My Own Private Spectres

by Jean Ray, John Flanders, Hubert Van Calenbergh (Translator)

16 short stories by "the Belgian Poe."

Genres: Horror, Weird Fiction, Humor

247 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Raymundus Joannes de Kremer was a Flemish Belgian writer who used the pen names John Flanders and Jean Ray. He wrote both in Dutch and French.

He was born in Ghent, his father a minor port official, his mother the director of a girls' school. Ray was a fairly successful student but failed to complete his university studies, and from 1910 to 1919 he worked in clerical jobs in the city administration.

By the early 1920s he had joined the editorial team of the Journal de Gand. Later he also joined the monthly L'Ami du Livre. His first book, Les Contes du Whisky, a collection of fantastic and uncanny stories, was published during 1925.

During 1926 he was charged with embezzlement and sentenced to six years in prison, but served only two years. During his imprisonment he wrote two of his best-known long stories, The Shadowy Street and The Mainz Psalter. From the time of his release in 1929 until the outbreak of the Second World War, he wrote virtually non-stop.

Between 1933 and 1940, he produced over a hundred tales in a series of detective stories, The Adventures of Harry Dickson, the American Sherlock Holmes. He had been hired to translate a series from the German, but he found the stories so bad that he suggested to his Amsterdam publisher that he should re-write them instead. The publisher agreed, provided only that each story be about the same length as the original, and match the book's cover illustration. The Harry Dickson stories are admired by the film director Alain Resnais among others. During the winter of 1959-1960 Resnais met with Ray in the hope of making a film based on the Harry Dickson character, but nothing came of the project.

During the Second World War Ray's prodigious output slowed, but he was able to publish his best works in French, under the name Jean Ray: Le Grand Nocturne (1942), La Cité de l'Indicible Peur, also adapted into a film starring Bourvil, Malpertuis, Les Cercles de L'Epouvante (all 1943), Les Derniers Contes de Canterbury (1944) and Le Livre des Fantômes (1947).

After the war he was again reduced to hackwork, writing comic-strip scenarios by the name of John Flanders. He was rescued from obscurity by Raymond Queneau and Roland Stragliati, whose influence got Malpertuis reprinted in French during 1956.

A few weeks before his death, he wrote his own mock epitaph in a letter to his friend Albert van Hageland: Ci gît Jean Ray/homme sinistre/qui ne fut rien/pas même ministre ("Here lies Jean Ray/A man sinister/who was nothing/not even a minister").

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

While the work of Jean Ray, almost superhumanly prolific "Belgian Poe," is easily accessible in a number of European languages, only a miniscule portion of it was translated into English. Out of this, most is contained within the trio of our of print collections, among whom this 1999 release is generally viewed as the best.

Out of 16 stories contained herein, ones that i've found particularly enjoyable are:

In “House of the Storks“, titular dwelling is haunted by what seems to be the corporeal manifestation of one deadly sin. This piece is packed with some memorably disgusting imagery.

At the beginning of one of this collections finest pieces, melancholy phantasmagoria „The Great Nocturnal One,“ we see mundane day-to-day existence of one Théodule Notte, engrossed in his memories and his unchanging daily rituals („men who manage to defeat time by anxiously safeguarding their tomorrow, by not allowing it to stray anywhere from the past, have in effect conquered death itself“). Then, a chance encounter with an object from his past leads to an avalanche of memories and regrets, to transgressions and to a very different sort of ritual. Story itself turns into this fevre dream wherein all firm borders between dream and reality, past and present, this world and another are lost. By the end, Notte might discover some unexpected truths about his life and his very identity.

Dreamlike “The Marlyweck Cemetery“ manages to be both humorous and eerie. Its reclusive protagonist is led, by his tricksteresque „friend“ and guide, from the mundane safety of his home into an encounter with… the inevitable. Like in „The Great Nocturnal One,“ Ray erases the border between the inner, psychological world and the otherworldly.

