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American Fantastic Tales #1
American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from Poe to the Pulps
From early on, American literature has teemed with tales of horror, of hauntings, of terrifying obsessions and gruesome incursions, of the uncanny ways in which ordinary reality can be breached and subverted by the unknown and the irrational. As this pathbreaking two-volume anthology demonstrates, it is a tradition with many unexpected detours and hidden chambers, and one that continues to evolve, finding new forms and new themes as it explores the bad dreams that lurk around the edges—if not in the unacknowledged heart—of the everyday. Peter Straub, one of today’s masters of horror and fantasy, offers an authoritative and diverse gathering of stories calculated to unsettle and delight.
This first volume surveys a century and a half of American fantastic storytelling, revealing in its 44 stories an array of recurring themes: trance states, sleepwalking, mesmerism, obsession, possession, madness, exotic curses, evil atmospheres. In the tales of Irving, Poe, and Hawthorne, the bright prospects of the New World face an uneasy reckoning with the forces of darkness. In the ghost-haunted Victorian and Edwardian eras, writers including Henry James, Edith Wharton, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Ambrose Bierce explore ever more refined varieties of spectral invasion and disintegrating selfhood.
In the twentieth century, with the arrival of the era of the pulps, the fantastic took on more monstrous and horrific forms at the hands of H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Robert Bloch, and other classic contributors to Weird Tales. Here are works by acknowledged masters such as Stephen Crane, Willa Cather, Conrad Aiken, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, along with surprising discoveries like Ralph Adams Cram’s “The Dead Valley,” Emma Francis Dawson’s “An Itinerant House,” and Julian Hawthorne’s “Absolute Evil.”
American Fantastic Tales offers an unforgettable ride through strange and visionary realms.
This first volume surveys a century and a half of American fantastic storytelling, revealing in its 44 stories an array of recurring themes: trance states, sleepwalking, mesmerism, obsession, possession, madness, exotic curses, evil atmospheres. In the tales of Irving, Poe, and Hawthorne, the bright prospects of the New World face an uneasy reckoning with the forces of darkness. In the ghost-haunted Victorian and Edwardian eras, writers including Henry James, Edith Wharton, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Ambrose Bierce explore ever more refined varieties of spectral invasion and disintegrating selfhood.
In the twentieth century, with the arrival of the era of the pulps, the fantastic took on more monstrous and horrific forms at the hands of H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Robert Bloch, and other classic contributors to Weird Tales. Here are works by acknowledged masters such as Stephen Crane, Willa Cather, Conrad Aiken, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, along with surprising discoveries like Ralph Adams Cram’s “The Dead Valley,” Emma Francis Dawson’s “An Itinerant House,” and Julian Hawthorne’s “Absolute Evil.”
American Fantastic Tales offers an unforgettable ride through strange and visionary realms.
746 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 2009
49 people are currently reading
933 people want to read
About the author
Peter Straub
260 books4,194 followersPeter Straub was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the son of Gordon Anthony Straub and Elvena (Nilsestuen) Straub.
Straub read voraciously from an early age, but his literary interests did not please his parents; his father hoped that he would grow up to be a professional athlete, while his mother wanted him to be a Lutheran minister. He attended Milwaukee Country Day School on a scholarship, and, during his time there, began writing.
Straub earned an honors BA in English at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1965, and an MA at Columbia University a year later. He briefly taught English at Milwaukee Country Day, then moved to Dublin, Ireland, in 1969 to work on a PhD, and to start writing professionally
After mixed success with two attempts at literary mainstream novels in the mid-1970s ("Marriages" and "Under Venus"), Straub dabbled in the supernatural for the first time with "Julia" (1975). He then wrote "If You Could See Me Now" (1977), and came to widespread public attention with his fifth novel, "Ghost Story" (1979), which was a critical success and was later adapted into a 1981 film. Several horror novels followed, with growing success, including "The Talisman" and "Black House", two fantasy-horror collaborations with Straub's long-time friend and fellow author Stephen King.
In addition to his many novels, he published several works of poetry during his lifetime.
In 1966, Straub married Susan Bitker.They had two children; their daughter, Emma Straub, is also a novelist. The family lived in Dublin from 1969 to 1972, in London from 1972 to 1979, and in the New York City area from 1979 onwards.
Straub died on September 4, 2022, aged 79, from complications of a broken hip. At the time of his death, he and his wife lived in Brooklyn (New York City).
Straub read voraciously from an early age, but his literary interests did not please his parents; his father hoped that he would grow up to be a professional athlete, while his mother wanted him to be a Lutheran minister. He attended Milwaukee Country Day School on a scholarship, and, during his time there, began writing.
Straub earned an honors BA in English at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1965, and an MA at Columbia University a year later. He briefly taught English at Milwaukee Country Day, then moved to Dublin, Ireland, in 1969 to work on a PhD, and to start writing professionally
After mixed success with two attempts at literary mainstream novels in the mid-1970s ("Marriages" and "Under Venus"), Straub dabbled in the supernatural for the first time with "Julia" (1975). He then wrote "If You Could See Me Now" (1977), and came to widespread public attention with his fifth novel, "Ghost Story" (1979), which was a critical success and was later adapted into a 1981 film. Several horror novels followed, with growing success, including "The Talisman" and "Black House", two fantasy-horror collaborations with Straub's long-time friend and fellow author Stephen King.
In addition to his many novels, he published several works of poetry during his lifetime.
In 1966, Straub married Susan Bitker.They had two children; their daughter, Emma Straub, is also a novelist. The family lived in Dublin from 1969 to 1972, in London from 1972 to 1979, and in the New York City area from 1979 onwards.
Straub died on September 4, 2022, aged 79, from complications of a broken hip. At the time of his death, he and his wife lived in Brooklyn (New York City).
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October 10, 2019
“There are horrors beyond life's edge that we do not suspect, and once in a while man's evil prying calls them just within our range.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, The Thing on the Doorstep
It is not an easy task to accomplish, to create a book of almost 800 pages which can keep you glued to it from the beginning to the end. This incredible collection does the job better than any other volume I read during this entire year. Of course, one may argue that this is an anthology of different works, and not a whole novel; and so the effect on the reader is quite different. But the talent of the author in finding such interesting, compelling works; alternating some of the most renown and beloved writers with more obscure hidden gems, is undeniable and surely contributes to the overall value of this masterpiece as much as the talent of the original authors.
This volume can be read and appreciated as a history of the concept of horror itself. As a horror fan, I've always been fascinated by the way the modern genre was born, and how the things that scare and terrify people changed so much and yet remained, in essence, the same throughout the years.
Certainly, the readers of today are not easily terrified by a small man becoming even smaller to meet a jellyfish ("The Jelly-Fish", by David H. Keller), and may find the idea behind a cat-man more funny than horrific ("The King of the Cats", by Stephen Vincent Benét); but it is undeniable that monstrosities, for which I mean the aberrations of physical and non-physical elements of "reality", are the very foundation of what we considered scary, as a species, form the beginning of time. And if some elements of moral, religious, historical and scientific matter changed so much the way we approach the different that we chuckle at what some of these writers considered nightmare fuel, one can easily argue that the essence of what horror actually is, didn't really change; what changed is the way it is perceived and narrated today. If in 2019 we can be scared by a clown, then why not by a ghost, or vampire, or werewolf? As the time changed, the concept of horror evolved, got purified by external elements still present at its infancy (the grotesque, the fantastical etc), and became a genre by itself. But its core was already there two hundred years ago, and maybe even earlier, in Greek tragedies and Latin poems.
This volume contains works by two of my favourite authors of all time (E. A. Poe and H. P. Lovecraft), along with authors which I never heard of and was very happy to discover. I doubt I will ever read a more comprehensive book on this subject, and I strongly recommend anyone who has a taste for classic horror to give it a try. Of course, the writing style is outdated, but I am particularly fond of how people wrote in those years anyway, so for me it's a plus. I read this as an encyclopedia of horror, and will surely jump directly to the second volume!
― H.P. Lovecraft, The Thing on the Doorstep
It is not an easy task to accomplish, to create a book of almost 800 pages which can keep you glued to it from the beginning to the end. This incredible collection does the job better than any other volume I read during this entire year. Of course, one may argue that this is an anthology of different works, and not a whole novel; and so the effect on the reader is quite different. But the talent of the author in finding such interesting, compelling works; alternating some of the most renown and beloved writers with more obscure hidden gems, is undeniable and surely contributes to the overall value of this masterpiece as much as the talent of the original authors.
This volume can be read and appreciated as a history of the concept of horror itself. As a horror fan, I've always been fascinated by the way the modern genre was born, and how the things that scare and terrify people changed so much and yet remained, in essence, the same throughout the years.
Certainly, the readers of today are not easily terrified by a small man becoming even smaller to meet a jellyfish ("The Jelly-Fish", by David H. Keller), and may find the idea behind a cat-man more funny than horrific ("The King of the Cats", by Stephen Vincent Benét); but it is undeniable that monstrosities, for which I mean the aberrations of physical and non-physical elements of "reality", are the very foundation of what we considered scary, as a species, form the beginning of time. And if some elements of moral, religious, historical and scientific matter changed so much the way we approach the different that we chuckle at what some of these writers considered nightmare fuel, one can easily argue that the essence of what horror actually is, didn't really change; what changed is the way it is perceived and narrated today. If in 2019 we can be scared by a clown, then why not by a ghost, or vampire, or werewolf? As the time changed, the concept of horror evolved, got purified by external elements still present at its infancy (the grotesque, the fantastical etc), and became a genre by itself. But its core was already there two hundred years ago, and maybe even earlier, in Greek tragedies and Latin poems.
This volume contains works by two of my favourite authors of all time (E. A. Poe and H. P. Lovecraft), along with authors which I never heard of and was very happy to discover. I doubt I will ever read a more comprehensive book on this subject, and I strongly recommend anyone who has a taste for classic horror to give it a try. Of course, the writing style is outdated, but I am particularly fond of how people wrote in those years anyway, so for me it's a plus. I read this as an encyclopedia of horror, and will surely jump directly to the second volume!
September 24, 2023
Just where to start with a collection like this? If this goes something like I plan, I won't be doing one of my usual exhaustive critiques of every story here (oops, didn't go as planned!) - for a couple of reasons, but mostly because, well, there's some pretty damn famous work here (I joked at the time I started that I probably had read 3/4 of this 746 page volume – a little checking of my notes revealed that I actually read and owned 1/2 the stories here already, although a number of the “unread” I had actually read, just back before I began taking notes a decade ago). Oh, I'll still dig into the stories that were new to me, and have something to say about the particular classics included here that I love, I'm sure. But I'd like to look at the book as a whole, mostly.
On pure aesthetic terms it's a beautiful product, which is to be expected from The Modern Library – a quality hardcover with sewn binding, tipped in bookmark and solid endnotes. The sleeve, which I removed while I read, is both cool and a bit on the garish side, but hey, no problem. After all, “Fantastic” fiction is always going to be the red-headed stepchild next to wholesome, corn-fed literature and maybe that's for the best (but that's a discussion I don't want to have right now).
