|
Post by Michael Connolly on Oct 3, 2018 13:15:20 GMT
Just last week I was thinking that a reissue of the Michael Cox biography would be welcome. This seems much less likely now. As M.R. James is most famous now for his ghost stories I would prefer to see a biography include a focus on how his life and work was reflected in his fiction. There is scads of material on this from the Haunted Library alone. I've no time for Freudian analysis that, unless the material being considered is explicitly sexual in nature, seems to be academic posturing. I've got the Cox biography - it's a few years since I read it, but I seem to remember there being remarkably little in it about James's ghost stories, and it being much more focused on his academic life (I think Cox said something in the Intro along the lines of the ghost stories being too well known for him to be able to add anything by discussing them). I'm no fan of the psychoanalytic approach either - except when an author is consciously and deliberately using ideas from psychoanalysis (like Aickman, for example). Having said that, if the material is "explicitly sexual" then psychoanalysis would seem to be redundant anyway. Michael Cox has an entire chapter on the ghost stories which I intend to read again after just having re-read the original stories and other commentary.
|
|
|
Post by dem bones on Oct 4, 2018 18:23:50 GMT
Rosemary Pardoe [ed.] - Ghosts & Scholars 34 (Haunted Library, Sept. 2018) Daniel McGachey The Kitchen Cat ( The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral) Rosemary Pardoe - Editorial Rosemary Pardoe - News Rick Kennett - Jamesian Podcasts 8 Paul StJohn Mackintosh - Proposed M. R. James R.P.G.
Fiction
Elsa Wallace - The Chalk Pit Elsa Wallace - The Suppell Stone Paul StJohn Mackintosh - My Dancing Days Are Over
Articles
Joseph Hilton - H. F. W. Tatham: An Outlier of the James Gang Peter Bell - The Jamesian Elliott O'Donnell Mark Valentine - The Watermelon and the Hatstand: On Aickman's The School Friend and Others Peter Bell - Jamesian Notes & Queries: Russell Kirk's Old House of Fear David A. Sutton - A Well In The West
Reviews
Rosemary Pardoe - Oh, Whistle and I'll Come To You, My Lad, adapted and Performed by Robert Lloyd Parry. Roger Johnson - Waiting In The Shadows, by Katherine Haynes.Arrived Monday. Sincere apologies for the delay in posting the details. 'Review'/ commentary over coming days ... Thanks, Ro
|
|
|
Post by helrunar on Oct 4, 2018 22:49:13 GMT
WOW what a gorgeous cover! Kudos to Daniel and Rosemary!
I wonder if H F W Tatham knew Dr H S Grace?
Looks fab! Hope I can get my cash out to Rosemary before it sells out!
cheers, Steve
|
|
|
Post by ropardoe on Oct 5, 2018 7:50:43 GMT
WOW what a gorgeous cover! Kudos to Daniel and Rosemary! I wonder if H F W Tatham knew Dr H S Grace? Looks fab! Hope I can get my cash out to Rosemary before it sells out! cheers, Steve Don't worry - it'll be in print for at least a year; I've still got plenty of copies! This is the first of a series of covers by Dan: I offered him the title of "the new face of G&S" but he refused!
|
|
|
Post by ropardoe on Oct 5, 2018 7:51:39 GMT
Thanks, Kev.
|
|
|
Post by The Lurker In The Shadows on Oct 5, 2018 10:27:55 GMT
This is the first of a series of covers by Dan: I offered him the title of "the new face of G&S" but he refused! This was nothing personal; I turned down the same offer from L'Oreal.
|
|
|
Post by Dr Strange on Oct 5, 2018 10:51:50 GMT
|
|
|
Post by helrunar on Oct 5, 2018 14:43:18 GMT
Wow, thanks Dr Strange for that fascinating link! Those costumes are really way out. I'm trying and failing to imagine our Provost in the midst of all that. He is identified in a couple of the photographs. The cast included Tatham, Maxse, Kynaston and none other than A. C. Benson.
Daniel, I think you'd be ideal as the new face of Ghosts and Scholars. L'Oreal can do something that might be a violation of the standards our esteemed Dem enforces here to put into proper Anglo-Saxon verbiage.
