| Author | Message | ||
     Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.70.83.157 |
Congratulations to Laird Barron! | ||
| Michael_kelly (Michael_kelly) Username: Michael_kelly Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 207.188.66.86 |
Yes, indeed! Congratulations, Laird! Well done. Well deserved. And congratulations to all the winners, and especially Ellen Datlow who was acquiring editor on every story that won. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.242.126 |
Well done, Laird! | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.196.78 |
Congratulations Laird! I really need to finish The Imago Sequence. In fact, I'm going to fetch it from my 'to read' pile (where it's sandwiched between Masques of Satan and Dirty Prayers) right now... ;-) | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.244.67 |
Does he win a weekend in a haunted house? | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
Congratulations indeed, Laird! | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.149.134.59 |
Well done, Laird! | ||
| Karim Ghahwagi (Karim) Username: Karim Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 204.104.55.242 |
A hearty congrats! | ||
| Richard_gavin (Richard_gavin) Username: Richard_gavin Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 69.157.39.63 |
Congratulations, Laird! I'm really looking forward to reading The Imago Sequence. Best, Richard | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.159.137.224 |
Well done indeed Laird... | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.148.96.124 |
What struck me as strange is that all the winners are spooky books, when in reality SJ's canon was not much that sort of thing at all. Odd, that. Having read a lot of her stuff last year I'd've had her put down as a mainstream author. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.148.96.124 |
Er, not really 'put down' of course. She's already dead. | ||
| Laird Barron (Laird) Username: Laird Registered: 05-2008 Posted From: 71.212.50.31 |
Thanks for the kind words, you guys. I've just returned from the Readercon convention in Boston. I'm pretty much worn out. | ||
| Laird Barron (Laird) Username: Laird Registered: 05-2008 Posted From: 71.212.50.31 |
Huw: I'm sandwiched by Oliver and McMahon? How delightfully naughty! | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
I'm delighted that Shirley Jackson hasn't been consigned to the ghetto of the "mainstream" (whatever that is). | ||
| Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 83.98.9.4 |
She's definitiely genre - Haunting of Hill house is one of the most effective ghost stories ever written ("Whose hand was I holding?") We have always lived in the castle is defo a horror book too. I can't quote on anything else but those two works place her as one of the finest writers the genre has seen. | ||
| John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 90.208.214.25 |
Serious congratulations, Laird! Let's hope there are many more to come (books & awards; but just books would be fine with me) | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 212.74.96.200 |
Well done, LB. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.21.232.114 |
Jubilations, Laird. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.148.96.124 |
But she was only occasionally genre, a person who 'writes horror - sometimes'. I'm not knocking horror, just saying it wasn't solely her thing, and that it struck me as odd there was an award for horror in her name. Was the award created before she died? Do people hate that? | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.148.96.124 |
Now if they'd called it the Hill House award that might have been better. As is, the award made me think it was for mainstream fiction. But Laird - congrats all the same. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.148.96.124 |
When a story dips a bit deep into horror horor fans claim it as their own, when in reality it IS literature. Literature is everything, and to demand it broken into segments when a theme focusses on one aspect more than another to me feels to harm it. But I've said this before. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
In my opinion The Haunting of Hill House is the greatest haunted house novel ever written. I apologise if I seem too much of a "horror fan". The award was created after she died, partly to honour her achievement in the field. As far as I'm concerned the issue isn't how much she wrote in it but how much she achieved in it. The same might be said of other writers whose output mainly wasn't horror: for instance M. R. James, Fritz Leiber, and to a lesser extent Robert W. Chambers. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.77.198 |
Similarly, the Olivier awards are offered for playwriting, dance, musicals, etc. None of which Laurence did much of. But he's a towering representative of theatre, an icon of the medium to lend it deserved credibility and attention. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.77.198 |
Tony, you're not concerned that Shirley Jackson's name/reputation might be tainted by the association with horror, are you? Does anyone know whether her estate was consulted before this award was set up in her name? Apropos of no issue - just wondered. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.244.67 |
Maybe he would prefer it if it was a writer who was solely a horror writer. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.76.230 |
I was just wondering whether there was a further agenda at work in their choice of Shirley Jackson - an attempt to affiliate genre fiction to a canonical author. I really don't know. Lest anyone misunderstand, I don't think calling it the Shirley Jackson award is any more worthy than calling it the H P Lovecraft award, but other people might. Imagine if they'd called it the Charles Dickens award on the basis of The Signalman... | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.244.67 |
Exactly. What has she done for horror? One well known story? A collection, maybe? | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
