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Post by ramseycampbell on Jun 25, 2010 11:51:59 GMT
Meanwhile at Probert Towers our 'adventures in Blackwood' have covered: Secret Worship - The ghosts of German monk schoolteachers are worshipping Asmodelius at the out of the way castle-like boarding school our narrator decides to pay a visit to out of nostagia for the...er..discipline (at least that's what it say here). He's welcomed as a guest but not allowed to leave as it gradually becomes apparent that he's the next sacrifice. I wondered if this might have influenced Aickman (by God he gets everywhere) and Ramsey Campbell, actually. I'd certainly read it and liked it (in the Dorothy Sayers anthology series) when I was at primary school, and later in the Dover book.
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Post by dem bones on Jun 25, 2010 12:11:28 GMT
hi Ramsey, apologies to pitch in with such a stupid question, but just on the off-chance that you see this -
one of the Scared Stiff stories that fascinates me is The Other Woman; Phil is haunted by the girl with odd eyes (one blue, one brown) he painted from imagination for the cover of a lurid pulp novel entitled Throttle. it's a big favourite of mine but the "fascinating" part is, i am almost sure i've seen a vintage paperback cover featuring an odd-eyed strangulation victim, possibly on a Hodder & Staughton yellowback? or is my mind playing tricks.
thanks for joining our forum by the way and i hope you enjoy your time with us.
Blackwood: i see Lord P. is fast-approaching psychic vampire outing (of sorts) The Transfer which, i must admit, i didn't expect to see in the Dover edition, but is another story of his that really worked for me. The better known Glamour Of The Snow struck me as a concise, more traditional ghost story and i certainly found it beautiful in my teens. i really have to have a rematch with him in the not too distant.
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Post by ramseycampbell on Jun 25, 2010 12:44:37 GMT
hi Ramsey, apologies to pitch in with such a stupid question, but just on the off-chance that you see this - one of the Scared Stiff stories that fascinates me is The Other Woman; Phil is haunted by the girl with odd eyes (one blue, one brown) he painted from imagination for the cover of a lurid pulp novel entitled Throttle. it's a big favourite of mine but the "fascinating" part is, i am almost sure i've seen a vintage paperback cover featuring an odd-eyed strangulation victim, possibly on a Hodder & Staughton yellowback? or is my mind playing tricks. No, it's me playing tricks with your mind... Seriously, I don't recall the cover, but perhaps my subconscious did. I had the awful realisation recently when I reread A Gun for Sale that in The Count of Eleven I'd echoed (= pinched from) Greene without realising.
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Post by dem bones on Jun 25, 2010 12:59:52 GMT
Ah, thank you for putting me out of my misery. Sort of.
It's likely i glimpsed a paperback on a stall and, after reading your story, my addled brain provided the cover illustration with a pair of mismatched eyes. Will still keep looking though!
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Post by Dr Strange on Jun 25, 2010 14:07:04 GMT
I'm presuming I've read the two 'greats' now so my expectations are lowered for anything else of his Maybe the only other one I've read that comes close to "The Willows" and "The Wendigo" is "The Man Whom The Trees Loved". Although a good case could be made for saying it's not really "horror" at all (and it has a strong mystical element that would normally put me right off - but somehow doesn't in this instance), it's another one of his pagan/nature stories and so is likely to appeal if you enjoyed the others. The "John Silence" stories all suffer from his didacticism (even worse - his "occult theories"), but are OK in small doses.
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Post by Johnlprobert on Jun 27, 2010 21:06:50 GMT
Ancient Sorceries - Arthur Vezin decides to try something spontaneous for once in his life & gets off his train at a small village in France, despite the rather garbled Gallic warning of one of his co-passengers. Once there things proceed very slowly indeed, and by the time we get to the Machenesque 'Dance of the Sorcerors' sleep may have claimed those with less stamina. The village may or may not be possessed by witches with the power to transform into cats - we don't really know, and neither does John Silence, to whom this tale is related and who has the job of wrapping everything up at the end in the most unsatisfactory and anticlimactic way possible.
I'm probably being a bit hard on this but it does go on a bit for its 57 pages, and the inclusion of the good if rather ineffectual Dr Silence does seem a bit pointless.
