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Post by Craig Herbertson on Jun 29, 2010 15:49:57 GMT
Here's to the Vault John. As to whaling. I am interested in whaling, Jojo and particularly keen on drink but I think you would have to be more interested in the abilities of the literati who draw tentative analogies from each page of Moby Dick to events and situations that occur mostly in the minds of bored librarians.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Jun 30, 2010 9:41:22 GMT
"The Gentleman from America" is apparently the basis for the utterly unavailable, possibly lost film THE FATAL NIGHT (1948), about which all the IMDb reviewers say it is the most frightening thing they ever saw. Of course, they were kids when they last saw it, but still. For some further discussion, see here.
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Post by ramseycampbell on Jun 30, 2010 11:36:29 GMT
Curses! Another film to hunt for! I suppose its brevity may be one reason why it hasn't shown up on video. Still, given the number of films I never thought I'd see that have been rescued by DVD, I'll live in hope. Meanwhile, let me try and cast a spell to conjure Island of Lost Souls...
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Post by dem bones on Jul 2, 2010 7:51:05 GMT
Yes, I think that's why we frequent this board. In various guest rooms, overnight stays, bus journeys and waiting rooms where I have had really absolutely nothing to read I've ended up trying to labour my way through Jane Austin, Hardy, Solzhenitsyn, Miller. I wouldn't deny for a second that some literati authors and their works are really good - I'm a big fan of Tolstoy and Joyce as examples, but for the most part these classics are middle class fuck stories with a few stabs at the complexities of the human condition. The worst of them all is 'Moby Dick'. If you are the type that must finish the novel you start, never never never start this book. I've read The Decline and Fall, Grote's encyclopedic History of Greece, War and Peace, several editions of Arabian nights in unabridged editions. I like long and worthy tomes but never never never go near Moby Dick. Never. I still regret the wasted hours... If I meet Herman Melville in hell I will punch him on the nose as they make me read his work for eternity. I can cope with James. The Turn of the Screw is a well constructed story and the inquisitorial subtext is masterly- The Preparatory Torture , the Ordinary Torture and so. It's well thought through. However coping and admiring is a bit different from enjoying. A whole collection? Think I'd leave it. I should add that I wouldn't apply that final judgment to this collection which looks ideal for that long train journey into the night I frequent this board because I would never have got round to reading 90% of this stuff if it hadn't been for them being recommended (or just even mentioned!) here. Add in the fact that pretty much everything on here you can find in second hand shops for a few quid and it really is literary horror heaven. And then there are comments like Craig's above that really make my day and make me realise I'm among such like-minded individuals it's (almost) scary . I raise my glass to you Vault of Evil! Not for the first time, thank you for cheering me up, Lord P. and Moby Craig! i'm really glad that absolutely crucial aspect - "Add in the fact that pretty much everything on here you can find in second hand shops for a few quid and it really is literary horror heaven" still comes across, your lordship. i'm sure old lags would agree that, from the first Vault was just a place we could chat about all the battered paperbacks we'd pick up from second hand & charity shops, car boot sales, church fetes and the like at a time when elements of the the small press had seemingly severed all pretence at providing popular fiction - all this deluxe, numbered limited edition with a dainty little pure silk marker nonsense, price £50 and rising, etc. For that kind of money you can still get a decent stash of evil-reeking horrors - or brand new Wordsworth Mystery % Supernatural editions, come to that - books you might actually WANT to read, not something that will remain unmolested on the bookshelf reserved for the BFSA nominated after the initial cursory flick-through. But, you know, different strokes and all that .... It's essentially a retelling of "A Watcher by the Dead", is it not? Similarly, Arlen's novel Hell! Said the Duchess owes a good deal to Machen. I think Arlen was something of an imitator, though he did create the Falcon character played in films by George Sanders. less celebrated than the Bierce and Arlen stories, but Robert Arthur gives the plot a deliciously nasty, E.C.-style makeover for ghoulish mortuary outing The Jokester
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Post by weirdmonger on Jul 9, 2022 15:51:57 GMT
If any interested here is my review today of this truly frightening story ….
“OH, WHISTLE, AND I’LL COME TO YOU, MY LAD”
“…said a person not in the story.”
