General Weird discusion thread

[Lobolover]

Hmm.Well,have to go and sent a facturation through the bank to save 70 crowns of shiping cost.Anyway,ordered it like that.

I also found "the frozen pirate" as an e-text,if desired.

And finished the Garshin story-kinda neat.Ill try to find out its name.
EDIT:"The Red Flower"-at this place The Red Flower - Wikisource

By the way-have started Shiel's "The Purple Cloud"
-and have found another paralel to Poe-the"dead man hanging over the side and not seeming dead form afar"-viz Pym.

One I could find nowhere,though,was "The house of the Black Ring", though its at antiqbooks.

Arlen-hmm,I COULD give him a chance,HPL also didnt see In Kopfsberg Keep .

This reminds me-what do you think of Doyle's tries at horror?

 

[AE35Unit]

Well i have read quite a bit of Doyle and his writing is brilliant. Clear and inviting. I've not read much of his horror other than Horror of the Heights and Ring of Thoth but Hound of the Baskervilles is a classic horror,wrapped around a detective story. Yet to read that tho.
BTW who is Pym?

 

[Lobolover]

I meant his ghost story collections-the most I liked "Jellands journey" from "round the fire stories"-I havent goten around to read the ones sugsted by HPL-but from that colection,Doyle howers often on th brink of briliant horror, only to bring his own story down to utter mediocricy with the end."The beetle colector" implied,unknwoingly to Doyle-a certain idea-one RUINED by the casual and simplisticly naturalistic way of the stories end.

 

[j d worthington]

I've not read a great deal of Doyle's weird fiction (save his detective tales and such); and even with what I have, it's been decades now. I do recall having a somewhat similar reaction -- the style being (at least at times) at odds with the tale told now and again; though "The Captain of the 'Pole Star'" and "Lot No. 249" certainly are memorable tales, as are a few others....

But, if you include the Professor Challenger stories in this category, several of those are quite marvelous, as are various Holmes tales. Even A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four have some powerful weird moments where Doyle manages to convey an atmosphere of the uncanny....

Oh, and "Pym" is Poe's Arthur Gordon Pym, unless I'm mistaken. And on that particular quote... I'm also reminded of Coleridge's Ancient Mariner....

 

[Lobolover]

Hmm-I think the scene was exactly copied from Poe,as a homage maybe.

By the way:you got around to look at the Garshin story I linked?I finished it today,rather short and realy pics up at the end.)

Also-going through HPL's "collection of basic story elements in supernatural fiction" or whatever the original title is,ive recognised a good many stories.though it kinda puzzles me why he includes such a DETAILED description of "The dark chamber"-a secret advert,maybe?

Anyway-in that piece,ive found a reference to a story about a priest keeping an ancint monster under lock and it escaping,causing devastation. When I think about it it COULD be "the green wildbeast",but im not entierly sure.

And:got to the room descriptions on N. 252-and im already starting to see why you liked it.Thanks again for linking it.

Ps:You ever read "The temptaion of saint anthony" by Flaubert-I realy saw some common stylistic points and pieces reminescent of "Vathek" .

 

[j d worthington]

Hmm-I think the scene was exactly copied from Poe,as a homage maybe.

Could well be; certainly he has influenced the majority of writers after him.

By the way:you got around to look at the Garshin story I linked?I finished it today,rather short and realy pics up at the end.)

No, I've not even had a chance to look at it. I was only on for about 20 minutes this morning while getting ready for work, and just got back from my first shift. Probably won't have a chance to read that one until Sunday....

Also-going through HPL's "collection of basic story elements in supernatural fiction" or whatever the original title is,ive recognised a good many stories.though it kinda puzzles me why he includes such a DETAILED description of "The dark chamber"-a secret advert,maybe?

Wouldn't be a promotion for the book, as the "basic elements" was a part of his commonplace book -- a notebook he kept for his own use, never intended for publication. With his fascination concerning tales featuring heredity, reverse evolution, and hereditary memory and the like, it likely features so prominently because he found the idea of the novel of particular interest, perhaps stimulating his own imagination rather keenly.

Ironically, when Derleth was doing his "posthumous collaborations", taking things from HPL's Commonplace Book, he apparently mistook this lengthy description as an original idea of Lovecraft's own, and ended up using it for one of these "collaborations" -- "The Ancestor", IIRC....

Anyway-in that piece,ive found a reference to a story about a priest keeping an ancint monster under lock and it escaping,causing devastation. When I think about it it COULD be "the green wildbeast",but im not entierly sure.

