Literary Horror discussion

A recent post by Miroslaw Lipinski on the Stefan Grabinski Facebook page:

"Ah, it's already the summer! Well, the Centipede volume is still cooking but I've added some translations, and hopefully will add a couple more so that the complete Motion Demon collection with premier inside the Centipede volume."

https://www.facebook.com/Stefan-Grabi...

Done early with White Hands and looking for more? Marie-Therese and I are reading and discussing



From the blurb:

These stories are explorations of the extreme in human behaviour, where the bizarre chills the spine, and few authors can match Grabinski's depiction of seething sexual frenzy.

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I do hope that you'll like it. I've thought the selection in "The Dark Domain" better and (much) more varied that that in old English-language incarnation of "The Motion Demon". That opening story is quite something, great dreamlike take on the old Incubus/Succubus. Most folks oughta fall in love with him after that one.

I'm about halfway through The Dark Domain now and am finding it mostly enthralling. Grabinski had the whole decadent thing down but this also has a distinctly Central European touch-it is clearly not French or English and the settings are reminiscent of more mainstream German and Austrian work from the same period.

I have to admit, though, that I found the first story, 'Fumes' (the one Paul references above) a bit hard to get into. The set-up is very intriguing and Incubus/Succubus bit is a weird as can be, but the writing itself is overly specific and frequently very awkward in a way that the other stories in this volume aren't. I'm going to assume that it's just the translator actually being faithful to the author and relaying what are real faults in Grabinski's original prose, because the other tales are so much better written. 'Fumes' is an intriguing story with what's likely the most "Eastern" setting in this collection but it seems like an odd choice to open the book.

Bill wrote: "Done early with White Hands and looking for more? Marie-Therese and I are reading and discussing



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Yes, please! If you've read this book or have been meaning to read this book and just needed a push (Randolph, I think you were going to read this, right?), join Bill and me and post your thoughts here.

That "eastern" feel that emanates from "Fumes" is what made it so appealing for me. It has that aura of creepy Slavic folktale.

Anyway, I'd like to say that Stefan Grabiński's "On the Hill of Roses" is well worth checking out, but given the prices that it must command right now (compared with its relative slimness) you're probably better off waiting for that perpetually "coming soon" Centipede mega-volume.

I'm glad that people like Grabinski's short fiction. Hopefully I'll contribute to the discussion here soon.

"Fumes" is probably the highlight of the collection for me so far. The atmosphere and confusion of identities reminds me of Brian Evenson's marvelous "Grottor".

The setup of "Szamota's Mistress" is also very nicely done; the exuberant mood quickly slips into less reliable territory. I like how much is left unresolved in either story; it's a quality that I associate with more recent dark fiction.

I'm not so fond of the other stories so far; the celebrated pieces involving trains don't date so well, in my opinion.

Interesting that you'd mention "Szamota's Mistress" next to "Fumes". Very different yarns, but there is something of a thematic parallel between them.

Here is my review of Grabinski's novelette "Passion":

I was struck by the similarities between Grabinski's novelette Passion and the story "Don't Look Now" by Daphne duMaurier, considering that Grabinski was virtually unknown to the English speaking world until the early 1990s.

Grabinski had spent some time in Venice, and there are probably autobiographical elements in this story. But as is typical in Grabinski's stories, strange elements enter into the lives of his characters.

The narrator is a Pole visiting Venice. He meets another visitor to Venice, a beautiful, Spanish widow. Their relationship becomes romantic.

But strange elements enter their lives. They meet a painter who has a reputation of having precognition. He creates a painting symbolic of the fate of the narrator's lover. Anther character who enters the lives of the couple is Gina Vamparone, a dis-sheveled woman who roams the area and gives off a bad vibe.

If you're a fan of the uncanny fiction of Robert Aickman and Daphne duMaurier, I think you will like Passion by Stefan Grabinski.

The goodreads shelf for Passion:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

"Passion" sounds tempting. I wish I'm more enthusiastic about the short stories. I just find pieces like "Vengeance of the Elementals" (yikes) to be quite dated.

I'm trying to figure out why I'm more forgiving of, say, some of M.R. James. Probably because James is less overtly passionate about symbols of modernity, like trains.

I really have to start reading his stories. I picked up a couple of his collections a little while ago so this timing is perfect. I'm especially interested in him because I do a lot of family research and travelling to some villages not far from his native Kamionka Strumilowa (which by the way is now known as Kaminka Buzka in western Ukraine.)

