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The Spawn of Cthulhu (1971)
edited by Lin Carter
274 pages - Ballantine Books
This interesting anthology looks a some of the stories around the 'Cthulhu mythos', which originated in a series of stories by H.P. Lovecraft, which usually involved a person or persons becoming aware of terrible, ancient gods who had once ruled the earth and would come again. There was often something of a science fiction element to the stories, with the horror coming either from outer space or other dimensions. Also often involved was a mythical book called the Necronomicon, authored by the mad Arab, Abdul Alhazred (I'm sure these days you couldn't call him 'the mad Arab' anymore, he'd be 'socially non-normative, unoptimally adjusted person of Middle Eastern descent'). Though Lovecraft wrote a series of stories with this same background, he was very encouraging towards other writers that wished to borrow and write stories with the same elements. And people have been writing them ever since.
This book includes the story "The Whisperer in Darkness" by Lovecraft, and then the editor introduces a series of stories (and even a few poems) by other authors, also providing context and some extra details before each piece. The introductions were actually one of my favourite parts of the book, as they're quite informative and distinguish the book from just another volume of stories. A couple of the stories actually precede Lovecraft and demonstrate some of his direct influences, and then there are many from his collaborators, and lastly a more recent one from the 60s. I think my two favourite works here were "The Inhabitant of Carcosa" by Ambrose Bierce, and "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros" by Clark Ashton Smith.
I mentioned there's some poetry as well. Here is a sonnet by the editor, Lin Carter:
Black Lotus
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The Coven-master gave to me a phial
Of that dread opiate that is the key
To dream-gates opening upon a sea
Of acherontic vapours: mile on mile
Stretch ebon coasts untrod, wherefrom aspire
Pylons of rough-hewn stone ascending skies
Alien-constellated, where arise
Grey mottled moons of cold and leprous fire.
My dream-self roamed the cosmic gulfs profound,
Past daemon-haunted Haddath where, in deeps
Of foul putrescence buried underground,
The loathsome shoggoth hideously sleeps...
I saw--and screamed! And knew my doom of dooms,
Learning at last where the Black Lotus blooms
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The Keep (1981)
by F. Paul Wilson
406 pages - Berkley Books
In 1941, a detachment of German troops is sent to set up an outpost in a pass in the Transylvanian Alps, in a keep that is believed to have been built in the fifteenth century, and has since been kept up in perfect condition -- though its builders, owners, and current source of funds for upkeep are unknown. When the Germans arrive they find that the stone walls are covered in metal crosses. On the first night one soldier is viciously killed, and every night that they stay there one person dies, no matter what precautions they take. The strange events prompt an SS squad to join them, as well as an old Jewish scholar and his daughter.
That's a pretty interesting setup for a story, and that's the main reason I wanted to read this. And there is a small amount of atmosphere built up at the beginning, though that is quickly lost as things proceed along. What I realized as I was reading it was that, although there's not anything specifically wrong with the book, it's probably the most uninspired book I've read in years. There's no sign of any personality or depth, and I'd say it's written at about a grade five reading level. This is the way I imagine book #25 in a franchise would read like. 400+ pages of fluff. I was really determined to finish reading it anyway, but finally, having gotten to page 237, I was just too hungry to read something much better.
Michael Mann made a film version of the story, in what most people call an interesting failure. I caught a small bit of it on TV one time, including the score by Tangerine Dream, and I kind of wish I had seen the whole thing. Different versions pop up on TV now and again, or are played at festivals, but because of the displeasure of many people involved, it's never been released on DVD, or even had a definitive cut.
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Ancient Images (1989)
by Ramsey Campbell
311 pages - Charles Scribner's Sons
Sandy Allan is 28 years old and working as a film editor at a large television station in London, England. She's good friends with an older employee of the station, whose specialty is recovering and restoring old films, and he tells her that he has come across a copy of Tower of Fear, a (fictional) English horror film made in 1938, starring Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi; a film that was suppressed before it was ever released, and remained unseen and believed lost. But as she goes to his apartment to attend a debut screening, she arrives just in time to see him leap (seemingly willingly) off the roof to his death, while the film disappears. As Sandy tries to track down all the people that her friend interviewed on the trail of the film, many of the people suffer deaths or injuries and feel themselves watched and pursued by strange beings in the shadows. Her investigations include a trip to a strange community in northern England where the family story of the local aristocrats seemed to have been borrowed for the movie.
