/lit/ - Literature

The horror subgenre started and died with The Monk.

>>22414715
There are centuries of horror stories outside of the Romantic and Gothic periods to dispute that.

>>22414718
DO NOT CONTRADICT ME

>>22414645
80s horror is kino

>>22414658
One of his best.

Horror short stories seem like a dying art. Here's a contemporary one to compare.
https://www.tor.com/2023/05/24/pretty-good-neighbor-jeffrey-ford/

Don't even think about it, groundskeeper.

The Fisherman by John Langan
Any of Laird Barron's short stories or, The Croning
Thomas Ligotti's Grimscribe and Songs of a Dead Dreamer

Reading Turn of the Screw by Henry James. One screw turned because I thought a ghost was going to haunt a child, then, to my dismay, a second screw turned as I realized a ghost was going to haunt two, yes two, wonderful cherubs. It is a real page turner and I literally am unable to put the book down, even as I make this post, because it is so enthralling. Oh my, there is a bloke in the window!

>>22415517
Did a man write that?

>>22416606
Loved the fisherman and some of laird bannon stuff

Anymore like fisherman?

>>22416649
Yes. He was a high school teacher and looked like this. Half the book contains 10 year old boys or girls getting raped by a monster or a pedo.

Horror-fantasy recs? I've already read Between Two Fires (meh), CAS (kino), and Schweitzer (also kino)

>>22414715
based
>>22417263
Robert E Howard and Karl Edward Wagner

Who here /crab/?

>>22417263
Michael Shea

HAHA NIGGA HOW ARE YOU SCARED OF BOOKS AHAHAHHA NIGGA JUST LOOK AWAY JUST CLOSE THE BOOK JUST STOP IMAGINING THINGS DUMB ASS

>>22418561
spoken like a true hylic
can barely see past the end of his own nose
no inner life at all

>>22414645
>Clark Ashton Smith
The Dark Eidolon is a good starting place and very affordable.
>Robert W. Chambers
The King in Yellow is the most known short story collection and very, very affordable.
>Arthur Machen
The Great God Pan and Other Horror Stories is the place to go.
These are my recs.
>>22417263
>CAS
God damn, thank you for mentioning him. The man is an under appreciated legend. Pic related, I'm about to buy his misc. set, too.

>Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke by Eric LaRocca
Don't fall for his stuff, covers and blurb are misleading. It's very boring and basic stuff that wouldn't shock anyone unless you're scared of a tapeworms

Read Ostermeier.
Closest thing I could get to Aickman in ages and it's some damn fine writing.

>>22414645
Good (recent) anthologies? I like my horror in this format.

>>22421195
I don't know any really, but I do read current magazines on horror. Some of the authors have appeared in these:
https://www.pspublishing.co.uk/anthologies-81-c.asp
Some of these are anthologies of old writers, but there seems to be a lot of recent ones.
These probably aren't that good, but I'm interested to see if anyone would care to read them. Some indie publishers I found doing anthologies:
https://www.crystallakepub.com/product-category/books/anthologies/
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CFJW8942

>>22416606
I have Fisherman but haven't read it yet. Is it good?

>>22417812
Is there a breakdown of any of these books/why they're good?

>>22421438
>Pugmire
W. H. Pugmire (b. 1951), although he began publishing as early as the 1970s, is finally gaining recognition as one of the more skilled prose-poets of weird fiction; the story collection The Tangled Muse (2011) features much of his best work. Donald Tyson has written a fascinating historical-supernatural novel, Alhazred (2006), about the author of the Necronomicon.
>Ligotti
And now we come to Thomas Ligotti (b. 1953). Ligotti is certainly the most distinctive, if not unusual, figure in contemporary supernatural fiction, if only because of the almost surreptitious way in which he has emerged as a leading figure in the field. His first volume, Songs of a Dead Dreamer (1986), was published by a small press with almost no fanfare, and I daresay that many readers and critics (I was among them) dismissed the poorly printed book as a tedious instance of “fan fiction.” But Ligotti, who had been publishing in magazines since the early 1980s, was the real article. Songs of a Dead Dreamer was reissued in 1989 by a mainstream British publisher and was quickly followed by the collections Grimscribe (1991) and Noctuary (1994); an omnibus, The Nightmare Factory, appeared in 1996. But after the appearance of My Work Is Not Yet Done (2002), Ligotti appears to have suffered some health problems that have virtually curtailed his fiction writing, and he has done very little original work in the past decade or more.
The publication of Ligotti’s impressive treatise The Conspiracy against the Human Race (2010) emphasises what has really been evident in much of his work: it is fueled by a deep pessimism regarding human life and action. Drawing upon the philosophical work of Peter Wessel Zapffe and others, Ligotti concludes that consciousness renders human existence so painful that it becomes folly to remain alive. There is some suggestion that Ligotti is merely attempting to create a philosophical patina to cover his own pessimism, but the cogency of Conspiracy is nonetheless a challenge to both religious and secular conceptions of the “gift” of life.
What is refreshing about Ligotti, from a purely literary perspective, is his frank disinclination to market himself. Even when his books were being issued by mainstream publishers, he was content to publish his fiction and other writing in non-paying small-press magazines; and he has frankly declared not only his inability to write a horror novel but the dubious aesthetic status of any horror novel. In some ways this stance is connected with Ligotti’s devaluation of human character in his own fiction, a direct product of his pessimism.
1/?