„The Mainz Psalter“ is a tale of maritime horror: the crew of the titular ship (named after the strange old book discovered by its owner) is hired to follow desolate, dangerous route for no discernible reason. Gradually, they find themselves stranded in what seems to be another world, one haunted by something utterly alien and utterly inimical to humanity („I know only that something is around us, something worse than anything else, worse than death!“). Cryptic, atmospheric piece with a lot more going on beneath its surface (no pun intended). Furthermore, one is reminded of W.H. Hodgson‘s better maritime stories. While Ray encountered Hodgson’s writing only after he wrote this piece, he thought highly of it and instantly recognized a degree of kinship between their works:
“It is one of the most gripping sea tales I have ever read; the mystery and overwhelming fear evoked by the oceanic solitude are especially well handled. [...] A few months back, I finished two stories, ‘The Tenebrous Alley’ and ‘The Mainz Psalter,’ which, to my mind, are somewhat akin to The Ghost Pirates, in that they too present the reader with a fear-inducing account of crimes perpetrated by invisible beings from an intercalary world situated in a different space and, occasionally, different time.”
Ray provides us a number of hints as to might be going on, down to the final theological speculation, but they serve only to leave the reader with even more questions to ponder. Ultimately, best way to deal is with this evocation of the unknowable is the one chosen by its protagonist: “we bowed our heads, and gave up trying to understand.”
There is, also, more than one surface parallel to certain stories of Lovecraft’s in this tale.

“The Pink Terror” - starts as tale of a locale infected by something malignant and unclassifiable, landscape and everything in it tinted by the colour of “Blossoming consumption inside a physical lung, foam on the lips of a man who has been stabbed to death, viscous slime enveloping a growing foetus, the bloodshot faze of a sickly albino... Pink is the pale ally of viruses and spirochaetes, closely involved with abscesses and festering wounds.” Then, in its (quite literally) cataclysmic finale, we’ll witness the birth of a new demiurge. I found this story enjoyable more on the merit of the ideas employed, than on their execution. It suffers, mostly, from too much being crammed in too small a space. Again, there are some parallels to Lovecraft, in this case to his “The Color out of Space”.

In “The Hand of Gôtz von Berlichingen”, narrator‘s uncle is engaged in a Faustian pursuit that ends in tragedy for everyone involved. This reads almost like a M.R. James-inspired story told wholly in Ray’s own style, what with antiquarian pursuits, occultism and ancient artifact from which evil emanates.

„Saint Judas of the Night“ is the longest, conceptually most ambitious story in this collection. Told in a number of interconnected fragments, dealing with a large cast of characters („I think it was the Seraphic Doctor who wrote about a magician who deployed a series of waxen figurines on a chessboard made out of rare wood. They could move of their own accord: each was allocated in its proper place, and then studied as they amassed sin upon sin, and crime upon crime.“) it is like a puzzle all of whose pieces fall into place by the story‘s end. Ray’s erudition is on full display here, as he is masterfully mixing real history, personages and locales (with this M.R. James-like antiquarian gusto) with his fictional narrative.
Techniques employed here are somewhat reminiscent of his novel, „Malpertuis.“ I think that this story would‘ve benefited greatly from being expanded into a novel of comparable length (I do wonder, given the troubled history of „Malpertius“, if this story was indeed originally envisioned as another novel) as there is perhaps too much crammed in here. Still, „overcrowded“ as it is, it still makes for compelling reading and I can‘t help but think of it as this crystallization of a worldview glimpsed underneath some other stories of Ray’s.

„The Tenebrous Alley“ is another excellent, cryptic piece. It consists of two separate narratives, presented as a couple of found manuscripts, contained within this slim framing story. Within the first manuscript, we learn of the travails of a group of women whose dwelling, together with the rest of their town, is under attack by malignant invisible entities. In another, we learn of a man obsessed by what seems to be a portal to another world, one visible only to him and one with which he has some sort of deeper connection. However, motives that lead him to finally cross into that other world, and the petty transgressions committed by him, seem to have direct influence on what he sees there. Ultimately, his actions lead to tragedy. By the end of the second manuscript, connections between the two narratives will become evident even though, ultimately, reader is left with even more unanswered questions.

