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Post by jamesdoig on May 22, 2012 23:42:34 GMT
For all the redevelopers' worst efforts it's not really changed that much except the pubs are going down like skittles, we're currently lacking the disreputable bookstall and the massed ranks of " foot sore tramps, drunken beggars, and other specimens of the refuse of society" have been whisked off the street so they don't upset anybody during the Olympics. And these days, instead of reading Varney the Vampire; The Death Grasp; and the Horrors of Zindorf Castle, the miliner's apprentice is reading The Black Book of Horror, Night of the Crabs, and The Fungus.
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Post by jamesdoig on May 23, 2012 1:32:51 GMT
i remember trying to establish where the stories originated. This is the gist. Thanks for that Dem - "The Hearse Driver" was terrific, and the looping framing story worked really well - I read somewhere that it gave Fred Hoyle the idea for his steady state universe theory - that it's always existed and continually repeats itself.
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Post by Dr Strange on May 23, 2012 11:50:07 GMT
H. G. Wells' The Inexperienced Ghost is usually cited as the (very loose) inspiration for The Golfing Story, but maybe it's just me, but i reckon there's more than a dash of H. R. Wakefield's The Seventeenth Hole at Duncaster. There's also a whiff of Robert Marshall's The Haunted Major (1902) about it.
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Post by andydecker on May 23, 2012 12:53:30 GMT
an today ... the miliner's apprentice is reading You really are an optimist
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Post by andydecker on May 23, 2012 13:01:32 GMT
the massed ranks of " foot sore tramps, drunken beggars, and other specimens of the refuse of society" have been whisked off the street so they don't upset anybody during the Olympics. What happened to them? Has the Carpathian Guard taken them to those pens on the Sussex Downs?
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Post by dem bones on May 23, 2012 18:00:54 GMT
an today ... the miliner's apprentice is reading You really are an optimist i don't know: for about a year from the summer of 2009, when friend Milan had his stall in Spitalfields market, it really was just like that. Ken MaCauley's The Nuclear Nazi's, Brian Ball's Lesson For The Damned, Jim Moffat's The Naked Light and Queen Kong, Richard Harrington's Hellfire Today, 'Thomas Luke's Phobia, Origin Of The Crabs .... memories. And once he'd moved into TYPE you could even get Paperback Fanatic! Back to/ on The Couch: [In one of my favourite of his black comedies, The Closer Of The Way ( Whispers, 1977), Bloch has been committed to an asylum after commuting some heinous act of violence. An exchange with Dr. Connors runs in part. " .... Not just in this collection (Pleasant Dreams), but in literally dozens of your stories. This hostility towards psychiatrists."
"I don't hate psychiatrists."
"Your characters seem to. There are disparaging references to psychotherapy in The Sorcerer's Apprentice, I Kiss Your Shadow, and other stories in the book. And in Enoch, your Dr. Silversmith is a caricature, a gross libel of the profession."Dr. Connor has a point. A Home Away From Home, The Shrink And The Mink, The Thinking Cap, Dead-End Doctor, Mannikins Of Horror - Bloch frequently portrays the profession in a negative light. I Do Not Love Thee, Dr. Fell goes as far as to depict psychiatry as the modern manifestation of the Black Arts. Bloch's response to Dr. Connors? "But that's just another way of shocking people. Psychiatrists have become the high priests of a society that worships science. Showing them as incompetent or powerless to prevail against the forces of evil is an effective gimmick."
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Post by andydecker on May 23, 2012 19:44:59 GMT
You really are an optimist i don't know: for about a year from the summer of 2009, when friend Milan had his stall in Spitalfields market, it really was just like that. I knew I got that with the milliner´s apprentice wrong
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