The Third Ghost Book ed. by Lady Cynthia Asquith

[Knygathin]

I usually mix up Shirley Jackson and Susan Hill, ... because of The Haunting of Hill House. But, I guess, they must be different persons! To my deep and endless shaaame I have read neither of them! (My sincerest apologies for this uneducated blasphemy). I saw the television version of The Woman in Black (rimes with Jack-son),... and it had some very creepy moments. I think I may have seen the movie version of Hill House as a child, but it did not stick with me; I always preferred visual, physical weird phenomena and monsters to invisible ghosts (Cthulhu trumps the Willows). Although appreciation of the numinous weird has increased considerably with my years.

As for negative criticism or dismissal, I am convinced it strikes back upon oneself. Whatever we say of others works as a mirror, it reflects some part of ourselves, although this usually lies deeply subconscious. If we dismiss others, we will inevitably also dismiss ourselves. Much better to give positive criticism, because it increases positive energy even onto the giver, while negative does the opposite and punctures energy, even stalls creativity replacing it with bitterness. One can observe technical weaknesses in others, but one better keep quiet about it, especially for those living, unless one can formulate it into uplifting constructive criticism (without being smug). Lovecraft put forth some negative criticisms in Supernatural Horror in Literature, but these were rather moderate and careful, weighed up by the positive things he said.

[Michael Connolly]

Sept 26, 2018 13:47:30 GMT Knygathin said:

I usually mix up Shirley Jackson and Susan Hill, ... because of The Haunting of Hill House. But, I guess, they must be different persons! To my deep and endless shaaame I have read neither of them! (My sincerest apologies for this uneducated blasphemyyy). I saw the television version of The Woman in Black, ... it had some very creepy moments. I think I may have seen the movie version of Hill House as a child, but it did not stick with me; I always preferred visual, physical weird phenomena and monsters to invisible ghosts (Cthulhu trumps the Willows). Although appreciation of the numinous weird has increased considerably with my years.

As for negative criticism or dismissal, I am convinced it strikes back upon oneself. Whatever we say of others works as a mirror, it reflects some part of ourselves, although this usually lies deeply subconscious. If we dismiss others, we will inevitably also dismiss ourselves. Much better to give positive criticism, because it increases positive energy even onto the giver, while negative does the opposite and punctures energy, even stalls creativity replacing it with bitterness. One can observe technical weaknesses in others, but one better keep quiet about it, especially for those living, unless one can formulate it into uplifting constructive criticism (without being smug). Lovecraft put forth some negative criticisms in Supernatural Horror in Literature, but these were rather moderate and careful, weighed up by the positive things he said.

But some things like so-called celebrity television programmes are beyond positive criticism.  

[Knygathin]

Sept 26, 2018 13:50:31 GMT Michael Connolly said:

But some things like so-called celebrity television programmes are beyond positive criticism.  

Well, those I consider simply an offensive crime against all human decency. There are evil agendas lying at the bottom of those.

[Michael Connolly]

Sept 26, 2018 13:57:31 GMT Knygathin said:

Sept 26, 2018 13:50:31 GMT Michael Connolly said:

But some things like so-called celebrity television programmes are beyond positive criticism.  

Well, those I consider simply an offensive crime against all human decency. There are evil agendas lying at the bottom of those.

I think they are crass exploitation of an easily-amused audience rather than evil.

[Knygathin]

Sept 26, 2018 14:04:40 GMT Michael Connolly said:

I think they are crass exploitation of an easily-amused audience rather than evil.

On the surface, yes.

However, they intentionally control the masses into passivity.

[Michael Connolly]

Sept 26, 2018 14:12:35 GMT Knygathin said:

Sept 26, 2018 14:04:40 GMT Michael Connolly said:

I think they are crass exploitation of an easily-amused audience rather than evil.

On the surface, yes.

However, they intentionally control the masses into passivity.

The passivity already exists. Whenever I criticise any programme, no matter how bad it objectively is, the answer usually is "Everyone's got their own taste".

[johnnymains]

Sept 22, 2018 10:27:36 GMT ramseycampbell said:

Sept 9, 2018 12:17:15 GMT johnnymains said:

We might hope Rolt wouldn't have been so petty as to dismiss an entire anthology because he'd fallen out with just one of the contributors. 




