Re: The Bison Reprints
Posted by:
Gavin Callaghan (IP Logged)
Date: 6 September, 2006 06:22PM
>>I just never got Joshi's whole "James is not cosmic!" argument.
Well, if Joshi is judging by that criteria, Lovecraft isn't that cosmic either, for that matter! For someone who made cosmicism his speciality, Lovecraft spent an awful lot of time dwelling on human-animal hybrids, cannibalistic degeneration, evil witches, Bacchanalian rites, and semi-human ghouls. I haven't done a scientific count quite yet, but just guessing I would say that perhaps only 1/10th, at most, of Lovecraft's weird fiction ouput was cosmic, and this goes without broaching the even more tricky topic of Lovecraft's racism: as if a cosmic viewpoint is in any way compatable with bias based upon race.
The notably non-cosmic issue of women as villains in Lovecraft's fiction, too, has often been overlooked, beginning with the serpentine Sieur du Blois in "Psychopompos", and on down through the evil Cybele in "The Moon Bog", the naked vampiric nymph "Lilith" in "Horror at red Hook", the Magna Mater in "Rats in the Walls", the beautiful "ghoul-queen" Nitocris in "Imprisoned in the Pharoahs", etc.: echoes of which can be found in the "moon ladder" described at the climax of both "Call of Cthulu" and "Mountains of Madness".
>>I found CAS more to my liking and consider him not only the greatest of the Weird Tales bunch but a major literary figure.
I tend to like Smith better too, though I don't know as much about him or his total fictional/poetic output. He had greater range. Smith's works are a bit harder to find!, unless you have $$$.
>>Not only that, he and Rosemary Pardoe are editing a collection of critical essays on James (which I am supposed to be working on at the moment.... ahem.)
I recently came across a two-page article on M. R. James in a Fortean publication, a few months ago. I forget the name of the magazine, but it was on sale at the newstand at Barnes & Noble. There was article suggesting that James' story, "Canon Alberic's Scrapbook", was loosely based upon the mystery of Rennes le Chateau, a mystery which was later made the basis of the bestseller "Holy Blood, Holy Grail." The author of the article cited many similarities between James story and the Rennes-le-Chateau mystery, and suggested that James, who was a Biblical scholar, might have got wind of the mystery and used it as the basis for his story.
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 6 Sep 06 | 06:24PM by Gavin Callaghan.