In my experience, gender can also be guessed at with some accuracy through examination of handwriting (of course, this method is by no means foolproof). As far as I've seen, females tend to have larger, rounder, neater handwriting--mine, in contrast, is small, drawn out horizontally, and often difficult to decipher (for people other than myself). I simply found it interesting that my gender was guessed through my commentary/syntax/word choice alone--I'm sure males employ a different frequency of certain types of words than females. Must be some sort of subconscious process going on.

But to get back on topic...I read H. R. Wakefield's "Old Man's Beard," and found it penetratingly weird. The main horror of the story is pretty original (excepting the closeness of the hair theme to a certain James story). I value originality very, very highly in weird fiction (I just read a minor Lovecraft revision, "The Trap," which is painfully similar to a lesser known Blackwood tale, whose name I cannot recall at the moment). The story, like many of James', is very mundane in setting and tone, and the shocks particularlly sharp because of it. The only major gripe I had with "Old Man's Beard" was that it was very slow to start up, dwelling excessively on characterization where some sort of action should have been mixed in--but once it got going, it quickly progressed into a rather weirdly delicious tale. (If I was a magazine editor, and Wakefield sent me that tale, I would get very excited--but demand something be done abut that intro--nothing whatever of a hook is present).



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 23 Aug 11 | 04:37PM by K_A_Opperman.

Jim, if you're out there, which of the stories in H. R. Wakefield's collection "Ghost Stories" were the few duds you earlier alluded to? And if you care to elaborate, which are the highlights? I might possibly acquire this volume in the near future, and I'm weighing the pros and cons...

Any illumination you might provide would be greatly appreciated, as there's no easy way to ascertain such info...

Ka,

"Used Car" is laughably bad. "Knock! Knock Who's There?", "The Red Hand", and "A Coincidence at Hunton" are not bad, but either ordinary/predictable in theme or a little disappointing in development.

"Nurse's Tale" is one about which people I know are divided, and I feel differently about it on different readings. The situation and setting are clearly inspired by M. R. James, but the prose, development, and characterization are just as clearly Wakefield's. Some find this jarring, some refreshing. I like it though I cannot help wondering how James or one of the writers more closely associated with him may have developed it.

Jim

Thanks Jim!--but some further interrogation (if you'd be so kind to submit to it): in your opinion, is the volume worth acquiring--for around 20 bucks? And how does the volume as a whole stack up against the 1978 Best Of volume edited by Dalby? On the one hand, it is rare--always alluring!--but the quality of the stories is an important factor as well...

As a side note, I read "The Red Lodge" last night. Not bad, really--certainly entertaining--but not the best story I've ever read--nowhere near the worst, though! I suppose being a poet makes me slightly biased against prose which isn't gushing with vivid description. Still, there were some passages that I liked--this one in particular stayed with me:

"With the dusk came that sense of being watched, waited for, followed about, plotted against, an atmosphere of quiet, hunting malignancy." It is not particularly poetic--and yet it says exactly what it needs to say. That, I can appreciate. Very economical, very effective. It also has a claustrophobic quality, being so deft a passage, which is highly appropriate.

Overall, Wakefield gives me a very Jamesian impression--a good thing. And the business of "the green monkey" echoes a certain Le Fanu tale of which I am extremely fond, and which actually frightened me a bit, unlike most supernatural fiction, which merely entertains (Lovecraft has accomplished this for me too, at times--a great accomplishment. To frighten with mere words is not easy...)

But I am rambling!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 31 Aug 11 | 06:23PM by K_A_Opperman.

Definitely worth acquiring for that price or any other price you consider reasonable. I think it is equal in worth to Dalby's volume. I think all of the collections are worth reading, if you can find them in libraries or inexpensively use. The least successful of the collections, as a whole (the best stories tend to be reprinted in other collections - "The Central Figure", "Day-Dream in Macedon"; "Frontier Guards","Epilogue by Roger Bantock", "Damp Sheets") is the evocatively titled IMAGINE A MAN IN A BOX, which includes some science fiction and a fewer lighter pieces, none of which (for me) aged very well.


The prose in "The Red Lodge" is a little crude perhaps, but I think the story as a whole is very effective - pacing, imagery, atmosphere. This scared the wits out of me when I first read it, at about 13 or so, in MORE TALES TO TREMBLE BY. At his best Wakefield works at almost a subconscious level, which lends a slippery, queasy quality to some of the late ambiguous tales - like seeing something out of the corner of the eye that does not quite make sense yet still gives us a visceral sense of unease, bordering on panic.

Jim

Thanks, Jim. And I agree that "The Red Lodge" overall is a success, and certainly effective--but in reading Wakefield's brand of prose (at least in that story), I often feel like just a smidge more description could go a long way toward filling in the picture. Of course, staying vague regarding paranormal phenomena is a smart thing to do--as they often present themselves fleetingly and vaguely...and the way in which "The Red Lodge" is told, I suppose, is somewhat like the common man would relate it--lending a good balance of realism. There is a humorous (but necessary) irony that people who record (fictional) supernatural events are usually amazingly adept writers... Perhaps writers are especially susceptible to hauntings?

jimrockhill2001 Wrote:

> This scared the wits out of me when I first read it, at
> about 13 or so, in MORE TALES TO TREMBLE BY.

