Forgive me if this has been mentioned elsewhere already, but I just noticed that Julian Osgood's Field's ("X.L.") The Devil or Nothing is now available for purchase, from a print-on-demand publisher on Amazon and eBay. Prices range from $19.99-$30.00. I haven't ordered yet, so I'm not sure of the quality. Certainly a better price than $1,000.00 for the original.

Does new fiction recognized by S.T. Joshi count? I just put a post on today for my book put out by Hippocampus, on Amazon, titled "Seven Deadly Pleasures." If you were just looking for classics I apologize for the intrusion.
Mike Aronovitz

Since Christmas, and through cold winter nights, I have been reading stories by M.R. James. What an intelligent, cultivated, man! These stories are excursions into subtlety and refinement. He draws upon an acquired knowledge of Christian church culture, the academic class, and the field of witchcraft and the supernatural. He has a sharp eye for human behaviour, and motive, and involuntary manners. And doesn't shy away from the grimy, the nastiest, most ugly and disturbing sides in Man either. His observations are never conventional, but have the unique complexity and variety of real life, including its seemingly accidental deviations. Only a true gentleman could write as generously as he does. No sloppiness here.

There isn't much of graphically overt horrors and fantasy, like in Lovecraft and Smith, although weird visuals strike in small doses on measured occasions. The quality here works instead purely on subtle planes and in the implications that are awakened as parts of a story ad up, and everything falls in place, and as I reflect on it afterwards I gradually get rising shivers because the scope of what it reveals can be quite nasty in its grimness and violate the mind's accepted normal boundaries.

Much of the joy in reading it, is simply from the astounding exactness with which things evolve. Every sentence seems essential. And every section falls in place and locks into the whole, in a beautifully organical life-like, but artistically intensified, manner. It is never boring to read these stories.
I recently read Martin's Close, and it has a wonderful fictive 17th century court report of a murder trial, documenting everything said. It is remarkable in itself. This ghost story centers around a man who, at a Christmas gathering, meets a retarded overweight young girl, whom he seduces, and uses sexually. She becomes attached to him, and whenever he comes around, "she would stand and jump up and down and clap her arms like a goose". He eventually tires of her, because she interferes with his chances on a more well-bred woman he wants, and leads her out on a moor, slits her throat, and drops her in a pond.... Pretty creepy stuff.

I can see and appreciate that both Lovecraft and Smith were inspired by James's work. I believe Lovecraft must have read Canon Alberic's Scrapbook before he wrote The Festival. I think he also got his using of imitation local vulgar speech, like in The Shadow Over Innsmouth, from James.
Smith surely must have read The Treasure of Abbot Thomas, before he wrote The Weird of Avoosl Wuthoqquan.

Oh, and I forgot to mention, that the way M.R. James handles the supernatural elements, has, to me at least, a completely believable documentary nature, as though taken from actual experience. The character of these elements and the way they are integrated is completely convincing. In spite of their transcending natural laws. I think James believed in these things, and even had personal experiences of it or knew others who had. At any rate he understands the essence of it.

A nice bit on James there. It is just possible that "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" was influenced by James in this way, but unlikely. But no, the others certainly were not, as he had already begun using such dialect as early as "The Picture in the House" written 12 December 1920, and he did not discover the work of M. R. James until mid-December 1925 (see, e.g., Letters from New York, p. 253). The most likely source for Lovecraft's peculiar dialect for his characters was, as Jason Eckhart (if I recall correctly) pointed out, James Russell Lowell's Biglow Papers, where the dialect is strikingly similar:

[www.gutenberg.org]

This would also make sense given the fact that Lovecraft himself noted that rural people he encountered didn't sound particularly different from others within the same region (SLII.293-94), and his dialect itself represents an extreme form of speech which had long since died out; in other words, the very speech of his characters in such tales emphasises their displacement in time, as it were... not merely their isolation from the world around them, but the fact that the past itself still is a living thing in such regions; a distortion or disruption of the normal chronological flow quite fitting to his favorite subject of "conflict with time".

That said, James obviously caught HPL's imagination and admiration, and I think some of the points you raise have much to do with that....

