William Hope Hodgson reprints

[Connavar]

No i havent read anything of Muagham. Wasnt he a non-genre writer ? The books i see at the library of his say he was mainstream lit in the bio info.

Speaking about Hodgson i must say Carnacki Ghost-Finder stories was well written but a bit dissapointing compared to my expectations. The supernatural horror,terror level,the way he builds it up is not near as good as his Sea monster stories.

One of the Carnacki stories feature a sea monster according to introduction to the collection. I wonder which, J.D do you know which story ?

 

[j d worthington]

To be honest, Connavar, I don't. I haven't read the Carnacki stories in nearly 30 years, so they're rather jumbled in my memory at this point....

 

[Connavar]

Heh thats understandable.

Carnacki is perfectly good ghost stories,detective stories.

But i wanted the same feeling,excitment i got from stories like From a Tideless Sea. So much feeling,atmosphere to that story. Even the technique of the letter telling story was interesting. I read House of The Borderland use that too.

Enough is enough time to get Nightshade volume 1 to get my fix.

 

[Lobolover]

Fried Egg : Before you say anything, try to read some of "The Night Land" . Because if your atention span is exceeded by the more or less short and fluent house, well, I would throw a quote from Dante in your direction, but we all generaly know which one that would be

 

[j d worthington]

Enough is enough time to get Nightshade volume 1 to get my fix.

And thus we witness the beginning of the downfall of Connavar....

 

[Lobolover]

Your mortal soul will be a delight .

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

I just wanted to throw my 2 cents in and mention that THE MAGICIAN by Somerset Maugham is a pretty superb novel with a phantasmagoric climax that matches the nightmarish impact of the subterranean parade in HPL's 'Under The Pyramids'. It easily beats Crowley's own novel of the occult, MOONCHILD for what it's worth. Maugham was a very versatile (and very fine) writer; this was his only foray into horror as far as I know, but a very creditable one indeed. Many of his other works deal with the dark sides of human nature too, although without the magickal trappings found here.

 

[Connavar]

I read,enjoyed The House on the Borderlands with the story of the elderly man who lived alone with his sister and their pets. The book so hauntingly conveyed a sense of terrible loneliness and isolation that made me like the story. The ending was a very fitting end.

The cosmic melodrama,the travel through time,space near the end of the novel was so hard to read and almost destroyed a good story.

 

[j d worthington]

That's an interesting take, Connavar. I'd have said that was one of the books' strengths, where Hodgson really took off and gave the story breathtaking scope....

 

[Connavar]

That's an interesting take, Connavar. I'd have said that was one of the books' strengths, where Hodgson really took off and gave the story breathtaking scope....

I enjoyed the first cosmic trip when he left earth went to that place with the plain,the other version of the house swine things. That was wonderfully so weird. The real cosmic trip through space,time through that took million of years didnt really pay off. Those pages feel out of place in the story. When he went back to that plain,house in the end,the ending was better.

I felt it did give scope but he went off too much. I meant not much interesting happened with those different suns,planets.

For the first time Hodgson was hard to read in that part of the story. His strenght is often his vivid writing,stories that you cant put your eyes away for a sec.

 

[j d worthington]

I suppose we are just coming at things from different perspectives, then. It sounds to me as if you are more caught up by the immediate, action-oriented prose with a strongly human element, whereas I found the contrast with the cosmic voyaging to be complementary to that, but also extremely stirring to my imagination, quite breathtaking.

I will agree, however, that that section of the novel can be a bit difficult at times in terms of the writing, albeit that may be a faulty memory from more than twenty years ago....

 

[Connavar]

I suppose we are just coming at things from different perspectives, then. It sounds to me as if you are more caught up by the immediate, action-oriented prose with a strongly human element, whereas I found the contrast with the cosmic voyaging to be complementary to that, but also extremely stirring to my imagination, quite breathtaking.

I will agree, however, that that section of the novel can be a bit difficult at times in terms of the writing, albeit that may be a faulty memory from more than twenty years ago....

