Scott:
Quote:still can't get the bad taste of "Murder in the 4th Dimension" out of his mouth. By contrast, he has no problem keeping minor tales by Lovecraft in comparison, because his initial exposure to Grandpa came through "At the Mountains of Madness," which he admires greatly.
I cracked up at the first part of your remark; I'd forgotten how bad that story is, as well! To be more serious, I think that there's something to what you say, but I would figure that time and the opportunity to read the whole of CAS's corpus of tales might've sufficed to wash out that bad taste.
I recall only Joshi's
Studies in Weird Fiction articles on Ligotti and Aickman, so perhaps he's revised his views since then. Joshi's discussion of Ligotti was critical but quite favorable, overall, and his treatment of Aickman was largely negative. Campbell, for reasons that remain inexplicable to me, he largely speaks of in the hushed, awed tones of one who stands in the presence of a deity. Campbell and Ligotti are two writers that I very much want to like, but I have great difficulty doing so. With Ligotti, there is a kind of cold, modernistic preciosity and wilful obscurity that keep me at arm's length. I also have no sympathy whatsoever with his nihilistic, self-defeatist world-view. Campbell's work simply never has interested me. He seems like such a nice fellow, though, that I feel somewhat bad about this! Lol. So, at any rate, I suppose that it galls me a little to see--from my perspective--Joshi undervalue the work of CAS, and Aickman, for that matter, and over-praise such authors as McNaughton, Ligotti, and Campbell.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 25 Aug 05 | 10:31AM by Kyberean.