Wheatley Haters

[David A. Riley]

It seems some people wouldn't know a good horror novel if it leapt up and bit them.

shocklinesforum.yuku.com/topic/12297

Though it's good to see he can still stir up a debate.

[dem bones]

Ramsey Campbell's always had a beef with Wheatley , on the grounds that:

"I'm for horror fiction as subversion. I don't like the kind that simply indulges received notions of good and evil, and I hate the kind in which the author indulges his own prejudices by blaming the devil for what he dislikes (Dennis Wheatley's novels are especially blameworthy) or, perhaps worse, flatters those of his supposed audience (the novels of John Saul, say, or Michael Winners film of The Sentinel)."

From Dennis Etchison (ed.) - Masters Of Darkness (Tor, 1986)

This is all very well, but blaming Wheatley for influencing the - admittedly risible - antics of somebody he doesn't like (join the club, RC) is a tad hypocritical. Might as well blame Bram Stoker and Shirley Jackson, as they seem to have been an even greater influence on the un-gentleman in question.

I like that Highlanderbooks chimes in with "well I'd like the chance to read him and make up my own mind". Surely, that's what it's all about.

Glad to see you're fighting his corner, Mr. Riley.

[jamesdoig]

Wheatley was also an excellent anthology editor - his Century of Horror is one of the best, though he did reuse it for later efforts, eg his Library of the Occult anthos.

[marksamuels]

It beats me how anyone can fail to enjoy Wheatley's The Devil Rides Out. Even that die-hard atheist leftie Stephen Volk chose it for his selection in Horror: Another 100 Best Books.

Mark S.

[dem bones]

Aug 15, 2009 8:24:20 GMT jamesdoig said:

Wheatley was also an excellent anthology editor - his Century of Horror is one of the best, though he did reuse it for later efforts, eg his Library of the Occult anthos.

... and he enticed Charles Birkin from self-imposed retirement, even contributing forewords to The Kiss Of Death and The Smell Of Evil. Admittedly they were the same foreword, but the thought was there ....

.... he followed up The Devil Rides Out with another stormer, Strange Conflict, then, decades later completed the loose trilogy with Gateway To Hell, a novel as jaw-droppingly atrocious in it's way as anything of Jim Moffatt's you care to mention. It's called VERSATILITY, sonny.

... he lent his name and contributed introductions to the aforementioned 'Library Of The Occult', surely one of the most ambitious mainstream horror paperback projects attempted to date.

... while we're blaming him for God's spiritual adviser, S. Munchhausen, let's not forget he also heavily influenced Gregory Pendennis. No The Ka Of Gifford Hillary, no To Hell With The Devil!

That will be all for the time being, your honour.

[Steve]

Wheatley was more than capable of being "pompous and turgid" as Joel Lane states but to dismiss the man and all his works as "crap" seems rather crass.

"Close to unreadable" is another phrase which could, I think quite fairly, be applied to some of Wheatley's writing (and also, for me, some of Ramsey Campbell's stuff for that matter). However, I find The Devil Rides Out anything but unreadable. Quite the contrary in fact - for much of its length it's something of a page-turner and generally an all round rattling good pulp adventure yarn.

While I'm unlikely to buy and read everything the man ever wrote, it's great to see some of Wheatley's 'Black Magic Stories' back in bookshops. I'm not now, nor have I ever been, a nazi occultist but I do enjoy a good read.

[Dr Strange]

You can add me to the list of "haters" (actually, that's a bit strong really) - others have already mentioned how he could be "pompous and turgid", "jaw-droppingly atrocious" and "close to unreadable", and I don't particularly want to open up the debate on whether the fact that he lived so long ago (except it wasn't really so long ago) excuses the casual racism, or whether that is totally irrelevant anyway.

But the other thing that counts against him in my book (and this is very much a matter of personal taste) is the crap (yup, I said crap) "magic" stuff. Like I said, it's personal taste, but I have the same problem with a lot of Algernon Blackwood and William Hope Hodgsons' "Carnacki", etc. - and I think it's reasonable to say that's the "tradition" that Wheatley comes from.

I mean, all that ritual magic and astral plane stuff just really gets on my tits... it can be OK in small doses, but it's a bit like the worst sort of SF - where the writer just says "well in the future they have faster-than-light travel, and universal translators, and teleportation, and..." It's just lazy, lazy, lazy - basically a version of the "deus ex machina". Anything goes, anything can happen - you just need to find the right ritual in the British Museum Library or wherever.

[Johnlprobert]

Oh I can't hate Mr Wheatley, especially not after I've pinched fashion tips from him

I read The Devil Rides Out when I was 12 or thereabouts (which is something I couldn't manage with Mr Campbell - I couldn't even make it to the end of one of his short stories at that age) and found it a splendid, fast-paced read, so it can't be all that bad. Perhaps I should take another look at it.

And yes - Wheatley, Hutson, Campbell et al should all be available so we can decide for ourselves.