I dont mind cosmic voyaging i actually looked forward to that part. It was just writing wise it was weak by a writer i expect alot from in this kind of story. It was a distraction from the actual story. I dont prefer action-orinted prose,human emotion it was just that part of the story had the quality i expected to read.

You dont have faulty memory it was very difficult in terms of writing and for the reader. I was close to skipping it.

I hope he has similar cosmic voyaging in other stories but better writing so i can enjoy it. It can be imaginative,breataking and that what i want to read.

 

[Fried Egg]

Well, I'm about 120 pages through a complete an unabridged version of "The Night Land". Boy, is it turgid? It's not just the weird psudo-archaic prose (that just doesn't flow) but the style of the narrative which is largely dry, uninterupted exposition in the first person. Almost every single paragraph begins with the word: "And". There's hardly any dialogue; I've probably encountered a handful of lines in all the pages I've read so far.

He does paint a fascinating picture of a bleak and desolate world in our distant future but it could be so better explored with a more engaging narrative style. Here is an exerpt taken from a very long description of the landscape surrounding the pyramid near the beginning:

"And so I could go on ever; but that I fear to weary; and yet, whether I do weary, or not, I must tell of this country that I see, even now as I set my thoughts down, so plainly that my memory wanders in a hushed and secret fashion along its starkness, and amid its strange and dread habitants, so that it is but by an effort I realise me that my body is not there in this very moment that I write. And so to further tellings..."

Boy, do I wish I had the incomplete, abridged version...

 

[j d worthington]

I must admit that I never had quite that kind of trouble with it; while it does have a certain turgid quality, I didn't find it nearly that irritating for that point. nor for the somewhat abstract concepts of the horrors of the Night Land itself (something which tends to annoy others); but I did find the pseudo-archaism annoying and clumsy. Perhaps it is just that I have read enough from such a period where the falseness of this approach just stuck out like a sore thumb (as the saying goes), or perhaps it was just the sheer clumsiness of his attempt on its own. Either way, this one may be the most powerful of his works conceptually, but it is also (unfortunately) one of the weakest stylistically.

I'd say it still deserves its reputation -- much as do, say, the works of David Lindsay, who was also often quite clumsy stylistically -- but that is most definitely in spite of its faults; and that latter may simply be too much for many people to overcome.

Lin Carter did a two-volume abridged (and, as I recall, somewhat stylistically modified) version of this novel for the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series from the 1970s, if you can find it....

 

[Fried Egg]

It's just not getting any better. I'm half way through now and he's just met up with Mirdath. Now instead of seeing some dialogue the protagonist only tells us of what was said, thereby keeping the reader in the position of someone listening to or reading the narrator's account after the event rather than putting us in the scene. This is just an example of how the narrative style only serves to distance us from the characters and the story.

I may yet give it up but getting past the half way point makes me feel better.

 

[BAYLOR]

Well, I'm about 120 pages through a complete an unabridged version of "The Night Land". Boy, is it turgid? It's not just the weird psudo-archaic prose (that just doesn't flow) but the style of the narrative which is largely dry, uninterupted exposition in the first person. Almost every single paragraph begins with the word: "And". There's hardly any dialogue; I've probably encountered a handful of lines in all the pages I've read so far.

He does paint a fascinating picture of a bleak and desolate world in our distant future but it could be so better explored with a more engaging narrative style. Here is an exerpt taken from a very long description of the landscape surrounding the pyramid near the beginning:

"And so I could go on ever; but that I fear to weary; and yet, whether I do weary, or not, I must tell of this country that I see, even now as I set my thoughts down, so plainly that my memory wanders in a hushed and secret fashion along its starkness, and amid its strange and dread habitants, so that it is but by an effort I realise me that my body is not there in this very moment that I write. And so to further tellings..."

Boy, do I wish I had the incomplete, abridged version...