This was a pretty fun read, and Campbell effectively builds up a mood of 'quiet horror'. There's not a lot here that will gross you out or shock you, but the scenes can be unsettling (especially the ones in daytime under sunshine and blue sky, interestingly enough). I actually think the non-horror elements in this book work better than the horror stuff. Eventually, you do get to the point where you're telling the characters "Don't go in there!/Don't do that!" and you wonder how many dead bodies and shadowy scarecrow-like figures that appear and then disappear do they have to encounter before they start being a bit careful. The last fifty pages or so are quite disappointing, as the conclusion of all the story-lines and the explanation of the phenomena doesn't really come together in a satisfactory way. I was also wishing that the lost film played a greater role - it takes up much of the first part of the book, but the focus shifts away from it at the end (and I think it receives an undeserved fate).
It's the first Ramsey Campbell novel I've read, and I'd be willing to give him another chance, if only because the setup was so intriguing.
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The Locus Awards: Thirty Years of the Best in Science Fiction and Fantasy (2004)
eidted by Charles N. Brown and Jonathan Strahan
512 pages - Eos
I've always been a bit perplexed about Locus when I've seen it on the magazine racks -- it's a magazine about science fiction, but doesn't actually contain any science fiction. The introduction to this volume explains how the Locus Awards are selected: each year the editors compile a long list of candidates in each category, and the readers send in their votes from those lists. For this collection, the editors have made a selection of the winners in the short story, novelette, and novella categories since the founding of the magazine approximately 30 years ago.
Let me just say right off the bat that most of the stories here are quite bad and painful to read through. It's the sort of thing that made me wonder if I really like science fiction, or maybe I was wrong all along? Whatever you might call this kind of science fiction writing, I would say that I am not a fan of it at all. To be fair, the chance at getting a different author once you finish the particular story kept me reading, and there were some good stories: "The Death of Doctor Island" by Gene Wolfe, "Rachel in Love" by Pat Murphy, "Buffalo" by John Kessel, "Gone" by John Crowley, and the Ray Bradbury tribute "October in the Chair" by Neil Gaiman.
But the vast majority of the stories here were nowhere near the quality of those pieces, and made me, as the reader, feel like I was being assaulted. A lot of them have a very specific and hectoring political, social, or religious agenda, and many of them feature a point at which the ideal character, who is super-powerful and super-smart, and also usually super-attractive, takes several pages to make a speech about how people need to be, and how the world needs to be, and how anyone who disagrees with them is just stupid. There's very little of the elements that make us all human, and the stories seem to almost glory in creating cardboard characters that are totally disconnected from the reality of individual people, relationships, or even the behaviour of the natural world. This is the sort of thing that makes me seriously ponder if I ever want to pick up anything with the 'science fiction' or 'fantasy' label ever again. With stuff like this being acclaimed, it's no wonder a lot of people see genre writing as simplistic, shallow, and self-centred wish-fulfillment for people trapped in a retarded adolescent mindset.
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The Dark Descent (1987)
edited by David G. Hartwell
1011 pages - Tor
A huge anthology focused on the horror story. The editor splits the stories into three categories, which represent to him the three streams of horror.
The first section contains 'moral allegorical' stories, which present the characters as being in a struggle between good and evil, even if this is something that only becomes evident to them at the end of the story. My favourite story here (or perhaps in the entire collection) is "There's a Long, Long Trail A-Winding" by Russell Kirk, in which a drifter settles into an abandoned house in a ghost town during a snowstorm, and finds an opportunity for possible redemption. Other good stories here are "The New Mother" by Lucy Clifford, "Young Goodman Brown" by Nathaniel Hawthorne, "John Charrington's Wedding" by E. Nesbit, and "Sticks" by Karl Edward Wagner.