Is this person — as mentioned by an unknown narrator, this narrator’s interventions here and there being worth a frisson or two in their own right! — the Disney named later in the narration of Professor Parkins’ exploits in Burnstow? In this version of the story that I have just read, there is no mention at all of a ‘Professor Disney’ that other readers have reported elsewhere of having seen named in it… The Zeno’s Paradox gait of some figures later on the beach might be best depicted by a stylish Disney cartoon? “…an appearance of running about his movements, but that the distance between him and Parkins did not seem materially to lessen.” — “The moment came when the pursuer was hovering about from left to right only a few yards beyond the groyne where the runner lay in hiding.” — “‘Will he get over this next one?’ thought Parkins; ‘it seems a little higher than the others.’ Yes; half climbing, half throwing himself, he did get over,…” — note the various other crucial ‘half’ ways in the text such as the story’s horror itself: blind with “muffled arms in a groping and random fashion. Turning half away from him…” — and all this is a similar half-Zenoism to that I found so prevalent in the works of Aickman recently, and in the works Aickman chose for the Fontana ghost anthologies…
As you can see I am looking at this famous story afresh, brainstorming in fact — you will already know the details of its plot and how very frightening it is. What I have thought anew about it today makes it even more frightening, I say!
The landscape is reminiscent of the English East Coast where I have lived for the last 28 years, e.g. its groynes, Martello Towers, cold whistling winds, and my own beachcombing finds, equivalent to Parkins’ famous find in this story. But why is he going for a golfing holiday in the winter when hardly any golf is played?
Getting bored already with my review? You need Dr Blimber’s ‘forcing’ methods to read on! “Your undivided attention, was what Dr Blimber actually said,” … but this is apparently mis-quoted (?) from Dombey & Son. Dr Blimber, in Dickens text, ‘had likewise a pair of little eyes that were always half shut up, and a mouth that was always half expanded into a grin,…’ but a double chin!
“…the Vicar, an estimable man with inclinations towards a picturesque ritual, which he gallantly kept down as far as he could out of deference to East Anglian tradition.” The local Vicar’s suspected Romishness, and Parkins’ conversations with the “lurid demeanour” of his eventual saviour, the Colonel, are connected with Parkins’ disbelief in the supernatural and his eventual come-uppance on this score, and the reference to the ‘foul fiend’ in Pilgrim’s Progress, and the Biblical Sadducees…. ”and his voice boomed out over the flats, as certain also of our own minor poets have said, ‘like some great bourdon in a minster tower’.” — that ‘bourdon’ quotation? Where is it from? Don’t know. From Internet, about Beverley, a Minster town I have visited: “Both west towers contain bells. In the south-west tower contains a swinging bourdon bell called Great John. It chimes the hour and it dates from 1901. It weighs over 7 tons and it is over 7 feet in diameter. Despite its name, it is not dedicated to Saint John of Beverley. It reads, ‘I am called the great bell of Saint John the Evangelist 1901’.” St John (not as in HPL’s Hound!) was an apostle of John the Baptist who called the Sadducees a ‘brood of vipers’… so, not just rats in Parkins’ room then?
Whistling for the wind as a paranormal phenomenon? A ‘confirmation bias’ or severe pareidolia / apophenia like mine? Or indeed a deadly synchronicity or cause-and-effect in this story’s gestalt? Rogers arriving at the end making a Holy Trinity or thirds against the shadows of a whole with Parkins and the Colonel?
FLA FUR BIS FLE – this, even beyond my confirmation-bias, surely must deliberately contain the real word ‘SIFFLEUR” which now has its own Wikipedia about its meaning as ‘whistler’? Has this been observed before in this MRJ story? (The rest of those letters only being the inferred ‘flab’ of the Colonel — or four letters just short of a ‘baffle’!)
BIS is Latin for twice, not half! Undivided Blimber? — “And here’s a sixpence – no, I see it’s a shilling – and you be off home, and don’t think any more about it.”
A truly great frightening story.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Jul 9, 2022 16:02:03 GMT
Is this person — as mentioned by an unknown narrator, this narrator’s interventions here and there being worth a frisson or two in their own right! — the Disney named later in the narration of Professor Parkins’ exploits in Burnstow? In this version of the story that I have just read, there is no mention at all of a ‘Professor Disney’ that other readers have reported elsewhere of having seen named in it… en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_Professor_of_Archaeology
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Post by weirdmonger on Jul 9, 2022 16:12:05 GMT
Is this person — as mentioned by an unknown narrator, this narrator’s interventions here and there being worth a frisson or two in their own right! — the Disney named later in the narration of Professor Parkins’ exploits in Burnstow? In this version of the story that I have just read, there is no mention at all of a ‘Professor Disney’ that other readers have reported elsewhere of having seen named in it… en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_Professor_of_ArchaeologyThat is very helpful. Thanks, However, it does not explain my version of the story I just re-read that has no mention of Professor Disney but vague unexplained ‘Disney’ references later in the text,
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Jul 9, 2022 16:48:19 GMT
That is very helpful. Thanks, However, it does not explain my version of the story I just re-read that has no mention of Professor Disney but vague unexplained ‘Disney’ references later in the text, There is no "Professor Disney."* The Disney Professorship is an endowed chair, named in honor of the donor, a John Disney. The holder of the chair is called "the Disney Professor." *In this context. There might, of course, be professors named Disney.
