In praise of FALL RIVER PRESS.

Greetings, fellow worms!

Too often we bibliophiles get so caught up in the content of our tomes that we forget the publishing houses and editors that make our reading pleasure possible.   Now, I am a firm believer that the tale is all that matters (hence the URL for this blog), but we readers take for granted that somebody, somewhere, will do all the legwork for us to find this or that great story and put it into print.  We have become sickeningly accustomed to the ease of just walking into a bookstore, casually roaming the aisles with an overpriced cup of coffee in our hand, knowing that with just a minimal browsing effort we will more than likely find something to pique our interest.

That being said, I thought it a good idea to take a break from the usual posted reviews to write a quick note about Fall River Press.

In my hamlet of Tyler, TX, the selection of bookstores is not too shabby (especially for the size of the town).  Of used book stores, which I love, we have three.  Two are worth checking out, Fireside Books and Pea Picker.  The other one, which shall remain nameless, seems to have a very narrow view of public reading tastes and they also don’t seem to understand that used books should be priced as such.

Of retail chains, we have a Barnes & Noble store as well as a Hastings (which has a curiously well run book department considering it’s imprisoned within the shell of a dying model – the video rental store).

The Barnes & Noble store, for several different reasons, has become my usual haunt.  It’s got a great little Starbucks coffee café nestled inside, the inventory is first rate and the store personnel are top notch.  The best thing, though, is the place just has that great book lover’s vibe.

 

A few years ago, during one of their big clearance sales, the store had stacks and stacks of overstocked titles that were bargain priced and I picked up an anthology called The End of The World.  It proved to be a wonderful collection of classic SF tales (all centering around some form of the apocalypse as seen through the eyes of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries).  The tales ranged from the well known, like Lord Byron’s poem “Darkness” penned during the same lakeside vacation on which his friend Mary Shelley wrote her little bestseller, to Arthur Conan Doyle’s Professor Challenger story, “The Poison Belt.”  There were, however, many great little tales in between, like Grant Allen’s “The Thames Valley Catastrophe” and Robert Cromie’s “The Crack of Doom” that I had either never heard of or had never run had before the good fortune to find in print.

The dust jacket for this little book and its title page showed that it was published by Fall River Press and edited (or compiled, as you like) by one Michael Kelahan. A little research has shown that Fall River Press is owned by another company that is actually wholly owned by Barnes & Noble.   Whatever its DNA, I have to say that I have been pleasantly surprised and very satisfied by other anthologies put out by Fall River Press under Mr. Kelahan’s knowledgeable guidance.  The books tend to focus on tales from the classic era and early golden age of Horror, Ghost, SF and Weird, and are a great resource for those interested in rediscovering these great stories or just wanting to learn about the influences of more recent modern masters.

Below is a list of some of the titles they have put out in recent years, and each contains a great selection from whatever theme they cherry pick from a particular genre:

M is for Monster

The Body-Snatcher

The Screaming Skull

The End Of The World

The Monster-Maker

All of the above are edited by Michael Kelahan and all contain first rate content.  The first three mentioned concentrate on Weird tales while the last two revolve around a Science Fiction theme.  There are a few other titles not mentioned, edited by Stephen Jones and others, that are more a mixture of modern and classic authors which would seem great ways to sample Weird literature from its inception to the present day.  That’s my shout out to Fall River Press and Mr. Kelahan, just because I think they deserve it.

I urge all my fellow worms to check these titles out.  They are a great way to give you a wide ranging sample of classic genre tales and from a content standpoint will be an asset to your library.  If you are looking for monetary value, I wouldn’t bet on them becoming collector’s items as they are mass produced anthologies of mostly public domain material.  But there is just something about their content arrangement and choice of paper and font that just invites a reader in.  Enjoy and spread the word.

"The Dead Valley" by Ralph Adams Cram

Published 1895

 

Plot Synopsis:

Two Swedish youths make an unchaperoned, overnight trip to a nearby village.  On the return journey they lose their way and find themselves wandering through a terrifying realm.

Review:

Nightmarish.  That word best sums up this chilling tale.  Its feeling of fear and despair at being lost in a frightening setting has really stuck with me since reading it, I am ashamed to say, for the first time just recently.

