Side Real Press

The Side Real editions contain some interesting material aside from the (unexpurgated) Ewers texts, Slawek, if that's any incentive. The first one had a really dandy intro by John H-Smith, and the second has not only the superb Mahlon Blaine illustrations, but also an essay on the Mandrake myth. Additionally, there's an analysis of Ewers and Alraune by me in there too, but don't let that put you off...

Mark S.

[yellowish haze]

Mark, your analysis of Alraune would make a great companion to Stanislaw Przybyszewski's extensive introduction to the first Polish edition of the book I have.

Ehh, in fact all of this additional material sounds superb. Now, I'll really have to think about it!

[qcrisp]

Quote Originally Posted by gveranon

I'm afraid that if I started crossing authors off my list because of their personal failings, there would be no end to it. And authors that meant a great deal to me in the past would have to be repudiated, my memory of them ruined, as I found out more about their lives and opinions. Cioran, Larkin: gone, gone. This list could be extended. X, y, z: gone, gone, gone. I might feel self-righteous about repudiating various authors, but is self-righteousness really such an admirable thing? In addition to all the above, I sense that literary culture and literary history would be damaged beyond repair if we started eliminating authors with besmirched reputations from our consideration. I wouldn't want that to happen. Maybe this means I'm evil myself -- but if so I have a lot of company. Hell, if it existed, would be a very crowded place.

I suppose that, since humans are moral creatures, or struggle to be, or struggle (as is the case with modern humans) not to be, it is quite natural that people should judge writers according to their behaviour and even opinions. However, the world is not that simple, that we can decide that a person is bad, and therefore not worth listening to, or good, and therefore worth listening to. It seems to me that if the literary art can claim to have particular functions, then very high on the list of those functions must be the reminder to human beings that the world is a complex and not a black and white place, that we never quite have things wrapped up and neat.

Also, if we're talking of morality, this is a very old moral tenet:

Judge not lest ye be judged. He whose slate is clean may cast the first stone.

Further, I personally believe - though this is a belief whose ramifications are often hard to face up to - that anything we see in the world (or at the very least in other portion of humanity) is also a part of us. To judge such things is often to refuse to confront them in oneself.

Quote Originally Posted by The New Nonsense

The nature of the horror genre presents a particularly unique twist on this issue. We expect horror writers to create something chilling; something that disturbs; occasionally something inhuman. Yet we also expect these derangements to come from a healthy and sound mind -- or at least we hope. So in many ways we have a double standard. We expect them to act the part, like some horror movie host, just as long as they don't go too far. If writers like Ray Garton, Jack Ketchum or Edward Lee were found to practice what they wrote, their books would be pulled from the shelves.

In my observation, readers have all kinds of double-standards. They want the stories to be 'real' and are disappointed if they're made up, but they don't want their own privacy invaded, and so on. These kinds of double-standards become particularly comical when it comes to the horror genre, as pointed out above. Again, my own personal view of this is that the idea of horror written by people who want to present themselves as in some way tough and scary, like their creations, is ridiculous. At the very least, it has no interest to me. It's a degraded version of the same hackneyed assault on Christian and even pre-Christian morality that has been part of the Western tradition since the writings of the Marquis de Sade, and no doubt before (I think I see the same attitude or a related one in the character of Thrasymachus in Plato's Republic).

Then there's the question of how horror writers can be expected to produce something truly horrific and still be of sound mind. Perhaps this is possible, but if this is really what happens, then I think horror writers deserve much greater recognition - even adulation - than they currently receive.

Actually, I think this is possible, but to expect it is unreasonable. My guess is that what generally happens in the horror genre is that some artists are inspired to create something truly horrific, and that fans then expect them to repeat this inspiration and it becomes a grand guignol tap-dancing routine. This is at the heart of what makes the horror genre ridiculous. To be consistently inspired to create the horrific in some authentic sense is to live a cursed life. For fans of an artist to expect him or her to live a cursed life for their benefit is... well, if he or she can escape that curse s/he will, and escape the curse of those particular fans while s/he's at it.

There is, perhaps, another way, and that is to recognise the idea of a group unconscious, or what it was that Emerson was saying when he said, "I contain multitudes." The work of an artist is both of that individual and yet not of them, and this, too, is part of the complexity of the world that humans have so much trouble dealing with. "If you wrote Dracula, how come you're not sucking blood?" Because the world is a complex place, and the recognition of such complexity can, I hope and believe, free us. I can write about Dracula on the one hand, and enjoy plucking buttercups in a meadow on the other. To some people this is still incomprehensible. It's simple - we all contain multitudes, and the sooner we all realise this, the sooner we stop identifying with a single, tired strain such as 'the horror genre', and life will be much better.