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Post by weirdmonger on Jul 9, 2022 16:56:56 GMT
That is very helpful. Thanks, However, it does not explain my version of the story I just re-read that has no mention of Professor Disney but vague unexplained ‘Disney’ references later in the text, Yes, but I am interested that James’ first reference in the text to Disney seems to be… “– at the ruins of which Disney was talking. I don’t exactly know where they are, by the way; but I expect I can hardly help stumbling on them.” without any antecedent reference to his name. He must have assumed we knew who Disney was without the help of the Internet!
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Post by Dr Strange on Jul 9, 2022 17:22:42 GMT
The story opens with:
"I suppose you will be getting away pretty soon, now Full term is over, Professor," said a person not in the story to the Professor of Ontography, soon after they had sat down next to each other at a feast in the hospitable hall of St. James's College.
The Professor was young, neat, and precise in speech.
"Yes," he said; "my friends have been making me take up golf this term, and I mean to go to the East Coast — in point of fact to Burnstow — (I dare say you know it) for a week or ten days, to improve my game. I hope to get off to-morrow."
"Oh, Parkins," said his neighbour on the other side, "if you are going to Burnstow, I wish you would look at the site of the Templars' preceptory, and let me know if you think it would be any good to have a dig there in the summer."
It was, as you might suppose, a person of antiquarian pursuits who said this, but, since he merely appears in this prologue, there is no need to give his entitlements.
So "Disney" appears to be "his neighbour on the other side" rather than the person who spoke the opening line. I suspect that James decided to call this character "Mr Disney" as an in-joke for his fellow antiquarians, since the Disney that endowed the chair in archaeology at Cambridge had been dead almost 50 years by the time the story was written.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Jul 9, 2022 17:23:15 GMT
He must have assumed we knew who Disney was without the help of the Internet! Recall the context in which this story was written---to be read aloud to friends. He could safely assume that his initial audience would know exactly what he was talking about.
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Post by weirdmonger on Jul 9, 2022 17:27:31 GMT
He must have assumed we knew who Disney was without the help of the Internet! Recall the context in which this story was written---to be read aloud to friends. He could safely assume that his initial audience would know exactly what he was talking about. Very good point, Thanks.
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Post by weirdmonger on Jul 9, 2022 18:18:18 GMT
Thanks, Dr Strange. Very useful.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Jul 9, 2022 19:15:16 GMT
The story opens with: "I suppose you will be getting away pretty soon, now Full term is over, Professor," said a person not in the story to the Professor of Ontography, soon after they had sat down next to each other at a feast in the hospitable hall of St. James's College.
The Professor was young, neat, and precise in speech.
"Yes," he said; "my friends have been making me take up golf this term, and I mean to go to the East Coast — in point of fact to Burnstow — (I dare say you know it) for a week or ten days, to improve my game. I hope to get off to-morrow."
"Oh, Parkins," said his neighbour on the other side, "if you are going to Burnstow, I wish you would look at the site of the Templars' preceptory, and let me know if you think it would be any good to have a dig there in the summer."
It was, as you might suppose, a person of antiquarian pursuits who said this, but, since he merely appears in this prologue, there is no need to give his entitlements.So "Disney" appears to be "his neighbour on the other side" rather than the person who spoke the opening line. I suspect that James decided to call this character "Mr Disney" as an in-joke for his fellow antiquarians, since the Disney that endowed the chair in archaeology at Cambridge had been dead almost 50 years by the time the story was written. I was relying on the note in A PLEASING TERROR. Now I am starting to think whoever wrote that is wrong.
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Post by weirdmonger on Jul 10, 2022 6:20:20 GMT
Still brainstorming like the mad thing or maddened man…
Bis-bedded room at the Globe but “half-way through the window backwards […] rigging up, with the help of a railway-rug, some safety-pins, and a stick and umbrella,…” as pareidolia towards a scarecrow “that its one power was that of frightening.”
[Is the identification of SIFFLEUR (professional whistler) from FLA FUR BIS FLE a new one, and was it arguably deliberate by MRJ? Wikipedia: Many performers on the music hall and Vaudeville circuits were professional whistlers (also known as siffleurs)]
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