>>22417812
>Laird Barron
The one writer of genuine merit who has emerged in the first decade of the twenty-first century is Laird Barron (b. 1970). On the basis of only three published books, Barron has established an enviable reputation as one of the cutting-edge writers in our field. He has some similarities with Caitlín R. Kiernan, notably in the verve and panache of his prose, in the firm backbone of science that underpins much of his work, and in an engaging melding of genres (chiefly those of science fiction, hard-boiled crime fiction, and espionage with supernatural horror) that produces atmospheric effects that he already seems to have patented.
There is some difficulty in discussing Barron, because he is a writer of such immense talent that criticising him seems almost an impertinence; but, although the overall distinction of his first story collection, The Imago Sequence and Other Stories (2007), is not in doubt, there are more than a few drawbacks to the nine long stories in the volume. His first published work, “Shiva, Open Your Eyes” (2001), is a meandering, confusing story full of “fine writing” but little coherence of thought. In many of his early tales one gets the sense of an accomplished virtuoso indulging in stylish improvisations that fail to cohere; Poe’s “unity of effect” seems woefully lacking in many of these narratives.
Consider “Hallucigenia” (2006). What we have at the outset is the tale of Wallace Smith and his wife, Helen, both of whom are apparently kicked by a horse under strange circumstances, with Helen suffering brain damage and Wallace hallucinations. But then the tale veers off into the account of the original owners of the property, especially one Kaleb Choate, who wanted to “accelerate his own genetic evolution” (163) and had also somehow “bored a hole through space and crawled through” (163). But the overall development of the scenario is far from clear.
Barron’s besetting sin of throwing out too many plot threads is evident even in the most accomplished story in his first collection, “The Imago Sequence” (2005). The tale begins compellingly with the idea that a triptych of photographs taken by one Maurice Ammon, and which he calls The Imago Sequence, depicts a hominid unknown to evolution. But this promising beginning is overlayered with so many other ideas, interesting as they are, that the overall focus of the narrative becomes obscured.
Barron remedied many of these flaws in his second collection, Occutation and Other Stories (2010). There are, to be sure, tales here that fail to cohere, such as “The Forest” (2007), apparently about insects taking over the earth after the human race dies out; and the oddly titled “—30—” (2010), which, insofar as any sense can be made of the plot, deals with a series of killings in the Southwest that may or may not have a supernatural cause.
2/?

>>22421438
>Jonathan Thomas
A much more promising writer than Joe Hill is Jonathan Thomas. Thomas began by publishing a now very rare and not particularly notable slim collection, Stories from the Big Black House (1992). After a hiatus of a decade and a half, he resumed writing, publishing the noteworthy collection Midnight Call and Other Stories (2008), whose first story, “Eben’s Portrait,” is one of the most chilling tales in contemporary horror fiction. Thomas has a pungently jaundiced view of human foibles, a lively, evocative prose style, and an ability to develop a sense of cumulative horror —especially in such novelettes as “Tempting Providence” and “Dead Men’s Shoes,” both included in his second collection, Tempting Providence and Other Stories (2010)—that is enviable. His Lovecraftian novel, The Color Over Occam (2012), a loose sequel to “The Colour out of Space,” is one of the most terrifying supernatural works of the past half-century. Its insidious display of regional horror (it is set in and around the town of Occam, which, in this novel, is postulated as the original spelling of Lovecraft’s Arkham), and its climatic scene, in Occam’s sewer system, is one of the most gripping set-pieces in contemporary weird fiction.
>Jeff Vandermeer
The literary career of Jeff VanderMeer (b. 1968) has been highly peculiar. He began by writing idiosyncratic works of short fiction that could best be classified as surrealist or absurdist. Somewhere along the way he veered toward science fiction, writing novels and tales set in an imaginary city called Ambergris. He has edited a fair share of anthologies, including a doorstopper of a book called The Weird (2012; co-edited with his wife, Ann VanderMeer), which attempts to mask its mediocre selections by sheer bulk. (For example, he selected H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Dunwich Horror”—widely regarded by scholars as one of the poorest of his later narratives—over such scintillating tales as “The Call of Cthulhu” and “The Colour out of Space”; and of course he could not resist inserting one of his own tales in the book.) He has also been a proponent of the subgenre called the New Weird, although he is as hapless as its other practitioners in defining exactly what this subgenre actually is and how it differs from any other sort of weird fiction.
Recently VanderMeer apparently made a conscious decision to reach a wider audience by writing a trilogy of novels that melded weird fiction and science fiction. The result was the Southern Reach trilogy; the three novels were initially published separately in 2014 and then gathered in an omnibus under the title Area X. In all frankness, this trilogy is a farrago of confusion and irrelevance that only the critically naïve or inept will mistake for even a modest contribution to the literature of the weird.
http://stjoshi.org/review_vandermeer.html

