| Author | Message | ||
     David_m (David_m) Username: David_m Registered: 07-2011 Posted From: 95.147.193.155 |
Aside from Twisted Tales's resident legendary writer, Ramsey Campbell, Liverpool has also produced another great master of horror: Clive Barker. Barker's fiction came to international attention with the publication of his Books of Blood in the mid-1980s. His status was considerably enhanced when he adapted his novella The Hellbound Heart into the film Hellraiser, which conquered the world in 1987 and went on to spawn many sequels, as well as a series of comics that explored its mythology. Clive also directed cult film classics Nightbreed (1990) and Lord of Illusions (1995). He designed the creatures and wrote the stories for two successful computer games: Undying (2001) and Jericho (2007) and is the author of many novels, including Weaveworld (1987) and Imajica (1991). Join Twisted Tales for an evening celebrating and discussing Barker's enduring legacy at the UK's official launch of the Hellbound Hearts anthology- a collection of stories from some of the top names in contemporary horror that explore the Hellraiser mythology. Featuring readings by: Mark Morris: Award-winning and bestselling author of The Immaculate, Torchwood: Bay of the Dead and contributor to Hellbound Hearts. Paul Kane: Co-editor of Hellbound Hearts and award-winning author of The Hellraiser Films and their Legacy and the bestselling Arrowhead trilogy. Marie O'Regan: Co-editor of Hellbound Hearts and award-nominated author of Mirror Mere. Followed by a Q&A with the authors, who will be joined by Ramsey Campbell to discuss the influence of Barker's work on 21st century horror. There will then be a signing session with all four authors. Hellbound Hearts:The Influence of Clive Barker on 21st Century Horror Waterstone’s Liverpool One 6-8pm, Friday August 5th Tickets £2* *redeemable against any horror bought on the night. To book tickets please visit the Waterstone's store or call (0151) 709 98 20 Link to the official Facebook event page... http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=126566960757715 So, who's coming? | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.26.214 |
Hey, let's not forget Pete Atkins! | ||
| David_m (David_m) Username: David_m Registered: 07-2011 Posted From: 95.147.193.155 |
Who wrote the screenplay for the excellent Hellbound: Hellraiser II, which I think just edges the original to be my favourite from the franchise. | ||
| Darren O. Godfrey (Darren_o_godfrey) Username: Darren_o_godfrey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 207.200.116.133 |
Go, Pete! Damned fine writer. And so is Clive, of course. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.152.220.113 |
Then there's this, next week in Dublin: http://clivebarkerdarkimaginer.blogspot.com/ | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
I've been on a minor Barker binge lately, confining myself to the early BOOKS OF BLOOD, the stories in CABAL and others.... I'm still floored by how good a writer this guy was (I'd say "is," but I've not read anything beyond the 1990's - hell, maybe the 80's!). It's not that he's the most uniquely imaginative guy ever existed, his style is nothing beyond what I'd call workable, his stories aren't always breaking new ground by any means... and yet, he's compulsively fascinating and readable: his stories grip you, and don't let go; they're always an easy, effortless, satisfying read. He makes it all look so damn easy, he does.... If he never existed from back then, and instead Barker suddenly appeared on the scene today, say, with all of these stories in a big stack under his arms - do you think he could get where he did? Has the world of writing, reading, publishing so changed, that even a Barker-sized talent can't shoot to the top anymore? This is going to sound like an odd question, but - is there even any reason to be this good a writer anymore? Here's a quote: "In old days books were written by men of letters and read by the public. Nowadays books are written by the public and read by nobody." -- Oscar Wilde. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.21.13 |
"...is there even any reason to be this good a writer?" Yes. There always is. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.155.181 |
The question presupposes a publishing deal being the principal reason for writing. How about being good for the sake of being good? | ||
| David_m (David_m) Username: David_m Registered: 07-2011 Posted From: 95.147.193.155 |
To answer Craig's question: first of all, as a horror reader, I am very grateful to the efforts of all fine authors and feel that they have made a genuinely positive cultural contribution, regardless of how well remunerated they are for their work. Also, I think that if an author came along with the vision, ability and drive of Clive Barker, offering a similarly huge shake up of horror fiction, then I am fairly certain that they would do very well. Look at John Ajvide Lindqvist- he became internationally famous on the back of his first book, wrote the screenplay for the critically and commercially acclaimed film adaptation (not necessarily in that order) and has sold very well with his two follow-up novels. Then you have someone like Adam Nevill, who has a phenomenal style and channels some of the best elements of Poe and James into distinctly contemporary horror, who has the full backing of Pan Macmillan. There are plenty of great authors who I wish were given far more support and publicity than they are (which is one of the reasons we founded Twisted Tales), but very talented writers of horror fiction are still finding significant audiences. Finally, I'm not sure when, exactly, that Wilde quote was published, but it is important to note that he was despairing of the state of publishing around 100 years before Clive broke out... | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.155.181 |
Indeed. Nowadays the quotation should read: "In old days books were written by men of letters and read by the public. Then, a little later, books were written by the public and read by nobody. Now, they're written by nobodies and read by everybody." http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/nov/22/ghostwriters-celebrity-jordan | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.229.19 |
"Now, they're written by nobodies and read by everybody." Maybe this could be "...read by nobod(-y/-ies)." | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.174.101 |
We have to remember the 1980s were a different era. I really don't think that someone as outre to this era as Clive was to the '80s would be accepted today. Things are more conservative in many ways now, especially economically. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Of course I was being facetious in my question, Ramsey. But I think Gary and David you skirt around what I was driving at, which was twofold.... One is, and bringing up Lindqvist is relevant here - everything's changed so MUCH to now, from even a handful of years ago. It's impossible to say if Kindle and self-publishing and this new boom in fan fiction and the death of traditional magazines and the looming death of bookstores and everyone now publishing themselves online and so on will last, but... it seems to be a combination of a dam having been burst, and of new technology again disintegrating the whole concept of "gate-keepers" and supply/demand, that one can despair of anyone arriving with "great writing" ever being able to be read at all. The second is, what, philosophical? tautological? something else? But when you ask, Gary How about being good for the sake of being good? if a book is written and buried forever, where does "good" or "bad" enter the picture at all? To write presupposes, demands, readers. The "gate-keepers" used to be what would pass for those who saved the good work - the best work in fact - from oblivion, sharing and promoting it to a wider audience; never a perfect venture, but much better I think before this new world appeared, which only looks to swell larger and worse with every passing year. Sometimes black swans do appear: witness the music industry. The question avoided is: If, again, Clive Barker appeared on these scene now with these same works under his arm, what does one think would happen?... Me, I don't think what did happen to/for him, would happen again. But perhaps this is a case of true talent + that ever vital bit of luck and fortune, which plays a hand in all productions of any art whatsoever. After all, if Ramsey had run afoul of a plummeting jet plane at the age of 12, we'd not have his work to read at all....  | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.141.208.185 |
As I said once before, we need to rejig the genre. A PG horror. I know it's dull to repeat myself but shock has become dull. I was thinking how horror film - and perhaps even literature - has become predictable whatever it does. It's like how music post punk became 'anything goes' - after that what is there left to do? Maybe Barker was a kind of 'punk'. It's also like art after that urinal sculpture - once the ultimate fence has been destroyed there is almost a kind of opposite to freedom. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 149.254.219.15 |
I'm the Threadkiller! | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.60.67 |
That's my title. Ethical question. I'm sitting on a train. I got up for 10 seconds to put something in a bin, leaving my bag and coat behind, When I got back a middle aged man was sitting in my seat. (It was two adjacent empty seats, so seat availability isn't the issue). I explained the situation and he refused to move. Was I right to kill him? | ||
| David_m (David_m) Username: David_m Registered: 07-2011 Posted From: 95.147.193.155 |
In preparation for the event, we are uploading Clive Barker-related content each Monday. Thus far, we have an article (reprint) written by Clive Barker about the making of Nightbreed... http://twistedtalesevents.blogspot.com/2011/07/nightbreed-by-clive-barker.html An article by Paul Kane about the Hellraiser films... http://twistedtalesevents.blogspot.com/2011/06/to-hell-with-you-article-by-paul- kane.html An interview with Mark Morris... http://twistedtalesevents.blogspot.com/2011/06/mark-morris-interviewed-by-david. html Another with Paul Kane... http://twistedtalesevents.blogspot.com/2011/07/paul-kane-interviewed-by-david.ht ml Please leave comments to let us know what you think. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.60.67 |
It's just that that action and refusal to take responsibility for it, is the world's wrongs in miniature. Fuck you, buddy - as architect of mutually-assured destruction John Nash used to say. There. That's the problem. The squeak as the world turns on its axis. It happened right in front of me. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.60.67 |
Sorry, I'm in a fugue state. Thread-relevent stuff: Clive Barker is in the Irish Film Institute this week in Dublin. Tommorrow, 13th I believe. Short notice for those not in the country, I know. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.144.33.219 |
Was I right to kill him? Only if it was a slow and painful death... anything less and and you let him off too easy | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 147.252.230.148 |
If I get a chance tonight I'll ask Clive Barker whether he thinks he would have been successful with the same stories today. I'll be seeing him at this here thing: http://clivebarkerdarkimaginer.blogspot.com/ Last time I met him he was promoting EVERVILLE in 1994. I and about two dozen others sat arround him in a pub overlooking the Liffey and he chatted with everyone over coffee and pints about everything from Disneyland to Miranda Richardson to the subliminal liberal messages of the STAR WARS films. He was spellbinding in person and it was a privilage to see an imagination like that at work right in front of you. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
