LAIRD BARRON

Alright, it just began to seem like you were censoring criticism of certain people to somehow appease them, but I concede that I may have misinterpreted and am sorry for quarrelling.

[dr. locrian]

Quote Originally Posted by James

Alright, it just began to seem like you were censoring criticism of certain people to somehow appease them, but I concede that I may have misinterpreted and am sorry for quarrelling.

I assure you that was indeed a misinterpretation. Members on every side of every conceivable debate have had content removed over the years, starting with a certain infamous thread. It's normal for human beings to become heated when communicating deeply held opinions, and tempers can easily wheel out of control.

[dr. locrian]

Quote Originally Posted by Geoffrey

I hope no one has the idea I don't like Justin btw. On the contrary. No flames intended. I do think there's been a good bit of silliness in this thread about Barron, even before I showed up. But not delete-worthy silliness.

I agree. Thanks for the clarification.

[Shadenuat]

@Geoffrey
TBH, you could have just stated your own opinion of Barron's fiction or challenged those posts that you've thought to be particularly silly, rather that going on and derailing the whole discussion.
That basically came trough as an attempt to sabotage the whole thread due to you disagreement with some things that were being written.

[Geoffrey]

Quote Originally Posted by Shadenuat

@Geoffrey TBH, you could have just stated your own opinion of Barron's fiction or challenged those posts that you've thought to be particularly silly, rather that going on and derailing the whole discussion. That basically came trough as an attempt to sabotage the whole thread due to you disagreement with some things that were being written.

I did state my opinion! I wrote that I like his fiction-particularly the crazy Noir stuff in Swift to Chase.

Sorry about derailing the conversation though. I get carried away sometimes.

I didn't think people responding negatively to Barron's newer work was silly btw. I can even understand that, especially if the reader is expecting more of the same from him. But the hyperbole about how bad contemporary weird writers as a whole are are and how great the revered old dead weird writers are did strike me as silly, and substanceless, as hell.

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

We cannot always predict which tangents or jokes will derail a thread.

[Geoffrey]

Barron has struggled with severe mental illness as well, right? I'm pretty certain I remember reading or hearing about that somewhere. He strikes me as one of those guys who responds by going the opposite way from Ligotti (raging against the beast of meaninglessness), even if his best stories often make me want to snuff it.

[brendanconnell]

Justin likes throwing shade at lefties? Justin, politically, IS a lefty. Not sure why anyone would think otherwise.

[Druidic]

Barron has written 5 stories I consider exceptional: Old Virginia, Hallucigenia, Blackwood's Baby, the Men from Porlock and Bulldozer. I've read his first three collections and the rest of his fiction just didn't work for me.

Frontier Death Song was another of his 'hunt' fictions--which I usually like--but this one felt like Stephen King trying to ape Barron. I also didn't appreciate the gratuitous nastiness aimed at one writer and one editor in the field.

At some point, it all comes down to individual taste.

BTW, if Justin Isis didn't exist, we'd have to invent him. Stimulating, thought-provoking, opinionated, sometimes annoying and occasionally brilliant, he's a treasure. But watch out for his wicked booby traps (every treasure has 'em.)

[qcrisp]

Quote Originally Posted by Ucasuni

I confess that my recall of Lovecraft's fiction is far from encyclopedic, but I can't think of any stories in which the objects of horror were simultaneously framed as objects of desirability. The Great Old Ones are (to my memory) uniformly presented negatively. Those characters that worship, serve, or are otherwise attached to these beings are considered woefully in error and/or themselves thoroughly corrupted. Don't get me wrong, the horror frequently has scale—overwhelming scale—but it doesn't inspire any sort of positive emotion. That's what i was trying to get at by talking about duality in Barker's fiction. I hate to put a disclaimer, but know the sensitivities surrounding HPL can quickly escalate any discussion about him into a flamewar. So to be totally clear, I'm not suggesting that one approach is necessarily better than the other ("The Outsider" is one of my all-time favorite stories). I was just observing what I thought to see a fundamental stylistic difference between Barker and HPL, one which might inform Joshi's mental block with regards to the works of the former. Incidentally, I'd be curious to be pointed in the direction of an HPL story that captures the sublime.

To give some examples of HPL presenting his horrors as desirable, there's this kind of thing:

"Dazed and frightened, yet not without a certain thrill of the scientist’s or archaeologist’s delight, I examined my surroundings more closely."

From 'Dagon'

“Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places. For them are the catacombs of Ptolemais, and the carven mausolea of the nightmare countries. They climb to the moonlit towers of ruined Rhine castles, and falter down black cobwebbed steps beneath the scattered stones of forgotten cities in Asia. The haunted wood and the desolate mountain are their shrines, and they linger around the sinister monoliths on uninhabited islands. But the true epicure in the terrible, to whom a new thrill of unutterable ghastliness is the chief end and justification of existence, esteems most of all the ancient, lonely farmhouses of backwoods New England; for there the dark elements of strength, solitude, grotesqueness, and ignorance combine to form the perfection of the hideous.”

From 'The Picture in the House'

"Now I ride with the mocking and friendly ghouls on the night-wind, and play by day amongst the catacombs of Nephren-Ka in the sealed and unknown valley of Hadoth by the Nile. I know that light is not for me, save that of the moon over the rock tombs of Neb, nor any gaiety save the unnamed feasts of Nitokris beneath the Great Pyramid; yet in my new wildness and freedom I almost welcome the bitterness of alienage."

From 'The Outsider'

I would say there are innumerable examples of this sort of thing. Naturally, these delights are not everyday pleasures like eating ice cream, etc., but I think an aesthetic sense of wonder blended seamlessly with the grotesque is one of the things that attracted me to Lovecraft and has led me to prefer his work to that of many horror writers from whom an aesthetic sense and a sense of wonder are missing.

This is not to say, of course, that Clive Barker doesn't present a different case again in terms of his portrayal of the attractions of the horrors he depicts.