Two stories, „My Own Private Spectre“ and „Streets“, are in fact accounts of Ray‘s own alleged experiences with the supernatural. Latter is of particular interests, as one recognizes within it seeds of a number of stories found in this collection. Whether or not one takes these accounts as truthful (they are certainly embellished), Ray was indeed a believer in supernatural with a keen interest in various aspects the occult. That is evident from the stories themselves, from the occasional employment of alchemical and kabbalistic concepts and symbols, to his invocation of various grimoires (some real, some extant and, in a manner of Lovecraft & co, constantly recurring only in his fiction). More conventional Christian symbolism and theology are also employed, tho sometimes curiously distorted and with some additional, disconcerning implications.

One review of another English collection of Ray’s described his fiction as “lacking sophistication.“ That it certainly does not, for there is surprising literary depth to, and erudition behind, some of these stories. However, what it does lack in any sort of pretentiousness or artsy aloofness. Ray’s fiction is written to be instantly readable and entertaining and, like the best of his pulp contemporaries, he achieves even when he is aiming at something more.

Several of these stories are set in author’s native Ghent. There is even this palpable nostalgic quality emanating from some of them, like in “The Hand of Gôtz von Berlichingen.” Ray’s shadowy Ghent is akin to Machen’s London or to Lovecraft’s fictional Arkham: with shadows reaching out from its history, with strange forces lurking beneath its surface, with streets that may lead one away from his mundane reality, its aged tenements suddenly going trough fantastic transmutations.

There is also this surprisingly definite moralist element to a number of these stories, say in „The House of Storks.” Ray is able to handle this without either diminishing their evocations of Numinous or having them feel overtly preachy.

As to the quality of translation, it leaves something to be desired. At this point, I’ve read enough of Ray to recognize short, jagged paragraphs or some abrupt, poorly handled transitions that have you thinking that entire paragraphs are missing, as the hallmarks of his own writing. That said, older translations of „The Mainz Psalter“ and „The Tenebrous Alley“ (as found in „The Weird“) read quite a bit better. My guess is that the translator here went for phrasings and the choice of words that is closer to Ray‘s original French.

This collection’s biggest flaw is that it is long out of print, with all that follows OOp status in the world of genre fiction small presses. Those vampires who customarily haunt that world demand, for a single used copy of this collection, sums of money that are nothing short of criminal.

[Michael Adams · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can see what Jean Ray is considered a hidden gem of weird fiction. His stories are imaginative, employing outré concepts from theoretical math and science, and melding them with spiritualist concepts to form a wholly unique hybrid. The stories in this collection range in tone from hauntingly fearsome to darkly whimsical, but are all consistently entertaining. I would highly recommend this collection to any weird fiction fan who can find a copy of it

[J. P. Wiske · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jean Ray's ability to straddle the fence between tongue-in-cheek pulp absurdity and sincere, cosmically uncanny horror—in the same story—is impressive. This praise may seem backhanded, as if Ray's stories achieve a horror in spite of themselves. This is not the case. I firmly believe that the effect is entirely by design: by creating a harmless absurdity, the transition to uncanny horror is naturally—even inevitably—absorbed by the defenseless reader. As Dürrenmatt wrote, '... the only way to avoid getting crushed by absurdity... is to humbly include the absurd in our calculations.' "The Pink Terror", "The Marlyweck Cemetery", "The Uhu", and "House of the Storks" are perfect examples of just how deftly Ray can take "over-the-top" and make it effectively synonymous with "cosmic". Meanwhile, stories like "The Great Nocturnal One", "The Mainz Psalter", "Saint Judas of the Night", and "The Tenebrous Alley" are more gently absurd but no less horrifying.

There are some stories that seem to use horror as a source of humor (rather than using the latter to transition into the former), and these work less well for me, simply as a matter of taste. "Gold Teeth" and "The Truth About Timothy" are two such stories. They lack the requisite nastiness to make them humorous horror stories (like, say, Clive Barker's "The Yattering and Jack" or Charles Birkin's "Circle of Children").

That said, I only have one material complaint, and it relates to the translation. Or at least I'm assuming it's the translation. Occasionally, transitions—be they in scenery or characters—can seem abrupt to the point of being confusing. Generally, reading a few sentences will reestablish the thread, but it can be frustrating in the mean time.