WEDNESDAYS WORDS

WEDNESDAYS WORDS is a new weekly installment that ranks the most interesting, intriguing books of the week (old, new, reissues, digital, etc). Contributors represent a variety of genres and sources. Each book includes Title and publisher blurb.

A one item, abbreviated WEDNESDAYS WORDS. Enjoy :

Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury: A Critical Edition : 1938-1943

Book Description
Publication Date: February 21, 2011 | Series: Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury
Inaugurating a critical edition of one of America’s most popular storytellers

In the past, collections of Bradbury’s works have juxtaposed stories with no indication as to the different time periods in which they were written. Even the mid- and late-career collections that Bradbury himself compiled contained stories that were written much earlier–a situation that has given rise to misconceptions about the origins of the stories themselves. In this new edition, editors William F. Touponce and Jonathan R. Eller present for the first time the stories of Ray Bradbury in the order in which they were written. Moreover, they use texts that reflect Bradbury’s earliest settled intention for each tale. By examining his relationships with his agent, editor, and publisher, Touponce and Eller’s textual commentaries document the transformation of the stories–and Bradbury’s creative understanding of genre fiction–from their original forms to the versions known and loved today.

Volume 1 covers the years 1938 to 1943 and contains thirteen stories that have never appeared in a Bradbury collection. For those that were previously published, the original serial forms recovered in this volume differ in significant ways from the versions that Bradbury popularized over the ensuing years. By documenting the ways the stories evolved over time, Touponce and Eller unveil significant new information about Bradbury’s development as a master of short fiction.

Each volume in the proposed three-volume edition includes a general introduction, chronology, summary of unpublished stories, textual commentary for each story, textual apparatus, and chronological catalog. The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury is edited to the highest scholarly standards by the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies and bears the Modern Language Association’s seal of approval for scholarly editions.

I have my doubts in regards to people dusting off early, arguably rough draft versions of Bradbury’s stories and compiling these as if they are offering something significantly new. However the statement that these stories, have not been collected before is intriguing.

Though perhaps the reason they have not been collected is because, they were the imperfect forms of stories that Ray Bradbury went on to perfect.

So beyond the obvious… he got better, I’m unsure what, of value, can be mined from this approach. And what critical analysis one can offer on Bradbury’s stories, that are not inherent in a/the stories themselves or b/ Bradbury’s discussion of his stories that thankfully the great man left us with, in multiple forms, from books, radio, television, and even film. Bradbury being perhaps one of the most consulted and interviewed writers of our time.

Rather than a best of compilation, or even a chronological compilation, the selling point of this book would seemingly be… this is the rough draft compilation.

I’m not sure if that’s the collection, that any writer wants of their work.

But this is all guesswork. I’ll withhold final judgment till I can get a reading copy. And the fact that I’m intrigued enough to give this a look means it is… WEDNESDAYS WORDS material.

The WEDNESDAYS WORDS column is a new blog feature, appearing (you guessed it!) every Wednesday. Come back next week to see which books make the list!

If you’re a publisher, writer, or other creative representative looking to submit items for WEDNESDAYS WORDS, just leave a comment on this post with your email/contact info, comments don’t get posted they come right to me, and I’ll reach out to you with the snail mail details.

And as far as readers, if you see items on WEDNESDAYS WORDS you’re considering purchasing then, if you are able and would like to support this blog, please utilize the attached links.

Your helpful purchases through those links, generates much appreciated pennies to keep this blog running. Your feedback and support… just way cool, and way appreciated. Thanks!

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On the Racism of HP Lovecraft : 2nd Verse same as the First! :)

One of my more popular posts is my article covering the racism of HP Lovecraft. And by popular demand of someone who describes themselves as a self-professed Romney and Gay marriage supporter out of Olympia, Washington (hey I’m just reading what’s on the card ) … he urges me (maybe she) to repost the article.

This Ricky makes an interesting point about HP Lovecraft’s popularity perhaps being buoyed by the rising tide of an America under attack by selfish liberal interests, bolstered by an ignorant populace that keeps resisting paying welfare to big business.

