October's Obdurate Observations Of Outstanding Ouevres

[j d worthington]

Am currently reading Al Sarrantonio's Horrorween, another of his Orangefield stories. While the previous entry, Hallows Eve, would comfortably (for the most part) fit with a YA audience, I'm not at all sure that I, at least, would feel comfortable with this one getting that ranking, as the first section and some of the early parts of the second are a bit extreme for that... but it is a rather enjoyable read; fast-paced while managing to have a genuinely unsettling and eerie feel to it, and once again makes me glad I decided to give this little group of stories a chance....

 

[Lord Soth]

Finished Tigana by GGK - excellent showing as always from him, if not quite as good (for me) as under Heaven. Now due to my usual genre swaps between books I am on to The Departure by Neal Asher, and I will try not to be influenced by some of the negative reviews this has received.

 

[Extollager]

A new month...a month of pure horror for some I hear?...

I decided to read Bradbury's October Country this month. I've read nearly all of it, over the years, I'm sure, but I'm not certain I've read all of the stories.

I'll be reading this Ballantine edition:

Might as well post my comments on the stories here. I intend to read the stories in order, so last night I started with "The Dwarf." This reminded me of one of my favorite Bradbury stories, "All Summer in a Day," in being another expose' of human meanness, the gratification of a cruel pleasure exerted upon an inoffensive person. The three-character arrangement worked well.

 

[Extollager]

"The Next in Line" from Ray Bradbury's The October Country: I don't really like stories like this, but it is very well done. An American couple is touring Mexico. Joseph is no longer interested as a lover in his wife; she can stand next to him fresh from her bath, wrapped in just a towel, and he is not interested; late in the story, she feels that imagining his hand in hers is more pleasing than the kind of hand-holding he is able to give her now. Marie is aware of her husband's body, perhaps is feeling a renewal of desire for him, but it coincides with a profound anxiety, which develops into terror, towards the Mexican town. The issue is the pervasive awareness of death. He is fascinated; she desperately wants to get away. He came there as a tourist and is clearly taking an interest in more than just a vague interest in the "picturesque" in such things as mummies and candy skulls; she wants to stay in their hotel room reading the Saturday Evening Post and longs to renew acquaintance with friends from the flower of her youth.

To considerable degree the story is a study in the trajectory of fear, and in that regard it reminded me of Faulkner's "That Evening Sun."

Like "The Dwarf," this is a story of the macabre but not of the supernatural.

 

[j d worthington]

You might look around for a copy (perhaps from a library) of a book titled The Mummies of Guanajuato, which combines photographs (by Archie Lieberman) from that particular museum with Bradbury's story... it makes for an immensely powerful presentation....

 

[elvet]

I started Reamde (Neal Stephenson) last night. What a fast paced book! It's very entertaining so far, and I'm appreciating the insiders look at how on line games get developed.

 

[soulsinging]

Just finished The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester and thought it was pretty phenomenal! Even inspired to take another crack at Count of Monte Cristo soon.

Now reading Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes.

Ok, have actually picked up Monte Cristo again instead and intend to finish this time! Then on to Matterhorn...

 

[Extollager]

I read "The Watchful Poker Chip of H. Matisse" recently enough that I decided to excuse myself the labor of rereading it and proceeded to the next October Country story, "Skeleton."

This is an audacious attempt to write a horror story that is pretty funny. (In that it's funny and also a story of profound unease, it reminded me of a mostly very different story, Robert Aickman's one about the man who spends the night in what turns out to be a madhouse; his roommate crawls around in the dark and so on... I think the story is called "The Hostel.")

I found myself thinking of the "scandal of the Incarnation" with reference to the Christian faith, that the eternal, transcendent God should become a flesh and blood -- and bones -- human being. For many "spiritual" people throughout the ages, this just won't do! I suppose this feeling is partly rooted in a fastidiousness that, in poor Mr. Harris's case, takes an extreme and peculiar form.

 

[Fried Egg]

I read "The Watchful Poker Chip of H. Matisse" recently enough that I decided to excuse myself the labor of rereading it and proceeded to the next October Country story, "Skeleton."

