Supernatural Horror in Literature: Discussion

[j d worthington]

Thought I'd begin a somewhat different thread on this one, as I'm interested in hearing people's thoughts on this subject. What I'm looking for here, essentially, are discussions connected to HPL's essay. Now the points I have in mind are the following:

• Thoughts on the essay itself
• Thoughts about works mentioned in the essay
• Comparisons (for those who have read both and are interested) between the various versions of the essay, including the abridged/revised (I would say "compressed" rather than merely abridged) one prepared for Willis Connover's fanzine(s)

For those who either haven't read the essay and would like to participate, or who would like to refresh their memory, it can be found at the following link:

Supernatural Horror in Literature by Howard Phillips Lovecraft

Those so inclined may find the majority of the works mentioned in the essay at various sites, including (but not limited to) the following:

HorrorMasters.com Horror Stories:  A new horror story every night

The Literary Gothic - the premier webguide to pre-1950 Gothic literature

Home Page : Arthur's Classic Novels

Main Page - Gutenberg

I look forward to your comments....

 

[Ningauble]

I don't have an abundance of thoughts on it right now, since I was reading it with proof-reading goggles the last time, but I've always enjoyed it. It is erudite, written in an inimitably entertaining way, and HPL generally has good opinions (i.e., I agree with him ) on the few titles discussed that I have read. I recently bought Melmoth the Wanderer because of HPL's recommendation.

Still, it has some peculiarities, such as the lack of any discussion of most of the 19th century.

 

[j d worthington]

Yes; there is that. Also Lovecraft's sometimes peculiar personal usage, which takes a certain degree of awareness of how he uses certain phrases to mean certain things which may not be quite what anyone else would mean with the same phrase; examples of this are his description of Dracula as "almost the standard modern exploitation of the frightful vampire myth" -- which indicates strong reservations on his part concerning the novel; something backed by his "insider" knowledge about the state of the manuscript, as per the account in his letters; or (contrariwise) his calling Shiel's "Xelucha" "a noxiously hideous fragment", which (as Bleiler, iirc, notes) is high praise.

It is also interesting in that it aids as a guide to writers who influenced HPL himself, or whose ideas he found intriguing, but the execution of which he found wanting....

 

[Lobolover]

To tell you the truth, I realy thought he was dismising Xélucha for a long time .

As for the essay, may have read it three times or so, and once in translation which I frequently re-read . I realy liked how he isn't as we say "genderless" in describing what he claims to be good and bad, and simply not maneuvering in between the phrase "in my opinion.....but....."

 

[Connavar]

I read part XVIII,IX. Really i focused on that part cause of the late 19th century,early 20th authors i might be interested to read.

"Few can equal him in adumbrating the nearness of nameless forces and monstrous besieging entities through casual hints and insignificant details, or in conveying feelings of the spectral and the abnormal in connection with regions or buildings."

About William Hope Hodgson, you cant disagree about that after what i have read of WHH.

 

[j d worthington]

Lobo: I'm a little confused by your phrasing here:

I realy liked how he isn't as we say "genderless" in describing what he claims to be good and bad, and simply not maneuvering in between the phrase "in my opinion.....but....."

Would you care to clarify?

I read part XVIII,IX. Really i focused on that part cause of the late 19th century,early 20th authors i might be interested to read.

"Few can equal him in adumbrating the nearness of nameless forces and monstrous besieging entities through casual hints and insignificant details, or in conveying feelings of the spectral and the abnormal in connection with regions or buildings."

About William Hope Hodgson, you cant disagree about that after what i have read of WHH.

He has some interesting things to say about quite a few of the writers he covers; definitely his own approach here; hence the terse mention of Le Fanu, little of whose work he read and even less of whose work he liked... I would argue because he viewed it as simply the traditional ghostly tale, when there's a great deal more going on there.

Nonetheless, it remains possibly the best historical survey of the field to date, even if it does end in the 1920s.

And, just as a point of interest concerning his connection with Hodgson... I still see claims that he was "influenced" by Hodgson; I'm afraid nothing could be further from the truth, as by the point he encountered Hodgson (around 1934), all but one or two of his original tales were already written, and those that remained show no influence of Hodgson at all, I'd say... save, perhaps, the sweep of time Blake sees in the Shining Trapezohedron in "The Haunter of the Dark", which may reflect that aspect of The House on the Borderland (though, frankly, I doubt it)....