Again, it's possible; but with these notes Lovecraft was more often concerned with extracting the essential themes, that were commonly used fo the best weird tales, rather than having specific tales in mind. Still, as with the above, this might be an exception....

And:got to the room descriptions on N. 252-and im already starting to see why you liked it.Thanks again for linking it.

Thought you might like that one. It's less anthropomorphic in its spectral appearances than the Bulwer, but closely akin in many ways. But that feeling of "alienness" is much stronger here, making the "unknown" even more so....

As for "The Temptation of St. Anthony"... No, I've not read the entire thing, only passages. I have two different translations, and had reluctantly held off until I got my hands on a copy of the Hearn translation (Lovecraft's preferred one, I believe). So it's scheduled for a reading shortly... though that "shortly" could be anytime in the next 6-8 months.....

As for its possible relation to/influence by Vathek... Not heard about that, but it's a possibility, I suppose. After all, Vathek was originally written in French, though published in English first....

 

[Lobolover]

Hmm-to the summaries-ive actualy idntified about ten stories already-among them "fishhead" and "secret worship"-I havent read "the house and the brain" yet,im actualy reading in this sequence:252,The Bad Lans,ABO-

Which reminds me-could you remember any tales from Benson except the one HPL talked about?

And one more thing-whats your opinion on Derleth and his "collaborations"?

 

[j d worthington]

Hmm-to the summaries-ive actualy idntified about ten stories already-among them "fishhead" and "secret worship"-I havent read "the house and the brain" yet,im actualy reading in this sequence:252,The Bad Lans,ABO-

Which reminds me-could you remember any tales from Benson except the one HPL talked about?

And one more thing-whats your opinion on Derleth and his "collaborations"?

On the latter -- they vary. Some are not at all good; some are interesting, but seriously flawed, and a small number I think work quite well... though they are not Lovecraft. Among the latter I'd include The Lurker at the Threshold and "The Lamp of Alhazred", for instance; the last being a rather poignant hommage to his mentor. "The Gable Window" is a rather haunting piece, as well, though it owes more than a little to Aiken's "Silent Snow, Secret Snow" in mood and theme.

Quite often, though, I find some of Derleth's concepts to be fascinating, while the story itself is simply pulpish... such as R'lyeh extending from the Pacific to the northeastern seaboard around Massachusetts....

Benson... Out of The Room in the Tower, I'd suggest the title story, "How Fear Departed from the Long Gallery", "Caterpillars", "The Man Who Went Too Far", "Between the Lights", "The Thing in the Hall", "The House with the Brick-Kiln", and to a somewhat lesser degree, "The Terror by Night".

From Visible and Invisible, I'd suggest: "And the Dead Spake....", "Negotium Perambulans", "Mrs. Amworth", "Inscrutable Decrees", and "The Horror-Horn" (though I'm less impressed with that one than was HPL).

About identifying the "underlying plots" he has with specific stories: that's a place to tread with caution. HPL was so prodigiously read in the field, that what may seem an obvious correlation often is a mistaken one, as he had another tale in mind, or (as I indicated above) several tales that use the same ideas in mind. A good example among his own work is "Cool Air", which most have seen as almost his version of Poe's "Valdemar", when he himself saw it as inspired by Machen's "Novel of the White Powder", as he hadn't even had the Poe tale in mind when he wrote it.... So with something like that, without corroborating statements from HPL, or such a detailed similarity that it's almost unarguable, best to leave it as a tentative identification rather than taking it as definitive.....

 

[Lobolover]

Hmm.Thanks.What do you think of "The dust cloud" or "the bus conductor",as I have those on my pc.

 

[j d worthington]

I know I read them, but be darned if I can recall anything about them. This doesn't necessarily mean they were bad (or good)... simply my sometimes spotty memory....

 

[Lobolover]

Oh,okay,ill try them toom,thanks .

 

[Lobolover]

Well-have finished 252-mostly curious!Though,if only he wouldnt refer to a story about ghosts IN a ghost story so often.

Am curently going throgh "The purple Cloud",like I said-your opinion?

And-have you ever heard of Jan Weiss?

 

[j d worthington]

Jan Weiss -- rings a bell, but I can't place it.

As for The Purple Cloud... mixed. Some parts of it are very impressive indeed, while others I felt lagged. By the way, there's been at least one film adaptation of this book, and (as I recall after so many years) that film was really quite good:

The World, the Flesh and the Devil (1959)

It strays quite seriously from Shiel's novel, of course, but as a film qua film....