He was spellbinding in person That ws my exact thought when he came to FantasyCon a couple of years ago. He's an impressive being, isn't he? | ||
| David_m (David_m) Username: David_m Registered: 07-2011 Posted From: 95.147.193.155 |
Thanks for posting the link to the Dark Imaginer conference; it looks superb. I hope that you have a great time and will type up the highlights in this thread. Could you ask Clive about his progress with the two sequels to Cabal? I adore that novella and eagerly await more tales of the Nightbreed. I've yet to meet Clive, but have seen many interviews with him. He comes across as an extremely eloquent, sensitive, imaginative and intelligent person. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
Ask him about when he attended an autopsy... He told that story when I saw him at waterstone a few years back... | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
Some geeky stuff - Mr Bronson from Grange hill was Hitler in Indiana Jones 3 and was auto-strangled by darth Vader in Empire strikes back... RIP Michael Sheard | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
whoops, wrong thread | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Thanks, Proto. I'd really like to know how he would assess this, especially since in that one intro to one of his retrospective anthologies, he mildly "put aside," I'll say, his earlier horror work - as if he'd moved on to bigger and better things - at least, that's the impression I got from what he'd written there.... | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.7.104 |
I'm never impressed by celebrity in itself; I didn't bother walking 10 minutes down the road to watch Obama give a speech. So it does my heart good to be able to report that Clive is still as charming, modest, funny, imaginative and, surprisingly shy as when I met him in 1994. (And his voice is much improved - quieter, but clearer.) In an intimate venue in Trinity College Dublin, the conference ran academic panels during the day discussing his work. At the end of the day, Clive appeared and spoke to an audience of perhaps 30 people. He began by saying his mother died six weeks ago and he hoped he wasn't going to cry as he reminised about his past and his early artwork. He talked us through a collection of his art but wandered off into any topic that ignited in his mind at the time. He said he's a bonfire, and his work is just a by-product: the sparks and ash thrown off from it. He talked about his despair at the murder of Passolini's, his revulsion at fascism, the first time he heard the word "fuck", his father being okay with nudity in his drawings as long as there were no monsters in there and the relationship between Blake and electricity pylons. He spoke for probably an hour and a half. Craig, yours was the last question of the evening. I asked for his assessment of where he'd be if he were starting again today with the same stories, plays and paintings. Is the environment of today an incubator for the imagitination or corrosive to it? He went in his own direction with the answer, which was about 5 mintues long. He said it was a smashing question. (I haven't heard "smashing" used in ages). He said that the external environment is both incubative and corrosive. It doesn't affect the imagination but it affects the imaginer. He didn't have a full time job until he was 31 (actually the same age I started my first real job) as he had a dread of signing himself away on a dotted line to an existence he didn't want. Don't let external voices decide the limits of our imaginations, don't allow them to put a name on us. He said keep changing: "I'm not the future of horror, I've written a fantasy Weaveworld. Oops, now I've just written a great cock-sucking scene in Sacrament." He said SACRAMENT is the book of his that sold the least but it's perhaps his favourite. It features a character based on a man he knew who died of AIDS at 30 [here he paused and I could see emotion on his face as he was just a few feet away]. He said it was all about whether you go down the commercial route or not. He said he'd be happy to live in a house with a hole in the roof and he can't care about what critics say. He said we must be the deciders of where the limts to our imaginations are and travel to that limit, and then fly beyond it. About the meeting in general, he seemed to genuinely welcome feedback on his work, not all of it positive, and said we're just at the beginning of exploring imagination. He seemed humbled by having a conference (as opposed to a fan convention) focus on his work and expressed (what felt to me like genuine) gratitude for his everyone in the room, who were as much active participants of this exploration as he. There'll be another day tomorrow, so I'll see if I can ask him another question then. The setting is very intimate so it should be possible. I was reminded of Robert Hughes' comment on Edward Hopper: he was an artist he trusted. I left with the knowledge that one can achieve huge success and retain humility and integrity. If anything, Clive seemed more fragile, more human, more honest, than ever. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.7.104 |
Sorry, that should read: "...the murder of Pasolini, his revulsion at Cocteau's fascism..." | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 49.226.163.41 |
Thanks Proto! 'He said it was all about whether you go down the commercial route or not. He said he'd be happy to live in a house with a hole in the roof and he can't care about what critics say. He said we must be the deciders of where the limts to our imaginations are and travel to that limit, and then fly beyond it.' Well said I say! | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Fascinating, Proto! Thanks for asking him that, and for providing these rich and thoughtful minutes. That was really great, and appreciated. Who knew, that one could wonder, and then be answered so swiftly by the authority himself?! I've been suffering myself in wondering about the strength of the personal imagination, and looking "out there" and seeing a world that simply doesn't value it (assuming, of course, there is a valuable imagination to begin with - regardless of me and my personal investment, I'm speaking generally). Barker's right: it is incubative in that the tools to enhance imaginative presentation are more abundant and easier to obtain than ever! The necessary and corrosive corollary is, the tools are available to everyone, and everyone indeed seems to be determined to use them. It's good sometimes to be able to witness what seems to be examples of destruction, and maybe kinds of rebirth. Take Myspace, once far more popular than Facebook: it sold recently for something like a paltry $30 million. The "amateur" music side of it is an interesting example, where garage bands were frothing like beer suds, and all the friends of one band were other bands - all cooks, as I like to say, no eaters of meals. In the end, the froth went down, and now Myspace is nothing more than (as SNL hilariously described it) an "abandoned amusement park." Crap bands adding crap bands adding crap bands, in the end, meant nothing - to the bands themselves, to the world, to posterity. Goodbye, and good riddance. My point being: Froth, anywhere it appears from a sudden abundance of empty gas, must subside. Faux creators will vanish along with the fair-weather fans. People will be left hungry, and true cooks will come back from the wilds, to create fabulous and sustaining meals once more... just to execrate this post finally with wretched mixed-metaphors.... | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
SNP? | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.24.189 |
Give Clive my best, Proto, and maybe ask him if he's chosen his own epitaph (but please explain that's because I've chosen mine: I'm certainly not wishing him away!) | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.183.79.202 |
What's your epitaph, Ramsey? Is it:- "Can everyone hear me? Good, I'll turn this microphone off; I hate using them"! | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.77.197 |
>>>'He said it was all about whether you go down the commercial route or not. He said he'd be happy to live in a house with a hole in the roof and he can't care about what critics say. He said we must be the deciders of where the limts to our imaginations are and travel to that limit, and then fly beyond it.' While I don't disagree with the sentiment in principle, I have grave issues with this point. I find it fanciful. Imagination needs more than freedom to sustain it. It needs more than psychological nourishment. The mind is yoked to a body and a body needs feeding. And an unfed body needs to work to be fed. If the market isn't there, there are two other options than work: starvation (and inevitable death of imagination), or relying on someone else to sustain us. A house with a hole in the roof still costs a fucking lot of money. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
It's easy to say that you'd be happy living in a hovel when you live in a mansion in the L.A. hills. But, yes, the sentiment is nice.  I'm with Gary. We should temper our imaginative aspirations with reality. That's what I always think when I'm writing from 9pm till midnight every evening after spending all day working to pay the bills and then cramming everything else I need to do into a couple of hours before my family goes off to bed... | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
If the market isn't there, there are two other options than work: starvation (and inevitable death of imagination), or relying on someone else to sustain us. Yep. I often think that I'd give my legs to be able to stay at home all day and write, and have someone else provide for me while I did so. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.77.197 |
>>>He said that the external environment is both incubative and corrosive. It doesn't affect the imagination but it affects the imaginer. He didn't have a full time job until he was 31 (actually the same age I started my first real job) as he had a dread of signing himself away on a dotted line to an existence he didn't want. The imp in me wants to say, "there's no delight the equal of dread". But seriously, we all have this dread. But what choice do most people have? Really, I mean. Realistically. Unless we're imagining a world full of aspiring fabulists. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.24.189 |
Forgive me, Proto - I meant give Clive my best and Jenny's too. Ho ho, Mick! Actually, the epitaph I want (seriously) is "Find the golden light". | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.206.219 |
I will, Ramsey, and I'll ask that question if I get the opportunity. "Barker's right: it is incubative in that the tools to enhance imaginative presentation are more abundant and easier to obtain than ever" Sure, but I took him to mean that everything in our environment is grist for the creative mill - imaginative sterility included. My opinion of Clive's work varies a lot (as does his) but I can't actually think of a single instance where he's "sold out". Failed, yes, but not sold out. He seems incapable of pretending to be that which he isn't. So I think owning houses in Beverly Hills doesn't invalidate his answer. Gary, I don't think it has to be all or nothing. It's about positioning oneself in a place where creating meaningful work is possible. That doesn't require a rich aunt to pass away, just (!) an honest assessment of one's priorities and emotional intelligence enough to play the long game. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
I didn't say it invalidated his answer. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.77.197 |