 

[Connavar]

Poor Le Fanu, the introduction of his wordworths collection does say that he wasnt as respected,remembered early 1900s. When its about ghost story he can make it much more exciting than the others famous for it.

Hodgson might be the best supernatural horror i have read of the first half of the 1900s. If only HPL was influenced of maybe i would haved it easier read of him when i tried reading him first

The best thing i got from those parts of the essay was that Ambrose Bierce and Algernon Blackwood was hailed by him. Blackwood specially is interesting to me since he wrote one of the first famous psychic detectives. I read that in the introduction to Carnacki Ghost-Finder.

 

[Lobolover]

J.D. - to put it bluntly, he had "the balls" to openly say that Otranto was garbage, that so and so bored him , etc. I may heavily disagree with an opinion, but it is better to have it then just be all around bland about the given subject .

 

[revelshade]

His interpretation of Wuthering Heights profoundly influenced my own reading of it (for good or ill I can't say).

I don't know the subject well enough to judge his coverage or his opinions but the thing sure is a pleasure to read.

 

[j d worthington]

His interpretation of Wuthering Heights profoundly influenced my own reading of it (for good or ill I can't say).

Ditto. The same can be said of his section on The House of the Seven Gables... though an excerpt from that one was also included in an anthology on the history and types of the Gothic tale (from Walpole to sf!) titled Ghosts, Castles, and Victims, which still remains a particular favorite of mine....

 

[Lobolover]

And sadly, a teacher whom I greatly respect has voiced an opinion that it's a "woman's novel" (read: low quality romance drivel loaned of by the dozen from libraries by midle aged women )

 

[j d worthington]

And sadly, a teacher whom I greatly respect has voiced an opinion that it's a "woman's novel" (read: low quality romance drivel loaned of by the dozen from libraries by midle aged women )

If that is what that teacher truly means by use of that phrase, I'm afraid I feel it shows a sadly limited and antiquated view.....

 

[revelshade]

And sadly, a teacher whom I greatly respect has voiced an opinion that it's a "woman's novel" (read: low quality romance drivel loaned of by the dozen from libraries by midle aged women )

More or less the impression I had when I was young and foolish. Doubt I would have read it if not for HPL.

 

[revelshade]

...an anthology on the history and types of the Gothic tale (from Walpole to sf!) titled Ghosts, Castles, and Victims, which still remains a particular favorite of mine....

*Sigh* My never-ending wishlist just got a little longer. Thanks a lot.

 

[brsrkrkomdy]

I've read HPL's essay three times already. One's a book from Dover. The other was in Stephen Jones' edited anthology of stories from writers Lovecraft had mentioned. I thought it was an excellent essay with all the references to writers I've never heard of. And I've managed to collect most of the stories by writers.

I've also found it annoying that most of critics when discussing history of the horror genre quoted Lovecraft's famous fear of the unknown quote as if this would define the Horror genre itself. I felt that one was taken out of context in my humble opinion. I'd argue that Lovecraft pointed out that there's more to it than just an emotional response. That would be like saying erotica ain't nothing more than masturbatory writing.

It's interesting to find that Lovecraft praised certain writers in this essay and yet in his letters he expressed disillusionment when he read further their works. For example, he liked early Dunsany but didn't care for the later ones. Same with Robert W. Chambers. He loved the King In Yellow stories but the rest of the ouvre were viewed as simply bad. (And you know what? I agree on that one. The first half of the book called King In Yellow is excellent but the second half was tepid and boring. I liked some of Chambers' stories of the fantastic but could not get thru his science fiction ones like "Search Of the Unknown". I don't even like his scientist character. He's a buffoon and a hopeless romantic.) As much as HPL admired Blackwood's stories, he didn't really care much for his mystical philosophies found entrenched in those tales.

HPL kind of villified the Gothics. He did like Radcliffe's Mysteries Of Udulpho though. Castle Of Otranto, you gotta admit it was a bad one. He complains of the Gothics' tendency to explain away the supernatural happenings. Even though he did like Matthew Lewis' The Monk, he didn't consider this one great. Yet as he pointed out that the best part about the novel was that it didn't offer any explanations for the supernatural occurances. I personally had reservations on the Gothics because of Lovecraft's observations. I managed to nab several of the Gothics.

