Weird Fiction

[nomadman]

Back on the subject of the anthology, I've read (generous estimate) perhaps a quarter of the writers represented and a little less of the stories themselves. My initial reaction is that it's a pretty solid body of choices; none of the works I'm familiar with stick out as being non-weird or borderline-weird, and there are some obscure classics like Jean Ray's The Mainz Psalter that I'm delighted to see get another airing.

Like I said, I would have chosen a couple of different examples to showcase some of the lesser known writers' works. Buzzati's The Colomber is a fine tale, but far from his best. Like a lot of Buzzati's work, it deals with lost dreams and wasted lives, but it's a little too literal minded in its approach IMO. More effective is his short short tale The Walls of Anagoor, a sort of hypercondensed version of his existential masterpiece The Tartar Steppe. The Devil's Jacket is a well-crafted Bloch esque piece about a bewitched dinner jacket that grants its wearer infinite amounts of money at a terrible price.

Cortazar's Axlotl is a fine tale, and one which skillfully plays around with his familar themes of perceptions, identity, and so on, but my personal favorite in this vein is The Night Face Up, which is a masterpiece, as is The Yellow Flower, a poignant tale of flawed reincarnation. I haven't read the particular Grabinski tale selected, but I have read a couple of his collections. He's a very powerful and intense writer, somewhat like a turn of the century version of Thomas Ligotti. My own favorites of his are Strabissimus, a tale of doppelgangers and the conflicts of one's mind, and The Glance, a solipsistic nightmare. I'd be intersted to see how The White Weyrak stacks up.

Akutagawa's Hell Screen is a classic of Japanese short fiction, and held in high regard in that country. I find it a tad overrated myself. It's carefully constructed, as all of Akutagawa's fiction is, and can be read on a number of levels, but the general plotline, taken from an earlier folktale, is a little stale. And whilst there's nothing I can really fault with it, there's not much that sticks with me either. I don't begrudge its inclusion, though to my mind a better example of weird fiction is the lesser known Horse Legs, a wryly humorous and better-than-it-sounds tale of a businessman who finds he has the legs of a horse and the resultant problems he faces at work, at home and so on. (I note that the above is a new translation however, which might improve my estimation of the work, given Akutagawa's great reputation as a stylist.)

I mentioned Jean Ray above. He's a master of weird fiction and it's great to see two of his classic tales represented.

I've only read one story of Ewers's, Blood. I can't recall any particulars save the setting, the Carribean, and the fact that it left me with a powerful impression. Very uncompromising. Lovecraft considered The Spider to be a first rate story, and Ewers himself a first rate writer so I really must rectify my situation...

[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....

[dask]

Sounds worth having but not for thirty bucks. That kind of money could buy a whole lot of good second hand anthologies of weird fiction (truly weird or not).

[creynier]

please define "weird-fiction"

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by creynier

please define "weird-fiction"

I'd say that's at least part of the point of the thread, really... and, as the above entries show, that's not an easy thing to do......

On the subject of this anthology in particular... I'll have to get my hands on it at some point; too many things there I don't have, and a fair number I've not read!

On Poe not being considered weird... again, it depends on who is defining it. The editor here may have excluded him, but to many he is one of the fathers of the genre... and I think a fair number of his works would certainly fit.

Weird and sf do go together, though... think of several of the stories in Groff Conklin's Science Fiction Terror Tales, or John W. Campbell's "Twilight" (as moody a piece as one can find); a number of Lovecraft's tales fall into this category: At the Mountains of Madness, "The Colour Out of Space", "The Shadow Out of Time", "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", "The Dreams in the Witch House", "The Call of Cthulhu", "The Whisperer in Darkness"... even "The Dunwich Horror", given the sort of beings the Old Ones are, according to the hints in the tale (super-advanced alien creatures on the level of what we would see as "gods"). There are any number of other examples.

It is a particularly difficult form to pin down because the term itself has often been used for wildly different sorts of things, from sword-and-sorcery fiction to the stranger sorts of sf to outright horror tales... and even humorous fantasy which had a hint of the uncanny, bizarre, or strange to them....

This is especially true now that we have such things as "the new weird" or the anthology New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird, which is very Lovecraftian without being restricted to what that term generally implies. I don't think there will be any consensus of opinion on its use, even critically speaking, for a good while yet, if ever....

[nomadman]

Originally Posted by creynier

please define "weird-fiction"

I'd say Lovecraft's definition is a pretty good starting place, though there's a little too much emphasis on cosmicism and "breathless dread" for it to be definitive in my opinion. Especially now, in the present age, where we're starting to see a greater spectrum of tales being brought under the weird banner by publishers and editors, it's starting to creak a little at the seams (that is, of course, dependent on whether you agree with the general broadening of the genre or consider some of the additions to be weird fiction at all).

At its heart, I think, weird fiction should strive for a quality of the numinous, the awesome or the uncanny and do so with seriousness and grace. It should "part the veil" in some way, and leave us with the feeling that we have emotionally and/or conceptually experienced something beyond the ordinary. How it does that is irrelevant to me, though there are certain methods which are more conducive to achieving this goal than others.

I'm not sure attempting to define it more precisely than that (or however you choose to do it) is really that helpful. It's a pretty nebulous genre at the best of times.

[nomadman]

By the way, I've just noticed, where the heck is Hodgson in that list?

