Edgar Allan Poe

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I think Poe was revolutionary for supernatural and macabre fiction because his tales were largely divorced from the moralism that was rampant in earlier examples, namely those of Irving and Hawthorne, and thus a greater emphasis on the grotesque.
 
Don't forget that many critics of the time regarded Machen's best works as pastiches of Robert Louis Stevenson. One has to be careful with that analyzing stuff; remember the fragile beauty of the butterfly?
 
Pastiches can be excellent. I would consider Ligotti's The Last Feast of Harlequin to be a Lovecraft pastiche. I'm a De Palma nut, and his best films are Hitchcock pastiches.
 
Druidic said:
Don't forget that many critics of the time regarded Machen's best works as pastiches of Robert Louis Stevenson. One has to be careful with that analyzing stuff; remember the fragile beauty of the butterfly?
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Glad to see you come out of hermitude!

My reading of Stevenson has been embarrassingly paltry -- not even read Jekyll and Hyde, which I will rectify soon. What elements of Stevenson's work did critics suspect Machen employed in pastiche?
 
The Three Impostors is a very obvious pastiche of Stevenson's The Dynamiter. Machen took the criticism on board when writing his next novel The Hill of Dreams.

I don't think The Dunwich Horror is a bad story, but I think it's very far from weird fiction at its best. it contains a lot of the excesses I tend to dislike about the genre. It's practically the blueprint for awful Mythos fiction. Robert Aickman told essentially the same story in The School Friend, and he did it with much more subtlety, nuance and skill.
 
I remember Penzoldt praising Lovecraft's ending of "Dunwich" as well as praising the pacing. Obviously it works for me though it may drive Joshi crazy.

I love "The Great God Pan" and I recently reread it. But the ending seems weak. Helen Vaughn who can call up monstrous companions that drive men and women mad or to suicide meekly decides to commit suicide because she's asked. Because she's threatened with exposure? Man, that's a Victorian ending...

Both stories are classic but I just rate Lovecraft's higher. The idea of Wilbur, the monstrous goatish giant, being terrified of dogs really tickles me. It makes sense that such hybrid flesh would be weak. Lovecraft also nicely hints at the bond between Wilbur and the Wizard. He patches up books for "the boy" and later Wilbur dashes desperately to get a doctor when the old man is dying. The whipperwills didn't get him, Wilbur remarks with some satisfaction...there was a hint of affection in his relationship with the Old Wizard...

Unfortunately when it came to the soul eaters, Wilbur wasn't so lucky. Or was he? They certainly paniced and fled fasr after a tussle with his soul. The mother (he probably sacrificed) fell victim to the psychopomps. Her death was probably essential to the completion of Wilbur's ends.

And I can't even get started on the second half. Wilbur's death scene, the invisible stalking Death...It was one thing to chase a demon, quite another to find it...and the last sentence? Fritz Leiber described it as a "supreme chill." Yeah, I'm a fan.
 
Hey Nirvana!

The Three Imposters, as James says, was often regarfed as a pastiche of Stevenson's The Dynamiter. Machen's work is far superior.

Machen's "Out of rhe Picture" seems to be a pastiche of Stevenson's Jeckell and Hyde according to some. I prefer to think of it as an interesting reworking. A good story.
 
Am I the only one who thinks "Hop-Frog" is a criminally underrated tale? A masterpiece of black comedy.
 
Has anybody read Walter de la Mare's A Revenant? It's about the ghost of Poe turning up to a lecture about him.
 
"A Revenant" is a fine piece by de la Mare. It's one of the dozen or so stories I would include in a collection of his best spectral work.
 
Druidic said:
"A Revenant" is a fine piece by de la Mare. It's one of the dozen or so stories I would include in a collection of his best spectral work.
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I'd enjoy seeing your list, as it's rare I encounter any discussion of de la Mare. A stab at my essential de la Mare dozen short stories would resemble:

Seaton's Aunt (tied with Aickman's The Inner Room as my favourite weird tale)
All Hallows
A Recluse
Out of the Deep
Crewe
Winter
The Green Room
The Tree
Mr. Kempe
The Almond Tree
Missing
A: B: O

Nearly making it are Miss Duveen, The Three Friends, The Vats, The House, The Count's Courtship, Strangers & Pilgrims and The Riddle. I wish he wrote more than a handful of true ghost stories, but many of his non-supernatural tales feel like ghost stories.
 
Your list is a good one. I'd probably remove "The Almond Tree", "Winter" and "The Green Room", replacing them with "The Wharf" (a woman tortured by dreams of Hell"), "Bad Company" ( a true ghost story) and "The Trumpet." But it's all a matter of individual tastes, I reckon. I really like "In the Forest", "The Three Friends" and "A Mote"...so why not add them as well?
 
Damn, I forgot about "The Ideal Craftsman". It's not supernatural but it's close to subtle horror.

By the way, I think "Missing" is an underrated tale. Critics dismiss it because it seems too obvious. Big mistake. Glad it made your list!

While you and I, James, pretty much like the same authors and stories, I suspect the difference in how we rate them is due to the fact I'm not as much into subtle horror as you are. I'm too coarse grained to appreciate it fully! For me Lovecraft is the perfect mix of physical and subtle horror. I don't like trash or sadism but I like stories that want to eat your face off. Michael Shea's "The Autopsy" is a good example.
 
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It is true my preference leans toward elliptical and subtle tales, but I do enjoy explicit horror. I adore Clive Barker's work, rating him as highly as I do Lovecraft. Ramsey Campbell has written some classics in that vein also. His story The Cellars comes to mind.

It is one of my great frustrations in life that de la Mare didn't write more ghost stories in the style of All Hallows, Seaton's Aunt or A Recluse. He fused the best elements of Henry James and M. R. James to create the most masterful style of ghostly fiction seen until Aickman put pen to page. I enjoy the rest of de la Mare's work (Memoirs of a Midget is an amazing book!), but I was disappointed upon initial reading to discover how few chillers he wrote considering his astonishing ability.

A cheap book entitled The Ghostly Fiction of Walter de la Mare featuring All Hallows, Seaton's Aunt, A Recluse, Crewe, Out of the Deep, Winter, The House, Mr. Kempe, Strangers & Pilgrims, The Tree, The Green Room and A:B:O aimed at weird fiction fans would do well to boost his reputation these days. I love The Green Room. It's deeply Aickmanesque.
 
I taught Poe for several years, and later introduced a bit of Hawthorne ("Young Goodman Brown") in some fiction classes. After reading "The Minister's Black Veil," "Rappaccini's Daughter," and "The Artist of the Beautiful" for a Gothic lit class, however, I found the latter author more impressive.
 
Our new Edgar Allan Poe has shipped!
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We've wanted to publish this for many years. I can't think of many of our books that have not been in a direct line of descent from Poe :)

http://tartaruspress.com/poe-the-macabre-tales.html
 
M. R. James is the only supernatural horror author I'm aware of who didn't like Poe. Any others? It's impossible for me to imagine why any fan or practitioner of the genre wouldn't worship the man. Plenty of great writers think Lovecraft and others sucked. Is Poe hate even a thing? I mean, it must be. Somewhere.
 
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