Customer Reviews

THE MODERN WEIRD TALE: A Critique of Horror Fiction

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Robert M. Price once called Joshi the reincarnation of Lovecraft, and this wasn't far from the mark. The shadow of Lovecraft is oppressively looming over this study, and Joshi's writing style and criticism is nearly identical to Lovecraft's 'Supernatural Horror in Literature'. Both can be annoying at times, although they don't take away much of the study's merit overall.

Joshi's tries to bring together a canon of modern weird literature, and argues that authors such as Ramsey Campbell, T.E.D. Klein, Thomas Ligotti, and Shirley Jackson are superior to mass marketing writers such as Peter Straub, Anne Rice, Stephen King, W.P. Blatty, and Clive Barker. Some of the latter get a bashing that they will probably remember for a long time.

In doing this, Joshi often sounds arrogant, elitist, and nit picking. While I do think he's overreacting sometimes it is also clear that the praise of best-seller authors is terribly out of proportion with their literary merits, and that Joshi's words deserve their extra impact. On the other hand, hasn't it always been that the literary merit of best-seller authors leaves much to be desired?

Even so, I think Joshi's study is important because of another aspect. It is an easily accessible study that deals with authors whose appreciations usually don't appear outside of fanzines, scattered journals, or OOP hardcovers. It is clearly written for other literary critics as well. All in all, Joshi shows to have a good understanding and grasp of the field and makes important and relevant commentaries.

As noted, Joshi stresses great importance on Lovecraft's theory of effective weird fiction, and every other three pages Lovecraft will make an appearance. This is a good foundation, but also a potential weakness. Much of Joshi's criticism goes to the grave if one simply refuses to see any merit in Lovecraft's own criticism of weird fiction. Therefore, fans of the bashed best-seller authors will more than likely be unimpressed by Joshi's biting remarks, and fans of the marginal authors he handles will learn not much more than what they already knew for themselves.

One thing that bothers me, though, is Joshi's obvious bias against weird fiction that doesn't somehow work with Lovecraft's 'supernatural realism' or harnesses atheism (he admits this in the final chapter and epilogue). This he defends adequately in the chapter on Blatty, deeming his metaphysical background too preachy, but later on it becomes strained. To Robert Aickman's opinion that the ghost story gains in strength in the presence of psychic research and faulty science, Joshi replies 'I hardly know how to respond to this farrago of nonsense', and quotes another extensive example of Lovecraft. But when dealing with Anne Rice's preachy vampires that constantly and sometimes violently assert that there is no God, Joshi comments: 'It is not clear what relevance these theological discussions have to the core of the novel, but they are admirably presented.'

The Modern Weird Tale examines the philosophy (or lack thereof) behind the works of Shirley Jackson, T E D Klein, Stephen King, Peter Straub, Clive Barker, Robert Aickman, Anne Rice, Ramsey Campbell, Thomas Tryon, William Peter Blatty and Thomas Ligotti, with an interesting chapter on Robert Bloch's Psycho and some of its loving offspring by Bret Easton Ellis and Thomas Harris. Joshi states in the introduction that the exclusion of authors like Richard Matheson and Thomas Tessier (to name but a couple) was prompted by his feeling that his book was already long enough. I cannot agree. Joshi is the most able and articulate literary critic to deal with supernatural horror in literature since the advent of H P Lovecraft, and his carefully argued critiques are desperately needed now that gross-out soap opera has all but pushed the good stuff off the shelves. I was a little disappointed with some of the emphasis in this work - thirty pages on Stephen King and only seventeen on Robert Aickman; an entire chapter devoted to William Blatty's sanctimonious potboilings while writers of the calibre of K W Jeter and Jonathan Carroll are relegated to the "excess length" department - but, after all, however much one may deplore the triumph of bestsellerdom, it's naive at best to ignore it. And even among the bestsellers, Joshi finds items worth bothering with - sometimes, indeed, items we would certainly be much worse off without. Even Joshi's deplored Stephen King is commended for Rage, The Running Man, Gerald's Game and some others. The chapters on the great writers - Jackson, Klein, Aickman, Campbell - are as thorough and rewarding as anything in The Weird Tale, although Joshi's antagonism towards Aickman's (admittedly unenlightening) theoretical views means that Aickman seems to get a little less than his due as a writer. Joshi has, for example, completely missed the point of Aickman's brilliant "Ravissante", and his paragraph on the story ends, in effect, with "so what?" Still, The Modern Weird Tale is at least as good a read as the earlier book, and contains almost as many pointers to interesting material of which the reader may not be aware. Perhaps the best I can say is that, having got through its 260 pages in a day, I immediately went and bought Joshi's critical study of John Dickson Carr - a writer I have never read - purely for the enjoyment of reading what Joshi has to say about him.