He/she further goes on to say that “the middle and lower classes are just not understanding that big business is right to bankrupt the country, and enslave many to debt for the needs of the coming over-lords and all this was foretold in the fiction of the messiah… LOVECRAFT!!!! You Liberal scum!! Don’t you see?!! Lovecraft loves you!!!!! HE DIED FOR YOUR SINS!!!!”

Again, I’m just reading what’s on the card people.

He/She goes on to say “CTHULHU! CTHULHU! CTHULHU!” To which I say Gezuntheit!

Ahh you’ve got to love the intelligence and stability and eloquence of Lovecraft supporters.

And I think that deserves our renewed attention to the article that started it all! For those who missed it the first time, read it at the link below, with love from he/she/it in Olympia, Washington!

This one’s for you!

MONARCHS OF MAYHEM Update! VOTE HERE!! & TOTAL RECALL trailer

Yeah I know my MONARCHS OF MAYHEM schedule for April is completely shot. I do get all the comments, even the ones that I don’t post… everyone of them. And yes, I know you want the Durham and Wrath and Fortier installments.

They are here gals and guys, along with three other writer interviews (including the great, inimitable Charles Saunders) as well as three more that I’m still waiting to come in.

So trust me Heroic Ones, I’m working hard behind the scenes here. In the words of the one true Robin Hood show (the magical tinged ROBIN OF SHERWOOD)… Nothing is forgotten. Nothing is ever forgotten.

Robin of Sherwood: Series One

So yes I remember I owe you more great MONARCHS OF MAYHEM entries, and kudos to all of you who continue to frequent the old episodes. Derrick Ferguson’s and Richard Gavin’s entries are particularly popular.

Kid’s when you go to these entries, don’t just read my admittedly excellent words , use the links and patronize the items mentioned.

The artists will thank you, and this blog will thank you. I hate doing a donate button like other blogs and sites, I much rather you use the links, and purchase something you wanted anyhow, And by doing, with no effort or extra expense on your part, also support the artists (where applicable) and this blog.

Definitely a win/win.

So far I’ve managed to be really consistent with WEDNESDAYS WORDS and that pleases me to no end.

The numbers skyrocket (as well as people subscribing) every Wednesday because of that consistency, and I’m going to try and do the same thing with MONARCHS OF MAYHEM. So I’m putting this out for a vote, what day should MONARCHS OF MAYHEM go up… on a Monday or a Friday?

Leave your comments they’ll come right to me, without getting posted unless you specifically mention you want your comment posted. thanks! The day that gets the most votes… will be the day.

As always pat yourselves on the back for being just great supporters of this blog, and of something more, great supporters of this fancy that we call Art.

Oh, and before I duck out, a word on TOTAL RECALL….

First, I think the poster for the TOTAL RECALL film, like most posters these days is boring and unimaginative. Posters in the 21st century being either a close up of the actors face, or a profile shot, generally they are just insipid and boring.

The marketing guys who come up with today’s lazy, poorly photo-shopped posters should be fired. There was a time, not too long ago, when posters were works of art as well as being an ad for the film. These days more often then not they are just boring and bankrupt of any allure. So yeah, poster of TOTAL RECALL gets a huge… fail.

However, that TOTAL RECALL trailer…. AWESOME!!

Okay I was never a huge fan of the original TOTAL RECALL, though I liked it well enough. I saw it when it first came out, in a theater in Garmish, Germany. Garmish is wonderful, southern Bavarian tourist town, and made all the more wonderful when you’re young and in love. And at the time I was both. Yeah, me young, go figure.

But yeah, the original was an enjoyable enough movie. Nothing great, but definitely fun. But the concept of a remake seemed… silly and uninspired.

And perhaps the idea is still that, but I have to tell you… that trailer looks GREAT!. If the movie lives up to the trailer, it is (Mars or no Mars) going to be better than the original.

I mean I’m not a Colin Farrell fan, but I did quite enjoy the one film I saw of this movie’s director, Len Wiseman, his DIE HARD: LIVE FREE OR DIE. I mean honestly that’s a sequel that you can argue is just as good, and perhaps even better than the original.

I think Len Wiseman has the chops to make his TOTAL RECALL a better film than the original. That’s right, you heard it here first.

For those who haven’t seen the trailer view it here.