The second section is focused on stories of 'psychological metaphor', in which events are a mirror of the psychological state of the characters. I have to say that this was my least favourite section, and a lot of stories here just seemed very flat or awkward. I think this is likely because something like psychology, especially after being filtered through popular culture and story writers, becomes a thing very dependent on trends and fashions in thinking. For example, you can write a story rooted in the theories of Freud, and people who agree with that thinking will praise it, but people that don't put any store in Freud will most likely think it nonsense. This section did still contain the excellent story "Three Days" by Tanith Lee, and after reading two excellent stories by her in two different anthologies, I really do need to track down more of her work.
The last stream of horror fiction highlighted is the "fantastic", where the usual everyday world dissolves and reality is seen as something far stranger, and often less reliable or knowable. Some of the best stories here were "Seven American Nights" by Gene Wolfe, "Night-Side" by Joyce Carol Oates, "Seaton's Aunt" by Walter de la Mare, "The Beckoning Fair One" by Oliver Onions, and "What Was It?" by Fitz-James O'Brien.
Probably the closest comparison to this anthology is the collection Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural which is also quite large and exhaustive, though it was published almost 50 years earlier. Neither collection is perfect, though I suppose if I had to choose one I would go with Great Tales, just because I think that sometimes The Dark Descent tries a little too hard to expand the limits of the horror genre, and seems to include some stories just because of the reputation of the names attached, when the story itself might just be merely potentially slightly unsettling (and really, couldn't you say that about almost any work of fiction?).
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Peace (1975)
by Gene Wolfe
264 pages - Orb
The narrator is Alden Dennis Weer, an old man wandering through the rooms of a large house which incorporates rooms from different times in his life. As he goes searching for his pocket-knife, various episodes of his life in the American Midwestern town of Cassionville come back to life, and, among other things, create a sort of personal history of the twentieth century. There are many memorable stories, but even more memorable are the stories-within-stories, such as the purchase of the chinese Easter egg, or the tale of St.Brendan and the cat and the dog, or the story of the apprentice pharmacist in a Florida town, the books of Gold, and the story of the young Chinese man who meets an old man in a hostel and gets to sleep on the old man's magic headrest.
The prose here is just wonderful, and is some of the best Wolfe has ever written. He is sort of channeling Proust and a bit of Joyce, as filtered through the Arabian Nights and the vast influence of middle America, with a guest appearance of some H.P. Lovecraft for good measure. I don't suppose there's any way of saying more about the plot without possibly including 'spoilers', but I don't think knowing any plot details can spoil a genuinely good book, though you should probably skip the rest if you don't want to know.
It was pretty clear to me even before I read much of the interesting speculation about this book on the internet, that Weer is actually dead, even though he seems as yet to be unaware of it. In fact, he isn't only dead, but he has awakened long after the human race has died out, and is in fact the last soul on earth. The large mansion which he wanders through, which he says he's built for himself to mimic many of the rooms he encountered in life (including the views out the windows) has a strong parallel to some of the memory devices people used before literacy was widespread, where they would create a house in their minds, and every object in it would be a reminder of something. So, my interpretation is that Weer is sort of circling and circling around in his memories as he tries to find peace about the things he's done in his life, as well as receiving clues about the reality of his situation.
This is at least the third time I've read this book, and it still really stands up. Perhaps a bit melancholy, but excellent. I also re-read a related short story:
"The Changeling" (1968) - collected in Castle of Days
A short story of about 10 pages about a man who went over to fight in the Korean war, got captured and then went over to the other side, and worked in China for a while before deciding to come back to the US. After getting out of jail, he returns to his hometown of Cassionville, even though he has no more family. He stays with a family he knew before, though he is shocked to find that one of their three children seems not to have aged a day, though nobody even hints at acknowledging it except the boy's father. The island on the river on which some of the story takes place is mentioned in Peace
( An excerpt of a section right near the end of Peace )
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The Collector of Hearts: New Tales of the Grotesque (1998)
by Joyce Carol Oates
323 pages - Plume
A collection of stories by Joyce Carol Oates. Some of these are what you could think of as her standard kind of story, while others are more dream-like, or have more of an obvious element of fantasy or horror. Twenty-seven stories are included, grouped into five sections; which is a way Oates often arranges her short story collections, though it's up to the reader to guess at the common theme in each grouping.
