| Author | Message | ||
     Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 83.98.9.4 |
I know I'm well behind on this one - I'm in the middle of reading Heart Shaped Box at the moment and all I can say is WOW! What an excellent book. I can honestly say this is possibly the best horror novel I've read this year. I hope it keeps this standard up till the end. I've just got past maybe the scariest seance scene I've read. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.242.126 |
I thought this was pretty good, Weber, but not great. It does, however, contain a couple of great scenes - namely the one involving the snuff video. No spolier: just wait and see. | ||
| Matt_cowan (Matt_cowan) Username: Matt_cowan Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 68.249.109.114 |
I though really enjoyed it and thought it kept up the intensity all the way through to the end.  | ||
| Karim Ghahwagi (Karim) Username: Karim Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 83.92.216.182 |
Somehow I ended up with three versions of this novel. The Subterranean Limited, the mass market hardback and a galley which I got from the very cool people at Goldsboro in London as a gift. 20th Century Ghosts was just a great collection. Best New Horror and Pop Art are particularly memorable stories I thought. I enjoyed the novel, thought it had some powerful scenes, but I was more impressed with the writing than this story, so I'm really looking forward to his next one. | ||
| Karim Ghahwagi (Karim) Username: Karim Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 83.92.216.182 |
He's doing good comic book work. Lock and Key is great and I have the final issue of King's The Gunslinger: The Long Road Home right here on my desk for consumption tonight! Has anyone here been collecting the Gunslinger comics? They have amazing artwork. Lots of interesting comics right now-Michael Marshall Smith's The Straw Men will be coming out in serial comic book form starting next month? And I have a promo also from today of King's The Stand on the way... | ||
| Grant (Grant) Username: Grant Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 67.176.207.225 |
I thought the the novel was good.Also enjoyed his prose style. In regards to comic work.I've read the first issue of Lock and Key which is alright.I love Jae Lee's art on the Gunslinger comics. | ||
| Michael_kelly (Michael_kelly) Username: Michael_kelly Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 192.206.151.130 |
I'm in the majority here, I know, but I found the novel very lacking. Stopped reading 150 pages in. I don't know. It all felt very familiar. Maybe I'll go back to it. Certainly the prose is accessible. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
I found it a bit too cool. I don't like to read stories about cool people. That's why I read Campbell and Ligotti and Aickman. As soon as I see the character is a cool writer with a cool wife and a dog I just want to throw up. It's basically Joe Hill in the book. Why not just call it "I'm Joe Cool. Look at my cool life Look at all the cool horrible stuff happening to me." It's as bad as Tom Savini acting in a horror film for which he's supplied the special effects. FUCK OFF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I stopped reading as soon as the ghost appeared in full view. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.77.198 |
What about 'cool' people who write about uncool lives, such as Martin Amis - his novel Money, for example? | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
That's fine. In theory. As I've never gotten past a few pages of his cringing "they're all looking at me because I'm a famous writer with a cig in my mouth and I'm wearing a writer's beige suit and I'm drinking gin from a proper glass with a diamond style pattern cut into it - you know the ones they always drink certain drinks from" attitude. But in theory... | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
Although, this seems to suggest that MONEY is not about an uncool person.. "Money tells the story of, and is narrated by, John Self, a successful director of commercials who is invited to New York by Fielding Goodney, a film producer, in order to shoot his first film. Self is an archetypal hedonist and slob; he is usually drunk, an avid consumer of pornography and prostitutes, eats too much and, above all, spends too much, encouraged by Goodney." A cool person, by my definition, would be a drunk and a slob. Etc. An uncool person would not touch such things as porn, unless it brought him great shame and self hate. Hence the story that would ensue. By uncool I mean neurotic and repressed. You know, real people. People who are free and easy and do as they please have no story and deserve no story. These are the people for whom serial killer movies were built for. So they could die in great numbers. The neurotic types always survive these films. In the stories of Campbell, Aickman, they are often the SOURCE of the energy that provides the bogeyman. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.76.230 |
What about fiction which deals with cool people who realise the limits of their coolness, its soul-shagging crapness, and end up as uncool as you suggest? Like Fitzgerald's stuff - or Evelyn Waugh's? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.76.230 |
I still think John Self is uncool. He's fucked up by everyone in the novel, and his efforts at self-improvement are just ridiculous. He's a puppet of his era's mores. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.244.67 |
