Re: Less Familiar Weird Literature
Posted by:
jdworth (IP Logged)
Date: 6 March, 2012 10:35AM
Knygatin Wrote:
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> Knygatin Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Reader's imagination is important . . . people
> > without it don't get much pleasure or meaning
> from
> > reading.
>
>
> Neither chills! These people, the rabble,
> consisting of most of the masses, tend to reject
> quality supernatural fiction, complaining that
> "nothing happens". They crave materialism, blood,
> disemboweled guts, and chopped off heads, to be
> impressed. And why does this garbage totally
> dominate literature and other culture today?
> Because of democracy, and its consequence
> outgrowth, materialism. Everyone's opinion and
> taste is "as good" as anyone's else; the masses,
> the idiot rabble have been allowed to set the
> agenda, because they dominate in number. At the
> beginning of the 1900s, before democracy had
> reached absurd levels and spread into every niche
> of society, when the elite still dominated taste
> and was respected, then the last sparks of quality
> literature, fine artistic expression, was
> encouraged and lifted forth. And that was the
> selection the rabble had to choose from, take it
> or leave it, either read or continue their
> customary barroom brawling. Today their primitive
> appetites are satisfied by literature down to
> their level, swarming the bookstore shelves,
> pushing away the more subtle and refined literary
> voices, tasteless bookcovers screaming out their
> senseless perspectives, leading the minds of youth
> onward towards Armageddon. And of course, it's a
> commercial success for the publishing houses!
> Capitalistic triumph. All thanks to democracy.
> Indeed, how wonderful.
Sorry, but that's nonsense. What has long been called a "subliterary tradition" of writing has always been with us; it just tends not to survive as well as the better work -- or hadn't, until the advent of cheaper printing and now the electronic media which allows anything and everything to survive.* If you think the writing of today is bad, try reading the penny dreadfuls, shilling shockers, etc. Even the best of them, such as Varney, the Vampire, The String of Pearls (often simply called Sweeney Todd), or their equivalents, such as George W. M. Reynolds' Wagner, the Wehr-wolf, the novels of William Harrison Ainsworth, or Capt. Frederick Marryat (each of which has some points of interest to the lover of weird fiction), make today's literature almost shine in comparison. And that isn't even touching on the sorts of things Blackwood's often published, or the plethora of Gothic novels such as Children of the Abbey by Mrs. Roche or (heaven forfend!) the Horrid Mysteries of "the Marquis von Grosse", or the tons of shorter Gothic tales published in the magazinse of the period. (Lest it be asked: Yes, for my sins, I have read all the titles specified above, as well as a fairly large selection of the general sorts mentiioned.) And this is only covering the last few centuries. The Romans had their garbage literature, too....
For a good taste of the middling-range (except for such things as The Necromancer and Horrid Mysteries, which I would put at the nadir) of Gothic fiction, I'd suggest looking up the "seven horrid novels" mentioned in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey. They have been in print as a set from the Folio Club many years ago, and are (if memory serves) currently available from Valancourt Press. For the shorter works, find Peter Haining's two-volume Penguin paperback selection of Gothic Tales of Terror, the Oxford Book of Gothic Tales, or Ronald Curren's Witches, Wraiths, and Warlocks or The Weird Gathering....
*By "survival", I do not simply mean their continued existence but their remaining in print or easily accessible at least periodically over the centuries.