Cheers, Steve
|
|
|
Post by The Lurker In The Shadows on Oct 5, 2018 15:02:08 GMT
Daniel, I think you'd be ideal as the new face of Ghosts and Scholars. I suspect that the true face of Ghosts & Scholars is, was, and ever shall be (as should be hoped considering its inspiration) a horrible, an intensely horrible, face of crumpled linen...
|
|
|
Post by ropardoe on Oct 5, 2018 15:40:55 GMT
Daniel, I think you'd be ideal as the new face of Ghosts and Scholars. I suspect that the true face of Ghosts & Scholars is, was, and ever shall be (as should be hoped considering its inspiration) a horrible, an intensely horrible, face of crumpled linen... That's no way to describe your esteemed editor - I know I'm getting on a bit!!!
|
|
|
Post by helrunar on Oct 5, 2018 16:19:47 GMT
Many thanks to both of you for the smiles--much needed on this somewhat beleaguered Boston Friday. (Ravishing weather, though)
Perhaps an intensely horrible face of crumpled linen is preferable to the "special friend" who comes to visit with Canon Alberic's scrap-book? We are all, alas, getting on... but art, beauty, and artful shivers provide solace and diversion.
Looking up the Wikipaedia entry on Canon Alberic, I was surprised to find this sentence:
The story has inspired a musical composition by Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji, St. Bertrand de Comminges: "He was laughing in the tower", first performed in 1985 by Yonty Solomon. (end quote)
Perusal of a French article duly footnoted reveals that the piano piece was composed in 1941, but as of 1988 was still unpublished. It was edited by the performer. The article mentions that Sorabji quoted a fragment of the old Dies Irae in this composition. I can write out some more details here, if this is of interest.
The only piece of music by Sorabji I have ever been able to really enjoy is a short piano piece, "In the Hothouse." Sorabji rejoiced in (it seems so much more appropriate to phrase it thus, as opposed to "suffered from") monomania and megalomania... how this worked itself out in his music makes the latter something of an ordeal, for performer(s) as well as audience.
cheers, Steve
|
|
|
Post by helrunar on Oct 5, 2018 16:31:26 GMT
For those who are curious, a recording of Sorabji's St Bertrand de Comminges is available here for listening: www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlY68NR-OYUSee my remarks in preceding post about Sorabji, pace "a warning to the curious." Best wishes, Steve
|
|
|
Post by The Lurker In The Shadows on Oct 5, 2018 17:00:45 GMT
I suspect that the true face of Ghosts & Scholars is, was, and ever shall be (as should be hoped considering its inspiration) a horrible, an intensely horrible, face of crumpled linen... That's no way to describe your esteemed editor - I know I'm getting on a bit!!! I knew I should have qualified that statement somewhat. I consider my esteemed editor both the head and the heart of G&S. And the backbone too. Beyond that I have given no thought.
|
|
|
Post by jamesdoig on Oct 6, 2018 0:02:39 GMT
This is the first of a series of covers by Dan: I offered him the title of "the new face of G&S" but he refused! It is a beaut.
|
|
|
Post by dem bones on Oct 11, 2018 6:07:43 GMT
On reading The Chalk Pit my thoughts were "that's the pick of this issue's fiction done and dusted," but then came The Suppell Stone. "So it's obviously a draw between these two." And it was, until Mr. StJohn Mackintosh complicated matters. A three-way tie it is then.
Elsa Wallace - The Chalk Pit: Ingenious prequel to The Story of an Appearance and a Disappearance. December 1937. Kidman and Gallop, proprietors of the "Foresta & Calpigi" puppet theatre, are surprised by a fiery priest as they get up close and personal with one another in a field. Should they dare visit his parish, the man of God assures them, he will see them hung. Kidman decides to teach the joyless old fool a lesson, pulls a sack over his head and ties it with rope. His malicious prank ends tragically when the Holy Man panics and falls into the chalk pit. Elsa Wallace - The Suppell Stone: Narrated by Lizzie, a visitor from Rhodesia who has travelled to the West Country to meet her Aunt Edie. On learning of Lizzie's plans to visit Stonehenge, Old Perce, a garrulous show off, insists on showing her Puttsford's solitary tourist attraction; the enormous standing stone - last survivor of the original circle - in Mr. Rannan's field. Local lore has it that a ravenous beast lives beneath the stone, a fanciful legend that has grown over the centuries due to the districts worryingly disproportionate cases of mysterious disappearance. The gypsies even believe that the stone can absorb bodies into itself.
Rannan is fiercely protective of the site: Sebastian, his stepson, and Willis, the sinister groundsman, far less so. It's lethally unfortunate for Perce that the landowner is away on business.
Paul StJohn Mackintosh - My Dancing Days Are Over: Shades of 'the Curse of Glamis Castle' about this story, or maybe it's just me. Grandfather James, a Black Magician, had a maze constructed on the Wilsthorpe Estate to his own evil design. A beast lurks there-in. Wilson, his successor must devote his every hour to protecting the innocent from themselves by keeping them away from the demon-haunted hedges. Death will bring merciful release, but, with no son to succeed him, who will keep the beast at bay?
Nephew John is unlikely to appreciate his inheritance once he realises it comes with the mother of all strings attached.
|
|