Clive Barker

Fried Egg said:
Hmm...is that "Midnight Meat Train" that was in the first book of blood? Not sure I'd want to see that; it was a bit of a gore fest...
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Yeah. The film looks awesome. It's one of my favorite Barker stories, and Kitamura is a cool director.
 
The Midnight Meat Train is an awesome story, it was so sick and interesting that i couldnt stop reading despite how disgusting it got at times.


I have to see the movie.
 
It was not my favourite story in the first book of blood. Now if they were going to make a film from "The Yattering and Jack", now that would be interesting...
 
Fried Egg said:
It was not my favourite story in the first book of blood. Now if they were going to make a film from "The Yattering and Jack", now that would be interesting...
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I recall reading that in comic book form many years ago.
 
Am curious about the movie. As Fried Egg has pointed out, Midnight Meat Train is a gore fest so it'd be interesting to see how it works out as a movie. I've always liked stories like these about the great cities and the land they are built on.

Fried Egg ... yes Thief of Always is for young people and it's wonderfully done, drawings and all. And there's cats. There's a graphic novel too. :p
 
A little late coming to this thread I guess.
Imajica, more fantasy than horror, is definetly worth plowing through. The characters and creatures are some of the most intriguing I've come across in sf/f.
 
Making my way through "Books of Blood: Volume 3" and I'm feeling thoroughly grossed out. First there's "The Celluloid Son" and then "Rawhead Rex". They're gripping tales but I'm finding them just too repugnant and visceral.
 
What is Weaveworld and Imajica like? I enjoyed The Great and Secret Show quite a bit, I need to get Everville (is Everville any good?)
 
I haven't read "Imajica" but I have "Weaveworld". Everyone I know who's read it says that it's great but I wasn't overly keen. For me it fell between two stools, not being very good horror or fantasy.
 
Fried Egg said:
Making my way through "Books of Blood: Volume 3" and I'm feeling thoroughly grossed out. First there's "The Celluloid Son" and then "Rawhead Rex". They're gripping tales but I'm finding them just too repugnant and visceral.
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It's been a loooooong time on this one (I read the books -- all six -- just after the last was released) but, as I recall, this was one of the weakest of the collections as a whole... but I will say that I remember "Human Remains" very favorably -- largely, I think, because Barker manages to blend the horror aspects with a great deal of pathos in that one, and I find those are often the tales of his which stick with me most, and touch me the most deeply.

Mind you, I'm not a big fan of Barker. I've nothing particularly against him; I just don't think he's all that good, generally speaking. He can indeed "grip", but I find too much of his work shallow; it doesn't "stick", in that it doesn't have much depth, substance, or repeatability. By that last, I mean it depends far too much on the "in-your-face" shock value rather than good, solid storytelling of a sort where you can go back time and again and find new, richer levels to the tale with each visit. (Again, this is a generalization. There are most definitely exceptions, even in this early work -- The Damnation Game, to me, being high on that list, even if it does remind me strongly at times of Melmoth the Wanderer.)

But, to give him his due, when he's good, he can be very, very good; and those tales most definitely deserve a hearing, especially from readers who are more thoughtful and looking for something other than having viscera thrown at them. Barker is too prone to that, I fear; but when he settles down to actually telling a story with substance, he can do a fine job, and there is at least one such in the third of the Books of Blood.
 
I'll carry on ploughing through them, no doubt. After reading a story like "Rawhead Rex", I can't help comparing how Lovecraft might have handled a similar premise so differently. Instead of unleashing the beast at the beginning of the tale, revealing the horror of it directly to the reader through it's actions, I think that he would have built up the horror more gradually, revealing it's horror indirectly through the discovery of ancient documents and folklore. I think also more would have been found out about the history of the village and it's dealings with such beasts. Certainly the sexualisation and deffecation side of things would have been absent.
 
Undoubtedly. And, in my view, there is a certain amount of dross in those elements which detract from the tale. A fair amount was gratuitous and served no purpose save the meretricious one of shock for shock's sake. I've no real problem with such elements, as long as they serve some purpose beyond that, but I find that to be a very shallow effect when working alone -- it reminds me of (to follow on your comments) someone exposing their genitalia or defecating in public just to get the reaction (and therefore immediate attention), rather than having any inherent necessity of the material being there, or serving both a literal and symbolic purpose, in many cases. (Not all, though. Barker does play on that at times, but not always well. Sometimes the symbolic layers are just too obvious, as if he's anxious that the reader note them, so he feels he has to hit one over the head with them. At other times, he lets them work for themselves, and that is when I think they are more powerful, as they genuinely do tend to play on multiple emotions.)
 
The only thing I read of Barker's, as I previously noted, was Weaveworld, which wasn't my type of thing, largely because the "horror" aspects of that novel, what little there were, were based largely on descriptions of misshapen products of ghostly sex . I found those passages realy unmemorable and kind of ridiculous , and the overall feel was much more of a fantasy , as noted by the author himself, but aside from scenes within the carpet itself , I found the things inbetween prety mediocre . To top it off the scene with the final "monstrosity" was marred by the necessity to have a character "sh*t out" fire , and prety much wasting lots of potential that thing had from the description of that huge wall in the desert behind where it was originaly held .
 
I just started reading The Damnation Game and i must say he starts it strongly writing wise. I have no clue what its about since i have only a vague idea know of what its about.

I bought this book because i liked his short stories in Books of Blood. Not all great stories but he showed enough potential to try a novel.
 
I've read a few of his books. I have to say that i enjoyed Weaveworld immensely and consider it one of my favourite books. I really enjoyed the Grerat and Secret Show too. Other than that, i've not really enjoyed his works that much to be honest.
 
I think, Lobo, that's where a lot of the problems come in. He is fine up to a certain point, then takes it to excess, at which point it ceases to impress or stir anything other than a feeling of the ludicrous. Now, excess is fine, as long as the writer himself never loses control of it. But once it crosses that boundary, the illusion is broken, and the thing at best has a maimed life to it, and will always disappoint to some degree.

At his best, Barker is very good indeed. The problem is that his best is often mated to his worst (or sometimes his mediocre), which is a pity, as he really does have some magnificent ideas and some superb writing in his work.
 
Then there was the romanticism in that book .

You would think after 700 odd pages, you would feel more satisfaction .
 
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