Why own a book like this? I can imagine two reasons. One – you're a little boy or girl and you like scary stories and your Aunt Minnie knows that a child's interests are fleeting and it's best to slip some of the quality stuff into their little adolescent hands at the right moment. If that's the case, the little runt might find this hard-going at first but maybe reading the book in reverse would do the trick. Two - if you're someone like me, who grew up on cheap Scholastic Scope bookmobile anthologies of public domain weird tales, you will own a majority of this stuff already. But it's a nice looking book and, as any good anthology reader (and hopefully any anthologist worth his salt) knows, it's all about what stories you pick and how your arrange them in relation to your theme. This seems to have gone over the head of a lot of griping Internet posters, who've complained as if this book (and its companion) are intended as “best of” roundups or something. No, Peter Straub is deliberately saying something by making these specific choices. The arrangement is chronological, so placement's not a consideration, but this is Straub's take on the American, stop, Fantastic, stop, Tale, stop – from “Poe to the Pulps” as it says, and then, volume 2, from “1940s to Now”. How it develops, the concerns it exposes.
So, yes, there might be better representative works by a particular author, but instead here are solid examples from said author which also resonate with the larger overview woven here. And those strands are what I'm going to try to tease out, helped by the brief introduction.
Let's look at the title. American – easy enough. I'd argue that one or two of the great writers offered are only “technically” American, in the sense that they might have been born here but their body of work is strongly associated with other cultures - Lafcadio Hearn is the prime example included, but Henry James is such a consummate example of the European literary sensibility that “The Jolly Corner” seems a rather canny choice, involving as it does a long-traveled expatriate returning to New York City to face the life he left behind in America. Edith Wharton falls into the same category in my mind as well, as “Afterward” (classic though it is) feels so much more English ghost story than American. But these are exceedingly minor quibbles – left out, there would have been an uproar in the “how could he forget that X was an American” mode. Nobody's going to make me feel bad by getting me to read “The Jolly Corner” anyway (and besides, it links so well with one of those strands I mentioned).
Fantastic – ahh, mind you, not “Fantasy.” And no Science Fiction here as well (fine by me). An American take on the European “fantastique”, then - the “weird” tale, not just horror and ghost stories but the “marvel” yarn as well. There's more I could probably say here about genre, but this thing will run long regardless, so...
Tale – well, that's easy. Some of the abstracted, literary styles that evolve as the book goes on may strain the definition of a tale - in the sense of a ripping yarn, a cracking good fireside story – but things eventually get knocked back into shape by the appearance of the pulps at the end, so no harm done.
Straub posits the horror and fantastic tale as seated in the grief, loss and terror historically experienced as the Enlightenment's orderly, rational universe of reason was slowly replaced with the decentralizing effects of science and the dehumanizing effects of the industrial revolution. This grief, loss and terror is the unspoken engine that drives most of these tales (with the added spice of religious overturn in the face of rationality as well). Pretty standard stuff, that take, so let's see how it applies to America in particular through the evidence of the stories.
Strand one – the crazy mind, the perverse drive, the obsession, the loss of identity, delusion, hallucination, the horror in our heads, the horror of our heads. Charles Brockden Brown's “Somnambulism: A Fragment” starts the collection. Much admired by Poe, I wrangled with Mr. Brown's Wieland and Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist awhile back. His usual convoluted sentences aside, it's a good choice to start the book, even if an underwhelming story in itself. Our narrator loves a woman who is visiting him. She and her father must suddenly leave the narrator's home and take a journey through the night, robbing him of his chance to get into her good graces (she is betrothed to another). The narrator desperately wants a reason to delay them or travel with them, and this develops into a profound fear that they will be attacked on the road at night. He becomes utterly convinced of their danger, while still somewhat aware that his mind has manufactured it (“This scheme possessed irresistible attractions. I was thankful to the danger for having suggested it”). Nick Handyside, a benign, local mental defective who haunts the woods and scares people, is fixated on as figure of menace (a bit of Boo Radley in him). In the end, violence does occur but . The construction is faulty - which I assume comes from it being a fragment – a synopsis of the events are given, then the narrator's fevered expression of his fears (exposing his mania), then the father's recitation of the factual events. The “eerie” aspect, the sleepwalking, is not exploited in any effective way, and yet, taken as whole, it points one way...
...through Washington Irving's “The Adventure of the German Student”, in which a morbid American student studying in Paris ignores all the contemporary political turmoil (The Revolution, natch) for the pursuit of knowledge. Possessed by an overwhelming feeling of impending death, one evening he meets the women who has haunted his dreams as he meanders by Madame Guillotine. However, those who follow the Goddess of Liberal Reason will eventually find themselves sleeping with death. Next comes Edgar Allan Poe, obviously, and “Berenice”, where a melancholy man from a wealthy family, born in a library, rejects the outside world for books, ideas and fantasies, and the love of his cousin. His oft sickly cousin, and her beautiful teeth. He cannot rid himself of the thought of her beautiful teeth. Not often remembered as yet another Poe “premature burial” story, and a bit front-loaded with info, the ending is shocking and abrupt even now.
Strand two starts with Nathaniel Hawthorne's “Young Goodman Brown” and the Devil who he meets in the woods. The Devil he *intended* to meet in the woods, I note, and the revelation that everyone in the world is secretly corrupt, or *may* be secretly corrupt. The religious impulses of young America, a land given to us by God to exploit and experiment with, are manifest here, but not only Nick Handyside lurks in the forest, savage Indians and the Devil do as well. And America is almost all forest at this point... As a devout agnostic I love this story, the paranoia and despair engendered by the Manichean world view is so expertly sketched, you can't help but be dazzled. Everyone is suspect, including oneself. Also, we get a nice carry-over of European “Walpurgisnacht” imagery and supernaturalism to the New World, with pagan "redmen" dancing with witches around the fire.
Strand three is fast on the heels, with Herman Melville's “The Tartarus of Maids”, less a story than an essay sketched as a twin to his earlier “The Paradise Of Bachelors” (about men training at the Temple Bar in London). Melville presents us a portrait of a prosperous paper mill, and the unending drudgery of the woman employed therein. It can be seen as “the horrors of Capitalism”, as the women are treated as less than human and yet their toil supplies a vital product to a thriving economy. Through long, naturalistic descriptions of the setting, it achieves an almost fable-like tone, as if the “maidens” are enslaved to some unseen demon-god. It's not a great story, alas, but I understand why it's here.
So, The Mind, God(s) and Money. Madness, Superstition, and Greed. And not all of these strands appear in every story, but they do recur with enough repetition to be noteworthy. Other sub-strands re-occur: the dangerous wilderness or location, personal identity and responsibility, the problem of women, the problem of race, the problem of class (in a “classless” society). And also, Science and Rationality explaining/treating/clashing with the human mind, undermining religion or proving powerless in the face of folklore, and helping capital achieve its goals - all would be other viable sub-strand to note.
Science, in a general sense, underlies the next tale, Fitz James O'Brien's “What Was It?”, a story I've always loved, and tend to see as of a piece with Bierce's notable “The Damned Thing”. A boarding house is reputed to be haunted but nothing evidences itself until the narrator retires one evening and is attacked by an invisible creature. The journalistic tone (the story is told as if it were recounted for a newspaper) and prosaic, reductive plot () clash nicely with the fantastic element.
Bret Harte's “The Legend of Monte del Diablo”, another fable-like piece, starts promisingly (a Spanish priest in Old California takes a trek into unknown country to convert the heathen “injun”, but meets Satan on the trail) but I found it underwhelming. Here, again, is old Nick out in the wilderness, and here he warns about California's future with the Gold Rush and the greed it will unleash, and here the satanic vision may have just been a bear all the time. Not a thrilling story, alas.
“The Moonstone Mass” by Harriet Prescott Spofford seems like a weird, inverse of Poe's “Ms. Found In A Bottle” as an exploratory search for the Northwest Passage, driven by a desire for profit, uncovers a strange elemental power in the arctic wastes. A fine weird tale, the “greed driving one to discover something unwonted” aspect is noteworthy, as is the “I possess knowledge of a treasure which is technically unattainable”, which puts me in mind of Fitzgerald's “A Diamond As Big As The Ritz”, and the cosmic imagery kind of foretells Lovecraft in a way.
Obsessive fixation returns in W.C. Morrow's “His Unconquerable Enemy”, not a particular favorite of mine from Morrow's work (I prefer “Over An Absinthe Bottle”). The story seems like an odd exercise in the conte cruel and grotesque, with Orientalist touches, as a wickedly tortured victim of a Rajah finally achieves his vengeful goal despite overwhelming odds. Money rears its head again during “In Dark New England Days” by Sarah Orne Jewett, as a deathbed act of thievery sets a curse in motion... maybe. It's the first story in this chronological read that also evidences the beginning of a modern story style.
Then comes Charlotte Perkins Gilman's “The Yellow Wallpaper”, about which much has already been said. The mind and its breakdown, an unreliable narrator and her obsessions, the oppressive and infantilizing treatment of women (see also “The Tartarus of Maids”) make this a classic and a definite must-read. There's a bit of the “rationality” thread in this as well, with the newly born concepts of therapy and treatment, quackery though they are in this case. “The Black Dog” by Stephen Crane is a shivery, fable-type story of a folkloric death-apparition, told in an ironic horror-comedy mode. I really liked the bluntly realistic sting in the ending lines, though. I'll be honest and say that while Kate Chopin's “Ma'ame Pelagie” is a fine story, I think its links to the “Fantastic” remit here are tenuous at best (I assume that reading centers on what, to me, seemed like a symbolic dream vision). Still, it has slight echoes of Shirley Jackson's WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE, with it's landed family of wealth fallen on hard times, and may be seen as indicating the way to Southern Gothic.
I'd always assumed John Kendrick Bangs was British, and associate him with the subgenre of the humorous ghost-story. The piece here, “Thurlow's Christmas Story” is interesting – not particularly scary but there are a number of ideas that bear fruit later in this volume. A reporter, charged with supplying a ghost story for his paper's Christmas edition, desperately explains to his editor why the story is late and reveals how he was approached by a fan of his previous work with a story to publish under his own name, gratis. It really should be read for the full effect; there's some neat bits to it that later show up in “The Jolly Corner” and a meta-textual element (a ghost story about a writer of ghost stories) that gets echoed in the last story in this volume. The ending, in particular, is well done, oddly ominous in its implications about writing for profit and the author's dream/vision/doppelganger and his resistance to the offer of same. Money and identity are the key themes here.
(My review is so long I have to continue it in the next few comment boxes - I apologize!)
On pure aesthetic terms it's a beautiful product, which is to be expected from The Modern Library – a quality hardcover with sewn binding, tipped in bookmark and solid endnotes. The sleeve, which I removed while I read, is both cool and a bit on the garish side, but hey, no problem. After all, “Fantastic” fiction is always going to be the red-headed stepchild next to wholesome, corn-fed literature and maybe that's for the best (but that's a discussion I don't want to have right now).