I have nothing against Barker at all. I think he's an extraordinary talent. But sometimes, when very successful folk speak, it does sound like the game is more a matter of mental attitude than the reality - or certainly, my reality - of physical graft relating to that which one does not wish to do (a paying job) and associated disgruntlement. Forgive me: I've had a year of hell at work. Even the oft-repeated advice from established novelists that "you should make time to read" makes me want to kick heads. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.77.197 |
But to be honest, I do not think Barker would be happy in "a house with a hole in the roof". I think it's a bit easy for folk who have wealth to be glib on this issue. They're a bit casual in that claim. I'll happily be proved wrong on this. But until then, it's what I feel. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.174.138 |
"I didn't say it invalidated his answer." That was for Gary F. [Next post from Gary Fry: "I didn't say it invalidated his answer", but at least that's bought me some time.] | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
Aaaah...I did wonder. Btw, I do live in a house with a hole in the roof. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.153.232.251 |
Forgive me: I've had a year of hell at work. ===== I had years of that - and I sympathise and empathise. But that doesn't really help. | ||
| John Forth (John) Username: John Registered: 05-2008 Posted From: 82.24.1.217 |
>Btw, I do live in a house with a hole in the roof.< The chimney? | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Gary, I hope this doesn't come out the wrong way, but it's clear to me - as a reader - that Barker, either intentionally or by accident, wrote stories that specifically targeted the largest possible rewards - which I'll define here as: (1) the attraction of the movie industry, and (2) a vast, broad audience. Doing this - and this is all imho only - requires choosing certain stories and styles over others. Barker's early BOOKS OF BLOOD creations, which are the bedrock of what he rests upon and so a worthy case to study, are masterpieces of attempts to gain these greatest possible worldly rewards. If there's a Platonic model for this end goal, he fit it nearly perfectly, in almost every story - even the lesser ones. You, Gary, may not be trying to write in this mold - this is not a question of quality, that's an entirely different matter - rather, the scales of quality are Einsteinian, in that they're all relative. But there's a scale of "quality" that, say, Hollywood uses; and a scale that is evident by the appeal of a mass audience. Barker weighs heavily on that scale, whereas you may not weigh so heavily. And hence, he gets to live in Hollywood mansions and make lots of money and be world famous... whereas others, who maybe by all other measurements pound his sorry work into the dust by immediate comparison, don't get to. There are accidents of time and place, and those played a part in Barker's rise. I lamented the possible inability nowadays of any writer being able to even do this at all anymore, which was the source of my initial question - these same stories Barker created in at a certain time and place, may not fly so high on this 30-years-later time and place. But I like to think they would. And it's not like, all things being equal, any good writer couldn't accomplish exactly what Barker did - if one believes in the power of story to break down methods of production/distribution, modes of communication, the firewalls of Hollywood, etc. - a subject too vast to go over at the moment, but taking it as possible to attain, then -- Yes, you too, Gary, can easily be Clive Barker. You just have to do what he did, write what he wrote... target that specific audience/those specific rewards... but if you choose not to, well... whose fault is that?... | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.155.181 |
It's clear to me, from this comment, that you assume I covet CB's success and that this is at the root of my comments above. That is incorrect. My comments above come off the back of the last two years, during which I have been wrestling with the new Coalition and their frightening approach to the truth, which has subsumed my life and made the thing I love most - writing fiction - nigh on impossible without working every weekend, too. I responded to certain comments above that I found rather lazy and glib - things perhaps I expected that someone of CB's undoubted intelligence would not say. I'm sorry, I just don't believe that a wealthy person would be as happy living in poverty as long as s/he had his art. I think that's bullshit. Or at least naive. >>>He didn't have a full time job until he was 31 (actually the same age I started my first real job) as he had a dread of signing himself away on a dotted line to an existence he didn't want. I FULLY appreciate this comment. It's what drives my whole life. I work now so I can play later in life. What choice do I have but to work at a job that pays but which doesn't satisfy? What choice do millions of people have? >>>Don't let external voices decide the limits of our imaginations, don't allow them to put a name on us. As I say, I like the sentiment. It is romantic and appealing. But the truth is that this happens every day: the bastards grind you down. I could tell you my own version of this, based on recent experiences, but to do so would sound like saying, I alone have suffered. There are a millions of us in these positions. They all have a story to tell. I repeat, imagination - the power to use it - isn't a mental act made in an occupational and financial vacuum. It's a act deeply contextualised in social reality and yoked to a body which tires, gets frustrated, loses hope. I'm sorry, I just think that unless one is living that life, one easily forgets it. (A huffy response to a wider ranging interview, I know ) | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 2.24.29.218 |
"I repeat, imagination - the power to use it - isn't a mental act made in an occupational and financial vacuum. It's a act deeply contextualised in social reality and yoked to a body which tires, gets frustrated, loses hope." This is a very strong observation, and helps to show why an imagination grounded in social reality can deliver more satisfying and memorable work than one adrift in the clouds of escapism. But in fairness to a whole stratum of struggling (and possibly misguided) fandom, the most dedicated escapists of 'pure' imagination tend to be people living in circumstances of intense psychological difficulty – often, though not always, linked to practical difficulty or with the latter just around the corner. Bad life (not only hard but pathological) promotes the fantasy of unfettered imaginative freedom and so does good life (lack of connection with real issues fostering illusions of the unfettered soul). So it's a bit like drugs really. Only a life of solid petit-bourgeois averageness lends itself to the realisation of literary goals. That's my excuse anyway. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.155.181 |
I see now that perhaps Craig was specifically addressing the other Gary. Oh well, my points remain. Btw, lest it's misunderstood, I love the Books of Blood and thought Thief of Always was tremendous. I kind of lost touch with CB after that - didn't get on with the fantasy stuff, but largely because I'm not into that kind of thing. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.155.181 |
Let me put it more simply: it's easier not to let "external voices limit your imagination" when you have the freedom - financial, temporal - to do so. I guess this is the central issue: that line about being happy living in a house "with a hole in the roof". And if Proto has misquoted the poor guy, I'll be having a serious word with him. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
Which Gary was Craig addressing? If it was me, I don't understand the context. In other words: eh? But: what GF said... (And for the record, I admire Barker, am a fan of his work, and am very happy with my own level of success - I have 2 masss market books out this year, and that's more than I ever dreamed of.) | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.155.181 |
You need to change your name, mate. It's confusing. I decree that from this moment forwards, on the RCMB you will be called Gladice. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.155.181 |
>>>Bad life (not only hard but pathological) promotes the fantasy of unfettered imaginative freedom This is a mind-body issue, for sure. But we all know that our imaginary faculties have been saturated and defined by the late modern world. Society of the Spectacle and all that. What's left is what Volosinov calls "pockets of heretical discourse": creative writing is one. Methods through which we rearrange social realities, like a child using building blocks to invent something unusual. But they're always the same building blocks. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.155.181 |
Sorry, my argument is evolving as I think. This is real-time philosophy a la Des. Conclusion ("trend" data only): Temporal freedom + financial freedom + talent = artistic contentment and personal security. Temporal freedom (eg, unemployed) + financial restrictions (no wage) + talent = artistic contentment and personal insecurity. Temporal restrictions (committed to an everyday job) + financial freedom (paid a wage) + talent = personal security and artistic discontentment. Crude yet nonetheless true, IMHO. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
Just call me Betty. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.155.181 |
And you can call me Al. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.155.181 |
>>>My point being: Froth, anywhere it appears from a sudden abundance of empty gas, must subside. Faux creators will vanish along with the fair-weather fans. People will be left hungry, and true cooks will come back from the wilds, to create fabulous and sustaining meals once more... just to execrate this post finally with wretched mixed-metaphors.... That's the dangers of metaphors, Craig. They're approximations and therefore misleading. The crucial one here, I think, is the naturalistic link to "gas". Humans run on something less inexhaustible: opportunity. Witness Simon Cowell. He's full of quite a different gas and one that lasts forever. Nobody has to negotiate with the Russians to get at the supply. It's piped into our lives ostensibly without cost, permanently on tap. The bill we pay would shock Hitler and we don't even realise we're incurring it. I match your mixed bag of metaphors and raise you one. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
We were happy calling the more Northern of the Garys 'Zed' until he got famous. That's the real problem with success: your writing name becomes your only name. If your writing name isn't your real name, of course, it gets weird – as with many singers, who can use it to help filter out strangers from people who actually know them. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
One more equation: Temporal restrictions (committed to an everyday job) + financial restrictions (low pay, drink habit) – talent = welcome to fandom! | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
We were happy calling the more Northern of the Garys 'Zed' until he got famous. Hahahahahahaha!  Joel, that made me laugh so much I think I want to cry... | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.155.181 |
Or maybe: Temporal freedom + financial freedom - talent = http://www.johnsaul.com/ | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