This is an audacious attempt to write a horror story that is pretty funny. (In that it's funny and also a story of profound unease, it reminded me of a mostly very different story, Robert Aickman's one about the man who spends the night in what turns out to be a madhouse; his roommate crawls around in the dark and so on... I think the story is called "The Hostel.")

It's called "The Hopsice"; great story.

 

[Extollager]

"Hospice" -- that's it, yes, thanks!

But I found myself thinking that, if I want to compare "Skeleton" to a story/ies by another author, maybe I should refer to Flannery O'Connor. (The great and indispensable Flannery O'Connor.) She's known for writing stories that lead up to a moment of grotesque violence. Well, I find that I forget how it is that Mr. Harris, um, gets his skeleton problem resolved; I remember how the story ends, but I tend to think vaguely that he is given some kind of chemical treatment. But that's not M. Munigant's method. One could revisit the story and see (what I seem to have missed somehow on previous readings) what specific kind of violation that method suggests. This violation might seem to be a terrible punishment for Harris's profound self-absorption and ungrateful neglect of a cute wife who loves him. I think O'Connor often uses deliberately grotesque imagery for actions of grace rather than punishment, but still there is some kind of parallel....

 

[Extollager]

Here’s an interpretation of “The Jar.” Take it with a grain of salt.

The story can be read (whether or not Bradbury meant it to be so read) as commenting on the vulgarity of horror fiction. Since the story itself is a gruesome horror fiction, this reading is ironic.

Charlie is not much respected by his rustic peers, including his sexy wife Thedy. Aware of his own fascination with the carnival jar, he realizes that others too won’t be able to help staring and coming back to stare, if he can persuade the owner to sell it. Taking advantage of Charlie, the carny owner sells it to him for $12. The “ingredients” of this attraction are cheap. Later we learn that the assemblage was worth only a couple of dollars, in the seller’s opinion. The “artistry” of whoever put the ingredients together (the carny man himself?) does work, however.

The story shows that Charlie was right. The repulsively fascinating thing in the jar brings visitors to his house again and again. Their imaginations are tickled: what on earth is it, anyway? Charlie relishes attention he gets on account of his property. (When it is threatened with exposure, however, as just an assemblage of cheap ingredients, he acts in desperation, removing the threat of exposure and continuing and even enhancing the attraction of the jar.)

The audience for the jar (the other rustics) is viewed patronizingly. They are vulgar gawkers. Yet the original jar does activate their imaginations, and there is a poetic quality to some of the thoughts and feelings that they try to articulate, notably in the case of the woman who thinks the thing in the jar might be her long-lost boy Foley and the man who suspects it is “the center of creation,” the primeval mass from which other life-forms are derived. Of course the construction is none of these things and we are amused by how the rustics are fooled. They have to be rustics for the story to work.

And so the story can be read as even a satire poking fun at horror fiction, at the perennial appetite for sensational, grotesque monsters concocted from the cheapest of ingredients and lapped up by people with a taste for nothing better; and yet the story allows that, even so, glints of “poetry” may be struck….

 

[Red 13]

I've just started reading "The King's *******" by Rowena Corey Daniels. I've only read one Chapter so far and i've got a feeling i'm going to enjoy it.

 

[j d worthington]

Dale: You posed the question whether you'd get away with that reading or not... I'd say it's a quite valid possibility that Bradbury intended that at some level; he uses his fiction to address all sorts of things at different times. Besides, it in no way actually clashes with the genuinely eerie, imaginative, and poetic aspects of the tale. As a rider on your comments, I think I'd add that those rustics who "dream" (if you will) about what is in the jar, exhibit a much greater degree of sensitivity and (largely unconscious) awareness than those who ridicule them. They may not be educated, but they are in touch with reality on a deeper level than the more sophisticated peers who look down on them.

The adaptation of this for the Alfred Hitchcock Presents series was, on the whole, rather good, with some excellent performances; the main drawback was being too explicit in the final shot, whereas Bradbury had the artistic restraint to suggest rather than state, thus maintaining the feeling of mystery about the jar....