Okay, now I’m out of here.

This installment is brought to you by this week’s sponsor. please visit his store here:

STORE OF THE DAY

EVERYONE OF YOU who enjoyed this post (yes I’m talking to you hiding in the corner) go to the store and buy something.

Also, If you’re interested in sponsoring future posts please leave a comment with your contact info. It doesn’t get posted, it comes direct to me, and I’ll respond to you.

New sponsors are always needed. .

Okay, now I’m really out of here! Bye till next time.

Writers Face Off: Robert E. Howard vs. H.P. Lovecraft! May the Least Racist Writer stand up! :)

I recently purchased THE SAVAGE TALES OF SOLOMON KANE from Del Rey Books and with spot illustrations by Gary Gianni.

So I’m going through the book, and I’m moving pretty capably along.

There are the random slurs and stereotypes, but pretty much they are few and far between and they don’t get in the way of the story…

Until I hit THE MOON OF SKULLS.

Game over man. Game effing over.

To call it insulting is perhaps an understatement. I had to check to make sure I wasn’t reading something by Lovecraft.

Oh stop crying! You know I’m right!

Have you read Howard’s THE MOON OF SKULLS?! A xenophobic, denigrating, and intolerant bit of writing, that goes on forever. I think the actual term that popped into my head before pulling the plug on the story was “racist piece of crap”.

Now I do make allowances for the time these books were written, and the fact that the Texan Howard when compared to his contemporaries of the time such as H.P. Lovecraft (a staggering racist) was quite moderate by the definitions of the age.

Part of this is the difference in the type of men they were.

Howard was a rough and tumble, ‘man-of-action’ sort, who understood the world beyond his head, and by that definition understood people outside of his head.

Lovecraft was a secluded New England ‘Intellectual’ who sought a mythology, a hierarchy of master and slave, with the almost ingrained need of the region to preserve an upper class (that in all truth, Lovecraft was very far from, due to the family’s loss of fortune early in his life) by the belief and need for a lower class.

I think racism, gave a lacking man like Lovecraft something. Something to drag himself up on, to restore him to that glory he never had, but thought he deserved… by tearing others down.

Whereas Howard was a self sufficient man (which makes his end all the more bewildering), he went along with the expected prejudice and tropes of the day, but you get the sense in some of his writing, he was content to see men as men. That Howard was a man who stumbled into the tropes of racism, rather than active in the creation and embracing of racism… ala Lovecraft.

I can deal with Lovecraft’s writing in small doses, but I find this recent deification of Lovecraft, of a writer who was barely a footnote in his own time… as odd, though not inexplicable; especially in a country that so desperately, like Lovecraft, wants to turn back the clock to a glorious age of Master and Slave, that never was glorious, and never will be.

But I do think people are over-stating both Lovecraft’s influence and importance, as his work followed in the footsteps of writers like Lord Dunsany, and took inspiration from contemporaries such as Clark Ashton Smith. Much of what people are quick to define as Lovecraftian isn’t, it belongs to a writing movement of the time, dark fantastic offshoots of the age of spiritualism, Houdini, and Arthur Machen.

“In 1914, when the kindly hand of amateurdom was first extended to me, I was as close to the state of vegetation as any animal well can be…With the advent of the United I obtained a renewal to live; a renewed sense of existence as other than a superfluous weight; and found a sphere in which I could feel that my efforts were not wholly futile. For the first time I could imagine that my clumsy gropings after art were a little more than faint cries lost in the unlistening world.” —H.P. Lovecraft

So I do take the biases of Lovecraft into account when reading Robert E. Howard. And rank him as better than the contemporaries of his age.

And I realize I just have to avoid Howard stories that are written toward a certain audience, and toward a prevalent prejudice of the day. Generally this means avoiding most of his Conan stories, as I would end up ripping them in half.

I can stomach his writing in small doses, and that’s generally when he isn’t on bigoted diatribes disguised as a story. In short bursts, and when not using an entire Continent of Africa to advance 1920s fantasies of race and heroism, I can appreciate his writing. His SKULLS IN THE STARS is probably his best short story, it is a well done story and mainly because it is free of Howard’s capitulations to the prejudices and tropes of the day.

