THE NIGHTMARE NETWORK

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Odalisque (Post 16022)

Here's a photo from the same batch as the Egnisomicon one. It shows Des Lewis on the flat roof outside our Lancaster University study-playroom.

http://www.ligotti.net/picture.php?a...pictureid=1044

Horror!
And why does my hair look like a hat?

This is me more recently (hard to credit):
http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o...toncone233.jpg

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nemonymous (Post 16023)

Horror!

If one can't post horror on the TLO, where can one post it?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nemonymous (Post 16023)

And why does my hair look like a hat?

Actually, your hair in the 1968 picture looks like a wig -- although I'm sure it wasn't.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Odalisque (Post 16028)

Actually, your hair in the 1968 picture looks like a wig -- although I'm sure it wasn't.

You're right. Although I probably need a wig today!

PFJ (Bowland Bar at Bailrigg, Lancaster University1969?):
http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o...desunivv45.jpg

DFL - in Morecambe 'Digs' (when at Lancaster University 1968?)
http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o...us/desuniv.jpg

DFL typing his poems at home in Old Heath Rd, Colchester (when on holiday from Lancaster University 1968?)
http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o.../desuniv36.jpg

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nemonymous (Post 16023)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Odalisque (Post 16022)

Here's a photo from the same batch as the Egnisomicon one. It shows Des Lewis on the flat roof outside our Lancaster University study-playroom.

http://www.ligotti.net/picture.php?a...pictureid=1044

Horror!
And why does my hair look like a hat?

This is me more recently (hard to credit):
http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o...toncone233.jpg

des, the conical hat in the more recent photograph is more becoming. Let us hope that it's not becoming conformed to your head's actual contours. :drunk:

I can't remember seeing the picture of me in Bowland Bar before (and I think it probably is from 1969). In my opinion, it makes me look less cool than the 1968 pictures -- which is probably no bad thing. I wonder who the young woman in spectacles sitting next to me was.

Here, by contrast, is the very latest picture of me (taken on 6th January 2009). I'm wearing my new (cashmere) hat.

http://www.ligotti.net/picture.php?a...pictureid=1043

Quote:

Originally Posted by Odalisque (Post 16052)

I can't remember seeing the picture of me in Bowland Bar before (and I think it probably is from 1969). In my opinion, it makes me look less cool than the 1968 pictures --

PFJ, I seriously think that 1969 photo is a very cool one of you.

Below is one of our collaborations published in the Nineties. This one is ALONE TOGETHER in 'Trash City' (1993). I intend to post some of these collaborations here abstemiously over 2009 if and when I can find them.

http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o...trashcity2.jpg

http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o...trashcity3.jpg
I do not know if you realise that my crazy novel THE VISITOR (1974) is posted HERE which contains much of your embedded (even crazier?) commentary on it that was written at the time and included as part of the novel as it went on!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nemonymous (Post 16063)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Odalisque (Post 16052)

I can't remember seeing the picture of me in Bowland Bar before (and I think it probably is from 1969). In my opinion, it makes me look less cool than the 1968 pictures --

PFJ, I seriously think that 1969 photo is a very cool one of you.

Thank you for that! Here's one of me trying to look cool in 1968 by pretending to play the guitar. :D

http://www.ligotti.net/picture.php?a...pictureid=1045

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nemonymous (Post 16063)

Below is one of our collaborations published in the Nineties. This one is ALONE TOGETHER in 'Trash City' (1993). I intend to post some of these collaborations here abstemiously over 2009 if and when I can find them.

And thank you for that. I think that Alone Together reads remarkably well. I wonder whether that picture was intended to illustrate the story. It doesn't look much like the door of a Norwood Junction train. Or did the artist know something about Norwood Junction trains that I don't? Maybe it's supposed to show the arrival of men in the world. :confused:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nemonymous (Post 16063)

I do not know if you realise that my crazy novel THE VISITOR (1974) is posted HERE which contains much of your embedded (even crazier?) commentary on it that was written at the time and included as part of the novel as it went on!

I had forgotten about The Visitor. I wish readers well with my crazy comments (and with the rest of the novel) should they click on that link. :drunk:

WHOFAGE
by DF Lewis

This short essay was first published in USA - 'Atsatrohn' 1993 and then in UK - 'Midnight in Hell' 1995.

