Monthly Archives: September 2020

Wandering with Melmoth

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Today, September 25, is the birthday of Charles Maturin (1782-1824). Maturin was the author of Melmoth the Wanderer. Karl Edward Wagner was influenced by the book when creating his character of Kane.

Published in 1820, Melmoth isn’t light reading but can be rewarding if the reader is diligent. The structure of the book is one of nested stories, or flashbacks within flashbacks. The book opens with John Melmoth being summoned to his dying uncle’s bedside. There he learns of a mysterious figure named Melmoth the Wanderer.  The Melmoth of the title sold his soul to the devil for an extra 150 years of life. His time is about up.

There are several spooky passages, such as early in the book when John Melmoth is waiting for his uncle to die and the Wanderer opens the door, looks into the room, and then shuts the door. No one but John sees him. Or the wedding officiated by an undead priest towards the end.

The flashback within flashback structure can be a bit hard to follow at times. Another feature that might make this challenging to modern readers is that in a modern novel a new paragraph starts if the character speaking changes. Not so in Melmoth. The paragraphs run long and can contain several changes of speaker without any breaks or indentations

All of which is to say, don’t read this book at bedtime or when you’re not alert. Not that it isn’t worth reading. It is. It’s just not going to be a quick, light read that you can daydream your way through. Melmoth the Wanderer is one of the important novels in the development of the Gothic. I enjoyed it. It won’t be for everyone, but if you like Gothics, give it a try.

Birthday Bounties

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There are a number of birthdays today (September 24). I’ve been slammed this week with the first exam of the semester, general job responsibilities, and more emails from students who didn’t bother to read their syllabus than you can shake a stick at. (I’d like to hit a few of them with a stick.)

Which is to say that I’ve not read anything to review for this post. Consider this just information and informal recognition. Continue reading →

Traveling with Tanith Lee’s “Companions on the Road”

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Tanith Lee’s birthday is today (September 19). She was born in 1947 and passed away in 2015. For her birthday, I decided to read something a bit longer than a short story.  (I promise I will review Melmoth the Wanderer soon.) I settled on “Companions on the Road”. It’s the title story of the collection of two novellas pictured there on the right.

Havor was orphaned at five, ran away from the orphanage at ten, and after wandering about doing a variety of odd jobs, he joined the Bear King’s army at sixteen. Now eighteen, he’s risen to the equivalent of sergeant in the army. The war is almost over. The Bear King is laying siege to the city of Avillis. Avillis is ruled by a dark mage, along with his son and daughter, a beautiful blond.

On the first night of the siege, the boy Lukon, a recent recruit in Havor’s unit comes and asks Havor to take what little pay he has earned to his mother and sisters if he should die in battle. Lukon tells Havor how to find the farm. Havor agrees.

The siege doesn’t last long. The people of Avillis hate their ruler and open the gates to the Ber King. Lukon doesn’t survive, and Havor, who has grown tired of the killing, resigns his commission. Before he can leave the city, He gets lured into a scheme his former second in command and a cutpurse to steal a treasure in a secret chamber under the castle. Havor thinks to give some of the treasure to Lukon’s family to mitigate the sting of grief that will accompany the news of Lukon ‘s death. The treasure turns out to be a golden chalice embedded with jewels. The men take and flee the city.

Too bad for them. Continue reading →

Happy Birthday to Howard Waldrop

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Howard Waldrop reading at Armadillocon in 2016.

Today, September 15, is the birthday of Howard Waldrop (b. 1946). Waldrop is one of the most original short story writers working today. Although he’s written a couple of novels, Waldrop is a short story writer. I’ve not seen him in several years, since I haven’t made it to Armadillocon in a while. My understanding is that his health hasn’t been very good. He’s only published a couple of stories in the last decade, most of them in the early twenty-teens.

Waldrop’s work is worth seeking out. He has a gonzo way of looking at things that I find refreshing.  I would suggest starting with “The Ugly Chickens”, a truly heartwarming and heartbreaking tale about dodos. You can find it in Howard, Who?, his first collection.

I’ve maintained that short fiction is the lifeblood of any genre, a form that allows for a wider variety of voices, techniques, and ideas than novels.  For Exhibit A I present Howard Waldrop.

Reinventing Teaching

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Just a quick update on things. I’ve been working on trying to run labs in a a hybrid format with alternating attendance model and a concurrent online lab. Plus having an all online version for those who can’t attend in person.

Tomorrow is the first face to face lab.  We never start labs until the week after Labor Day because the holiday throws off the schedule, and it was a week late this year. It’s been hectic, especially the last few days of the week, and I don’t anticipate this week being much calmer, at least not at first. I have discovered that it is possible to kill brain cells if the student email to which you are replying is of sufficient stupidity.

I’m going to try to carve out time for writing and editing. I’m in the process of putting a collection of some of my short stories together. I intend to send it out into the world with the hopes that it will find work and send money home and not just die of loneliness.

I am probably not going to do a lot of reviews in the near future. I finished, after a number of interruptions, Melmoth the Wanderer about a week ago.  I haven’t had a chance to write the review. That will probably be the next post.  As I said at the end of yesterday’s post about Charles L. Grant, birthday posts will most likely brief tributes without any stories reviewed. Given the time crunch I’ll have this semester, I’m going to focus more on writing fiction than I am reviewing it.

Remembering Charles L. Grant

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Charles L. Grant

September 12, AKA today, is the birthday of Charles L. Grant (1942-2006). Grant was a practitioner of what is known as quiet horror. It’s the type of horror I prefer. In addition to being an amazing writer, he was one of the most influential anthology editors of the late 1970s and 80s.

I first became aware of Shadows, the groundbreaking anthology series he edited when I was in the 8th grade.  We had recently moved to Paris, TX.  The public library had a good selection of anthologies for a library of that size in those days, including at least one, and probably more, titles from the Shadows series. The first volume I read was Shadows 3. I was hooked. I hunted down the others, especially Shadows 2, which had “The Chair” by Jane Cozart and Alan Dean Foster, Foster being my favorite writer at the time.  This was about a year before I discovered Kuttner and Brackett. Continue reading →

RIP, Charles R. Saunders

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Reports are coming in on Facebook (which I’m not on, so this is all second hand) that Charles R. Saunders passed away in May. Saunders was born on July 12, 1946 in Elizabeth, Pennsylvania. Saunders founded the sword and soul subgenre when he began writing a series of stories about a warrior named Imaro in 1970s. They were set in an alternate Africa called Nyumbani.

Saunders isn’t as widely known as he should be. Fortunately much of his work is available. Check it out.

Rest well, sir. You will be missed.

Who Are the Giants?

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So yesterday’s post on Edgar Rice Burroughs and Harold Lamb and the recent post on the canon, coupled with today is the anniversary of the passing of J. R. R. Tolkien and the seventh anniversary of the death of Frederik Pohl, got me to thinking. I referred to Burroughs and Lamb as giants. In the canon post I quoted Newton talking about his achievements being due to his standing on the shoulders of giants.

So who exactly are the giants in the field? Continue reading →