[nomadman]

Concerning some of the newer writers, I'm glad to see Cisco and Barron represented, though I've not read either of these particular stories. Cisco's work is hallucinogenic in its power, and truly strange. His novel, The Divinity Student, reads like a waking nightmare. His shorter works are a bit of a mixed bag, I find, though The Water Nymphs and The Ice Age of Dreams are both incredible stories. Barron is simply one of the best weird writers of the modern age. I don't think I've come across a weak story by him yet. Mark Samuels is pretty good, though he falls short of those two by a small margin I feel. The White Hands is a well crafted horror tale, rather turn of the century in its feel, and deliberate in its pacing. Samuels is secretary of The Friends of Arthur Machen society, and The White Hands reads a little like a cross between Machen and Ligotti.

[Fried Egg]

I preferred Mark Sammual's "The White Hands and other weird stories" to both Michael Cisco's "The Divinity Student" and Laird Barron's "Imago Sequence" but he's certainly the most rooted in the traditional and therefore perhaps somewhat less original than the other two.

[GOLLUM]

Originally Posted by nomadman

Concerning some of the newer writers, I'm glad to see Cisco and Barron represented, though I've not read either of these particular stories. Cisco's work is hallucinogenic in its power, and truly strange. His novel, The Divinity Student, reads like a waking nightmare. His shorter works are a bit of a mixed bag, I find, though The Water Nymphs and The Ice Age of Dreams are both incredible stories. Barron is simply one of the best weird writers of the modern age. I don't think I've come across a weak story by him yet.

In response to your earlier comment regarding authors presented here I would have read I estimated 93 of the approx 106 authors on the list which probably means I'm possibly doing something right but may also need to get a life....

Having said that I think I will now acquire that anthology as it simply has far too many A graders to ignore in addition to the fact I'm still to catch up on some of the highlight acts like Laird Barron, Michael Cisco and Jean Ray I keep hearing so much about, It's one of the benefits of being involved in an online community such as this one..you just never stop learning form other people....

Aside form the novel Malpertuis by Jean Ray, which after chatting with Fried Egg appears to be a bone fide classic, can you recommend what you consider are the key collections or longer works by those three gents I should be spending my hard earned on?

[Fried Egg]

Originally Posted by GOLLUM

Aside form the novel Malpertuis by Jean Ray, which after chatting with Fried Egg appears to be a bone fide classic, can you recommend what you consider are the key collections or longer works by those three gents I should be spending my hard earned on?

I don't know if you've seen NomadMan's thread on Jean Ray but it may answer some of your questions.

It pretty much confirms my investigations that have found that the only "affordable" piece of his work currently available is the novel "Malpertuis". His collections are out of print and very expensive to obtain second hand.

[GOLLUM]

Originally Posted by Fried Egg

It pretty much confirms my investigations that have found that the only "affordable" piece of his work currently available is the novel "Malpertuis" His collections are out of print and very expensive to obtain second hand.

OH OK..thanks...I think... Point being I'm with you..phoee! to his collections being hard to get. It sounds as if a reprint would be in order then.

Still Malpertuis appears to be considered amongst his greatest works certainly in the longer format, so that's something.

Originally Posted by Fried Egg

I don't know if you've seen NomadMan's thread on Jean Ray but it may answer some of your questions

Thanks. In fact Nomadman recommend to me Malpertuis in that very thread almost 18 months ago..I must be crazier than I thought..Lol!

[Extollager]

I wonder how satisfactory a definition of "weird fiction" would be that reflected something of the old meaning of weird as fate or destiny. A weird tale then would be a story with an element of creepiness that builds to an inevitable outcome given the postulates of the story. It would tend to minimize the ability of human beings to "master their fates" or would treat such human efforts ironically (the very trying to prevent a foreseen fate as bringing it about). There would often be a sense of doom. No one particular philosophy would have to underlie the weird tale. You could have stories that suggest the universe is hostile to man; stories that emphasized the power of certain human beings or of other agents to compel victims to their fates; you could even combine the sense of fate/doom with a Christian understanding of the importance of moral choices -- when Wentworth turns from reality, humility, and love to self-pleasing eroticism and withdrawal from love, he is doomed to a fate weird enough in the telling of Charles Williams's Descent into Hell.

The definition would be loose enough to cover stories with supernatural agents and also stories that could be understood naturalistically, but all would have a sense of the creepy in one way or other.

Some stories that have been considered weird fiction that wouldn't fit under this definition might be some of the Conan stories, etc.

More later, probably...

[Extollager]

Having proposed a sense of what "weird fiction" could mean, here are some examples of stories that I would take as good examples:

The Turin Turambar sequence of Tolkien's Silmarillion, but not most of Tolkien's writing
Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery," although it is not a story of the supernatural (or sf)
Kuttner and Moore's "Vintage Season"
Poe's "Fall of the House of Usher," "M. Valdemar," etc.
Machen's "Black Seal"
Just about anything by Lovecraft
Dunsany's "Hoard of the Gibbelins," "Distressing Tale of Thangobrind," etc.
Robert Aickman's "Into the Wood"
Tarjei Vesaas's Ice Palace -- though nothing certainly supernatural occurs in it
Henry James's Turn of the Screw
Stevenson's "Thrawn Janet," Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, etc.
Rider Haggard's She

Here are some stories that I think would qualify as weird fiction although they are probably not usually regarded as weird stories:

Harlan Ellison's "Jeffty Is Five"
Asimov's "Nightfall"
Clarke's "The Star"

Here are some stories that might be regarded as weird fiction in other contexts, but wouldn't qualify under my proposed concept of the weird:

Stories from Unknown or along those lines, such as de Camp and Pratt's Harold Shea adventures
Probably most of the Conan pastiches by de Camp
Ray Bradbury's "The April Witch," right?

[dask]

Quick check with the dictionary in my computer says weird means odd or supernatural with fate being archaic. The perfect anthology would have all three blended to different degrees. For me, the more blades in the mix-master the better.