Ramsey - if nowadays is to go by, people dismiss entire careers because of one thing said - or this or that - so I'd find it entirely believable that Rolt could easily have been as petty! 

[helrunar]

I returned home from a near-week long family visit to find my copy of the 1960 Great Pan printing of this volume awaiting. Though I have only perused the contents list thus far, I'm already finding the volume a comforting presence in the house.

Alas, this edition doesn't have Mr Jolly Roger offering the special hospitality of the inn to his startled guest on the cover. That vision always gives me such gay fancies.

I do love the brooding atmosphere of the cover the volume does sport. Perfect for the fag-end of this spectral Yule season.

Interesting about the Aickman tale. A couple of years ago I listened to a fairly well done BBC radio adaptation which some thoughtful person had added to a you tube playlist. Of course I barely remember the plot now, but it was shivery.

I don't think I have read any of Rolt's stories. I really am barely literate, you know.

cheers, Helrunar

[helrunar]

Some notes on the stories I have read thus far. I bought the book for the evocatively-named Marghanita Laski's tale "The Tower," but decided to read straight through until I arrived at it--it is situated roughly halfway through the book. I'm now reading "Ringing the Changes," by Aickman, and Laski's story comes directly after that.

I am only going to bother making remarks about the tales that made some sort of impression beyond "good story." I don't think any of these had ever been published before; possibly some had appeared in magazines, but not in book form.

Evelyn Fabyan -- "Napoleon's Hat"  Fabyan is one of several authors represented here who was new to me. I looked her up on the Internet Speculative Fiction database (isfdb dot org), which presumably has its basis in Bleiler's research and publications. She was born in France with a very long string of names but wrote under this name. However, she seems only to have published 2 or 3 stories (there is one in the Second Ghost Book, of which happily I now have a copy waiting its turn on the shelf at my elbow). Like many of these stories, this one is told from the perspective of two children living in rural France, around 1900, who have to deal with the demands of an implacable German governess (who goes about wearing the titular hat). What made the story stand out for me was the atmosphere and the way certain impressionistic details were recalled. The ghost was mainly window-dressing. The ending of the story was horrific but told in an oddly detached, almost humorous fashion. There are unfortunate comments about Jews and Germans that would have been considered commonplace in early to mid 20th century England.

Rachel Hartfield -- "The Bull"  Rachel Hartfield is even more obscure than Evelyn Fabyan and seems only to have published this one tale (but perhaps she wrote more in other genres). This time, the narrator as an adult recalls an odd episode she experienced as a child. Sent with her parents to live in a remote farmhouse somewhere in southern England, she is awakened, repeatedly, in the wee hours by an odd noise, the "clatter and slip of hard feet on brick, as if it were the restless movement of some animal." From this minor beginning hangs the entire tale.

L. A. G. Strong -- "The House that wouldn't keep still"  This one almost reads like someone remembering a dream, or a nightmare. The most horrific detail for this reader was the description of the bedside breakfast served in a Dutch inn roughly circa 1910:  "two cold soft eggs, wafers of raw ham, raw herring in crushed ice, gingerbread, and coffee." I suppose the gingerbread might have been edible, had it not been of the hardness of a roofing-tile. Was this even a ghost story? The ghost may have been the titular house but it is all quite vague.

Mary Fitt -- "The Doctor"  Mary Fitt was the pseudonym of a woman Classics don who had a very active career and wrote detective stories in addition to having a very successful roster of popular publications for the lay person interested in ancient Greek literature. Her real name was Kathleen Freeman and she has been the object of research by some feminist historians. This tale is told in a letter to the unnamed narrator, sent from her aunt who bears the remarkable name of Dorothea Hornwinder. The entire thing is a bit of a wind-up but I enjoyed it. The ending made me laugh.

Elizabeth Jenkins -- "On no account, my love"  If there was a point to this one, it evaded me.

Lord Dunsany -- "The Ghost of the Valley" A superb little masterwork IF you love pantheistic mysticism, which I do.. lasts barely three pages. According to S. T. Joshi in his monograph on Dunsany, this very late story was Dunsany's final word on a theme that had preoccupied him starting in the 1920s if not earlier.

Margaret Lane -- "The Day of the Funeral"  This one also was baffling... it seemed to be leading up to something which never happened. This story is her only listing on ISFDB.

