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Post by monker on Jun 5, 2009 8:16:05 GMT
Wordsworth-If you ARE doing Benson, please exclude the Dust Cloud, sure, it has a short description of a graveyard slowly crumbling into the sea, but, like Capes' "Dark Dignum" ,fails to be actualy good, story wise.It's just a lengthy rhapsody on the wonders of a car, and talks about the ghost of a car.You'd do us ALL a favour . Oh-wait you mean his BROTHER. I have no doubt that you may have a big point on the merrits of that particuler story but you would be denying the people the chance to judge for themselves. Judging from what I can glean from this forum - the folks of 'WE' are too amiable not to grant your request.
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Post by dem bones on Jun 5, 2009 8:20:15 GMT
They're lovely to deal with, Monker. But, have no fears. They're not stupid.
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Post by lobolover on Jun 19, 2009 20:47:03 GMT
Dem, could you please stop riding over me any chance you get ?
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Post by unholyturnip on Jun 22, 2009 11:00:08 GMT
I have to admit to being quite partial to The Dust Cloud. I enjoy old motors, so I guess I'm automatically biased in one way, but I like the way the story unfolds. It outlays the back-story at the beginning, so you know it's going to come in somewhere, but the question is where. The imagery in it has enough to make it different from your typical ghost story, and Benson's typical ghost stories in particular.
That being said, there are a number of Benson's most celebrated stories that I don't care for. The Horror-Horn struck me as overly cheesy, The House with the Brick-kiln has a cool idea but isn't subtle enough to really work, ditto for The Other Bed. At the end of the day though, these are personal discrepancies. Whilst I'm not too keen on them, to someone else they may well constitute the best of Benson.
It comes back the old thing of do you go for completeness, or do you go for a more subjective 'best-of'. Personally, I think there's only a handful of authors of whom I'd say 'read everything'. Le Fanu, the two James's, Aickman, Blackwood maybe. Benson isn't one of them though. He wrote some amazing stuff, but a lot more that was quite average, and some stories are very blatant re-writes of earlier ones (some folks, like the aforementioned Le Fanu, could rewrite stories and still pass them off as originals, but Benson doesn't do this very well at all). Whatever happens though, I think we can all agree it'll be nice to have Benson back on the shelves again.
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Post by dem bones on Jun 22, 2009 11:27:14 GMT
..... there are a number of Benson's most celebrated stories that I don't care for. The Horror-Horn struck me as overly cheesy, The House with the Brick-kiln has a cool idea but isn't subtle enough to really work, ditto for The Other Bed. At the end of the day though, these are personal discrepancies. Whilst I'm not too keen on them, to someone else they may well constitute the best of Benson. That's it in the proverbial nutshell, far as i'm concerned. With Benson, it's his gentler stories that don't much do it fo me, but, yep, that's just a personal discrepancy. Cynthia Reavell, editor of The Tale Of An Empty House collection and a prime mover in the Tilling Society favours Pirates above his other supernatural work whereas my thing is more for the nastier likes of The Face and The Outcast. Who cares? They were all written to be enjoyed (or whatever it is we do with ghost & horror stories), and the more of his complete collections available for us to argue over, the better.
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Post by monker on Jun 22, 2009 12:49:44 GMT
How Fear Departed from the Long Gallery is Benson's most overrated story IMO and Between the Lights his most underrated.
I would find it interesting to read which thirteen stories some of the posters on this forum would have chosen if they'd compiled what became 'The Horror Horn'.
I'll post my picks later.
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Post by dem bones on Jun 22, 2009 14:59:32 GMT
i'd need to reread him again to do it justice, so instead, here's thirteen i've the fondest memories of at time of writing. Negotium Perambulans The Face The Outcast The Sanctuary Inscrutable Decrees The Step Christopher Comes Back The Wishing Well The Room In The Tower The Dance The Horror Horn Mrs Amworth and one from either Monkeys, The Friend In The Garden, The Gardener and The Man Who Went Too Far. ... And here's the contents of Alexis Lykiard's The Horror Horn (Panther, 1974) Bruce Pennington The Room In The Tower Gavon’s Eve Caterpillars The Thing In The Hall The House With The Brick Kiln The Horror Horn Negotium Perambulans Mrs Amworth The Face “And No Birds Sing” The Bed By The Window Monkeys The Sanctuary ... which strikes me as by far the more sensible selection of the two.
