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Post by Knygathin on Jun 6, 2012 22:01:04 GMT
A reviewer said it's impossible to summerize any story by Aickman: If one of his stories is like a cake, then explaining it would be like force feeding you all of the ingredients before mixing and cooking.
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Post by Knygathin on Jun 3, 2012 10:31:57 GMT
I do think it's worth reading them in context, but individual episodes ("The White Powder", "The Black Seal") began to be anthologised as early as the twenties, presumably with Machen's approval. That is comforting to hear. Tales . . . was published one year after Machen's death, and I was afraid the publisher had taken liberties. But even if the first two tales may not be presented in an entirely pure way, this is still a convenient collection that gathers together a lot of material.
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Post by Knygathin on Jun 1, 2012 21:36:35 GMT
How do you feel about a collection like Tales of Horror and the Supernational, in which some tales have been pulled out of a larger work like The Three Impostors?
Is that alright? Or is it corrupt? Would Arthur Machen have approved of this? Should those tales be kept and read in their original context?
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Post by Knygathin on Jun 1, 2012 21:21:05 GMT
After some wonderfully evocative setup scenes in which the Great Old One is barely glimpsed (the sculptor's nightmare, the Louisiana swamps), his actual appearance comes as a letdown. As much as I like Lovecraft, I find that his tendency toward over-explicitness sometimes undercuts his efforts to develop "cosmic horror." To cite another example, "The Whisperer in Darkness" is partially ruined for me by the mental image of the curiously ineffectual Mi-Go . . . In that sense Lovecraft is expressive and colorful. Some of his stories appear more like fantasy than horror. I think I reacted in a similar way to Cthulhu the first time I read the story. It is very demanding upon the imagination to see a lumbering green monster with tentacles as actually being scary or horrible. The mind is not set up to do that, we have no references from real life to draw memories from; except our minds having been tainted with inadequate representations from movies and paintings. We humans are scared of loss, abuse, psycho murderers, war, weather catastrophes. Local, mundane situations. That's what we know. Cthulhu demands more from our imagination. One solution is (and a very rewarding one it is!) to linger upon the monster. Meditate upon it. Give it time. And let the mind transcend past the first impression and prejudice of it being silly. Explore its possibilities. Because, it really is horrible! Using a telescope and looking up at the stars and planets also help opening the mind to its hidden recesses, and coming to intellectual acceptance that such bizarre creatures are part of reality.
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Post by Knygathin on Jun 1, 2012 2:06:45 GMT
Really? Don´t get me wrong, I am seriously interested. I always thought this the weakest part of the tale. I mean, I love and adore Lovecraft, but as far as plotting and action goes, he was sometimes not very convincing. All this build-up in this tale, you have this imprisoned god from beyond the stars, whose presence alone drives people all over the world insane. And then this octopus emerges, swims around, gets hit by a ship and swims poutingly back to sleep some more. This is so disappointingly anticlimactic. And, which is more regretable, it is not worth of the ideas and atmosphere established beforehand. I think it depends on how you read it. Which sentences and words are important you, and which you choose to focus on. And what references of experience and knowledge you have for use to interpret what you read. You may see a silly old fat monster with rubber tentacles (envisioned from bad movies, or insufficient fantasy art) wading about in the water. Or you may see something else. To me, when Cthulhu is out there, the spells, or whatever you want to call it, emerging from him . . . his ponderous alien setup and energy patterns . . . they disintegrate the physical reality by whose reference points our anatomical setup and nervous system is adjusted to and supported on. And exposes us to other physical composites or laws. The very air is bending inside out. The molecules become different, poisoning us. It is absolutely sickening! I am sorry, I can't explain it better. It is more complex than I intellectually comprehend.
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Post by Knygathin on May 31, 2012 19:24:00 GMT
I have seen it with my own eyes! Ok ok. I meant artistic representation of physical objects.
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Post by Knygathin on May 31, 2012 19:14:54 GMT
On the other hand, this thought didn't cross my mind--though I did read The Green Pearl not long ago. The Tanjecterly sequence is an odd digression; I wonder if there's a play on the word "tangent" in there. I read The Green Pearl several years ago. I don't remember clearly. I think there was a scene where they briefly dropped into some backward dimension hole, with strange colors, etc. I am sure that is the wordplay.
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Post by Knygathin on May 31, 2012 19:01:56 GMT
Well, thank you! I'll shamelessly plug The Inhabitant of the Lake and Other Unwelcome Tenants (PS Publishing), since it includes all the first drafts of the tales I rewrote. You're welcome. I can recommend "The Tomb Herd" to those who have not read it! (But remember, tastes differ! Many say these stories are no good. I like them, especially the individual details and scenes.)