A respected and famous architect of the early 20^th century, Ralph Adams Cram’s designs were primarily in the European Gothic tradition and he became sought after for cathedral style churches as well as for many buildings at prestigious universities.   Early in his career, though, he found time to dabble in short fiction and published the small anthology Black Spirits and White:  A Book of Ghost Stories.    Containing only six stories, “The Dead Valley” is the last one in the collection and it is a virtuoso fear.

The tale is told second hand as a remembered conversation with a Swedish immigrant.  The opening narrator remarks that the Swede would, while playing chess on winter evenings, often recount stories of his homeland and how these tales would “grow very strange and incredible” as the night deepened but how, nevertheless, he still believed him.  The narrator’s characterization of the Swede is brief and done in the casual tone of one describing a close friend.   The offhand manner in which it is handled lends a curious verisimilitude to the Swede’s boyhood tale that reinforces the reader’s ability to suspend disbelief and, indeed, become lost in the feeling that the story is an actual memory, that it really happened, and as such is all the more horrifying.

As a Horror tale, the effectiveness of “The Dead Valley” is heightened by the ninety degree dark turn it takes about one-third of the way along.  Although it begins as a recounting of an episode during the Swede’s bucolic youth when he and his best friend travel to a nearby village to buy a puppy, it transforms into a harrowing tale of two boys lost in a dreadful land devoid of life and hope.  They find themselves beset on all sides with frightening, unfamiliar scenery and a feeling of dread and despair hanging thick within a pervasive silence.  If the idea of two 12 year olds and a puppy lost in a wilderness version of Silent Hill (“The Dead Valley” predates that game and later film by more than a century and is every bit as creepy) is not disturbing enough, Cram treats the reader to the idea that the boys have to try and keep their minds from cracking when a keening, tortured wail shatters the oppressive quiet.   Cram describes the sound as “a low, sorrowful moan, rising to a tremulous shriek, culminating in a yell that seemed to tear the night in sunder and rend the world as by a cataclysm.” 

Without spoiling the plot (I disdain reviews that basically retell an entire story in a watered down, deconstructed fashion), this sound marks a shift in the story's flow of action and the characters' mental states.   Their crushing fear, which has been kept at bay and in check through an incredibly display of forced maturity and reason, overwhelms them and instinct drives them to react the way we all would when confronted with mind-altering terror.

 

“The Dead Valley” is a beautiful, chilling story and is so much the better in the way it presents itself as an event, as a happening in the boyhood of a Swede a lifetime ago and far away.  It asks few questions and offers even fewer answers as to his experiences and it leaves the reader with the ominous sense that the world is frighteningly unknowable.  Robert Frost notwithstanding, the road less traveled can lead to terrible, strange realms where one may not only lose his way, but his sanity or life as well.

Seek out Cram’s excellent tale, fellow worms, its exquisite dread will stay with you long after you have made your way home.

"From the Darkness and the Depths" by Morgan Robertson

Published 1913

Plot synopsis:

An aged former seaman recounts the harrowing details of his doomed last voyage near the eruption of Krakatoa, and of the unseen menace that terrorized his stricken ship and crew.

Review:

In popular memory, Morgan Robertson is best known for the 1898 publication of his novella Futility, or The Wreck of the Titan in which many details of its plot mirrored those of the Titanic disaster fourteen years later.  Such a spooky coincidence tidally locked his renown to that work forever, and Robertson died suddenly in 1915 before he could fully parlay his fame into a wider recognition of his other works.

“From the Darkness and the Depths” is one of his finer stories and is an absolute gem of an early 20^th century monster tale.   While technically Science Fiction (the monster’s invisibility is based on a combination of flawed turn of the century explanations about light refraction and the chemical composition of the creature’s tissues) one could easily view the story in a similar fashion to Ridley Scott’s film Alien in the sense that, while wearing the skin of SF, the blood and bone beneath is all Horror.   The notion of a multi-armed giant sea creature latching onto a ship to probe cracks and crevices for juicy person meat may seem cliché and a little pulpy.  What makes Robertson’s story unique and terrifying (especially for the era in which it appeared) is the idea that the monster is unseen.  The story is relentless in holding the reader's realization that death may come at the smallest misstep or misjudgment.

