generic could cross over - Victoria Holt being the Queen of this as what with her secondary career as Jean Plaidy she had the historical womens fiction market sewn up!
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Post by jamesdoig on Nov 24, 2015 7:47:28 GMT
I can see it originating with some editor trying to fashion a line that his salesman could get into stores with a recurring order similar to that enjoyed by SF and Crime I reckon that's right - it's a marketing phenomenon. You've just got to look at the Paperback Library Gothics - I mean it includes Night Has A Thousand Eyes and the Moonstone! They grabbed anything that some idiot thought fit the bill. Paperback publishers were always watching each other for trends - if one started a gothic line others would soon follow. Even Horwitz had one, and there'll be an article in the next PF on that.
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Post by dem bones on Nov 24, 2015 8:11:06 GMT
Dem - that's interesting about the Vampire scene; it casts a whole new light on the argument, and I can see why you don't see it the same way. What was it about vampires that inspired women and yet not picking up a mint copy of Atomic Rooster's 'In Hearing Of'? I am, of course, aware that I have answered my own question... So is it simply that women's autistic spectrum comes out in things that generally blokes don't notice? At the risk of stereotyping (which I am, but it's that nuture/social thing) do blokes notice obsessions with shoes, Barbie and perfumes, whereas cluttering up the house with old bound copies of 'Gaiety - A Magazine Of Humour' (it is, but only vaguely) and as many Vertigo spirals as the bank balance will stretch to is somewhat more intrusive on the soft furnishings? Well I'm certainly not stupid enough to try and speak on behalf of womankind (always a fatal mistake), or indeed, anyone else, but will note that the bride of dem's obsessions are of far greater practical use than mine (very similar to your own, give or take the odd Martian Dance bootleg CD. It's just our favoured reading material differs). Was trying to work it out last night. It's not like I've a huge number of writing credits to my name, but there were bits and pieces throughout the 'nineties for things like Nocturnal Ecstasy, Poison Coffin, S.O.Und, The Goth/ Udolpho .... If a wired, off-the-cuff intro counts, then the first male editor I "worked" under was Filthy Steve. Mr. Fanatic is only the second and, most likely, last. So yeah, that could well have coloured my perspective. But I still reckon it's doing everyone an injustice if we're too quick to pigeon-hole ("Oh, that's an exclusively male/ female trip," etc). I reckon that's right - it's a marketing phenomenon. You've just got to look at the Paperback Library Gothics - I mean it includes Night Has A Thousand Eyes and the Moonstone! They grabbed anything that some idiot thought fit the bill. Paperback publishers were always watching each other for trends - if one started a gothic line others would soon follow. Even Horwitz had one, and there'll be an article in the next PF on that. Will look forward to that. Did Frank Bernier provide any of the cover artwork?
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Post by jamesdoig on Nov 24, 2015 9:25:17 GMT
Will look forward to that. Did Frank Bernier provide any of the cover artwork? [/quote] No, I don't think so - a bit too late for him. They have the standard gothic covers though.
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Post by andydecker on Nov 24, 2015 18:43:54 GMT
dem: who was it who said vampires are the Star Trek of horror? But all snark aside, now that the fangs are loosing their popularity, I wonder what will be next. Not many playthings left in the box.
Pulp: you are spot on. It is a shame that not one of those editors wrote memoirs. Or the many men who wrote under woman pseudonyms. In hindsight that seems to be a bit cynical. I never bought an original, so I don't know, but did they they do those fake biografies? Marilyn Ross is a schoolteacher who trains horses in her spare time and so on?
James: looking forward to that article. But Woolrich as a gothic? Unbelievable.
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Post by dem bones on Nov 24, 2015 19:02:40 GMT
dem: who was it who said vampires are the Star Trek of horror? But all snark aside, now that the fangs are loosing their popularity, I wonder what will be next. Not many playthings left in the box. The post-Romero zombie revival of recent years is the nearest I've seen to vampire mania in terms of overkill. There's still life (as it were) in the walking dead, but you can see they're heading the same way. Mummies are quietly acquitting themselves well in background but not sure they're cut out for dreaded next big bandwagon status. Is Paranormal Romance the bastard love-child of the Gothics and the reluctant/ "sensitive" vampires that were suddenly all over the place in the wake of Anne Rice? Or is the genre an entirely new phenomenon? James: looking forward to that article. But Woolrich as a gothic? Unbelievable. No more so than Sydney Horler and Arthur Machen!