Why own a book like this? I can imagine two reasons. One – you're a little boy or girl and you like scary stories and your Aunt Minnie knows that a child's interests are fleeting and it's best to slip some of the quality stuff into their little adolescent hands at the right moment. If that's the case, the little runt might find this hard-going at first but maybe reading the book in reverse would do the trick. Two - if you're someone like me, who grew up on cheap Scholastic Scope bookmobile anthologies of public domain weird tales, you will own a majority of this stuff already. But it's a nice looking book and, as any good anthology reader (and hopefully any anthologist worth his salt) knows, it's all about what stories you pick and how your arrange them in relation to your theme. This seems to have gone over the head of a lot of griping Internet posters, who've complained as if this book (and its companion) are intended as “best of” roundups or something. No, Peter Straub is deliberately saying something by making these specific choices. The arrangement is chronological, so placement's not a consideration, but this is Straub's take on the American, stop, Fantastic, stop, Tale, stop – from “Poe to the Pulps” as it says, and then, volume 2, from “1940s to Now”. How it develops, the concerns it exposes.
So, yes, there might be better representative works by a particular author, but instead here are solid examples from said author which also resonate with the larger overview woven here. And those strands are what I'm going to try to tease out, helped by the brief introduction.
Let's look at the title. American – easy enough. I'd argue that one or two of the great writers offered are only “technically” American, in the sense that they might have been born here but their body of work is strongly associated with other cultures - Lafcadio Hearn is the prime example included, but Henry James is such a consummate example of the European literary sensibility that “The Jolly Corner” seems a rather canny choice, involving as it does a long-traveled expatriate returning to New York City to face the life he left behind in America. Edith Wharton falls into the same category in my mind as well, as “Afterward” (classic though it is) feels so much more English ghost story than American. But these are exceedingly minor quibbles – left out, there would have been an uproar in the “how could he forget that X was an American” mode. Nobody's going to make me feel bad by getting me to read “The Jolly Corner” anyway (and besides, it links so well with one of those strands I mentioned).
Fantastic – ahh, mind you, not “Fantasy.” And no Science Fiction here as well (fine by me). An American take on the European “fantastique”, then - the “weird” tale, not just horror and ghost stories but the “marvel” yarn as well. There's more I could probably say here about genre, but this thing will run long regardless, so...
Tale – well, that's easy. Some of the abstracted, literary styles that evolve as the book goes on may strain the definition of a tale - in the sense of a ripping yarn, a cracking good fireside story – but things eventually get knocked back into shape by the appearance of the pulps at the end, so no harm done.
Straub posits the horror and fantastic tale as seated in the grief, loss and terror historically experienced as the Enlightenment's orderly, rational universe of reason was slowly replaced with the decentralizing effects of science and the dehumanizing effects of the industrial revolution. This grief, loss and terror is the unspoken engine that drives most of these tales (with the added spice of religious overturn in the face of rationality as well). Pretty standard stuff, that take, so let's see how it applies to America in particular through the evidence of the stories.
Strand one – the crazy mind, the perverse drive, the obsession, the loss of identity, delusion, hallucination, the horror in our heads, the horror of our heads. Charles Brockden Brown's “Somnambulism: A Fragment” starts the collection. Much admired by Poe, I wrangled with Mr. Brown's Wieland and Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist awhile back. His usual convoluted sentences aside, it's a good choice to start the book, even if an underwhelming story in itself. Our narrator loves a woman who is visiting him. She and her father must suddenly leave the narrator's home and take a journey through the night, robbing him of his chance to get into her good graces (she is betrothed to another). The narrator desperately wants a reason to delay them or travel with them, and this develops into a profound fear that they will be attacked on the road at night. He becomes utterly convinced of their danger, while still somewhat aware that his mind has manufactured it (“This scheme possessed irresistible attractions. I was thankful to the danger for having suggested it”). Nick Handyside, a benign, local mental defective who haunts the woods and scares people, is fixated on as figure of menace (a bit of Boo Radley in him). In the end, violence does occur but . The construction is faulty - which I assume comes from it being a fragment – a synopsis of the events are given, then the narrator's fevered expression of his fears (exposing his mania), then the father's recitation of the factual events. The “eerie” aspect, the sleepwalking, is not exploited in any effective way, and yet, taken as whole, it points one way...
...through Washington Irving's “The Adventure of the German Student”, in which a morbid American student studying in Paris ignores all the contemporary political turmoil (The Revolution, natch) for the pursuit of knowledge. Possessed by an overwhelming feeling of impending death, one evening he meets the women who has haunted his dreams as he meanders by Madame Guillotine. However, those who follow the Goddess of Liberal Reason will eventually find themselves sleeping with death. Next comes Edgar Allan Poe, obviously, and “Berenice”, where a melancholy man from a wealthy family, born in a library, rejects the outside world for books, ideas and fantasies, and the love of his cousin. His oft sickly cousin, and her beautiful teeth. He cannot rid himself of the thought of her beautiful teeth. Not often remembered as yet another Poe “premature burial” story, and a bit front-loaded with info, the ending is shocking and abrupt even now.
Strand two starts with Nathaniel Hawthorne's “Young Goodman Brown” and the Devil who he meets in the woods. The Devil he *intended* to meet in the woods, I note, and the revelation that everyone in the world is secretly corrupt, or *may* be secretly corrupt. The religious impulses of young America, a land given to us by God to exploit and experiment with, are manifest here, but not only Nick Handyside lurks in the forest, savage Indians and the Devil do as well. And America is almost all forest at this point... As a devout agnostic I love this story, the paranoia and despair engendered by the Manichean world view is so expertly sketched, you can't help but be dazzled. Everyone is suspect, including oneself. Also, we get a nice carry-over of European “Walpurgisnacht” imagery and supernaturalism to the New World, with pagan "redmen" dancing with witches around the fire.
Strand three is fast on the heels, with Herman Melville's “The Tartarus of Maids”, less a story than an essay sketched as a twin to his earlier “The Paradise Of Bachelors” (about men training at the Temple Bar in London). Melville presents us a portrait of a prosperous paper mill, and the unending drudgery of the woman employed therein. It can be seen as “the horrors of Capitalism”, as the women are treated as less than human and yet their toil supplies a vital product to a thriving economy. Through long, naturalistic descriptions of the setting, it achieves an almost fable-like tone, as if the “maidens” are enslaved to some unseen demon-god. It's not a great story, alas, but I understand why it's here.
So, The Mind, God(s) and Money. Madness, Superstition, and Greed. And not all of these strands appear in every story, but they do recur with enough repetition to be noteworthy. Other sub-strands re-occur: the dangerous wilderness or location, personal identity and responsibility, the problem of women, the problem of race, the problem of class (in a “classless” society). And also, Science and Rationality explaining/treating/clashing with the human mind, undermining religion or proving powerless in the face of folklore, and helping capital achieve its goals - all would be other viable sub-strand to note.
Science, in a general sense, underlies the next tale, Fitz James O'Brien's “What Was It?”, a story I've always loved, and tend to see as of a piece with Bierce's notable “The Damned Thing”. A boarding house is reputed to be haunted but nothing evidences itself until the narrator retires one evening and is attacked by an invisible creature. The journalistic tone (the story is told as if it were recounted for a newspaper) and prosaic, reductive plot () clash nicely with the fantastic element.
Bret Harte's “The Legend of Monte del Diablo”, another fable-like piece, starts promisingly (a Spanish priest in Old California takes a trek into unknown country to convert the heathen “injun”, but meets Satan on the trail) but I found it underwhelming. Here, again, is old Nick out in the wilderness, and here he warns about California's future with the Gold Rush and the greed it will unleash, and here the satanic vision may have just been a bear all the time. Not a thrilling story, alas.
“The Moonstone Mass” by Harriet Prescott Spofford seems like a weird, inverse of Poe's “Ms. Found In A Bottle” as an exploratory search for the Northwest Passage, driven by a desire for profit, uncovers a strange elemental power in the arctic wastes. A fine weird tale, the “greed driving one to discover something unwonted” aspect is noteworthy, as is the “I possess knowledge of a treasure which is technically unattainable”, which puts me in mind of Fitzgerald's “A Diamond As Big As The Ritz”, and the cosmic imagery kind of foretells Lovecraft in a way.
Obsessive fixation returns in W.C. Morrow's “His Unconquerable Enemy”, not a particular favorite of mine from Morrow's work (I prefer “Over An Absinthe Bottle”). The story seems like an odd exercise in the conte cruel and grotesque, with Orientalist touches, as a wickedly tortured victim of a Rajah finally achieves his vengeful goal despite overwhelming odds. Money rears its head again during “In Dark New England Days” by Sarah Orne Jewett, as a deathbed act of thievery sets a curse in motion... maybe. It's the first story in this chronological read that also evidences the beginning of a modern story style.
Then comes Charlotte Perkins Gilman's “The Yellow Wallpaper”, about which much has already been said. The mind and its breakdown, an unreliable narrator and her obsessions, the oppressive and infantilizing treatment of women (see also “The Tartarus of Maids”) make this a classic and a definite must-read. There's a bit of the “rationality” thread in this as well, with the newly born concepts of therapy and treatment, quackery though they are in this case. “The Black Dog” by Stephen Crane is a shivery, fable-type story of a folkloric death-apparition, told in an ironic horror-comedy mode. I really liked the bluntly realistic sting in the ending lines, though. I'll be honest and say that while Kate Chopin's “Ma'ame Pelagie” is a fine story, I think its links to the “Fantastic” remit here are tenuous at best (I assume that reading centers on what, to me, seemed like a symbolic dream vision). Still, it has slight echoes of Shirley Jackson's WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE, with it's landed family of wealth fallen on hard times, and may be seen as indicating the way to Southern Gothic.
I'd always assumed John Kendrick Bangs was British, and associate him with the subgenre of the humorous ghost-story. The piece here, “Thurlow's Christmas Story” is interesting – not particularly scary but there are a number of ideas that bear fruit later in this volume. A reporter, charged with supplying a ghost story for his paper's Christmas edition, desperately explains to his editor why the story is late and reveals how he was approached by a fan of his previous work with a story to publish under his own name, gratis. It really should be read for the full effect; there's some neat bits to it that later show up in “The Jolly Corner” and a meta-textual element (a ghost story about a writer of ghost stories) that gets echoed in the last story in this volume. The ending, in particular, is well done, oddly ominous in its implications about writing for profit and the author's dream/vision/doppelganger and his resistance to the offer of same. Money and identity are the key themes here.
(My review is so long I have to continue it in the next few comment boxes - I apologize!)
March 24, 2010
As is always the case with collections, this one was a mixed bag (skip Herman Melville's story if you value your patience), but I also found several good ones I didn't know about (Straub generally chose lesser known stories from the biggest names) and revisited some old favorites (like the wonderful "The Yellow Wallpaper"). I enjoyed the fact that the stories were arranged chronologically by date written/published as it allowed a reader to see the progression of American storytelling, but also American life in general. Not surprisingly, the earliest stories deal more in atmosphere than in action, but that can certainly be just as scary, if not more so. I'm going to give myself a break before Volume 2, partly because the first book was so long, but also because I hate to see it end.
