| Author | Message | ||
     Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.234.229 |
Recently picked up a copy of the new Penguin Classics anthology American Supernatural Tales, edited by S.T. Joshi. It is fantastic. In this anthology, Joshi corrects many of his own past sins of omission by embracing American supernatural fiction as a broad and diverse canon of work. Of course his favourites are here – but so is a great deal else he’s never given much attention to before. His introduction is the most satisfying overview of the genre he has yet written, acknowledging the rich interplay between supernatural horror and the genres of crime fiction, SF and fantasy. The authors whose stories are included (in chronological order) are: Irving, Hawthorne, Poe, O’Brien, Bierce, Chambers, (Henry) James, Lovecraft, Smith, Howard, Bloch, Derleth, Leiber, Bradbury, Jackson, Matheson, Beaumont, Klein, King, Etchison, Ligotti, Wagner, Partridge, Schow, Oates, Kiernan. Each introduced with a page or two of biography and comment. Wow. Did I mention Beaumont? And Leiber? And Etchison? And Derleth at his best? This is a magnificent buffet of all textures and flavours, a showcase of American horror that displays its full potential for excellence. Flaws? No Wellman, Sturgeon, Ellison or Grant – serious omissions. And the intro to the King story is so grudging it suggests the story has only been included to boost sales – especially as the overall intro also snipes at King’s work. That’s the one sour note in a book that shows an intelligent and generous appreciation of the genre. I mean, Joshi is still meaner about Dean R. Koontz, but who cares? What you have here is an authentic guide to American weird fiction over the past two centuries: from the American Gothic to the ferocity of early pulp, the quiet intensity of late pulp, the horror boom of the 1970s, the specialist press landscape of the 1990s. Everything here is fine, and most of it is brilliant. This is the kind of book that restores your sense of the weird fiction genre as a living, evolving tradition that will continue to astonish, move and frighten us for a long time to come. This book is so good you’ll have to buy two copies. One to take to bed with you, and one to read. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.178.170 |
I agree, Joel. I was sad to see no Wellman, Sturgeon, Davis Grubb, Brennan, Ellison or Grant. I was also disappointed to see more recent writers like writers like Lisa Tuttle, Lucius Shepard and Glen Hirshberg excluded. And where the heck was Jack Cady, surely a better writer than the last few in the book's table of contents? I don't agree with some of his story choices, but overall it's a very good anthology. There's another thread on this already, somewhere... | ||
| John_l_probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 90.199.0.176 |
Joel - I've nearly finished it & I agree wholeheartedly. I only bought it initially to encourage those chaps at Penguin to do more of this sort of thing but as I started to flick through it I became engrossed and gorged myself on most of the contents in a single Sunday. It struck me as the sort of book I would have loved as a youngster (mind you I love it now and am probably in a better position to love it than back then - how many double entendres has that left me open to oh and there's another one) It's a lovely book, and you're right - it deserves an extra copy being bought. | ||
| Griff (Griff) Username: Griff Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
*coughs*clothes*coughs* | ||
| Griff (Griff) Username: Griff Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
Do you wear a full length flannel nightgown with long poiny cap with a bobble on the end, JPL? | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.44.100.43 |
He'll start getting embarrassed, you know, Griff. | ||
| John_l_probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 90.199.0.176 |
I have a purple silk one for the summer and a Sherlock-Holmes style one in red tartan for the winter. This is getting too much like a makeover show. Maybe I should devote a part of my website to my wardrobe | ||
| Karim Ghahwagi (Karim) Username: Karim Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 83.93.30.31 |
Ever since I saw that image of John talking at the wedding, I want him to come over to dinner at my house and tell horror stories to my friends until the sun comes up. Or we'd rent a castle somewhere in Eastern Europe for the occasion. Actually I think that John's choice of wardrobe is excellent. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.44.100.43 |
I had a bunch of pals at college who used to always ask me to make jokes as I was a bit 'funny'. One day I was feeling a bit sad and they started asking me to 'say something funny'. I almost belted them. Not that this will go that way, it just reminded me of it!  | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.231.242 |
Huw – yes, I'd forgotten Joseph Payne Brennan. But yes. And I'd forgotten Lisa Tuttle was American – a lot of her best stories are set in Europe, which may have taken her outside the book's remit. Also, I think Joshi's idea of drawing on a classic 'canon' stopped him including anything more recent than 2000. There's a thread on Shocklines with some Koontz fans whining on. Regarding the wardrobe theme, I remember a time when I was a union officer and we were meeting with a trio of managers – one aggressive, one manipulative and one narcissistic. We referred to them privately as the lion, the witch and the wardrobe. It was funnier if you knew them. But not much. | ||
| Matt_cowan (Matt_cowan) Username: Matt_cowan Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 68.249.98.191 |
Regarding S.T. Joshi and Stephen King, in a recent interview on the Yog-Sothoth podcast he said that in the feild of weird fiction he believes that Ramsey Campbell is head and shoulders above King. Personally, I agree with that statement. | ||
| Karim Ghahwagi (Karim) Username: Karim Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 83.93.30.31 |
Glen Hirsberg could certainly be part of the list. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.197.202 |
