James Wade - Such Things May Be: Collected Writings

[dem bones]

James Wade - Such Things May Be: Collected Writings [ed. Edward P. Berglund] (Shadow Publishing, 2018)

]Jim Pitt

Edward P. Berglund - Preface
Fritz Leiber - Foreword
James Wade - Introduction

Macabre Tales

Full Cycle
Final Decree
The Elevator
Snow in the City
The Pursuer
Grooley
Something for Grooley
Grooley adaptation (by Terence Staples)
Time After Time
Temple of the Fox
The Deep Ones
The Nightingale Floors
The Facts in the Case
Who’s Got the Button?
Medium Without Message
The Silence of Erika Zann
A Darker Shadow Over Innsmouth
A Swishing Over Innsmouth.

Early stories:

The Sandals of Sargon
Those Who Wait
Planetfall on Yuggoth
Photo Finish

Poetry:

Cotton Mather’s Vision
What They Said
Moonlight
Night-Shadows
Satori
At the Corner of Walk and Don’t Walk: 12th of Never
Sonnet 1948
Nocturne
The Twilight of Faustus
Sonnet 1949
Farewell in Limbo
Panels for a Nativity
Wotan Brooding over the Ruins
Sauk City: Two Gentlemen Meet at Midnight
In Memoriam: H. P. Lovecraft
The Book in the Glade
A Poem about Bone Cancer in Children
Shoggoth Victim
Revisionist Sonnet
The Sinister Sonnet
H. P. Lovecraft, Esq
Mist
My Love
Untitled Poem
Limmerks
Fan-Tasia.

Realistic Stories:

The Commuter
Tonic Triad
Foreign Policy
The Scowler
Among the Sand Dunes at Crane Rock Point

Music Score:

Three Sonnets by H. P. Lovecraft for Voice and Piano.

Essays & Reviews:

Film Review: Spirits of the Dead
Review: Mulligan, Come Home!
Book Review: The Green Man
Film Flam
My Life with the Greatest Old One
The Mass Media Horror
Lunch with Mr. Bloch
Review: Lovecraft’s Follies
Book Review: Selected Letters III
Book Review: The Collected Ghost Stories of Oliver Onions
Film Review: Don’t Look Now
Arkham House: Promise and Performance
Book Review: The Height of the Scream
Book Review: The House of the Worm
A Sense of Otherness
Book Review: Kecksies and Other Twilight Tales
Book Review: Interview With the Vampire
A Shipboard Reading List
Book Review: The Beyonders
Book Review: The Great White Space
Book Review: The Princess of All Lands
Fritz Leiber Revisited: From Hyde Park to Geary Street
Book Review: An Index to the Selected Lettersof H. P. Lovecraft
Book Review: Lord of the Hollow Dark
You Can’t Get There From Here: “How the Old Woman Got Home” and M. P. Shiel as Thinker
Lovecraft and Farnese in Harmony and Discord
Some Parallels between Arthur Machen and H. P. Lovecraft
Book Review: Lovecraft: A Biography
Book Review: Lovecraft At Last
Book Review: Prince Zaleski and Cummings King Monk
Book Review: The Witchfinder,
Book Review: Worth the Waiting
Book Review: Xelucha and Others.

Blurb:
Tales from Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos: ‘The Deep Ones’, ‘A Darker Shadow Over Innsmouth’, ‘The Silence of Erika Zann’.
Supernatural terror from the Midwest: ‘The Nightingale Floors’, ‘The Pursuer’, ‘The Elevator’, ‘Snow in the City’.
Weird tales set in Korea: ‘The Temple of the Fox’, ‘Time After Time’.
And many other short stories and poetry, plus essays and reviews of weird fiction. 25 short stories, over 20 poems and more than 30 essays and reviews in this major retrospective of the author.

After army service James Wade (1930-1983) settled in Korea and he wrote widely on music for a variety of periodicals. His symphonic and chamber music has been performed in many countries, and he completed an opera based on Richard E. Kim's best-selling novel of the Korean War, The Martyred. He wrote a column for the Korea Times and his work has been anthologised by such noted editors as August Derleth, Ramsey Campbell, Stuart David Schiff and Herbert Van Thal.

[helrunar]

I'm curious about this one. The titles "A Swishing over Innsmouth" and "The Silence of Erika Zann" made me giggle, at least.

H.

[dem bones]

Apr 17, 2018 20:13:37 GMT helrunar said:

I'm curious about this one. The titles "A Swishing over Innsmouth" and "The Silence of Erika Zann" made me giggle, at least.

H.

