| Author | Message | ||
     Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.184.109.44 |
In my local waterstone, the have a set of shelves labeled Cosy Crime.... Under this category you will currently find 4 copies of Pretty Little Dead Things by one Gary McMahon. | ||
| John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.131.51.242 |
Well I believe Gary is very comfortable to sit on. | ||
| Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus) Username: Rhysaurus Registered: 01-2010 Posted From: 80.4.12.3 |
Just by one Gary McMahon? What happened to all the others? | ||
| Simon Bestwick (Simon_b) Username: Simon_b Registered: 10-2008 Posted From: 86.24.209.217 |
They sleep beneath the waves until the stars are right again. | ||
| John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.131.51.242 |
We all knew there was more than one - that explains his omnipresent literariness. | ||
| Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus) Username: Rhysaurus Registered: 01-2010 Posted From: 212.219.233.223 |
I can sympathise with any bookstore putting inappropriate books (such as the McMahon) into the Comfy Crime section... Do we really expect them to have a section called Bleak as Fuck? | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
I imagine some nice little old lady picking up a copy of PLDT to read in her easychair, and vomiting with horror into her teacup. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
Btw, it was good to see you last night, Weber - thanks for coming along. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.26.169 |
All this came out of last night's panel, where I noticed the Cosy Crime section and suggested there is also Cosy Horror - at least, the kind that seeks to reassure. Ours doesn't. | ||
| Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus) Username: Rhysaurus Registered: 01-2010 Posted From: 212.219.233.223 |
Ramsey: when do you believe that non-cosy horror truly began? For instance I think it barely existed before the 1950s. I've heard the arguments for M.R. James, Blackwood, Lovecraft, etc, being non-cosy but it doesn't wash with me. They were cosy (and I base this formulation on the cosy effect they have on me). The earliest truly disturbing work of non-cosy horror that I've ever encountered is Maldoror by Isidore Ducasse (1868). Nothing before that is genuinely troubling (we make a deliberate effort to be troubled for their sake). | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.26.169 |
Poe, certainly. Bierce, Le Fanu, Leiber - just a few that come to mind. And (if I may pre-empt you, Joel) the likes of Woolrich and John Franklin Bardin, even if published as crime fiction (an overlap we already find in Poe, of course). | ||
| Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus) Username: Rhysaurus Registered: 01-2010 Posted From: 212.219.233.223 |
But are those writers really disturbing? I'm not trying to be awkward. I love Poe. I also like Ambrose Bierce. But neither of them actually frighten or disturb me. The same applies to Le Fanu (who I like less). They are still quite cosy really, don't you think? I mean that when we read them we make a deliberate effort to jump up and cry, "I'm scared!" It's designer-fear. We're not deeply troubled by them, not really... The unpleasantness is not unpleasant enough. Maldoror, on the other hand, genuinely seems to be attempting something new: to "erode the reader's soul" in the words of the author... I came away from reading that book feeling that my soul had been twisted in a mangle. I also found Georges Bataille's short novel The Story of the Eye (1928) rather disturbing, vastly more so than anything by M.R. James or Lovecraft. I just have the feeling that Poe, James, Lovecraft, etc, were playing a parlour game; but that Ducasse and Bataille et al were doing something more deadly. Just my own personal viewpoint, of course. | ||
| Darren O. Godfrey (Darren_o_godfrey) Username: Darren_o_godfrey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 64.12.117.80 |
I found "The Facts of M. Valsemar's Case" to be quite disturbing the first time I read it. But I was only about ten. The brutality displayed in "The Black Cat" also left me a bit unsettled. | ||
| Darren O. Godfrey (Darren_o_godfrey) Username: Darren_o_godfrey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 64.12.117.80 |
Oops. That's Valdemar. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.158.61.161 |
Hop Frog is a particularly brutal piece of work by Poe. i certainly wouldn't call it a cosy horror story... | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 220.138.164.36 |
I agree about the uncosiness of Poe. I often find his stories almost unbearably claustrophobic and bleak ('The Pit and the Pendulum', for example). I think that even the authors sometimes considered more 'cosy' on the horror scale wrote some decidedly uncosy stuff. M.R. James, for instance. There's nothing cosy about 'Martin's Close', 'The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance', 'Lost Hearts' and many others. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.137.168.78 |
