Re: Good modern horror
Posted by:
Knygatin (IP Logged)
Date: 28 July, 2018 06:31AM
I especially liked Michael Shea's short story "Polyphemus" in the POLYPHEMUS collection. Very imaginative in a visually graphic way and horror mixed delectably with humour.
Currently reading Nifft the Lean, and not sure what I think of it, whether I like it or not. The prose is dense, with interesting and sophisticated thought patterns, fantastic imagination, and great metaphors - but the narrative story events are almost completely linear, every little step, one after the other, is described in graphic detail (Shea had a great sense of visuals, and understood the anatomy of forms and objects), without pause for breath or for variation in form and pace, ... I find it a bit tiresome ... rich in content, but monotonous in approach (I am thinking of the writing style within the stories themselves; without referring to the short breaks of introduction before each story, which is a kind of structural variation).
Shea unfortunately did not have much popular success with his work - I am thinking that he may have been too intellectual for his own good? The book is chock-full of intelligent convoluted observations, and a second reading may perhaps be rewarding. The style is reminiscent of Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, and Clark Ashton Smith - but it feels more self-conscious and calculated, ... stilted, (and yet so brilliant) ... lacking a wider perspective of wisdom? His intentions are at least honest and passionate. What is the difference in quality between them and Shea?
That makes me wonder what actually made writers like H. P. Lovecraft and C. A. Smith so superior? Their great wisdom and the mystical quality of their minds. I think it really is beyond our intellects to grasp or properly analyze. It is futile. They tower above us. It is on a mystical level. I think, barely, the only possible approach to them is by daring expression of art through ourselves, instead of just criticizing.
That also makes it kind of comical with all the critics and their the lame criticisms that try to get especially Lovecraft under their control. They delude themselves (and the public) that they can trump Lovecraft's vast intellect, and make an evaluation of Lovecraft that he himself wouldn't grasp. Or some, that perhaps are aware of their own inferiority, but still go on unashamedly in their arrogance, because they follow an agenda; Charles Baxter, one of many examples, a "Professor in Creative Writing", says in the New York Review of Books (symptomatic in ownership with the rest of established mainstream media), that "The effectiveness of Lovecraft’s fiction has little to do with its purely literary qualities, which are minimal ...". That is fundamentally a political stance, from a brainwashed multiculturalist globalist left-winger; he is afraid of Lovecraft, afraid of Lovecraft's intellectual capacity, afraid of Lovecraft's influence - so his midget intellect simply tries to crush down and taint Lovecraft's reputation as much as he can. That is always their way of approach.
I expect there will eventually be a transformation of the low depressive capitalist level of society we are in now, and that great art unhampered will again be created. It may take a long time, but eventually all present dross and lies will be cleansed away.