>>22421438
>Gemma Files
Pic related.

>>22421501
Joshi is a cuck fuck. Listen to him talk for a bit in an unscripted interview and you'll quickly see how up his own ass he has become.

>>22417812
I need to read more of these, but I know of a shocking number of them.

I am always happy to see Pugmire get recognition.

Wyrd is also fantastic.

Finally reading through The King in Yellow. I’m on the last story and have overall enjoyed it, even when it switched to more romance prose.
Repairer of Reputations is definitely the strongest story, which kinda hurts the overall book that it’s up first. I also greatly enjoyed In the Court of the Dragon and The Yellow Sign, but The Mask was weaker. For the romance stuff, I thought The Street of the First Shell was very evocative while The Street of Our Lady of the Fields was the weakest.
Next up will be The House on the Borderland.

>>22421713
>t. "New" Weird tranny

>>22414645
>Captcha: G8GG8P

>>22421149
I need to grab some books from that company once October rolls around. What's their website again?

>>22421501
>which attempts to mask its mediocre selections by sheer bulk
Oh, good. I'm not the only one who recognized how terrible the selection is in that book.

>>22416608
Fucking lol’d

>>22422020
Broodcomb Press
https://broodcomb.co.uk

I can't vouch for the quality of anything other than Ostermeier's three entries but I think it should all be suitably weird.

>>22421724
The Mask is integral to understanding what makes the king in yellow different from Lovecraft. I actually find it stronger than the Court of the Dragon on rereads, because Court is largely just a demonic possession story or being taken by the devil.
Romance is a key aspect of the king, tragedy and the subversion of what we want vs the nature of reality. The dream in The Mask is one of the most haunting images in any of the 4 stories and I am tired of it being slept on.

>>22421501
This is by far the best analysis of Vandermeer that I have ever seen. Ive not read a book of his, but a few short stories and his introduction to the penguin Liggoti book. One of the most laughably dick-riding introductions I have ever read. Vandermeer says that ligotti rises far above the writings of Kafka and Poe, saying that unlike the former, Ligotti "cannot be emulated in a meaningful way". get the fuck outta here. Ligotti is definitely one of the better newer writers, but I would never go that far

>>22421501
>the three novels were initially published separately in 2014 and then gathered in an omnibus under the title Area X. In all frankness, this trilogy is a farrago of confusion and irrelevance that only the critically naïve or inept will mistake for even a modest contribution to the literature of the weird.
What a stick in the mud. Authority is the single greatest Delta Green novel you can read.

>>22424038
>>22421501
I think he was expecting to understand everything on a single read of the Area X trilogy, when the whole point is to put you in the mind of the characters where it's hard to see the true nature and actions of the beast until you are already inside it due to everything that is distracting you.

I had a creepy shower thought realization about the trilogy recently where in terms of timeline and scope, the three books are sort of arranged like an eye, moving outwards.
>Annihilation starts in the center of the pupil, small, but in the center of it all, concentrated and should be the most telling
>Authority, the iris, both forwards and backwards in time with a wider scope between Control's childhood and the background radiation Area X and the Southern Reach had on his life,
>Acceptance, the Schlera and eyelash, the white of the eye, the most range in time and perspective all the way from before Annihilation or the start of Authority, to after it has ended in its vignettes. Various perspectives and only finally do you see the edge and start to understand what it is you are looking at.