December 14, 2016
A lot of all-time favorites in this, including "The Repairer of Reputations" by Robert Chambers, "Young Goodman Brown" by Hawthorne, "The Yellow Wall Paper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "What Was It?" by Fitz-James O'Brien, and "The Jolly Corner" by Henry James, plus a ton of stories by people I'd never heard of, including a couple great ones, most notably "The Little Room" by Madeline Yale Wynne, and "Golden Baby" by Alice Brown, which was a knockout, by far my favorite in the volume! Just loved it.
Spent the whole year reading this book and plan to do the same in 2017 with the 2nd volume.
Spent the whole year reading this book and plan to do the same in 2017 with the 2nd volume.
September 24, 2015
Excellent collection of stories.
Want to get all snuggled up in a warm blanket on a cold and stormy night?
This book is a must have for entertainment.
Want to get all snuggled up in a warm blanket on a cold and stormy night?
This book is a must have for entertainment.
February 16, 2019
281117: not exactly terror but definitely uncanny. as any collection there is very good and less, but it is interesting to read more popular authors, some names in high lit, some names i have never read. that it is history intrigues more in technique, poetics, narration, and perhaps it is better read only occasionally rather than all through in a few weeks. surprising that there are so many female authors, but suggests ability to subvert patriarchal concepts, some sexism, racism, xenophobia, possibly of its time. Poe was interesting, so was gillman, cather, fitzgerald, lovecraft, read some names i have heard of but not read, such as seabury, ashton smith, some lit names like mellville, hawthorn, kate chopin. a good slice of history...
December 28, 2013
4.5 stars
This book isn't a pulpy horror book to read to your kids in the dark. It's actually a collection of sophisticated literature that contains horror and terror elements. It's not necessarily scary, but I definitely got some chills. This book isn't for your horror fix, but it's fantastic nonetheless if you're a fan of terror-themed literature.
This book isn't a pulpy horror book to read to your kids in the dark. It's actually a collection of sophisticated literature that contains horror and terror elements. It's not necessarily scary, but I definitely got some chills. This book isn't for your horror fix, but it's fantastic nonetheless if you're a fan of terror-themed literature.
May 9, 2019
Highlights for me were: "Young Goodman Brown" by Hawthorne, "The Yellow Wallpaper" by C.P. Gilman, "Afterward" by Edith Wharton, "Absolute Evil" by Julian Hawthorne (son of Nathaniel), and "The Thing on the Doorstep" by that creep H.P. Lovecraft.
January 2, 2025
I have read relatively few books this year, and part of that is because I watched an unreasonable amount of television, but part of that is because I usually do at least a third of my reading in audio, and reading this audio book took me from May until December.
Some of that has nothing to do with this book. Some of that is because my commute patterns changed. But some of that is absolutely because this was, in many places, a slog.
That's not to say I regret reading it! I feel like I have a much better understanding of the origins of horror as a genre, now, and there were stories I loved. But there were also quite a lot of stories in which the horror was expressed as some flavor of xenophobia (it's scary because it's other! and by other I mean not white and/or female!), and that . . . was a lot to take, back to back to back. I might have given this collection four stars had it merely been shorter.
Story-by-story notes, as best as I can reconstruct them, with stars by the ones that positively captured my attention and two stars by the ones I liked best. If you don't want to read through the whole list, I'll note that stand-outs for me were "In Dark New England Days" (Sarah Orne Jewett), "The Yellow Wall Paper" (Charlotte Perkins Gilman), "Thurlow's Christmas Story" (John Kendrick Bangs), "The Repairer of Reputations" (Robert W. Chambers), "The Little Room" (Madeline Yale Wynne), and "Mr. Arcularis" (Conrad Aiken):
Somnambulism: Of historical interest? Probably. Of actual interest to me, a modern reader? No. Men perpetrating violence against women (and feeling very sad about it) just makes me feel tired.
The Adventure of the German Student: Is this the first instance of the "woman who has a ribbon around her neck tells lover not to remove it; when ribbon is removed, her head falls off" trope? Maybe, but I have read it too many times at this point to be intrigued. Sorry, Irving.
Berenice: Atmospheric, but still uninteresting to me; at this point I was beginning to regret reading the collection.
Young Goodman Brown: A little too straightforward of an allegory for my taste.
* The Tartarus of Maids: This is the first story that grabbed me. It is, okay, also a very straightforward allegory (actually I don't think it's even subtle enough to be called an allegory), but I am always Here for allegories about the horrors of industrialized labor. And "Why is it, Sir, that in most factories, female operatives, or whatever age, are indiscriminately called girls, never women?" Yeah, you tell 'em, Melville.
* What Was It?: I was strangely charmed by this one. I thought it was going to get by all on atmosphere and vague "was it an opium dream?" conclusions, but no, the monster is real and physical and yet remains inexplicable, and that's not an ending I see often, even now.
The Legend of Monte del Diablo: The one where the Devil tries to tempt a Spanish missionary to stop proselytizing, but he manfully resists. As a modern (and non-Christian) reader, I am Team Devil on this one, which made it an unsatisfying tale.
The Moonstone Mass: The first story in the collection by a woman, and thus I regret to report I found it entirely forgettable.
His Unconquerable Enemy: There sure are some unfortunate statements about race and disability in this story! On the other hand, it had bits that were genuinely horrifying (in their gruesomeness) in a way that nothing before it was; it felt like something straight out of the Grand Guignol tradition, despite predating it by decades. Memorable and original, if not necessarily recommended.
** In Dark New England Days: Second story by a woman, and this made me want to go out and seek more Jewett immediately. Deft characterization and a compelling, bleak atmosphere.
** The Yellow Wall Paper: Full disclosure, I did not reread this because I'd just reread it a couple months previously in a stand-alone book. But: it's psychologically gripping and remains unfortunately relevant to this day. A classic for a reason.
The Black Dog: I did not understand the point of this brief tale, which evoked no emotion in me at all.
Ma'ame Pelagie: Chopin's prose is always compelling, but I'm a bit skeptical of this as a tale of "terror and the uncanny."
** Thurlow's Christmas Story: A writer strikes a Faustian bargain. I don't care that the concept is unoriginal; this one made me laugh out loud repeatedly. It's rare for humor to age this well.
** The Repairer of Reputations: Absolutely chilling. I loved this. Perfect implementation of an unreliable narrator.
The Dead Valley: This is . . . fine? Like The Black Dog, I found it somewhat pointless. Some evocative description, at least.
** The Little Room: This is rambling and probably doesn't deserve to go on for as long as it does but I don't care; I found it charming. A house gaslights its humans by making a room appear and disappear. I've had dreams like this.
The Striding Place: Another one I found completely forgettable.
An Itinerant House: I do remember this one, and mostly what I remember is being utterly baffled. I read it twice. I still have no idea what happened. The prose slipped one ear and out the other.
* Luella Miller: The voice and precise characterization made this otherwise fairly straightforward story work for me as horror. I don't know if I'd seek out other stories by Freeman but I don't regret reading this.
Grettir at Thorhall-stead: This is where I stalled out on the collection the longest. It's not a long story, but I found it utterly tedious. Maybe it was more exciting when vampires were still a novel concept.
* Yuki-Onna: I have . . . somewhat mixed feelings about Lafcadio Hearn's role in appropriating, popularizing, and Westernizing Japanese myth, but I can't deny that his voice is a strong one, and the story works as fairy tale regardless of its authenticity.
* For the Blood Is the Life: Another story that was probably stronger when the ideas were fresher, but I still appreciated its sense of setting; I felt very much like I was back in Italy.
* The Moonlit Road: I've read this one before, but it's been years. I admire the complexity of its writing more than I enjoy it.
Lukundoo: That sure is a way you can write about Africa and Africans, I guess, but it's not something I enjoy reading.
* The Shell of Sense: One of the stories in the collection that most surprised me. The ghost of a woman watches over her former husband and his new lover, and ultimately finds release when she decides to bless their union. Did I like it? I don't know that I'd go that far, but it was certainly unexpected.
The Jolly Corner: Another story I find utterly tedious and that stalled me out on the collection for a while. I have not read Henry James before and I am not inclined to do so now.
Golden Baby: ...followed by another story I completely forgot.
Afterward: This is a perfectly competent ghost story but I found the blithe, upper-class protagonists unsympathetic from the start, which sort of deprives the ending of punch.
Consequences: Rambling and distressing. Another story where I struggled to connect with the characters.
* The Shadowy Third: Misogyny as horror: blunt, but still powerful.
* Absolute Evil: This is rambling and strangely structured, and yet I found the adventuress's voice compelling, even as the central horror element (a werewolf) failed to capture my attention.
* Unseen--Unfeared: There's so much racism and xenophobia masquerading as horror that I was braced for the worst with the story, and taken off-guard (in a very welcome way) by the fact that xenophobia is the horror that needs to be rejected in this one.
* The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: Somehow I have never read this before! It's a charming classic for a reason, although as with many stories in the collection I found it difficult to empathize with the protagonist's horror of being seen as unusual.
The Curse of Everard Maundy: Oh boy, this story of pseudo-scientific explanations for demonology has not aged well, particularly not the racial elements.
The King of the Cats: I was extremely charmed by the cat masquerading as a conductor, here--which means the story does not work for me at all, because we're supposed to take it on faith that's he's Evil and must be banished. But what did he ever do except want to conduct music??
The Jelly-Fish: Microscopes as horror. The nicest I can say about this is that it's short.
** Mr. Arcularis: This is one of the few stories in the collection that I found genuinely creepy, not merely engaging on other levels. A haunting look at the mind in the final moments of death. (Followed by whiplash when I googled the author and learned, in short succession, that he's Joan Aiken's dad--cool!--and that his father and mother died in a murder/suicide that he witnessed as an eleven year old--yikes.)
The Black Stone: I do not think Robert E. Howard is for me. The racism here is excruciating.
Passing of a God: More "Black people whose only role in the story is as the source of an evil curse on white people." No thanks.
* The Panelled Room: A satisfying haunted house story that felt very pro-Shirley Jackson.
The Thing on the Doorstep: Look, you can either tolerate Lovecraft or you can't, and I already know that I can't. I would read a reworking of this where Asenath got to be an actual person, though.
Genius Loci: This story tries to get by entirely on vibes (the place is bad! you know it's bad because I told you it's bad), and unfortunately I found those vibes uncompelling.
* The Cloak: The twist ending is pretty telegraphed to a modern reader, but I bet it was startling at the time. And there's some nice details of setting and description that work for me.
Some of that has nothing to do with this book. Some of that is because my commute patterns changed. But some of that is absolutely because this was, in many places, a slog.
That's not to say I regret reading it! I feel like I have a much better understanding of the origins of horror as a genre, now, and there were stories I loved. But there were also quite a lot of stories in which the horror was expressed as some flavor of xenophobia (it's scary because it's other! and by other I mean not white and/or female!), and that . . . was a lot to take, back to back to back. I might have given this collection four stars had it merely been shorter.
