Weird Fiction in Canada?

[nomis]

I found myself thinking the other day that Canada doesn't seem to have the same collectives of weird fiction writers that other English speaking countries do (namely, of course, the USA and Britain).

Can the participants here list some authors for me I might be able to investigate further? I know Richard Gavin, of course, but that's about it.

Again, I'm not speaking of "horror" writers in general — rather that subset who are more familiar with Machen and Ligotti rather than King and Koontz.

Suggestions? Preferably with book titles...

[SpookyDread]

A Strange Manuscript Found In A Copper Cylinder by James De Mille (1888)

Theosophical worldview.. hyperborea channels into the inner earth corresponding to energy centres of the body and mana.. metaphysics of which corresponding to cannibalism, anthropological proof in Oceanic cultures (see "Soul" Of the Primitive by Lucien Levy Bruhl) , author also comments on Buddhism , compared with sleep paralysis … see Sinister Yogis by David Gordon White or Haunting the Buddha by Robert DeCaroli . There is also in the book at the root of the metaphysics is gift economy of like the Maori … see Marcel Mauss The Gift which is about gift economy and exchange of mana . You can do a lot of reading into this book. The author himself is interested in these topics and weaves it into his story. The very secrets of the divine order of existence, contained in this very book, detailed and explicit. It is like reading a Bible too. One of those stories that is just … deserving of endless praise and gsagoigdsagsgj it's very beyond. All of what I am saying is meant to intertwine in this book, so Buddha's enlightenment is because of night-mares, and has to do with offering mana to gods like described in Lucien's book.. you can really find all of this collaborating information in anthropology and religion studies , in modern times.

I'm rambling a bit but the book is packed with such things

this is the great masterpiece of english horror fiction, or horror in general. horror with an intellectual curiosity which is unparalleled. it reads like a confession.

the other great great is Algernon Blackwood

I am in need of recommendations too, -1945 , for an assignment
I've already done James De Mille

Beautifully written as well , both elegiac and deeply disturbing

We entered the cave. As we did so the natives heaped coal upon the fire, and the flames arose, lighting up the interior. We found here a number of women and children, who looked at us without either fear or curiosity. The children looked like little dwarfs; the women were hags, hideous beyond description. One old woman in particular, who seemed to be in authority, was actually terrible in her awful and repulsive ugliness. A nightmare dream never furnished forth a more frightful object. This nightmare hag prostrated herself before each of us with such an air of self-immolation that she looked as though she wished us to kill her at once. The rough cave, the red light of the fire, all made the scene more awful; and a wild thought came to me that we had actually reached, while yet living, the infernal world, and that this was the abode of devils. Yet their actions, it must be confessed, were far from devilish. Everyone seemed eager to serve us. Some spread out couches formed of the skins of birds for us to sit on; others attended to the fire; others offered us gifts of large and beautiful feathers, together with numerous trinkets of rare and curious workmanship. This kind attention on their part was a great puzzle to me, and I could not help suspecting that beneath all this there must be some sinister design. Resolving to be prepared for the worst, I quietly reloaded the empty barrel of my rifle and watched with the utmost vigilance. As for Agnew, he took it all in the most unsuspicious manner. He made signs to them, shook hands with them, accepted their gifts, and even tried to do the agreeable to the formidable hags and the child-fiends around him. He soon attracted the chief attention, and while all looked admiringly upon him, I was left to languish in comparative neglect.

