THE DEEP ONES: Winter 2012 Schedule Planning

Well, this thing seems to be going well enough that we should let it continue, I think! We'll use the LT vote function, as voted earlier (though I admit that voting is biased in favor of voting), and I'll jigger the results to avoid excessive author repetition, if necessary. Any story that gets more "No" than "Yes" votes won't make the cut; otherwise they'll be prioritized according to net-yes-minus-no. Okay, I hope?

To post a story for voting, place the title and author between HTML-style angle-bracket tags. The open tag says vote (in brackets); the close tag says /vote (ditto). Multiple polls seem to need multiple posts.

To start off, here are the three leftovers from the last round of nominations:
ETA: VOTING ENDS ON THE WINTER SOLSTICE (DECEMBER 22)

I'm going to go on to suggest a few others.Sturgeon once declared this to have been his best story; it was especially admired by August Derleth.

Did we really not have any REH this quarter? Even with the huge Conan! thread in the group?

Because I really dug "Nethescurial." This is supposed to be Ligotti's supreme homage to HPL, and it's pretty widely reprinted.

One of my favorite authors, whom I wouldn't ordinarily place in "the Weird Tradition." But this story was included by Straub in the second American Fantastic Tales volume.

Wagner's homage to Weird Tales artist Lee Brown Coye.

An unusual take on HPL's mythos from Shea.

A 1931 mythos tale by one of the original members of the Lovecraft circle.

Mythos tale from one of Lovecraft's most successful literary heirs

ETA

Note - not a mythos tale

An early Lovecraftian homage from Godzilla.

An exercise in Grand Guignol from a master of American letters.

A later Weird Tales entry, from 1958.

>5 paradoxosalpha:

You're right! How did we miss REH? I'll save "Pigeons from Hell" for next time...

Oh, forgot to mention (but I'll edit to add it to the top of the thread): I'll take the determinative votes as of December 22: the longest night of the year.

Bierce is part of Joshi's canon in The Weird Tale, and from the title alone we can see the influence of this brief tale on the mythos.

I could repeat my remark at #7 practically verbatim, except to note that this one has been anthologized in Cthulhu 2000 and Lovecraft's Legacy.

It's seasonal! (I was reminded of it by the Xmas Horror thread elsewhere.)

I'll post links to my nominations (if I'm able to find them via a quick Google search) so you all can look before you vote if you so desire.Not able to find on the net after a quick search. S.T. Joshi: "When the tale was published in Weird Tales, it elicited a protest from authorities in Indiana, who sought to have the issue banned."(!)

Also not found. "A grim, terrible story of fortune unendurable - a tale of frightful vengeance in a medieval oubliette."

One of the more-reprinted short stories by the author -- it is also available online.

http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/short-stories/61/

http://wikilivres.info/wiki/The_Tower_of_the_Elephant

http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/lotry.html

If you voted "no" for a reason other than the story being closer to mainstream/mimetic fiction than to weird, I'd be obliged if you'd say why below.

I don't know how to make all the fancy, fancy stuff.

I would like to nominate another Irvin S. Cobb tale since it seemed that people liked Fishhead.

According to Wikipedia "The Unbroken Chain was a model for Lovecraft's The Rats in the Walls."

I have never read it before personally.

>1 paradoxosalpha:

Not to get all pedantic again, but I'm not aware of a Dunsany story called "The Hashish Eater"; are you sure you don't mean "The Hashish Man"? (Or do you mean the Clark Ashton Smith poem "The Hashish Eater -or- the Apocalypse of Evil"?)

>5 paradoxosalpha:

That's okay - we seem to be making up for it now. :)

>6 paradoxosalpha:

Reading that one right now. 8)

>28 Thulean:

Here ya go, Thulean:

> 29

Title corrected in #1. Strange how so many of us wanted to read a nonexistent story, eh?

>30 paradoxosalpha:

Any Dunsany story with "hashish" in the title is ok by me! What's strange is how changing the title from "The Hashish Eater" to "The Hashish Man" takes the tone from weird pulp to Broadway musical .

:)

I plan on delving deeply into Dunsany's writings in the new year.

>30 paradoxosalpha: & 31

LOL at both you guys. :)

>31 gwendetenebre:

I plan on delving deeply into Dunsany's writings in the new year.

