I had been meaning to post in this thread for a couple of months just to thank Kyberean for bringing up this quaint little story from Ramsey Campbell's collection "Uncanny Banquet". It is truly amazing that this novelette has yet to be reprinted.

The one out of print nugget that I'll share is from the English author Catherine Storr called "Marianne Dreams" (1958) from which the movie Paperhouse (1989) was based.
Although it is considered a "Young Adult" book, I believe that is simply based on the fact that the main character is a 10 year old girl.

It's about a girl that get's feverishly ill and becomes bed ridden. While bed ridden she starts to draw a picture of a house using a pencil she found in her grandmothers sewing(?) basket, and is amazed that when she dreams what she has drawn appears in her dreams as real as the real world. While dreaming an ill boy (He can't move his legs) appears in her dreams, and together they have to struggle with an unknown horror inside the the dreams (Where's Randolf Carter when you need him).

I just read this a couple years ago and thought the story and atmosphere was very enjoyable. If you check out the reviews on Amazon, there all from adults that enjoyed it as much as I did.

Amazon
[www.amazon.com]

Bookfinder.com - starting at $5.00
[www.bookfinder.com]


Paperhouse
[www.imdb.com]


Kyberean Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Without question, the finest near-unknown work of
> weird fiction, to my mind, is Adrian Ross's 1914
> novel The Hole of the Pit.
>
> Although it displays touches of naive domesticity
> that no doubt would have repelled Lovecraft, I
> also must recommend Eleanor Ingram's 1921 novel
> The Thing from the Lake, of I am also very fond,
> and which is very Lovecraftian, in certain
> respects.
>
> Speaking of Lovecraft, as an aside, I agree with
> Lovecraft with regard to Hoffmann.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 17 Jul 10 | 07:49PM by Dunwichsouth.

I am glad that you enjoyed The Hole of the Pit. It really is superb, and it's absurd that it has not received a stand-alone reprinting, ideally with notes-- and certainly with more information about the author. One would think that Arthur Reed Ropes's connection with M.R. James would spark contemporary interest in this book.

It's so nice to be fan of an author, like M. R. James, where you only need one single book, a neat paperback. And still there you have, within the small format, a complete world, all in itself. Light and easy to handle. No frustrations of collecting, and chasing after editions, no cumbersome heavy pile. Just full spiritual mental concentration on the stories themselves — as it should be. So very neat!

Reading Hieroglyphics, Arthur Machen's analysis of literature and the element of "ecstasy". The short preface, presenting the setting for the conversation in the book, alone is worth the purchase. It reveals Machen's undisputable mastery, seemingly easy and casual, for painting an atmosphere and transporting us back in time to now long gone cultural surroundings; here an early 18th century house, with labyrinthine rooms and halls (as interior architecture was designed in those days), "done up" by a later owner in the early 1800s with typical attributes of the period, such as wall-paper of heavy crimson colour, which even on bright summer evenings look almost black, and seem to cast a shadow into the room. And he includes subtle supernatural suggestions, giving added depth to his documentary observations.

Quote:

The short preface, presenting the setting for the conversation in the book, alone is worth the purchase.

Or, for the relatively poor, the impatient, or the pragmatic, worth the download.

Very interesting, Knygatin - that's quite a fascinating essay.(And thanks for the link, Absquatch.)

I was reading through the part where Machen compares Vanity Fair with The Pickwick Papers, and I found his comments to be quite insightful. I have always loved Pickwick (and found Vanity Fair a bore!) for precisely the qualities that Machen relates. The sense of "ecstasy" in Pickwick - as well as that feeling of opening to a hidden realm of faery-like enchantment and beauty - is something that is seldom captured in such a striking fashion (especially in other novels of the period).

At the same time, one senses that Dickens lost that sense of the ecstatic as he grew older (in his later novels of the Great Expectations period, for example). In a similar way, the Wordsworth who wrote the "Immortality Ode" was not the same Wordsworth who wrote the "Ode to Duty." Alas, it is a stuggle to keep alive that youthful fire and sense of wonder! (Not impossible, but difficult. And I might add that neither Dickens nor Wordsworth had to live in an era of Reality television, general cultural degradation, etc.)