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Post by Knygathin on May 31, 2012 18:46:39 GMT
On the other hand, Campbell expertly grasps the nature of the supernatural horror elements in themselves, and probably finalizes them better than Lovecraft did. I think I got slightly carried away here. I would like to modify that a bit. There are different styles in art. Like for example natural realism, and there is more expressive art. It can be difficult to compare them, and say one is better than the other. I think, as I experience it, for example in "The Render of the Veils", that Campbell here describes the supernatural elements in a natural realistic way, that feels very convincing. And at the same time it has a fine artistic expression. When Cthulhu emerges in "The Call of Cthulhu". . . I have never elsewhere read such a lush and expressive artistic representation of supernatural horror pouring in. It overwhelms me. I have no idea where Lovecraft could have found his sources to shape this kind of scene. Comparably, Campbell's artistic expression above is perhaps not quite as grandiose as Lovecraft's. Campbell is better in some other certain way. Perhaps Lovecraft's vision is more based on an interest in science, while Campbell has better command on a more subtle psychic level? But Campbell also handles physical objects really well.
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Post by Knygathin on May 30, 2012 17:17:28 GMT
My favorite among the Inhabitant tales is probably "The Render of the Veils," "The Render of the Veils" is my favorite too. I enjoy the subject, of manipulating the senses to get through the barrier to the Abyss. (It is akin to "From Beyond". Lovecraft's story is a colorful imaginative fantasy, but "The Render..." is more convincingly horrifying. In Jack Vance's book The Green Pearl there is a side story, about the land of Tanjecterly, that handles a similar situation.) Otherwise I am particularly fond of "The Church in High Street", or perhaps preferably, its earlier, innocently unabashed (and at the same time tighter and free from consciously literate filling) version "The Tomb Herd". I am a reader who is generally more interested in visual details and atmospheric scenery, than the overall storyline. I really don't care much if a story is wrapped up neatly, with a fanfare snappy ending. "The path is everything, the goal is nothing." Or, "The path is the goal." But, of course, I do appreciate a well structured story (spontaneously I come to think of M. R. James's finely integrated "A View From a Hill", or C. A. Smith's ecstatic "The Dark Eidolon" ending on the giant scale of some magnificient opera.) But to me it's not primary. I think Ramsey Campbell's decadent atmospheric images in this book are as good as Lovecraft's, maybe even better. They are visually very graphic. With the right essence. In "The Tomb Herd" there are some delicious scenes, like the distorted reflection of the sports car in the scum-covered water. Or the most memorable scene, which was removed from the final version, in which the garden lawn before the house is so sick and overgrown with white fungus that the man's shadow on it appear "eldritch and distorted, like that of some ghoul-born being from the nether pits". The difference from Lovecraft, is that Campbell's atmospherics are here piled onto each other in a jumble almost (no wonder, if written by a teenager), while Lovecraft's atmospheric descriptions are details organically integrated into a greater whole. I think Lovecraft's foundation of wisdom and understanding was started in early childhood years, built from his wide erudition both in literature and science. On the other hand, Campbell expertly grasps the nature of the supernatural horror elements in themselves, and probably finalizes them better than Lovecraft did. Sometimes when occupied with my book collecting, I see the image from first lines in "Cold Print". The man sitting on the bus, with snow on his fingers, and his book being snug inside a polythene bag. It's a celebration of bibliophiles and pulp lovers like us! Also, to me there is a nostalgic 1970's feeling over it.
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Post by Knygathin on May 28, 2012 0:46:34 GMT
Nice historic setting too in that story—endless of free time for Victorian frivolity. Hide and Seek among grown ups. I'll say. Those were the days!
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Post by Knygathin on May 28, 2012 0:05:03 GMT
I guess Hartley's ghost stories will be released by Wordsworth Editions sooner or later.
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Post by Knygathin on May 27, 2012 23:57:02 GMT
Thanks demonik. I will keep an eye open for those stories.
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Post by Knygathin on May 27, 2012 19:21:00 GMT
I was wrong about the writing being chatty, it quickly improved after a few pages. The fickle characters remained, as part of the setting.
Great stuff. Not much of atmosphere. But bizarre enough! It is not a very realistic concept, but still convincing in a nightmarish way. I wonder if Lovecraft read this one, and if he valued it or found it too outre'.
"Knives underneath", and "parquet inlaid on top, so it blends invisibly with the floor". Brilliant.
"The shoes were flattened against the floor", and the ankles were crushed—. It is so very brutal, in a physical way.
Did he write more stories grim and relentless like this?
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Post by Knygathin on May 25, 2012 17:06:38 GMT
I have been reading the first few pages of "The Travelling Grave" story. I find the writing style chatty, and not essential, profound, or memorable. It is emotionally oversensitive and fickle in the characteristic coquettish manner of the male homosexual community.
Still, he has such high critical esteem. And his reputation for taking people's fears and neurosisses and manifesting these into hauntings seems interesting. I guess I'll give him a go.
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