The Ghouls
Dec. 15th, 2009 09:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
koilungfish5/12/09 - Ill
6/12/09 - Ill
7/12/09 - Editing
8/12/09 - Ill
9/12/09 - Ill
10/12/09 - 901 words on Erdebrand & Ablythrin
11/12/09 - 110 words on Erdebrand & Ablythrin
12/12/09 - 2436 words on The Cult of Irix
13/12/09 - 2882 words on Ljinnsfurghl & The Cult of Irix
14/12/09 - Ill
15/12/09 - 1618 words on Commissars
Title - The Ghouls, Book One
Editor - Peter Haining
ISBN - 0-8600-7808-8
The Devil in a Nunnery is a tale encapsulated in its title. The set-up of the story is minimal, but the effects of the devil on the sisters is a good evocation of emotion and, given the shortness of the tale, worth reading for. It is of interest as a horror story as it works not on monsters and darkness, the external horrors, or the cruelty of humanity, the internal horror, but on loss and sacrifice - a light darkness, if you will. Modern horror built on emotion tends towards fear and cruelty; this is built on love and sorrow, and is most refreshing for it.
The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether sees Mr Poe continue to live up to his reputation, although the story has a strong comic tone, not least because of the unrelenting stupidity of the narrator [remarked upon by his host, and well might he]. As an observation of mental illness it is flawed, I believe, to the point of incredibility, but the underlying topsy-turvy concept is one that will rarely fail. Humans by nature fear change, and to discover that change has occurred unobserved, and that the natural order is now inverted, is a wholly fundamental horror.
Feathertop proves that Mr Hawthorne is still boring. This story I was only able to read by skimming. The point of horror here is, surprisingly enough for its premise, the horror of self-as-other. It is not a patch on The Outsider and whilst Mr Lovecraft has a reputation for verbiage excessive enough to require pruning, Mr Hawthorne requires some form of editing chainsaw. Any writer who allows himself to surface through his story sufficiently to comment in the narrative, directly to the reader, about how his characters tend towards the stereotypical, is breaking a very great law of writing. Nothing should ever come between the reader and the story - not song lyrics, not fancy typesetting, not conceits, not postmodernist cranium-induced appendicitis, and most certainly never the author.
Phantom of the Opera as presented here is a heftily abridged version, less than half the length of the actual book. It seems folly to read a tale of such long standing and good repute in such a cut-down version - after all, if one is introduced to a French viscount, one does not expect to be introduced to only his right-hand side - and, having read the original work, I would recommend that the curious reader look to the full version rather than the half-cut.
"The Magician" is the finest story in the book by merit of its velvety soft-rich prose. Mr Maugham is less interested in telling a story - I'd swear at one point the scene shifts from a sitting room to an art gallery with no warning - as he is laying out a gallery of images. When most writers attempt to do this they roam into excess verbiage, purpleness and headaches for their editors. Mr Maugham gets a pass on this for creating a flurried atmosphere fitting to the story. That "The Magician" is of sufficient quality to pique my interests in Mr Maugham's other works should make it clear how good his prose is, and doubly so immediately after reading Mr Hawthorne's dry witterings.
Spurs is an appeal to the grotesque, with a strong feel of the medieval in its unpleasantness. Dwarves - or whatever the correct term to use currently is, I doubt it is Mr Robbins' preferred term, which is "midget" - do not make the best villains, thus Mr Robbins sees fit to place the power of threat not in the hands of the dwarf but in the mouth of his loyal companion, a very large dog. The plot rests upon the threat of the dog - without it, the dwarf is nothing - and what the dog can accomplish borders on the supernatural. Unlike most horror stories, especially the more modern ones, there is no real sense of the moral. Although dwarf's victims display avarice with a faint suggestion of intended murder, the dwarf himself is meting out cruelty that seems wholly unjustified. All in all, Spurs leaves a nasty taste in the mouth, although the reader who prefers nasty to nice may find it naturally to their palate.
The Most Dangerous Game's point of horror is that of man's inhumanity to man. I cannot believe that this was the first time someone wrote of one man hunting another for sport - it seems such an archetypal tale that I feel there must be some medieval manuscript, some Greek myth, some Palaeolithic cave painting that depicts it - and yet I cannot think of one. The protagonist gets himself into the story by the silliest route I've ever seen, dropping himself in the ocean whilst leaning for a pipe that must've contained some form of counterweight for how easily he goes in. The antagonist is a man of some hypocrisy, complaining of how big game offers no contest to a man with a high-powered rifle and yet not considering that perhaps he should try putting the rifle down. Much of The Most Dangerous Game's power comes not from the manhunt - modern readers, I suspect, will be much jaded to the concept - but from the distinct impression that the antagonist is cheating.
