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Post by Dr Strange on Jun 12, 2010 10:39:54 GMT
At some level, "How Love came to Professor Guildea" is undoubtedly about homosexuality, a subject in which Hichens seems to have taken an interest. (His best-known work is THE GREEN CARNATION, a roman-à-clef about the relationship of Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas.) Or, perhaps, specifically about being the object of unwanted homosexual attraction. I guess that is where I was kind of heading with my comments on both men being described as "celibate" and, in particular, the Anglican priest choosing an order that forbids marriage. Other than the "Guildea" story I know absolutely nothing at all about Hichens, and now it looks like I am going to have to read that story yet again. Do you think Hichens might actually be suggesting that the priest is (somehow) "responsible" for Guildea's unhappy end? |
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Jun 12, 2010 11:00:19 GMT
Do you think Hichens might actually be suggesting that the priest is (somehow) "responsible" for Guildea's unhappy end? Well, he certainly seems to have been doing fine until he befriended the creepy priest. |
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Post by monker on Jun 12, 2010 12:19:56 GMT
Well, that just confirms that Hitchens was going for something totally different from what I was pre-empting. No wonder Guildea's outlook seemed artificial to me, it was all a metaphor, and not one I picked up on. I thought I remember the 'thing' being designated female, though, not that that alters anything, necessarily.
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Post by Dr Strange on Jun 12, 2010 15:25:36 GMT
I thought I remember the 'thing' being designated female, though, not that that alters anything, necessarily. I think that impression comes solely from the priest saying that the parrot's movements reminded him of the "idiot woman" who had been following him about. Given where this discussion has been going, this exchange between Guildea and the priest now seems to be much more significant - GUILDEA: "D'you think I'm an attractive man?" PRIEST: "Bless me! What makes you ask? Do you mean attractive to the opposite sex?" GUILDEA: "That's what I don't know. That's what I don't know." |
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Jun 12, 2010 18:36:44 GMT
I first read this story many years ago and found it very eerie. Since then I have thought about it and, in particular, learned something about its author, and it now seems to me that the "ghost" is meant as a rather transparent metaphor for feelings between the professor and his new friend that he does not wish to acknowledge, or for fear of intimacy more generally. Unfortunately, as rereading it just now has proved, this perspective has ruined the story for me---at least as a supernatural story. So, boys and girls, the moral is that the less you know about, and the less you analyze, a work of art, the more potent is its potential effect.
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Post by Johnlprobert on Jun 12, 2010 19:31:54 GMT
Unfortunately, as rereading it just now has proved, this perspective has ruined the story for me---at least as a supernatural story. So, boys and girls, the moral is that the less you know about, and the less you analyze, a work of art, the more potent is its potential effect. Nice to see this thread kick off like this but the above echoes my sentiments exactly. It's a very very good scary story, provided you don't try and take it to pieces. Then, like the little boy who dissected his pet guinea pig, sadly it doesn't work anymore. |
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Jun 12, 2010 19:59:53 GMT
Then, like the little boy who dissected his pet guinea pig, sadly it doesn't work anymore. The guinea pig, that is, not the boy. In this case I feel a large part of the blame lies with the author, as in hindsight it is rather obvious he knew exactly what he was doing. I tend to prefer writers like Aickman himself, whose stories with a few exceptions---"The Swords" comes to mind in this particular connection---I believe were as mysterious to him as they are to us. |
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Post by monker on Jun 13, 2010 2:51:42 GMT
It's funny, because I was analysing it before I'd really even began to read it. I suppose it's typical of me as I never pick things up and read them from a position of total neutrality. I often give myself impressions and if they are not fulfilled it puts me on the back foot, so to speak - that'll learn me!
It's interesting because it relates to the way each individual enjoys their reading and whether a particular quality is innate to the story or purely in the mind of the reader.
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Post by Johnlprobert on Jun 13, 2010 8:02:58 GMT
Time to finish this one off:
Ambrose Bierce - The Damned Thing. It's big! It's invisible! It gets you really really bruised & kills you! It's the Damned Thing! And that's all the story tells you!
Edith Wharton - Afterward. A pretty weak story to finish the volume with I thought. A revenge piece with not a lot of atmosphere and some turgid paragraphs mean I'm not driven to look up any more of Miss Wharton's work.
I can't say I enjoyed this book as much as volume 6 or 7, mainly because the Dunsany was rubbish, the Beerbohm a bit pointless, and a couple of the other stories more ordinary that I was expecting, especially the last.