Completely with Huw, there. I think Poe and MR James are some of the most uncosy horror authors I've ever read, despite the latter (or because of?) having a scholarly cosiness about it. Some of the greatest shocks of uncosiness to my systems were some stories by F Marion Crawford, AM Burrage, May Sinclair... | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 2.24.37.237 |
"There's nothing cosy about 'Martin's Close', 'The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance', 'Lost Hearts' and many others." Agreed up to the last three words – I'd say the list is really not much longer than those three stories. Rhys, I think you might agree with the 'California School' view of horror fiction that non-cosy supernatural horror – where the fear was not 'a pleasing terror' but something that invaded the reader's mental environment – didn't start until the likes of early Bradbury, Matheson and Leiber. But they in turn were building on the mordant urban noir fiction that Ramsey refers to above. Earlier supernatural fiction can disturb you if you allow it to break out of the 'fireside' narrative framework in your head – that does happen sometimes. Poe disturbs me in a way I don't consent to, a way that doesn't come from wanting to be creeped out – 'Berenice' in particular is corrosive, warped, terrifying. So is Bierce's 'The Death of Halpin Frayser' with its post-mortem Oedipal encounter. Non-cosy horror makes you more disturbed than you asked for. It has no 'safe words'. Nobody feels good about reading it, though they may be impressed. Nobody feels good about writing it either, though they may not be ashamed of the result. It can't be contrived or successfully imitated. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Hop Frog is a particularly brutal piece of work by Poe. i certainly wouldn't call it a cosy horror story... No, and "The Cask of Amontillado" might just be the world's first noir (as we understand that literary/filmic term now) tale.... Poe seems to have invented a number of genres. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.158.61.161 |
Will people please stop agreing with me. I'm really not used to it. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.158.61.161 |
agreeing even | ||
| John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.131.51.242 |
My understanding of cosy horror would be the kind of mainstream horror novels where the status quo is threatened and all is back to normal at the end. And there's nothing at all wrong with that. I'm not sure that such well-regarded masters of the genre as MR James can really be described as 'cosy horror' just because they wrote about things that people can't really relate to any more. I'm not saying that you need to be a Latin scholar or have gone to Eton, but there's plenty in his stories to disturb rather than repel and / or bore, which I'm afraid is what a lot of the modern urban horror movement does for me. A similar movement existed / exists in SF that's tried to trash John Wyndham and his ilk for being 'cosy cardiganed SF' where in fact much of it is nothing of the sort. There - I've become a grumpy old horror fan in single posting. Oh and Non-cosy horror makes you more disturbed than you asked for. It has no 'safe words'. Nobody feels good about reading it. Do you really mean that, Joel? | ||
| Pete_a (Pete_a) Username: Pete_a Registered: 07-2011 Posted From: 75.85.10.161 |
"My understanding of cosy horror would be the kind of mainstream horror novels where the status quo is threatened and all is back to normal at the end." I agree with you, John. I've always thought of that stuff as 'conservative horror' but I guess 'cosy' works just as well. Ramsey spoke earlier in the thread about 'horror that seeks to reassure' -- which is certainly the imperative behind the type of fiction you're talking about here (that written by the various spiritual heirs of Dennis Wheatley). But I do think there's a difference between horror that seeks to reassure sociologically and 'horror' that seeks to reassure metaphysically. Both Machen and Blackwood, for example, could be said to be doing the latter (albeit not always), and I certainly wouldn't belittle them with the term 'cosy'. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 61.216.48.81 |
"Poe seems to have invented a number of genres." E.T.A. Hoffmann was doing it before Poe, Craig! I think what some find cosy about the works of James and other writers of the time is the manner of narration. I disagree with Joel that the 'uncosiness' is limited to just a few tales - 'The Haunted Doll's House', 'Count Magnus', 'The Ash Tree', 'A View from a Hill' and even 'Wailing Well' (with its often comedic, lighthearted tone) have some pretty gruesome elements. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.31.210 |
'I mean that when we read them we make a deliberate effort to jump up and cry, "I'm scared!"...' I don't need to, hence my citing them. I would also say that the crucial predecessor of Ducasse and Bataille is de Sade - one extreme of the Gothic novel, as well. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.57.88 |
Imaginary Monty Python sketch: John Cleese returning a book to his local Waterstone's - "I bought this book yesterday. Found it in your Comfy Horror section." "Yes, Sir?" "Well, it isn't very comfy, is it? I mean, near the end I was nearly scared out of my wits." | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.209.20 |