I was actually indeed addressing you, Mr. Fry. I guess this specific comment of yours was what stood out to me: But sometimes, when very successful folk speak, it does sound like the game is more a matter of mental attitude than the reality - or certainly, my reality - of physical graft relating to that which one does not wish to do (a paying job) and associated disgruntlement. The "game" I took to mean this whole enterprise called a "writing career," which maybe I was wrong to assume. And all I was pointing out was, that - the evidence is usually right before anyone - me, I'm always vexed that I can stare straight at it and not understand it myself. The story of my life. Why did Barker become a gigantic worldly and financial success? Why did Stephen King? The others on down? There are many factors at play, some of them of time and place - some of them related to the material itself. To me, the material trumps the circumstances ultimately, because circumstances change, but material remains the same. On one scale, Aickman trounces Barker soundly every time. On another scale, Aickman limps sadly behind Barker. It's all about which scale one's choosing to use. And there's no right answer there either. But the "game" (as I perhaps misinterpreted your use of the word) must be engaged according to its particular set of rules, as I see it. One can't complain about the unfairness of a "game" on the one hand; and at the same time not actually be playing, really, that same game at all.... | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.155.181 |
??? Are you actually reading what I'm saying or just assuming you know what that is? At which point do I complain about the "unfairness of the game"? My points are nothing to do with the way Barker has got where he is. I don't begrudge him that at all. fair play to him: he's a gifted guy. I like his stuff. So your comments bewilder me. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
So what are you complaining about? Or were you not complaining? And what did it have to do with Barker then, if you were? What role does he have to play in your complaining at all - why was he a factor? And if so, how is he exempted from your position of complaining? i.e., why is Barker on one side of the complaining fence, and you are not? That he got big and successful? Was that whatever it is that constitutes time/place that we call "luck"? But luck is patently unfair, isn't it? But then, I don't think so, I don't think it was pure luck, hence my shifty analysis... and round and round.... | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
Craig - I thnk I speak for most of us - SHUT THE **** UP!!! | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.155.181 |
Craig, I know it's probably a controversial thing to say, but . . . why not read what I wrote? You don't have to, of course; nobody has to. Unless they're responding to me. In which case, I would expect it to be a pretty essential grounding for any ensuing discussion. Scandalous proposal over. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
I repeat, imagination - the power to use it - isn't a mental act made in an occupational and financial vacuum. It's a act deeply contextualised in social reality and yoked to a body which tires, gets frustrated, loses hope. But couldn't one easily argue, using many examples, that it can be denuded when "yoked" to a body which has grown indolent, indulged, and positively goal-less? The "power to use it" here, is also a struggle, but a struggle of a completely different kind. You are assuming (you have to be!) that Barker doesn't struggle; at the very least, that he doesn't struggle quite like we do, which is somehow, in some way, a more pity-worthy struggle. Are we perhaps falling into a "the grass is greener" fallacy?... Or to more succinctly respond to Weber: No.  | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.155.181 |
It's not about Barker and his success or his working habits. It's about two very particular comments of his I plucked from many others. I'm not going to defend them when it's all up there to figure out. In fairness to Barker, I could just as easily have focused on what sounded like his genuine grief regarding his mother and that friend of his who died. But I was just discussing some issues that caught my interest on a discussion board. This has gone on long enough. I'll leave it be now. For the record, Barker is fine by me. I wish I had the prose style he showcases in the Books of Blood. Wonderful stuff. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.152.206.172 |
"...the bastards grind you down. I could tell you my own version of this, based on recent experiences, but to do so would sound like saying, I alone have suffered." Hi Gary, Setting aside all other comments for the moment (including those of CB) if you're up to it, I'd genuinely love to hear your individual story of how your external environment affects your ability to create. You sound frankly pissed off and this could be a good opportunity to get that stuff off your chest while propelling my understanding forwards; it's a subject that fascinates me. [By the way, I'll post a report on the conference later, including Clive's choice of epitaph...] | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.184.107.120 |
Last time I saw Clive he managed to segue seamlessly from a story about an autopsy to Blue Peter (children's TV programme) and back again. It was marvellous to listen to | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.152.206.172 |
Well, that man in the OPERATION game would make a beautiful Advent calendar. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.155.181 |
Hi Proto, It's really no more complicated in terms of affecting the writing than me getting older and less energetic and the job demanding I work evenings and weekends to fulfil obligations (and some senior staff who lack the same commitment, leading to bitterness on my part). It also, if I'm honest, involves a very dispiriting recent involvement with a certain branch of the government which it is no exaggeration to describe as Orwellian in its approach to truth. That's all I can say about that. In fairness, all this might one day actually lead to an enriching of my creativity, but at the moment all I can see is the damage it has wrought on both my health - overwork and stress - and the time to which I can devote to my creative endeavours. I take no responsibility for two things in my life: my need to write fiction; my need to feed/shelter myself. Both exist inside me like insuperable appetites, but only one must be yielded to (the latter). That is why I have to work at a paying job. But the hunger I feel from not writing is often as unpleasant as the other sort: I grow anxious, irritable, feel forlorn and listless; my stomach generates acids which cause indigestion and my head hurts a lot (all of which can be combated by a good day writing - I did 10,000 words last Saturday and another 7,000 the other after [my first weekend of proper freedom in a long while] - man, I felt good). I wrote nothing in six months until this latest period. Now, with another tight work deadline encroaching, I see my recent burst of creativity - 50,000 words of a novel in 10 days (if I don't write when I can, I tend not to write at all, and the white heat was upon me at the time) - getting eaten away by obligation . . . an involuntary obligation to my body (hunger/shelter), my conscientiousness as a employee, and the people for whom, I hope, we're conducting worthy research. So it simply winds me up a bit - and maybe this is just me feeling bitter in the midst of a grim period - when folk say things I regard as just a bit too easy to say. But I'm all right, really. I remain sunny and with a sense of perspective. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.155.181 |
PS I have a week off starting next Friday and will finish the first draft of this novel. That will reverse a lot of the hassle I've experienced these last few years. It's that simple. Plus things will get easier starting October this year. So lots to be optimistic about. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.155.181 |
Oh, and yeah, tell us more about the conference. It's cool to have one about someone living, let alone a genre guy. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.153.232.251 |
Gary, I hope you had the window of opportunity - just now - to see Liszt's Piano Concerto No 2 performed at the opening night of the Proms by a 19 year old soloist from Southend. It was truly wonderful. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Okay, Gary. Hope you didn't take offense at anything. I was just going down my usual train-of-thought meandering path to and over the pier.... I do wonder something about the Clive Barker "origins" story. Does anyone know the facts surrounding it? I'd always heard he had these stories that became the BsOB, and that they'd never been published anywhere previously to their appearing in print in book form - not one, not anywhere. Then, he burst upon the scene with these 3 books in the U.S./6 books in the U.K. Do I have the facts correct? I find it REALLY hard to believe, Clive Barker wrote each of these stories - let's just call them gems, every one of them - and then sat on each one, one after the other, never submitting never trying - until he was able to get a multiple book deal? A "Let's purposely vault this guy to stardom" deal? Really?! With a non-novel collection of short-stories?! (I mean, there is J.K. Rowling example; but given that too was novel, even she wasn't an instant, pre-sale phenom, didn't her sales make her stardom?) There just plain HAS to be more to the Barker story than that... right?...  | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.63.158 |
Thanks Gary, it's good to hear that expressed. "my conscientiousness as a employee" I get this. I wish I didn't care so much, but I find it actually takes more energy from me to do my job badly than to do it well. And the ones who care inevitably pick up the slack from the dead wood who don't. Craig, these books: http://www.clivebarker.info/memorybooks.html go into incredible detail and are well illustrated with rarely- (and never-) seen drawings and photographs. Two large volumes only reach 1981 so far. The third one will probably cover TBoB. Douglas Winter's biography has details too. TBoB have a very chequered publishing history and I get the impression that initially they weren't so much published as erratically coughed up by the publishing industry. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.63.158 |
I'll give full details tomorrow, but for now:  | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 2.24.30.57 |
The first three volumes of the Books of Blood were first published in paperback in the UK, as were the second three volumes a year or so later. I bought those editions and they would be worth a lot of money now, but my copies were stolen from my home under circumstances I won't go into here. At the time their mass-market publication was not surprising: Christopher Fowler's first three books (all mass-market) were horror collections, and collections by most leading horror writers were available in mass-market paperback editions. This was the horror boom, remember! It was immediately clear that the publisher had taken a chance on a new writer because his work had obvious commercial potential: it reworked familiar themes from horror fiction and cinema with postmodern irony and flamboyant lashings of gore. It was high-concept horror for the Fangoria generation. In addition, they had in Barker a brilliantly articulate representative who was capable of building up a personal cult following. Barker had not sought to sell any of the individual stories, presumably because he didn't want to waste time with that and/or he wanted to burst on the scene from nowhere. I find some of the 'Year Zero' mythology around Barker quite bewildering (the editor of Fangoria wrote that horror fiction had been dead for decades when Barker gave it a new lease of life), but there's no denying his intelligence or his work ethic. | ||
| David_m (David_m) Username: David_m Registered: 07-2011 Posted From: 95.147.193.155 |