Added to this visceral fear of the unknown (and I do mean “visceral” in the literal sense as well, the creature has a predilection for sucking the guts from an individual and leaving an empty bag of skin), is the author’s deft imagery describing the events preceding the arrival of the monster, the environment of the flooded ship, the miserable conditions of the water soaked crew and the incredible dread of a lurking, invisible killer.   The horror of “From the Darkness and the Depths”  is the primal “please don’t let it get me” kind and it works wonderfully.   The story moves along at a brisk pace with a taut, dangerous ambience.  The reveals of the creature here and there throughout the story are handled indirectly through evidence of its movements and the damage it causes to wood and flesh.  As is the case with all the best monster tales, it is much scarier when imagination is required to give the big bad its form and shape.

The whole time reading it I couldn’t help but think that , with today’s CGI technology, the  story would make a great period short film or telemovie.   It is my personal belief that these older tales comprise a huge treasure trove of film material just waiting to be rediscovered.   At the time of their publication, stories like “From the Darkness and the Depths” had content and imagery decades ahead of the capabilities of what could be effectively portrayed on film, so not only did they slowly slide off the literary radar, as is wont to occur over time, they were also never given a second chance at mass rediscovery as cinema source material.   

“From the Darkness and the Depths” is public domain and can readily be found in online format after a little Googling.   It can also be found in M is for Monster, an excellent little anthology from Fall River Press.    Give it a read fellow worms, I promise you will find it well worth your time and a pure treat of the man vs. creature horror story!

"The Willows" by Algernon Blackwood

Published 1907

Plot Synopsis:     

Two men take a canoe trip down the Danube River in pre-WWI era Europe.  As the waters widen into a vast flood plain, a chain of strange incidents force them to question the boundaries of existence and the very laws of nature.

Review:

What can be said about “The Willows” that has not already been written by numerous critics over the past hundred plus years?

The answer:  not much.  However, I will give it the old college try because a major thrust of this blog is to connect readers with great works.  There are so many incredible pieces of fiction, (Weird, Horror, SF, Mainstream, etc.) that for one reason or another have dropped off the radar to such an extent that, while often monuments to the genre in their own right, they are no longer easily available or even well known to modern and especially, I expect, readers younger than 25 or so.  

Those that follow this blog will notice that I will often be reviewing works from the 20th and late 19th century.  That this may give me the appearance of being a stodgy old school purist I am well aware.  This could not be further from the truth, however, as I absolutely gobble up the latest from King, Landsdale, Kiernan, etc., as well as many from the crop of “New Weird” authors that have revitalized the Weird genre in recent years.   If a fellow worm wants to ascribe me a label in relation to my old school tastes, I would say that “aficionado” is probably the most accurate moniker to cast.

But I digress.  “The Willows” is among the giants of all Weird Tales and, indeed, without it and just a handful of others of the same quality from the same era, Horror and the Weird (not to mention a goodly portion of SF) would not exist in the forms we know today.  Without such works would the style and quality of these genres be worse or better?  That is a “what if” scenario for another post (or maybe the germ of a good story) but my biased gut tells me our loss would have been incalculable.

“Genius" is a word that gets thrown around a little too freely in literary circles, so much so that the special merit of its attachment to an author or work has become diluted over time.  But for those unaware and uninitiated, Algernon Blackwood was the real deal and we sadly may never see his ilk again.  He was a major influence on the master himself, H.P. Lovecraft (may  we all please pause to genuflect piously to the Poe of the Prohibition Era - and I say that without a molecule of sarcasm), and Lovecraft described him best when he said, "Of the quality of Mr. Blackwood's genius there can be no dispute; for no one has even approached the skill, seriousness, and minute fidelity with which he records the overtones of strangeness in ordinary things and experiences..."

Quite famously, Lovecraft also said, "It is my firm opinion that his longish short story The Willows is the greatest weird tale ever written."

I think we can all agree that dear Uncle Howard knew his shit, so let's all take a moment of silence and ponder his above statement.