Story-by-story notes, as best as I can reconstruct them, with stars by the ones that positively captured my attention and two stars by the ones I liked best. If you don't want to read through the whole list, I'll note that stand-outs for me were "In Dark New England Days" (Sarah Orne Jewett), "The Yellow Wall Paper" (Charlotte Perkins Gilman), "Thurlow's Christmas Story" (John Kendrick Bangs), "The Repairer of Reputations" (Robert W. Chambers), "The Little Room" (Madeline Yale Wynne), and "Mr. Arcularis" (Conrad Aiken):
Somnambulism: Of historical interest? Probably. Of actual interest to me, a modern reader? No. Men perpetrating violence against women (and feeling very sad about it) just makes me feel tired.
The Adventure of the German Student: Is this the first instance of the "woman who has a ribbon around her neck tells lover not to remove it; when ribbon is removed, her head falls off" trope? Maybe, but I have read it too many times at this point to be intrigued. Sorry, Irving.
Berenice: Atmospheric, but still uninteresting to me; at this point I was beginning to regret reading the collection.
Young Goodman Brown: A little too straightforward of an allegory for my taste.
* The Tartarus of Maids: This is the first story that grabbed me. It is, okay, also a very straightforward allegory (actually I don't think it's even subtle enough to be called an allegory), but I am always Here for allegories about the horrors of industrialized labor. And "Why is it, Sir, that in most factories, female operatives, or whatever age, are indiscriminately called girls, never women?" Yeah, you tell 'em, Melville.
* What Was It?: I was strangely charmed by this one. I thought it was going to get by all on atmosphere and vague "was it an opium dream?" conclusions, but no, the monster is real and physical and yet remains inexplicable, and that's not an ending I see often, even now.
The Legend of Monte del Diablo: The one where the Devil tries to tempt a Spanish missionary to stop proselytizing, but he manfully resists. As a modern (and non-Christian) reader, I am Team Devil on this one, which made it an unsatisfying tale.
The Moonstone Mass: The first story in the collection by a woman, and thus I regret to report I found it entirely forgettable.
His Unconquerable Enemy: There sure are some unfortunate statements about race and disability in this story! On the other hand, it had bits that were genuinely horrifying (in their gruesomeness) in a way that nothing before it was; it felt like something straight out of the Grand Guignol tradition, despite predating it by decades. Memorable and original, if not necessarily recommended.
** In Dark New England Days: Second story by a woman, and this made me want to go out and seek more Jewett immediately. Deft characterization and a compelling, bleak atmosphere.
** The Yellow Wall Paper: Full disclosure, I did not reread this because I'd just reread it a couple months previously in a stand-alone book. But: it's psychologically gripping and remains unfortunately relevant to this day. A classic for a reason.
The Black Dog: I did not understand the point of this brief tale, which evoked no emotion in me at all.
Ma'ame Pelagie: Chopin's prose is always compelling, but I'm a bit skeptical of this as a tale of "terror and the uncanny."
** Thurlow's Christmas Story: A writer strikes a Faustian bargain. I don't care that the concept is unoriginal; this one made me laugh out loud repeatedly. It's rare for humor to age this well.
** The Repairer of Reputations: Absolutely chilling. I loved this. Perfect implementation of an unreliable narrator.
The Dead Valley: This is . . . fine? Like The Black Dog, I found it somewhat pointless. Some evocative description, at least.
** The Little Room: This is rambling and probably doesn't deserve to go on for as long as it does but I don't care; I found it charming. A house gaslights its humans by making a room appear and disappear. I've had dreams like this.
The Striding Place: Another one I found completely forgettable.
An Itinerant House: I do remember this one, and mostly what I remember is being utterly baffled. I read it twice. I still have no idea what happened. The prose slipped one ear and out the other.
* Luella Miller: The voice and precise characterization made this otherwise fairly straightforward story work for me as horror. I don't know if I'd seek out other stories by Freeman but I don't regret reading this.
Grettir at Thorhall-stead: This is where I stalled out on the collection the longest. It's not a long story, but I found it utterly tedious. Maybe it was more exciting when vampires were still a novel concept.
* Yuki-Onna: I have . . . somewhat mixed feelings about Lafcadio Hearn's role in appropriating, popularizing, and Westernizing Japanese myth, but I can't deny that his voice is a strong one, and the story works as fairy tale regardless of its authenticity.
* For the Blood Is the Life: Another story that was probably stronger when the ideas were fresher, but I still appreciated its sense of setting; I felt very much like I was back in Italy.
* The Moonlit Road: I've read this one before, but it's been years. I admire the complexity of its writing more than I enjoy it.
Lukundoo: That sure is a way you can write about Africa and Africans, I guess, but it's not something I enjoy reading.
* The Shell of Sense: One of the stories in the collection that most surprised me. The ghost of a woman watches over her former husband and his new lover, and ultimately finds release when she decides to bless their union. Did I like it? I don't know that I'd go that far, but it was certainly unexpected.
The Jolly Corner: Another story I find utterly tedious and that stalled me out on the collection for a while. I have not read Henry James before and I am not inclined to do so now.
Golden Baby: ...followed by another story I completely forgot.
Afterward: This is a perfectly competent ghost story but I found the blithe, upper-class protagonists unsympathetic from the start, which sort of deprives the ending of punch.
Consequences: Rambling and distressing. Another story where I struggled to connect with the characters.
* The Shadowy Third: Misogyny as horror: blunt, but still powerful.
* Absolute Evil: This is rambling and strangely structured, and yet I found the adventuress's voice compelling, even as the central horror element (a werewolf) failed to capture my attention.
* Unseen--Unfeared: There's so much racism and xenophobia masquerading as horror that I was braced for the worst with the story, and taken off-guard (in a very welcome way) by the fact that xenophobia is the horror that needs to be rejected in this one.
* The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: Somehow I have never read this before! It's a charming classic for a reason, although as with many stories in the collection I found it difficult to empathize with the protagonist's horror of being seen as unusual.
The Curse of Everard Maundy: Oh boy, this story of pseudo-scientific explanations for demonology has not aged well, particularly not the racial elements.
The King of the Cats: I was extremely charmed by the cat masquerading as a conductor, here--which means the story does not work for me at all, because we're supposed to take it on faith that's he's Evil and must be banished. But what did he ever do except want to conduct music??
The Jelly-Fish: Microscopes as horror. The nicest I can say about this is that it's short.
** Mr. Arcularis: This is one of the few stories in the collection that I found genuinely creepy, not merely engaging on other levels. A haunting look at the mind in the final moments of death. (Followed by whiplash when I googled the author and learned, in short succession, that he's Joan Aiken's dad--cool!--and that his father and mother died in a murder/suicide that he witnessed as an eleven year old--yikes.)
The Black Stone: I do not think Robert E. Howard is for me. The racism here is excruciating.
Passing of a God: More "Black people whose only role in the story is as the source of an evil curse on white people." No thanks.
* The Panelled Room: A satisfying haunted house story that felt very pro-Shirley Jackson.
The Thing on the Doorstep: Look, you can either tolerate Lovecraft or you can't, and I already know that I can't. I would read a reworking of this where Asenath got to be an actual person, though.
Genius Loci: This story tries to get by entirely on vibes (the place is bad! you know it's bad because I told you it's bad), and unfortunately I found those vibes uncompelling.
* The Cloak: The twist ending is pretty telegraphed to a modern reader, but I bet it was startling at the time. And there's some nice details of setting and description that work for me.
December 13, 2018
I started off by reading Stephen King horror anthologies and decided to expand my horizons. I tried John Connolly and that was not to my taste (bored, impatient, too wordy, slow). I got this book without really looking at it. I think this is a great book if you want to read horror over the years (as I assume the stories are horror or close to it). I think it's a great idea. But I just couldn't get into the style of writing. I started to read the first story, "Somnabulism - A Fragment" by Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810). Gave up. I found it slow and long winded. The Adventures of a German Student by Washington Irving (1783-1859). It was okay but you have to know when to hold them and know when to fold them. I decided to fold as there are so many stories from so long ago. I could just tell I would have to force myself to read them and it would be a chore, because so far one was slow and boring and the other was just meh. I have too many books to waste time reading stuff I don't like. Sure I might find one I at least think is okay but... not worth the effort.
If you're a fan of horror in general, get this book, it's one to add to your collection for a well rounded collection. I've realized I'm a fan of more modern horror i.e. from about the late 70's maybe but certainly from the 80's and up. It doesn't deserve to get a low rating so I'm not rating it.
I just realized there are some more modern stories so I'm going to skip ahead and read them.
I read The Curse of Everard Maundy by Seabury Quinn (1889-1969). I liked it.
I read The King of the Cats by Steven Vincent Benet (1889-1943), The Jelly-Fish by David H. Keller (1880-1966), read a few pages of Mr. Arcularis by Conrad Aiken (1889-1973). The stories were meh. I went on to The Black Stone by Robert E. Howard (1906-1936). I found this last one to be offensive. "whirled the wailing babe high in the air and dashed it's brains out against the monolith... rip the tiny body open with bare brutish fingers and fling handfuls of blood on the shaft." That's too far for me, it was not entertainment, beyond horrifying into the realm of offensive. I will not read another of this authors stories.
Passing of a God by Henry S. Whitehead (1882-1932)... it was okay but I feel that I missed what the author was trying to tell the reader at the end, I felt like a missed something important.
The Panelled Room by August Derleth (1909-1971) I enjoyed. Not great but interesting and I thought well told. Might be the best of the bunch so far.
The Thing on the Doorstep by H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937). It was interesting, worth reading but... not really sure I liked it. Still don't know what to think of it. Probably won't read it again. All I know about Lovecraft is that he's supposed to be a major force in horror fiction and I once saw a movie based on something he'd done and the movie was a dud.
Genius Loci by Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961) was a dud. I started reading but it was wordy and dry so I skipped it.
The Cloak by Robert Bloch (1917-1994)... I liked it. The stories I read seemed samey in a way and were a little boring, but this one was not like any of the other stories. There was a Hammer film called The House That Dripped Blood that was a collection of short stories. One was about a cloak that turned it's wearer into a vampire (pretty sure that was the premise but this was 35-40 years ago). The reason I remember this much is because the lead actor was played by Jon Pertwee who played the third Doctor in the original Doctor Who series. I'd be willing to bet that they based their story on The Cloak by Bloch.
Okay, still think this is must reading (or at least trying to read) for horror fans. I wish I had the patience and interest enough to read the rest of the stories. If you're a horror fan, buy this book and add it to your collection.
If you're a fan of horror in general, get this book, it's one to add to your collection for a well rounded collection. I've realized I'm a fan of more modern horror i.e. from about the late 70's maybe but certainly from the 80's and up. It doesn't deserve to get a low rating so I'm not rating it.
I just realized there are some more modern stories so I'm going to skip ahead and read them.
I read The Curse of Everard Maundy by Seabury Quinn (1889-1969). I liked it.
I read The King of the Cats by Steven Vincent Benet (1889-1943), The Jelly-Fish by David H. Keller (1880-1966), read a few pages of Mr. Arcularis by Conrad Aiken (1889-1973). The stories were meh. I went on to The Black Stone by Robert E. Howard (1906-1936). I found this last one to be offensive. "whirled the wailing babe high in the air and dashed it's brains out against the monolith... rip the tiny body open with bare brutish fingers and fling handfuls of blood on the shaft." That's too far for me, it was not entertainment, beyond horrifying into the realm of offensive. I will not read another of this authors stories.