Yeah, anybody with as many connections to important literary figures (both expected (J.R.R. Tolkien, H.P. Lovecraft) and unexpected (Arthur C. Clarke, William Butler Yeats (!))) as Dunsany deserves a thorough investigation. 8)

> 32

I don't get why you are surprised by the Dunsany --> Yeats influence. It seems pretty patent to me. Clarke is a little startling, though.

>33 paradoxosalpha:

The exclamation point was less an expression of surprise than one of sort of mocking derision toward the "intellegentsia" who, until quite recently, would probably be appalled to learn that a Great Man of Letters like W. B. Yeats would consort with a writer of (ugh!) fantasy like Dunsany. I mean, it doesn't seem surprising to me at all (nor, on a related note, does W.H. Auden's appreciation of Professor Tolkien's work (http://songosmeltingpot.blogspot.com/2008/09/wh-auden-on-jrr-tolkien.html#!/2008/09/wh-auden-on-jrr-tolkien.html), another relationship which seems to leave literary critics scratching their heads) - I actually see them as artists of quite related sensiblities (along the same lines, I have toyed with the idea of posting a thread here on Yeats' "The Second Coming", as I think it speaks quite vividly to the imaginations of weird fiction fans). However, it would seem that many among the literati fail to see them as peers; see, for example, this piece from The New Yorker which, while not utterly worthless, seems to me to be full of condescension and misunderstanding: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/12/06/041206crbo_books1?currentPage=all

On the Clarke/Dunsany friendship, there is apparently a book that collects their correspondence (Arthur C. Clarke & Lord Dunsany: A Correspondence); I'm sure it makes for fascinating reading.

>34 artturnerjr:

Art, feel free to start that Yeats thread! As for The New Yorker.... feh. They're still not above publishing the occasional Stephen King story to boost sales, though, are they? As long as he's on his best behavior, that is. I wonder if The Smithsonian magazine has ever published an article on Dunsany, as he seems the perfect subject for one of their historical features...

> 34

With whom are we supposed to compare Yeats? If Dunsany and (presumably) Machen are off-limits, that's like saying you shouldn't read Shakespeare alongside Marlowe or Smart.

>36 paradoxosalpha:

Well, yeah, in my mind that's precisely true. The point I'm trying to make is that writers like Dunsany and Arthur Machen don't have nearly as impressive a literary reputation as Nobel Laureate Yeats. I, personally, think this is beyond absurd, particularly in Machen's case, considering he (for starters) anticipated the stream-of-consciousness narrative style of modernist literary giants like James Joyce and Virginia Woolf by at least a decade, but my understanding is that neither author gets a great deal of attention in academic circles these days. I mean, I don't know - you have a great deal more formal education than I do - don't you find that to be the case?

> 37

you have a great deal more formal education than I do

Man, you make me feel like I wandered in here with my pants off. Have I been bragging on my sheepskins? Anyhow, I really don't know how English literature is taught these days at the post-secondary level. My own first encounter with Machen was a uniform collected works on the shelves of my college, though. I was interested in him then as both an influence on Lovecraft and an initiate of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. I can't remember any dismissive references to Dunsany, but it took me a while to get around to making it a priority to find him, since his books have never been what you'd call "common," except perhaps for a few minutes when Lin Carter's reprints were out new.

Now, I just looked around to see what short fiction we might read from Yeats, and there is hardly any extant. He wrote poetry, essays, and plays. So I guess we're sort of comparing apples and oranges -- even if that wasn't my initial impression. Who are the great Weird Poets? George Sterling, almost certainly. There must be others, but perhaps this deserves its own thread.

>35 gwendetenebre:

Art, feel free to start that Yeats thread!

I just might do that, Kenton... I just might do that. :D

As for The New Yorker.... feh. They're still not above publishing the occasional Stephen King story to boost sales, though, are they? As long as he's on his best behavior, that is.

Financial considerations are certainly a factor, but I also think that the sheer quality of King's short fiction over the last couple of decades has gotten to the point that even The New Yorker can't shut him out anymore; stories like "The Man in the Black Suit" and "That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is in French" are, IMHO, as flawless as any prose fiction from an American writer in my lifetime.

I wonder if The Smithsonian magazine has ever published an article on Dunsany, as he seems the perfect subject for one of their historical features...

