Recent Reading

[In A Dark Light]

Today I shall start reading Michael Cisco's 'Celebrant'. This shall be the fourth Cisco book I've read this year, following 'Wretch of the Sun', 'Secret Hours', and 'The Narrator'.

[njhorror]

The Spirit of Place and Other Strange Tales: The Complete Short Stories of Elizabeth Walter

Well written entertaining stories. I am enjoying this book very much.

[Frater_Tsalal]

Having finally gotten around to watching the 1964 cinematic masterpiece that is Les amitiés particulières last month, I felt inspired to read the 1943 novel of the same name as soon as I could, though it did cost me more than I anticipated that it would... it seems mind-boggling to me that a novel which won the Prix Renaudot when it was first published, and which no less a luminary than André Gide declared that the book would still be read a century after it was published, is currently out-of-print in English; one may only hope for an eventual Penguin Classics reprint, so that a new generation of readers can experience this novel (for that matter, here's hoping that the film version gets a DVD release as well, though the curious can easily see it for free on YouTube: incidentally, the film stays very true to the book, with only a few minor details changed).

The setting is a Catholic boarding school called St. Claude's, in France in the 1920's. The main character is one Georges de Sarre (himself modeled after the writer in question, Roger Peyrefitte), a 14 year-old boy of nobility who develops a crush on a fellow student, a 12 year-old boy named Alexander. The two embark on a special friendship that, while slightly ritualistic and totemic in character, is still pretty chaste by our modern standards: despite the scandal the book caused at the time, there's nothing overtly sexual about the friendship of Georges and Alexander (indeed, they don't even so much as kiss on the lips). Ah, but gay courtship rituals were certainly something back then, weren't they? Making gifts of flowery poetry, sharing blood, forging death pacts... sadly something of a lost art in these days of Grindr hook-ups. The book unfolds at a leisurely pace, beginning at the start of the school year (on October 3rd) and finishing during the summer break (in July). If you ever wanted to know what it was like to be a student at an all boy's Catholic boarding school in France in the 1920's, this book is for you, as Peyrefitte spares almost no details.

Seeing as the book examines both old-school French Catholicism (I come from French ancestry myself, and am pretty much a lapsed Catholic) and sub rosa homosexual themes, it's only natural that I would be drawn to such a novel, though the last one hundred pages are almost overbearingly sad. It doesn't give up much of the plot to say that it all ends in tragedy for almost everyone involved, from school boys to priests. As it is, this tragic ending is foreshadowed by Peyrefitte throughout the novel, with his frequent allusions to Christian boy martyrs of antiquity such as Pancras of Rome and St. Tarsicius.

[qcrisp]

I started reading this recently:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/...he-sublime-and

The first line of Part One, Section I has a familiar kind of ring to it:

"The first and simplest emotion that we discover in the human mind, is Curiosity."

Do we know if Lovecraft read Burke? It seems likely.

The treatise deals with, among other things, the aesthetic appeal of terror and tragedy. Some of the ideas I find artificial and unconvincing - others I find both surprising and oddly compelling.

I think if I had browsed the book before buying, the section headings alone would have decided my purchase:

Magnitude in BUILDING

INFINITY in pleasing OBJECTS

DIFFICULTY

MAGNIFICENCE

The cries of ANIMALS

The vibrations must be similar

DARKNESS terrible in its own nature

Why DARKNESS is terrible

Concerning SMALLNESS

And so on.

[ToALonelyPeace]

I've just finished The Loser (Thomas Bernhard). I feel a mild disappointment though I'm not sure what I was expecting. Maybe I should have read it in one go...

[luxfugio]

I've been reading "The Woman of the Pharisees" by Francois Mauriac and the story "The Sufferings of Prince Sternoch", which is beautifully horrid.

[Mr. Veech]

I read Howard's "The Tower of the Elephant." I normally dislike fantasy, but I must say - it was awesome! It made me feel like a boy again.

Howard was way ahead of his time, and his "sword and sorcery" stories show it.

[New Devilry]

I highly recommend "The People of the Black Circle" and "Queen of the Black Coast" if you liked "The Tower of the Elephant."

NO by Boyd Rice. It's alright.

[Patrick G.P]

Just finished Arthur Machen's The White People and Other Weird Stories, this was really excellent, I loved the atmosphere in these tales, the sense of beauty and the hidden terrors. I very much look forward to reading more by Machen.
So now I have started reading Reggie Oliver's Masques of Satan.