500+ pages! Not as daunting a prospect as it first appears: Wade, for the most part, keeps fiction and articles Syd Bounds brief. Of the stories new to me, The Silence of Erika Zann is my pick, way up there with The Nightingale Floors as an example of his best work. The Facts In The Case is a contemporary take on Poe's gleefully disgusting "cautionary" tale with identical squelchy results. Snow In The City is way better for appearing somewhere other than the 11th Pan Horror volume (it didn't quite fit). Much as I share the sentiments expressed in Full Cycle, two days on from reading the story it feels like I'm being haunted by Matthews' Southern Comfort's Woodstock and that's doing my mental well-being no good whatsoever. Wade's book & film reviews are far less charitable than ours, but that's for later on in the thread. 'Macabre Tales' first.

The Silence of Erika Zann: (Edward P. Berglund, ed., The Disciples of Cthulhu, 1976). Erika, grand-daughter of you-know-who, fronts a psychedelic rock band, the Electric Commode, who nightly draw huge audiences to Pete Muzio's 'Frisco club, the Purple Blob. Erika is a former Devil Worshipper with powerful enemies, agents of same having now infiltrated her band and crew. Behind the scenes Tommy, lead guitar, has roped in a mystery man - "a black man - not a Negro, just a black man" - whose terrifying arrangements summon the Elder Gods (who jam along from the void on what sounds like a great cathedral organ). Try as she might to hold them back, our terrified hippy rock chick knows she is fighting a losing battle.

Erika is obviously modelled on Jinx Dawson, lead singer with Coven, whose debut album, Witchcraft Destroys Minds & Reaps Souls (1969), culminates in a 13 minute "Satanic Mass."

Snow In The City: (Herbert Van Thal [ed.], 11th Pan book of Horror Stories, 1970). Another set in Chicago's slum district. A bad Samaritan goes in for some creative flower arrangement on the corpse of his bag-lady victim. Written some time between the mid-forties and early 'fifties and rejected, as were his other stories of that period, by Weird Tales and MF&SF. Made little impression on me at the time (not positively, anyway) but better second time around. Wade doesn't hint at such, but I suspect the narrator is John Carmody, the psychiatrist we'd then recently caught up with in Robert Bloch's Yours Truly, Jack The Ripper.

The Facts In The Case: Now that Dr. Yurka has discovered the cure for cancer, it's finally time to thaw the cryonically preserved. What could possibly go right?

The Pursuer: (Ramsey Campbell, ed., New Terrors 1, 1980). Is the silent, seedy-looking old guy in the beat up clothes really shadowing him, or is it mere coincidence that their paths cross whenever he leaves home? Our narrator instinctively knows that to confront his stalker will be his own undoing.

The Nightingale Floors: (David A. Sutton [ed.], The Satyr's Head & Other Tales Of Terror, 1975). A junkie takes a job as lone night-watchman in the decrepit Ehlers museum. The ever-creaking floorboards - designed that way by the Japanese - soon get on his nerves, but it's the apparition of an executioner and his bound victim in the gloomy Remington Gallery that decides him to quit and clean up. We learn from Wade's introduction that the setting is the now long demolished Harper Museum on Chicago's South side.

Grooley: (David A. Sutton [ed.], New Writings In Horror & The Supernatural: Vol 2, 1972). Grooley is Timmy's imaginary friend. Headless, orange, "funny looking and all wet", he lives at the bottom of the toilet. Recently Grooley has become very demanding, and Timmy is compelled to nick his parents jewellery to feed him. Dad Roger, furious at having his favourite tie-pin flushed down the bog, puts a lock on the bathroom door and Timmy is only allowed access under strict supervision. Grooley gets angry. Grooley gets very hungry indeed ...

Something For Grooley: The previous story is narrated by Babs, mother of Timmy. This is the kid's version of events, his mum having very foolishly ventured into the bathroom to investigate Roger's screams.

Terence Staples - Grooley: A Short Film based on the story by James Wade: You can't keep Timmy out of the toilet. The action is relocated to England (Dad reads Daily Telegraph and the visit to Dr. Steingruber dispensed with, but otherwise screenplay remains faithful to Wade's original.

Full Cycle: (Sotireos Vlahopoulos, [ed.], The Stylus, April 1955). Wade's first published fiction. Mankind finally realises that human existence is pointless, slams on the brake and sets on a program of rapid devolution to achieve the ultimate goal. Primal peace, blessed oblivion.

Final Decree: Velma, her head turned by L.A. Satanists, enters into a compact with the Evil one. She is insistent that her other half be gone before Old Horny arrives to ravish her, but he very violently refuses to agree to a divorce. There can only be one winner, and sure enough ...