I'd certainly be interested in reading it if they have. :)

Alan Moore on the literary reputations of weird fiction writers (this is from his introduction to Richard Corben's graphic novel adaptation of Hodgson's The House on the Borderland):

This book, along with its author and some of his equally illustrious contemporaries or near-contemporaries, represents a buried treasure-seam of literature which might immeasurably enrich our currently moribund cultural landscape, if only it were not buried, had not been ruthlessly buried alive in the first instance.

For "buried," read forgotten, marginalized, disqualified. It seems as if, with the arrival of Jane Austen on the literary map, there was a sudden and unanimous consensus reached within the critical fraternity to the effect that socially realistic parlor-dramas and sparkling comedies of manners were not merely the most lofty point to which all writings might aspire, they were the only form of writing that could be considered genuine, serious literature. Thus, at a sweep, all genre fiction and all fantasy were ruled unclean, consigned to the outlying slums and ghettos past the ivory battlements of literary respectability.

There are a few names, it is true, that have somehow survived the purge: Poe. Lovecraft (just). Maybe Bram Stoker, simply based on Dracula's enduring success. Possibly another one or two whose names evade the memory at present, which, if anything, just serves to underline the basic point: Buried. Disqualified. Forgotten.

What about Lord Dunsany, with his perfect little one- or two-page fables? What about Clark Ashton Smith, his opulent prose style, his retirement partly spent in carving pebbles into leering and fantastic demon-heads then throwing them away, perhaps to be found decades later by some stranger, who would surely marvel all their lives? What about Arthur Machen, with The Three Impostors or The Great God Pan, who joined the legendary magic brotherhood, the Golden Dawn; who saw visions of Sion rise above the wind-scoured squares and terraces of Holborn? What of M.P. Shiel, "the gem-encrusted magus," overweight and running from his health through London's twilight streets, wearing a vest of battery-driven lights to alert coachmen and pedestrians to his approaching presence? What about William Hope Hodgson?

>38 paradoxosalpha:

Have I been bragging on my sheepskins?

Not at all, man. I merely noticed that you had a couple of graduate degrees posted on your LT author page.

Anyhow, I really don't know how English literature is taught these days at the post-secondary level.

Well, things have probably improved a bit since I was an undergrad, but when I was studying for my English BA (late 80s - early 90s), the notion that you could put a writer of genre fiction on the same level as Ernest Hemingway or William Faulkner was almost always considered completely ridiculous. I remember a fellow student making an argument for the aesthetic merit of the work of a genre SF writer (it escapes me who it was, but I'm almost certain it was someone like Philip Dick who you could make a pretty reasonable case for) in my Writing Fiction course and the prof literally laughed at him.

Who are the great Weird Poets?

Good question. Sterling, Clark Ashton Smith... Edgar Allan Poe's poetry is highly regarded is certain circles, although oddly (with the exception of "The Haunted Palace" and a few other pieces) I've never been a particular fan of it. I know Ann K. Schwader is highly regarded among aficionados, but I've honestly never read her work. Like you said, it probably deserves its own thread.

ETA: Schwader's poem "To Theia" is online - I found it rather haunting, actually:

http://www.strangehorizons.com/2009/20090928/schwader-p.shtml

For a direct Dunsany-to-Yeats comparison, one should probably read the plays of each.

ETA:
> 41
Oh, I forget that I have an author page. It's really based on a few chapbooks (that people -- some of whom I've never met -- really did buy and catalog here on LT). My actual books are still in MSS.

Back to voting. Not enough HPL to choose from here.With our recent reading of "The Great God Pan" to support it.

>27 artturnerjr:

I love the work of Shirley Jackson, but I've read and discussed "The Lottery" so many times over the ages that it just doesn't appeal to me as a discussion piece as much as some other tales of hers might. It is a classic, though. I won't object if it's chosen - maybe looking at it through a "weird" filter would provide some additional insight.

>42 paradoxosalpha:

Ah, yes, the perils of living in the Age of the Internets. I had a similiar experience with making a pretty extensively annotated list of my favorite films on my IMDb profile page... and then forgetting it was there. Fortunately, it was still there when I remembered it. :)

>45 gwendetenebre:

Thanks for that, Kenton. I'm kind of curious to see if it's been robbed of any of its power for me over the years - my original read was probably the great "WTF!" literary moment of my high school years, particularly since it was assigned reading.

It may be tooting my own horn a bit, but Project Gutenberg just completed a collection of Algernon Blackwood's short stories, The Wolves of God and Other Fey Stories.* I don't think we've done anything by Blackwood, and that would all be easily available.

