Understanding Ghost Stories: Books by ST Joshi and Andrew Smith
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Reading ghost stories provides a familiar chill to many readers, but only a select few want to delve deeper, burrowing into a thorough understanding of what drives the spectral tale. Today, with weird fiction scholarship more vibrant than ever before, that journey doesn't have to happen alone. Two outstanding study aids published in recent years head up a multiplying field. Look to S.T. Joshi's Warnings to the Curious and Andrew Smith's The Ghost Story 1840-1920: A Cultural History for proof of ghostly energies in literature.
S.T. Joshi Shines the Light on Jamesian Demons
Warnings to the Curious: A Sheaf of Criticism on M.R. James recalls the glory days when most scholarship focusing on literary horror occurred in obscure journals. Aside from H.P. Lovecraft, M.R. James enjoyed zealous attention to his supernatural works. Ghosts and Scholars was a long running publication devoted to unveiling the many mysteries he left behind, headed by Rosemary Pardoe, who joins Joshi in editing this volume. The two wizened Jamesian observers have assembled a diverse array of discourse on M.R. James' most celebrated stories.
Unlike Ghosts and Scholars, which occasionally delved into minutiae that was only decipherable by absolute Jamesian fanatics, Joshi's scholarly collection is much more accessible. Occult, historic, and erotic tensions are explored as deep and relevant influences behind James' work. In many ways, gaining added insight into the forbidden knowledge fearfully communicated by M.R. James does nothing to dispel his demons.
Instead, Warnings to the Curious peels back the layers of beautiful illusion responsible for obscuring pure horror in James' tales. The demons, ghosts, and less definable terrors are then revealed in all of their alien glory. This book collects the most well thought and illuminating studies of James' fiction to date, and it should remain master for some time.
Andrew Smith Uproots Ghostly Terrors
By the time The Ghost Story 1840-1920 ends, M.R. James' ascent to the spectral throne of literary horror is just nearing its peak. This fat volume by Andrew Smith attempts to pierce the historic origins of the ghost story in the United Kingdom and beyond. More importantly, Smith lets loose an important bridge rarely completed in scholarship that's strictly centered around the weird.
Smith's haunted history talks about not merely James and Sheridan Le Fanu, but household names such as Charles Dickens and Henry James. Whatever other conclusions this book draws, no one can ignore its ability to place spectral fiction in the forefront of art and society. Smith's revelations are always tied back to the mainstream literary scene, political events, and economic turmoils that influenced the rise of the British ghost story, perhaps the same elements that were influenced in turn by a new and fearful aesthetic.
For a product of academia, The Ghost Story 1840-1920 is pleasantly readable to the average horror fan. Smith capably connects crucial figures and events back to phantoms, without droning on like an absent minded professor.
Understanding ghost stories isn't easy. It's conceivable that the most devoted weird horror readers could spend a lifetime contemplating the nuances of uncanny play between the dead and the living. Thanks to study props like these, at least they won't have to ponder in isolation.
-Grim Blogger