But this isn't a horror scenario. I should have stipulated that. I'm talking about horror. Uncoolness in other genres is different. Because we don't have to feel sorry for them. We might be poking fun at them. Horror needs a foil that is repressed enough that it is vague enough to include anyone reading through it. Coolness is basically fake. An image. We are all uncool inside. And foils (the so called protagonist/hero of the story are internal entities. Hence neurotic and unsure and vague. You don't want a character as a foil. I don't. And Joe Hill is a character: Son of King. Surrounded by objects and personality objects. Like guitars owned by so and so. My ex wife's son. My dead Dad's car in the garage. I really hate that stuff. It's so distracting. Over done. He's just like his dad. A grey man in a grey world who finds a doorway into a horrible bright world is the perfect equation for a perfect horror story. Anything more is wankery. For me. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.244.67 |
By wankery I mean: "Oh look at me and how good I am at building characters." Yeah, you took up half the book doing that. Thanks. Waste of my time. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.76.230 |
>>>A grey man in a grey world who finds a doorway into a horrible bright world is the perfect equation for a perfect horror story. You mean that stories about folk already rooted in the world at large do not involve that enforced unsettling transition from the private to the public? | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.244.67 |
Yep. Now you say it. I do mean that. I think. Private to public? That could mean many things of course. Maybe you should tell me what you think it means...before I decide what I think it means... Make it good. I want to look cool. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.76.230 |
The neurotic's inner world violated by what T S Eliot called "too much reality". | ||
| Karim Ghahwagi (Karim) Username: Karim Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 204.104.55.241 |
Burnt out rockstars / muscicians exist, and they may very well experience a midlife crisis like everyone else. I found it more to be a portrait of the artist, and one working perhaps in the darker spectrum of the arts- so I didn't find it all that cool and distanced from reality. The collector gene I can also relate to. I can see what Albie means, but sometimes I am also tired of the disturbed or very weird individual experiencing whatever supernatural or seemingly supernatural occurence. Actually I am most for the stories where a down to earth, sensible character is 'invaded' by the fantastic or horrific, and sometimes not because of a particular inherent character flaw etc. I often find this most satisfying in MMS stories for example. I really don't see Joe Hill's characters being so distanced from reality. On the other hand, complete social realism makes me want to shoot myself- I don't necessarily want to pay money to experience, read or see something I'm experiencing every day. Exceptions to the rule of course, but still... | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.161.253.149 |
I quite like seeing unflawed, even plainly 'nice' people encountering scary stuff, the scary stuff showing things about them that's deeply hidden. I feel fear for them, and the danger is heightened. But it's chemistry; different stories require different types of character to set them off. but yes; cool people, to me, just feel oddly uncool. Like the dog in Simpsons, with the hat on backwards. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.237.88 |
You can sum it up thusly: - Normal "Uncool" Protag: horrible slip-slide into darkness, the innocent sheep slaughtered - revelations of dark/hidden corners of the psyche - Flawed "Cool" Protag: morality fable - surface-level - lessons to be learned - comeuppance/poetic justice tale The second is necessarily more "flat," and hence less interesting. Protag is a "dick," and so now he's going to be "un-dick-ified." The first is much deeper, because it usually goes beyond one-note surface flaws (greedy, asshole, angry), and is able to pan-explore psychological/character depths. We are the protag in the first; they are the protag in the second. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.242.126 |
Coolness is basically fake. An image. We are all uncool inside. End of discussion, methinks: the Albie abides. :-) | ||
| Karim Ghahwagi (Karim) Username: Karim Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 83.92.216.182 |
Alright no coolness then ;-) It has been escorted out of the virtual building, never to return. The Albs abides dude. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 67.116.103.241 |
No coolness? What am I supposed to do, then?... | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.3.65.135 |
>>>We are the protag in the first; they are the protag in the second. Good observation, Craig. What interests me in this context is how modern culture seems to split between these two in the form of celebrity gossip and reality TV - the singers and the mingers, as Ben Elton puts it. It's as if we're getting our fix of idealism from the first lot, which offers hope; and our fix of comparative superiority from the second, which makes us feel less crap about our own humdrum lives. | ||
| Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 83.98.9.4 |