So the winner of my Writer’s Face-Off? Well let’s put it this way. I own a Robert E. Howard book, I don’t own any HP Lovecraft books.

I guess that says it all.

MONARCHS OF MAYHEM March LineUp UPDATED!!

I’m really happy to bring you guys over the next four weekends incredible insights into some of the industries premier talents and creators.

I provided a questionnaire, that was suitably HEROIC TIMES insane and some amazing writers and artists picked up the gauntlet and made time in their VERY busy schedules to provide you, lucky reader, with must-read responses!

I’ve read some of the responses. WoW. They are pretty darn great! As well as being intriguing looks at each creator, they also introduce you to their loves and influences and recommendations. It’s just fantastic stuff from some of the most exciting creators of pulp and weird fiction.

Here’s the schedule for the first two weekends:
MAURICE BROADDUS 9 MAR

LR GILES 11 MAR

DERRICK FERGUSON 13 MAR

RON FORTIER 17 MAR
WRATH JAMES WHITE 19 MAR
TBA 21 MAR

The other two weekends I’ll post as soon as they are ready.

Also the nest WEDNESDAY WORDS is 14 MAR.

So lots of great content coming up.

Mark the dates down, and come back and have some fun! Thanks!

PHOTO OF THE DAY: MY STAY AT A HAUNTED HOTEL

“After that, nothing was real. It was fantasy, ecstasy, dread and apprehension. It was glory. They went to live in her apartment, and did not need a thing. Neither people nor food nor sleep. Nor the world. Because there was too much of each other within the hours that they would never have.”
— SO SOFTLY SMILING by Chester Himes from
The Collected Stories of Chester Himes (Himes, Chester)

I see her often.

When I have given up seeing everything.

In the darkness and in the light, when it’s softly raining and when it’s hardly night… I see her often.

She’s in the places where corridors end, and doors that are shut… speak of being opened.

In the middle of the night I find myself in endless hallways, in strange cities, in tortured lands, waiting for the one corner that I will turn, the one door I will open, the one promise I will break…

And she will be there.

And hell will have no dominion.

It’s a dream… I have.

—NO DOMINION copyright 2012 HT

Today’s Recommended Short Story: THE GHOST OF MARTIN LUTHER KING by Hal Bennett

There is no one who has ever written quite like Hal Bennett, His stories live somewhere that is beyond our suffering, and beyond our joy, beyond our hopes, and beyond our despairs. His are alien deep space tableaus, as strange as any fiction of Bradbury’s outer space, but rooted in the far more alien landscapes of a Jim Crow tinged America. There’s a bitter truth in his tales, married to a wicked, merciless humor. His is the landscape of an irony and lynch-filled America. Where sense is a strange and undiscovered country, and insanity the norm, for those who live and die by insane designations.

Insanity Runs in our Family. These stories are a wry and disarmingly written indictment of the Insanity of a post Jim Crow America, and things we lost in the fire, but more than that, they are about our missives and our misgivings, and living in a wronged world… that resists being righted.

I continue to dip my toe into these stories of the downtrodden and disenfranchised, and yet somehow remarkable, and more than a bit magical. And I continue to be… both horrified and charmed.

THE GHOST OF MARTIN LUTHER KING is one of those stories, wherein Hal Bennett takes us on a spiderwalk above still restless and unsettled ground. B+.

Insanity runs in our Family– Price your copy here!

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: GHOST PROTOCOL 2011 Movie Review!

So based on the fantastic, kick-ass trailer, MISSION IMPOSSIBLE:GHOST PROTOCOL was one of my most eagerly anticipated films of 2011. So finally seen, with a 1st time Live-Action director Brad Bird at the helm, what is my verdict?

Well first it’s worth setting the scene, I saw this in IMAX, not IMAX 3D or 3D, but IMAX. Parts of this film were shot in the 70mm IMAX format, but not in 3D. So yeah I have no problem, viewing a film shot in IMAX in IMAX.

Well let me rephrase that, seeing this in IMAX is not a problem. Payment the exorbitant markup to see this in IMAX… big problem.