One of the central aims of our Hellbound Hearts event is to explore the role Barker's work has played in shaping the imagination and style of the horror authors influenced by his work. Key themes include the erotics of pain, the excitement of bodily transformation mingled with a fear of dissolution, identification with the monstrous, and gateways into new worlds of perception and experience. To those of you who write fiction, how do you see his influence, both in your own work and within the wider field? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.155.181 |
Craig: of course not. Barker hasn't been a huge influence on me. Maybe some of the meatiness of his prose style has mediated my tendency towards the concise precision of Ramsey's stuff, but that's all. I think he as a person is too extraverted to truly speak to me. I prefer quieter voices - and terrors - like our landlord's. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.155.181 |
Barker is the genre's rock star, though, isn't he? He has the whole package, off and on page. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.155.181 |
I missed that, Des, though will catch it on iPlayer. I love the 2nd piano concerto. Very Bohemian, with some rich, gorgeous harmonies, and a couple of lyrical passages that always slay me. If you can take a rich dessert, there's nothing finer. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.155.181 |
(Liszt must have been perpetually bursting with musical ideas - tormented by them. His compositions are stuffed with endless invention. He tries something new at every turn. Maybe his irrepressible imagination was his weakness, the way Tchaikovsky's melodic gift was his [and was self-acknowledged as such].) | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.153.232.251 |
Such 'torment' is the lot of most of us who deem ourselves (sometimes presumptuously) creative. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.155.181 |
Yeah, in a much smaller way, it's what I'm on about above. But in the case of heavyweights like Liszt, it's how it's marshalled. Maybe we need a new thread for this. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 2.24.10.31 |
David, it would be presumptuous of me to start discussing my scrawny fiction here, but as a reader I feel that Barker popularised the more sexually and emotionally challenging approach of modern American horror fiction (Matheson, Sturgeon, Reamy, Ellison) for an audience largely unaware of it, as well as tapping into a modern literary culture that included such figures as John Rechy and Hubert Selby Jr. In that regard he helped the genre to grow up. While I don't feel his work was all that original it certainly promoted an adult and emotionally aware sensibility and an engagement with present-day reality. Sadly a lot of Barker's immediate influence fed into a juvenile area of horror fandom that celebrated gore for its own sake – he was the patron saint of splatterpunk – but he never endorsed that mentality, or agreed with the fans who said horror fiction was dead before he reinvented it. It made me angry when critics (and this was a popular attitude in the late 1980s) used Barker's work to disparage other contemporary writers for not going 'far enough' in terms of splatter. I've enjoyed some of Barker's stories though I generally feel he's too wordy and too conceptual, too much an 'ideas' writer, to fully deliver on the promise of his themes – but there's no doubt that his work helped anyone trying to deal with sexuality in weird fiction, especially in the UK, to feel more confident that their attempts wouldn't simply be dismissed. He helped to broaden the expectations of horror readers in the UK, and many writers (myself included) benefited from that freedom. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.9.253.123 |
Years before the Books of Blood were published Clive asked me if I knew of any markets for (and I believe I quote accurately) "some excellent short horror stories". Alas, I didn't - I wasn't editing any anthologies either, or would have asked to see some of the tales. I've always assumed these were some of the BoB contents. I should also mention that it was conceived as a single volume - it was Sphere who split it into three. | ||
| Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus) Username: Rhysaurus Registered: 01-2010 Posted From: 212.219.233.223 |
> I've enjoyed some of Barker's stories though I generally feel he's too wordy and too conceptual, too much an 'ideas' writer, to fully deliver on the promise of his themes... Interesting. I've always said that I'd prefer a writer with good ideas and poor everything else to a writer good at everything except ideas... But I wonder how true this is. Having recently read a lot of great-ideas-but-poor-emotional-engagement fiction recently, I came away with the mental equivalent of a dry mouth... I've never read any Barker, though, so I ought not to hang around here. One (very successful) horror writer I know told me that Barker was "a fantasy writer hiding in a horror writer's frock coat" but he expressed approval of Barker's early work nonetheless... | ||
| David_m (David_m) Username: David_m Registered: 07-2011 Posted From: 95.147.193.155 |
Thanks for the feedback so far, it's made for engaging reading. Rhys, if you are interested in exploring Barker's horror fiction I would suggest starting with Cabal, The Books of Blood, and The Hellbound Heart, in that order. | ||
| Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus) Username: Rhysaurus Registered: 01-2010 Posted From: 212.219.233.223 |
Thanks David. Maybe I will actually give him a go. It'll have to be next year, though, as my 2011 reading list is absolutely crammed... In fact my reading list is probably crammed for the next 5 years (but I daren't look too closely!) | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.155.181 |
This thread has made me want to read the BoB again. I seem to recall some of the prose being quite wonderful. Just as aside relating to Joel's comment above: does anyone find Terry Lamsley's work a "bit wordy"? | ||
| Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus) Username: Rhysaurus Registered: 01-2010 Posted From: 212.219.233.223 |
No, I don't find Lamsley's work particularly wordy. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.68 |
Nor I! | ||
| David_m (David_m) Username: David_m Registered: 07-2011 Posted From: 95.147.193.155 |
Rhys, I can relate to the crammed reading list- no matter how much I get through, mine just keeps growing. If you want a really short introduction to Clive's horror fiction, then I would recommend 'Jacqueline Ess: Her Will and Testament'. It originally appeared in the second volume of the Books of Blood and was chosen by Ellen Datlow to open her Darkness: Two Decades of Modern Horror anthology. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.155.181 |
On Lamsley: must be just me, then. I think he writes some superb tales, but a lot of his paragraphs are Merleau-Pontyan. Same with Ligotti, I guess. Sterling authors, both, however. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Thanks, all. Those books look like invaluable clues on the way to discovering the "hellbound heart" of Clive Barker, Proto—it does hint at answering a portion of my questioning mind, in that it's clear Barker was honing himself in theatre as, at least partially, an actor (dare I compare him to Shakespeare?) before/during his time composing what would become the BsOB. There is much of the cinematic in these stories. I wonder about that, Joel, in context with the time and place, that world of the horror boom back then. There was, after all, in a slightly different way, precedent: Stephen King. Now, King certainly didn't leap out of nowhere fully-formed—he already had a rich body of published short fiction. But I don't think (?—correct me if I'm wrong) it's going out on a limb to say he was not universally acclaimed (more: barely known), before the publication of Carrie, an event which was indeed akin to being vaulted from nothing to sudden stardom. My limited purview of the genre back then, and from a long way out, seems to me that (a) King hadn't made much notice with his short stories in the time before his first novel appeared, and (b) his publications were in tucked-away magazines mostly, that didn't rise to the level of wide notice in the horror industry (the record shows it was almost exclusively Cavalier—a porn rag, or am I wrong on that?). I remember reading somewhere about King going from struggling and unknown, to suddenly being told he'd sold that first novel for a staggering $400,000. For that time? Wow, that's unbelievable—that same amount would be unbelievable now! He was to some extent pre-preened for his wide and as-yet-unaware-of-him adoring public. The "gamble" worked, because King was indeed a staggering and prolific talent; so there ended up being no, or if anything underestimated, hype. In sum, I sense something of that going on here with Barker and the BsOB—I'm not casting anything like aspersions, but I'm just noting that, as in all fabulous stories, there's missing data that would, revealed, mitigate a pure miracle. The stories in Barker's BsOB are superb Faberge Eggs of horror fiction: no question. But it still remains for me, impossible to believe that he crafted these all alone in a room, then indeed sprung them upon the public all at once. Perhaps he had a deft editor somewhere, Ramsey, who remains unnamed? I just think there's more to that particular story, that would prove demystifying to some degree, and illuminating.... | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 2.24.38.245 |
'One (very successful) horror writer I know told me that Barker was "a fantasy writer hiding in a horror writer's frock coat"' Barker always had better dress sense than that. He wouldn't be seen undead in a frock coat. Though, to be fair, neither would any horror writer except K** N*****. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Barker hasn't been a huge influence on me. Gary—again, I'm going out on an ignorant limb, but I'm thinking Barker has indeed (and one could say, oddly) had little influence on horror fiction; not like say Ramsey's work, which has influenced writers too numerous to tally. I think Barker influenced mediums like film and comics mostly. I think there's a reason for that: like Joel said, his work is extremely "cinematic." Take, for example, what I think is another superb collection of short stories: David Morrell's Black Evening. Staggering collection of short stories... but I doubt anyone would ever describe them, or much of Morrell's work, as being "influencing." I think that's because Morrell is writing so firmly and cleanly in the thriller/suspense subgenre—and firmly occupying the "cinematic" wing of that location—that there's little individualistic about it, beyond the imaginative (to use a cinematic term) logline. Again, I'm not denigrating the work—Morrell, Barker, anyone else. But there are few screenplays, as screenplays and not the films they become, that would ever "influence" any writer. Unique style is of far lesser importance to a screenplay, than the clean transmission of story; plot of far more importance, than nuance/subtlety and development of character. Generalizing of course. And so, the more you list towards the cinematic, the less you're writing is about writing, but rather: the transmission of concept/logline and plot. It's just the way it is. And so, why I think Barker is—as I see it, just imho—not as intense an influence upon horror fiction as one might knee-jerk assume he would be.... (To me, the writer who occupies the ground almost exactly between the cinematic and the stylistic? Again: Stephen King.) | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
Barker was a huge influence on me, but I only realised this last year. In my youthful reading, Ramsey showed me that it was okay to write horror set outside your own front door and Barker showed me that horror can be whatever the fuck you perceive it to be. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.9.248.78 |