What do you think about Aickman, Rhys? | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 2.24.30.89 |
John – I didn't mean that reading non-cosy horror leaves the reader feeling guilty or in the wrong – I meant that being challenged in that way is uncomfortable and worrying. It can certainly be a healthy thing, but the 'feelgood factor' is not there. It leaves you rattled and uneasy. There's no closure. Hence limited commercial viability. And (as I said at the reading mentioned above) being violent or gruesome does not make horror non-cosy. That's important. It's about how the reader judges the status or meaning of the work. M.R. James inadvertently nailed the problem with his phrase 'a pleasing terror'. If you're delighted by the entertainment a story or film provides, that is a form of cosy horror no matter how brutal the content may appear. If you're sitting with your eyes closed, hands shaking, not wanting to talk about it, then the experience wasn't cosy. Does that clarify what I mean by 'not feel good'? | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 2.24.30.89 |
Huw – 'gruesome', or even scary, is not what I meant. James trademarked the 'now you're going to be scared... we're going out of the normal world intio the scary world... there, wasn't that scary?... now we're back in the normal world, have a safe journey home' storytelling approach. He did it so well that the form's limitations were overlooked by many later writers. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.209.20 |
>>>>If you're sitting with your eyes closed, hands shaking, not wanting to talk about it, then the experience wasn't cosy. I felt that way when I first watched TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE. I rewatched it recently and found it piss-poor, clunky and boring. On the other hand, rereading James is a constant source of 'pleasing terror', and his frights linger while other, ostensibly more withering stuff has faded away. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.209.20 |
I was "delighted" by Kubrick's The Shining and it disturbed me hugely. Same with Don't Look Now. They induced exquisite feelings of terror. If that's 'pleasing', that's good enough for me. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 61.216.48.81 |
Joel, I see what you mean, but I think you may be oversimplifying James's methods and abilities somewhat. I don't think his style of storytelling is any less worthy or potent than any other in the field. He had a real talent for gradually orchestrating an unsettling ghost story, as did Lovecraft (although HPL wasn't so interested in 'traditional' spectres, of course). I do agree that there is a certain 'cosiness' (for want of a better word) about the way these stories are written; but that doesn't undermine the effects they can have, in my opinion. There are moments in James's stories that are as effective as anything produced in the genre. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 61.216.48.81 |
'as' should be 'than' in my second sentence above... wish we had an edit button! | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.209.20 |
Hey, presto! | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 61.216.48.81 |
Thanks, Gary! | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.137.168.78 |
[You can't do that with real books.] I think all fiction has some 'ominous imagination' element. Even with a happy ending, we know the characters will die. In fact, that makes it even more uncosy, by contrast? | ||
| Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus) Username: Rhysaurus Registered: 01-2010 Posted From: 80.4.12.3 |
I don't have time today to contribute properly to this fascinating debate, but Joel has nailed it, as far as I'm concerned, with all his remarks above... Safe horror is like a rollercoaster: you know you'll be safe at the end. James, Lovecraft, Stoker, even Poe and Bradbury are like this for me. Unsafe horror is like being in a crowd and you feel the prick of a needle. Has someone just injected you with a hypodermic? If so, what the hell was in the syringe? Will it fuck up your mind or kill you? Lautreamont, Bataille, Sade (as Ramsey rightly pointed out), William Burroughs, are more in this category, in my view... One of the most devastating examples of unsafe horror for me is J.G. Ballard's Crash... | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.209.20 |
Have you read The Grin of the Dark, Rhys? | ||
| Stephen Theaker (Stephen_theaker) Username: Stephen_theaker Registered: 12-2009 Posted From: 94.169.3.199 |
This overlaps a bit with what other people have said, but I think cosiness can also come from staying safely within the reader or viewer's genre expectations. A man being stabbed to death in a Friday the 13th film can feel cosy and safe, but when the same thing happened in the Brookside spin-off Damon and Debbie it was profoundly distressing. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.209.20 |
Not as scary as the episode in which Matt Sugden ran over a sheep in Emmerdale Farm. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.137.168.78 |
Yes, all is context. Last night's 'Glorious 39' gave more disturbing significance to a choirboy's singing than during a performance of, say, Faure's Requiem (unless you can lip-read a choir member using swear words instead of 'pie jesu' !). | ||
