- Taschenbuch: 288 Seiten
- Verlag: Mcfarland & Co Inc (März 2001)
- Sprache: Englisch
- ISBN-10: 078640986X
- ISBN-13: 978-0786409860
- Größe und/oder Gewicht: 2,3 x 1,5 x 0,2 cm
- Amazon Bestseller-Rang: Nr. 833.114 in Englische Bücher (Siehe Top 100 in Englische Bücher)
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The Modern Weird Tale
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Synopsis
The august art of horror fiction, with its oral roots going back to prehistory, remains a very popular genre. Its most prolific modern writers are examined in this work, which begins with an introduction to horror fiction and a discussion about how it has been dealt with by the critics. The author provides his own literary criticism of the writings of well-known authors such as Stephen King and Anne Rice, among others. Divided into five segments - Shirley Jackson: Domestic Horror; The Persistence of Supernaturalism; Ramsey Campbell: The Fiction of Paranoia; The Alternatives to Supernaturalism; and Pseudo-, Quasi-, and Anti-Weird Fiction - this work takes a close look at writers who have worked extensively in horror fiction and examines themes that often operate in this genre.
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Einleitungssatz
During the early part of the twentieth century, weird fiction was not so much a genre as the consequence of a world view, and relatively few authors of what could only retrospectively be called weird fiction were conscious of writing in a specifically weird mode that was to be radically distinguished from "mainstream" writing. Lesen Sie die erste Seite
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During the early part of the twentieth century, weird fiction was not so much a genre as the consequence of a world view, and relatively few authors of what could only retrospectively be called weird fiction were conscious of writing in a specifically weird mode that was to be radically distinguished from "mainstream" writing. Lesen Sie die erste Seite
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A Lovecraftian Critique
31. März 2002
Format:Taschenbuch
Robert M. Price once called Joshi the reincarnation of Lovecraft, and this wasn't far from the mark. The shadow of Lovecraft is oppressively looming over this study, and Joshi's writing style and criticism is nearly identical to Lovecraft's 'Supernatural Horror in Literature'. Both can be annoying at times, although they don't take away much of the study's merit overall.
Joshi's tries to bring together a canon of modern weird literature, and argues that authors such as Ramsey Campbell, T.E.D. Klein, Thomas Ligotti, and Shirley Jackson are superior to mass marketing writers such as Peter Straub, Anne Rice, Stephen King, W.P. Blatty, and Clive Barker. Some of the latter get a bashing that they will probably remember for a long time.
In doing this, Joshi often sounds arrogant, elitist, and nit picking. While I do think he's overreacting sometimes it is also clear that the praise of best-seller authors is terribly out of proportion with their literary merits, and that Joshi's words deserve their extra impact. On the other hand, hasn't it always been that the literary merit of best-seller authors leaves much to be desired?
Even so, I think Joshi's study is important because of another aspect. It is an easily accessible study that deals with authors whose appreciations usually don't appear outside of fanzines, scattered journals, or OOP hardcovers. It is clearly written for other literary critics as well. All in all, Joshi shows to have a good understanding and grasp of the field and makes important and relevant commentaries.
As noted, Joshi stresses great importance on Lovecraft's theory of effective weird fiction, and every other three pages Lovecraft will make an appearance. This is a good foundation, but also a potential weakness. Much of Joshi's criticism goes to the grave if one simply refuses to see any merit in Lovecraft's own criticism of weird fiction. Therefore, fans of the bashed best-seller authors will more than likely be unimpressed by Joshi's biting remarks, and fans of the marginal authors he handles will learn not much more than what they already knew for themselves.
One thing that bothers me, though, is Joshi's obvious bias against weird fiction that doesn't somehow work with Lovecraft's 'supernatural realism' or harnesses atheism (he admits this in the final chapter and epilogue). This he defends adequately in the chapter on Blatty, deeming his metaphysical background too preachy, but later on it becomes strained. To Robert Aickman's opinion that the ghost story gains in strength in the presence of psychic research and faulty science, Joshi replies 'I hardly know how to respond to this farrago of nonsense', and quotes another extensive example of Lovecraft. But when dealing with Anne Rice's preachy vampires that constantly and sometimes violently assert that there is no God, Joshi comments: 'It is not clear what relevance these theological discussions have to the core of the novel, but they are admirably presented.'
