Unutterable Horror

[Michael Connolly]

PS Publishing has made available the two volumes of Unutterable Horror: A History of Supernatural Fiction, by S.T. Joshi.

This is the description from its website: www.pspublishing.co.uk/ "UNUTTERABLE HORROR was the product of five years of solid work, and the book comes to a total of 312,000 words. It covers the entire range of supernatural and non-supernatural horror fiction from the Gilgamesh (1700 B.C.) to such contemporary writers as Caitlín R. Kiernan and Laird Barron. Along the way I discuss the Gothic novel, Edgar Allan Poe, the Victorian ghost story, Ambrose Bierce, the five “titans” of the early 20th century (Arthur Machen, Lord Dunsany, Algernon Blackwood, M. R. James, H. P. Lovecraft), Walter de la Mare, American pulp writers from Robert Bloch to Ray Bradbury, the horror “boom” of the 1970s and 1980s (William Peter Blatty, Stephen King, Peter Straub, Clive Barker, Anne Rice), and many others. This book is intended not only as a history of the field but a guide to the best writing in the field over the past two or three centuries."

I've read no reviews of the books yet, but on the strength of Joshi's previous books, they should be worth getting.

[piglingbland]

I reviewed the Joshi volumes for Le Fanu Studies, on-line from Gothic Press:-

Le Fanu Studies

[piglingbland]

The Le Fanu Studies website mentioned in the previous post in no longer available. I was asked to review the books with specific reference to Joshi's criticism of Le Fanu , but you may get also get a general flavour of these studies... review copied below:

Unutterable Horror A History of Supernatural Fiction.
Volume 1: From Gilgamesh to the end of the Nineteenth Century. ISBN 9781848635234.
Volume 2: The Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries. ISBN 9781848635241.
By S. T. Joshi.
PS Publishing 2012, hardcover, marbled boards. £35.00 each volume.
Review by David A. Sutton
Joshi will be a familiar name to readers of Le Fanu Studies as the author of a string of non-fiction books, especially on the subject of H. P. Lovecraft, but also on other weird fiction writers too. In the genre he is an award-winning critic, bibliographer, novelist and anthologist and also the writer of works on atheism and social matters. The amount of material he’s written on Lovecraft is staggering, but his brief extends to many other weird fiction authors, so it is perhaps no surprise that this sumptuous two-volume set has appeared. Unutterable Horror is a delightful and useful piece of literary criticism – and make no mistake, Joshi does not treat the genre, or rather its proponents, lightly.
In the Preface Joshi tells us, “I have also considered it a significant part of my enterprise to gauge the overall aesthetic success of the works I study, with particular emphasis on the effectiveness of the supernatural manifestation in a given work.”
Of specific interest to readers of this on-line journal, is what he has to say about Le Fanu. The Irish ghost story writer is one we might think classically fits in the same pigeonhole with those other great exponents, M. R. James and Arthur Machen, (although historically earlier) but under Joshi’s literary scalpel no admiration is extended to the fiction of “The Invisible Prince”. The appraisal of Le Fanu’s writings appears in volume 1 in a chapter on Mid Victorian Horrors, where he is given about twelve pages of commentary. “Is it then,” Joshi remarks on the recent renaissance of published books of Le Fanu’s fiction, “the case that he is a sadly neglected master of supernatural and mystery fiction who has now regained the canonical status he deserves?” Joshi answers his own question saying that Le Fanu has been “grotesquely overpraised by his partisans”. He soundly condemns him as unimaginative, verbose and lacking in characterisation and plot development. He does reserve some praise, however, for two of Le Fanu’s stories. ‘Green Tea’ although flawed, “comes close to redeeming nearly the whole of Le Fanu’s other work” and ‘Carmilla’ mainly for its influence on later works by other writers. Joshi feels that Le Fanu’s fiction “did almost nothing to advance the field of supernatural literature”. Having banished Le Fanu firmly in a Room 101* dump bin, we then have to consider if Joshi has singled out our Irish writer of ghost stories for particular opprobrium.
Perhaps we can look no further than his discourse on Stephen King in volume 2, where the author of Carrie and a multitude of other horror novels and novellas receives about seven pages of commentary. He says of King that his stories “are beset with conceptual problems, especially in the critical issue of the function of the supernatural.” And after discussing various works finishes with, “there is every reason to believe that the great proportion of his work will, as with so many of the bestsellers of prior ages, lapse into oblivion with the passage of time.” Well, perhaps Stephen King is too contemporary to make comparisons, although Joshi no doubt feels the two writers should similarly be relegated to the dusty, benighted and (rightly?) neglected shelves of the horror genre.
But maybe we should look at a contemporary of Le Fanu as a more appropriate example? The French duo, Erckmann-Chartrian (Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chartrian) “produced a surprisingly interesting array of weird fiction in the 1860s”. In a page or two Joshi reviews these authors’ major supernatural horror tales, finding ‘The Queen of the Bees “a touching tale of benign supernaturalism” and ‘The Invisible Eye’ “gripping”. He also finds ‘Le Cabaliste Hans Veinland “particularly powerful” and spends time outlining the plot of ‘The Man-Wolf’. All this is in stark contrast to the section which follows on Le Fanu.
Nonetheless, Unutterable Horror is a splendid double bill, covering the whole history of supernatural horror fiction. Of course Poe and Lovecraft. And Machen, Blackwood, Dunsany and M. R. James (“The Titans”). And hundreds of other writers – this is a work worthy of superlatives. On your bookshelf (though Joshi regrets the lack of inclusion of several contemporary writers in his Epilogue and elsewhere) it will become a standard reference work, for the author’s reviews, plot threads, historical anecdotes and commentary, plus an extensive bibliography of the texts discussed. Finally, it’s almost impossible to do justice to these books in a short review. Aficionados of Le Fanu might be miffed that Joshi dispenses with his contribution to supernatural horror, but they should not be put off by the scholarship contained within, and the usefulness, of these two books.

