| Author | Message | ||
     Matt_cowan (Matt_cowan) Username: Matt_cowan Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 68.249.98.134 |
I posted a new article over at the Vintage Horror site. In this one I delve more into several stories by M.R. James that are lesser known. He is one of my all-time favorite writers. You can find it at the link below.  http://www.vintagehorror.com/node/124 | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
Keep spreading the word, Matt! Indeed, depositum custodi! | ||
| Matt_cowan (Matt_cowan) Username: Matt_cowan Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 68.249.98.134 |
"Keep spreading the word, Matt! Indeed, depositum custodi!" Thanks Ramsey. I discovered James because of you actually. You chose "A Warning to the Curious" as your selection in the anthology "My Favorite Horror Story" in 2000. I read it and loved it. I've kept reading James since then. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.186.68 |
Good job, Matt. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.227.106 |
You can't go wrong with James. You'll read him and reread him, mark my words. Some of his spectral manifestations are the closest to actual nightmare I've ever encountered, e.g. the murdered dimwit in "Martin's Close" who hides a in closet and only comes out when the lights are out, etc. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.186.68 |
'Martin's Close' is, to me, reminiscent of more than a few Asian ghost stories featuring wronged spectres. One of my favourite James tales is 'A Story of an Appearance and a Disappearance', which must surely feature the creepiest Punch and Judy sequence in all weird fiction. Can anyone think of any other Punch & Judy related scenes? I've always found them scary. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.227.106 |
"[The boy] remained some few minutes behind the bush, looking on the pond, and saw something dark come up out of the water at the edge of the pond farthest away from him, and so up the bank. And when it got to the top where he could see it plain against the sky, it stood up and flapped the arms up and down, and then ran off very swiftly in the smane direction the prisoner had taken." I wonder where he got that - the flapping of the arms, I mean. For some reason it evokes an unexplicable sense of dread. That and that "ran off very swiftly". Very potent imagery. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.186.68 |
Fritz Leiber does this kind of imagery well, too. There are some descriptions in Our Lady of Darkness that are worthy of James at his best. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.227.106 |
It's been a while since I read Our Lady of Darkness, but as I recall the protagonist was looking at his own apartment through a pair of binoculars when he saw a pale brown thing reaching out from his window, waving at him. There's definitely a shade of "A View From a Hill" here. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.186.68 |
Definitely, Hubert! There's another very well-realised scene later on in which Franz is being pursued (or imagines he is, I can't recall for sure right now) down a hillside. Ramsey is the master of this kind of scene (being pursued by something less than welcome) nowadays, I think. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.253.74 |
Ramsey is the master of this kind of scene (being pursued by something less than welcome) nowadays, I think. Not even nowadays: the descriptions of the "figure" seen far in the distance in NIGHT OF THE CLAW are the most horrifying parts of that deeply-disturbing novel (as opposed to the human-madness scenes, which are the most terrifying).... | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.227.106 |
Reminds me of the Thing in the Wheelchair in "Reply Guaranteed" . . . And of course the Thing in the Train pursuing Rowan in The Influence . . . Examples abound. |