"The stories in Barker's BsOB are superb Faberge Eggs of horror fiction: no question. But it still remains for me, impossible to believe that he crafted these all alone in a room, then indeed sprung them upon the public all at once. Perhaps he had a deft editor somewhere, Ramsey, who remains unnamed?" Well, the typescript I read of the first three volumes certainly didn't appear to have been edited, whereas that of The Damnation Game had a fair number of minor changes, not by Clive. Indeed, the latter is in my archive at Liverpool University. | ||
| Simon Bestwick (Simon_b) Username: Simon_b Registered: 10-2008 Posted From: 86.24.209.217 |
Though, to be fair, neither would any horror writer except K** N*****. I don't know... Lord Probert might consider it. As for Barker 'coming from nowhere' as a writer- didn't he have a substantial background in the theatre scene prior to the Books Of Blood, with a number of well-received plays? (Indeed, one writer friend of mine from the US met Clive B comparatively early on in his writing career, and was told he wrote prose in order to make 'fuck you money' to do theatre.) He also wrote and directed a number of films while at college. So while he might not have had a track record as a writer of prose fiction prior to the Books of Blood, he had a track record as a writer- and while scriptwriting is a very different discipline from prose fiction, it still requires a grasp of theme, character, structure, not to speak of effective dialogue and use of imagination (which I seem to recall his plays weere praised for.) Those are elements that can be transposed to prose fiction (speaking from experience), which left the main development area that of the lyrical prose style that was one of the factors differentiating his work from a lot of the other stuff on the bookshelves at the time. The other big revelation in the Books Of Blood and subsequent works was a thoroughly modern sensibility, particularly in terms of sexuality. Barker embraced the idea of sexual freedom as a radical and liberating force- or so it seemed to me at the time; it's been a while since I read the Books of Blood, and I might have to put that right shortly. That might well have come from the world of the theatre- imagine a stage play with the sexual politics- or indeed, insight into character- of a Guy N. Smith or a Dennis Wheatley. You need to know people a hell of a lot better than that to write good drama. I think both of these elements did come across as fresh and new in terms of the popular horror fiction of the 80s- I know Ramsey's stuff has a similar sensibility in many ways, and I know that other writers had a modernity of outlook (i.e. not underpinning everything they wrote with a simple, dichotomous God and the Devil narrative) but most of the books in the genre that sold in vast quantities had decidedly prudish attitudes towards sexuality- any kind of deviation from the norm was all too often punished by some kind of horrible death. (Less true of King but very true of Herbert.) Barker was pushed, saleswise, as someone on the same level as King, Herbert et al. Horror was big back then, and here was something fresh and new, but also saleable. If he'd started out a decade or so later, then yes, it would probably have been a much more uphill climb. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.186.207.49 |
Even as a teenager I did notice that any time a character in a James Herbert book was revealed to be gay they died within 2 pages. Most notably a female professor in Domain who'd been in the book for nearly two thirds of it and had been set up as one of the survivors. We found out she was a lesbian and within a page she'd been drowned, machine gunned and eaten by rats all at once. The only sexual deviant who survives a Herbert novel IIRC is the flasher in Lair who's used as comic relief several times. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 2.24.28.26 |
Simon – Barker has also said (in writing) that he spent years writing plays as a 'day job' to keep himself in spaghetti while he worked on the Books of Blood. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.155.181 |
I sense elephants being jewelled. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.126.87 |
Pretty crappy superpower you have there. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.121.187 |
Anyway, I told Clive that Ramsey Campbell had a question for him (at this point he put his hands together and looked upwards in benediction). In response to "Find the golden light" Clive said his epitaph would be "Whoops. Lost it again." He said he wouldn't know what to do with the golden light once he had it. David, Clive spoke about how he was asked to write a sequel for WEAVEWORLD just after he'd finished it and was lamenting on the public's desire for sequels, so that probably answers your question on Cabal 2 and 3... | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
I just don't want to believe, Ramsey, that someone was this good for THIS MANY stories, never trying to get ONE of them published beforehand.... It just seems uncanny, doesn't it? That someone could pile up THIS MANY let's-just-call-them perfect stories?! At once?!?! The more I think about it, the more fantastic it seems. That's just not the way things happen in life. There has to, has to, HAS TO, be more to this Barker BsOB story.... I'm not denying his art, I'm just saying... well, what I'm saying, that there's something more to this whole story.... | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 2.24.30.84 |
Craig, what on earth are you so bothered about? Somebody wrote a (longish) book and got it published as a book. What's so strange about that? As for impossibly piling up so many stories "at once", I suspect Barker wrote them one at a time, using a typewriter or a word processor. He didn't bother with the small press, there weren't that many professional outlets and he didn't look for them. He wanted to impress fans and critics with a new bunch of stories. It's slightly unusual but it's not uncanny. "That's just not the way things happen in life" – well, yes it can be. And as Simon has pointed out, Barker had been writing plays successfully for years, he didn't come from nowhere. I'm afraid you're doing another "the atomic bomb doesn't exist" with this. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.155.181 |
>>>Pretty crappy superpower you have there. The curse of a Yorkshireman. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.155.181 |
While I don't share Craig's fanboyish view of the tales' "perfection" (they are bloody good, tho), might it be true that Barker knew how appealing they were and was amassing a bunch of them to market collectively? Also, they're all novella-ish length - hardly the easiest type of story to place. | ||
| David_m (David_m) Username: David_m Registered: 07-2011 Posted From: 95.147.193.155 |
Proto, thanks for your reports about the conference. The sequels to Cabal are something that Clive has discussed several times over the years... http://www.clivebarker.info/newbooksb.html#cabalsequels Were there any particularly good papers given across the two days? Did Clive single any out as giving him a new perspective on his work? Also, for fans of the Hellraiser films, we have just uploaded an extract from Paul Kane's The Hellraiser Films and their Legacy, which discusses the Cenobites... http://twistedtalesevents.blogspot.com/2011/07/demons-to-some-from-chapter-3-of. html Let me know what you think of it. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
When you look at some of the absolute garbage published unfer the Horror label by mainstream publishers back then, it becomes apparent why Barker held onto those stories to get a book deal with them. Because he knew they were more than good enough to do that. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
under | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.155.181 |
"infer" would have been fitting here, as in infernal . . . | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
Ha!  I'd like to think Barker's stories would still have garnered all that fanfare now, but because of the state of the publishing industry - and horrorin particular as a commercial genre - I think he'd have been forced to write a novel rather than a collection of superb short stories. I feel the need to reread the Books of Blood...again. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.155.181 |
As they say in Liverpool: l'infer, c'est les dawson. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.30.192 |
I've only now remembered that Stuart Schiff at Whispers saw some of Clive's tales and rejected them. I specifically recall "In the Hills, the Cities", which Stuart turned down on the grounds of physical impossibility. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.155.181 |
Doh! Joe Gillis [to script agent]: "I guess you'd have turned down Gone With The Wind." [director] "No, that was me." --Sunset Boulevard. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
It's also important to remember that the first three BoB volumes were published a year before the last three, and the latter may have been written after the former gained a contract. They are certainly stronger overall. Reading the first three volumes in isolation, as I did the month they were first published, was a pretty mixed experience: a couple of excellent stories, plus much that was professional enough but not remarkable. They showed promise, and the three volumes that followed delivered more significantly on that promise. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.6.69 |
I wonder what all the publishers who turned down Harry Potter are doing now? Actually, I feel a bit sorry for them - I couldn't wade through all the adverbs either. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Gosh, I'd NEVER have described myself as a "fanboy" of Barker. How odd to me anyone would even think that (like I said, I've never gotten beyond Barker's 1990's), or that I'm a fanboy of Michael Bay... surely fanboys by now would have seen parts 2 & 3 of TRANSFORMERS, and I haven't! (And have no plans to.) Joel, indeed, it just didn't pass the smell test, as they say. Ramsey has somewhat borne me out—knowing he tried to submit at least one story somewhere, just plain makes sense. It's nothing beyond my disbelief that anyone stacks up (just calling them for the moment) perfect stories, one after the other. Human beings just don't do that, imho (outside of Emily Dickinson, and even she submitted a few poems here and there). I thought perhaps a backstory could have been, an editor liked a few, then encouraged Barker to keep going and they'd turn it into a trilogy; or, they weren't so perfect, and a nameless editor took his hand to them and turned them into what they are now; and so on. I for one have never believed that Matt Damon and Ben Affleck wrote GOOD WILL HUNTING, which won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay that year. I mean, wtf?! These guys didn't go on and write, there's nothing about them that screams, "Writers." There's long been rumors around that someone basically so rewrote it, that it's hardly Matt's and Ben's at all—the ghostwriter's name I'd heard mentioned was Rob Reiner. But the existing facts in this case?... no, sorry, don't buy it... GOOD WILL HUNTING, and nuclear weapons, those two things.... | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.155.181 |
Mayhap we can summon someone "in the know" to put the record straight . . . | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.6.69 |
