[j. d. worthington]

On Ewers... as I mentioned in the other thread, his work is rather difficult to come by. There is, if memory serves, a new translation of Alraune, but the excerpts I saw from it didn't particularly impress me; a bit too flatly literal, whereas Ewers himself ranged from a very naturalistic approach to a very poetic one, depending (and often within the span of a single piece). The advantage of this new translation is that it replaces something which was excised from that of Guy Endore, but I personally found this not enough to compensate for the loss otherwise. Others might greatly disagree.

If you can come across, either at a reasonable price, or at a library, his work, I would definitely recommend it. I would agree that "The Spider" is one of the great weird tales, as I've found it to grow with each reading. While The Sorcerer's Apprentice was not as much to my taste as I would have liked, I really think I need to revisit it in light of my later readings of Ewers, and see if that impression holds. Alraune (in the Endore translation), however, I found very impressive indeed. I also found Strange Stories and Nachtmahr (both story collections) to be rather good. I have never been able to get a copy of Vampire (the third in his novels concerning Frank Braun), so I've no idea how that one stands up.

(I also note that, if you read German, you can find his work for sale at quite reasonable prices. It's the English translations which are so darned costly....)

EDIT: I stand corrected. Both The Sorcerer's Apprentice and Alraune, in their English translations (at least, as far as I can tell from the descriptions) are available as POD for fairly reasonable prices....