Classics Online

[Mr. Veech]

Quote Originally Posted by Druidic

Hey, Mr. Veech! Of course it all comes down to preference in the end. Ligotti is quite right on that. But Durrenmatt claimed all great Art was 'playful'. (What are your thoughts on that?) Assuming that is true, we have to assume there is an element of play in even the most dour of artists. Lovecraft never struck me as dour. But there was, I believe, an element of play that ran through much of his fiction. He seemed to delight in including disguised bits of autobiography in his fiction and I suspect this was a conscious artistic decision, not an unconscious Freudian thing. I'm sure he never dreamed that future critics would notice this. How could he? He died thinking his work was an abject failure.

I don't know what Durrenmatt means by "playfulness." I was using the term in a very conventional sense, i.e., overly satirical, self-consciously innovative, humorous, etc. These aren't inherently bad things; I'm just not easily impressed by them. Perhaps I should be.

[Druidic]

I think what Durrenmatt meant by 'playfulness' was the artist's willingness to play with possibilities, choices, even going against his inclination, whatever. I also think he saw the artist's ability to cannibalize his own experience in a disguised form (see my comment on Lovecraft) as 'play.'

[Whispers of Sorrow]

Quote Originally Posted by Druidic

Before At the Mountains of Madness, before Who Goes There? there was "In Amundsen's Tent" by John Martin Leahy. A Pulp Classic of ghastly horror in The Great White Space. For enhanced effect, read while listening to Al Stewart's "Antarctica."

Reading of this story, for those who like it that way

YouTube

is his (Leahy's) remaining fiction any good? looks like he hasn't produced much more, in any case