Optimistically speaking.

PS. I remember reading an interview with Kate Bush years back in which she said that she's always fascinated if she meets a person she knows through their art and they are not at all like their persona. I was young at the time, and didn't really get what she was saying. I was still hung up on untenable ideas of authenticity. These days, I'm more inclined to agree with her position, that the true authenticity comes from those who recognise and live out their own complex nature, not those who continue to identify only with a single strand of their nature, and use it as the basis of a lifelong tap-dancing routine.

[qcrisp]

I have a feeling this is a bit of a tangent, considering this thread is actually about Side Real Press, but I just thought I'd add this link as something relevant to the discussion on whether writers should be judged on their morality, etc:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jesse-..._b_382551.html

[The New Nonsense]

Quote Originally Posted by qcrisp

The work of an artist is both of that individual and yet not of them, and this, too, is part of the complexity of the world that humans have so much trouble dealing with. "If you wrote Dracula, how come you're not sucking blood?" Because the world is a complex place, and the recognition of such complexity can, I hope and believe, free us. I can write about Dracula on the one hand, and enjoy plucking buttercups in a meadow on the other. To some people this is still incomprehensible.

Well said. To give another example: If Jeffrey Dahmer wrote a book about lobotomized sex-zombies, torture and cannibalism, most people would be sickened rather than pleasantly horrified in the way most horror fiction functions. This is because it would take no creative effort on his part. He would just tell it like it is, or was. Thus, this would not be art, just exploitative trash.

If this is the case, are horror writers who live ordinary lives or who look like a sweet, mild mannered ladies (Flannery O'Connor comes to mind) more creative by nature than horror writers who try to look the stereotypical part, or who live a dark lifestyle where spookiness is commonplace that perhaps leads to a level of desensitization? Would Stephen King sell as many books if he was known as "The Man in Pink"? I doubt it. There's definitely a measure of showmanship in most horror writing, or at the very least, a selectiveness about how one presents themselves. Personally, I think one is generally being more creative when they are forced to stretch the limits of their ordinary perception or daily life. So, I'm all for your buttercup plucking, Quentin.

This is why I like Ligotti so much ("Here we go again..." my friends would say and roll their eyes -- like "mad marbles", I would think). He seems like a regular enough guy, at least from the outside, yet he can take the ordinary (something we're all familiar with) and warp it into something abominable. Take his story "The Clown Puppet". On its surface it's just a short tale about a bored store clerk working late at night when a clown puppet shows up unexpectedly and then vanishes. The end. When put that way it sounds unremarkable, to say the least. However, through Ligotti's creative genius, he takes this mundane setting and ends up making it suggest a terrifying other world. That's the real power in horror; to have it suddenly appear where you never expected to find it, without explanation, and often in a way you'd never thought possible. Forget clichés; if you really want to scare someone, make their world suddenly turn deliriously on its end and for no reason.

[qcrisp]

Quote Originally Posted by The New Nonsense

Well said. To give another example: If Jeffrey Dahmer wrote a book about lobotomized sex-zombies, torture and cannibalism, most people would be sickened rather than pleasantly horrified in the way most horror fiction functions. This is because it would take no creative effort on his part. He would just tell it like it is, or was. Thus, this would not be art, just exploitative trash.

Someone please advise me if I'm going too far off-topic. I just thought I'd post the following clip to chime in with the above:

YouTube- Patricia Highsmith : I don't understand murder

I really know nothing about Patricia Highsmith, but based on the couple of clips of her I've seen, I want to read her work. I suppose that's an example of being influenced by the personality of a writer, if not the morality.

Quote Originally Posted by The New Nonsense

If this is the case, are horror writers who live ordinary lives or who look like a sweet, mild mannered ladies (Flannery O'Connor comes to mind) more creative by nature than horror writers who try to look the stereotypical part, or who live a dark lifestyle where spookiness is commonplace that perhaps leads to a level of desensitization? Would Stephen King sell as many books if he was known as "The Man in Pink"? I doubt it. There's definitely a measure of showmanship in most horror writing, or at the very least, a selectiveness about how one presents themselves. Personally, I think one is generally being more creative when they are forced to stretch the limits of their ordinary perception or daily life. So, I'm all for your buttercup plucking, Quentin.