another quote,

"Yet there may be another reason for it, and I sometimes think that the Kosekin may be nearer to the truth than we are. We have by nature a strong love of life—it is our dominant feeling—but yet there is in the minds of all men a deep underlying conviction of the vanity of life, and the worthlessness. In all ages and among all races the best, the purest, and the wisest have taught this truth—that human life is not a blessing; that the evil predominates over the good; and that our best hope is to gain a spirit of acquiescence with its inevitable ills. All philosophy and all religions teach us this one solemn truth, that in this life the evil surpasses the good. It has always been so. Suffering has been the lot of all living things, from the giant of the primeval swamps down to the smallest zoophyte. It is far more so with man. Some favored classes in every age may furnish forth a few individuals who may perhaps lead lives of self-indulgence and luxury; but to the mass of mankind life has ever been, and must ever be, a prolonged scene of labor intermingled with suffering. The great Indian religions, whether Brahmanic or Buddhistic, teach as their cardinal doctrine that life is an evil. Buddhism is more pronounced in this, for it teaches more emphatically than even the Kosekin that the chief end of man is to get rid of the curse of life and gain the bliss of Nirvana, or annihilation. True, it does not take so practical a form as among the Kosekin, yet it is believed by one-third of the human race as the foundation of the religion in which they live and die. We need not go to the Kosekin, however, for such maxims as these. The intelligent Hindoos, the Chinese, the Japanese, with many other nations, all cling firmly to this belief. Sakyamoum Gautama Buddha, the son and heir of a mighty monarch, penetrated with the conviction of the misery of life, left his throne, embraced a life of voluntary poverty, want, and misery, so that he might find his way to a better state—the end before him being this, that he might ultimately escape from the curse of existence. He lived till old age, gained innumerable followers, and left to them as a solemn legacy the maxim that not to exist is better than to exist; that death is better than life.

one more!

After the repast they brought me water in a basin, and all stood around me. One held the basin, another a towel, another a flask, another took a sponge and proceeded to wash my face and hands. This was all strange to me, yet there was nothing left for me but submission. Then the chief, who had stood looking on with a smile on his face took off his rich furred mantle and handed it to me. I was half inclined to refuse it, but was afraid of giving offence, so I accepted it, and he himself fastened it around my shoulders. The others seemed actually to envy the chief, as though he had gained some uncommon good-fortune. Then they offered me various drinks, of which I tasted several kinds. Some were sweet waters of different flavors, others tasted like mild wine, one was a fermented drink, light, sweet, and very agreeable to the palate. I now wished to show my generous entertainers that I was grateful; so I raised my cup, bowed to all of them, particularly the chief, and drank their health. They all watched this ceremony with very sober faces, and I could not quite make out whether they took my meaning or not. They certainly did not look pleased, and it seemed to me as though they felt hurt at any expression of gratitude, so I concluded for the future to abstain from all such demonstrations.

[R.P.Dwyer]

Michael Dirda, who is the book reviewer for The Washington Post, wrote:

"Ever since Algernon Blackwood’s “The Wendigo,” some of our best eerie fiction is set in Canada. That’s still true. Recent paperbacks by authors to our north include Simon Strantzas’s “Nightingale Songs” (Dark Regions, $17.95) and “Burnt Black Suns” (Hippocampus , $20); Rio Youers’s “Westlake Soul” (ChiZine, $15.95); Richard Gavin’s “At Fear’s Altar” (Hippocampus, $20); and Ian Rogers’s “Every House Is Haunted” (ChiZine, $15.95) and “SuperNoirtural Tales” (Burning Effigy, $15.95). It hardly needs pointing out that Canadians know everything about being chilled to the bone."

Michael Dirda on horror and specialty presses - The Washington Post

[Robin Davies]

Quote Originally Posted by nomis

Can the participants here list some authors for me I might be able to investigate further? I know Richard Gavin, of course, but that's about it. Again, I'm not speaking of "horror" writers in general — rather that subset who are more familiar with Machen and Ligotti rather than King and Koontz.

Barbara Roden?

Northwest Passages: Amazon.co.uk: Barbara Roden: 9781607012054: Books

 

Northwest Passages: Amazon.co.uk: Barbara Roden: 9781607012054: Books

[SpookyDread]

The Lamp At Noon by Sinclair Ross . It's about a giant dust storm . It's more like they're already dead and then become more dead. I read it as a ghost story or one of those common instances where the wilderness is so intensely personified that it becomes a spectral force or haunting. “I’m afraid, Paul. I can’t stand it any longer. He cries all the time. You will go, Paul – say you will. We aren’t living here – not really living.”

Sir Charles G D Roberts .. author of a poem called Tantramar Revisited, it's very spooky

[SpookyDread]

This is amazing , it's a classic on the level of Arthur Machen or Algernon Blackwood's writings.