* http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/8/3/1/38310/38310-h/38310-h.htm

> 47

"The Wendigo" is doing pretty well in the voting above at #21.

Before I read #47, I was planning to hop onto this thread for the following purpose:According to Joshi's intro to The White People and Other Stories, HPL considered "The Willows" to be the greatest horror story of all time.

>21 paradoxosalpha:, 47, 48

Algernon Blackwood is one of the biggies we must get to.

Idea - 'tis the season for reading a lot of weird fiction, so should we have a special Xmas read?

("Wendigo" vote removed - see >53 gwendetenebre:, below)

> 49

First, your poll doesn't match the accompanying note. Are you polling on "The Willows" or "The Wendigo"? Second, "The Wendigo" looks like a shoe-in for winter anyhow, and it's not a Xmas story as such.

>50 paradoxosalpha:

Since it's described as "seasonal" in >21 paradoxosalpha:, I thought that you meant the Xmas/New Year's season.

If not there must be at least one "Weird Xmas" tale we could do. Hmmm...

"The Last Feast of Harlequin" evidently concerns a Winter Holiday.

>52 paradoxosalpha:

"Last Feast" evidently involves the Feast of Fools, a December fest somewhat resembling the Saturnalia.

We could vote on it, but might I suggest the following instead?

“Transition” by Algernon Blackwood (1913) – A man embarks on a bizarre and nightmarish journey home to his family with a bundle of newly purchased Christmas presents for them.*

I haven't read it, but it is available online. I'll remove the "Wendigo" vote-thing.

* description taken from the following site, which has a few other interesting Xmas selections listed:

http://vintagehorror.com/2011/12/a-celebration-of-christmas-horror-masters/

> 53

Cool. The M.R. James and Ramsey Campbell stories there look good too!

>54 paradoxosalpha:

The other links on that page that go to previous years have a lot of good stories on them, too! Let's move the potential Xmas story vote off of this thread, so it can get back to the regular winter schedule. I'll open an Xmas vote thread with the above tales and we can vote on those and whatever other stories might be put up. Let's decide on one by 12/18? No pressure whatsoever on anyone to join in the the extra Xmas discussion, either. Let's just see what we come up with.

http://www.horrormasters.com/Text/a1833.pdf

Cited as a possible inspiration for At the Mountains of Madness.

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Horla

S.T. Joshi cites this as a possible source for "The Call of Cthulhu".

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/35517/35517-h/35517-h.htm#NOVEL_OF_THE_BLACK_SEAL

Probable source for "Call of Cthulhu", "The Dunwich Horror", and "The Whisperer in Darkness".

Note: "The Novel of the Black Seal" is part of The Three Imposters, although sometimes reprinted as an independent story and readable as such.

>59 paradoxosalpha:

I would just put The Three Impostors up for a vote, but I think it would be a bit of a read for our group.

ETA: Actually, it's not as bad as I thought - looks like TTI runs about 100-180 pp. in most editions. Still, it'd be the longest thing we've ever read.

TONIGHT is the longest night of the year. The actual solstice falls in the dark hours of early morning here in the US. Settle your votes, 'cause I'll be counting them as soon as I roll out of bed tomorrow.

>61 paradoxosalpha:

Happy winter solstice to you! I'll raise a can or three o' Guinness draught to celebrate as I'm wrapping Xmas presents tonight! Looking forward to reading the voting results tomorrow.

VOTING IS CLOSED. Results posting momentarily in a new thread!

HEY! Where's the finished winter schedule thread? I just found an e-text source for the Merritt story--
http://gutenberg.net.au/plusfifty-a-m.html#merritt
--and I was going to note it there, but I can't find it! I was the one who posted the thread, and I certainly didn't delete it. Can anyone else see it?

If you mean "THE DEEP ONES Reading Schedule for Winter 2012", I still see it - it'll be right under this one after I post this (I hope).

Did you accidentally click "Ignore"? That would send it to the very bottom.

Yeah, I must have somehow clicked ignore. Now I know: If you star AND ignore a thread, the red X trumps the star.

>66 paradoxosalpha:

If you star AND ignore a thread, the red X trumps the star.

It also opens one of the gates that lets in those things...

>66 paradoxosalpha:

Speaking of accidentally clicking things - I did something similar and removed myself from the group the other day. That's why I'm a "Recent" member.

:-P