I agree with antiloquax on The Female Man. One of my favorites by Russ, a writer for whom I have considerable respect. That's one of those books which is challenging on a great many levels, and bound to irritate and offend in such a way as to get people to thinking about their own ideas on the subjects involved... which is, to me, one of the best things about sf as "the literature of ideas" (a label it doesn't always live up to, by any means). And I must admit that, corny as it sounds, the end of the book darned near moves me to tears, first of laughter, then of hope....
I'm continuing with Karloff's ...And the Darkness Falls, having read the following:
"The Black Pool", by Frederick S. Greene
"The Scoop", by Leonora Gregory
"Femme et Chatte" (verse), by Paul Verlaine
"The Hanging ogf Alfred Wadham", by E. F. Benson
"The Departure", by Selma Robinson
Though all but two of these could be said to involve the supernatural, with only one is such a claim certain; the others could well be naturalistic with a supernatural "feel" to them. "The Black Pool" is not entirely successful -- Karloff mentions in his headnote to this one that "The writing is a little florid, and I must apologise for saying that some of the sentiments expressed are a bit schoolboyish", but he also explains his reasons for including the tale, and I think he was quite justified. It does indeed suffer from those faults, but is nonetheless a fine exercise in the development of the inevitable... which can be every bit as satisfying as a story full of surprises, as the tension mounts with each turn of the screw.
"The Scoop", on the other hand, is a surprise story, where the revelation at first appears contrived, but on reflection makes the horror of the whole all the more effective.
The Paul Verlaine piece is, of course, a bit of imagery with its implications, but oh, how it demonstrates how something so simple can carry quite a punch.
Benson's tale is the most prototypical ghost story of the batch I've read so far, and I'm afraid that I find the stereotyped structure of the weird itself here to be a bit of a drawback, but the atmosphere is handled nicely, and it also carries the horror of a situation which is all the more relevant these days: the seal of the confessional; how does one justify keeping silence when the obvious harm (in this case, an innocent man being hanged while the actual murderer goes free, thus adding another victim to his sins) so obviously outweighs, in secular terms at least, the need for maintaining that silence. Obviously, given my own atheism, it can't be justified realistically; but the unenviable position of a priest (who genuinely does believe in the sacrosanct nature of the confession) who receives such information, and who suffers his own hauntings as a result, makes a poignant picture.
"The Departure" is an odd one, in that the haunting here could be psychological or real, the outcome horrific or blissful, depending on how one reads it... which in fact is one of the reasons Karloff included it in the anthology.
So far, this one is confirming me in my view that, his roles as an actor in horror films aside, Karloff had a fine sense of what constitutes the tale of terror, the differences between terror and horror, and a very discerning eye for the best literary expressions of either; and, had he made his career that of anthologist rather than actor, might well be regarded as one of the best the field has ever seen....