And I finished Sarrantonio's Horrorween last night. The final pages are a bit wobbly in their impact, but overall it was a rather good, enjoyable tale for the season. Uneven, but quite entertaining. It strikes me, having read two of his few Orangefield books, that these would be easily adaptable to a visual medium, and would make some very good films (or, preferably, "miniseries", thus allowing them to retain the bulk of his story rather than having to jettison things due to time concerns). Perhaps this has been done, and I don't know about it, but if not, I would like to see someone out there pick up the idea....

 

[Extollager]

Dale: You posed the question whether you'd get away with that reading or not... I'd say it's a quite valid possibility that Bradbury intended that at some level; he uses his fiction to address all sorts of things at different times. Besides, it in no way actually clashes with the genuinely eerie, imaginative, and poetic aspects of the tale. As a rider on your comments, I think I'd add that those rustics who "dream" (if you will) about what is in the jar, exhibit a much greater degree of sensitivity and (largely unconscious) awareness than those who ridicule them. They may not be educated, but they are in touch with reality on a deeper level than the more sophisticated peers who look down on them.

The adaptation of this for the Alfred Hitchcock Presents series was, on the whole, rather good, with some excellent performances; the main drawback was being too explicit in the final shot, whereas Bradbury had the artistic restraint to suggest rather than state, thus maintaining the feeling of mystery about the jar....

1."Those who look down on them" -- but to what degree can we absolve the narrative voice itself from presenting the story's characters as stereotypical rustics?

2.I wasn't thinking TV but rather old-time radio. Seems to me like the kind of plot an Arch Oboler might have used, kind of thing one might encounter with Lights Out! or Quiet Please or even Inner Sanctum ("A word of caution... tonight's gruesome story might jar your nerves a little... heh heh").

 

[Extollager]

"The Lake," the next story in The October Country, seems to me not completely successful. The evocation of the end-of-season locale is authentic. But as we attend more specifically to the story, I'm not sure that felt "authenticity" remains. We're meant to sympathize with the narrator. I think we do this to the extent that we grant a wistful feeling about having been kids once, never again. But mixed up with his sense of loss is the finality of the body-bag. This doesn't work, for me. Rather than focusing the loss-theme in a powerful moment of feeling, I'm thinking: "No way that, after ten years, there'd be anything left but odd scattered bones." And I'm thinking: "How clever of the lifeguard to estimate just exactly ten years." And I'm wondering a little about the context in which the lifeguard would have been told this convenient bit of information. And the narrator's feeling seems so unreal.

So I wouldn't include this story in an Essential Bradbury.

 

[j d worthington]

I think one of the things which is being overlooked here is his comment about the train, and the effect he feels during that ride (either way). It is as if she has been waiting for him to come within a "sphere of influence" in order to reawaken the little boy who was so in love with her. At that point, all the emotional connections he has developed in the intervening years simply cease to be; it is as if they never were on an emotional level, which makes this a most unusual form of haunting, as well as one with, to me, a high degree of poignancy blended with the horrific situation I just mentioned.

 

[Vonk]

The following is what I finished in October within the Fantasy/Science Fiction genres.

Fuzzy Nation by John Scalzi, fun read, too much ".." A said, ".." B said etc. But still a fun read, quickly finished.
Micromegas by Voltaire, really short, finished it quickly, was very interesting.
Storm Front by Jim Butcher, I like the conversational tone it's written in. The story was a bit lacking.. Will probably give Full Moon a try, but I don't know when.
Pilgrimage to Hell (Deathlands #1) by James Axler, bad book. Won't read any other in the series. The introduction with how the bombs went off was cool, wasn't interested at all in the rest of the story.
Agent to the Stars by John Scalzi, fun book, nice take on the first contact thing, nothing special, but fun.
Double Star by Robert A. Heinlein, loved it. Heinlein doesn't always deliver, but this was a lot of fun. It's different from a lot of other Heinlein books. A tad bit predictable, but good.

Currently reading (in genre):
Leviathan Awakes by James S.A. Corey. Really liking what I've read so far.
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, just started.