 

[j d worthington]

Lovecraft was more critical in the essay than he tended to be in his letters, when it comes to the Gothics... at least, to some degree. (And the correspondence between HPL and Donald Wandrei on Udolpho makes for some very interesting reading; one gets the feeling Wandrei would have liked to have broiled Radcliffe to a fine turn....) He comments here and there on passages he quite liked in the Gothics, and one gets the feeling of a considerable fondness for the genre overall (and it was an extensive genre before it finally transmuted into other forms; Montague Summers' bibliography of Gothics, for instance, is quite extensive). After all, apparently his grandfather Whipple drew most of the motifs in the oral weird tales he told the young Howard from the Gothics, so his exposure to much of that material was at a very young age....

Chambers... yes, he's an odd one. There are some very good things in The Maker of Moons, and certainly in The King in Yellow; a few in In Search of the Unknown (though the original short story version of "The Harbor-Master" is better, I think)... but what little of his other work I've read tends to be quite poor. And yes, he wasn't much on benign mysticism even in Blackwood's stories -- and had nothing but scathing things to say about such in life. (He also, you may recall, cautioned that believers tend to be less convincing than nonbelievers as artists when it comes to depicting the weird. Overall -- though there are exceptions such as Blackwood and Machen -- I'd say he's got it right.)

 

[Lobolover]

If that is what that teacher truly means by use of that phrase, I'm afraid I feel it shows a sadly limited and antiquated view.....

It was, I asked three times to be sure .

brsrkrkomdy : well, if you like the first half of the King In Yellow, then you will probably love the title story of "The Maker of Moons" . There are afew more stories (one or two) of the strange kind in that colection, though I am to read any yet. Also, if you find his french painter set romance bad, go to horrormasters.com and read his "Eggs of the silver moon" - a quarell over insect eggs which have nothing at all strange about them, the main character has nothing but women in mind , he brings in for help a former female detective, the murder didn't happen at all, the blood was from a small nose wound and the final "horryfying revelation" is the main characters asistant kissing th detective . This is the only complaint I have against horrormasters.while they have lots not present elsewhere, they insist on having certain stories which have absolutely and totaly nothing to do with horror or even the fantastic . but it just has to be there .

J.D.- about Wandrei's comments, would you happen to have an excerpt or quote at hand ?

 

[j d worthington]

J.D.- about Wandrei's comments, would you happen to have an excerpt or quote at hand ?

I'll look something up when I get back from work tonight....

 

[j d worthington]

Sorry about the delay on that, Lobo; things got rather badly off-kilter here for the time being, and haven't had a chance to look at my copy of the Wandrei-Lovecraft correspondence.

In the meantime... as anyone who has looked at my recent reading in the monthly reading threads is likely to have noted, I've been recently reading some of the French decadents that HPL mentions in his essay; currently I'm reading Huysmans' Là-Bas. As I noted there, I can see the influence of Huysmans on HPL, and I was wondering if anyone else here has read any of these works (Les Fleurs du mal, Là-Bas, À rebours, and the like) and, if so, if they have any thoughts, either about them per se, or about their connection with Lovecraft, Smith, or even horror writing in general....

 

[j d worthington]

All right, Lobo: finally had a chance to dig out my copy of Mysteries of Time and Spirit, and the following should give you an idea of Wandrei's views on Mother Radcliffe:

I certainly am getting fed up on lachryomose Anne. I have read "The Romance of the Forest", "The Sicilian Romance", and "The Mysteries of Udolpho", and have yet to read "The Italian", I am omitting "The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne" and her unfinished work, though they are available at the U. library.

-- from a letter dated 31 Oct., 1927 (p. 176)​

Mrs. Radcliffe is disposed of, for good, for ever, and completely. As for her posthumous work -- it may be complete. I haven't read it, but have a vague impression of reading somewhere that it was not finished. My memory or the reference here is as likely to be at fault as not, but I haven't enough interest in the lady to correct the point by a further examination of her work.

-- from a letter dated 20 Nov., 1927 (p. 185)​

I am heartily sick of Mrs. Radcliffe. My professor insisted on having a paper, though, so I am amusing myself with a sizzling, sarcastic survey of her characters.

-- from a letter dated 10 Dec., 1927 (p. 190)​

And so on....