L. P. Hartley -- "Someone in the Lift" The most effective tale thus far in the book, for this reader (can't really be compared with the Dunsany as that would be a case of apples and oranges). I saw the finale coming from a mile off but it was effective nonetheless. Hartley also wrote an introduction to the book, and was a near lifelong friend of Lady Cynthia Asquith.

Many of these stories have to do with the state of childhood and the inevitable nostalgia that comes upon a person with encroaching old age. With the Aickman tale, the theme seems to undergo a shift--it will be interesting to see if the same theme resumes in Marghanita Laski's tale. 

I found myself reflecting that in my earlier life, I would have been too bored by many of these stories to bother carrying on with them. At this time in my existence, in my early Sixties, it is strangely fascinating to read such vividly composed evocations of a world, the early to mid 20th century, that preceded my own birth and now has by and large vanished as completely as the age of the dinosaur.

H.

[helrunar]

I read Marghanita's tale last night and while the beginning was good, the ending seemed like a non-event. I'm sure I missed something. I read the final paragraphs 3 times in an attempt to figure out what I was missing, beyond the obvious fact that the woman's mind had collapsed.

This morning on the commute I read "I Become Bulwinkle" by the otherwise unknown (to me) Jonathan Curling--comic touches reminiscent of Thorne Smith (one of those once wildly popular authors people stopped discussing or reading, seemingly, after the 1970s). It is a black magic yarn rather than a ghost story... several of the tales in this book could be thought of as  "ghost stories" only by a considerable stretch. Perhaps that's why Rolt dismissed the book.

Collin Brooks "Mrs Smiff" thus far is proving once of the most delightful tales in the volume, although Brooks commits the common mistake of having people in his story act as if witch burnings occurred in England--they didn't. I think heretics were burned but Witches were hanged. (However, if somebody comments that you're "hung like a Witch," that may refer to something quite other.)

cheers, H.

[Jojo Lapin X]

Jan 6, 2020 15:09:50 GMT helrunar said:

I'm sure I missed something. I read the final paragraphs 3 times in an attempt to figure out what I was missing, beyond the obvious fact that the woman's mind had collapsed.

Read some of the earlier paragraphs again. Take note of any numbers you see there. Perhaps use an Excel spreadsheet.

[helrunar]

Yeah I got the bit with the numbers. It just seemed like a pointless detail to me. Yes, I realized she was still going down and had counted more steps down than she counted up. In case you think I'm "not right in the haid" as our ancestors used to say.

I'm glad it works for others. I suppose I was expecting too much. Always a fatal mistake.

H.

[Jojo Lapin X]

Jan 6, 2020 17:41:38 GMT helrunar said:

Yes, I realized she was still going down and had counted more steps down than she counted up.

Brr! It still keeps me up at night.

[helrunar]

I think her husband had a lot to answer for. Being forced to become a culture vulture with a specialty in Italian master painting in the name of conjugal duty is more than any woman should have to endure.

H.

[helrunar]

My overall impression of this volume continues to be that it's mostly misses, with a few middle-of-the-road mildly "good" tales, and one tonight, Daniel George's promisingly titled "The Woman in Black," that I gave up on in exasperation about a third of the way through. Just far too coy and full of himself for me to tolerate further.

"Harry," by Rosemary Timperley, illustrates why Timperley's stories were so sought after in the Sixties and Seventies. Although like many in the volume, it features a neurotic woman obsessing over a small child (in this case, her adopted daughter Christine), the tone remains focused and taut and the shocks thus have more impact than would have been the case with one of the more verbose, self-consciously "literary" writers who seem to dominate this anthology.

Interestingly, Rosemary Timperley took over editorship of this series with the Fifth Ghost Book, originally published in 1969. I may need to have a look at that vlume.

I looked up Collin Brooks (author of "Mrs Smiff") and found this interesting note about him. Mad Doctor Merciful sounds like the kind of yarn Christine Campbell Thomson--the REAL first lady of horror in 1930s Britain--would have appreciated.

www.ramblehouse.com/maddoctormercifulchapter.htm

The blurb on the cover of the Third Ghost Book promises the reader that here are "stories that will take you in a cold embrace--27 startling tales of the tormented and the damned." But most of these are quiet little literary fables of the inner lives and picturesque bucolic settings in which the feeble and the delusional move inexorably toward their respective fates.

I am going to read (more or less) through to the end of the volume. The editor herself provides the final tale, "Who is Sylvia?" and I'm quite curious about that.

H.