When the cashier said $15.50 I actually had to pause, for a less anticipated movie I would have told him forget it and either not see it in IMAX (which I notice theaters are making it difficult to do, offering either no regular non-Imax, non-3D showings, or these showing only seldom and at inconvenient times) or just wait for DVD.

I can understand seeking to increase revenue in a down market, but attempting to fleece and extort your existing customer base may not be the way. You end up with people like myself, who actively will seek out less IMAX movies and movies in general, because of such price gouging at theaters.

A $15.50 ticket?!! Really?? You’re talking what, a 50% markup over regular ticket prices? That is just not good.

So already you’re creating the wrong mindset for people going into the film, the way my brain, and a lot of peoples brains work, Anything $10 or less, is kind of an impulse buy. You look at the 2hrs of big screen entertainment, and you justify it as $5/hr. Not horrible.

But suddenly cracking $15, and it’s suddenly a purchase that registers in your brain as expensive. You start getting thoughtful about the money spent, which is not really what you want consumers doing, questioning if they are getting value, getting their money’s worth.

It’s a dangerous habit to get the customer into, making a movie ticket less impulse buy and more potentially over-priced money-waster.

So it’s with that mindset a bit in my head I enter the darkened IMAX theater.

This theater being one of AMC’s retrofitted pseudo Imax theaters/Midget Imax theaters, it is not a real 5 story high, 70 foot wide screen (yet another reason I balk at paying the exorbitant prices), that said it is a very large screen for a multiplex.

And obviously they are trying to at least give you something to kinda justify that expense because man, they really had the sound and bass cranked, the picture looking great. I’ve seen IMAX movies at this theater before, and they raised the game for this movie. I sat there looking at the seven trailers prior to the movie, having my chest pummeled by sound, and my eyes dazzled, and I have to say… , I was impressed.

And the seven trailers?

SNOW WHITE & HUNTSMAN- An action packed updating of the Snow White myth

MAN ON THE LEDGE- Intriguing looking heist film

JOHN CARTER- I hated the first trailer for this film, however this new trailer actually looks great,

UNDERWORLD:AWAKENING- I’m no fan of this francise, having only seen bits of previous movies, but this trailer looks good if not great. And I’m always game for a Werewolf movie. RISE OF THE DARK KNIGHT- I have my problems with Nolan’s films. Unlike most I’m not a fan, that said this was a decent enough trailer

GI JOE: RETALIATION- I hated the first GI Joe Movie, however this one actually looks good. Mostly due to Dwayne The Rock Johnson.

THE TITANIC in 3D- There’s one person I don’t bet against when it comes to 3D, and that’s James Cameron. If James Cameron puts his name behind something it’s good enough for me. And watching the trailer I was reminded of all the people who have spent years deriding Titanic, who are going to end up eating their words as they pay to see it a 2nd time in 3D. Fan boys are an odd breed with selective memory, and they like to bash what is successful and popular, just because it is successful and popular. TITANIC became thw largest grossing movie of its time for a simple reason, because it was an effing epic movie, and because people could not stop seeing it.

A lot of fan boys have this revisionist memory, almost attacking things for being popular, forgetting that at the time they enjoyed the movie just as much as everyone else. But in hindsight, and with some posing it becomes the rage to bash on TITANIC. A similar film is SUPERMAN returns, that was a darling when it came out, everyone was raving about the plane scene and the bullet to the eye, but suddenly in blogs and podcasts and the peanut gallery it becomes revised as a bad movie, by the same ones who enjoyed it at the time. So yeah the fickle and schizoid ranting of fanboys I let go in one ear and out the other, quality tells. And quality says, while it’s not going to make a billion dollars in theaters again, it’s going to do very respectable business for a revival film.

I’m pretty sure there was a 7th one, but I can’t remember what it was.

Okay, enough with the trailers… onto the feature.

Brad Bird’s transition from animation to live action can only be called… impressive and epic.

Wow, from first frame to last, what grabbed me was just how brilliant and accomplished this film looked. how the heck does a first time live-action director pull off a film on this scale.

It is a gorgeous looking movie, stylishly filmed, and action packed. It’s easily the best of the MISSION IMPOSSIBLE series, and the performances… I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again.,.. Tom Cruise is one of Hollywood’s best actors, and that he has maintained giving 110% in his work, even while dealing in the meat-grinder that is the press, and with fickle fanboys, is only to be applauded.