>>>We are the protag in the first; they are the protag in the second. What if I don't want to read about me? What if I need to read about someone else getting shafted by forces beyond their control coz I really can't stand the way things are going for me? I need the cool... It has now been let back into the building. Thank you | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
>>I can see what Albie means, but sometimes I am also tired of the disturbed or very weird individual experiencing whatever supernatural or seemingly supernatural occurence. Actually I am most for the stories where a down to earth, sensible character is 'invaded' by the fantastic or horrific, and sometimes not because of a particular inherent character flaw etc. I would say that they are both the same. It's down to earth to be a bit mad. In the case of many Campbell protagonists -for want of a better word - they think they are normal but are mad...which is as near to the truth of anyone as you can get. Horror is about unveiling the truth of reality. The evil monster that pulls the levers. The sudden proof of magic and things beyond our worlds. Accompany that with the unveiling of a personal truth...and connect them: perfect horror(?) We are mad and the world is mad. So why does Joe Hill not work for me? Because you have to start out with a character that is already mad, but just needs that little push. I got the feeling from his book that he was so sane he would never get there. Does he? Basically: I don't want to read a book where they all walk away safe and sound at the end. I want to know from the first page that death and madness(subtle madeness)has already won. That takes talent. Every word that Aickman wrote was death. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.3.65.135 |
It's about insight, really. Compare R D Laing to other commentators on mental illness. Laing knew it from the inside - his work gets it right. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
>- Normal "Uncool" Protag: horrible slip-slide into darkness, the innocent sheep slaughtered - revelations of dark/hidden corners of the psyche I would see them as already used up by the greyness of reality. Spent without ever really being anything or anyone. A typical Campbell protagonist. (somebody come up with a better word. Protagonist sound like they ever had a chance against the antagonist. Victim is better) They don't need to be interesting because they are already us. We just need to see through their eyes and not have to work at knowing them too much. Then we can investigate what we really came to see: the monster. The Hero does not exist in true horror. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
>>What if I don't want to read about me? What if I need to read about someone else getting shafted by forces beyond their control coz I really can't stand the way things are going for me? I need the cool... Why would you do that? Would that make the horror scarier? Of course, you may be reading something that I wouldn't class as true horror. More adventure horror? Boobies? machine guns? Vampires? Tee hee. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
Of course, there is no "me" in true horror. Because there is no real "me" in reality. Horror takes place in the thoughts, the mind. Mostly. Hence the subtle and vague quality of Aickman, Campbell. Deep down in your mind there is no character. And the protagonists that lead us through the Typical Aickman reflect that blankness. It serves as a means to allow us into the story as well as revealing a deeper truth about us. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
How irrational is it that we aren't continually shocked by our own existence? You can't get anymore blatant an example of that with the likes of Ligotti. The monsters and the ghosts are that shocking fact that no longer touches us. There's a surreal quality to the best horror. An almost dadaistic quality to the bogeymen. Like they are something that is not real, yet all too real. Just like us. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.3.65.135 |
>>>How irrational is it that we aren't continually shocked by our own existence? Yes, I do think that horror at its best bursts apart our smug rational attitude to the world at large: if we don't understand yet, we soon will. Horror is positivism's nemesis. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.244.67 |
I'm sure only you know for sure if that's what I meant.  | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.3.65.135 |
It's the same in any language. Did you see what I did there? Did ya? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.3.65.135 |
Kop a load o this, gumby: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamiliarization | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.244.67 |
It's what I'm all about. Amongst other things. Am I? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.3.65.135 |
Perhaps you're trying to lead people down your crooked path to where all the nettles grow. | ||
| Karim Ghahwagi (Karim) Username: Karim Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 87.62.5.130 |