CAS's reading of James's work came via Lovecraft. CAS first mentions having read James in a letter to Lovecraft dated February 1931. "The Weird of Avoosl Wuthoqquan" was completed in November 1931. The possibility of influence exists, but there is a pretty slim window, I think.

Knygatin is absolutely right, I think, that James believed to some degree in supernatural phenomena, although his public comments on the matter were coy. On the other hand, given James's unfortunate propensity for "rough-housing" with other males, and his dishy comments in his letter about Lovecraft, how much of a "gentleman" he was is open to debate.

Aspects of James's writing caught Lovecraft's imagination, certainly (witness the bizarrely disproportionate re-telling of nearly the entire plot of "Count Magnus" in Supernatural Horror in Literature), but, if I am remembering correctly, Lovecraft also in his letters criticized James's pedestrian style and his lack of a cosmic imagination.

Ach... I must be going completely senile... I should have made the point about "The Festival" in particular... this one, also, could not have been influenced by James, as it was written in October 1923, more than two years before HPL's discovery of the British master of the ghostly tale.

However, such instances of parallelism are far from infrequent in literature, and there are several such scattered throughout Lovecraft's work alone. Not influence or -- lest someone raise the possibility -- plagiarism, but a similarity in ideas and/or development of themes such as one finds even with such work with relative frequency....

Absquatch Wrote:
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> if I am remembering correctly,
> Lovecraft also in his letters criticized James's
> pedestrian style and his lack of a cosmic
> imagination.

Well, yes he did criticize him about the latter, but not the former -- at least, not so far as I have been able to find. Here are the relevant references to James, dating from Oct. 1930, when the first real critical comment about James appears, to Feb. 1937:

Quote:

In literature we can easily see the cosmic quality in Poe, Maturin, Dunsany, de la Mare, & Blackwood, but I profoundly suspect the cosmicism of Bierce, James, & even Machen.

-- SLIII.196 (17 Oct. 1930)

Quote:

I make no claim to membership in the first rank of weird writers -- a rank represented by Poe among the dead, & by Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, Walter de la Mare, Lord Dunsany, & Montague Rhodes James among the living.

-- SLIII.379 (19 June 1931)

Quote:

About M. R. James -- I think I can see what you mean, but can't classify him quite as low as you do. And if you can't see his utter, prodigious, & literarily incalculable superiority to the W. T. plodders I must again urge you to give your sense of appreciation a radical analysis & overhauling. James has a sense of dramatic values & an eye for hideous intrusions upon the commonplace that none of the pulp groundlings coul even approach if they tried all their pitiful lives. But I'll concede he isn't really in the Machen, Blackwood, & Dunsany class. He is the earthiest member of the big four.

-- SLIV.15 (5 Feb., 1932)

Quote:

My favourite authors -- aside from the Graego-Roman classics & the English poets & essayists of the 18th century -- are Poe, Dunsany, Machen, Blackwood, M. R. James, Walter de la Mare, & others of that type.

-- SLIV.383 (13 Feb. 1934)

Quote:

As a rule, I don't think that a comic or flippant style -- or one with much satire -- mixes well with the weird. Dunsany has lost power through giving over too extensively to humour, & Cabell's weird touches are pallid for the same reason. .......... M. R. James joins the brisk, the light, & the commonplace to the weird about as well as anyone could do it -- but if another tried the same method, the chances would be ten to one against him. The most valuable element in him -- as a model -- is his way of weaving a horror into the every-day fabric of life & history -- having it grow naturally out of the myriad conditions of an ordinary environment.

-- SLV.119-20 (6 Mar. 1935)

Quote:

I always endeavour to read and analyse the best weird writers -- Poe, Machen, Blackwood, James, Dunsany, de la Mare, Wakefield, Benson, Ewers, & the like -- seeking to understand their methods & recognise the specific laws of emotional modulation behind their potent effects.

-- SLV.204 (4 Oct. 1935)

Quote:

If you want to see real artists in fantasy, look outside the magazine field -- at Dunsany, Blackwood, Poe, Machen, de la Mare, Bierce, the late M. R. James, etc.