"Were there any particularly good papers given across the two days? Did Clive single any out as giving him a new perspective on his work?" David, Clive didn't attend the presentations himself. He explained: "It was very very hard for me not to be present, I desperately wanted to hear all this stuff. But I was very frightened of becoming self-conscious. An artist's fear is that they'll understand themselves too well. God, preserve me from understanding myself, that is the artist's prayer. Because the moment you understand yourself you take away the mystery that makes getting up on Monday morning fascinating. If I understood what I was doing, why the fuck do it?" He's going to read the papers later. He seemed genuinely engaged and excited by the process but at the same time not that interested in dialectic divorced from the act of creation. | ||
| Darren O. Godfrey (Darren_o_godfrey) Username: Darren_o_godfrey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 207.200.116.133 |
Peter Atkins ought to know. As Clive finished each of the tales (at least those written after the two had relocated to London), he'd come round and show them to Pete. They must've discussed what was to be done with each piece...right? | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
"Ramsey has somewhat borne me out—knowing he tried to submit at least one story somewhere, just plain makes sense." True, Craig – I apologise somewhat. | ||
| Pete_a (Pete_a) Username: Pete_a Registered: 07-2011 Posted From: 75.85.10.161 |
For what it's worth, folks, here are my memories of how the first three BOOKS OF BLOOD came to be written (and please bear in mind it's thirty years ago now, and age and alcohol have done their work). The trigger was Kirby MacCauley's anthology DARK FORCES. Clive read it, was very impressed by the range of tones and styles in it, and decided he'd like to have a go at doing a single-author equivalent. He wrote it over the course of a year or so and, without doubt, was writing it AS a book -- the way somebody'd decide to write a novel. To the best of my knowledge, he gave no thought to submitting individual stories anywhere -- I believe, Ramsey, the submissions to Stu Schiff and elsewhere came about only at the suggestion of Barbara Boote, his editor at Sphere, after she'd accepted the collection -- and he also intended it as a large single volume; again, it was Barbara who insisted on splitting it into three volumes. What Barbara DIDN'T do, Craig, was 'edit' the stories -- at least not in the way you're wondering if she (or somebody) did. She was a commisioning editor at a paperback house, not Ezra Pound 'fixing' THE WASTE LAND for his mate Tom. She gave some notes, of course, but only the kind of notes any house editor would give. Clive had always loved horror literature and film but he undertook the book, frankly, as a long-shot hope of making some money. In one of the posts above, Joel kindly refers to him as a "succesful" playwright, but the truth is he wasn't -- not in a commercial/financial sense, at least. He wrote plays for his own company to perform (a company of which I was a member) and the sad truth is that we usually played to audiences whom we outnumbered, while being unofficially supported by the state (ie. we were all on the dole). The only reason Clive wasn't living in a house with a hole in the roof (re other posts) was that his boyfriend had a corporate job. He wrote them all longhand, by the way. He still to this day doesn't do his own typing. And Darren's right -- I had the privilege of being the 'first reader' of most of them. Well, Doug Bradley too, as I recall. Again, though, the only notes we gave were the kind any friend-of-the-author would give (though I am proud of being the guy who suggested he make the squabbling couple in "In the Hills, the Cities" gay rather than the straight married pair they were in his first draft). And Hi, everyone. Old mate of Ramsey's. Long time lurker, first time poster. Be gentle. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
Greetings, Pete. Nice to have someone in the know put the record stright on this. Maybe Craig will shut the hell up now. He wrote them all longhand, by the way. He still to this day doesn't do his own typing. I thought that might be the case. I remember knowing a guy at college who was apparently friends with the woman who typed up at least some of Weaveworld. He knew I was into genre fiction, so told me that she claimed to be having nightmares for weeks. That always impressed the hell out of me - a writer's fiction affecting someone that deeply.. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.155.181 |
Doesn't do his own typing? So like, where did he get all those muscles? | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 220.138.162.157 |
Welcome, Pete. I loved your story "Aviatrix' (and the reason for writing it), and the stories in Spook City. | ||
| John Forth (John) Username: John Registered: 05-2008 Posted From: 82.24.1.217 |
Good to see you on board, Pete. I'm a big fan of your novel Morningstar. You'll be a Fantasycon this year, if I recall...? | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.152.208.213 |
Great to hear that background, Pete, thanks. Craig, in the last week you've had Clive Barker, Ramsey Campbell and Pete Atkins appear to answer your question. Please ask God something. | ||
| Darren O. Godfrey (Darren_o_godfrey) Username: Darren_o_godfrey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 207.200.116.133 |
Hi Pete, Great to see you here. So...how's the weather down LA way? | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.184.137.136 |
Hi Pete - welcome. I recall you joining our table in the bar at the World Fantasy Convention in London back in the 'eighties for a natter and a couple of drinks! | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 2.24.27.149 |
'though I am proud of being the guy who suggested he make the squabbling couple in "In the Hills, the Cities" gay rather than the straight married pair they were in his first draft' Pete, that really makes you il miglior fabbro – how much more resonant the story is with that change... | ||
| Pete_a (Pete_a) Username: Pete_a Registered: 07-2011 Posted From: 75.85.10.161 |
Thanks, everyone, for the welcome and the kind words. And yes, I'll be back in blighty for FantasyCon so hope to meet some of you there. Hi, Darren! Hope you and the girls are doing well. Please give them my love. And Joel, that's very kind of you. I wish I could claim I suggested the change for its potential socio-political impact, but it was so much more banal than that; the banter simply reminded me of when Clive and John (his then partner) got snappy with each other and so I told him he should cut the Tennessee Williams crap and have the characters be who they actually already were. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Actually, it is I who must humbly ask you for an apology, Joel—it turns out you were right and I was wrong, because Mr. Atkins' story bears you out: it doesn't matter if Barker submitted stories after he had decided to write them all and get them published at once in a book, my premise was he didn't do that at all, in fact, that it was impossible any writer would; and according again to Mr. Atkins, on top of that, he was pushed to do so by someone else! So, what I thought couldn't possibly have been true of a writer, really was—you are allowed to trounce me three times soundly round the skull for that one. I guess I just jealously couldn't believe that, again, Barker could amass these fine tales all at once, holding out for book publication, never trying himself first in the magazines—as if almost effortlessly, he appears on the scene, influential and daunting, like Athena from the head of Zeus. My envious amazement sometimes gets the better of me. The envy comes from the term you used, "cinematic," a very good one: it's the particular style of Barker's I'm most in admiration of, naturally (desiring to screenwrite)—and so the "agon" is there where it wouldn't be for other such writers. I can simply revel in Ramsey's work and so many others, because even the thought of scaling those artistic heights is sheerly beyond me—there I'm a mere reader, and get all the luxurious enjoyment, guilt- and envy-free. Lucky me! | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Craig, in the last week you've had Clive Barker, Ramsey Campbell and Pete Atkins appear to answer your question. Please ask God something. Gosh, you know, you're right, Proto—good God that's amazing! I thank you all greatly, for even bothering to answer and then putting me straight. And God?... settle this once and for all: can You or can You not create a rock so big even You can't lift it?... | ||
| Pete_a (Pete_a) Username: Pete_a Registered: 07-2011 Posted From: 75.85.10.161 |
"holding out for book publication, never trying himself first in the magazines" Partly a true instance of 'ignorance is bliss', Craig. I'm fairly sure (though can't say with utter certainty) that Clive simply *didn't know* there were magazine markets. I know I didn't. We knew there'd *been* magazines back in the pulp days and were vaguely aware that ASIMOV'S, F&SF, and the crime digests were still around, but it was really terra incognita to us at the time, wrapped up in our little world of fringe theatre as we were. But you're right in assuming that there was also Clive's desire to announce himself with a splash. He always was a confident little bugger. } | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.155.181 |
It did occur to me that CB might not even have known there was a market for his fiction. I remember when I started out, I had no idea about markets until Ramsey told me about Best New Horror and its list of markets in the back. | ||
| Karim Ghahwagi (Karim) Username: Karim Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 193.89.189.24 |
I was 14 or so when I came across this collection. It was the collected paperback edition with Ramsey's intro. The following week I stumbled across issue 1 of the Tapping the Vein comics from Eclipse with the Dave Mckean cover. I have the six single signed Barker illustrated covers from BOB framed in my office. They had a major effect on the imagination of my 14 year old self. And I have enjoyed everything he has done ever since. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.23.40 |
Welcome, Pete! Are you accompanied by Messrs Sponge and Scrotum? | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
That rock exists, Craig. | ||
| God (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
No it doesn't. Unless you count Craig's template theory of films as a metaphorical rock... | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
You guys have no idea how surprised I was when I logged on here and discovered that God had made the last post on the message board.  I guess my surprise comes from being an atheist ... | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.155.181 |
Think how I felt when He asked for a password. I'd assumed He was ubiquitous. | ||
| Pete_a (Pete_a) Username: Pete_a Registered: 07-2011 Posted From: 75.85.10.161 |
"Welcome, Pete! Are you accompanied by Messrs Sponge and Scrotum?" Like dyspepsia and the grave, Sir, they are never far from any of us. | ||
| John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.158.78.71 |
Are you accompanied by Messrs Sponge and Scrotum?" Why do I feel I'm back at work? Hello Mr Atkins! I believe Aviatrix has already been praised on this thread so I'll just say I'm intending to do my best to remember to bring my copy of Wishmaster and Other Tales to FantasyCon for a signature this year. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 2.24.18.62 |
So Weber is God? That explains a lot. About the world I mean. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 166.216.226.189 |
He was diagnosed with three personalities, after all.... | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Of course, even if Weber didn't exist, I'm not sure I'd bother to invent him. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 2.24.30.12 |
But your Weber is a sectarian fiction. Ours is the true Weber. | ||
| Lincoln (Lincoln_brown) Username: Lincoln_brown Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 58.168.232.210 |