To return to Hill, his short story collection 20th Century Ghosts, did provide a quite diverse palette of protagonists who for different reasons are visited by the horrific or fantastic etc. Hands down it was one of my favourite collections- awards or no awards whatever- I bought the PS edition just as it came out and gobbled it right up in two sittings. That rarely happens to me when I read a collection. Usually its fun to read a story a day and let it gestate. Not this, it was a genuine page turner- and much, much better than the novel- which I enjoyed, but no Damnation Game comparisons here as Gaiman wrote- not by miles. In fact I'm still waiting for someone to pick up the mantel from Barker's BOB books really. But this is a different time. An there are some really, really talented writers working here on this board for example, whoes fiction I immensly enjoy- (and there are still some I need to check out for sure!) The writer in my opinion who is productive as hell and whose writing is still improving and improving and pushing the boundaries and always challenges me is that of Ramsey Campbell. Which is why I'm here. Alright I'll be less online for the duration of the summer, as I rented another place with little internet connection to finish stuff for the fall. I will be participating in the monthly Campbell Reading Group but not posting too much. I hope you have a wonderful summer everyone and I'm looking forward to the books coming out from this board! The very best with that! Publish or perish! Take care everyone. -Karim | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.149.134.59 |
"In fact I'm still waiting for someone to pick up the mantle from Barker's BOB books really." Why not go back in time and read all the writers Barker was imitating? Matheson, Leiber, Sturgeon, Ellison, Reamy – they all inherited Barker's mantle, but they did it backwards. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.5.0.76 |
Horror is about unveiling the truth of reality.... This has always been to me the "action-base" of horror. Protags, or heroes, in horror - as in any other genre - must succeed in their goals, ultimately; if they don't, they're not, by definition, protags or heroes. But when you're up against mighty horrors and monsters, the only success guaranteed you is: truth, the reality of the horror. A by-now-tired cliche in horror, is the horror coming upon the protag/hero, enveloping him/her in the story's final moments - the truth of the horror coming at you, in those same terrible seconds the horror claims you. Except, it's not really a cliche: it's a convention. A necessary catharsis. BLAIR WITCH PROJECT is so disturbing, because it doesn't offer a complete catharsis - the protags are enveloped by the horror, but never quite know what the essence of that horror was or is (or even does) - fundamentally, they don't. Which is also why that movie doesn't quite fully satisfy either.... | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.3.65.135 |
I've said before that the most effective horror treads that fine line between the knowable and the unknowable. Like Blackwood's The Willows - we can assimilate the invasive 'thing' to a degree, yet not wholly. It leaves us neither mystified nor satisfied. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.3.65.135 |
And yet...it's both mystifying and satisfying... Hmm. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.16.79.186 |
That's probably the key, Gary, that delicate - sign-of-the-artist? - balance. King talks about finally seeing the "monster behind the door," and how it's nearly always a let-down, despite its absolute necessity in horror tales (i.e., as a convention); the sign of high artistry, is to show the monster, or reveal it to some degree... and still maintain the mystery... and have satisfaction as a result... difficult, but why the highest level of art in any field, is what it is. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.3.65.135 |
Which is why the final bit of Cloverfield almost ruined all the good work it had done till that point. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.3.65.135 |
Btw, I don't mind seeing the monster, but for me it must be done outrageously - a real assault. The first T-Rex scene in Jurassic Park was pretty good. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.3.65.135 |
It must subsume my senses, rule out any cognitive interference. Maybe only going to see the cinema can manage this. DVD at home just ain't the same. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.251.172 |
It must subsume my senses, rule out any cognitive interference.... Yes, Gary! That's the key. It can be done, too - some filmmakers do come close, since you're using film as an example. Lynch is pretty good at showing us THE horror, whatever that horror is, and it remaining horrible.... But I don't think people REALLY want to be up close and personal with a "monster," however safe, however supposedly deliciously spine-tingling, one may think it might be. We instinctively don't want that experience. How come no one has made a, oh, let's say... a house-cat-sized living, throbbing, true-to-life replica of a fly? Replete with ooze, and twitching, and loud buzz, and jerky movements - absolutely real-to-life squishy replica that throbs and beats its wings in your hands wildly as you grab it. It's horrific to imagine... it could be done... but no one would want to get near one, even knowing, fully cognitavely, that it's fake... because of course, it's not, sub-cognitavely... not to our primal, forever fear-filled psyches it's not.... | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.77.197 |
>>>But I don't think people REALLY want to be up close and personal with a "monster," Interesingly, the only reason I can think of for the final clear shot of the monster in Cloverfield was because the general audience needed to see the monster, to be paradoxically reassured. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.5.2.146 |
You mean I gotta wait through that whole !@#@! movie to see the gol-dang monster?!... |