* Room101, a BBC television series where celebrities are invited to discuss their pet hates before the show’s host decides which pet hate to dump in Room 101, a fate worse than death (which itself comes from the infamous accommodation in Orwell’s 1984).

i1243.photobucket.com/albums/gg553/shadowpublishing/UnutterableHorror_zpsdsueb2am.jpg

[Michael Connolly]

Mar 15, 2019 10:49:28 GMT piglingbland said:

The Le Fanu Studies website mentioned in the previous post in no longer available. I was asked to review the books with specific reference to Joshi's criticism of Le Fanu , but you may get also get a general flavour of these studies... review copied below:

Unutterable Horror A History of Supernatural Fiction.
Volume 1: From Gilgamesh to the end of the Nineteenth Century. ISBN 9781848635234.
Volume 2: The Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries. ISBN 9781848635241.
By S. T. Joshi.
PS Publishing 2012, hardcover, marbled boards. £35.00 each volume.
Review by David A. Sutton
Joshi will be a familiar name to readers of Le Fanu Studies as the author of a string of non-fiction books, especially on the subject of H. P. Lovecraft, but also on other weird fiction writers too. In the genre he is an award-winning critic, bibliographer, novelist and anthologist and also the writer of works on atheism and social matters. The amount of material he’s written on Lovecraft is staggering, but his brief extends to many other weird fiction authors, so it is perhaps no surprise that this sumptuous two-volume set has appeared. Unutterable Horror is a delightful and useful piece of literary criticism – and make no mistake, Joshi does not treat the genre, or rather its proponents, lightly.
In the Preface Joshi tells us, “I have also considered it a significant part of my enterprise to gauge the overall aesthetic success of the works I study, with particular emphasis on the effectiveness of the supernatural manifestation in a given work.”
Of specific interest to readers of this on-line journal, is what he has to say about Le Fanu. The Irish ghost story writer is one we might think classically fits in the same pigeonhole with those other great exponents, M. R. James and Arthur Machen, (although historically earlier) but under Joshi’s literary scalpel no admiration is extended to the fiction of “The Invisible Prince”. The appraisal of Le Fanu’s writings appears in volume 1 in a chapter on Mid Victorian Horrors, where he is given about twelve pages of commentary. “Is it then,” Joshi remarks on the recent renaissance of published books of Le Fanu’s fiction, “the case that he is a sadly neglected master of supernatural and mystery fiction who has now regained the canonical status he deserves?” Joshi answers his own question saying that Le Fanu has been “grotesquely overpraised by his partisans”. He soundly condemns him as unimaginative, verbose and lacking in characterisation and plot development. He does reserve some praise, however, for two of Le Fanu’s stories. ‘Green Tea’ although flawed, “comes close to redeeming nearly the whole of Le Fanu’s other work” and ‘Carmilla’ mainly for its influence on later works by other writers. Joshi feels that Le Fanu’s fiction “did almost nothing to advance the field of supernatural literature”. Having banished Le Fanu firmly in a Room 101* dump bin, we then have to consider if Joshi has singled out our Irish writer of ghost stories for particular opprobrium.
Perhaps we can look no further than his discourse on Stephen King in volume 2, where the author of Carrie and a multitude of other horror novels and novellas receives about seven pages of commentary. He says of King that his stories “are beset with conceptual problems, especially in the critical issue of the function of the supernatural.” And after discussing various works finishes with, “there is every reason to believe that the great proportion of his work will, as with so many of the bestsellers of prior ages, lapse into oblivion with the passage of time.” Well, perhaps Stephen King is too contemporary to make comparisons, although Joshi no doubt feels the two writers should similarly be relegated to the dusty, benighted and (rightly?) neglected shelves of the horror genre.
But maybe we should look at a contemporary of Le Fanu as a more appropriate example? The French duo, Erckmann-Chartrian (Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chartrian) “produced a surprisingly interesting array of weird fiction in the 1860s”. In a page or two Joshi reviews these authors’ major supernatural horror tales, finding ‘The Queen of the Bees “a touching tale of benign supernaturalism” and ‘The Invisible Eye’ “gripping”. He also finds ‘Le Cabaliste Hans Veinland “particularly powerful” and spends time outlining the plot of ‘The Man-Wolf’. All this is in stark contrast to the section which follows on Le Fanu.
Nonetheless, Unutterable Horror is a splendid double bill, covering the whole history of supernatural horror fiction. Of course Poe and Lovecraft. And Machen, Blackwood, Dunsany and M. R. James (“The Titans”). And hundreds of other writers – this is a work worthy of superlatives. On your bookshelf (though Joshi regrets the lack of inclusion of several contemporary writers in his Epilogue and elsewhere) it will become a standard reference work, for the author’s reviews, plot threads, historical anecdotes and commentary, plus an extensive bibliography of the texts discussed. Finally, it’s almost impossible to do justice to these books in a short review. Aficionados of Le Fanu might be miffed that Joshi dispenses with his contribution to supernatural horror, but they should not be put off by the scholarship contained within, and the usefulness, of these two books.

