Jim,
I'm also very fond of De la Mare and have been making my way through Volume 1 of the Giles dlM collections recently, partly rereading and partly filling in gaps.
I do find de la Mare a very difficult (or perhaps demanding is better) read, I can make no sense of his work if I'm tired, I really have to be awake to tackle him. Whereas I can enjoy e.g. Aickman even while sleepy.
From my recent reading standout tales for me were:
"the Three Friends" (sadly overlooked for the Tartarus volume)
"Lispet, Lispett & Vaine"*
"the Tree" (which I hadn't read before)
"Miss Duveen"**
"Missing"**
"Mr Kempe"
I also enjoyed "Out of the Deep" much more than on previous visits. I'm about 1/3rd of the way into "the Connoisseur & Other Stories" but have skipped over "Seaton's Aunt"** until later.
I think Ding Dong Bell reads like too much of the same thing although I have enjoyed Strangers & pilgrims in the past when read in isolation.
One thing that I hadn't noticed before was quite how many of dlm's tales occur in conversations between strangers, frequently in pubs, cafes, railway waiting rooms, even graveyards : e.g. mr kempe, crewe, strangers & pilgrims and missing. Others are conversations between friends: the Three friends (in a pub), LL&V, or are largerly inner monologues: e.g. A nap. Strangers & pilgrims indeed!
*Mark Valentine's beautiful tale "the White Company" from the Ash-Tree Press anthology "At Ease with the Dead" (reprinted in MV's magnificent "Nightfarers" from ex occidente) struck me as channeling perfectly the spirit of dlm's approach (I'm sure this was deliberate on Mark's part). Rereading LL&V convinced me that this story was the model and inspiration for mark's tale. I think MV distils the best of dlm and Machen into his own writing and his work easily stands alongside the best writing of the earlier authors. (For anyone who hasn't read Mark Valentine, Tartarus Press recently published a pb omnibus of his stories based around the psychic detective "the Connoisseur", whose name it now occurs to me
may have been a nod towards dlm?)
** There is a very interesting essay by Russell Hoban discussing these three tales here:
[
www.walterdelamare.co.uk]
Bernard Capes is another fine read, not quite as difficult as dlm (well apart from "A Gallows Bird" and "Accursed Cordonnier" :-) An Eddy on the Floor is a marvelous, and rather nasty, ghost story, my other favourites are probably "the Green Bottle" & "Moonstricken"
Cheers - Chris
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 5 Nov 10 | 09:04AM by cw67q.