I finished this a few days ago and had mostly the same overall impression as Bill (interesting, slightly dated, middling grade). Where he and I differ are in our appreciation of particular stories. I actually found "Fumes" atmospheric and imaginative but poorly written* and "Szamota's Mistress" struck me as having a nice way with setting but in service to a rather tired story (reminded me of Balzac and Gautier but without their flair for drama). None of the train pieces really worked for me, either.

The pieces I did like were the less clearly decadent, more psychologically oriented tales. While I found the set up for "Vengeance of the Elementals" a bit heavy-handed and old-fashioned, I liked the intensity of the story's final pages, and the claustrophobic paranoia of "The Glance", "Strabismus" and "Saturnin Sektor" seemed surprisingly modern and highly effective.

*The first six paragraphs are almost in a lesson in "what not to do" when setting a scene. Outrageously bad. After reading them, I almost gave up on the book before I'd really started it!

Randolph wrote: "I'm certainly intrigued by Grabinski so far. Did Kafka, Lovecraft, etc. have any knowledge of each other? I'm no literary scholar?"

My conclusions on this topic at the present time: Lovecraft did not know Grabinski. On the other hand, Miroslaw Lipinski says that one of Lovecraft's stories was translated into Polish, and the name of the translator was a pseudonym that Grabinski used.

On a related note, I surmised that Daphne du Maurier got some ideas from reading a story by Grabinski that was translated into Italian. I don't wonder about this lightly or in malice, for as some people around here know, I'm a big fan of du Maurier's short and medium length fiction.
There's an interesting discussion of du Maurier as an idea thief. The grand-daughter of Frank Baker, author of the novel _The Birds_ posted there:

http://mybookgoggles.blogspot.com/201...

Anyone here managed to grab "In Sarah's House" back in the day?

An October 5, 2017 post on The Stefan Grabinski Website:

It's been a while (actually a long while!) since the last update. The mammoth Centipede volume on Grabinski is basically finished, though probably still ready for one story to make its way inside, if time permits. So far, I cannot display a cover or give a publication date, but that will come in the future.

As usual, I have various ideas and projects for Grabinski. Part of my plan is to get mainstream publishers interested in Grabinski. I could do, and have done, a Grabinski volume myself (a couple, in fact), but I like the sense of working with someone to actualize in a more general fashion this author of the macabre. Though I will "solicit," I also welcome any mainstream publisher who wants to publish Grabinski. Contact for this is mirelski@aol.com.

http://www.stefangrabinski.org

Valancourt would be more than interested in this, I'd wager. And they have published a number of works that previously saw expensive Centipede editions.

Budget-priced editions of his newly translated fiction would be great indeed. New York Review Books would be a nice fit too since they have published solid amount of weird fiction and obscure European lit...
https://www.nyrb.com/

I'm formulating a letter to Penguin Random House suggesting that they publish Grabinski.

Penguin Random House has published the masters of our genre.

This is a Nov 1, 2017 Facebook post by Miroslav Lipinski:

Due to other book commitments at Centipede, its Grabinski volume will take longer than anticipated. Maybe by very late 2018. However, it will give me more time to add stories to the collection. My hope is that, at least, the complete THE INSANE PILGRIM will make it, together with one or possibly two more stories. I am already working on the next paperbound volume of Grabinski, which should be out early next year, titled THE LUMINOUS LUNATIC. And a couple more surprises are in store.

https://www.facebook.com/Stefan-Grabi...

From that Facebook page, it says there's also the possibility of a paperback version of _On The Hill of Roses_.

I have the hard cover version--which exhibits high production values--and this is my review of one of the stories in that book:

"At the Villa by the Sea"
This is a kind of story that Robert Aickman might have written--uncanny stuff happens, and the reader has to infer some things. The narrator visits his distant cousin Richard. Richard is a widower, well off, and has a boy. The narrator and Richard discuss a poet they knew, who died tragically. It appears that this dead poet has a telepathic influence on all the characters in the story. The reader has to infer why the dead poet is doing this.
I am greatly impressed by this story.

September 7, 2019 Facebook post by Miroslav Lipinski:

"There is movement in that huge Centipede volume on Grabinski. I see the light of day... I turned in the last of my translations today. Will report when the book is close to available."

https://www.facebook.com/pages/catego...

Ron says: I wish that Lipinski jettison Facebook as a homepage for Stefan Grabinski. I don't find "internet 2.0" such as Facebook and Twitter conducive to substantive communication.

There is a writer on conspiracies and Fortean subjects who uses Goodreads as his home page. It seems to work much better than Facebook, and he has a good size following.

January 21, 2021 Facebook post by Miroslav Lipinski:

While we wait for the Centipede Press volume, scheduled now for the fall of 2021, my efforts, aside from the smaller Grabinski works, will be his first novel. SALAMANDER.