* Room101, a BBC television series where celebrities are invited to discuss their pet hates before the show’s host decides which pet hate to dump in Room 101, a fate worse than death (which itself comes from the infamous accommodation in Orwell’s 1984).

i1243.photobucket.com/albums/gg553/shadowpublishing/UnutterableHorror_zpsdsueb2am.jpg

Even with its many and annoying typographical errors, Unutterable Horror is the best history of horror fiction that I've ever read.

[helrunar]

Thanks for those quotes, Piglingbland. I have read very little of S. T. Joshi's work and don't really feel inclined to peruse those tomes, though the story about the Queen of the Bees does sound intriguing. I may check the books out from the library when I'm in search of more tales to savor, though since I became a Vault resident, I've found plenty of grist for that particular mill thanks to our learned and enthusiastic Undead.

(Why Yes, JoJo...heh heh...it's true... but please, don't be alarmed! You'll find life by moonlight and shadows so much more... diverting... than the life known to those feckless mortals who walk by light of day! heh ... heh... HEH!)

I'd call Le Fanu a jobbing writer who at times touched greatness. I personally find Carmilla, which I have read a few times between my teenage years and now (last time was two or three years ago) to be one of the most remarkable literary achievements of the century in any genre. Much better, as literature, than Dracula, in my not-so-humble opinion. Incidentally, Lovecraft in a couple of his letters reports a story he was told by a lady who was a professional ghost writer (no pun intended) and revision jobber. She told him, and apparently a number of other people, that she had prepared Stoker's MS of Dracula for publication. Reportedly, what Stoker completed on his own was "a mess." If true, this would account for how feeble the remainder of Stoker's literary production proved to be, though it's possible that all his work post-Dracula went through the filter of a professional revisionist. I do not think that there has ever been any independent confirmation of this story.

Among Le Fanu's other tales, I have enjoyed and will no doubt someday read again "Madam Crowl's Ghost," "Mr Justice Harbottle," "The Child who went with the Fairies" and several others. I re-read several of them a couple of years ago when friends gave me an electronic reading device. One of the first things I added to it was a very cheap edition of all of Le Fanu's supernatural-themed work.

It's interesting to note that while much of the Gothic horror of the 20th century evokes imagery that seems rooted in Victorian Gothic sensibilities, Le Fanu's tales often refer to the atmosphere, settings and scenes of the 18th century. That would have made his work hugely appealing to Lovecraft, among others.

H.

[Jojo Lapin X]

Le Fanu is the author of the utterly magnificent UNCLE SILAS, probably the coolest novel ever written, and on the strength of that work alone is a towering genius.

[andydecker]

Joshi is hit and miss for me, but never boring. I admire him for his outspokenness. Now and then I read his blog, and it seems that his opinions has earned him a lot of enmity.

[Michael Connolly]

While I'm no fan of Le Fanu, his best story "Carmilla" really sticks in the mind. The end that suggests that she still might be knocking about is creepy.

[Knygathin]

Mar 15, 2019 15:08:10 GMT helrunar said:

...

... Le Fanu's tales often refer to the atmosphere, settings and scenes of the 18th century. That would have made his work hugely appealing to Lovecraft, among others.

H.

I think that was his foremost appeal. His mastery at it was at least equally great to Poe's. This reminds me of The Queen of Spades, the most beautiful film ever made evoking the 18th century.

Hmm, selective defenses crumbling, ... directed by Jojo Lapin X's persistent praise for Uncle Silas, I shall finally have to explore what this seemingly depressing long novel is about. Archive.org has a nice looking old book file for download.

[Jojo Lapin X]

Mar 16, 2019 16:51:42 GMT Knygathin said:

Hmm, selective defenses crumbling, ... directed by Jojo Lapin X's persistent praise for Uncle Silas, I shall finally have to explore what this seemingly depressing long novel is about.

Good boy! When you are finished with that, report back for further instructions.

[Knygathin]

Mar 16, 2019 17:02:23 GMT Jojo Lapin X said:

Good boy! When you are finished with that, report back for further instructions.

Very good Master. I am afraid it will take some time though, ... fulfillment of one of your earlier instructions, Hothouse by Aldiss, has most regrettably been delayed.