It took me about i month read this book. It has great imagery and it has great story elements but The writing style is godawful, It's pseudo 17th century prose and dialogue renders this book useless and inaccessible to all but the most determined readers. Hodgson would have been better off to have written the novel in a more reader accessible style.

 

[j d worthington]

It took me about i month read this book. It has great imagery and it has great story elements but The writing style is godawful, It's pseudo 17th century prose and dialogue renders this book useless and inaccessible to all but the most determined readers. Hodgson would have been better off to have written the novel in a more reader accessible style.

Unfortunately, that would have completely destroyed what Hodgson was attempting to do: to deliver these visions of the future through the eyes of a man of even our past, a past in many ways as remote from us as the future he is describing. Let's not forget that the narrator isn't the man of the future as such, but that man's "soul" as filtered through someone who simply is incapable of understanding what it is he is experiencing. What would have been better would have been for Hodgson to have either learned the proper idiom himself (an arduous and extremely time-consuming effort) or to have collaborated with someone who did know it well and who could temper his use of such archaisms. As is, it isn't even proper pseudo-17th century, it is a hodgepodge of his own creation which frankly fails to anyone who has read even a modicum of such. Even HPL severely took him to task for this aspect, albeit being enormously taken by the feat of imagination the tale itself represents.

 

[BAYLOR]

Unfortunately, that would have completely destroyed what Hodgson was attempting to do: to deliver these visions of the future through the eyes of a man of even our past, a past in many ways as remote from us as the future he is describing. Let's not forget that the narrator isn't the man of the future as such, but that man's "soul" as filtered through someone who simply is incapable of understanding what it is he is experiencing. What would have been better would have been for Hodgson to have either learned the proper idiom himself (an arduous and extremely time-consuming effort) or to have collaborated with someone who did know it well and who could temper his use of such archaisms. As is, it isn't even proper pseudo-17th century, it is a hodgepodge of his own creation which frankly fails to anyone who has read even a modicum of such. Even HPL severely took him to task for this aspect, albeit being enormously taken by the feat of imagination the tale itself represents.

The only reason I stuck with the book was that I kept hoping it would get better . It didn't. The payoff at the end just wasn't worth all the aggravation of reading it.

James Stoddard did retelling of this book. Did he improve upon it?

Also Ive seen an illustrated version of The Night Land online . Impressive stuff.

 

[j d worthington]

The only reason I stuck with the book was that I kept hoping it would get better . It didn't. The payoff at the end just wasn't worth all the aggravation of reading it.

James Stoddard did retelling of this book. Did he improve upon it?

Also Ive seen an illustrated version of The Night Land online . Impressive stuff.

I think that, for me, the "feat of imagination" referred to above was enough to make it worth my while... but I still think that Hodgson erred in not having someone thoroughly familiar with the patois of that day go over his manuscript and work with him on it. A grand royal pain in the ass for a writer, granted, but the book would have been so much better as far as the actual writing is concerned, were this the case. Tolkien, for instance, could get by with doing parts of The Silmarillion (his original drafts, that is, not the version published under that title) in the old Anglo-Saxon idiom, because he knew what he was about, and so it works. It's a slog for a bit, until one becomes familiarized enough to simply relish the lovely antique language as much as the story being told, but it definitely adds to the feeling of these tales being transmitted from very ancient manuscripts, giving the whole a sense of historical depth which is a joy in its own right. The same could have been the case with The Night Land had Hodgson himself known enough, or been willing to work with someone who did. As it is, he had a magnificent conception which was gravely marred by his own ignorance of his chosen idiom.
This is why a writer must always take great care when utilizing a form of language not his or her own, even if it is an older form of their native tongue.

 

[J Riff]

I heard that Hodgswon was killed in trenches of WW!? His sea terror stuff is great. The olde style is what it is, ridiculous to crit it all these decades later.
I liked the end of HOTB, the guy in his chair with the Sun going around faster and faster, his dog turning to dust beside him... I named my dog 'Dusty' because of that book... * )