Dracula's Guest is one of the Inescapable Classics and it seems highly improbable that anyone with an interest in horror stories, and anyone who reads collections of short horror stories, will not know it half-way by heart already.
The Devil and Daniel Webster is a story told in fast-forward. Whole conversations - indeed, most of the second half of the story - are summarised. It is a mite hard to think of it as a horror story, since the characters and what conversations are reported are of such an exaggerated tone that one is more inclined to laugh that flinch. However, the unfortunate whose impending doom triggers the story gives an underlying current of coldness to the tale. It bears out the rule that the best way to impart an emotion to the reader is to have a character feel it.
Lacking a suitably orange-and-brown stick to poke the internet with [this book being published in 1971] I cannot tell if Mr Haining is alive, dead or retired. Certainly the apparently endless slew of horror collections he edited in the seventies and eighties is testament to a man who loved, and hopefully still loves, horror fiction. He has a knack for assembling collections. The stories here concern deeply different things, turn on different points of horror, and are disunited in all respects saving only the one that Mr Haining presents and, through this presentation, makes into a surprisingly harmonious whole.
That said, this book is probably not worth reading. Some of the stories are of little interest - Feathertop in particular could vanish down the drain of history - and the best of the rest will be found in compilations of the works of their respective authors.
This book is:
* - disparate in content
* - very short if you ignore the abridged Phantom of the Opera
* - contained of a good story with no apparent title
This book is not:
* - naturally cohesive
* - worth looking for
* - in print
6/12/09 - Ill
7/12/09 - Editing
8/12/09 - Ill
9/12/09 - Ill
10/12/09 - 901 words on Erdebrand & Ablythrin
11/12/09 - 110 words on Erdebrand & Ablythrin
12/12/09 - 2436 words on The Cult of Irix
13/12/09 - 2882 words on Ljinnsfurghl & The Cult of Irix
14/12/09 - Ill
15/12/09 - 1618 words on Commissars
Editor - Peter Haining
ISBN - 0-8600-7808-8
"Seen through his eyes, the seashore in the Saint Anne had the airless lethargy of some damasked chapel in a Spanish nunnery, and over the landscapes brooded a wan spirit of evil that was very troubling. He loved the mysterious pictures in which the painter had sought to express something beyond the limits of painting, something of unsatisfied desire and of longing for unhuman passions." - The MagicianContents:
- The Devil in a Nunnery - Francis Oscar Mann ["The Devil in a Convent"]
- The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether - Edgar Allan Poe ["The Lunatics"]
- Feathertop - Nathaniel Hawthorne ["Puritan Passions"]
- Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux ["Phantom of the Opera"]
- "The Magician" - Somerset Maugham ["The Magician"]
- Spurs - Tod Robbins ["Freaks"]
- The Most Dangerous Game - Richard Connell ["Most Dangerous Game"]
- Dracula's Guest - Bram Stoker ["Dracula's Daughter"]
- The Devil and Daniel Webster - Stephen Vincent Benét ["All That Money Can Buy"]
The Devil in a Nunnery is a tale encapsulated in its title. The set-up of the story is minimal, but the effects of the devil on the sisters is a good evocation of emotion and, given the shortness of the tale, worth reading for. It is of interest as a horror story as it works not on monsters and darkness, the external horrors, or the cruelty of humanity, the internal horror, but on loss and sacrifice - a light darkness, if you will. Modern horror built on emotion tends towards fear and cruelty; this is built on love and sorrow, and is most refreshing for it.
The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether sees Mr Poe continue to live up to his reputation, although the story has a strong comic tone, not least because of the unrelenting stupidity of the narrator [remarked upon by his host, and well might he]. As an observation of mental illness it is flawed, I believe, to the point of incredibility, but the underlying topsy-turvy concept is one that will rarely fail. Humans by nature fear change, and to discover that change has occurred unobserved, and that the natural order is now inverted, is a wholly fundamental horror.