Flannery O'Connor is also on my list. Ah, I can't die yet, after all. Still have to read Flannery O'Connor, Clarice Lispector, Patricia Highsmith, etc.

I think you're right that a pink Stephen King would not sell as much as the... muddy brown (?) one we have at the moment. However, I'd be far more interested in a pink King, myself. I suppose it is precisely in this way that my finger is not on the pulse of the public, etc.

Anyway, come springtime, I fully intend to skip about in meadows full of buttercups, pluck them, and bathe in their hideous yellow blood!

Quote Originally Posted by The New Nonsense

This is why I like Ligotti so much ("Here we go again..." my friends would say and roll their eyes -- like "mad marbles", I would think). He seems like a regular enough guy, at least from the outside, yet he can take the ordinary (something we're all familiar with) and warp it into something abominable. Take his story "The Clown Puppet". On its surface it's just a short tale about a bored store clerk working late at night when a clown puppet shows up unexpectedly and then vanishes. The end. When put that way it sounds unremarkable, to say the least. However, through Ligotti's creative genius, he takes this mundane setting and ends up making it suggest a terrifying other world. That's the real power in horror; to have it suddenly appear where you never expected to find it, without explanation, and often in a way you'd never thought possible. Forget clichés; if you really want to scare someone, make their world suddenly turn deliriously on its end and for no reason.

Yes, I agree with all of this. It's like Arthur Machen's talking rose as an incarnation of evil.

Now, I really must find out more about Side Real Press. Apart from anything else, they have a great name.

[The New Nonsense]

Quote Originally Posted by mark_samuels

The Side Real editions contain some interesting material aside from the (unexpurgated) Ewers texts, Slawek, if that's any incentive. The first one had a really dandy intro by John H-Smith, and the second has not only the superb Mahlon Blaine illustrations, but also an essay on the Mandrake myth. Additionally, there's an analysis of Ewers and Alraune by me in there too, but don't let that put you off...

Now I'm extra interested in this book after hearing about the mandrake essay. I find the folklore surrounding the plant fascinating. For those interested in further reading on the subject, I'd recommend the book The Mystic Mandrake by C.J.S. Thompson.

Incidentally, I'm currently growing a couple mandrake plants (with limited success, as they're notoriously hard to grow). When the time comes, I plan to employ my neighbor's dog for the uprooting, as is tradition. I'll make sure I'm far enough away as not to be effected by the subsequent shriek.

Cheers to Side Real Press, by the way, for making these stories available.

[klarkash]

I was particularly intrigued by Side Real's recent call for submissions for a Ewers tribute volume...

Shades of Ex Occidente's Meyrink and Bulgakov homages?

Which other weird authors do you think would make for good homage subjects?

[rhysaurus]

Quentin's post (no #23) is one of the most thoughtful I've ever read on the subject of the link (or non-link) between horror authors and their themes. There's really nothing more to add to what he has said...

When it comes to horror, my own feeling is that too many authors reply on utilising the props of horror -- the physical manifestations of the horrific, or the mental reactions to those physical manifestations -- rather than tackling the real horror that is the essential fact of existence in this universe.

Existentialist horror is the only true horror.

It's too easy for a reader to read Dracula or The Day of the Triffids or The Fog (or whatever) and to close the book at any moment of his or her choosing; to shut away the horrors in a cage, as it were, and return to the real world, safe and sound.

But when a reader opens a book and the contents of that book emerge and swell and surround the reader -- in other words when the idea of the horror of existence/consciousness/being-in-the-universe transmits itself complete into the mind of the reader (when the existentialist horror is mapped isomorphically from author to reader with little or no distortion) -- then there's no putting the horrors back in the cage. They are out for good. And then the lifelong struggle begins.

That's why I regard 'mind####' writers (Franz Kafka, Philip K Dick, Harlan Ellison, Thomas Ligotti) as more significant than the usual names in the standard pantheon of 'horror writers'... Quentin S Crisp is a mind#### writer (in my own view). M.R. James certainly wasn't. Lovecraft is claimed to be by others, but I don't believe so.

For me Norman Spinrad's short story 'No Direction Home' is one of the most important stories ever written, and one of the most horrific, even though it contains absolutely no horror. But it awakens in the reader, or attempts to awaken, the 'Nebula Eye' -- that moment when we feel (as well as intellectually know) that both consciousness and oblivion are equally terrible but that we are fated for one or the other after death.

[Evans]

You I can't realy describe the sort of fiction I like - it would not be horror by the very visceral definition but then again it certainly doesn't fit the concept of Existentialism.