More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
Dec. 26th, 2006 12:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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darkling_talesLJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY dfordoom)
Very few writers have limited themselves to such a narrow field of literary endeavour as Montague Rhodes James. His fiction is confined pretty much exclusively to ghost stories, and includes some of the most widely praised and widely anthologised stories in this very small sub-genre. I must confess that some of his most admired stories leave me cold. In particular, Oh Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad is a tale that does nothing whatever for me. There’s a lack of passion, a dry intellectual quality, in his writing that somewhat repels me. After reading the chapter on James in S. T. Joshi’s The Weird Tale (and Joshi seems to dislike James as a writer even more than I do) I thought it only fair to try a few more of James’s ghost stories. The Tractate Middoth confirmed most of my prejudices about his writing, but I was surprised to find that I rather liked A School Story. It’s a story that doesn’t go anywhere particularly, but I does have a genuine disquieting oddness to it that appeals to me. And I found myself thoroughly enjoying Mr Humphreys and his Inheritance, a story that Joshi said some very unkind things about. Perhaps it’s just that mazes appeal to me! And again it’s a story that is more about suggestion than actual plot. So now I’ve finally come to the end of James’s More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, and I still can’t make up my mind about this writer.
dfordoom)Very few writers have limited themselves to such a narrow field of literary endeavour as Montague Rhodes James. His fiction is confined pretty much exclusively to ghost stories, and includes some of the most widely praised and widely anthologised stories in this very small sub-genre. I must confess that some of his most admired stories leave me cold. In particular, Oh Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad is a tale that does nothing whatever for me. There’s a lack of passion, a dry intellectual quality, in his writing that somewhat repels me. After reading the chapter on James in S. T. Joshi’s The Weird Tale (and Joshi seems to dislike James as a writer even more than I do) I thought it only fair to try a few more of James’s ghost stories. The Tractate Middoth confirmed most of my prejudices about his writing, but I was surprised to find that I rather liked A School Story. It’s a story that doesn’t go anywhere particularly, but I does have a genuine disquieting oddness to it that appeals to me. And I found myself thoroughly enjoying Mr Humphreys and his Inheritance, a story that Joshi said some very unkind things about. Perhaps it’s just that mazes appeal to me! And again it’s a story that is more about suggestion than actual plot. So now I’ve finally come to the end of James’s More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, and I still can’t make up my mind about this writer.