As Birds Bring Forth The Sun by Alistair MacLeod

It's about a ghost dog with an old Gaelic name . It has an instance where daemonic-dread is used as a literary device to connote both haunting as well as possession . If I understand correctly it's a folk story passed down in the author's family. It's a very short story but it has a mystical gut punch to it.. It's very much about spectrality - "Always in the area of the half perceived. […] Seen but never taken." It's also about the nature of loss, and healing being contingent upon each other. Personally I really like Marcel Mauss because I've seen the potential ways his theory is used in criticism and in anthropology concerning shamanism. This story is about english shamanism because like Rime of the Ancient Mariner it follows the order of self-loss, combined with feelings of blessings and love, along with grace, healing and madness. It's a lot like that story in those ways. It has that Darth Vader thing going on where someone/dog gets destroyed, raised partially from the dead, and between worlds. Luke Skywalker is very pedestrian by comparison and hardly heroic. He loses his hand big deal.

a quote,

We are afraid of what he may see and we are afraid to hear the phrase born of the vision. We are aware that it may become confused with what the doctors call 'the will to live' and we are aware that some beliefs are what others would dismiss as 'garbage'. We are aware that there are men who believe the earth is flat and that the birds bring forth the sun.
Bound here in our own particular mortality, we do not wish to see or see others see that which signifies life's demise. We do not want to hear the voice of our father, as did those other sons, calling down his own particular death upon him. We would shut our eyes and plug our ears, even as we know such actions to be of no avail. Open still and fearful to the grey hair rising on our necks if and when we hear the scrabble of the paws and the scratching at the door.

then it just ends there.

Really great story. Has lots of animal semen .

The last sentence got to me.. it begins with Open , even though I guess it's referring to the eyes and ears, its placed in that last sentence for the effect of being part of fearful part, so they are contingent on each other there again.. but Open being in the next sentence has also little to do with the former sentence the "Open" is just open to everything the wide carnivorous void. This story has a lot of that going on, I believe, this idea of things happening in relation to other things . The dog has an accident, the dog grows to tremendous size, continent on being in an accident. The dog is given a new name and is not itself but something other than. so anyway - buy it . Not an old story. It's in the collection "As Birds Bring Forth The Sun And Other Stories" or something. Probably not a lot of ghost stories in there, but here you go. Also in a book called Island by Alistair MacLeod , this is in print popular on amazon so buy this i guess instead.

sorry I edit a lot I am a freak.

[SpookyDread]

1. Open still and fearful to the grey hair rising on our necks if and when we hear the scrabble of the paws and the scratching at the door.

Daemonic-dread in response to a ghost.

Daemonic-dread is a weird German compound word coined by Rudolf Otto in his theology, book title is Idea Of The Holy . It simply means the physical cathartic shudder in response to ghosts experienced in real life and described as a real life sensation in literature. It's believed to be the way mankind connects to the divine. It has a demonic aspect, and results in enlightenment (of the Japanese kind) says Otto.. there he is conceding that it results in ego death, ecstasy as well as madness and profound depression and loss perhaps too (medically speaking).

In other words, he found the body function that makes people go insane. I've found instances where in Korea this bodily catharsis is used in rituals of spirit possession.

This is a great example of it in horror fiction because it is coupled with the emotional actions that induce it, not only the bodily mechanism itself but also so to speak the propellent -- Self-loss, love, for the dog that gets run over and nearly killed, bodily life-force loss of healing into the dog from the man who cares for it.. the dog's lycanthropic transformation is part of the man's supernatural powers as well, coeval with each other.. self-loss to the dog as a preternatural force.. bears out the making of a shamanic ritual powered by the shaman's own emotional momentum.

The text hands you a match and a jerry can basically.

Rudolf Otto's idea of mysterium tremendum et fascinans.. daemonic-dread.. the numinous.. comes from a difference in two Japanese words osoru and osore , sacred awful fear or regular fear.

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

There's an Oxford Book Of Canadian Ghost Stories edited by Alberto Manguel.

[njhorror]

I used to enjoy the NORTHERN FRIGHTS series of anthologies, published by Mosaic Press, and edited by Don Hutchison. I first came across them back in the early '90's and see they've been reprinted around 2010. I don't remember anything in particular about them except that I enjoyed them very much.

[R.P.Dwyer]

Gemma Files might qualify.

Gemma Files was born in England and raised in Toronto, Canada. She has numerous short stories published, and a recently published novel _Experimental Film_, which has been well received. I'm current reading the novel and wondering if we have a new horror classic on our hands.