Passing of a God by Henry S. Whitehead (1882-1932)... it was okay but I feel that I missed what the author was trying to tell the reader at the end, I felt like a missed something important.
The Panelled Room by August Derleth (1909-1971) I enjoyed. Not great but interesting and I thought well told. Might be the best of the bunch so far.
The Thing on the Doorstep by H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937). It was interesting, worth reading but... not really sure I liked it. Still don't know what to think of it. Probably won't read it again. All I know about Lovecraft is that he's supposed to be a major force in horror fiction and I once saw a movie based on something he'd done and the movie was a dud.
Genius Loci by Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961) was a dud. I started reading but it was wordy and dry so I skipped it.
The Cloak by Robert Bloch (1917-1994)... I liked it. The stories I read seemed samey in a way and were a little boring, but this one was not like any of the other stories. There was a Hammer film called The House That Dripped Blood that was a collection of short stories. One was about a cloak that turned it's wearer into a vampire (pretty sure that was the premise but this was 35-40 years ago). The reason I remember this much is because the lead actor was played by Jon Pertwee who played the third Doctor in the original Doctor Who series. I'd be willing to bet that they based their story on The Cloak by Bloch.
Okay, still think this is must reading (or at least trying to read) for horror fans. I wish I had the patience and interest enough to read the rest of the stories. If you're a horror fan, buy this book and add it to your collection.
Want to read
December 7, 2024Charles Brockden Brown | Somnambulism: A Fragment
Washington Irving | The Adventure of the German Student
Edgar Allan Poe | Berenice
Nathaniel Hawthorne | Young Goodman Brown
Herman Melville | The Tartarus of Maids
Fitz-James O’Brien | What Was It?
Bret Harte | The Legend of Monte del Diablo
Harriet Prescott Spofford | The Moonstone Mass
W. C. Morrow | His Unconquerable Enemy
Sarah Orne Jewett | In Dark New England Days
Charlotte Perkins Gilman | The Yellow Wall Paper
Stephen Crane | The Black Dog
Kate Chopin | Ma’ame Pélagie
John Kendrick Bangs | Thurlow’s Christmas Story
Robert W. Chambers | The Repairer of Reputations
Ralph Adams Cram | The Dead Valley
Madeline Yale Wynne | The Little Room
Gertrude Atherton | The Striding Place
Emma Francis Dawson | An Itinerant House
Mary Wilkins Freeman | Luella Miller
Frank Norris | Grettir at Thorhall-stead
Lafcadio Hearn | Yuki-Onna
F. Marion Crawford | For the Blood Is the Life
Ambrose Bierce | The Moonlit Road
Edward Lucas White | Lukundoo
Olivia Howard Dunbar | The Shell of Sense
Henry James | The Jolly Corner
Alice Brown | Golden Baby
Edith Wharton | Afterward
Willa Cather | Consequences
Ellen Glasgow | The Shadowy Third
Julian Hawthorne | Absolute Evil
Francis Stevens | Unseen—Unfeared
F. Scott Fitzgerald | The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Seabury Quinn | The Curse of Everard Maundy
Stephen Vincent Benét | The King of the Cats
David H. Keller | The Jelly-Fish
Conrad Aiken | Mr. Arcularis
Robert E. Howard | The Black Stone
Henry S. Whitehead | Passing of a God
August Derleth | The Panelled Room
H. P. Lovecraft | The Thing on the Doorstep
Clark Ashton Smith | Genius Loci
Robert Bloch | The Cloak
Washington Irving | The Adventure of the German Student
Edgar Allan Poe | Berenice
Nathaniel Hawthorne | Young Goodman Brown
Herman Melville | The Tartarus of Maids
Fitz-James O’Brien | What Was It?
Bret Harte | The Legend of Monte del Diablo
Harriet Prescott Spofford | The Moonstone Mass
W. C. Morrow | His Unconquerable Enemy
Sarah Orne Jewett | In Dark New England Days
Charlotte Perkins Gilman | The Yellow Wall Paper
Stephen Crane | The Black Dog
Kate Chopin | Ma’ame Pélagie
John Kendrick Bangs | Thurlow’s Christmas Story
Robert W. Chambers | The Repairer of Reputations
Ralph Adams Cram | The Dead Valley
Madeline Yale Wynne | The Little Room
Gertrude Atherton | The Striding Place
Emma Francis Dawson | An Itinerant House
Mary Wilkins Freeman | Luella Miller
Frank Norris | Grettir at Thorhall-stead
Lafcadio Hearn | Yuki-Onna
F. Marion Crawford | For the Blood Is the Life
Ambrose Bierce | The Moonlit Road
Edward Lucas White | Lukundoo
Olivia Howard Dunbar | The Shell of Sense
Henry James | The Jolly Corner
Alice Brown | Golden Baby
Edith Wharton | Afterward
Willa Cather | Consequences
Ellen Glasgow | The Shadowy Third
Julian Hawthorne | Absolute Evil
Francis Stevens | Unseen—Unfeared
F. Scott Fitzgerald | The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Seabury Quinn | The Curse of Everard Maundy
Stephen Vincent Benét | The King of the Cats
David H. Keller | The Jelly-Fish
Conrad Aiken | Mr. Arcularis
Robert E. Howard | The Black Stone
Henry S. Whitehead | Passing of a God
August Derleth | The Panelled Room
H. P. Lovecraft | The Thing on the Doorstep
Clark Ashton Smith | Genius Loci
Robert Bloch | The Cloak
May 18, 2010
Good, but not great, anthology.A lot of the stories were not the most popular ones by the known authors which isn't necessarily a bad thing.Some of the stories were great-about 20% of them.The other 80% were just OK and nothing special.Still,it is a huge set of stories if you buy both books in the series.I will read the other book in the set once I receive it from the library.I won't be buying the first book in the set though.Too many just fair stories and not much horror.I like my horror not filled with a lot of grue and violence and there is really none in this book.That said, I did find most of the stories very dated.There is quite a bit of racism and misogyny in the stories.Less so the later the stories were written.Also there is some animal cruelty in a couple of the stories that I found hard to stomach.Pets and animals were thought of very differently at the turn of the century along with peoples idea's about hunting.I am not a hunter nor do I understand the joy some people get out of killing animals.Thankfully,The days of the 'great white hunter' are mostly behind us except for a few individuals.
I've been reading a few stories at a time and think that that is the way to read this book.The above issues can get overwhelming otherwise and I found myself having feelings of distaste if I read too many stories at one time.
I do think that Straub did an admiral job of compiling very different kinds of stories together in a 2 volume set.This would be a good addition to anyone's' library who likes either light supernatural fiction or just good, but not great, short stories.
I've been reading a few stories at a time and think that that is the way to read this book.The above issues can get overwhelming otherwise and I found myself having feelings of distaste if I read too many stories at one time.
I do think that Straub did an admiral job of compiling very different kinds of stories together in a 2 volume set.This would be a good addition to anyone's' library who likes either light supernatural fiction or just good, but not great, short stories.
February 8, 2011
This 2 volume set is a fine edition to The Library of America (see www.loa.org). I got both volumes for Christmas and am focusing on this volume since I know the least of this period of terror literature. Several of the stories have impressed me (The Adventure of the German Student). Other have left me cold (Somnambulism). I am particularly looking forward to reading the short stories of the female writers since the only one I know is Kate Chopin - a lady who was daring in her writing and in her topics.
On the whole and the average, this is a collection of stories that caught me by surprise, There are very few tales of Traditional Terror and few that strike me as uncanny. Stranger and Stranger yes. However, the stories kept calling me to return and I did. Finally I had to put the volumes down and move on to other readings.
A good read
Finished reading volume one all the way through this time. Remains a really good collection. Actually volume one is a better selection of stories than is volume 2.
02072011 -- Finished volume 2 from beginning to end. Some of the strangest and weirdest fantasy I have ever read. Stone Animals made no sense to me. The Little Stranger was an enjoyable short tale done after the manner of letter writing.
On the whole and the average, this is a collection of stories that caught me by surprise, There are very few tales of Traditional Terror and few that strike me as uncanny. Stranger and Stranger yes. However, the stories kept calling me to return and I did. Finally I had to put the volumes down and move on to other readings.
A good read
Finished reading volume one all the way through this time. Remains a really good collection. Actually volume one is a better selection of stories than is volume 2.
02072011 -- Finished volume 2 from beginning to end. Some of the strangest and weirdest fantasy I have ever read. Stone Animals made no sense to me. The Little Stranger was an enjoyable short tale done after the manner of letter writing.
September 19, 2020
A collection of 45 spooky tales written from 1805 to the 1930s. As with any collection of horror tales, the eeriness becomes rather routine as you read through them, but there were some fine exceptions in this anthology. I found about a third of these to be superb, more so for the masterful literary skills used to create scene and character than for their spookiness, though some elicited a chill at their conclusion.
The outstanding tales were:
”What Was It?” by Fitz-James O’Brien;
”In Dark New England Days” by Sarah Orne Jewett;
”The Yellow Wall Paper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman;
”The Dead Valley” by Ralph Adams Cram;
”The Little Room” by Madeline Yale Wynne;
”The Striding Place” by Gertrude Atherton;
”An Itinerant House” by Emma Francis Dawson;
”For the Blood Is the Life” by F. Marion Crawford;
”The Jolly Corner” by Henry James;
”Afterward” by Edith Wharton;
”Consequences” by Willa Cather;
”Unseen – Unfeared” by Francis Stevens;
”The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” by F. Scott Fitzgerald;
”The Curse of Everard Maundy” by Seabury Quinn;
”The Thing on the Doorstep” by H. P. Lovecraft;
“Genius Loci” by Clark Ashton Smith;
”The Cloak” by Robert Bloch.
The outstanding tales were:
”What Was It?” by Fitz-James O’Brien;
”In Dark New England Days” by Sarah Orne Jewett;
”The Yellow Wall Paper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman;
”The Dead Valley” by Ralph Adams Cram;
”The Little Room” by Madeline Yale Wynne;
”The Striding Place” by Gertrude Atherton;
”An Itinerant House” by Emma Francis Dawson;
”For the Blood Is the Life” by F. Marion Crawford;
”The Jolly Corner” by Henry James;
”Afterward” by Edith Wharton;
”Consequences” by Willa Cather;
”Unseen – Unfeared” by Francis Stevens;
”The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” by F. Scott Fitzgerald;
”The Curse of Everard Maundy” by Seabury Quinn;
”The Thing on the Doorstep” by H. P. Lovecraft;
“Genius Loci” by Clark Ashton Smith;
”The Cloak” by Robert Bloch.
September 27, 2010
At first, my rusty brain was having trouble comprehending the language of the late 1800's/early 1900's. But now that I'm adjusting and getting limbered up again, I'm really starting to enjoy this endless collection of "strange" and "fantastic" stories. I will try to finish it, but the library said I renewed it too many times. We'll see.