Some of the highlights are: "██████" about the recall of a childhood experience that contains a lot of incomplete, confused, and missing memories; "Labor Day" about a missing child in a beachfront community; and "Unprintable" in which an abortion-rights activist attends a function on her birthday, and thinks about how her own parents had desired to abort her, while she is also haunted by her own aborted fetuses, and those of the women she has counseled.
But, I think the most remarkable story here is "The Affliction", which is a really powerful metaphorical story. On the surface it's about a person with a strange physical mutation that's extremely painful, but that he finds a way to turn into something else. What it's a metaphor for is pretty clear to me, but I think it's probably best discovered by each individual reading the story.
Not every story here is wonderful, but quite a few of them are; it's a very strong collection, and I have to marvel in admiration at how Oates can just kick out high quality story after story after story.
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A Christmas Carol (1843)
by Charles Dickens, illustrated by George Alfred Williams
eBook: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/19337
I doubt there are a many people in the English-speaking world that are unfamiliar with the story of miser Ebeneezer Scrooge and the night he receives visits from the three ghosts of Christmas Past, Christmas Present, and Christmas Future. The original text gets lost a bit in the flood of numerous stage and film adaptations, but, having now read it, I think that the written story is the strongest version; if only because a written story allows you to get so much closer to the interior lives of characters. I'm sure knowing so many details of the plot beforehand takes some of the suspense and surprise away, but I was still genuinely touched.
Growing up, the version of this story I knew best was Disney's animated version. I've also seen the 1938 and 1951 versions, though I think my favourite adaptation has to be the 1984 version starring George C. Scott - the creepiest and most serious take.
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Little, Big (1981)
by John Crowley
538 pages - Perennial
Smokey Barnable, who has travelled all across America but is now living in New York City, gets engaged to a woman whose family lives in a strange immense mansion in the country. As he becomes part of the family he gets to know their various members and odd history. At a certain point in the book a lot of time passes and the main protagonist of the novel becomes Smokey's son, who goes back to New York to live. This book won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 1982.
Sigh-Ugh. I'd heard so many good things about this book, and I really liked a couple of short stories I read by Crowley before this. But instead of getting lost in this thick, ornate novel, the novel lost me. The writing is undeniably fine, but it's in the service of something that seems entirely directionless and unfocused. I read a comment by someone that you could read these chapters in reverse order and it would make just as much sense; and that is absolutely correct. There's a big difference between fantasy that's using imaginative situations to tell a meaningful story, and fantasy that's just the author's self-centred wish fulfillment, and unfortunately this is the latter. The only thing Crowley manages to get across is some kind of vague hippy-dippy New Age worldview. There's also a creepy sort of attitude to sexuality throughout the novel, where people get aroused by pictures of naked children, and nobody even raises their voice or gets upset when they find out their spouse has been cheating on them. It's a world where actions have no consequences, and people have no direction. Also, in Crowley's world everybody in the city, especially non-whites, all speak in 'street-jive'.
I ended up quitting this with about 200 pages to go (on pg.341, the start of Book Five). I just realized it was going to be the same type of thing right to the end, and I said No Thanks.
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Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural (1944)
edited by Herbert A. Wise & Phyllis Cerf Wagner
1034 pages - The Modern Library
This large anthology is split into two sections; the first quarter of the book contains "Tales of Terror" while the remaining three-quarters is classified under "Tales of the Supernatural". The constraints of the selection seem to be that all of the authors are born in the 19th century (give or take a couple of years) and all but a couple of the authors originally wrote their tales in English.