Craig, in 'Shadows in Eden'(Underwood/Miller) Clive Barker responds to a question: 'But I did come out of left field, and I think that's maybe one of the reasons I managed to get where I got so quickly. There wasn't an expectation of my arriving.' And, regarding 'The Books of Blood': 'Sphere Books took the first five stories and said, "Fine, we'll take whatever you've got," so I continued to write...' | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
For the Universe to look at itself it naturally had to split in half and/or create itself anew - as space and time do not exist either concept is equally valid - creating two identical views of itself. Being equal, but opposite, one individual/half cannot possibly lift the other individual/half which equates with "God" having created a "rock" that "God" is unable to lift. I just never expected it to be called Weber... | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
That fails because the universe has never tried to look at itself. If it did all it would need would be a mirror. Also it's easily possible to lift a weight that's equal and opposite to your own - you throw in a pulley... | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 166.216.226.95 |
Note how he's not speaking in the capacity of God, though.... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.4.19.77 |
In that state of existence (note I didn't say at that time) nothing existed apart from the two identical but opposite entities. Neither one knew which came out of the other but inferred that one must have. Yet neither had power, or the ability to lift, over the other. Simple. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Lincoln - that kinda puts a period on that! Stevie - is this split into a "good" and an "evil"? | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
Wouldn't God expect humanity to lift the rock and punish it for failing? Anyway we should be talking about Clive Barker. Can he write a book he is unable to lift? | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.152.204.58 |
"Anyway we should be talking about Clive Barker. Can he write a book he is unable to lift?" The big print version of Imajica is massive enough to bend light. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
No, Craig. Merely something and other. The concept of good and evil only arose after the conscious allowance of limitation of knowledge. I've already banged on enough about how much I admire Clive's imagination and seemingly effortless ability to weave spellbinding tales and create endless characters of Dickensian memorability. What frustrates me is that the only thing the mass populace ever seems to bang on about is the Hellraiser "universe" and bloody Pinhead. There is so much else to the man and his works! | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.152.204.58 |
Sigh. I prefer Stevie's older stuff. Do a list again! List! List! List! | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
Stevie, I bet you're great fun at parties. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.4.19.77 |
Depends what kind of parties you're talking about... | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.56.66 |
I prefer quieter voices - and terrors - like our landlord's. Same here. However, things like "Coming to Grief" showed me Barker had more in him than that Cenobite r******. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 166.216.226.32 |
Ok, I'm searching my mind, but.... what naughty word starts with "r"? | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.56.66 |
Rhubarb. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 147.252.230.148 |
x**! Am I right? I'm not wrong. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
"Ok, I'm searching my mind, but.... what naughty word starts with "r"?" Rubberdildotitwank | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.56.66 |
Weber's got the first four letters right! | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
rubbingcockshaftfacefucktwat? | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.56.66 |
Plus the fifth letter! Give that man a cigar. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
Rubbish, then. But that's only rude in this context, it's not a true 'rude word'. You can do better. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.155.181 |
Rodgering. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.56.66 |
'Rubbish' looks as if I hate the man, which I don't, hence the caution. I honestly tried to get into at least one novel - The Great and Secret Show - but couldn't finish it and pretty much gave up on CB after that. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
The Great and Secret Show is one of my favourite genre novels of all time, Hubert - just out of interest, why didn't you like it? | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.56.66 |
Difficult to remember Zed, because this was like fifteen or twenty years ago. It had definitely something to do with the writing in its own right. Shortly thereafter I discovered his story in Prime Evil and was pleasantly surprised - but here, too, I would have to re-read the tale in order to be more specific. I remember I tried Straub's The Throat around that time and it didn't work for me, either. Maybe I'm just hard to please. I was very much into Michael Blumlein's superb collection The Brains of Rats and probably expected too much of horror at the time. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
Weird, For me, Barker's novel raised the game for horror at that time. Straub does it with each new book he writes. This is probably a taste thing: I recall you hating Justin Cronin's The Passage, whereas I thought it was the best book of the year. | ||
| Simon Bestwick (Simon_b) Username: Simon_b Registered: 10-2008 Posted From: 86.24.209.217 |
Tbh, I really wasn't keen on The Great and Secret Show either- I found it overblown and long-winded, and I loist interest in reading a lot of Barker's longer works after that. Possibly I need to give it another try. (And if I enjoy it, I might well end up reading the rest of his stuff, which promises weeks of happy reading!) For me, The Damnation Game, Weaveworld and Cabal, along with the Books of Blood are all brilliant, and these alone are enough to give him an important place in the genre. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.56.66 |
Cronin? That must have been someone else, Zed. I'm totally unfamiliar with his work. | ||
| John Forth (John) Username: John Registered: 05-2008 Posted From: 82.24.1.217 |
I've got a lot of fondness for THE GREAT AND SECRET SHOW. Less for EVERVILLE, which I thought fell into some very obvious sequel traps and was tonally a bit too distant from the first novel. I think I prefer WEAVEWORLD for the slightly spurious reason that it is (at first) set in the UK. It's a rubbish point, I know, but one I often find myself coming back to with British authors who later set work in The States. I'm the same with, say, Alan Moore. Much prefer stuff like V FOR VENDETTA or MIRACLEMAN to WATCHMEN. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 27.252.177.122 |
'For me, The Damnation Game, Weaveworld and Cabal, along with the Books of Blood are all brilliant, and these alone are enough to give him an important place in the genre.'Yes. Agreed. I have all these. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
Hubert - sorry, mate, maybe it was Huw. One of you H guys, anyway. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 220.138.164.172 |
Not me... must have been one of those other H-name chaps... Harry Fry or Hick Curtis, perhaps? | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.184.137.136 |
Oo-ar! | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.155.181 |
Tony Hovel? | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
Maybe it was Hamsey Hampbell. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Probably bits here and there from Hoel, Hate, and Hary. Yeah, I just like saying Hoel, Hate, and Hary. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.155.181 |
Understood, Haig. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 61.216.47.214 |
Maybe it was DI Harris... | ||
| David_m (David_m) Username: David_m Registered: 07-2011 Posted From: 95.147.192.98 |
Sadly, I have no idea who made that comment. In the run up to our Hellbound Hearts event, we'll be uploading two pieces of blog content each week (on Monday and Wednesday). Today, we have an interview with Clive Barker by Paul Kane... http://twistedtalesevents.blogspot.com/2011/07/clive-barker-interviewed-by-paul- kane.html Let me know what you think of it. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.155.181 |
Ha ha, Huw, I was thinking about him the other day . . . | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
I still fondly recall Paul Kane interviewing Clive Barker at Fantasycon a few years ago – and at one point, the interviewer blushing to the roots of his hair at a comment Barker made regarding Gray's Anatomy. Bless. | ||
| Pete_a (Pete_a) Username: Pete_a Registered: 07-2011 Posted From: 75.85.10.161 |
Oh Joel, you're such a tease. What'd he say? Okay, I'll go first. Here's one that made *Clive* blush: Clive and Doug Bradley were on a panel together several years ago. In the Q & A section, someone in the audience asked Clive about his various exotic pets. He went through a list, including some recent acquisitions, and then as an aside to Doug, said "You've met the parrot, Doug. But you didn't know I had a cockatiel, did you?" "No," Doug replied. "But I knew you'd had a cockatoo." Proud of him. You can take the boy out of vaudeville, but you can't take the vaudeville out of the boy. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.155.181 |
Carry On Hellraising. Fine film. Starring Montague Rhodes "Sid" James and Conrad "Kenneth" Williams. | ||
| David_m (David_m) Username: David_m Registered: 07-2011 Posted From: 95.147.192.98 |
Today's blog content is an article by Suzanne J. Barbieri about the psychoanalytical themes of Barker's The Hellbound Heart... http://twistedtalesevents.blogspot.com/2011/07/hellbound-heart-death-of-ego-birt h-of.html If you'd like to discuss it, either post here or beneath the article. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
Pete, I think Clive's quip is transferable to other Barker events so I won't spill it here. That's a hint...  | ||
| David_m (David_m) Username: David_m Registered: 07-2011 Posted From: 95.147.192.98 |
I'd love to arrange an event when Clive releases his next horror book, be it Black is the Devil's Rainbow, The Scarlet Gospels or some other project. Hopefully we can convince him to make an appearance in his home town. | ||
| David_m (David_m) Username: David_m Registered: 07-2011 Posted From: 95.147.192.98 |
Does anyone know who to contact at the Liverpool Echo and Radio Merseyside about publicizing forthcoming events? | ||
| John Forth (John) Username: John Registered: 05-2008 Posted From: 82.24.1.217 |
>I'd love to arrange an event when Clive releases his next horror book, be it Black is the Devil's Rainbow, The Scarlet Gospels or some other project.< We'll all be using zimmers then at this rate. | ||
| David_m (David_m) Username: David_m Registered: 07-2011 Posted From: 95.147.192.98 |
John, I think Black is the Devil's Rainbow is actually finished, so it may come sooner than you expect. Today's blog content is an interview with our third reader for the Hellbound Hearts event this Friday, Marie O'Regan... http://twistedtalesevents.blogspot.com/2011/08/marie-oregan-interviewed-by-david .html . | ||
| David_m (David_m) Username: David_m Registered: 07-2011 Posted From: 95.147.192.98 |
Today's blog content is an article on the psychoanalytical themes of Clive Barker's Cabal by Suzanne Barbieri: http://twistedtalesevents.blogspot.com/2011/08/midian-down-into-unconscious-by-s uzanne.html Only two days to go until the event- I'm looking forward to it. |