With me, my biggest disappointment with a weird story I had heard of oftentimes before is Visiak's "Medusa". It's basically just a regular nautical novel until the last chapter or so, where it suddenly switches gears so suddenly and confusingly that it just does not leave a good impression, in my opinion.

Visiak didn't appear to really pull off endings very well too as his "Haunted Island" is a 17th century story about a mad scientist working on a world destroying superweapon...until he just sorta gives up right before the island gets blown up anyway.

There are many stories in weird fiction genre that I find to be very disappointing. For example "ZANONI" by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. The book was so dull and boring that I was unable to finish it ... A lot of stories by Lovecraft I consider to be below the average (THE STRANGE HIGH HOUSE IN THE MIST", "COLD AIR", "THE TERRIBLE OLD MAN", "IMPRISONED WITH THE PHARAOS" etc.) But as far as short stories go, the hugest disappointment was the short story collection "THE DRUG AND OTHERS" by Aleister Crowley. After reading his horror tale "THE TESTAMENT OF MAGDALEN BLAIR", I was really excited to read more stuff of this eccentric guy but reading it was a waste of time.

I'm not necessarily disagreeing, but what specifically did you find disappointing in those Lovecraft stories? Was it that the story didn't resolve effectively? (My nomination for this flaw would be his revision THE GREEN MEADOW, where the narrator refuses to set down the soul-shaking cosmic revelation, due, I suspect, to the fact that HPL couldn't come up with one)

S.T. Joshi's biography of HPL (his idiosyncratic editing of the fiction notwithstanding), is superb in all respects, and with regard to "The Green Meadow", he quoted a letter in which Lovecraft said that the idea was supposed to be that the writing discovered in "a notebook embedded in a meteorite that landed in the sea near the coast of Maine" (Joshi 164, first printing), was actually a "narrative of an ancient Greek philosopher who had escaped from the earth and landed on some other planet" (Lovecraft, SL I-136). The lack of clarity is apparent, yet I've always enjoyed the opening description, unfulfilled as it is by the paltry development. Winifred V. Jackson, who published two volumes of verse (Lovecraft's mother greatly admired Jackson's poems), may have deterred HPL from writing a story that would have begun with that opening description, which was based on a dream. Instead, he developed "The Green Meadow" from it after she showed him a map indicating the location of a similar dream of her own. Of course, there's no guarantee that Lovecraft would have written the story he had in mind, if there was one. Jackson and Lovecraft were romantically linked, and she was evidently an attractive brunette, but 14 years older. Regarding disappointing weird fiction, I thought THE CEREMONIES, a Mythos novel from the 1970s by T.E.D. Klein, was completely disappointing. It was like sitting thru the worst Broadway musical imaginable. Kirby McCauley edited a best-selling original anthology from the same period called DARK FORCES, which was also disappointing,inferior to Stuart Schiff's WHISPERS anthologies that came later. DARK FORCES was panned by a lot of the weird fiction fans of those days. ("Dark Farces", Dark Feces"). McCauley's paperback anthologies were better, particularly NIGHT CHILLS (1975).

jkh

Thanks for the info re. "The Green Meadow". I haven't reread that story in years, but I think I first came across it in one of the paperback collections of HPL which Ballantine released in the late 1970's, after their 'grotesque face' editions. Murray Tinkelman's painstakingly cross-hatched cover illustrations seemed an elegant step up after their rather lurid predecessors. I remember doggedly searching the shelves for any Lovecraft story I hadn't read. What a thrill to find "The Diary of Alonzo Typer" in Peter Haining's anthology THE PULPS! Pardon my nostalgic glee...

Interesting that Ballantine added Tinkelman's art on both the front and inside covers for The Trail of Cthulhu. A wretched novel, btw. I'm not familiar with the other Tinkelman covers you're referring to, but going back to the early 1970s, I think my favorite art on a Lovecraft paperback is the Gervasio Gallardo wrap-around cover on The Doom That Came to Sarnath. Could he paint!

jkh

Gallardo celebrated his 88th birthday on June 5th. The fourth of the Lin Carter edited Clark Ashton Smith series, XICCARPH, has stunning wrap-around art by Gallardo, inspired by Smith's tale of "The Flower-Women". I would love to have quality poster reproductions of that painting as well as the one for Sarnath.

jkh

Nice to know he's still around! I just missed the Ballantine "Adult Fantasy" era-I started buying books in 1975. Lin Carter may well be remembered primarily for being the editor of that line and helping to usher in the modern boom in Fantasy. While he might have preferred to have his own fiction as his legacy (what writer wouldn't?), still, playing such an important supporting role in the genre's popularity is no mean feat. Well done, Lin!

It's been a long time since I read THE CEREMONIES, so a lot of the plot has vanished from my memory, but I do recall feeling at the time that Klein's shorter fiction such as, "Children of the Kingdom" and "Petey" were more effective (and, to be blunt, scarier!) And, let's face it, "Black Man with a Horn" is probably the best Cthulhu Mythos story written since HPL laid down his pen.

Marjorie Bowen (pen name of Gabrielle Margaret Vere Campbell Long) is highly esteemed for her historical novels, and also her supernatural stories. Her works in the genre are markedly convincing in period detail as one would expect. BUT--there is also an overstressed parallelism of physical and moral decay that detracts from the weirdness at times. In the first 8 paragraphs of her tale, "The Sign-Painter and the Crystal Fishes", this flaw can be seen to full (and unintentionally absurd) effect. The signifiers of decay are quite obviously overdone. The pathetic fallacy is present ("evil ripples") amid a plethora of overbaked adjectives in these paragraphs. As to the effectiveness of the rest, I can't say, but several other Bowen stories, such as "Scoured Silk", are outstanding, even classic.

jkh