Feathertop proves that Mr Hawthorne is still boring. This story I was only able to read by skimming. The point of horror here is, surprisingly enough for its premise, the horror of self-as-other. It is not a patch on The Outsider and whilst Mr Lovecraft has a reputation for verbiage excessive enough to require pruning, Mr Hawthorne requires some form of editing chainsaw. Any writer who allows himself to surface through his story sufficiently to comment in the narrative, directly to the reader, about how his characters tend towards the stereotypical, is breaking a very great law of writing. Nothing should ever come between the reader and the story - not song lyrics, not fancy typesetting, not conceits, not postmodernist cranium-induced appendicitis, and most certainly never the author.
Phantom of the Opera as presented here is a heftily abridged version, less than half the length of the actual book. It seems folly to read a tale of such long standing and good repute in such a cut-down version - after all, if one is introduced to a French viscount, one does not expect to be introduced to only his right-hand side - and, having read the original work, I would recommend that the curious reader look to the full version rather than the half-cut.
"The Magician" is the finest story in the book by merit of its velvety soft-rich prose. Mr Maugham is less interested in telling a story - I'd swear at one point the scene shifts from a sitting room to an art gallery with no warning - as he is laying out a gallery of images. When most writers attempt to do this they roam into excess verbiage, purpleness and headaches for their editors. Mr Maugham gets a pass on this for creating a flurried atmosphere fitting to the story. That "The Magician" is of sufficient quality to pique my interests in Mr Maugham's other works should make it clear how good his prose is, and doubly so immediately after reading Mr Hawthorne's dry witterings.
Spurs is an appeal to the grotesque, with a strong feel of the medieval in its unpleasantness. Dwarves - or whatever the correct term to use currently is, I doubt it is Mr Robbins' preferred term, which is "midget" - do not make the best villains, thus Mr Robbins sees fit to place the power of threat not in the hands of the dwarf but in the mouth of his loyal companion, a very large dog. The plot rests upon the threat of the dog - without it, the dwarf is nothing - and what the dog can accomplish borders on the supernatural. Unlike most horror stories, especially the more modern ones, there is no real sense of the moral. Although dwarf's victims display avarice with a faint suggestion of intended murder, the dwarf himself is meting out cruelty that seems wholly unjustified. All in all, Spurs leaves a nasty taste in the mouth, although the reader who prefers nasty to nice may find it naturally to their palate.
The Most Dangerous Game's point of horror is that of man's inhumanity to man. I cannot believe that this was the first time someone wrote of one man hunting another for sport - it seems such an archetypal tale that I feel there must be some medieval manuscript, some Greek myth, some Palaeolithic cave painting that depicts it - and yet I cannot think of one. The protagonist gets himself into the story by the silliest route I've ever seen, dropping himself in the ocean whilst leaning for a pipe that must've contained some form of counterweight for how easily he goes in. The antagonist is a man of some hypocrisy, complaining of how big game offers no contest to a man with a high-powered rifle and yet not considering that perhaps he should try putting the rifle down. Much of The Most Dangerous Game's power comes not from the manhunt - modern readers, I suspect, will be much jaded to the concept - but from the distinct impression that the antagonist is cheating.
Dracula's Guest is one of the Inescapable Classics and it seems highly improbable that anyone with an interest in horror stories, and anyone who reads collections of short horror stories, will not know it half-way by heart already.
The Devil and Daniel Webster is a story told in fast-forward. Whole conversations - indeed, most of the second half of the story - are summarised. It is a mite hard to think of it as a horror story, since the characters and what conversations are reported are of such an exaggerated tone that one is more inclined to laugh that flinch. However, the unfortunate whose impending doom triggers the story gives an underlying current of coldness to the tale. It bears out the rule that the best way to impart an emotion to the reader is to have a character feel it.
Lacking a suitably orange-and-brown stick to poke the internet with [this book being published in 1971] I cannot tell if Mr Haining is alive, dead or retired. Certainly the apparently endless slew of horror collections he edited in the seventies and eighties is testament to a man who loved, and hopefully still loves, horror fiction. He has a knack for assembling collections. The stories here concern deeply different things, turn on different points of horror, and are disunited in all respects saving only the one that Mr Haining presents and, through this presentation, makes into a surprisingly harmonious whole.
That said, this book is probably not worth reading. Some of the stories are of little interest - Feathertop in particular could vanish down the drain of history - and the best of the rest will be found in compilations of the works of their respective authors.
This book is:
* - disparate in content
* - very short if you ignore the abridged Phantom of the Opera
* - contained of a good story with no apparent title
This book is not:
* - naturally cohesive
* - worth looking for
* - in print