At any rate, I wonder if HPL ever read The Pickwick Papers? because I know he had in general little love for Dickens. But my guess is that he didn't, and that if he had read Pickwick, his opinion of Dickens would have been much higher, i.e., for the same reasons (the "weirdness" of the work, it's sense of "ecstasy", etc.) that Machen adumbrates.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 13 Sep 10 | 02:15AM by Dexterward.

Glad the post led to something worthwhile.

I have tried to use Google-books a few times, but can't figure out how to get to the actual text of a book!

Aside from the literary contents, I come to thinking a little more about that room setting for the book. My copy is small book with yellow boards. I don't know if the publishers actually thought about it, or if it's just me, but that yellow is a perfectly dynamic complimentary colour, that stands in contrast and therefore emphasizes the imaginary heavy crimson that occupies every page of the book. It vibrates into a delicious decadent rich crimson, that almost drips from, or presses off the paper as from sorcery.

Got it quite cheap too.

Do you like E.F. Benson? I started reading the first paragraph of The Man Who Went Too Far, and it seems interesting. I also looked at a few others, but their language sounded too didactic.

Do you like Sheridan Le Fanu?

In this article M.R. James celebrates Le Fanu. And he more or less dismisses E.A. Poe, saying that effective supernatural fiction and terror needs a base of everyday reality (much as Lovecraft argues), and that Poe only reads like a bad dream. Interesting point of view.
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~pardos/ArchiveLeFanu.html

I've always had a fondness for Le Fanu, and that has only become greater over the years. For some, I suppose, he might seem a bit too circuitous in his approach, but my experience has been that his stories only grow in power with rereading. They are often quite subtle in some of their implications, and one should read them carefully to appreciate their full effect. Also, Le Fanu blends the grotesque and comic with the horrific in a remarkably effective way -- something Lovecraft pointed out as being characteristic of the Irish weird tale, yet seemed to completely miss in Le Fanu; one of those (relatively few) instances where I have a strong disagreement with HPL when it comes to an assessment of a writer in the field. Even Le Fanu's "mystery" novels (like those of Wilkie Collins) have a strong hint of the supernatural woven into them, such as the diabolical nature of
Silas, the presence haunting Wylder's Hand, and the like. (I wouldn't, however, suggest his lengthy The House by the Cemetery as a good place to begin; that's something one should tackle once familiar with his style and approach.)

E. F. Benson is more uneven than Le Fanu, but nonetheless, I feel, repays reading. Some of his tales can also be read multiple time with growing pleasure, and his handling of certain concepts can be quite startling. His frequently anthologized "Caterpllars" and "Mrs. Amworth" are quite good, while "Negotium Perambulans" and "The Face" are classics in the field. I remember reading the collections The Room in the Tower and Visible and Invisible many years ago, and being quite favorably impressed with the majority of their contents. ("The Room in the Tower" is a rather good piece of its own, though more graphic in some of its imagery than some might like.) Overall, I would highly recommend Benson as one of the better of the "second tier" of writers of spectral tales.

James was, coming from his own aesthetic perspective, quite correct. Poe does tend to be more perfervid in his approach (part of his own aesthetic approach to such things); much less restrained in general, but by no means always unsubtle (although there are occasions...). However, I think James also tended to be a bit too narrow in his views on what makes effective weird or horror literature; a bit too fastidious at times when it comes to subject matter or a particular manner or style. But when it comes to Le Fanu, as regards the latter's abilities, he knew what he was talking about, and Le Fanu is a reading experience not to be missed.

(You might also enjoy reading what Jack Sullivan had to say about Le Fanu in his Elegant Nightmares: The English Ghost Story from Le Fanu to Blackwood. Some very good insights there.)

I would say Le Fanu is unsurpassed in subtle humor and subversiveness. UNCLE SILAS, built around one of the most delicious conceits in all of literature---that a man would risk his daughter's life and sanity to prove his brother is not the villain everyone else thinks he is---is hilarious, and probably among the most entertaining things you will ever read. And, of course, Le Fanu introduced the now universally accepted concept of lesbian vampires.