Yes! I'm delighted to hear of someone else who had the same reaction to this long-forgotten anthology (published by THE READER'S DIGEST if I remember correctly). I must have come across it when I was eight or nine--when I was reading every spooky book in the children's section of my local library. The librarian reassured my worried mother that many children went through this phase in their reading careers, and that it probably wouldn't last too long. Hah! As you can see, she was wrong in my case.

It was about then that I first stumbled upon Smith's story THE UNCHARTED ISLE in some collection whose title, unfortunately, escapes me. I had only come across a comparable sense of dislocation in a few of Edgar Allan Poe's stories. That bewildering sense of 'wrongness' I found unforgettable, even though it was about ten years before I came across another story by CAS. (That was UBBO-SATHLA in TALES OF THE CTHULHU MYTHOS, in case you were curious).

Does anyone out there remember ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S MONSTER MUSEUM (edited by Robert Arthur), MONSTER FESTIVAL (edited by Eric Protter and illustrated by Edward Gorey) or FAMOUS MONSTER TALES (collected by Basil Davenport)?

Yes, I must admit that I'm glad to see that title again myself. That and its predecessor were among my earliest acquisitions in the field (aside from a collection of Poe and an anthology entitled Ghosts and Things, edited by Hal Cantor), when I was between eight and twelve, and yes, several of the stories in there gave me the willies. I reacquired them about six years ago, out of sheer sentimentalism, and find that they remain, on the whole, fine anthologies. (The edition I have is that put out by Whitman publishing company: Tales to Tremble By was published in 1966, More Tales to Tremble By in 1968.) For anyone interested, the contents are:

Tales to Tremble By:
"The Hand", by Guy de Maupassant
"The Middle Toe of the Right Foot", by Ambrose Bierce
"No. 1 Branch Line, The Signalman", by Charles Dickens
"Adventure of the German Student", by Washington Irving
"The Sutor of Selkirk", Anonymous
"The Upper Berth", by F. Marion Crawford
"The Judge's House", by Bram Stoker

More Tales to Tremble By:
"The Red Lodge", by H. Russell Wakefield
"Sredni Vashtar", by Saki
"Thurnley Abbey", by Perceval Landon
"God Grante That She Lye Stille", by Cynthia Asquith
"The Voice in the Night", by William Hope Hodgson
"The Extra Passenger", by August Derleth
"Casting the Runes", by M. R. James
"The Book", by Margaret Irwin

Not at all a bad selection to introduce some quality weird writing to the younger generation... if they've the attention span for it....

I have read a few of those stories...good stuff.

By the way, I am part of the younger generation (24 in a few days), and there is hardly anything in my mind besides weird literature (overexaggeration)--and, I have an invincible attention span. However, I realize that I am the exception. I almost never watch television, and read, write, and practice music daily.

Since this is an H. R. Wakefield thread, I'll mention--for whoever cares--that I finished reading "He Cometh and He Passeth By" today, and found it a thoroughly entertaining story. The prose style was much improved from "The Red Lodge." True, it is largely a ripoff of James' "Casting the Runes"--and yet, there is enough to make it original. I particularly enjoyed the tense psychic standoffs between the protagonist and the villain. A very enjoyable read! I'm looking forward to finishing the Dalby collection.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 4 Sep 11 | 01:29AM by K_A_Opperman.

Yes, I've known some quite young people who are devoted readers, even of the older (eighteenth and nineteenth century) writers, just as I've run across those who are enthusiasts of the silent era in cinema; so it isn't intended as a blanket statement, simply a qualification. After all, when I first encountered the books mentioned above, I was part of a "younger generation" which also showed little tendency for such things....

I have yet to read "He Cometh and He Passeth By," which isn't in the three volumes I have (JUMBEE, WEST INDIA LIGHTS, PASSING OF A GOD), and I'm becoming a bit frantic. I have been devouring Whitehead of late as he and his weird fiction play a key role in the book I am preparing to write. It's frustrating that so little is known of him. I was hoping for a few pages devoted to him in the Centipede Press book, CONVERSATIONS WITH THE WEIRD TALE CIRCLE, and was hugely deflated to find but a mere ten-line paragraph in the back section, "Other Voices." The few "facts" that we have concerning him seem confused and unreliable. A man of mystery, indeed.

"I'm a little girl."
--H. P. Lovecraft, Esq.

I have been clued in to why I cannot find the story I am looking for, for in my dotage I have confus'd Whitehead with Wakefield. It's sad, how things fall apart when one grows aged.

"I'm a little girl."
--H. P. Lovecraft, Esq.