Neglected/Underrated Writers

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

https://www.quercusbooks.co.uk/books...=9781786484895

[njhorror]

I've recently found a website with free downloads of E.F. Benson and Saki stories on mp3. Very good too.

Podcasts short stories by Saki | Corvidae Ltd

[Doctor Dugald Eldritch]

Walter Owen, the Scots-born author and translator who was a long resident in Argentina and, also, a correspondent of M.P. Shiel and a mystic. He wrote two bizarre and idiosyncratic novels; the first, The Cross of Carl: An Allegory, is a brutal and nightmarish anti-war novel full of horrific imagery, and the second, More Things in Heaven..., is a complex book involving spontaneous human combustion, cursed manuscripts, Zoroastrian maledictions against Alexander the Great and his descendants, and a secret occult society who control the world. With its arcane erudition and verisimilitudinous style, it is reminiscent of Borges and anticipates the writings of Umberto Eco and Thomas Pynchon. Timothy J. Jarvis, perhaps Owen's only fervent champion today, enthuses about the novel and its influence, in hindsight, on his The Wanderer here.

The fact that these books have not been reprinted ever since publication is an absolute disgrace. What will it take for some ambitious publisher to reprint these in high-quality editions?

[marioneta]

Jean Ray is due for a revival. His Malpertuis is a classic of the modern gothic, and Whiskey Tales is due out soon, translated by Scott Nicolay. The Belgian Poe should be more read.

[Nicole Cushing]

Witold Gombrowicz.

I've read two of his books, Ferdydurke and Pornografia. Of those two, Ferdydurke was probably the strongest. (But they were both delightfully dark, bizarre, and nihilistic.)

[rhysaurus]

Ferdydurke is tremendous and contains the best weird tennis routine in literature. Gombrowitz also disliked Borges to an intense degree, which makes him unusual among writers of the imaginative strange.

Another author unfairly neglected by everyone:

Felisberto Hernandez

Authors that aren't neglected to the same degree, but who are rather neglected by devotees of weird fiction:

Felipe Alfau
Boris Vian
Bioy Casares
Georges Perec

They should all be better known than they are...

Authors who were fashionable in the 1980s and 1990s but have since fallen into a neglect that is unfair:

D.M. Thomas
Milorad Pavic
Mario Satz

A modern author of strange literature who is unfairly neglected among weird fiction devotees:

Mia Couto

There are many many many others, of course. In fact the majority of authors of the weird are neglected and underrated. I wonder how many utterly brilliant stories are out there in mouldy old out-of-print books or decaying magazines in attic corners...

[ThisCreepingEvil]

I hope I am allowed to resurrect this thread to bring up a few potentially interesting choices. Also I am very glad the post below happened so that more people are aware of Hecht's "Kingdom of Evil" and "The Lost Traveller". If only those pages excised due to WW II paper shortage could be recovered ! Reposting Doctor Dugald Eldritch's post in order to have more people see it, since it was posted almost 5 years ago.

As for my own picks, I would say the following:

* Gerald Kersh: Already mentioned in this thread, the man is capable of weaving very amusing, sometimes short, tales of fantasy, murder, horror and the bizarre, with his "On an Odd Note" being the perfect introduction into his world, it is readily available from Valancourt Books.

* Sydney Fowler Wright: A british writer of fantasy, science fiction and other miscellaneous works. His "The Adventure of Wyndham Smith" is a fascinating look into a late stage emotionless super scientific society where the entire world's population votes for self extermination because they cannot discover anything more, and two people have to outmanouver the machinations of their foes trying to ensure the complete extinction of humanity, people who themselves are already dead but whose mindless robotic machines are determined to finisht he job. There is no artificial intelligence about, instead the machines are stumbling, out of controll, impossible to reason with, more like a force of nature.

