Originally Posted by Evans (Post 19386)

Technically it does- whether the cat/author is very good at what they do is another matter entirely (a very objective on at that).

Originally Posted by MadsPLP (Post 19766)

Julian, sorry for slow reply. It took rather long.

This is rather off-topic, but it's an interesting discussion, I think. Maybe it should have its own thread.

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How can you know if you don't read them?

It's a general rule although there are exceptions. But I refuse to read something I know I probably won't like just to clarify the matter. For example, I've read some (not much) Ramsey Campbell - ditto for H P Lovecraft and James Herbert and any other horror writers - and I don't like it enough to want to read more. Fans of RC have rather impertinently and arrogantly suggested that I should familiarise myself with his entire ouevre before daring to dislike his work, but that's a ridiculous argument. A person reads enough to make a decision.


In the last couple of years I've read at least the following modern writers:
Thomas Ligotti, Quentin S. Crisp, Mark Samuels (though disappointed by his latest, I think quite highly of his writing, Joel Lane, T.E.D. Klein, Terry Lamsley, Ramsey Campbell, Ray Russell, Mark Valentine and some stories Karl Edward Wagner (though deceased, I would put him in the "contemporary" box), To name some of those I've read. I think they hold up quite well. I wouldn't per se call them better nor worse than the "golden age" writers, but I think their work works very well on their own terms, and is, in it's own respect, on par with the "golden age", in spite of me finding the whole "Olympic Games of Horror Writing" a bit uninteresting.

I've read stuff by the writers you mention and would agree that the first five are very decent authors (notwithstanding my minor disagreement with MS here recently and a more serious falling-out with JL).

I haven't read much by Terry L; I dislike RC's work and think it vastly over-rated); no comment on MV except to say he's very competent but alas too pretentiois for my liking; RR has many talents but writing is not one of them; it's been ages since I've read anything by HW.

But you're omitting the best new writer in the genre: Reggie Oiver.

1: I'm not really interested in those commercially succesful US horror writers. You may be right, but I'm not interested in King, Straub, Poppy Z. Brite, Thomas Harris og William Peter Blatty. I don't know how the commercially succesful writers ever came into this post. In fact, I think the most commercially succesful living weird fiction writer I read is Thomas Ligotti.

Excuse me for asking this, but English is, after all, only my second language:
Are you saying that academics like Joshi or Dziemianowicz are cronies with those commercially succesful writers, and therefore writing them better than they are?

Yes; and allowing their cronies to hype and pitch their own products / projects. (I refer specifically to the reference book they co-edited for Greenwood Press.)

Or are you saying that commercially succesful writers are getting all the genre awards?

Nope; if commercially successful writers won the awards then the likes of Ramsey Campbell would have fared much worse in winning awards from the same Society he is president of. It beggars belief that he's even allowed to be considered for a BFS award: it's a bit like allowing Gordon Browne being allowed to enter the Labour Party Employee Of The Month competition.

As for the first, it's obviously not true - the writings I've read by Joshi doesn't really seem to think too high of contemporary weird writers (I confess not to having read much scholarly by Dziemianowicz except for his excellent essay on Ligotti in The Ligotti Reader).

Joshi thinks too highly of Lovecraft and Campbell but I must admit that I haven't read SD's Ligotti essay.

As for the second point, it may be true. I'm not really interested in genre awards, and wouldn't be able to name a single winner. Much as I wouldn't be able to name a single winner in the recent Academy Awards. I don't inhabit a world where said things matters.

2: Which superb writers from pre-WWII are neglected? A guide would be much appreciated.
I have sometimes used Joshi's et.al. reference book in three volumes for study purposes. I haven't read it systematically through, but I haven't noticed any particular bias towards living, American writers, nor have I noticed any particularly nasty remarks about English writers of the Golden Age. Some examples to prove your point would be much appreciated. Insinuation is all very fun, but doesn't really help the discussion, does it?