[to be continued]

Many thanks to David A. Sutton

[dem bones]

I need to revisit Lovecraft - The Shadow Over Innsmouth in particular - before tackling novella The Deep Ones (which I may even have read in the long ago).

The Elevator: (August Derleth [ed.], Dark Things, Arkham House, 1971). One of Wade's best known stories and very deservedly so. Testimony of Dorothy Welker, English teacher, who, visiting Feldmans dept. store, watched the lift descend to the basement and seemingly melt through the floor, ascending seconds later with a passenger load of ropey-looking individuals, all of them new save for the sweet smiling, dark skinned "Maenad" of an attendant. A member of staff assures her there is no sub-basement. Where did the customers disappear to?

This smiley lift attendant turns up on a shaken Dorothy's doorstep later that evening. Dorothy questions the wisdom of inviting her into her home, but "I am not at all sure that there would be anyway of keeping her out." Meanwhile, across town, Edith Dexter hears the key turn in the lock and assumes it's husband Charles returned home from Feldman's with the errands ....

Time After Time: (Korea Times, 6 March 1966). Frederick Halbert has a serious heart condition. Prior to embarking on an ocean voyage, Dr. Kang strongly recommends that he "forget that there is such a thing as time ... time will have no significance for you on on this trip; it will be as if time doesn't exist." The S.S. Chronos sets off into the fog. Kang's mantra proves prophetic.

As Wade cheerfully admits in his introduction, the story owes much to Conrad Aiken's Mr. Arcularis, so;

"I wrote to Aiken for his judgement; he liked the story and remarked that if I didn't mind the similarity, he certainly had no objection."

Where's The Button?: A short, everyday tale of a stressed father who is late for work, a busy mum, a hyper-inquisitive four year old with a mild sadistic streak, a crying baby .... and a sharp button hook. Somehow you just know from the off it will all end in screams.

[dem bones]

A Swishing Over Innsmouth: (J. Vernon Shea (ed.), Outre, Feb. 1980). When his car packs up on the outskirts of a foul smelling fishing village down Arkham way, Harold Binghampton, a camp, VERY LOUD refugee from the San Francisco Gay Lib scene, fears the worst. The natives - all bulgy-eyes, queer, narrow heads, blubber lips and flat noses - are friendly enough, especially the ugly who insists on calling him "Pht'thya-l'y," but there is rough trade and there is rough trade. First impressions can be deceptive, and, once acclimatised, Harold takes to a life of round-the-clock blasphemous orgies like a gillman to water!

Planetfall on Yuggoth: (Meade & Penny Frierson [eds.], HPL, March 1972). So some bright spark thought it was a good idea to let a pulp-obsessed crewman name the first manned mission to Pluto Project Yuggoth ...

Photo Finish: (Edward P. Berglund [ed.] From The Dark Spaces, Feb. 1977). Tokyo-based Charles Ward is concerned that his American correspondent, Kirk Gissom, Professor of sociology, is too sane, judiciously discriminating in his research, and quietly persuasive in his arguments to fit the profile of the average H.P. Lovecraft fan (i.e., spotty herbert, can't get a boy/girl friend, "issuing pretentious amateur publications crammed with controversies, feuds, self-congratulation and hair-splitting speculative analysis concerning their idol and his literary works," etc).

To Ward, this can only signify an enemy of the Elder Gods. The relevant authorities have been notified.

[helrunar]

Thanks for these notes, Kev! Some of these do sound like great fun. "The Silence of Erika Zann" seems the most intriguing thus far.

cheers, H.

[dem bones]

The Silence of Erika Zann definitely my overall pick of the Mythos content to date. The Nightingale Floors and The Elevator are particularly strong weird supernatural horror stories, and the Grooley variations good sick fun. This next, a sprightly two pager, I could make no sense of at all.

Medium Without Message: Yukio Mishima succeed Pope Paul VI as head of the R.C. Church when the pontiff commits ritual suicide in Tokyo during a tour of the far east. Apparently Wade got the idea from a misheard news item on the radio.

A Darker Shadow Over Innsmouth: (August Derleth [ed.], The Arkham Collector #5, Summer 1969). He boarded the bus to Innsmouth seeking cosmic evil, but the place is a shell of its former self thanks to the navy raids of '28. Initially despondent, he perks up when a frog-faced gal named Nella Kadoz informs him that they'll soon be recruiting staff at the Napalm plant. Who needs Dagon when you can wipe out huge swathes of detested human race with the Government's approval?

Vietnam, flower children, Gay Lib, widespread drug use, rock music - for a man who was adamant that the Mythos should have died, at the very latest, with the passing of his "friendly enemy" Derleth, Wade seemed determined to drag it into the 'seventies - and beyond.