Ok, so I finished it! Standout stories include Hawthorne, Melville and Poe contributions. And of course, the whole reason I started this densely packed book was to finish "King of the Cats" by Benet. While waiting for my indecisive Pisces friend to pick out a calendar at a bookstore, I became engrossed in the cat story but didn't want to shell out the big bucks just to find out the ending.. hence the public library, friend of the financially challenged or just plain cheap.
It was sometimes hard to get through - some of the stories were a bit convoluted in wordiness, etc. but overall, it was a worthwhile experience for me. Common themes include vampires/evil spirits, ghost houses/rooms, devil worship.. but nothing so scary it'll keep you up at night.
Ok, so I finished it! Standout stories include Hawthorne, Melville and Poe contributions. And of course, the whole reason I started this densely packed book was to finish "King of the Cats" by Benet. While waiting for my indecisive Pisces friend to pick out a calendar at a bookstore, I became engrossed in the cat story but didn't want to shell out the big bucks just to find out the ending.. hence the public library, friend of the financially challenged or just plain cheap.
It was sometimes hard to get through - some of the stories were a bit convoluted in wordiness, etc. but overall, it was a worthwhile experience for me. Common themes include vampires/evil spirits, ghost houses/rooms, devil worship.. but nothing so scary it'll keep you up at night.
October 14, 2017
So many greats in here & so many forgotten by modern readers. Sure there's HPL & Clark Ashton Smith here but even better stuff by Nathaniel Hawthorne, his son Julian, & so many great 19th century talespinners
April 17, 2010
This book might have been ok, but I couldn't finish it. I guess I'm just not much for short stories. There isn't enough plot development for me.
May 13, 2022
A wide-ranging collection of short stories of terror, haunting, and the uncanny, published between 1805 and 1939.
Want to read
September 27, 2023Volume 1: Poe to the Pulps Table of Contents
"Somnambulism: A Fragment", by Charles Brockden Brown
"The Adventure of the German Student", by Washington Irving
"Berenice", by Edgar Allan Poe
"Young Goodman Brown", by Nathaniel Hawthorne
"The Tartarus of Maids", by Herman Melville
"What Was It? A Mystery", by Fitz-James O'Brien
"The Legend of Monte del Diablo", by Bret Harte
The Moonstone Mass by Harriet Prescott Spofford
"His Unconquerable Enemy", by W. C. Morrow
In Dark New England Days by Sarah Orne Jewett
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
"The Black Dog", by Stephen Crane
Ma'ame Pelagie by Kate Chopin
"Thurlow's Christmas Story", by John Kendrick Bangs
"The Repairer of Reputations", by Robert W. Chambers
"The Dead Valley", by Ralph Adams Cram
The Little Room by Madeline Yale Wynne
The Striding Place by Gertrude Atherton
An Itinerant House by Emma Frances Dawson
Luella Miller by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
"Grettir at Thorhall-stead", by Frank Norris
"Yuki-Onna", by Lafcadio Hearn
"For the Blood Is the Life", by F. Marion Crawford
"The Moonlit Road", by Ambrose Bierce
"Lukundoo", by Edward Lucas White
The Shell of Sense by Olivia Howard Dunbar
"The Jolly Corner", by Henry James
"Golden Baby", by Alice Brown, from Vanishing Points
Afterward by Edith Wharton
Consequences by Willa Cather
The Shadowy Third by Ellen Glasgow
"Absolute Evil", by Julian Hawthorne
"Unseen—Unfeared", by Francis Stevens
"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button", by F. Scott Fitzgerald
"The Curse of Everard Maundy", by Seabury Quinn
"The King of the Cats", by Stephen Vincent Benét
"The Jelly-Fish", by David H. Keller
"Mr. Arcularis", by Conrad Aiken
"The Black Stone", by Robert E. Howard
"Passing of a God", by Henry S. Whitehead
"The Panelled Room", by August Derleth
"The Thing on the Doorstep", by H. P. Lovecraft
"Genius Loci", by Clark Ashton Smith
"The Cloak", by Robert Bloch
"Somnambulism: A Fragment", by Charles Brockden Brown
"The Adventure of the German Student", by Washington Irving
"Berenice", by Edgar Allan Poe
"Young Goodman Brown", by Nathaniel Hawthorne
"The Tartarus of Maids", by Herman Melville
"What Was It? A Mystery", by Fitz-James O'Brien
"The Legend of Monte del Diablo", by Bret Harte
The Moonstone Mass by Harriet Prescott Spofford
"His Unconquerable Enemy", by W. C. Morrow
In Dark New England Days by Sarah Orne Jewett
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
"The Black Dog", by Stephen Crane
Ma'ame Pelagie by Kate Chopin
"Thurlow's Christmas Story", by John Kendrick Bangs
"The Repairer of Reputations", by Robert W. Chambers
"The Dead Valley", by Ralph Adams Cram
The Little Room by Madeline Yale Wynne
The Striding Place by Gertrude Atherton
An Itinerant House by Emma Frances Dawson
Luella Miller by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
"Grettir at Thorhall-stead", by Frank Norris
"Yuki-Onna", by Lafcadio Hearn
"For the Blood Is the Life", by F. Marion Crawford
"The Moonlit Road", by Ambrose Bierce
"Lukundoo", by Edward Lucas White
The Shell of Sense by Olivia Howard Dunbar
"The Jolly Corner", by Henry James
"Golden Baby", by Alice Brown, from Vanishing Points
Afterward by Edith Wharton
Consequences by Willa Cather
The Shadowy Third by Ellen Glasgow
"Absolute Evil", by Julian Hawthorne
"Unseen—Unfeared", by Francis Stevens
"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button", by F. Scott Fitzgerald
"The Curse of Everard Maundy", by Seabury Quinn
"The King of the Cats", by Stephen Vincent Benét
"The Jelly-Fish", by David H. Keller
"Mr. Arcularis", by Conrad Aiken
"The Black Stone", by Robert E. Howard
"Passing of a God", by Henry S. Whitehead
"The Panelled Room", by August Derleth
"The Thing on the Doorstep", by H. P. Lovecraft
"Genius Loci", by Clark Ashton Smith
"The Cloak", by Robert Bloch
October 21, 2020
There were some very interesting finds here, including old favorites that I was happy to read again, a few lesser-known stories by well-known writers; by far the bulk of the book, though, is a tour through the dark corners of old American magazines, with a distinct historical pattern: gothic literature was much enjoyed by early nineteenth century readers, but lost favor as we come towards 1900. After 1905 or so, it returns to prominence as a much larger category we might call “the fantastic” to try to encompass all that’s going on here. And I guess this genre has not gone away since — though that must be a matter for volume II in this series, which I don’t currently have.
One old favorite I was quite happy to read again was “Young Goodman Brown,” by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Having read Faust and a few other titles from 18th century Europe since I last looked at this story, I see it with new eyes now: Hawthorne, along with Melville and others, is really forging an American voice by using the materials of Europe, including the gothic interest in supernatural events, but here, without any old castles or reflections on the romantic age of knights and ladies. Art is not progressive like science or mathematics, of course, and for this proposition we may compare the narrow, Puritan world of Hawthorne with the more cosmopolitan Goethe. But I would digress to continue that here. Suffice to say, American literature has never seemed so interesting as now, with its moras of contradictory tropes and movements from so many different sources.
Edgar Allan Poe very much continues the development of what we might term the American magazine style, which seems to carry forward a characteristic tension between keen social observation, as in Hawthorne, against deeper and deeper psychological investigations, of which Poe is of course the great pioneer of his age. “Berenice,” the example Peter Straub chooses for the volume, is a refreshing departure from the usual Poe canon, one that absolutely defies the idea that Freud pioneered the theory of neurotic behavior. It is all here, bad dreams, lost teeth, and confused relations among sensitive young men and women.
As for the rest, there are so many. Some are so substantial that I have decided to re-read them to attempt some more in-depth analyses — the single pass-through in anthology-reading mode didn’t do them justice. “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button“ by F. Scott Fitzgerald feels like the most important piece in here, with a bitter social message that I don’t remember coming through in my first reading, in the years after the movie with Brad Pitt came out. Henry James’ “The Jolly Corner” is a puzzling artifact, and went by much too fast for me to digest. More on these two to come, as well as the intriguingly enigmatic work of Robert W. Chambers, Charles Brockden Brown, Kate Chopin, Ambrose Bierce, and Alice Brown, whose story of redemption, “Golden Baby,” would serve advanced teens well as material for analysis and imitation.
Other stories were just plain fun, and deserve briefer note, maybe for teaching to high school students in future. “What Was It?” by Fitz-James O’Brien certainly sticks in the mind, and the opium-smoking provides a nice connection to the history of China. “His Unconquerable Enemy” by W. C. Morrow was a real gas, with the book’s most colorful character for sure in the form of a murderous quadruple amputee dwarf. “Luella Miller,” by Mary Wilkins Freeman, creates a similarly comic, but slightly realistic character, in the form of the home-bound woman who sucks the life out of anyone in her orbit. And speaking of sucking life, “The Cloak” by Robert Bloch is the perfect reading for those days before the Halloween Party, with a vampire romance of more chemistry than anything in Twilight.
One old favorite I was quite happy to read again was “Young Goodman Brown,” by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Having read Faust and a few other titles from 18th century Europe since I last looked at this story, I see it with new eyes now: Hawthorne, along with Melville and others, is really forging an American voice by using the materials of Europe, including the gothic interest in supernatural events, but here, without any old castles or reflections on the romantic age of knights and ladies. Art is not progressive like science or mathematics, of course, and for this proposition we may compare the narrow, Puritan world of Hawthorne with the more cosmopolitan Goethe. But I would digress to continue that here. Suffice to say, American literature has never seemed so interesting as now, with its moras of contradictory tropes and movements from so many different sources.
Edgar Allan Poe very much continues the development of what we might term the American magazine style, which seems to carry forward a characteristic tension between keen social observation, as in Hawthorne, against deeper and deeper psychological investigations, of which Poe is of course the great pioneer of his age. “Berenice,” the example Peter Straub chooses for the volume, is a refreshing departure from the usual Poe canon, one that absolutely defies the idea that Freud pioneered the theory of neurotic behavior. It is all here, bad dreams, lost teeth, and confused relations among sensitive young men and women.
As for the rest, there are so many. Some are so substantial that I have decided to re-read them to attempt some more in-depth analyses — the single pass-through in anthology-reading mode didn’t do them justice. “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button“ by F. Scott Fitzgerald feels like the most important piece in here, with a bitter social message that I don’t remember coming through in my first reading, in the years after the movie with Brad Pitt came out. Henry James’ “The Jolly Corner” is a puzzling artifact, and went by much too fast for me to digest. More on these two to come, as well as the intriguingly enigmatic work of Robert W. Chambers, Charles Brockden Brown, Kate Chopin, Ambrose Bierce, and Alice Brown, whose story of redemption, “Golden Baby,” would serve advanced teens well as material for analysis and imitation.
Other stories were just plain fun, and deserve briefer note, maybe for teaching to high school students in future. “What Was It?” by Fitz-James O’Brien certainly sticks in the mind, and the opium-smoking provides a nice connection to the history of China. “His Unconquerable Enemy” by W. C. Morrow was a real gas, with the book’s most colorful character for sure in the form of a murderous quadruple amputee dwarf. “Luella Miller,” by Mary Wilkins Freeman, creates a similarly comic, but slightly realistic character, in the form of the home-bound woman who sucks the life out of anyone in her orbit. And speaking of sucking life, “The Cloak” by Robert Bloch is the perfect reading for those days before the Halloween Party, with a vampire romance of more chemistry than anything in Twilight.