This kind of eugenic scientific society is a commont theme for Wright, explored again from several different angles in his "The New Gods Lead". Also, basically his entire output is legally available online thanks to a small appreciation society:

Home - Sydney Fowler Wright

* Charles Williams: a sadly neglected writer, who wrote fantastic fiction which is unlike most things I have ever seen. Be it the bizarre time manipulation shennanigans of a magic stone belonging to Solomon in "Many Dimensions", the mental machinations of a super mind bent on becoming the embodiment of gnostic prophecy, abusing the living and the dead to do so, to his masterpiece, "The Place of the Lion", where philosophical concepts begin to materialise and take physical shape in our reality, with grim and horrific consequences, as unimaginable, destructive forces completely isolate a small town.

* Jean Ray, the "Belgian Poe", whose work is only now starting to properly appear in English now thanks to Wakefield Press, his stories involve phantasmal graveyards, streets that don't exist, forbidden manuscripts, bizarre cosmic horror and protagonists who tend to be utter and complete bastards. For a long time only his novel "Malpertuis" was the only readily available in English, the two earlier selections from his French language collections, "Ghouls in my Grave" and "My Own Private Spectres" have been out of print for decades and demanding fantastic prices when they did appear for sale. His "Whiskey Tales" is a perfect place to start.

Also some of his stories did appear in highly edited form in Weird Tales but I'd rather read the proper translation of Les Contes du Whiskey since those were apparently changed quite a bit.

* Henry de Vere Stacpoole was a British author who is not often cited in discussion of Weird Fiction, but he wrote two interesting novels of dopplegängers and recurring past lives, "Pierrot" and "The Death, the Knight and the Lady".

* Felipe Alfau wrote only two works of fiction, however his "Locos: A comedy of Gestures" is very intriguing. It concerns the often bizarre adventures of a group of characters whose relationships to each other and even their names periodically shift around and change with each story, refusing to do what Alfau, the author, wishes them to do.

* William Sharp wrote a series of interesting, grim, often very bloody stories with celtic and old irish themes. One of his most grim tales is the title story of his collection "The Gypsy Christ", while his short collection "The Hills of Ruel" has quite a few weird tales.

* Richard Garfinkle is one of the few modern authors who have managed to fascinate me to this degree: his "Celestial Matters" takes place in an alternate universe where the Earth is the center of the universe and the only calm thing in existence, animals procreate by spontaneous generation, human physiology is based on a balance of the Four Humours, as a ship made from carved moonrock sails to the sun to try and drop a small part of it on the Chinese capital to end several centuries of war between the West and the East.

* Leon Blóy: the self proclamed ungrateful beggar, a man who wrote books no one read about despair, horror and degradation, while Blóy spent his life by begging everyone and anyone he could for money, his family starving to death around him. Wakefield Press have issued both his collections "Sweating Blood" and "Disagreeable Tales" in English.

Quote Originally Posted by Doctor Dugald Eldritch

Ben Hecht is best known nowadays as a highly-regarded Hollywood screenwriter, but he also wrote two decadent phantasies in the mould of Huysmans. Fantazius Mallare is very much Hecht's answer to A Rebours. Its phantasmagorical sequel, The Kingdom of Evil, has often been compared to the works of Lovecraft and Smith. Both were illustrated, respectively, by Wallace Smith (Fantazius Mallare) and Anthony Angarola (The Kingdom of Evil). My second-hand copy of Kingdom is extremely fragile and there are many tears as a result of trying to separate the pages that have stuck together over the decades. They will never attain the poetic, literary heights of other weird writers, but they offer the connoisseur of the morbid and the grotesque a ghoulish feast. The grotesque Beardsley-inspired nightmares of Fantazius Mallare and The Kingdom of Evil, as illustrated by Wallace Smith and Anthony Angarola. There is also the Scottish Surrealist poet Ruthven Todd, who authored that curious phantasy novel The Lost Traveller, which T.E.D. Klein mentions in his The Events at Poroth Farm as ''the narrative of a dream turned to nightmare,''.

[Perry R]

Shuji Terayama is probably best known for his incredible experimental and fantastical films, but his writing is equally wonderful. The Crimson Thread of Abandon is a collection of some of his translated short stories, which are all very bizarre, usually grim fairy tales. All of the stories within are likely of interest to weird fiction fans, but especially The Eraser, which is a really unsettling story about a man who uses a magic eraser to physically erase his romantic rivals out of existence.