I think both Ramsey and Stephen King will be remembered for a long time as important figures in the horror field, but for different reasons. King did a lot to help bring horror into the spotlight (in the mass market sense, especially), and while I think his writing veers from excellent to mediocre and bloated (often within the same book), he's written enough good stuff to ensure that he'll be remembered not only for being a popular writer. Ramsey is more of an innovator, and his stuff, to me, is truly sui generis. You can open any of his books literally at random, and some creepy image or wonderfully sinister turn of phrase will jump out at you (I honestly don't know how he does this so well and so consistently). More than any other writer I've read in the field, he has the ability to make the world of the protagonist seem painfully real (The Grin of the Dark alone confirms this). One thing they both have in common is their generosity in helping up and coming writers. That, and their loyalty to their field. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.149.134.59 |
S.T. Joshi weighed in very heavily with a series of blistering attacks on King's reputation back in the 1980s. If his view has become more balanced, that's all to the good. I agree that Campbell is a better and more original writer of weird fiction than King, but the latter has his own strengths: he speaks teenager (a language few writers understand) with unusual fluency, and can capture the mindset of angry and downtrodden working men and women with real eloquence. He understands alcohol and related issues. He has his own thematic area, in other words, and is a very talented writer in broad terms. I don't think he's a great weird fiction writer, but he's certainly a good one. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.149.134.59 |
Of course, King's own comments on Campbell in DANSE MACABRE – a book pointedly omitted from Joshi's list of significant studies of the genre – highlight some notable differences between them. King was quicker than most critics to notice and praise Campbell's writing, back in the 1970s. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.76.230 |
Don Herron makes the interesting point a good many of King's fans aren't attracted to his work for its weird element, rather for its characterisation and elucidation of everyday life. Indeed, much of his best work has no weird element at all: Apt Pupil, Misery, Gerald's Game, Shawshank, etc. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.76.230 |
In other words, it's probably true to say that his immense popularity isn't solely ascribable to the horror elements. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.149.134.59 |
Oh yes. Absolutely. Though he can do the conventional supernatural story very well. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.149.134.59 |
Gary, picking up on your last point: I don't think it's due to the horror elements at all. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.149.134.59 |
To use a musical analogy, King is a Johnny Cash where Campbell is an Ian Curtis. Both important, but not similar. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.77.198 |
He can, yes. But he can also by inexplicably dumb at times. Have you seen Sleepwalkers? Jeez. Herron again: how can a guy sit down one day and write Apt Pupil and then sit down the next and write the screenplay for Maximum Overdrive*? *I like that film. :<) | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.77.198 |
>>>Gary, picking up on your last point: I don't think it's due to the horror elements at all. Perhaps not. But I do think that it's horror elements that drew a lot of readers to him; but it's the other qualities that get them hooked. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.149.134.59 |
Again, yes. King's low points are perhaps explained by the fact that when some writers are having an off day, the results don't get published. King is not one of those writers. | ||
| Karim Ghahwagi (Karim) Username: Karim Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 83.93.30.31 |
One point I'd also add is King's remarkable imagination. While not as visionary as Clive Barker for example, King's fertile imagination is sometimes overseen. Also I don't see King having the same control of the language as Campbell- nothing in King's oeuvre nears for example Campbell's The Darkest Part of The Woods-in the control of the language as it relates to the content. These comparisons are of course a moot point but lots of fun. | ||
| Karim Ghahwagi (Karim) Username: Karim Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 83.93.30.31 |
I do think King will be remembered in the same vein as Dickens for example, as an immensly popular writer of his time. Also King is often asked when he will write his 'great American novel', where his fans would argue that he has already written several. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.76.229 |
Joel, maybe that's a consequence of his immense success. Whatever he writes will get picked up because of its commercial appeal. Like everyone else, he needs a gutsy editor. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.197.202 |
Another thing that makes people relate to King is his talent for capturing the mundane in people's lives: when he decribes an anxious parent taking a Valium or a chronic pain sufferer taken a Percocet, it's something many of us can relate to (especially Americans, but I believe it's more or less universal). The repeated mention of well-known brand names is a recurring feature in his writing, and another thing many 'regular' people relate to instantly. Another thing he excels at, as Joel already touched on, is childhood and adolescence: the world of childhood friendships (and all the rituals this can include), being bullied, falling in love for the first time... he does this very well, when he's not being overly mawkish. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.76.215 |
Here are Herron's problems with King: 1. He's a big producer and writes perhaps when he should think. 2. Herron has profound doubts about the artistic value of the subtext - eg, the diet theme in Thinner. Herron says: "If you're good enough to write about Vietnam, write about Vietnam." 3. Herron doesn't believe King can control his material; he compares him to Dickens or Tobe Hooper, who just managed the occasional great horror work. 4. Herron thinks that as a product of a university, King loads his work self-consciously with symbols, etc; in short, it's the kind of fiction you'd expect from a professor. Despite all this, Herron reckons King is worth writing about, and that he's done some great work. He singles out The Shining, Apt Pupil, The Body, and a few others. I personally find that a fair assessment of him. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.77.198 |