Agree or disagree with Cruise’s beliefs if you choose, though how that’s anyone’s business but his I don’t know, but what he puts on the screen can not be questioned. He’s a star, the likes of which we seldom see anymore. Add to that wonderful performances by his IMF (the use of that acronym kept tripping me up, I would immediately think International Monetary Fund (Boo! Hiss!) rather than Impossible Missions Force (Yay! Hurrah!) team-members, namely Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg, Paula Patton; fantastic stunts, beautiful locales, and bone crunching action and you have a fun ride at the movies.

Thant said, it’s not perfect. The pacing is a bit uneven, bordering on long, and the script at brief times is a bit by the numbers. I think it probably could have benefited from tighter editing and a shorter runtime, that said I was quite satisfied for the film to play out at its pace.

All in all it’s a solid ***1/2 out of **** and is definitely one I’ll be adding to my DVD collection. B+.

WHAT I’M READING: Grading the Short Stories Nov 2011 Edition

What I’m reading:

BLUE YODEL

- This is a short story from Scott Snyder’s VOODOO HEART collection, published in a nice hardcover by Dial Press in 2006. It’s an imaginative tale of one man’s mad chase across the country for… aww but that would be telling. Suffice it to say it’s an irreverent fable, touched with the capraesque and the odd. Perhaps a little too plodding, and the ending is a bit forgettable, but overall a good read. C+.

Voodoo Heart:Price it Here

Next are a few stories I want to mention from Joe Hill’s 20TH CENTURY GHOSTS collection. First a word about the book: The 2005 1st US Edition published by William Morrow (and one of the rare books still printed in the US), paradoxically boasts a beautiful black hardcover exterior, while a very cheap rag/pulp paper interior. There’s something quite endearing about that dichotomy. It’s a book designed for you to want to hold it and page through it. A book that has a lure and allure, still beyond the reach of a digital age. I read this book for free from the library, but it’s one I have to buy for my shelves for the reasons of its construction listed above, and the reasons of its content, listed below…

Here are the grades on the stories in 20TH CENTURY GHOSTS that I’ve read so far:

BEST NEW HORROR

- A short story that lives up to its name, and is a strong one to open this collection with. The genre is so hard to be original in, because for the most part it relies on conventions that the reader is well aware of. The strength of Hill’s story is it plays and counts on and echoes the readers familiarity with the horror genre, to craft a tale that sucks us in, and creeps us out despite our cynicism. It’s really wonderfully written and constructed tale, that does not overstay its welcome. B+.

20TH CENTURY GHOST

- The titular story, I couldn’t get into it. A story of a haunted movie theater, that unfortunately does nothing with that both familiar, and potentially interesting premise.

POP ART

- Now that’s a brilliant and unusual and completely captivating way to start a story. I was hooked from sentence one. Laugh out loud brilliant and strange, absurdity of a story, that underneath may or may not tackle serious issues of neglect, abuse, childhood terrors, childhood friends, escapism, hope, survival, imagination, beauty, suicide, death of the wondrous, and growing up. It’s just subtle, imaginative, and elegant writing.

“You get an astronaut’s life whether you want it or not. Leave it all behind for a world you know nothing about. That’s just the deal.”

or

“It is my belief that, as a rule, creature’s of Happy’s ilk— I’m thinking here of canines and men both— more often run free than live caged, and it is in fact a world of mud and feces they desire, a world with no Art in it, or anyone like him, a place where there is no talk of books or God or the worlds beyond this one, a place where the only communication is the hysterical barking of starving and hate-filled dogs.”

or

“I hope if there is another world, we will not be judged too harshly for the things we did wrong here– that we will at least be forgiven for the mistakes we made out of love.”

I was reading this, silly, silly story. And somewhere through it I realized the space under my eyes was wet, and for the life of me, I could not find out how. One of the best short stories I’ve read all year. An easy A-.

