M.R James

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HoopyFrood

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I'll start the thread in this forum, seeing as it is all things ghoulish and ghosty...

I know a few people have recently purchased some M.R James, particularly the Collected Ghost Stories, if the Book Haul thread is anything to go by. I'm currently reading the collection for my creative writing class and of all the books I've been set to read from any of my modules, this one has been one of the best. I'm only about half way through, but I don't think I've been disappointed by any of the stories I've read so far.

I have to say that the thing I like most about James' stories is how...sensible people are when faced with the supernatural goings-on. I don't mean in keeping a cool-head or anything because a few of them do understandably get quite the shock(!) What I mean is the amount of times I have been frustrated by people being confronted by the supernatural and when they try to tell others, no one bloody believes them! But I like how methodical people are in the some of the stories; like in The Mezzotint, when the protagonist takes photos of the picture and gets other people to view it and sign accounts of what they saw. I want to pat him on the back for it!

I think The Mezzotint has been my favourite story thus far. There was something about the description of the black figure creeping on all fours across the lawn towards the house that was decidedly creepy. And again in "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad", with the description of the weird white creature's movements across the beach; how it stops, raises its arms, then stoops and runs forward again. Such weird and inhuman movements are so much more eerie...

Just one last thing -- did M.R James have a dislike of golf or something...? :D
 
On that last, Hoops... you'd have to ask a Jamesian scholar, or perhaps find out from his biographers....

But, yes, there is that very commonsensical approach so many of James' characters have, combined with the very quixotic aspect of their nature (generally in connection with some form of scholarship)that frequently gets them into these messes -- one can see his characters as being very real people, unlike some I could name in supernatural fiction....

And his "ghosts" are also often quite unusual, and rather ghastly....
 
I only ask (in my usual facetious way) because of some of his rather dry remarks on the sport, popping up in a number of stories. After the third or so time I spotted one, it certainly made me wonder if he had a dislike for it. Perhaps he has a horrible golfing accident of which he never spoke.............

Yes, another aspect of the stories that I like is the scholar-y nature of many of his characters. As you say, makes them seem all the more real, and the supernatural aspects all the more invasive and weird when these educated and learned men run into them...
 
If you think James' take on golf is ... interesting, you should try H. R. Wakefield's "The Seventeenth Hole at Duncaster".....:rolleyes:
 
Well,I didnt read much of him-cause I think he was a bit of a wuss,when talking about other writers.
 
Considering that he's one of the most important writers in the field, for someone who is so intent on this field, that seems more than a little blinkered, Lobo....
 
Another thing (yes, me again) I like about the stories is the passive way some of them are told: old letters or chanced-upon manuscripts or being told the story by someone else. It's like how when you'd swap ghost stories when younger and usually start "A friend told me about their friend..." or "this happened to a friend of a friend..." If they said it had happened to them, it was never believable. But if it happened to some obscure, but somehow related, person, there was that added layer of "Well...it might have happened..."
 
Well,its more because ive other priorities at the moment.I just dont like what he says about other people is all-but that has litle to do with my not having read his fiction.
 
I've enjoyed some of his stories but others just leave me with a feeling at the end that is like, "oh right, is that it?" Even when I've enjoyed the telling of the story, the conclusion is sometimes quite underwhelming.

A classic example of this is the tale I just read called "The Tractate Middoth".
 
I was thinking about the conclusions of some of the stories myself the other night (although we've covered the book in the creative class now, I'm still carrying on with it because it's so good), particularly after finishing The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral. Perhaps, after reading so much King, I'm used to unresolved endings or it's just my general feeling, but the conclusion to that one felt a little contrived, with the narrator being given the card with the poem on it. Now we do have an explanation to why the ghostly goings-on happened, but I enjoyed the rest of the story so much that this part just felt a little tagged on to me. I loved the form of the story, with the diary extracts and these small, partial glimpses of the ghostly happens which I think are so much better in their condensed nature. Particularly lines like "The cat was on the stairs again tonight" and the empathised "I must be firm". Frickin' awesome.
 
I read a story concerning some "ancient englissh crowns" burried in the ground. Okay,even if re-buried and even if we have this character following the "perpetrator",It stil feels mightily-uh.
 
HoopyFrood said:
Just one last thing -- did M.R James have a dislike of golf or something...? :D
Click to expand...

After a brief bit of googling, I found this:

"I shall most likely be out on the links": golf as metaphor in the ghost stories of M. R. James.(Critical Essay)

From: Papers on Language & Literature | Date: September 22, 2004| Author: Thompson, Terry W.
Click to expand...

 
Occaisionally, as I work my way through his "Collected Ghost Stories", I stumble accross a real gem. This just happened when I read the story called "Martin's Close". This story is most interesting because it used a most unusual device for the telling of a ghost story; a transcript of a murder trial. Supernatural goings on are only hinted at, through the testimony of the witnesses and the reactions of the defendant.
 
Rammenoth said:
I love him, it was quite an inspiration for HPL. I have even rewrited one of his shorts stories (A house near the graveyard or something like this, I dont remember the English title) for our comicbook Young Lovecraft.
Click to expand...

Could it be "There Was a Man Dwelt by a Churchyard"? That one is, iirc, in A Warning to the Curious.... (Though my first thought was the Le Fanu novel, The House by the Churchyard....)
 
Well, I have grown to like him, actualy, have read both Ghost stories and More ghost stories of an antiquary and have nothing else to do . I also read one of his freidns a character called "B" .

J.D.-To the Le Fanu novel, without spoilering, I loaned it, do you think I could like it ? I know Joshi made a coment about it wasnt exactly that of praise .
 
It's an odd novel, that. I quite like it; Teresa disliked it, found it too rambling and with far too many digressions, if I recall correctly. I found that its meandering tended to add to the cumulative effect, myself. I rather doubt it would be to your taste as a whole, but I think you'd like the earlier chapters quite a lot -- a very effective and nasty ghost story there. As I recall, MRJ thought highly of this one, though; so my suggestion would be to give it a go and, if your interest begins to flag, drop it at that point.....
 
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