The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester, Tombs of Atuan by Ursula Le Guin, Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn are books I've been reading for ages but can't seem to get through. Might drop them for later.

No horror...

 

[Moonbat]

Really quite annoyed. I was reading A Storm of Swords (pt 1& 2) from George R R Martin's series, but I got a bit bored with it. Not only do all the nice characters die, but barely any of the nasty ones do, and it's all got a bit formulaic by now. I'm not as impressed as I was, and so...

I put the Kindle app on my new smart phone and when I was out I started on Kingpin: How one hacker took over the billion dollar cyber crime undergound, which was really interesting and took over from the aforementioned Storm of Swords.
I finished Kingpin and then started on Pyramid by the always amusing Terry Pratchett.
I'm afraid I may never finish Storm of Swords, some people even said it was the best book, and that I could stop reading after it as the following two get a bit boring.

 

[Red 13]

Really quite annoyed. I was reading A Storm of Swords (pt 1& 2) from George R R Martin's series, but I got a bit bored with it. Not only do all the nice characters die, but barely any of the nasty ones do, and it's all got a bit formulaic by now. I'm not as impressed as I was, and so...

I put the Kindle app on my new smart phone and when I was out I started on Kingpin: How one hacker took over the billion dollar cyber crime undergound, which was really interesting and took over from the aforementioned Storm of Swords.
I finished Kingpin and then started on Pyramid by the always amusing Terry Pratchett.
I'm afraid I may never finish Storm of Swords, some people even said it was the best book, and that I could stop reading after it as the following two get a bit boring.

The same thing happened to me with A storm of Swords. I got to the end of book one and just couldn't be bothered with reading the second part, i've given up on the series. I think there are too many characters and therefore there are some chapters i really can't be bothered to read.
I also i get the impression that G.R.R Martin is taking advantage of the fact that the TV series has done so well and pushed more people towards reading the books that he is purposefully dragging the hole thing on longer than intended in order to get a bit more money out of it.

 

[Connavar]

Here’s an interpretation of “The Jar.” Take it with a grain of salt.

The story can be read (whether or not Bradbury meant it to be so read) as commenting on the vulgarity of horror fiction. Since the story itself is a gruesome horror fiction, this reading is ironic.

Charlie is not much respected by his rustic peers, including his sexy wife Thedy. Aware of his own fascination with the carnival jar, he realizes that others too won’t be able to help staring and coming back to stare, if he can persuade the owner to sell it. Taking advantage of Charlie, the carny owner sells it to him for $12. The “ingredients” of this attraction are cheap. Later we learn that the assemblage was worth only a couple of dollars, in the seller’s opinion. The “artistry” of whoever put the ingredients together (the carny man himself?) does work, however.

The story shows that Charlie was right. The repulsively fascinating thing in the jar brings visitors to his house again and again. Their imaginations are tickled: what on earth is it, anyway? Charlie relishes attention he gets on account of his property. (When it is threatened with exposure, however, as just an assemblage of cheap ingredients, he acts in desperation, removing the threat of exposure and continuing and even enhancing the attraction of the jar.)

The audience for the jar (the other rustics) is viewed patronizingly. They are vulgar gawkers. Yet the original jar does activate their imaginations, and there is a poetic quality to some of the thoughts and feelings that they try to articulate, notably in the case of the woman who thinks the thing in the jar might be her long-lost boy Foley and the man who suspects it is “the center of creation,” the primeval mass from which other life-forms are derived. Of course the construction is none of these things and we are amused by how the rustics are fooled. They have to be rustics for the story to work.

And so the story can be read as even a satire poking fun at horror fiction, at the perennial appetite for sensational, grotesque monsters concocted from the cheapest of ingredients and lapped up by people with a taste for nothing better; and yet the story allows that, even so, glints of “poetry” may be struck….

That is much to read in a minor story compared to the other stories in the collection. What did you think of the actual story ? Good ? Weak ? Weird,suspenseful enough ?

I like the story as weird southern story kind, the way Bradbury wrote them. The Jar itself kept me interested but i must say i almost forgot about the story when i read the stories after it in the collection.