Yeah, let that sink in.

You probably feel at this point that this post is less a review of "The Willows" than an advertisement of it's greatness, and I must admit you're not far off base.  As I mentioned at the beginning, what can be said that hasn't been said already?   Well, there is one last Lovecraft quote that describes the power of the story perfectly, and anyone would be hard put to say it more effectively.  You see, "The Willows" is a rare example of a perfect story.  In construction, in execution, and in just plain grave-cold hands around your testicles atmosphere.   In Lovecraft's own words, it is a tale "without a single strained passage or a single false note."

"The Willows" is the finest example of Blackwood's ability to make the environment not just a setting of the story, but a character itself.   It is ever encroaching, ever speaking to the reader and the protagonists in its own silent, ancient language.  Blackwood was a lifelong nature lover and he traveled the world hunting and exploring at a time when man had not yet invaded or spoiled most of the planet's rivers and forests, when ancient, virgin woods still existed and were full of mystery.

As two men,  our protagonists in "The Willows," float along the Danube on a camping/exploration excursion in a small canoe, they are literally swept along to an ever changing fate in a landscape that increasingly fails to conform to the usual laws of nature.   The unceasing wind, the apparent sentience of the flora and fauna surrounding them, and the increasing sense that they are not anchored in stable reality combine to generate an incredible sense of dread and unease.  In more colloquial terms, there is a serious, "Holy shit, what the hell is going on here!" vibe that builds throughout the story that is sublimely terrifying.

Due to the wind and current, for the majority of the story Blackwood insidiously traps the men on a small sandbar island that is literally crumbling around them.  There is a constant feeling of impending danger and anxiety as they are confronted with nothing less than evidence of otherworldly (or, just as likely, other-dimensional) superior forces or beings with seemingly malicious intent.  All the while as the very ground they stand on is disappearing around them.   Needless to say, fear grows thick and smothering throughout the story, and nerve wracking, exhaustive, and completely awesome all at the same time.

If you have never heard of "The Willows," or Algernon Blackwood, then I urge you to seek both out immediately.   Like any author, not all of his works are homeruns, but the vast majority have that vein of genius running throughout, and even those that ultimately miss their mark upon the reader are still a pure pleasure to read.  More often than not, though, his prose, tone and description of the outdoors is mesmerizing (at some point in the future I'll review his second most famous tale, "The Wendigo," a great example of this ability, with one of the most distressing and unsettling endings ever written).

Enjoy fellow worms, "The Willows" is one of those stories that you'll wish you could experience for the first time over and over and over again.

"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Published 1892

 

Plot Synopsis

In the late 19th century, a woman and her husband move to a pastoral home as a treatment for her depression, only to prove the old adage that the cure can be far worse than the disease.

 

Review:

I first encountered this masterpiece years ago in a cheap aged trade paperback anthology of classic horror stories.  As an avid collector I usually avoid paperbacks entirely, though the occasional trade edition may merit a purchase if it's rare or collectible or just plain hard to find in hardback.  This edition didn't really fit any of those criteria, but something about its yellowed pages bespoke the possibility of tantalizing, whispered secrets (or, in simpler consumer terms, I heard it shouting “buy me!” for some odd reason), so I rescued it from the shelf of a used book store.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” is a seminal achievement and, if my sources are correct, the only Weird Tale Ms. Gilman ever penned.  It is at once many things, fraught with two main possible interpretations.  Is it one of the most unsettling haunted house (or, rather more precisely, haunted room) stories ever told, or is it one of the most unsettling accounts of a woman’s descent into madness?  My opinion is the latter but reading the story with this viewpoint in no way diminishes its impact upon finishing or, while reading, the incredible uneasiness which impends upon the reader as reality, or the main character’s perception of it, slowly becomes unhinged.    

Beneath the main story is the none too subtle but deftly presented commentary on the way in which doctors treated depression near the turn of the 19^th century.   Even more so, it is illustrated how women deemed to have “hysterical tendencies” were treated like children with no sense of what was best for their own mental state.  If a person, especially a woman, were diagnosed as depressed, then they were advised to stay in bed and rest (read: sleep) as much as possible with occasional brief forays outside for “air” and exercise.  In effect, the “cure” often exacerbated the illness and drove the person more deeply into a state melancholia.  Can you imagine a 21^st century psychiatrist telling a patient with a depressive mood disorder that the best thing for them would be to sleep more?