July 8, 2020
Overall I found this a great anthology that I'm glad I read and have on my shelf, but it's a little tricky to review. By virtue of its length, it contains many outstanding stories, some good or interesting ones that I'm glad I read, and unfortunately also several that just weren't very good, which made the reading experience uneven at times.
To be clear, these not-so-great stories weren't lacking because they're "dated" or have a different writing style and story conventions. Many stories in this book stand the test of time -- Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown remains a stunning piece of work despite requiring slight adjustment from the reader for the 19th century prose.
But not all the selections, in my opinion, were stunning. I wish some of the lesser stories we're cut, and I think most readers would agree. It may seem like the more stories the better, but reading a few mediocre stories in a row would make it feel harder to get through the 700+ page book. Luckily, it usually wouldn't take long to reach a good or excellent story.
Sometimes, I felt like the book was taking a more academic, comprehensive survey of the history of this genre in American literature, rather than a best-of collection -- which is maybe a weakness and a strength. If you're looking for a distillation of the best horror stories, you might be disappointed.
The advantage of this approach is that the book included a broad spectrum of uncanny tales. It has room for the classic early writers you might expect (Poe and Hawthorne etc.), but isn't afraid to present them alongside with, for example, the striking Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F. Scott Fitzgerald (not a traditional horror story, but a dark and unsettling fable), a Japanese ghost story retelling from Lafcadio Hearn, a bizzarre and funny story like The King of the Cats, and more. The breadth of genres and styles, from pulp to fable and allegory to literary experiments, was really interesting to see, as well as the evolution of this literature over time and the rich variety of themes and concerns that come up again and again.
I will say I wouldn't necessarily recommend this to someone getting started in this genre - for that I'd recommend American Gothic Tales edited by Joyce Carol Oates, which is consistently excellent and covers two centuries, while showing the evolution and even experimentation with the genre. I think this would be a good followup for those who want to dive deeper, in a slightly different direction.
I'm sure I'll read the second volume of this set at some point.
To be clear, these not-so-great stories weren't lacking because they're "dated" or have a different writing style and story conventions. Many stories in this book stand the test of time -- Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown remains a stunning piece of work despite requiring slight adjustment from the reader for the 19th century prose.
But not all the selections, in my opinion, were stunning. I wish some of the lesser stories we're cut, and I think most readers would agree. It may seem like the more stories the better, but reading a few mediocre stories in a row would make it feel harder to get through the 700+ page book. Luckily, it usually wouldn't take long to reach a good or excellent story.
Sometimes, I felt like the book was taking a more academic, comprehensive survey of the history of this genre in American literature, rather than a best-of collection -- which is maybe a weakness and a strength. If you're looking for a distillation of the best horror stories, you might be disappointed.
The advantage of this approach is that the book included a broad spectrum of uncanny tales. It has room for the classic early writers you might expect (Poe and Hawthorne etc.), but isn't afraid to present them alongside with, for example, the striking Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F. Scott Fitzgerald (not a traditional horror story, but a dark and unsettling fable), a Japanese ghost story retelling from Lafcadio Hearn, a bizzarre and funny story like The King of the Cats, and more. The breadth of genres and styles, from pulp to fable and allegory to literary experiments, was really interesting to see, as well as the evolution of this literature over time and the rich variety of themes and concerns that come up again and again.
I will say I wouldn't necessarily recommend this to someone getting started in this genre - for that I'd recommend American Gothic Tales edited by Joyce Carol Oates, which is consistently excellent and covers two centuries, while showing the evolution and even experimentation with the genre. I think this would be a good followup for those who want to dive deeper, in a slightly different direction.
I'm sure I'll read the second volume of this set at some point.
January 4, 2016
The reason I wanted this collection was I've searched for a decent printed edition of Harlan Ellison's hilarious story I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. On top of that I was blessed with 1 500 pages of everything imaginable in the lands of American weird and horror fiction. I've got a hopelessly modernist taste as a reader, so Volume I of this chronological collection was not my favorite. That said, it's pretty cool to read brilliant Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wall Paper , Edith Wharton's Afterward, Willa Cather's Consequences, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button together with unapologetically pulpy The Thing on the Doorstep by H. P. Lovecraft or The Cloak by Robert Bloch.
February 3, 2011
Reviewing a collection is always tricky, where an occasional story might soar or stumble, what you are doing in reading a collection is tracing an idea from origin to conclusion. In this anthology, Peter Straub chose a number of works from the catalog of what I would call "weird fiction," stories that stand uncomfortably between genres but, more often than not, evoke emotions of dread and horror. Other collections I've read of this type often frame these stories as steps in a progression towards HP Lovecraft. I think one definitely positive aspect of this collection how that famous author is de-emphasized. Lovecraft's one offering here is probably one of his best, "The Thing on the Doorstep."
What I enjoyed, however, were the many, many other tales that managed that atmosphere of haunting, otherworldly dread. Particularly memorable to me is Robert Howard's Black Stone, which is as fine a Lovecraft story as one could read, minus the prolix. Also worth reading are "The Dead Tree," and "Passing of A God" by Whitehead.
What I enjoyed, however, were the many, many other tales that managed that atmosphere of haunting, otherworldly dread. Particularly memorable to me is Robert Howard's Black Stone, which is as fine a Lovecraft story as one could read, minus the prolix. Also worth reading are "The Dead Tree," and "Passing of A God" by Whitehead.
February 10, 2012
I thought this was a very good selection of tales. It contained some very interesting tales by earlier American writers that I had never encountered before, and some work by more familiar authors that I had not read. Some, of course, I have read many times in various contexts ("The Yellow Wallpaper" by Gilman is an example), but it was good to encounter them under a different rubric. However, the one problem I had with the selection is that some of the tales really aren't uncanny or terrifying, but are really "tricks," or jokes on a genre. I'm thinking particularly of "The Black Dog" by Stephen Crane. The end of the tale is amusing, but I don't think it really fits the definition implied by the title or as laid out in Straub's introduction. Also, "The Yellow Wallpaper," while uncanny, has a causal agent (the mover of the plot) that is both reasonable and completely rational: one woman's response to the "rest cure." But on the whole, there is a lot to like about this anthology and I'm looking forward to volume 2.
January 1, 2022
Some really phenomenal stories in here (along with some slogs). You've got your standard Poe and Hawthorne, but Melville's The Tartarus of Maids builds the horror of capitalist industrial economy and is a standout piece in the collection. Other good ones I hadn't read before: Bert Harte's the Legend of Monte Del Diablo (a good Wild West supernatural tale), W. C. Morrow's His Unconquerable Enemy (best literary summation of revenge malice I've ever read), Madeline Yale Wynne's The Little Room actually gave me nightmares (great job!), Mary Wilkins Freeman's Luella Miller would be a great movie, and Robert Bloch's The Cloak was a great reimagining of the vampire origin story.
I had never read The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (and didn't realize it a was a Fitzgerald short story) and honestly it was really good. One of my favorite writings of his. And I read my first Lovecraft! The Thing on the Doorstep was really good (and gave good context for the modern Lovecraft Country). I want to read more, although I have heard it's pretty horribly racist. Gonna find out.
I had never read The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (and didn't realize it a was a Fitzgerald short story) and honestly it was really good. One of my favorite writings of his. And I read my first Lovecraft! The Thing on the Doorstep was really good (and gave good context for the modern Lovecraft Country). I want to read more, although I have heard it's pretty horribly racist. Gonna find out.
June 24, 2012
To begin with this is a beautiful book, I mean the way it is put together. It is beautifully bound with crisp archival-grade paper with just enough weight. This is the type of book you buy with every intent of not just reading but keeping it for decades. Its only failing is its dustcover which I dislike it on a conceptual level so don't listen to me when I talk about them.
For its content it's good but suffers universal failing of all anthologies; the stories are invariably uneven. But in this case it has more to with changing tastes, as the book includes stories from the early 1800's up to 1940. While not all of these stories have quite held up they all represent the best of their periods. This collection should be read by any fan of either the horror or fantasy genres to see at least part of the of their evolution.
For its content it's good but suffers universal failing of all anthologies; the stories are invariably uneven. But in this case it has more to with changing tastes, as the book includes stories from the early 1800's up to 1940. While not all of these stories have quite held up they all represent the best of their periods. This collection should be read by any fan of either the horror or fantasy genres to see at least part of the of their evolution.
May 4, 2017
A sub-par collection, beautifully presented in the Library of America tradition. Straub opts for the genteel over the unsettling or bizarre, those traits in which the genre excels, and the period which Straub is purporting to champion suffers for it. This book is a confirmation that the English were so much better at this sort of thing in the 19th century: they could be subtle without being tame, understated without being banal, whereas the authors in this collection blur those distinctions. A notable exception is Edgar Allan Poe; the mediocrity he is surrounded with in this collection reinforces the magnitude of his imagination.
June 8, 2018
my favorite stories from this collection:
* The Adventure of the German Student by Washington Irving
*Berenice by Edgar Allan Poe
*The Yellow Wall Paper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
* Thurlow's Christmas Story by John Kendrick Bangs
*The Dead Valley by Ralph Adams Cram
*Luella Miller by Mary Wilkins Freeman
*Afterward by Edith Wharton
*The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F. Scott Fitzgerald
* The Jelly-Fish by David H. Keller
*The Panelled Room by August Derleth
* The Cloak by Robert Bloch
Even the stories in here that were not favorite were still enjoyable to read. My favorite compilation of short stories, yet.
* The Adventure of the German Student by Washington Irving
*Berenice by Edgar Allan Poe
*The Yellow Wall Paper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
* Thurlow's Christmas Story by John Kendrick Bangs
*The Dead Valley by Ralph Adams Cram
*Luella Miller by Mary Wilkins Freeman
*Afterward by Edith Wharton
*The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F. Scott Fitzgerald
* The Jelly-Fish by David H. Keller
*The Panelled Room by August Derleth
* The Cloak by Robert Bloch
Even the stories in here that were not favorite were still enjoyable to read. My favorite compilation of short stories, yet.
July 25, 2016
It took me forever to finish this -unexpected for a volume I was hoping would rekindle my earlier love of horror. Looking back over the story titles upon completion of the collection, I couldn't recall any details about most of them, save for the Fitzgerald and Lovecraft, read during a final, furious 250-page stretch. I have volume 2 and will soon start into it, hoping it will raise my blood pressure more than this first volume ever did.
January 21, 2011
Not a big Henry James fan so "The Jolly Corner" was tedious, but loved "Afterward" by Edith Wharton. I suppose writing ghost stories around the turn of the century wasn't so disreputable as it is now. Many of the other stories are standards which I'd read before (hello again, Charlotte Perkins Gilman), but there were some rediscovered gems too--Madeline Yale Wynne's "The Little Room" and Alice Brown's "Golden Baby" among them.
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