I haven't seen anything but praise for this collection, many considering it the anthology of older horror stories. Which made the reading of it somewhat disappointing, because overall I thought it was just mediocre. Perhaps that's because I've read some of these stories before; but as I went on to the next story I felt like it was as likely to bore me as engage me. I don't like how a lot of people criticize older things out of hand as being too slow or too boring, so I was surprised to come to the conclusion that I think one of the main problems with this book is its stodginess. For a lot of the stories to be effective, you would have to find horrific the thought of things such as paganism, primitive humanity, or miscegenation. A lot of these stories are rooted in the fear of the displacement of a sort of insular world of white, anglo-saxon, protestants; a fear that is far less effective in the 21st century as much of that world has indeed changed so much to become something else entirely.
There were still some good stories here; I especially enjoyed the ones by Saki, and am planning to read more of his work. Other impressive stories were "La Grande Breteche" by Balzac, "A Terribly Strange Bed" by Wilkie Collins, "The Boarded Window" by Ambrose Bierce, "Rappaccini's Daughter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne, "What Was It?" by Fitz O'Brien, "How Love Came to Professor Guildea" by Robert Hichens, "The Celestial Omnibus" by E.M. Forster, "The Ghost Ship" by Richard Middleton, "The Sailor-Boy's Tale" by Isak Dinesen, and several others. But overall I had high hopes coming into this collection, and while I know what it feels like getting my socks knocked off, this wasn't it.
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Count Magnus and Other Ghost Stories: The Complete Ghost Stories of M. R. James, Volume 1
by M. R. James
288 pages - Penguin Classics
Montague Rhodes James was a scholar and teacher who is most popularly known for the ghost stories he wrote. This collection contains his first two books, Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904) and More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1911). James was concerned with crafting 'classic English ghost stories', which for him meant a subdued atmosphere and no overt violence, sex, or gore, and subtle chills rather than anything outrageous.
My favourite stories here were "The Mezzotint", "The Ash-Tree", and "Mr. Humphries and His Inheritance", which is about a man who inherits a mansion with a very peculiar hedge maze. Though, I have to be honest and say that I probably wanted to like this book more than I actually did. A lot of the stories are just dull and dry and spend a lot of time talking around the story. I can't count the number of times I picked up this book feeling fairly alert, and then drifted off to sleep after just getting a few pages farther on.
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The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
by R.E. Raspe and Others, profusely illustrated by Ronald Searle
143 pages - Pantheon Books
Baron Munchausen is probably the prototypical teller of tall-tales, and here he relates story after wonderful, unbelievable story, such as the time he lowered himself down on a short rope and, when getting to the end and suspended in the air, cut off the top where it was held in place, and used that length to climb down further. Or, the time he tried to jump over a lake with his horse, then in mid-leap realized he would not make the distance, and so turned around in the air and landed back on shore. On the second leap he was also unsuccessful, and landed in the water, but was able to pull both himself and his horse out of the water by tugging up on his own hair. As a point of trivia, I found out that Baron Munchausen had a Lithuanian horse.
The introduction focuses on the illustrations by Searle, and so not much is said about the text, though the modern tone and the 'and Others' credit for the authorship indicates this is some kind of 'modified' version of the various stories that began with Raspe's original edition in 1785. The illustrations by Searle are alright, but I think I would have much rather read the edition that is illustrated by Gustav Dore, though the library did not have any of those available on loan.
It's a pretty enjoyable read, though the episodes are mostly short and scattered, so the narrative doesn't really build, it just zips from one adventure to another. I enjoyed the absurdity and the humour. I'm sure a child reading this would love the wildness of imagination.
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Ghost and Horror Stories of Ambrose Bierce
199 pages - Dover Publications
The introduction to this book, written by E. F. Bleiler, paints a portrait of Bierce as a very unpleasant man, full of anger, hatred, misanthropy, and devoid of much sense. In fact, the introduction is so negative that I put this book away for a while before getting into the stories, as it didn't sound like it would really have much value. However, when I did finally end up reading it, I was pleasantly surprised at how good many of the stories were: well-written, imaginative, deep, and affecting.