I simply don't have the time to list all the writers who've been ignored at the expense of contemporary writers. I promise this isn't evasion; I really don't. But when I do, I will happily cite at least 20 authors who should have been in the book.

With regards to wikipedia, there is much more on contemporary writers. Doubtless, some are using it to promote themselves (or fans are using it to promote favourite writers), as will happen when an encyclopedia is user-generated. This also means that the encyclopedia is dependent on the knowledge of the users, and since much pre-WWII weird fiction is pretty elusive, not many may know of it, and that may in turn lead to a certain bias toiwards living writers. However, wikipedia isn't really authoritative, is it?

It's appallingly bad.

(I tinker with it all the time, making up absurdly plausible facts.)

3: With regards to knowing or not personally knowing the author one's writing about, I have mixed feelings. Ideally it should be avoided. However, this field isn't really very large. A lot of the material is elusive. Therefore, if one is an academic and wishes to write about a living writer, contacting that writer may be the easiest way of getting the material you're needing. And, having some contact with said writer can give some valuable insights.

I disagree. Distance is important.

Also: is it possible not to have any contact at all with contemporary horror writers, given the smallness of this scene? Here, there are so many writers. Were I to write about one of the writers who are present here (and I am indeed considering writing an academic paper on either liminality or urban representations in contemporary weird fiction), I may have some valid points to discuss with them. This may decrease the distance between myself and the subject of my thesis, but there may still be valuable insights?

It's a matter of supreme comfort to me that M R James and Robert Aickman would have despised the horror fraternity and all of its petty politicking.

I personally think Joshi's academic work is very, very sober, usable and encyclopedic. He has a weak point with regards to religion, spiritualism and the like, which unfortunately leads him to condemn the works of Machen and Aickman. Knowing that weak point, however, I can still use Joshi's books on the weird. Judging from his The Evolution of the Weird Tale, Joshi doesn't seem to suffer of the scratching-the-back-of-your-contemporaries-syndrome, nor does he seem to suffer from any form of contempt towards English writers. He does have a tendency to read everything with his old pair of Lovecraftian glasses, but he makes no secret of it - it's out in the open, not hidden.

I'm not as well-read on Joshi as you, I'm just judging him from stray pieces I've read, his stance on RC and HPL, and the Greenwood reference book. So, your view could well be more qualified than mine.

I don't really know the case in question. I've read that Zoran Zivkovic wrote something for her book as well. I shan't be the judge of other people's ethical standards, but I guess no one (except maybe for Stephen King) would write an introduction to a work which they felt weren't up to a standard they would wish to be associated with.

Only her friends, cronies and Ashtree customers have praised her work. Offline, everyone I've spoken to about her writing finds it dreary and derivative. When you bear in mind that the income stream from Ashtree Press has all but dried up, it isn't difficult to deduce that she's using her friends and contacts in the publishing world to help launch a writing career, even though her experience lies in editing.

Besides, an introduction need not be a piece of real literary criticism - sometimes, it merely suggests some general themes in the author's writing. Of course, most introductions to contemporary collections won't mention the inferior tales - that's left for the academic literary criticism and leter selections to judge. You'll rarely see an introduction to a collection by a contemporary writer saying: "I think all the stories are good, except for the third and fifth, which were merely included to give some bulk to the collection".

Well, you probably shouldn't agree to introduce a book unless you think it's very good.

Unless, of course, you feel obliged to by way of repaying a favour or assisting a friend.

That's possibly true. I fail to see what this has to do with the subject, since Hill is firmly in the mainstream part of the genre, a part in which I have no interest.

P.S.: This is not to be impolite, but I have a request - could you possibly stop using Reggie Oliver to bolster your arguments in every other post? Your arguments won't become more or less valid by it, and I'm sure Reggie Oliver doesn't need his name to written in every other post. Your posts are interesting enough as they are, and Reggie Oliver's a brilliant enough writer without him being mentioned off-topic everywhere.