-- SLV.304 (1 Sept. 1936)

Quote:

What I miss in Machen, James, Dunsany, de la Mare, Shiel, and even Blackwood and Poe, is a sense of the cosmic.

-- SLV.341 (9 Nov. 1936)

Quote:

Abe Merritt -- who could have been a Machen or Blackwood or Dunsany or de la Mare or M. R. James (they never gave in & truckled to the Golden Calf![...])
[...]Machen & Dunsany & James would not learn the tricks -- & they have a record of genuine creative achievement beside which a whole library-full of cheap Ships of Ishtar & Creep, Shadows remains essentially negligible.

-- SLV.400-01 (7 Feb.[?] 1937)

So, while Lovecraft felt James lacked the cosmic, his opinion of his general artistry remained high until the former's death. This does not specifically mention style, but the comments on James' standing as a real artist of the weird and his ability to derive such effects from the commonplace would seem to veer in that direction to some degree.

Hmmm... had some problem with the formatting of quotes on that post... odd......

jdworth Wrote:
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> Hmmm... had some problem with the formatting of
> quotes on that post... odd......


I fixed it for you.

Yes, I checked, and it was actually CAS who used the word pedestrian to describe James's style, and not Lovecraft. Lovecraft, however, politely intimates largely the same charge, however, in his Supernatural Horror in Literature (and not in the letters; again, my faulty memory):

Quote:

He is an artist in incident and arrangement rather than in atmosphere, and reaches the emotions more often through the intellect than directly. This method, of course, with its occasional absences of sharp climax, has its drawbacks as well as its advantages; and many will miss the thorough atmospheric tension which writers like Machen are careful to build up with words and scenes. But only a few of the tales are open to the charge of tameness. Generally the laconic unfolding of abnormal events in adroit order is amply sufficient to produce the desired effect of cumulative horror.

Again, none of this is to suggest that Lovecraft did not hold James in overall high regard.

Boyd Wrote:
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> jdworth Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Hmmm... had some problem with the formatting of
> > quotes on that post... odd......
>
>
> I fixed it for you.

Many thanks!

The following one is probably not weird at all, but may be of some interest.

Has anyone of you read Knut Hamsun's Pan?

Here are some reader's comments:

"Pan begins as a nature story - detailed, lush, knowledgeable descriptions of nature, of living a solitary existence, of feeding off the forest and sea. Phrases such as "there was a sweet sulphurous smell from the old leaves rotting in the woods" lull the reader into an expectation of a pastoral romance novel. This is anything but. It is, rather, an exploration of the relationship of the solitary Lt. Glahn with two women in particular and society in general. Lt. Glahn is socially inept and impulsive. The two women? One is servile and unavailable; the other, more interested in the power of the chase than the capture. The resulting story is an intriguing study of human emotions, of motivation and of the honesty of self-revelation.


Pan is a short, terse, novel about a reclusive "wild" man, Lieutenant Thomas Glahn, gifted with sexual charisma who idealizes nature and himself but is blind to his arrested development, his cruelty, and his enslavement to his own compulsive actions, which, as the novel progresses, have tragic consequences. By showing the disparity between Glahn's perception of himself, which is rather romantic and lofty, with the "other" Glahn, the uncouth, abrasive one who clashes with other people, Knut Hamsun succeeds in writing an ambiguous, mysterious fable about the conflict between solitude and civilization, and how the "self" cannot be defined in its isolated state."

As much as I enjoy C.A. Smith, Lovecraft, Hodgson, Machen, M.R. James, Dunsany, Merritt, and others, I have arrived at the conclusion that Algernon Blackwood must be the finest writer when it comes to genuinely weird and cosmic atmosphere. This has been firmly established in my mind after having read the collection Ancient Sorceries and Other Weird Stories.

I like his paganistic Nature tales especially.

I am putting together my own book of specially selected Blackwood stories difficult to find in print but still of high quality. A few are found in collections attached to bunches of others. Many exist in files on the Internet, but while some of the pdf files can be read they are prohibited from being printed onto paper, which is a real bummer.

Knygatin Wrote:
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> while some of
> the pdf files can be read they are prohibited from
> being printed onto paper, which is a real bummer.


Heh! Anything can be solved with a little Googling:
[freemypdf.com]