Recent Reading

Hanns Heinz Ewers is an astonishingly powerful writer, even in this spurious translation I'm reading of his novel Alraune.

'No, the one he was looking for should be a prostitute. Not because she couldn't be anything else, but because every inch of her body screamed for new embraces. Because under the caresses of one lover, her soul already longed for the kisses of another. She needed to be a prostitute just like he – he hesitated. What was he? Tired and resigned, he finished his thought: just like he needed to be a dreamer.'

This book is an ecstasy of sin.

[paul b.]

Quote Originally Posted by Prince James Zaleski

Hanns Heinz Ewers is an astonishingly powerful writer, even in this spurious translation I'm reading of his novel Alraune. 'No, the one he was looking for should be a prostitute. Not because she couldn't be anything else, but because every inch of her body screamed for new embraces. Because under the caresses of one lover, her soul already longed for the kisses of another. She needed to be a prostitute just like he – he hesitated. What was he? Tired and resigned, he finished his thought: just like he needed to be a dreamer.' This book is an ecstasy of sin.

Ewers is fantastic, and extremely underrated.
You oughta check out "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" too. Somewhat different beast from Alraune, rambling, filed with musings about philosophy and human condition, to a point where maybe 10-15% or so of the novel is relegated to its plot, but it is well worth a read, deliciously cruel and decadent. Finale of Braun's sojourn in that isolated Italian village is something that gets carved into one's memory.

Anyhow, I've just started reading "Elegies & Requiems" by Colin Insole. Blurb compared the fiction contained within to Mark Valentine, as well as old masters such as Machen and Rodenbach, and the very first story managed to justify all three of those comparisons. Such a beautiful, melancholy piece about beauty and magic lost, that can be regained for but a moment, and for a price, in these squalid latter years.

I have read The Spider and The Sorcerer's Apprentice so far. You are spot on about the ending of the latter.

Ewers was a genius of the dark poetic side of imagination. Such forbidden and uncomfortable beauty. I have to read everything he has done. The horror novel is something only a handful of people have mastered. He is one of them.

[miguel1984]

The Suprematist Manifesto by Kazimir Malevich:

Kazimir Malevich. Suprematism. Manifesto.

[Mr. Veech]

I just ordered a very cheap book containing twenty or so of M.R. James' ghost stories thanks to Zaleski's (our resident ghost specialist) recommendation. I realize James is perhaps the most well-known author of ghost stories, but I wasn't aware of him until recently. Aside from Lovecraft and Ligotti, I'm very much new to weird fiction because I was preoccupied with a great deal of Western philosophy. I actually feel at home here, though.

He lacked the existential profundity and literary flair of Aickman, Le Fanu or de la Mare, but his minute accrual of detail to evoke a revelation of terror has been matched but never beaten. M. R. James is a writer whose technique must be studied closely. It's deceptively simple much of the time, and whilst he does often undercut the true terror of his stories with a certain cosiness and distance, stories such as Count Magnus and A Warning to the Curious (my favourite of his) are terrifying masterpieces of bleak, icy dread.

Walter de la Mare, Vernon Lee and L. P. Hartley are better literary stylists, but it's hard to recommend them to people starting off as their works are fewer in number and less accessible in presentation than M. R. James due to being spread all over the place. It's hard to find more consistent collections in terms of both quality and genre importance than Le Fanu's In a Glass Darkly and M. R. James' Ghost Stories of an Antiquary. They're the perfect beginner packs.

[Mr. Veech]

I just finished reading "Count Magnus." The fact that there are no real clues regarding why the Count is a sinister being makes the story chilling.

So many unforgettable sinister details. That guy found against the tree still pushing at something, the Black Pilgrimage to Chorazin, the tentacle arm, the beautiful timing with the falling padlocks...

[Mr. Veech]

Quote Originally Posted by Prince James Zaleski

So many unforgettable sinister details. That guy found against the tree still pushing at something, the Black Pilgrimage to Chorazin, the tentacle arm, the beautiful timing with the falling padlocks...

I should've been more clear. I was referring to the Count's motive.

The BBC adaptations of his work are worth checking out on YouTube. None of 'em quite nail the Jamesian approach when it comes to the apparitions themselves, but they have an interesting atmosphere and are otherwise exceptionally well crafted for horror films. A Warning to the Curious' TV adaptation is quite unsettling in parts. If only they'd trimmed the screentime of the ghost near the end.