[dem bones]

Four more, the first a particularly ghoulish supernatural horror short which should have been revived long before now.

Temple Of The Fox: (Korea Times, Oct. 31 1965). Martinson, an American lecturer in Seoul, plans to spend his vacation at a Buddhist retreat on Song-Ni mountain. Climbing beyond the nearest village to his destination, he's waylaid by Chae, a decrepit, black-toothed monk who leads him to the Temple of the Fox. Martinson suspects something is amiss when Chae complains that, these days, he and his brother monks so rarely have any meat.

The Commuter: (The Stylus, undated). A life-long worshipper of beauty, he resents every wasted hour of his twenty years a wage-slave tied to a soul-destroying job. Beauty finally repays his devotion when, exiting the station, he collapses dying on the marble floor. The blood makes such exquisite patterns.

Among The Sand Dunes At Crane Rock Point: East meets West sit-com. Wade's arrival in the remote community on real estate business, coincides with the funeral of the village dowager.

Tonic Triad: Mr's Markham's ambition for her son is that he become the great pianist his late father never was. Joel arrives in the city, lands a residency at the Blue Note club, but a sheltered upbringing has ill-prepared him for knockbacks. Besotted with Laine Morton, pop chanteuse, he can't understand why his feelings for her are unreciprocated. On finding her in the arms of their manager, Joel loses it completely.

[dem bones]

The Deep Ones: (Tales Of The Cthulhu Mythos, 1969). "This tale was suggested by an item in Time about experiments with dolphins, including a photo of a pretty girl being suggestively nuzzled by a purposeful porpoise." - James Wade.

The Institute for Zoological Studies, California. Dr. Frederick Wilhelm's experiment in telepathic communication between porpoise and human goes disastrously awry when the subject, Josephine Gilman, oceanographer, is raped in the aquarium by Flip the dolphin while in a state of trance. Alonzo Waite, disgraced Uni lecturer turned hippie guru, had warned as much. He and his followers have the hard evidence of their acid hallucinations to confirm that, far from the benign creatures their reputation suggests, dolphins are evil emissaries of the Great Old Ones. Wilhelm angrily dismisses Waite's ravings but Dorn, our parapsychologist narrator, wonders if their might be some substance to his claims. Ominously, we learn that Josephine originates from Innsmouth. Her mysterious uncle Joseph pulled strings to land her the job at the Institute. Jo hasn't seen her relative since childhood; all she remembers about him is that he reminded her of a frog.

As the hippies step up their nightly drug-fuelled bongo orgies and the complex is battered by gale force winds, Wilhelm listens to the recording taken during the night of Jo's assault and finally realises that Waite is right. He writes a suicide note addressed to Dorn, enclosing the tape for him to act on, or otherwise, as he sees fit.

[Dr Strange]

May 19, 2018 15:24:29 GMT dem bones said:

The Deep Ones: (Tales Of The Cthulhu Mythos, 1969). "This tale was suggested by an item in Time about experiments with dolphins, including a photo of a pretty girl being suggestively nuzzled by a purposeful porpoise." - James Wade.

That would be Margaret Howe Lovatt - www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jun/08/the-dolphin-who-loved-me

May 19, 2018 15:24:29 GMT dem bones said:

Dr. Frederick Wilhelm's experiment in telepathic communication between porpoise and human...

And that would be based on John C Lilly, also the inspiration for my favourite Ken Russell film Altered States - and the video game Ecco The Dolphin.

[helrunar]

I read "The Deep Ones" in an anthology today. I guessed the ending shortly in advance of the halfway mark--I thought the story had some good potential which wasn't entirely realized. I think this was one of Wade's earlier efforts. Derleth's influence seemed quite evident, right down to the italicized final "shocking" revelation.

H.

[andydecker]

Jul 29, 2022 0:39:50 GMT helrunar said:

I read "The Deep Ones" in an anthology today. I guessed the ending shortly in advance of the halfway mark--I thought the story had some good potential which wasn't entirely realized. I think this was one of Wade's earlier efforts. Derleth's influence seemed quite evident, right down to the italicized final "shocking" revelation.

H.

Frankly I always thought the Deep Ones the most boring part of Mythos fiction. It is basically Aliens under water, which is not very interesting. Also it doesn't help that most of those stories follow Shadow over Innsmouth slavishly. In older Mythos fiction it is always: OMG, I am one of them and will transform at the end. Yawn. I can't understand how Brian Lumley could devote so many pages to this.

And yes, The Creature of the Black Lagoon is an Deep One. No doubt about it.