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Post by Dr Strange on Jun 13, 2010 9:27:41 GMT
Unfortunately, as rereading it just now has proved, this perspective has ruined the story for me---at least as a supernatural story. So, boys and girls, the moral is that the less you know about, and the less you analyze, a work of art, the more potent is its potential effect. Nice to see this thread kick off like this but the above echoes my sentiments exactly. It's a very very good scary story, provided you don't try and take it to pieces. Then, like the little boy who dissected his pet guinea pig, sadly it doesn't work anymore. Well, I couldn't disagree more with that. Personally, I find stories that are just what they seem to be on first reading often end up unsatisfying and unscary - my usual reaction being "is that it?" (it's why I don't read much "pulp" - frankly, it bores me). It tends to only be when I can't easily pin a story down that it disturbs me - and that makes me want to eventually re-read it. It also seems that someone who writes a story like this must want the reader to analyze it - else why bother? So if you just take it at face value, then you are actually doing the author a disservice (at least you are probably not the target audience anyway). As to Jojo Lapin X's last comment above, my experience is exactly the opposite - perhaps because I am still not 100% certain that I have the correct "solution", and if I read it again I may well end up thinking it's something else altogether. You also seem to suggest that "explaining" it as the author writing something about an unwanted sexual advance somehow precludes it also being a supernatural horror story - which it doesn't. So, maybe the "thing" is some sort of projection from the priest's unconscious (a la "The Forbidden Planet"). The fact that it might actually "mean" something doesn't prevent it from also being a story that can be read for entertainment. As for analysis destroying beauty, I can't do any better than to quote Umberto Eco - “Even gynaecologists fall in love.” |
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Post by monker on Jun 13, 2010 10:26:43 GMT
…Only that that is a rather heavy handed metaphor that doesn't really work.
It varies, does it not? Just because something has re-read potential does not necessarily make it better than the one that doesn't; it just means that it tickles a different receptor, so to speak. For instance, if I had a strong response to a short story the first time around, that might add up to more than I get out of the several re-readings of something like, say, 'Seaton's Aunt'. Just because it is has higher literary values does not necessarily make it work better as a ‘horror’ story.
For me it would depend on the main reason for a story's existence weighed up against my own expectations, of course, the potential for surprise is factored in.
I think they have a point; it’s like when a pedant tries to scientifically explain away the beauty of a sunset, if you'll forgive me putting it in cringingly sentimental terms. I personally think that horror is the wrong genre for deep analysis but criticism is another thing.
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Post by Dr Strange on Jun 13, 2010 10:46:51 GMT
…Only that that is a rather heavy handed metaphor that doesn't really work. No more heavy handed than the small boy dissecting his pet - and I am assuming none of us here are small boys. Anyway, it's got nothing to do with "literary value" (and I don't know what that means anyway) - it's about getting something more from reading than just passing the time. Again - explaining the sunset does not stop it being beautiful (to me). I really don't know what else to say - I guess I would actually feel quite sorry for anyone who found that increasing their understanding of anything made it less beautiful or wonderful. That seems like a horrible choice to be faced with - understanding and no beauty, or beauty and no understanding. Thankfully, I don't have to make that choice. |
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Post by Johnlprobert on Jun 13, 2010 11:46:11 GMT
it's about getting something more from reading than just passing the time. Again - explaining the sunset does not stop it being beautiful (to me). I really don't know what else to say - I guess I would actually feel quite sorry for anyone who found that increasing their understanding of anything made it less beautiful or wonderful. That seems like a horrible choice to be faced with - understanding and no beauty, or beauty and no understanding. Thankfully, I don't have to make that choice. Good points, and of course what on earth am I doing on a board like this if I don't want to discuss the fiction I'm reading? What I would say is that if someone makes a good argument for what a story is really about (and the above is a good argument indeed) then it's going to alter the story for those who haven't spotted it. It doesn't make the story any less well written, or executed, but it's bound to alter the way you feel about it. For some peculiar reason (and I have no idea why) the subtext in Guildea hadn't occurred to me at all - I was having such a good time with the story that it flew right past me. I can't explain why I enjoyed reading that story a lot more not knowing what it was meant to be about but I just did, which I suppose is my own fault & no-one else's. But at the end of the day I'm very pleased that I came to the story 'blind' and yes - I do often read purely for entertainment's sake and therefore I suppose 'to pass the time', and I don't have a problem with continuing to do that, either. Certainly I have often found it more fun that way, but at the same time I don't have a problem with those who wish to approach stories like this differently  |
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Post by Dr Strange on Jun 13, 2010 12:18:20 GMT
Good points, and of course what on earth am I doing on a board like this if I don't want to discuss the fiction I'm reading? What I would say is that if someone makes a good argument for what a story is really about (and the above is a good argument indeed) then it's going to alter the story for those who haven't spotted it. It doesn't make the story any less well written, or executed, but it's bound to alter the way you feel about it. And those are good points too; and I suppose I had forgotten that, actually, I did come to the story "blind" myself - and it was just the feeling that I was nearly (but not quite) getting it that made me want to keep going back to it. Certainly, "spoiling" the story in any way for anyone else wasn't my intention. Aickman himself now... I really don't have a clue what he was about most of the time. |
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Post by Johnlprobert on Jun 13, 2010 12:48:46 GMT
[Aickman himself now... I really don't have a clue what he was about most of the time. Me neither! And yet his stories do 'work' for me, or at least the two that I've read recently have (Inner Room & The Cicerones). I may well read Fontana 1 next which has 'The Trains'. I've been trying to read modern stuff too but at the moment I'm quite spellbound by these old anthologies! |
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