Many of these stories take place in the American west, which is a fresh change from the usual ghost story trappings of England or New England. Also very refreshing is Bierce's spare, direct prose; most of these stories are 10 pages long or less, but that space is used very effectively, as Bierce can create a world and set it alive with movement in a single eloquent paragraph. There is also a depth that is sometimes explored in these stories, of metaphysical speculation, emotional feeling, moral values, that makes it ridiculous to think that the author was only the arrogant rude jerk of the introduction - there had to be another side.
"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" is probably the most famous story here. Among those I really enjoyed were "Moxon's Master", which is about the creation of a chess-playing automaton that takes on a life of its own, "Beyond the Wall", an eerie ghost story set in shabby decay, "The Suitable Surroundings", about a dare to read a horror story in the most appropriate setting, "John Bartine's Watch", a one-trick story with a pretty good trick, and "An Inhabitant of Carcosa", which is a very otherworldly tale of an ancient spirit walking through a graveyard. Also included are what seem to be 'factual' items from Bierce's newspaper reporting, such as sections entitled "Some Haunted Houses" and "Mysterious Disappearances" - ironic, because Bierce eventually Mysteriously Disappeared himself.
There's a few stories here that are maybe a bit overwritten, and try a bit too hard for a clever laugh, but mostly they are lean and mean tales that explore various states of dread. In a way, this struck me as the sort of thing that H. P. Lovecraft wished he could have written if he had been a more discerning and vicious self-editor. Powerful stuff.
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The Town That Forgot How to Breathe (2003)
by Kenneth J. Harvey
471 pages - Raincoast Books
Bareneed, Newfoundland, is a small fishing village devastated by the collapse of fish stocks. As the novel progresses, a strange illness begins to spread, in which people start to become violent before losing their ability to breathe unconsciously - if they don't actively try to breathe, they suffocate. Along with this, other strange things begin occurring, such as bodies of drowning victims washing up on shore en masse, looking like they'd just drowned even if they're hundreds of years old.
For the first 100 pages or so, this was a very gripping and engaging book. However, at some point after that it loses its power and inventiveness, and just kind of plods along, switching between a big cast of characters every few pages. As more of the mystery begins to be revealed it becomes painfully awkward and patronizing. The parts where previously good characters begin to have bad thoughts and impulses are written in a way that comes off as just completely unconvincing and goofy. I know that the author was trying to make a point about the value of historical ties, storytelling, etc., but it comes across as so much syrupy sentimentality. I do think that we ignore the past too readily, and the modern world isn't universally wonderful, but the solution isn't blinkered nostalgia. However, if you think that electricity is an evil that must be wiped from the face of the earth, this could be the book for you.
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Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things (1904)
by Lafcadio Hearn
240 pages - Charles E. Tuttle Company
Lafcadio Hearn was born and raised in Europe and America, but he moved to Japan and immersed himself in its culture, writing numerous books on the Japanese that were successful in Japan and abroad. Kwaidan translates as 'Weird Tales' and that's exactly what these are. Stories of ghosts, goblins, wandering souls and restless dreams, culled from folktale and legend.
The collection is supplemented with a collection of three "Insect-Studies" on butterflies, mosquitoes, and ants. The ants section unfortunately ends the otherwise-enjoyable collection on a sour note, because it is entirely different in tone. Hearn not only considers ant society superior to human society, but believes that humanity needs to evolve in the direction of ants, and we would be all better off if we just did the right thing automatically, without personal choice or responsibility. This also includes trying to find a way, from birth, to eliminate sexual characteristics and behaviour from the majority. It's unfortunate that an otherwise enjoyable book is ruined by such unpleasant crackpot notions tacked on at the end.
An excellent Japanese film, Kwaidan, was made from four of Hearn's stories; two of which are taken from this collection.