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Post by dem bones on Apr 17, 2016 18:47:23 GMT
Vic Ghidalia & Roger Elwood - Horror Hunters: Nightmare Tales of the Dead (McFadden, 1971: Manor, 1975) For August Derleth: Those Who Knew Him Will Know WhyAlgernon Blackwood - Ancient Sorceries William Hope Hodgson - The Gateway Of The Monster H. P. Lovecraft - The Unnamable Robert E. Howard - The Thing On The Roof August Derleth - Mr. Ames Devil Fritz Leiber, jr. - In The X-Ray Theodore Sturgeon - One Foot And The Grave Robert Bloch - I Kiss Your ShadowBlurb: A TERRIFYING JOURNEY INTO THE UNKNOWN .... If you have ever seen the shadow of the indescribable then you will understand that there are more things in Heaven . . . in Hell . . . and on earth than most men dream Join the HORROR HUNTERS on a haunting journey into the world of monstrous creatures, nameless beasts and evil things that find no rest in death."Exclusive UK Distributors David Gold & Son. (Holdings)" What? The David Gold as in Stepney-born serial chairman of Rustler/ Ann Summers/ Sunday Sport West Ham United repute? Robert Bloch - I Kiss Your Shadow: ( MFSF, April 1956). If pressman Joe Elliott thought wife Donna was a "succubus" in life, wait until he's preyed upon by the undead version. Elliott confides his fear that the late Donna haunts him still to brother-in-law, our narrator, who suggests an appointment with Dr. Partridge, one of very few sympathetic psychiatrists in Bloch's fiction. Only when Elliott is implicated in the inexplicable "suicide" of the shrink does narrator realise that Donna's death - her car went over a ravine - was no accident. Elliott makes a clean breast of the murder but maintains that it was his dead wife pushed Partridge from his office window. He has come to accept that he'll never be free of the clinging, ever-loving spectre, and so it proves. But there is still a nasty shock in store. August Derleth - Mr. Ames' Devil ( Fantastic Adventures, August 1942). Quiet, unassuming Mr. Sherwood Ames, the lesser partner in a legal firm, conjures a demon just to see if it can be done. Unfortunately Zebub the inch-high imp is a stickler for Personal Devil Union rules and refuses to return to the pit without first committing an evil deed or three. As the death toll rises, Mr. Ames turns to a psychic researcher for help. John Kendrick Bangs' A Houseboat On The Styx is mentioned in passing. I usually like Derleth's non-Mythos stories but this one hasn't dated well.
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Post by pulphack on Apr 18, 2016 4:49:31 GMT
Indeed that David Gold. The Gold family money - and David Sullivan's, in effect - is built initially not on Anne Summers, but on cheap pulp. Dave and Ralph's dad (Ralph is the younger brother, who retired early about twenty years back) Godfrey Gold was a newspaper book and magazine wholesaler who made a lot of money out of early skin mags. He got into production as well, buying out Roberts & Vintner, which gave him Hank Janson, Compact Books, and bizarrely New Worlds and Mike Moorcock as a by-product. Cheap imported paperbacks were a large part of the business late sixties/early seventies as they were incredibly low priced to buy in as ballast from ships, and so could be banged out at a tidy profit. Anne Summers was bought by Dave from Kim Waterfield (who named it after his secretary Annice Summers, apparently) - now he was an interesting bloke, being a Robin Cook/Derek Raymond type, a posh boy who liked the naughty criminal life, and was a one-time boyfriend of Diana Dors. Anyway, Old Godfrey sounds like a proper East End 'businessman', so Dave probably ate Kim for breakfast and spat out the bones. Sullivan enters the picture as an accountancy grad who saw a gap in the market for serious sleaze, and went to the Golds as distributors. Dave saw money and a kindred spirit, and the rest is the Olympic Stadium at dodgy bargain prices. Ralph, on the other hand, was not like Dave and Godfrey, and from his book seemed rather glad to get out. Waterfield, by the way, nicked the idea of Anne Summers from a German chain, also female-named, which he saw while on 'holiday' in Germany away from some East End chums who were a little annoyed with him. Apparently.
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Post by dem bones on Apr 18, 2016 12:19:14 GMT
Indeed that David Gold. The Gold family money - and David Sullivan's, in effect - is built initially not on Anne Summers, but on cheap pulp. Dave and Ralph's dad (Ralph is the younger brother, who retired early about twenty years back) Godfrey Gold was a newspaper book and magazine wholesaler who made a lot of money out of early skin mags. He got into production as well, buying out Roberts & Vintner, which gave him Hank Janson, Compact Books, and bizarrely New Worlds and Mike Moorcock as a by-product. Cheap imported paperbacks were a large part of the business late sixties/early seventies as they were incredibly low priced to buy in as ballast from ships, and so could be banged out at a tidy profit. Anne Summers was bought by Dave from Kim Waterfield (who named it after his secretary Annice Summers, apparently) - now he was an interesting bloke, being a Robin Cook/Derek Raymond type, a posh boy who liked the naughty criminal life, and was a one-time boyfriend of Diana Dors. Anyway, Old Godfrey sounds like a proper East End 'businessman', so Dave probably ate Kim for breakfast and spat out the bones. Sullivan enters the picture as an accountancy grad who saw a gap in the market for serious sleaze, and went to the Golds as distributors. Dave saw money and a kindred spirit, and the rest is the Olympic Stadium at dodgy bargain prices. Ralph, on the other hand, was not like Dave and Godfrey, and from his book seemed rather glad to get out. Waterfield, by the way, nicked the idea of Anne Summers from a German chain, also female-named, which he saw while on 'holiday' in Germany away from some East End chums who were a little annoyed with him. Apparently. Thanks for the confirmation and condensed history, Mr. Hack. David Gold's 546 page autobiography, Solid Gold: The Ultimate Rags To Riches Story is available as a free download HERE. Chapter 10, 'Hank Janson To The Rescue' sheds some light on his first business adventure - a seedy, proto- Lovejoys pulp/ adult bookshop on the Charing Cross Road (it's the only chapter I've read, and that last night when I chanced upon the book after posting the above). Came from Stepney originally. Seems he wasn't a huge fan of his old man. Of course, his colleague, Karren Brady, has enjoyed literary success with her steamy, disgustingly entertaining football soap, United!.
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