Douglas A. Anderson Wrote:
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> The truth is that 1) Hodgson's own
> manuscript survives (I've held it in my hands).

It is worth mentioning that, in earlier online posts, made many years ago, where you claimed to authoritatively address this issue, you claimed that it was a TYPESCRIPT that you saw. No big deal. I assumed that was what you meant by "manuscript" anyhow. However, you refuse to clarify how you knew this document was Hodgson's, and in that context hence it obviously makes a big difference whether what you saw a typescript, or a manuscript.

(Or course, if you have also since then seen a manuscript, feel free to clarify).

Well, I recently read William Hope Hodgson's posthumous story "A Timely Escape". Call me paranoid if you must, but I cannot help very strongly suspecting that Hodgson did not write that one either. It read like something his wife might have written.

I have nothing against traditional damsel-in-distress stories. And I have nothing against stories featuring an active female protagonist who saves her man. But Hodgson was far more likely to write the former than the latter. This is the only exception I've ever seen.

So I check her background, and sure enough, she had been a staff writer for a women's magazine.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 21 Jun 19 | 03:59PM by Platypus.

So what you're saying is you have a suspicion based on a kinda sexist interpretation and no proof.

I have read cca. 70 short stories by W.H. Hodgson so far and I must say a great body of his work has nothing to do with the supernatural and is a far cry from his “standard“ horror tales.
There are scores of Mr. Hodgson´s stories published in his life one would hardly expect to be written by him. “Kind, Kind and Gentle is She“, “My House Shall Be Called the House of Prayer“, “The Captain of The Onion Boats“, “Judge Barclay´s Wife“, “The Girl with The Grey Eyes“, “Sea Horses“, “Date 1965: Modern Warfare“, “The Valley of Lost Children“ and many, many others … It is hard to believe these stories, full of humour, sentimentality, fun, action and love, were written by the same author who created “The House on The Borderland“ or “The Voice in The Night“ …

I don't think it's that hard to believe. Many authors have tried different styles of writing and genre fitting of their mood at the time. CAS himself wrote love poetry, satirical poetry, phantastic poetry, and not to mention the various genres of short stories he'd written, ranging from heavy tales of grim sorcery like "The Dark Eidolon" to humorous satires on science like "Schizoid Creator." I haven't read Hodgson's non-weird work, and I'm not all that inclined to seek them out, but he's written epic fantasies like "The Night Land" and added plenty of romantic adventure and sentimentality to "The Boats of the Glen Carrig." For someone to write so many stories, and to have such an active and varied life as his, I'd be surprised if they didn't explore various fields, themes, and perspectives in their literature.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 22 Jun 19 | 12:13PM by Yluos.

Ancient History Wrote:
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> So what you're saying is you have a suspicion
> based on a kinda sexist interpretation and no
> proof.

LOL. Are you trying to insinuate I'm a "sexist"? Thanks for your comment.


Yes, I have a suspicion, based on what my sense of sense of Hodgson based on having read a fair bit of him. No I did not claim to have "proof".

Minicthulhu Wrote:
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> I have read cca. 70 short stories by W.H. Hodgson
> so far and I must say a great body of his work has
> nothing to do with the supernatural and is a far
> cry from his “standard“ horror tales.
> There are scores of Mr. Hodgson´s stories
> published in his life one would hardly expect to
> be written by him. “Kind, Kind and Gentle is
> She“, “My House Shall Be Called the House of
> Prayer“, “The Captain of The Onion Boats“,
> “Judge Barclay´s Wife“, “The Girl with The
> Grey Eyes“, “Sea Horses“, “Date 1965:
> Modern Warfare“, “The Valley of Lost
> Children“ and many, many others … It is hard
> to believe these stories, full of humour,
> sentimentality, fun, action and love, were written
> by the same author who created “The House on The
> Borderland“ or “The Voice in The Night“ …

All I can say is that I read most of the stories you mention, and I did not find it hard to believe that Hodgson wrote them. The story that attracted my suspicion was one that features a female protagonist, seemingly a stand-in for Hodgson's wife, as protagonist, saving her talented, slightly-pompous, but clueless, lover who seems to be a stand-in for Hodgson.

I'm not necessarily saying Hodgson could not have written it either. But it was published after his death. And even Moskowitz says there was no evidence that the story was ever submitted to magazines prior to his death. Would you be surprised if his wife wrote it?

Yluos Wrote:
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> I don't think it's that hard to believe.

Sure, maybe not. But as it stands, I find his wife writing it even easier to believe. One alternative not being impossible does not rule out other alternatives.

You mentioned "The Night Land" and "The Boats of the Glenn Carrig". These, as I recall, show his usual approach to the male-female dynamic in adventure stories.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 22 Jun 19 | 01:02PM by Platypus.