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Post by Dr Strange on Jun 23, 2009 9:11:37 GMT
OK, but first here is what I don't like about Benson -
1. His banging on about golf, cars, tennis, fishing, and other gentlemanly pursuits of the well-to-do bachelor. But especially the golf. 2. I mostly don't go for his straight-up "ghost" stories - i.e. where there is an actual ghost (as opposed to, e.g. a big slug thing). His handling of those is very repetitive and cliched (misty figures, feeling someone invisible brush by, etc.) 3. And I don't go for the "occult science" stuff he sometimes (too often) throws in - especially the cod-Einsteinian space-time continuum nonsense he sometimes uses to try to explain "premonitions".
Having said that, I really like some of his stuff. So here is my 13 (in no particular order) -
1. Gavon's Eve (set not far from where I grew up) 2. The Thing In The Hall (hypnotism, seances & elementals) 3. Negotium Perambulans (very Jamesian) 4. The Room In The Tower (much-anthologised vampire story) 5. Mrs Amworth (another vampire - and if 2 is too many, I prefer this one) 6."And No Bird Sings" (something evil in a Surrey wood) 7. The Wishing Well (Cornish witchcraft) 8. The Sanctuary (Satanic black mass story) 9. Caterpillars (I'd like to see Cronenberg film this one!) 10. The Bus Conductor ("room for one inside" is such a creepy line) 11. Monkeys (Benson's take on the mummy's curse) 12. The Temple (ancient druidic evil) 13. The Confession of Charles Linkworth (a relatively straight ghost story, notable for early example of "EVP")
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Post by monker on Jun 23, 2009 13:23:03 GMT
This is a provisional list only…
The Room in the Tower The Thing in the Hall The House with the Brick-Kiln Caterpillars Between the Lights Negotium Perambulans In the Tube The Gardener The Face A Tale of an Empty House 'And No Birds Sing' The Step Monkeys
Bubbling under…
The Man Who Went Too Far, And the Dead Spake and Mrs Amworth
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Post by unholyturnip on Jun 27, 2009 16:58:38 GMT
I'd agree with most of what's been posted. But I am very partial to 'Pirates'. That one has a subtlety that's almost Aickmanesque, which really gets my head spinning if I read it late at night. 'Tale of an Empty House' and 'The Hanging of Alfred Wadham' are also personal favourites of mine from his major books.
I think the lesser known tales 'The Friend in the Garden', 'Dummy on a Dahabeah' and 'The Flint Knife' are both excellent too. Those three were collected in 80's collection 'The Flint Knife', which features a lot of uncollected stories (which were strangely omitted from the 1992 Dalby edited collection). Judging from most of them, they weren't especially worth collecting, but there are a few true master-works in there.
It would be nice, when the Wordsworth edition does come around, if the tales omitted from the Dalby collection did make appearance though. Like I say, they're not all brilliant, but some of them are better than his more well known tales.
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Post by monker on Jun 28, 2009 16:59:48 GMT
Interesting comments your unholy vegetableness. I made my list without being completely familiar with all of his tales because I tend to pick and choose through short story collections which I'm doing now with Benson. I'm a reader who is easily distracted so I don't do nearly enough as I would like to hence all of my statements regarding 'bests' are provisional only but I like to comment anyway. Given the amount of junk that I could wade through to get even this far, I don't think I'm completely out of my depth. I had a feeling there might be more to Pirates than it merely being a benign ghost story. I look forward to checking for myself when I get to it. I'll going on to The Ape and The Chippendale Mirror next. Enough of me hijacking this thread, maybe Dem can move this part of it to a/the Benson thread.
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Post by dem bones on Jun 29, 2009 17:01:17 GMT
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Post by lobolover on Oct 11, 2009 16:56:48 GMT
How Fear Departed from the Long Gallery is not a bad story, but more for the gruesomness of the back story . A guy throws two infants into a fireplace that's......extreme .
I did like those of his celebrated stories I read, but I just found that the Dust Cloud, while having good imagery, had to much rhapsodising about the wonders of cars and to few ghostly things in comparison .
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