Peter Haining - Detours Into The Macabre/ Lucifer Society

[dem bones]

Peter Haining (ed) – The Lucifer Society (W. H. Allen, 1972: Pan 1974 as Detours Into The Macabre)

Foreword – Kingsley Amis
Introduction – Peter Haining

Sir Winston Churchill – Man Overboard
John Gawsworthy – Timber
G. K. Chesterton - The Angry Street
Agatha Christie – The Call Of Wings
Lawrence Durrell – The Cherries
Somerset Maugham – The Man From Glasgow
Robert Graves – Earth To Earth
J. B. Priestley – The Grey Ones
C. S. Forester – The Man Who Didn’t Ask Why
Grahame Greene – All But Empty
Angus Wilson – Animals Or Human Beings
Kingsley Amis – Something Strange
Sinclair Lewis – The Post-Mortem Murder
F. Scott Fitzgerald – The Dance
William Faulkner – A Rose For Emily
Raymond Chandler – The Bronze Door
MacKinlay Kantor – The Man Who Had No Eyes
John Steinbeck – The Affair At 7 Rue De M—-
Patricia Highsmith – The Snail Watcher
Evan Hunter – Inferiority Complex
Paul Gallico – The Terrible Answer
Truman Capote – Miriam
William Burroughs – Exterminator
John Updike – During The Jurassic

Blurb:
"One only has to know a little of the style and scope of any contributor here to appreciate his relish in plummeting the depths of the strange, the macabre and the horrible .... Finally, a word of caution. Don't expect to find traditional tales of the macabre herein - these are stories by major literary figures who innovate rather than copy and the results promise some very strange sensations." - From the introduction by Peter Haining.

Twenty-four masterly tales of terror, each one written by an author famous in other fields.

Winston Churchill rustles up a super-grim conte cruel. Graham Greene meets a zombie at the cinema. Angus Wilson comes over all James Herbert circa The Rats. Truman Capote takes home a predatory ghost girl. Proof that proper literature needn't always be rubbish, but you shouldn't make a habit of it.

Winston Churchill - Man Overboard: High drama on the Red Sea when a passenger is swept off the deck. The band's rendition of The Rowdy Dowdy Boys drown his cries for help. Sometimes death just can't come soon enough.

As featured on the 1st Vault Advent Calendar: Download

Graham Greene - All But Empty (aka A Little Place Off The Edgware Road): North West London, 1939. Craven passes an afternoon in the decrepit little theatre in Culpar Road. Although there are no more than twenty people in the audience, a stranger takes the seat next to him and sporadically interrupts the film with a commentary on the Bayswater murder, a subject about which he seems worryingly well informed. When his hand brushes against Cravens it is wet and sticky. After the film, Craven telephones the police. They already have the killer in custody, but the victim has disappeared.

C. S. Forester – The Man Who Didn’t Ask Why: Carpmael is a famous gambler whose phenomenal success rate owes everything to his ability to see into the future. Now he's wondering how long his happiness can last: how and when will he die? Can he defy his morbid curiosity?

Truman Capote - Miriam: Similar in feel to Hugh Walpole's classic, The Silver Mask. Mrs. Miller, widower, meets a striking little girl in a cinema queue, helps her gain admittance to her first movie. Miriam, all silver-white hair and knowing hazel eyes, having all but exhausted her current victim, decides she's adopting Mrs Miller, regardless of the old woman's feeling on the matter. The ghost girl is high maintenance, and impossible to be rid of.

Angus Wilson - Animals Or Human Beings: Fraulien Partenkirchen's parents pack their troublesome daughter off to Wales to take up the position of housekeeper to eccentric Miss Ingelow. The old girl is a fervent anti-vivisectionist, devoting her life to the rescue of unfortunate creatures destined for the laboratory. The Fraulien decides she doesn't like pets - not when they're huge buck rats - and resigns shortly before Miss Ingelow's grisly death.

W. Somerset Maugham - The Man From Glasgow: When the narrator meets Robert Morrison, he finds him contagiously jumpy and takes him for a chronic alcoholic. Morrison is returning home after spending "too long" in Spain where he's been managing an olive grove. In the centre of the grove stands a derelict house, and it's the dreadful laughter and screams emanating from within that haunt him. Twenty years earlier, the mad owner was slain with a razor, and the crime is re-enacted on nights of the full moon. Morrison hopes that by putting an ocean between himself and San Lorenzo, he will no longer hear the lunatic laughter ...

Robert Graves - Earth To Earth: Brixham, South Devon during World War II. Elsie and Roland Hedges become disciples of Dr. Eugene Steinpilz, who has developed a revolutionary bacteria to reduce even the most stubborn household waste to rich compost. They don't believe in doing things by halves.

Patricia Highsmith - The Snail-Watcher:: Peter Knoppert learns the hard way that a man can have too many snails. Beginning with a mere handful of specimens, he allows them to reproduce unchecked until they’ve taken over the study and we can sit back, safe in the knowledge that they'll soon be crawling up his nostrils.

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G. K. Chesterton - The Angry Street: A thoroughfare off Leadenhall Street grows resentful at all the businessmen who take it's existence for granted and pisses off to Heaven.

Evan Hunter - Inferiority Complex; Gray frets that aliens of superior intellect and hostile intent are closing in from all sides. Field chuckles at the other's ridiculous fears. You've already guessed who's right, but the ending may still surprise. Can't say it did much for me.

MacKinlay Kantor - The Man Who Had No Eyes: Chance meeting between successful insurance salesman Mr Parsons and a blind street-pedlar who lost his eyes in an explosion at a chemical plant leads to dramatic revelation. Da*ly Ma*l readers and T*ries likely to orgasm at morale on offer in this one.

John Steinbeck - The Affair At 7 Rue De M--: The author's son has taken to chewing gum, a habit his father finds disgusting and prays the boy will leave behind now they've moved to Paris. All is well until a friend replenishes John junior's supply. But this new bubble gum is different - it chews back, and Steinbeck has the devil's own job dragging it free of the boy's mouth. When the wrestling match is done, Steinbeck wraps the pulsating horror in a handkerchief and dumps it in the Seine. If only it were that easily disposed of.

Robert A W Lowndes revived this for Magazine Of Horror #12 (Health Knowledge Inc., Winter, 1965/66), so little surprise it should turn up again in a Kurt Singer anthology (Tales Of The Uncanny) shortly afterwards.

[andydecker]

Here is the German edition. At the time dtv was known for "literature" and quality. It even sold. This is the second edition from 1980, marked as 16th to 25th print run.

dtv phantastica, 1979

, 277 pages

A very careful edition, there a short bios of both the writers and the translators included. But this is a rare thing. The print is very small.