 

[Lobolover]

Jan Weiss-czech (oslovakian) writer in the 60's,active comunist,but also writer of fantastic stories and one of the few people advocating the necessity to dream in czech literary history since WWII.Even his "serious" works have dream elements in them-like the description of a cube rotating inside a circular human head ,as in a dream-its kinda hard to desrcibe
.One of his best short stories (he was a diferent sort of SF writer) is "The Apostle",centering around a group of people in a typhoid camp,being preached to by a man of strange new lives in diferent forms and shapes on diferent worlds-the man dies,suposedly of typhoid,saying he is mad,however, his adherents believed he went of to his new life.

Then,of course,is his masterpiece,"House of a thousand floors",about a mysterious gigantic city under one roof,with surreal characters, bizare places and dreamy visions-got my copy for free,but worth a read,beyond doubt.

Other of his good works include "The regiment of madmen"-about WWI Austria trying to imploy madmen in the army-but they run amok and turn an abandoned castle into a mad house of terror.

Or another story,where,in the future,people use artificial wings to fly for sport, however a man forces his beloved to take on the simple, cultureless life of a bird-which ends in him being slain by another .

He was an ardent anti kapitalist,but his works reveal a shining beacon of dream light anyone should read.

Anyway-working through the Bad Lands and geting to ABO next.

And anyway-any title you yourself read you would wanna have a coment from me on?

And finaly-any news on Lovecrafts Library from HP?

 

[j d worthington]

Anyway-working through the Bad Lands and geting to ABO next.

And anyway-any title you yourself read you would wanna have a coment from me on?

And finaly-any news on Lovecrafts Library from HP?

Weiss does sound interesting. Are there currently any English translations available that you're aware of or would recommend?

I'm curious as to what you'll think of "The Bad Lands" and "ABO".

Well, not so much a single title (though, come to think of it, a couple do come to mind...) as a writer or two. In this case, Thomas Moore. Have you read either of those by Moore mentioned by HPL in his essay? If not, I'll warn you that "The Ring" is actually the title of two vastly different pieces by the Irish versifier....

And on Lovecraft's Library... I'm not quite sure what you mean? Are you referring to the volumes being put out under that series title? If so... no, I've heard nothing on that score. I've sent an email to Derrick about the latest releases, but have heard nothing back....

 

[Lobolover]

Well-not that I know of,but during the authors life,there WAS a translation of "The regiment......" .Ill look it up.

The Bad Lands-well,its quite nice and leaves things open at the end

ABO however is quite diferent and I enjoyed it thoroughly-though Mare's characters do strange things sometimes,it was quite enjoyable-but I find he tends to-leave of,before finishing properly-like with "All Hallows" and ABO.

Will begin "the thing in the hall" story and then Mrs. Amworth from Benson. Been thinking of trying out "The snout" by White-though its kinda long for comp reading at one go.

From the books of HP's you mentiond on the last page-you read any of them?

And also-finished my own two stories,should I translate them?

 

[j d worthington]

With the exception of Undine and some of "Q"'s stories, no; though I have a few on order at this point....

While I congratulate you on the stories, and would like to read them, there are a couple of points to bring up here: if you were planning on posting them, I'm doubtful about that being a good idea for you as a writer, given the way it can affect marketing your work otherwise. Secondly: whether you should translate them or not... depends on the length of the work and whether you'll want feedback right away....

And, to further broaden the discussion on the general topic here... As HPL's essay is one of the main sources for the various writers mentioned in this thread, how many have looked at the older writers/tales mentioned there (and this includes any of the verse pieces)?

 

[Lobolover]

Well,I DID read Bürgrs "Die wilde jäger",of the top of my head.

The stories-I always post them on an online site I know-helps get feedback and contact people about them.Both of them are 3 something pages.

And I looked up "Weiss"-well,can you read german?

 

[j d worthington]

And I looked up "Weiss"-well,can you read german?

Sadly, no. As with so many Americans, I am quite lacking in my knowledge of other languages. I know a (very) small smattering of German, but nothing near enough to read a tale with....

So... what did you think of that piece? Or, for that matter, any of the other works mentioned?

 

[Lobolover]

Die Wilde Jäger-read it in original german-well,im not sure.

Of course,I read "Rime of the ancient Mariner" .If only Coleridge wouldnt have to mix god into the subject and give it a more "belieavable" ending.

Ps:You ever tried writing something?

And PPS:Ill probably translate them during the night and send them to you.