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Endangered Species (1989)
by Gene Wolfe
506 pages - Tor
This is a collection of 34 short stories, which average about 20 pages in length. Most of them could be described as having an aspect of fantasy or science fiction, though some are relatively straightforward, and others are just plain odd. Two stories, "The Map" and "The Cat" both take place in the same world as Wolfe's Book of the New Sun series, and several other stories here are linked together. A lot of these stories play around with the conventions of genre storytelling, as evidenced just by their titles ("The Last Thrilling Wonder Story", "The HORARS of War", "Our Neighbour by David Copperfield", "When I Was Ming the Merciless").
My favourite story here was probably "Procreation" (which is actually split into three stories: "Creation", "Re-creation" and "The Sister's Account"), a brief tale that is both humourous and beautifully profound. "The Headless Man" seems to start off ridiculous, but ends up to be quite moving, and "Kevin Malone" is an eerie story of a down-on-their luck couple who get jobs to act as the wealthy inhabitants of a large mansion, as long as they ask no questions.
"The Detective of Dreams" probably deserves special mention, because not only does Wolfe call it one of his own favourite stories, but many others consider it to embody his clearest statement of purpose. In it, the detective-narrator investigates the case of three people who are haunted by re-occurring dreams; dreams which relate to faults in their own lives, and also involve a central figure who they are convinced is causing these dreams (though never named, it is obviously Jesus Christ). The detective is charged with 'destroying' this tormentor, and does so, after he identifies Him, by going to church and receiving Holy Communion. I remember reading an article quite a while ago that contrasted the writings of Protestants with those of Catholics, and it noted that whereas the Protestant tendency is to regard the relationship with God as something that separates the person from others and indeed the entire world, the Catholic view is that it is through experience of the world and community with others that a person discovers God (a comparison which is perhaps more 'interesting' than 'right-on-the-money'). Wolfe here strongly articulates his own Catholic faith, where he not only treats created reality as being full of signs and meaning, but even the dreams that we are sent.
There are some good stories here, and some mediocre ones, but I can't say that this is really a knock-your-socks-off collection.
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Best Ghost Stories of J.S. LeFanu
467 pages - Dover
Joseph Sheridan LeFanu (whose name I've also seen spelled Lefanu and Le Fanu), was a 19th century writer of mystery and supernatural stories. This book collects 16 of what can loosely be termed 'ghost' stories, even though among them is the story "Carmilla", which is actually a vampire tale that predates Dracula. LeFanu sets a lot of his stories in decayed and run-down out-of-the-way places in Ireland, and his descriptions of nature are some of the best passages of his writing.
"Green Tea" is the other famous story here, and I found it quite effective. However, my favourite piece was probably the novella "The Haunted Baronet". The most effective stories in this collection are ones where the supernatural events are somehow echoing events in the 'regular' lives of people, whether they be feelings of guilt, nervous anxiety, or misdeeds of the past that affect the present-day. LeFanu does have a tendency to get a bit wordy, but that isn't unusual for the Victorians. I can see myself going back to re-visit some of the stories, but I wouldn't want to read them all again; the stories do vary in quality.
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The Angel of the West Window (1927)
by Gustav Meyrink, translated by Mike Mitchell
421 pages - Dedalus
At the beginning of this novel, the narrator inherits a collection of papers and various other objects that a recently-deceased relative was assembling, all belonging or in reference to John Dee, alchemist, advisor to Queen Elizabeth I, and their common relative. As the narrator's life is interspersed with entries from Dee's journals, we notice that events hundreds of years apart are mirroring each other, and many of the same personality archetypes that surrounded Dee also surround the narrator. Eventually the narrator realizes that he is Dee, or perhaps more accurately that they are the same unknown person.