20th Century Ghosts: Price it Here

My appreciation of the writings of H.Russell Wakefield has led me to other early 20th century writers of the weird, of strange fiction. Poe and Shakespeare withstanding, we have a tendency to expect something of the outdated, the stilted, the historically important but unfortunately no longer engaging from writers of yesterday. However I largely find, that great writing, is great writing, and it endures. Largely because even though times move on, what moves and drives people… largely does not. That what made the seafarers of a distant age laugh and cringe, is not all that removed, from what moves you and I.

And perhaps that is a failing of man, that the penny-dreadfuls, and Poe’s tales of madness and revenge, and Doyle’s mysteries of the macabre should resonate as well today as yesterday in the hearts and minds of men.

It shows how little we evolve, that we can still understand and thrill to… the petty failings and fears of men. The day we do evolve past the point of understanding or identifying with lines such as the following, we will have gained and lost… much.

“But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered Country, from whose bourn
No Traveller returns, Puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of.
Thus Conscience does make Cowards of us all,”
-Shakespeare’s Hamlet

or

“This spirit of perverseness, I say, came to my final overthrow. It was this unfathomable longing of the soul to vex itself–to offer violence to its own nature–to do wrong for the wrong’s sake only–that urged me to continue and finally to consummate the injury I had inflicted upon the unoffending brute.”
- Edgar Allan Poe, “The Black Cat”

It’s the fact that hundreds of years can separate the writing from the reading, but the passions and conflicts and soul searching is as new as the dawn.

So it is that the writing of Robert Aickman, removed from us and our world by decades of time and decades of change, still maintains the power… to enrapt. Case in point

RAVISSANTE

my first introduction to the short stories of Aickman (and indeed the first short story of his first sole collection), surprised me with its seeming prescience, it’s ability to put on the page, observations ever current, and ever waiting to be discovered… particularly for those of us of an artistic bent. And it surprised me with its… strangeness. I would have expected its frankness and its sensuality from a writer of today, but not one so far into yesterday.

But many writers of today, would have lacked the craft and patience and subtlety to make that frankness and sensuality more than shock, lacked the ability to make it not unlike… revelations.

Not a ghost story, more an examination of the strange corners of the world where we haunt ourselves, RAVISSANTE can be found in both the collections SUB ROSA and one of Aickman’s “best of” collections, PAINTED DEVILS.

Painted Devils; Strange Stories: Price it Here

On HP Lovecraft, HAUNTER OF THE DARK and The Melancholy of All Men

I’m not a fan of HP Lovecraft. I’ve read several of his short stories, listened to several more via audio dramas, and while the cult of Lovecraft is strong, and I appreciate his dark ramblings, I’m not particularly a fan of them.

I’m far more fond of the work of some of his contemporaries such as Clark Ashton Smith, MR James and particularly H Russell Wakefield.

And this goes beyond Lovecraft being a product of his manifest destiny upbringing, his work judged on its own… largely drones on me. He has a tendency to ‘talk’ his stories into repetitive circles, perhaps feeding his love for litany and language, at the expense of momentum and a story. And perhaps even simpler, as a pulp writer, paid by the word, padding the story was not out of the realm of his possibility or his purpose.

Whatever the truth his stories to differing extents, are perhaps not the better for their length. HAUNTER OF THE DARK being an example. The most interesting thing about the story is the 4 line poem that opens it.

I have seen the Dark Universe Yawning
Where the Black Planets roll without aim
Where they roll in their horror unheeded
Without knowledge, or luster, or name
… From the opening of THE HAUNTER OF THE DARK

That’s a great opening, unfortunately the story fails to be worthy of it.

I consider myself a person with some patience, and appreciation for the setting of mood. As I said I’m a fan of some of Lovecraft’s contemporaries, and even a few of Lovecraft’s own stories (The Outsider comes to mind), but the HAUNTER OF THE DARK showcases the over stylization that hinders rather than helps the world Lovecraft is trying to create. He can take 10 sentences to say “Blake ran out of the building”, and if you’re enriched by those 10 sentences that’s fine, but largely it’s a repetition of ten sentences he used to describe his protagonist walking into the building.

His erudition, taken to such extremes… is by definition pedantic. And as such his work can be far from compelling.

But at moments, in small doses, his work rises above the minutiae of the man, to be something not unlike… a window onto the melancholy of all men.