I would have thought the majority of people who have heard of her would associate her with the macabre. Hill House is her best-known novel, and "The Lottery" is her best-known short story. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.76.215 |
I'd love to know the reasoning behind the choice of Jackson for this award. Does anyone know? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.76.215 |
Ah, here it is: http://www.shirleyjacksonawards.org/ | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.194.172 |
Jackson wrote at least two well-known horror novels, and many well-known short horror stories. Even her less 'horrific' work has touches of horror or eerieness woven through it. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.149.134.59 |
It's a bit like having a ghost story award named after Henry James. Far from dragging an author into the ghetto, it breaks down the ghetto walls and staggers, Golem-like, into the wide open spaces. Shirley Jackson is one of the modern masters of supernatural fiction – if she wrote other stuff as well, that puts her alongside M.R. James (academic books), Blackwood (children's fiction), Machen (journalism), Campbell (film criticism) and Derleth (mainstream fiction, poetry, crime). Is Captain Beefheart a less important musician because he also paints pictures? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.76.215 |
>>>Far from dragging an author into the ghetto, it breaks down the ghetto walls and staggers, Golem-like, into the wide open spaces. Good on her estate for supporting it, then. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
I'd suggest that if her estate want to protect her reputation they can't have been too happy about the bloody awful remake of The Haunting (which the makers had the gall to claim went back to the novel rather than remaking the Wise film). | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.149.134.59 |
They can't – but if that was their pitch to the estate, it's not surprising that they approved it. I assume they did so before the film was made. And then there's the money. Money doesn't talk, it silences. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.77.198 |
Yes, that's a good point. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.161.253.149 |
I just felt some poeople wanted to name an award, and chose Jackson because of HOHH. It bothers me because yes, while she did write a few horror-tinged pieces, she largely didn't. And it seems to suggest that there aren't enough horror writers of her ilk to name the award after so they used her. That sort of made me sad. She just felt used. I'm a bit sore at this me being a horror-kicker thing, btw. I just feel in a way mainstream literature is getting kicked sometimes, that it's being suggested horror elements don't belong to it, and I don't want horror syphoned off from the mainstream rendering it bland. And if it means anything Ruth Rendell has written more great horror than many 'horror authors'. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.161.253.149 |
But yes, the Ronnie Barker award for dramatic performance. It might make sense but it would also feel bloody odd. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.161.253.149 |
And I wish they'd change the title of The Haunting remake because it's great fun in other respects; a real ghost train ride of a film, sort of on the Scooby Doo area of the spectrum. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.161.253.149 |
See; just acknowledged horror as having a spectrum. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.161.253.149 |
Gary; not at all. I just felt it was limiting what she was. | ||
| Richard_gavin (Richard_gavin) Username: Richard_gavin Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 65.110.174.71 |
To my mind, almost everything Shirley Jackson wrote had a touch of the eerie. Even her memoir of parenting and familial routines, Life Among the Savages, seemed slightly gothic to me. I wish I could offer specific passages to support my theory, but I have nothing so concrete. I just get a vibe from Jackson's work. It is invariably witchy and slightly off-kilter, regardless of the subject matter. I don't think she would have had a problem with her name being attached to the recognition of outstanding horror texts. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.149.134.59 |
Any more than H.P. Lovecraft would have said, "Don't attach supernatural horror awards to me, I'm primarily a writer of ironic verses in an eighteenth-century style. And astronomical studies." | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.149.134.59 |
There are far too many novels written in the supernatural horror field. Only a small minority are good and a mere handful are great. That Shirley Jackson wrote one of them immediately makes her more important to the genre than hundreds of career writers of horror whose contribution is merely quantitative. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.161.253.149 |
I suppose. It's just I read a lot of her stuff last year and it felt very vivid, and tragic and observant. And not exactly horror. Does it feel like I'm criticising horror here? I've been reading some older literature recently that makes me wonder whether more authors need to be labelled as horror authors also, and that the mainstream overlap is bigger than I'd thought. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.237.88 |
Poe and Lovecraft are taken for horror awards. Shirley Jackson is taught in public schools to children who couldn't give a fig for horror - everyone here in the States has read "The Lottery," it's like a standard text. So whom are you going to name a prestigious horror award after - who's left? Charlotte Perkins Gilman?... Belated congrats to Laird. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.242.126 |
Everything I've read by Jackson I'd call horror. Tony - it often sounds like you might have a somewhat narrow definition of horror, which is what most of us are fighting against. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.242.126 |
Not having a go, btw - just commenting. :-) | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.161.253.149 |
It often feels like some folk have a narrow idea of mainstream fiction, you mean!  | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.242.126 |
Touche! :-) |