I wish we could have good critical biography of this author, by someone able to find out more about his life and who was well read outside the weird fiction genre. The biographer probably should be someone not affiliated with the conventional academic world that is so tiresomely preoccupied with literary theory. On the other hand, I would hope the biographer would not be an excessively "fannish" author. I don't suppose we will get that biography.

Platypus Wrote:
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> Yluos Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > I don't think it's that hard to believe.
>
> Sure, maybe not. But as it stands,

It looks like you assume I was discussing that possibly wife-written tale, but to be honest I had little interest in that topic. I was responding solely to Minicthulhu and his surprise that an accomplished author could write a variety of very different stories. I myself have written a cosmic horror story with a grim and sardonic tone (which will soon be made into a short film), a Dunsanian fantasy about wistfulness and yearning, and a fairy tale with a humorous twist ending. And after reading Dr. Farmer's reminiscences of CAS as both a person and a poet, I'm mostly never surprised when an author tries very different things. Even Lovecraft went from writing fantasy stories about escapism to writing a story that defies escapism (even if the story itself indulges in quite a bit of it).

As to the wife-story, it could have been written by him, or maybe it wasn't. I'm siding with you about the possibility that it wasn't, because even though an author can write a wide variety of genres and styles, it's still usually easy to see the difference between one writer and another. Hodgson can write one story about lovers and then write another story about vicious pig-men, but no one can write about those same subjects in the same precise way he did. But that doesn't interest me. Not as much as that critical, insightful biography Mr. Nelson suggested.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 24 Jun 19 | 10:45AM by Yluos.

Yluos Wrote:
--------------------
> It looks like you assume I was discussing that
> possibly wife-written tale, but to be honest I had
> little interest in that topic. I was responding
> solely to Minicthulhu and his surprise that an
> accomplished author could write a variety of very
> different stories.

My mistake. However, I am pretty sure that nobody, including Minicthulhu, doubts that Hodgson wrote (for instance) "The Captain of the Onion Boat" or "The Sea Horses". It is a non-issue.

> As to the wife-story, it could have been written
> by him, or maybe it wasn't.

Okay.

> But that doesn't interest
> me. Not as much as that critical, insightful
> biography Mr. Nelson suggested.

Is something in the works? Honestly, I find this disembodied interest in a hypothetical Hodgson biography, written by a non-academic person (odd specificity on Mr. Nelson's part) to be rather hard to identify with. Is there some particular question about Hodgson that you were hoping the biography would resolve?

And surely we can wait for its release before we start praising it for being insightful.

For anyone that hasn't heard, William Hope Hodgson scholar Sam Gafford has had a heart attack and is in the hospital. Here's hoping for his recovery.

That´s bad, hopefully he will be allright. I have always appreciated his blog about W.H.Hodgson. (though now it has been "dead" for more than a year)

This is rather late, and perhaps you've already read this story by now, but Hodgson's The Voice in the Dawn is interesting, as it is his only Sargasso story that isn't an explicit horror or adventure story. I'm not sure if it can even be considered fantasy in terms of genre, though it does have a mystical yearning in its tone and atmosphere.

The story is kind of a longish vignette about sailors going through an endless sea of green and yellow weed, marveling at the big and little sights of nature, while hearing a mysterious voice calling to them as if from beyond time and space. It's really not like any of his other stories I've read, even if it uses the common setting and weird sea creatures. It's like a profound appreciation of the wondrous beauty and inhuman ambiguity of the weed sea. It doesn't harshly and irrationally judge the ocopi and crabs and other weird creatures as "abominable" like Lovecraft might, while still appreciating that they're so strange, frightening, and more powerful than humanity in this distant environment.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 19 Nov 19 | 02:13PM by Yluos.

Yluos Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> This is rather late, and perhaps you've already
> read this story by now, but Hodgson's The Voice in
> the Dawn is interesting, as it is his only
> Sargasso story that isn't an explicit horror or
> adventure story. I'm not sure if it can even be
> considered fantasy in terms of genre, though it
> does have a mystical yearning in its tone and
> atmosphere.
>
> The story is kind of a longish vignette about
> sailors going through an endless sea of green and
> yellow weed, marveling at the big and little
> sights of nature, while hearing a mysterious voice
> calling to them as if from beyond time and space.
> It's really not like any of his other stories I've
> read, even if it uses the common setting and weird
> sea creatures. It's like a profound appreciation
> of the wondrous beauty and inhuman ambiguity of
> the weed sea. It doesn't harshly and irrationally
> judge the ocopi and crabs and other weird
> creatures as "abominable" like Lovecraft might,
> while still appreciating that they're so strange,
> frightening, and more powerful than humanity in
> this distant environment.


Thank you Yluos, those are interesting observations. I have read the story when younger, but don't remember it. I am sure I will appreciate it much better today. As it is in the far back of the collection Deep Waters, and as I don't see myself rereading the full of that volume anytime soon, I might have missed it forever. But now it is readily within easy reach. Thanks.