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Critical
4. Juni 2001
Format:Taschenbuch
The Modern Weird Tale examines the philosophy (or lack thereof) behind the works of Shirley Jackson, T E D Klein, Stephen King, Peter Straub, Clive Barker, Robert Aickman, Anne Rice, Ramsey Campbell, Thomas Tryon, William Peter Blatty and Thomas Ligotti, with an interesting chapter on Robert Bloch's Psycho and some of its loving offspring by Bret Easton Ellis and Thomas Harris. Joshi states in the introduction that the exclusion of authors like Richard Matheson and Thomas Tessier (to name but a couple) was prompted by his feeling that his book was already long enough. I cannot agree. Joshi is the most able and articulate literary critic to deal with supernatural horror in literature since the advent of H P Lovecraft, and his carefully argued critiques are desperately needed now that gross-out soap opera has all but pushed the good stuff off the shelves. I was a little disappointed with some of the emphasis in this work - thirty pages on Stephen King and only seventeen on Robert Aickman; an entire chapter devoted to William Blatty's sanctimonious potboilings while writers of the calibre of K W Jeter and Jonathan Carroll are relegated to the "excess length" department - but, after all, however much one may deplore the triumph of bestsellerdom, it's naive at best to ignore it. And even among the bestsellers, Joshi finds items worth bothering with - sometimes, indeed, items we would certainly be much worse off without. Even Joshi's deplored Stephen King is commended for Rage, The Running Man, Gerald's Game and some others. The chapters on the great writers - Jackson, Klein, Aickman, Campbell - are as thorough and rewarding as anything in The Weird Tale, although Joshi's antagonism towards Aickman's (admittedly unenlightening) theoretical views means that Aickman seems to get a little less than his due as a writer. Joshi has, for example, completely missed the point of Aickman's brilliant "Ravissante", and his paragraph on the story ends, in effect, with "so what?" Still, The Modern Weird Tale is at least as good a read as the earlier book, and contains almost as many pointers to interesting material of which the reader may not be aware. Perhaps the best I can say is that, having got through its 260 pages in a day, I immediately went and bought Joshi's critical study of John Dickson Carr - a writer I have never read - purely for the enjoyment of reading what Joshi has to say about him.
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Not Without Merit, But...
5. Februar 2008
Format:Taschenbuch
I agree with much of what Joshi says about writers such as Anne Rice and Stephen King--their success is no testament to the quality of their work. Also, he champions good writers, like TED Klein (although sometimes for questionable reasons--such as their having a world-view he approves of).
That said, Joshi is an unnecessarily harsh critic. His tirades extend way beyond the pale of unbiased criticism. He is gratuitously nasty, and this makes him sound weak-minded, which perhaps, after all, he is.
His credibility is called into further doubt when he dismisses writers because they believe in God. He is far from the first atheist I've read--or listened to--who is unable to deal with others' religious beliefs in a reasonably objective, rational manner, but that hardly excuses it.
Curiously, too, Joshi never even mentions reliable workhorse authors like Michael McDowell or Charles Grant. McDowell may have been overly prolific, but at his best he is as good as any of the other modern writers whose virtues Joshi extols.
Joshi is very widely read in the genre of weird fiction, but this reading does not seem to have helped him develop his chops as a scholarly critic. At best, this is a book of pop-criticism, not a work of serious academic merit.
That said, Joshi is an unnecessarily harsh critic. His tirades extend way beyond the pale of unbiased criticism. He is gratuitously nasty, and this makes him sound weak-minded, which perhaps, after all, he is.
His credibility is called into further doubt when he dismisses writers because they believe in God. He is far from the first atheist I've read--or listened to--who is unable to deal with others' religious beliefs in a reasonably objective, rational manner, but that hardly excuses it.
Curiously, too, Joshi never even mentions reliable workhorse authors like Michael McDowell or Charles Grant. McDowell may have been overly prolific, but at his best he is as good as any of the other modern writers whose virtues Joshi extols.
Joshi is very widely read in the genre of weird fiction, but this reading does not seem to have helped him develop his chops as a scholarly critic. At best, this is a book of pop-criticism, not a work of serious academic merit.
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