I agree with much of what Joshi says about writers such as Anne Rice and Stephen King--their success is no testament to the quality of their work. Also, he champions good writers, like TED Klein (although sometimes for questionable reasons--such as their having a world-view he approves of).

That said, Joshi is an unnecessarily harsh critic. His tirades extend way beyond the pale of unbiased criticism. He is gratuitously nasty, and this makes him sound weak-minded, which perhaps, after all, he is.

His credibility is called into further doubt when he dismisses writers because they believe in God. He is far from the first atheist I've read--or listened to--who is unable to deal with others' religious beliefs in a reasonably objective, rational manner, but that hardly excuses it.

Curiously, too, Joshi never even mentions reliable workhorse authors like Michael McDowell or Charles Grant. McDowell may have been overly prolific, but at his best he is as good as any of the other modern writers whose virtues Joshi extols.

Joshi is very widely read in the genre of weird fiction, but this reading does not seem to have helped him develop his chops as a scholarly critic. At best, this is a book of pop-criticism, not a work of serious academic merit.

S.T. Joshi would be the pre-immenint critic of supernatural and weird fiction if it were not for his inability of being able to seperate his religous and moral bias from his craft of literary criticism. According to Joshi, underlying atheistic or secular themes are acceptable in stories while underlying religous or moral themes are not. This reveals a clear bias on Joshi's part.

With that being said, Joshi has accomplished quite a feat in his annotated Lovecraft editions. The labor is one of meticulous study, and sheds a deeper insight into Lovecraft's works. He is also responsible for helping to bring Lovecraft's genius into the forefront of literature, thus exposing an entire generation to the works of one of the most influental writers of the twentieth century. Any of Joshi's Annotated Lovecraft editions are HIGHLY reccomended.

Joshi has admitted that one of the primary functions of this work was to 'lay down a canon of modern weird writing' (p.258). Whilst well placed to establish such a canon, it is inevitable that his choices would be contentious. I was an admirer of his earlier work, The Weird Tale, and found this an extremely useful successor. Anyone with an interest in Lovecraft will be aware of the enormous debt that is owed to Joshi for his research and analysis of his work.

The Modern Weird Tale is eminently readable. It has an enthusiasm for the genre and a well deployed sense of humour that reminds the reader that this is Joshi's perspective. The section on Stephen King was extremely satisfying, as it brought out the difference between literature which is popular, and that which is significant. Of course, many fans of the genre will be dissapointed at some of Joshi's assessments. The problem here is that there is nor direct relationship between quality and popularity. Joshi has done weird fiction a great service in reminding readers of the importance of people like Shirley Jackson, Ramsey Campbell, T. E. D. Klein and Thomas Ligotti. These are the writers who have expanded the genre in recent years.

As an enthusiast of Weird fiction, I would reccomend this book to anyone interested in the genre. Joshi has written a critical work which is profoundly accessible, whilst retaining critical insight. When Joshi is critical of an author, or when he praises another, he always provides a clear and succinct explanation for his critical choice.

Of course, if as a reader, you simply want to hear that your favourite author is wonderful, this is not a book for you. This is serious criticism and analysis, presented with wit and style, not hero worship. If you are seriously interested in weird fiction read this book.

Despite the comments of the "Educated Reader" below, S.T. Joshi has done more work in the field of weird fiction than any other critic, ever. The notion that one must be a fiction writer of write legitimate literary criticism is fatuous. Joshi rates in the first rank of literary critics of any genre due to his holistic approach (he typically reads _everything_ an author writes before he puts pen to paper), maniacal diligence (he has uncovered scores of unreprinted titles and restored dozens of corrupt texts), incredible work ethic, academic background in classical philology, and keen insight. If you didn't notice, Mr. Reader, Joshi also has a great sense of humor--perhaps the concept of the "polemic" is foreign to you--and writes clearly, unlike so many other academic obscuritanists.

Save your money, but more than that, save your time. Joshi seems to be channeling Dorothy Parker in his vicious "critiques" of modern horror writers. He doesn't just keep his vitriol for the writers either--there's plenty of contempt for the "uneducated" readers. Joshi is apparently the embodiment of "those who can't" gripe about those who do. Check this guy's credits. He hasn't done anything beyond editing and deconstructing. This book is mean-spirited, off-base and laughably pompous. This guy needs to remove the stick.