M. R. James is not the sort of writer or individual who could ever understand an author such as Poe. There's no evidence of which I am aware that James had any appreciation for poetry or poetic prose. Given James's taste for the pedestrian, in terms of style, and his generally prissy tastes, his obtuseness comes as no surprise, regarding Poe.

Jdworth is right: LeFanu's power is cumulative, without question. It took a while for his work to grow on me, but now I consider him to be the finest supernaturalist of his generation.

Jdworth's characterization of E. F. Benson as belonging to the second tier of weirdists is also accurate, I think. There's far better stuff out there to explore, first (de La Mare *cough* *cough*). "Negotium Perambulans" is far and away my favorite tale of Benson's, and it just misses the status of masterpiece, in my eyes, because of its slightly rushed ending.

A good summation, that. I would heartily agree that one should read De la Mare before Benson, but then I don't tend to put him in the second tier, really. Much of his prose work is of the finest grade: subtle, textured, bordering on (or transcending to) the sensitivity and delicate assurance of poetry. He takes a bit of getting used to, for most, because of those very qualities; but he is also a writer one can return to again and again.

Thanks for interesting thoughts on these authors. Le Fanu sounds like my cup of tea. I get the feeling that he is "profound". I will explore both Le Fanu and Benson, even though I really don't have room for more authors in my library... there are too many books already, waiting to be read. I will limit myself to five or six carefully selected stories by each of the two, based on a combination of reputation and overall reviews, and my own intuitive individual taste of subject.

I agree with your thoughts on James' perspective. In one sense he is right. On the other hand there is no denying the expressive mastery of Poe, and appreciation of his terror also depends on the reader's imagination and ability to dispel belief. Ultimately Poe is probably a greater artist than James, notwithstanding the latter's exquisite writing, for Poe works on the grand scale with archetypes, and only a select few geniuses are able to reach those heights.

Knygatin Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Le Fanu sounds like my cup of tea. I get the
> feeling that he is "profound".

Le Fanu is certainly not "profound" in the sense I suspect you mean. Essentially, he wrote black comedies of manners. Nothing about having transcendental experiences from looking at trees.

Although your characterization matches most portions of a novel like THE HOUSE BY THE CHURCHYARD and some aspects of several others, Jojo, I do not agree with you that Le Fanu essentially wrote black comedies of manners. I think this is too simple a view of the better early novels and do not agree with it at all if applied to the supernatural fiction. W. J. McCormack, Victor Sage, and James Walton have all argued convincingly that there is far going on in even the weakest of the novels than their conventional trappings would suggest, and several shorter studies have also pursued this line of thought.

There is a deep sense of spiritual wrong-ness in the supernatural works, a sense that a spiritual world has interpenetrated our own and that its denizens work by rules that we do not always recognize. Le Fanu has a very special take on Christianity, partially flavored by his reading of Swedenborg; but even his take on Swedenborg has its quirks. The justice at work in "Mr Justice Harbottle", "Squire Toby's Will", "Green Tea", "The Familar", "Ultor de Lacey", and even "Carmilla" (among a much longer list of candidates) is far from simplistic - each of the characters so that even Harbottle and Carmilla can be seen as victims of a vast system of spiritual agencies that dwarf their own enormities. To make matters worse, the supernatural threat is also prone to be reshaped and even aided by the victim's own psyche (see especially "The Familiar" and "Green Tea").

If you turn to the longest and most complex of the supernatural tales, the short novel THE HAUNTED BARONET, you embark on an even richer journey into the marvelous and terrible. Here, not only do the protagonists have to contend with an outside supernatural force, aided and abetted by their own psyche, but nature and the very landscape are among the conspirators.

I would argue that Le Fanu is profound, in fact one of the most profound masters of supernatural we have seen thus far. I believe he ranks alongside James Hogg, Henry James (when his circumlocutory prose does not betray him), Edioth Wharton, Walter de la Mare, Arthur Machen, A. E. Coppard, and a few others as among the most profound and thought-provoking writers of supernatural fiction in English.