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Post by andydecker on Jun 29, 2010 10:16:01 GMT
Here are the first books of the german Blackwood. All by the same publisher Suhrkamp, who was - and is - mostly a publisher of high end literature. (In brackets is the new title, if the publsiher didn´t use the original title) Der Tanz in den Tod (The Dance of Death), 1998, Content: Der Tanz in den Tod - The Dance of Death - From The Listener Durch die Wand (Through the wall) - The Case of Eavesdropping - From The empty House Der leere Ärmel - The Empty Sleeve - From Wolves of God Ein Opfer der Vierten Dimension (A Victim of the Forth Dimension) - A Victim of Higher Space - From Day and Night Stories Der Mann, den die Bäume liebten - the Man whom the Trees Loved - From Strange Stories Rennender Wolf - Running Wolf - From ibid Der Mann, der Milligan war - The Man who was Milligan - From ibid Verbotener Weg (Forbidden way) - Ancient Lights - From ibid Aussprache - Confession - From ibid Verfrühtes Ereignis (Premature Incident) - Accessory before the Fact - From ibid Der Griff aus dem Dunkel (Grip out of the dark), 1973 (this paperback 1980) Content: Das Haus der Verdammten (House of the Damned) - The Damned - From Incredible Adventures Die Übergabe - The Transfer - from In Pan´s Garden Am ersten Abend im Mai (First evening in Mai) - May Day Eve - From The Listener Jones´Wahnidee - The Insanity of Jones - From The Listener Im Banne des Schnees - The Glamour of the Snow - From The Listener Der Fall Pikestaffe - the Pikestaffe Case - From In Tongues of Fire Afterword by Kalju Kirde "Algernon Blackwood - Ghostwatcher and Worldtraveler
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Post by dem bones on Jun 29, 2010 21:30:37 GMT
Der Tanz in den Tod (The Dance of Death), 1998, i can't put my finger on why, but that has to be the strangest cover for a Blackwood collection i've ever seen.
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Post by Johnlprobert on Jun 30, 2010 5:59:55 GMT
Der Tanz in den Tod (The Dance of Death), 1998, i can't put my finger on why, but that has to be the strangest cover for a Blackwood collection i've ever seen. Well that's how Lady P & I attire ourselves before an evening of Blackwood! Talking of which: The Other Wing - Young Tim is convinced something - or somethings - come into his room at night when he's asleep & concludes that it's the Ruler of the Other Wing, that being the part of the huge mansion in which his family lives that he's never been to. So off he goes, into the land of dreams, down the Nightmare Passage (no jokes please) to find his dead grandfather, to whom he gives the man's lost cane that he has rescued from his father's study. At which point he wakes up, grows up, and then saves his wife from a house fire in an episode which may be linked... This felt like a rather nice story for mature children to me. It's not exactly horror, but it does the dreamlike thing rather well. The Transfer - Uncle Frank, the 'people's vampire', according to our governess narrator is coming to visit to talk to little Jamie about something important. But there's a dead patch of earth in the garden that's waiting to suck him dry of all the energy he's leeched off other people over the years. Another weird one, this isn't exactly scary, but it throws up a couple of good ideas, and unlike a couple of the other stories in here, it actually gets on with it.
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Thana Niveau
Devils Coach Horse
We who walk here walk alone.
Posts: 109
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Post by Thana Niveau on Jun 30, 2010 6:36:05 GMT
Greetings crab fetishists! Just tearing out the stitches from my mouth for a moment to say hello before His Lordship locks me away again.
Nothing is going to match "The Willows" for me. It instantly joined the ranks of my all-time favourite weird tales.
And I thought "The Other Wing" was lovely, particularly the evocative opening. It effectively took me right back to my own hyper-imaginative childhood, although my mind sent the story off in a far more morbid direction.
Yours, Lady P
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Post by andydecker on Jun 30, 2010 10:05:44 GMT
I can´t put my finger on why, but that has to be the strangest cover for a Blackwood collection i've ever seen. Now that you say it ... you are of course right. Maybe it is the suggested time which seems so unlike Blackwood. The Roaring Twenties? This is more F. Scott and Zelda and not the victorian times. And especially not the nature theme which was so typically Blackwood. This cover would be better suited to a collection of stories about the decadent backlots of Berlin or Paris after WWI. Now that would be a book I´d like to read.
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Post by Johnlprobert on Jun 30, 2010 10:05:16 GMT
In case anyone's wondering, the 'Location' box on Lady P's profile is entirely correct - in fact I'm jangling the keys here now I'm delighted to see she's got the dusty old computer up and running that we keep in the Old Locked Room At The Top of The Stairs. Let's just hope it doesn't wake the mantis next door...
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Post by andydecker on Jun 30, 2010 10:08:00 GMT
In case anyone's wondering, the 'Location' box on Lady P's profile is entirely correct - in fact I'm jangling the keys here now I'm delighted to see she's got the dusty old computer up and running that we keep in the Old Locked Room At The Top of The Stairs. Let's just hope it doesn't wake the mantis next door... As long as she puts a light in the one and only window ...
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Post by Dr Strange on Jun 30, 2010 10:20:02 GMT
I can´t put my finger on why, but that has to be the strangest cover for a Blackwood collection i've ever seen. Now that you say it ... you are of course right. Maybe it is the suggested time which seems so unlike Blackwood. The Roaring Twenties? This is more F. Scott and Zelda and not the victorian times. Except Blackwood's stories aren't really Victorian - the earliest collection (The Empty House) is 1906 (though he would have written some of them before Victoria's death in 1901). He even did radio (and early TV!) broadcasts of them.
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Post by David A. Riley on Jun 30, 2010 10:24:55 GMT
Yes, Charles. In many respects a fairly modern writer. Certainly not Victorian.
I wonder if there are any recordings somewhere of his radio and TV broadcasts. Doubtful, I suppose, but that would be something if they could be unearthed.
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