Reality is very localized for the central character as she spends nearly the entire story within a single room of the estate house which her husband has procured in hopes of curing her of “nervous depression.”   The room where she spends almost every minute (one gets the sense she is treated vitiatingly like a queen under house arrest) is covered in an unusual yellow wallpaper that from the onset upsets and unsettles her.  It is in the patterns of this wallpaper that the woman’s deteriorating mental state (or her ability to sense the malleable boundaries of reality) are slowly revealed.  That the ending seems inevitable from the story’s outset is immaterial, the writing is just so good that it is still a visceral gut punch of tragedy and frustration at her situation.

If there are any fellow worms out there that have yet to come across “The Yellow Wallpaper,” or just haven’t made time for that classic short story collection gathering dust on the mantelpiece, I strongly urge you to give it a read immediately.   You will not be disappointed, and you might miss more than a few hours of sleep pondering just how tenuous a hold you have on your own sanity.

Short Stories

As a bookworm and lover of all things literature, I long ago discovered that my favorite form of fiction is the short story.  That's not to say that I eschew novels or even mammoth series of their ilk like those in Frank Herbert's amazing Dune cycle or Stephen King's unparalleled Dark Tower works (one could say that nearly all of King's novels and many of his short fiction selections somehow interconnect to the world of the Roland's Tower, a truly jaw-dropping achievement on King's part).  On the contrary, my bookshelves are filled with novels and many-faceted standalone works which sit side by side with their series siblings.  The short story, however, has always been my first love.

More specifically, when talking about short stories and their relation to books, I mean those more often than not found within the short story anthology.  Now, I have several books that are a collection of stories from this or that particular author, but I have literally dozens of anthologies that bring together a large number of selections from different authors within one binding.    A novel is a complicated beast, and when done well it is admirable for it's execution and ability to coherently pull readers along from beginning to end without losing them to some unnecessary subplot or worse, murky subtext.  Short stories may also be complex, but when they are they have to sharpen that complexity to a diamond point.   A short fiction story cannot muck about hoping the reader will be willing to slog along until the author's message gets through.  By their very brevity, they are forced to build a character, an atmosphere or idea (or sometimes all three), tell a compelling story about one or some (or all) of these things, and then wrap  up the whole shebang in a way that is satisfying to the reader.  That's not to say the reader will always feel closure, but they must always feel satisfied at having read a good tale.  That's why I love short story anthologies.  If a novel is a seven course meal that may leave you nauseous when you've finished, a good short story anthology is a like a smorgasbord of gourmet snacks.  They may not all be to your favorite taste, but they are all very tasty. 

Of my many many short story anthologies a large majority contain works in the Weird Tale category.  While nearly all Horror stories can also be called Weird, not all Weird Tales can be classified as having overtly horrific elements.  Similarly, some of the best Weird Tales ever put to paper are decidedly Science Fiction in tone, while a definite large section of the Science Fiction genre could not be construed as being Weird in nature whatsoever.  It is a nebulous thing, the Weird Tale.  It's best identified with the old saying, "I can't really describe it to you, but you'll know it when you see it."      

I thought it would be best to start this blog by listing and reviewing many Weird Tales that I have come across in my lifelong love affair with that literary art form, the short story.  Those to follow are in no particular order of importance, other than whatever order my hindbrain sees fit to notify the rest of my mind that it's time to share this or that with the world at large.  I hope you enjoy the information and, if I happen to be helpful in pointing you toward a work you had never heard of before or maybe had heard of but had never been able to track down for one reason or another, please let me know.  Not only would I love your own comments and thoughts on different works, but knowing that I helped someone make a connection with a story they like (and might not otherwise have found) would be immensely rewarding for me and a huge incentive to build content for this blog on a daily basis.  There are so many great stories out there, I just can't wait to share them with all my fellow worms!  Look for my first review tomorrow......