>>22423124
See, I think Repairer did a great job of showing what makes Chambers different than Lovecraft. Namely that he’s better at dialogue, characterization and emotions. Lovecraft tackles higher brow concepts and is more of a raw creative, but he’s not the best at writing fundamentals, while Chambers captures madness excellently.
Also, dream from The Mask? Aren’t you talking about The Yellow Sign? That one had the big focus on a nightmare.

>>22424359
>Also, dream from The Mask?

>These thoughts passed through my troubled mind as I lay sick, but they were hopelessly entangled with visions of white creatures, heavy as stone, crawling about in Boris’ basin,—of the wolf’s head on the rug, foaming and snapping at Geneviève, who lay smiling beside it. I thought, too, of The King in Yellow wrapt in the fantastic colors of his tattered mantle, and that bitter cry of Cassilda, “Not upon us, oh King, not upon us!” Feverishly I struggled to put it from me, but I saw the lake of Hali, thin and blank, without a ripple or wind to stir it, and I saw the towers of Carcosa behind the moon. Aldebaran, The Hyades, Alar, Hastur, glided through the cloud rifts which fluttered and flapped as they passed like the scolloped tatters of The King in Yellow

>>22424074
>single read
It's not that. I think Vandermeer has always been a fairly overzealous vegan SJW and it seeps into his work. If you also don't execute some "twist" like that properly, then it's going to look amateurish.

>>22421501
>He began by writing idiosyncratic works of short fiction that could best be classified as surrealist or absurdist
Don’t think you even know what surrealist and absurdist lit is, retard

>>22425783
That's from Unutterable Horror by S.T. Joshi, numbnuts. I'm sure you have the same credentials.

>>22425788
A literal who, who has no idea what surrealist or absurdist lit is, retard.
>credentials
Post physique

Imagine trusting anyone who looks like this kek. This board has become peak reddit

>>22425793
>literal who
He's probably the foremost Lovecraft scholar. It's telling you know nothing about the subject, or maybe just stumbled in this thread because you're pretentious.
>surrealist
I think he would, given that he's written extensively on Edgar Allan Poe.
>or absurdist lit
Absurdism in literature isn't clearly defined anyway, probably due its nature, so you get retards thinking it's anything from Camus to Beckett to Artaud
>post physique
Maybe you should have gone to university, you semi-ape.

>>22425796
You don't even know what is being discussed. Read the subject and think through what the glyphs mean.

>>22425796
Looks like a normal dude to me

>>22425801

>>22425807
Ah... some Twitter nigger stuck in 2017. Nothing to worry about here.

>>22425811
>I think he would, given that he's written extensively on Edgar Allan Poe

>>22425814
Ah yes, because Surrealism is only limited to Continental poets mostly from France and can't have different strains across the pond... Get over yourself. You can't even think that different traditions of literature like Weird and Horror Fiction might have different ways of taking from schools. Hint: Edgar Allan Poe was seen as an American strain of Surrealism, even if it's quite alien to French Surrealism. And Joshi didn't even use the capital-S Surrealism to talk about the proper art movement.

>>22425814
I even bothered to read some Breton to prove you wrong. Go fuck yourself, idiot.

>>22425856
LMAOOOOOOOOOOOO

>>22424593
Aaaaah, right.
So I interpreted the way I interpreted the story was that the main character murdered his friend and fiancé in a jealous psychotic rage during the moment when he was “sick” and the whole bit about the statues unpetrifying at the end was a delusion.
Is that a common view of the story or am I off the mark?

https://www.creepypasta.org/creepypasta/gateway-of-the-mind

>>22423124
>Romance is a key aspect of the king, tragedy and the subversion of what we want vs the nature of reality.
i think thinking of the TKiY as a cohesive artistic whole is a reach. even in the first few stories the carcosa link is very weak and the tones and styles are inconsistently inconsistent. like Repairer is great and sets up this world and is filled with detail and madness, but then the other few horror ones are mostly the usual gothic affair, and the romances are very middling. i dont at all buy that they are intentionally there to play with expectations. the book is way too overrated in the genre for its surface level influence on necronomicon.

>>22416606
The fisherman is boomer shit.

>>22426420
It's so boring. Nothing happens for the first portion of the book, not even atmosphere.

>>22416728
>>22416711
All the boomers horror writers look like pedos.

>>22426428
>boomer
>born 1914
retard

>>22426673
Still a pedo.

>>22415757
>>22414645
The Collapse of HMS Mariana