When I corresponded with Peter (now Petal) Jeffery back in the 60’s and 70’s, a convenient acronym cropped up for the type of literature we both enjoyed: WHOFAGE (Weird, Horror, Occult, Fantasy, Avernal, Ghost, Egnis). You will have to read the mighty Tome that we conspired to write at Lancaster University in 1967 (THE EGNISOMICON) to understand Avernal and Egnis. Only two copies exist. Petal’s and mine. One a photocopy, which we consider to be the pukka one. As you may know, in the 80’s, Petal was to become the Red Brain in the now late lamented Lovecraft fanzine DAGON.

But my first introduction to whofage started even earlier when I was at Colchester Royal Grammer School - and who was in the same Sixth Form class as me? None other than Michel Parry. And it is that fact which reminds me that Anthologies were my real spur toward whofage. In Great Britain, there were a good many horror anthologies edited by Michel during the early 70’s, mostly in Mayflower, Corgi and Panther paperbacks, such as The Supernatural Solution (spook sleuths), Mayflower Book of Black Magic Stories (six volumes), Strange Ecstasies (drug fantasy), Rivals of King Kong, Rivals Of Dracula, The Hounds Of Hell (doggy horror - and aren’t all dogs horrible?), Beware the Cat &c. &c. There were also two Devil’s kisses anthologies edited by Linda Lovecraft (who was Michel Parry in disguise!), one of which was banned because the early 70’s were too early for this brand of erotic horror. So, if you have the Devil’s Kisses anthologies (as I do), they’re probably valuable. But, no, of course, the early seventies were too late to have influenced me in my most impressionable years. My first real taste of WHOFAGE (even though the acronym hadn’t been invented at that stage) was when I accidentally met Michel Parry in the Colchester WH Smiths bookshop in 1964(?) where he picked the Panther edition of HPL’s Haunter Of The Dark off the shelf and recommended it to me. He scored his nail under a few tales (the Dunwich Horror being one, I recall) as particular favorites of his. Despite still being at school, Michel had a flat of his own where he later showed me an amazing Arkham House collection. And that was strange in those days, I guess.

Whofage only really came home to me a year or so later with August Derleth’s anthologies. You must have seen these. Or perhaps you haven’t. In the late sixties, one could often find English paperback editions of these American classic anthologies in secondhand bookshops. I always recall travelling round Peter Jeffery’s home town of Southend, picking a goodly trawl of Derleths from market stalls &c. Not now, I’m afraid. Derleth, to my mind, was not a good writer, but he did assemble some pretty amazing whofage tales by motley crews under single roofs. Among the best of these are Who Knocks? and When Evil Wakes. Herein I furthered my love of HPL and people like John Metcalfe, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, J. Ramsey Campbell, C.M. Eddy Jr., Arthur Machen, and Seabury Quinn. Oh, the list is gloriously endless. These anthologies are Required Reading. Or they certainly were when whofage was sparse on the shelves. Now there’s too much of it. All those wide black spines. Ramsey Campbell (yes, the J. Ramsey Campbell mentioned above) and Stephen King are the only two worth reading to my mind. But who am I to say?

Peter Haining’s anthologies of the sixties and seventies also inspired me: there are literally scores of these, so I imagine you still may be able to obtain them secondhand. Robert Aickman’s and later, R. Chetwynd-Hayes’ Fontana Ghost Story volumes that they edited were amazingly good, too.

Robert Aickman...Aaah! Well, that’s another story. Perhaps next time.

I’ve just returned from a holiday in Sark, Channel Islands. It is an island 3.5 miles by 1 mile, ringed by back-breaking craggy bays to get down to. Its only transport horses, bikes or the odd tractor. Definitely no cars. Well, this was an ideal spot to renew ancient acquaintances. And some of these anthologies have been better friends than most people. Sitting in a cave, I listened to the waves gently whofage, whofage, whofage on the pebbles outside - the only way for a sea to gurgle or ripple or softly sough.

As I recall, the E of WHOFAGE was originally Etc. That said Egnis is certainly better.