This was Meyrink's final book, by far his longest--he was suffering serious health problems by this time and portions of it were apparently written by an associate. The narrative can be slightly tedious at times, but there are also stunning moments full of visionary symbolism. Various schools of mystical thought are drawn upon, but while you are dreading that Meyrink is going to be delivering some sort of sales pitch or manifesto it never happens, and even though the ending somewhat tends toward Rosicrucian beliefs, it is still bathed in mystery and the ultimate eternally enduring love of God. I am somewhat hesitant to put a 'fantasy' tag on this, because nothing here is that far from reality, even the alchemists turning base metals into gold is not actually scientifically impossible, it's just not within our current ability (which could actually spawn a whole discussion of how a lot of fantasy narratives are closer to what people believe than some of the things that occur in 'straight' fiction). The empty husk of a caterpillar's cocoon after it has turned itself into a butterfly is a reoccurring symbol.
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The Golem (1914)
by Gustav Meyrink, translated by Madge Pemberton, edited by E.F. Bleiler
190 pages - Dover
Around the beginning of the twentieth century, a jewel-cutter lives in the Prague Ghetto, his entire past except for the last few years is locked away from him, the result of treatment at a psychiatric hospital. The book records a series of strange experiences in his life, initiated by the visitation of the Golem of Jewish myth. He struggles against a dark-hearted junk-dealer who has a shop across the street, is instructed by a poor wise man who lives in his building, tries to resolve his relationships with several women, and spends time with the various denizens of the Ghetto in the streets and cafes.
This is one strange, mysterious, mystical, powerful, off-kilter book. Much of it reads like the strange zone between sleep and wakefulness, and indeed the narrator does freely drift from the 'real' world into dreams, visions, and the world of imagination. It's very fragmented (Meyrink apparently had a lot of trouble completing this, his first novel, and cut this out of a much more elaborate story) and for all its quality and brilliance it is certainly ragged and somewhat obtuse. There are strong visionary, religious, psychological and occult elements, and I actually had some very interesting incidences of synchronicity while reading this.
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Best Ghost Stories of Algernon Blackwood
366 pages - Dover
Algernon Blackwood was born to a privileged family, but clashed with them and soon after his schooling he emigrated to Canada where he was unsuccessful at all his endeavors, such as running a dairy farm and a barroom. He moved down to New York City where his troubles continued, living in slums until a stroke of luck got him a job as a personal secretary that eventually brought him back to England. He is considered one of the most notable writers of spooky supernatural stories in the first half of the twentieth century. I would say he exists somewhere between E.T.A. Hoffmann and H.P. Lovecraft, with some of the fantastic whimsy of the former, and an influence on the 'otherworldy' threats portrayed by the latter
'The Willows' is probably his most famous story, about two men who canoe down the Danube and begin to experience a strange otherworldly presence while camping in the marshy, flooded, desolate sections of the river. This story didn't quite live up to the hype for me, though the final shock is effective. My favourite story here is 'The Wendigo', about a hunting party in the forests of Canada that has an encounter with the beast of the title--very effective in evoking the terror that can arise in wide desolate spaces and on dark nights in the woods. Also notable are 'The Listener', which is structured as a series of short diary entries, and 'Secret Worship', about a man who returns to his old boarding school in the Black Forest and finds all the teachers exactly as they were when he left.
There's an interesting imagination at work here, but overall I found most of the stories quite disappointing. Blackwood has a real tendency to over-write, explaining things in too much detail, such as when he goes on for about two pages about a man's deformities before one of the characters tries to surprise you with 'He had leprosy!' and another instance where a man meets someone in a dark alley and half a page later the name of this character in the shadows is revealed--in both instances it is completely obvious what is going on, and the reader has already moved beyond that point. I don't think there's a much more disappointing feeling in fiction than to think ahead about what might be the most typical way for this narrative to develop, and then discovering that that is the exact way it is going...only slower than you imagined. Also, fatal to a lot of the stories is that the characters are mostly uninvolved--they don't do anything to bring events upon themselves, they just stumble into them; which makes the stories feel like they're only half-alive. Just think how much better a story can be when the outward trials are a mirror of some inner conflict. But there's none of that here. I will say that I found Blackwood's mind quite interesting, you really get the sense that he is a sensitive and thoughtful person trying to re-live and exorcise some deep pain and trauma through these stories--however, that doesn't make them much more than mediocre stories.
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