Mind you, he thought IT was two tons of shit in a six-ton crate. :<0 | ||
| Karim Ghahwagi (Karim) Username: Karim Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 83.93.30.31 |
I think IT is a good if not great American novel about small town life, childhood and all its monsters. The Stand is one of the great apocalyptic novels. Wasn't King blasted by Harold Bloom some time back? I love the vintage, sometimes rambling King and would have hated it, if an editor had polished his work too much, as is the case today I think. King was drinking 30 beers a day and had a drawer full of cocain when he was writing the Shinning I believe he once said. | ||
| Karim Ghahwagi (Karim) Username: Karim Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 83.93.30.31 |
Harold Bloom: THE DECISION to give the National Book Foundation's annual award for "distinguished contribution" to Stephen King is extraordinary, another low in the shocking process of dumbing down our cultural life. I've described King in the past as a writer of penny dreadfuls, but perhaps even that is too kind. He shares nothing with Edgar Allan Poe. What he is is an immensely inadequate writer on a sentence-by-sentence, paragraph-by-paragraph, book-by-book basis. The publishing industry has stooped terribly low to bestow on King a lifetime award that has previously gone to the novelists Saul Bellow and Philip Roth and to playwright Arthur Miller. By awarding it to King they recognize nothing but the commercial value of his books, which sell in the millions but do little more for humanity than keep the publishing world afloat. If this is going to be the criterion in the future, then perhaps next year the committee should give its award for distinguished contribution to Danielle Steel, and surely the Nobel Prize for literature should go to J.K. Rowling.' http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2003/09/24/dumb ing_down_american_readers/ I love Harold Bloom's writing on Shakespeare etc, but here the man was off the mark. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.76.230 |
Interesting debate here, guys: http://www.thecimmerian.com/?p=816 | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.76.230 |
>>>What he is is an immensely inadequate writer on a sentence-by-sentence is is | ||
| Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 83.98.9.4 |
Without king, I wouldn't still be reading horror. At his best he is an excellent writer and has written some of the great works of horror fiction. He's written some crap as well but for his good books he deserves all the credit he's due. Salems lot is one of the best vampire novels ever written. Misery is a brilliant thriller.The Shining is a fantastic book. OK so some of his more recent stuff is shit, but it's shit compared with the rest of his work. Compare it with Hutson, it's true intellectual literature. His effect on popular culture can't be ignored. The film world would be a lesser being without him. Shawshank, Stand By Me, Carrie, etc. In short I rate the guy highly even though I don't rush for his books the way I once did. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.5.5.124 |
He shares nothing with Edgar Allan Poe.... Funny, coming from the critic who has long castigated EAP as unworthy of the status in literature he enjoys. I too greatly admire Harold Bloom (though he has a tendency to be shrill, especially on Shakespeare); it's just that, sometimes, he can be a little... cranky.... | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.70.74.223 |
It is the 200th anniversary of Poe's birth next year. And apparently Sylvester Stallone is going to direct a film called Poe. Just thought that I would share that. Craig - do you know anything about this? | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.227.251 |
Stephen King is the Grace Metalious of horror. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.239.31 |
Ally, I swear, I know nothing about Sly doing a Poe film. There was, some years back, a "hot spec" that had sold, and I thought I heard Johnny Depp was set to star in it (of, course). It had a clever premise, something about Poe getting involved in some mystery that was peopled with all the major characters/incidents from his stories. Or was it someone was killing off others using Poe's story's devices, ala THEATRE OF BLOOD?... Oh well, it never went anywhere. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.70.118.167 |
Thanks Craig - they probably dropped the idea. | ||
| Karim Ghahwagi (Karim) Username: Karim Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 83.93.30.31 |
I can see it: Poe - Stallone - 'This time he's pissed' Poe on opiates (played by Stallone)in a fist fight with Danko- bring it on. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.148.103.184 |
Stallone has been interested in this for ages. He sounds smart, you know; it could be something to look forward to. King has lots of flaws, and to my mind aims too high of late. He does have grandiose ideas and themes but can't pull off working them into his fiction. It feels like a lecture. When he writes about monsters plain and simple he can be ironically a richer writer for it. When I pick up one of his books and see that 'college' is in it it usually means I won't like it. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.148.103.184 |
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0461315/ | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.70.55.33 |
Thanks Tony I thought that I was dreaming it. Mind you I've just had an insomnia attack which came out of the blue last night and have been awake for 24 hours - so what do I know. On a more positive note my local school has asked me to supervise four 9 year olds in the writing of a mummer story. They are getting Prince George and the Steam Dragon and it is set in Victorian England. Me - conform never. I thought that the teacher would throw it back at me and ask for St George and a Saracen - she went for it, so my C of E school is quite flexible. I wonder what the vicar will say. He'll probably be happy as long as the good guy wins. I might make it a draw :>) or if I'm having a bad day tomorrow I'll steer the little mites to the dark side. They are already working on how to kill a steam driven dragon and are probably looking up explosives as we speak. |