| Author | Message | ||
     Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.153.151.150 |
I was helped in finishing a story this week by dipping into Katherine Mansfield. Her style is very good and to the point it seems. Anyone else read her? I see Elizabeth Bowen wrote an introduction to a collection of hers which makes me wonder if they have similiarities. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.165.39.90 |
I am a big fan of Katherine Mansfield stories. New Zealand's own. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.165.39.90 |
I's say she is more pastel-shaded than Bowen with less traction of texture. But just as haunting and emotionally complex. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.153.151.150 |
It felt like she has a foot in the strange stuff. One tale I read ended up with someone smothering a baby. One of these authors who seem a bit prim but hide odd qualities, like Shirley Jackson, it seems. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.153.151.150 |
Ah, pastel! It's a bit croppy-up today, is old pastel. I like these Bowen/Mansfield/Jackson people; they seem ever-so-slightly peculiar, like they're a little mad in some way. I'm sure it helps. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.153.151.150 |
God, I'm repetitive. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Tony, Mansfield is great. I just recently read her wicked little short story, "Poison" - do check that one out, and many others.  | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 212.219.63.204 |
I was captivatd by "Bliss and Other Stories", delicate, subtle but, at times, quite dark. Cheers Terry | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 85.125.12.11 |
'The Little Governess' is one of my favourite short stories. The way it builds and builds to a gripping denouement. I analysed this tale as part of my PhD. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.170.180.105 |
It occurs to me there's a sub-sub genre of writing that is taken for straight literature but which isn't. Mbfg you mention the darkness, and maybe it's that, but for me it's another thing but I don't know what. Something to do with an undertone of surreality in life that hangs about in stories like smoke? Do the writers consciously write this 'smoke'? It seems sometimes it's never addressed, and sometimes I even think I'm imagining it. I found some H E Bates collections recently and he has a little of it, too. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
The horror genre has never had a copyright on the weird, the uncanny, the strange and the mysterious. We tend to tell ourselves mainstream writers are taking ideas from the horror genre when they are just doing what good writers have always done: representing the complexity of life. The horror genre did not invent any of its own subject-matter: those elements were already there in folklore and experience. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.170.180.105 |
I love it when it's almost unnoticable, like something in the water. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.151.109.99 |
Unknown stories now known! http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/pageviews/2012/07/the-plot-thickens-four-previo usly-unknown-stories-from-katherine-mansfield-found | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.158.157.153 |
I heard this on the radio - have they said when we'll see them? | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.158.157.153 |
Ah, I saw. 'Fallen out of popularity'.  I started reading her journals a while ago and she comes across as a very strange person. Quite mystical and vaguely unhinged, like Highsmith. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Indeed, what an odd statement: Mansfield's stories have fallen somewhat out of popularity in recent years.... Huh?! Which "recent years," how far back? And how does one even measure such things? Stupid. | ||
| Stephen Theaker (Stephen_theaker) Username: Stephen_theaker Registered: 12-2009 Posted From: 92.232.184.137 |
She was in the Penguin Mini Moderns so she hadn't completely fallen off the radar. And it seems like many of us have read her. Just went to retrieve my copy of her collected stories - annoying to see I didn't put a bookmark in it. Curse the me of twelve years ago! |