Oh, and 'that astral projection stuff' gets on my nerves too, but I seem to remember it was often seasoned with semi-naked pulchritude. Or is that just at my house?

[killercrab]

I mean, all that ritual magic and astral plane stuff just really gets on my tits... >>

Can the real Dr Strange please put their astral hand up?

KC

[andydecker]

THE DEVIL RIDES OUT is a must read

Funny thing is, that "astral crap", which writer invented it as a plot device? I don´t think Wheatley was the first. I have a faint recollection of Sax Rohmer using it in his BROOD OF THE WITCH QUEEN, which was heavy on rituals and magic.

[glodfinger]

Is Wheatley the Marmite of Supernatural fiction?

Without placing on some ridiculously exalted literary pedestal, I would argue that he's a pretty good author. He's very uneven, and the worst stuff is horribly dull, but the very best is real page-turning stuff. As has been said, whether you like the 'magic' element is up to you, but I've always liked the way that Wheatley has magic following somewhat inflexible rules. In that sense it is rather like the more strict SF, where the rules of physics cannot be broken.

He does seem to inspire a knee-jerk reaction as regards his politics; something that I find pretty ridiculous. If we're only going to have authors in print whose opinions we find acceptable, then the bookshelves are going to empty pretty quickly.

[pulphack]

oh honestly, some people do get in their high horses about this sort of thing. (er, like me)

first, the racism, etc. of course he had this: he was a man writing mostly over half a century ago. the moral lines in the sand were different then. doesn't make them right or wrong, it just is. read it in the context of that as you would any text, or don't bother.

wheatley was an abominable right winger: that's my opinion. he was also a bloody good storyteller. anyone who can't read a book without bringing such distinctions to it shouldn't bother picking up a book. you want it spoonfed, already? well, no, most of us on here can make these distinctions... we wouldn't read the execrable (but fascinating) moffat otherwise.

he wasn't the first or last to have stupid get out clauses - lots of writers before or since have had them, and i would suggest that whether or not you moan about this depends on how much you like the author in question. whenever a mss leaves the typewriter and ends up on the page, it's interpretation is open purely to the readers ability - or not - to interpret the writer and his aims, no matter how clear he or she is.

and, much as i actually like mr campbell as an author (which i do) i would also suggest that he takes writing a little too seriously - it's fucking telling stories, not a cure for cancer, after all.

for the record, i love the devil rides out and such things are dangerous, but can't abide the rest. and he can be terribly turgid. but reading someone pontificating about writing when they're putting their own views on someone else from a different age is just arse.

[Dr Strange]

Aug 15, 2009 21:10:05 GMT andydecker said:

THE DEVIL RIDES OUT is a must read

Funny thing is, that "astral crap", which writer invented it as a plot device? I don´t think Wheatley was the first. I have a faint recollection of Sax Rohmer using it in his BROOD OF THE WITCH QUEEN, which was heavy on rituals and magic.

Not sure when it first appears in fiction, but there were (are) people who take "the astral" very seriously indeed - big part of the Victorian occult revival (Golden Dawn and all that) - so I suspect it first appears in the fiction of people (like Blackwood) who actually were believers. Not sure who fits into that category, but predates Blackwood - I think Dion Fortune wrote some fiction, as did "Madame" Blavatsky?

Occurs to me that much of the problem (from my point of view) is with "believers" losing sight of the story-telling and going off on one where they try to explain how magic might actually "work" - I suppose though that it's debatable whether Wheatley really did believe, or if that was just for marketing purposes.

[Dr Strange]

Aug 15, 2009 18:15:22 GMT killercrab said:

I mean, all that ritual magic and astral plane stuff just really gets on my tits... >>

Can the real Dr Strange please put their astral hand up?

KC

Let's say I am more Dr Hugo Strange (DC) than Dr Stephen Strange (Marvel).

[Dr Strange]

Just finished "The House of Lost Souls" by F.G. Cottam (Hodder & Stoughton, 2007). It's a British supernatural horror novel - faintly (and, I think, consciously) "old-fashioned", as you'd probably expect from an author adopting that rather quaint two-initials-and-a-surname styling. I really enjoyed it though, apart from being a bit unsure (on several levels) about the ending...

So... why have I posted this in the "Dennis Wheatley Haters" thread? Because dear old Dennis is a character in the book... and it's not a flattering depiction! He's a racist, and a sadist (of course). He's also a Satanist. He must be spinning...

Anyhow, here's a brief taster -

He heard the staccato clack of high heels on wood as she started to descend the stairs from the darkness above him. Pandora's approaching footsteps sounded terribly loud in the silence of Klaus Fischer's empty mansion. As they got closer, he heard wood splinter and groan under their impact. And he began to think that whatever was coming down the stairs was certainly bearing its considerable weight on two legs. But the thing climbing down to him wasn't on heels, it dawned on him, with horror. It was coming down on hooves.