[.uk] Collected Ghost Stories (Wordsworth Mystery & Supernatural) (ISBN 1840225513)

SPIFFING!:
I wonder whether Mr John Major (remember him?) has read these stories. They are the English of the English (more than you could say for him I guess) and evoke the sort of idealised tranquil Albion that I suppose he was harking after when he tried to present a vision of spinsters cycling through the eventide and so forth. If he has I trust he found them not unsplendid, as I do. I myself am Scottish although I have lived most of my life in England, and I like to think that the peculiar sense of Englishness that I get from M R James is one that a semi-foreigner can feel with special force. The mises-en-scene are cathedrals, canal boats, rural railways etc. It is partly these warm reassuring backgrounds that give the special thrill to James's glimpses of things old and sinister lurking in odd corners of the placid landscape. He never lays the effects on with a trowel as Lovecraft keeps doing, and to judge by other reviews I have read he is found all the more effective for that. I doubt that Lovecraft ever scared anyone, but for me James's Count Magnus is a candidate for the most flesh-creeping story I know, and when I told the story of Number 13 to my son aged c 7 or 8 at his own request and believing it to be innocuous, he forbade me for years even to mention it again. James's skill does not even depend on the degree of horror in the story. Count Magnus is horrific in the extreme, but what is probably James's best-known story? I would guess Whistle and I'll Come to You, where the story itself suggests that the apparition is one that only frightens not harms, and it frightens not a bit less for that. A lot of the trick is in introducing paganism into an ostentatiously C of E context, all archdeacons and vergers, and An Episode in Cathedral History is one of the best. Get an edition that is absolutely complete. Some of the stories, like A Neighbour's Landmark, read like ideas for stories rather than the final article, but the magic is there already and there are too few of them in total for anthologising to be sensible.

Yawn:
COLLECTED GHOST STORIES was first published in 1931. The thirty fictional "ghost stories" herein - more correctly, perhaps, stories of the supernatural - were written by author Montague Rhodes James at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. James was an English antiquarian, linguist, gentleman and scholar, so it's no surprise that each of the tales is usually about a fictional individual of similar capacities who's come across it while rummaging around in an old church, or among old books or letters, or has been told of it by a another who's had a direct experience with the paranormal. The plots take place in the 19th or late 18th century, and are mostly in a rural setting. Compared to the writings of Stephen King and Dean Koontz, these yarns, while reasonably inventive, are decidedly not scary. Purists might assert these authors compose trash, while James's pieces comprise "classic" literature. Well, perhaps, but COLLECTED GHOST STORIES still put me to sleep in short order as I read them in bed at night. The author's style includes the penning of interminable paragraphs that numbingly extend for one or two pages. And he sometimes includes Latin phrases or sentences that go untranslated. I guess genteel readers in those days were more robustly educated, or the author didn't expect the narrative to fall before such plebeian eyes as mine. (True, I took two years of the language in high school, but it evidently didn't stick.) At times, the plot of an individual story seems overly contrived, as the one about the phantom conjured up by the unusual pattern in a new set of curtains. Worse, James occasionally and intentionally leaves out an element of the story that might have otherwise improved upon it, as the tale of a country doctor who falls victim to the evil machinations of a fellow physician: "Annexed to the other papers is one which I was at first inclined to suppose had made its way among them by mistake. Upon further consideration I think I can divine a reason for its presence. ... It relates to the rifling of a mausoleum in Middlesex ... The account is blunt and terrible. I shall not quote it." Then why, pray tell, bring it up? My favorite chapter was "A View from A Hill", which has as its chief prop an old and singular pair of binoculars filled with some sort of icky distillate, and which allowed one to see through the lenses landscapes and buildings from the past. My kind of high-tech gadget! (Sort of like the x-ray glasses I saw advertised as a kid becoming interested in girls, and which I thought would allow me to see through ... well, you know.) I started this review with the intent of awarding three stars, but have worked myself up into a froth of dissatisfaction with the volume as a whole. So, two stars. The author's long dead anyway and not likely to care.

collect collected!:
great stories from the master. excellent at details, truly chilling, great descriptions, noone can make as much out of the traditional ghost story. james no that one change is enough to make a completely different story. changing objects, persons, places, angles, james shows the complete potential of the ghost story. built up excellent, these stories are among the best read in horror. lurking evil, suggestive evil, warning of evil, sudden icy touches by ghostly hands. i have read a lot of horror, but james almost startles me. like that scene in the well, i could almost feel a hand on my shoulder.

Haunted by Greatness:
I find James's tales deeply compelling, yet at times unsatisfying. He is unmatched in my experience at providing atmosphere and 'setting a stage'. With most of the works included here I was quickly drawn into a delicious world of Victorian academics and antiquaries afield in remote, small towns; along lonely seashores; or about routine pursuits -- all of which were overhung by exquisite melancholy and an expectation of the strange or the perilous. Too often, however, the denouement proved awkward or disappointing. Where he might better leave the instrument of a curse or haunting unseen, James instead resorts to goblin-like runts who crawl out of holes, do their wickedness, and then retreat. I have always preferred ghost stories which relied on what has been called the 'numinous', a quality by which the haunting presence, though unable to affect our physical world directly, may yet arouse such dread in the living that harm indeed results, but only through panic and ensuing accident. Still, not all of James's stories fall short so, and some of his best are concentrated in the third quarter of this collection. I am confident I shall re-read many with great pleasure, and there is always a certain inimitable virtue to fiction written in or near the period it depicts.

Collected Ghost Stories:
The stories are all set in the 1800s and quite detailed. Too much detail if you are reading to retell the story to a group, but OK for entertainment reading.