fiction files redux discussion

hey kids:

i recently read a collection of may sinclair uncanny stories. of the eight in the collection, three were very good, and one kicked my ass. it's called "where their fire is not quenched", and luckily for you all, it's available as a pdf online!

http://www.horrormasters.com/Text/a07...

i would love to hear what others think of this creepy story. the ending left me imagining the most grotesque afterlife image of all time. :)

now back to looking for jobs, and reading ghost stories, and comics. :)

Maureen wrote: "hey kids:

i recently read a collection of may sinclair uncanny stories. of the eight in the collection, three were very good, and one kicked my ass..."

Good story. It didn't kick my ass, but it did sort of pinch my buttocks. (The publisher of a future edition of Sinclair's stories should feel free to use this comment as a cover blurb.)

Not sure what to make of it. It is very dense and compressed so I had a hard time reading it. It reminds me of Peter Straub in his old days before he started writing books that are easily read although I still find his Floating Dragon one of the best if a bit sentimental at the end.

hi fellas: thanks for checking out the story! i really appreciate it as i can't stop thinking about it, and i keep telling it to other people, like i'm the wedding guest, and it's the albatross around my neck. :)

adrian: did it pinch your prepubescent buttocks? that's the image i'm hung up on. how old is she when she says she is too young? she kind of hit me in the same way iris murdoch hits me. i am curious about her novels now, especially the dark night: a novel in unrhymed verse that my boyfriend edwin arlington robinson was crazy about.

patrick: well, the story was published in 1922, when may sinclair was almost sixty. what little i've read of her seems to indicate that "modern victorian" is kind of an appropriate appellation for her. she is much more like henry james -- i can't say about peter straub because i've only read ghost story. and actually, this story has been noted for the spareness of her descriptions. still i can see how it drags a bit about three quarters through.

anyway, she has written a story that leaves me filling in gaps in the end in a horrific way, and that's why i can't stop thinking about it.

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sadly, though may sinclair was a popular writer in her own lifetime (besides being an influentic critic) it looks like it might be really hard to get at the books i want. a search for the dark night on abe and alibris came up empty. i checked gutenberg and there's a bunch of stuff there -- hopefully it's her best stuff. :)

Maureen wrote: "hi fellas: thanks for checking out the story! i really appreciate it as i can't stop thinking about it, and i keep telling it to other people, like i'm the wedding guest, and it's the albatross aro..."

Unless I'm confusing her with some other gal, I think May Sinclair makes a guest appearance in Virginia Woolf's diary. The bookcase is temporarily blocked by a stack of heavy boxes, so I can't check to see whether Woolf sinks her fangs into Sinclair's writing and enjoys the taste or tosses it about like she did with some of her contemporaries.

We had a thread in one of the previous groups where we mentioned unpleasant images of the afterlife. I remember Cynthia Ozick expanded her comical stories about the bookish Ms. Puttermesser in The Puttermesser Papers, and ended with a chapter about the woman's death & resurrection in the next world: it begins with the fulfillment of her dreams and then eventually turns bleak and utterly hopeless.

James Branch Cabell wrote a macabre short novel, The White Robe, about a werewolf who becomes a bishop. It ends with his passage into what appears to be Paradise, but something dreadful occurs as the gates are closing for all eternity.