| John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.138 |
Hi Joel - yes that's fine  | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
Isn't it all a matter of personal taste and individual opinion as to whether someone finds a particular horror tale "cosy" or "comfy", or not? I think people vary in the degree to which they can "tolerate or cope with" (for want of a better term) different degrees of horror fiction. That's why some might prefer, say, Hutson's work to Ramsey's and vice versa (I think I can safely say that those of us here prefer Ramsey's to Hutson's). And, of course, it probably depends on how close to home a particular piece feels. James' work doesn't feel very relevant nowadays, because of the settings, the era, the way it's written, and so on. But set a horror story in your own back yard, so to speak, and it probably doesn't feel so comfy. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.209.20 |
No, that's too boring. It's got to be more contentious and worth having a punch-up over. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.209.20 |
That's kind of a genre rule. | ||
| Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus) Username: Rhysaurus Registered: 01-2010 Posted From: 212.219.233.223 |
Maybe it could be argued that if you read a book and you don't immediately die when it's finished, that book is "comfy horror"? Gary: no, I haven't read any Aickman or Campbell's The Grin in the Dark yet, though many people keep recommending both to me... Maybe next year? Ten years ago Ray Russell of Tartarus Press sent me that magnificent limited-edition two volume collection of Aickman's work, The Collected Strange Stories... I always wanted to read it, but at that time in my life my finances were in really bad shape, so bad that I went without food for three days and then reluctantly sold the books for £20 so I could buy groceries. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.57.88 |
James' work doesn't feel very relevant nowadays, because of the settings, the era, the way it's written, and so on. I think it's still very relevant. I visited Eton a couple of years ago, went on long hikes through the playing fields by the Thames and visited James's grave. Going to a bakery in the main street passing through the college grounds (I forget its name) and being accosted by a couple of 'new boys' who asked me where this or that Hall was . . . It all made sense. I'd love to see more. | ||
| John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.138 |
I agree with GF - there should be more violence before such a discussion can be resolved. We ARE in the horror business after all. I agree with Hubert too - I've spent more time in English country churches and academic ivory towers than city tower blocks so a lot of MR James works better at giving me a properly unsettling scare than contemporary urban horror. And I agree with Caroline because how can one not?  | ||
| Kate (Kathleen) Username: Kathleen Registered: 09-2009 Posted From: 86.131.51.242 |
If Caroline and I have a catfight over Peter Cushing, will that satisfy you, Gary?  | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.209.20 |
Only if you use real cats to Cushing the blows. | ||
| Kate (Kathleen) Username: Kathleen Registered: 09-2009 Posted From: 86.131.51.242 |
It took you 20 minutes to come up with THAT? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.209.20 |
Right, forget Caroline. Outside! | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
Have I caused a catfight?  Just realised, my comments above (done in a bit of a rush - I had work to do!) might have sounded like I was saying Ramsey writes cosy horror. That's not what I mean. What I mean is, I like horror which scares and disturbs me rather than disgusts and repulses me. That means that horror which scares and disturbs me is "cosy horror" FOR ME (Ramsey scares and disturbs me, but never disgusts and repulses me). Am I making any sense? Do I ever make any sense? Right, please excuse me while I go and drool over my pin-up poster of Peter Cushing ... (Kate, you don't stand a chance ) | ||
| Nathaniel Tapley (Natt) Username: Natt Registered: 11-2009 Posted From: 92.21.81.18 |
I think the word 'cosy' is being used in two different senses here (as Pete rightly identified). One form of cosiness is a political cosiness, which can be as gruesome and 'extreme' as it likes but only really serves to reinforce the status quo; but there is also personal cosiness, where the audience never feels themselves in real danger, although that doesn't stop a story rocking their conception of what is right and wrong in the world. My own preference is for the politically 'uncosy', which is why I bridle at the implication that Poe is 'cosy'. I think he was swinging at a lot of things, and generally hitting them. Can anyone really say the image of the narrator of "A Cask Of Amontillado" leaning over the half-built brick wall to drown his victim's groans with his own shrieking (or singing or whatever) is cosy? Being in the protagonist's mind as it happens is distinctly unsettling, and a huge challenge to Victorian mores (Dickens might show us Quilp, he might let Quilp talk to himself (and us), but he never puts us inside his head). |