Cox Story

Casting the Runes and Other Ghost Stories (World's Classics)
$8.95
I simply had to have this book. I have started on a creative writing career hoping to specialise in supernatural fiction. So who better to read than the acknowedged doyen of the genre? MR James was an absolute master of the craft. Many years ago the BBC dramatised one of his short stories every Christmas Eve and continued the practice for several years. Even as a mature adult these plays used to scare me witless! Michael Hordern's wonderful depiction of paralysis in sheer terror at the end of "Whistle and I'll come to you my lad", is indelibly engraved in my memory. But the television can only depict one man's interpretaion. Believe me, the imagination does so much more. So the stories are infinitely more enthralling. This volume contains all the greats: the nightmarish Count Magnus, Whistle.., Number 13, the haunting Mezzotint and perhaps the most chilling ghost story ever written, A Warning to the Curious. The thing about MR James was that he wrote so well and with such a sensitivity for how to make the supernatural thriller "work". Apart from the inevitably dated settings, it is entirely possible to imagine the events he relates as a plausible part of one's own daily experience! This volume contains a very useful essay (Explanatory Notes)by the author on the elements of the most effective ghost stories. The valuable insights offered therein are alone worth the price. This volume contains a representative sample of his best known work and I am compelled to recommend it in the highest terms. But a warning to "the curious": this is potent story telling. The reader who having once picked it up, will not be the same when they put it down again; if they can (heh, heh, heh,heh).

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story "Original Motion Picture Soundtrack"
$9.99
"As I stand on the precipice of death, my perspective is enormous". Hands down the best lyric ever written. John C. Reilly is excellent. Fantastic singing. Kudos to the songwriters for their period parodies. I can't stop watching this movie on cable. it gets better every time. All songs are great.

Victorian Ghost Stories: An Oxford Anthology (Oxford Paperbacks)
$17.95
this collection contains a good deal of godd ghost stories, like an eddy on the floor and the shadow on the wall, making it a worthwhile read. old fashioned ghost stories. silent, subtle, growing on you. why only three stars? well, the uninteresting stories in the collections are really uninteresting. sometimes i don't see the interest at all. but you should still buy this.

The Oxford Book of Victorian Ghost Stories
$19.95
Victorian ghost stories, though elegant and often well written, are a bit unpalatable to the modern reader for a few reasons. Trudging through 35 of these little novelties is a bit like eating a half pound of caviar - an acquired taste is piquant only in small doses and too much at once leads rapidly to indigestion!

Here are the issues with Ghostly Tale Victoriana:

1) Complete predictability. Victorian readers were a lot like pro wrestling fans; they know exactly what they like, they expect any given example of the medium to gratify those expectations, and novelty of any sort is equivalent to heresy. A villain must be punished; the saccharine little bourgeois family moving into the haunted manse must escape unharmed. The loved one who appeared mysteriously when far away has to have died, etc. These recycled tropes create not only linear simple plots but also a rather numbing similarity in how examples can be categorized.

To wit, herein we have 4 "tragic spectacle re-enacted" tales (aka VCR hauntings), 6 supernatural vengeance tales, 5 loved one expiration viewings, 5 ghostly premonitions of death etc. We have a few unusual tales but these are few and far between.

2) Lack of psychological nuance. Unlike the Gothic story, Victorian ghost tales have to happen to normal people with carefully restrained passions and balanced temperaments. This requirement of tight constraint for the protagonists not only makes for dullish characters, but it also means the events occurring in the tale often have no internal meaning to the character. (Compare for example "The Yellow Wallpaper" or "The Turn of the Screw" Gothic rollercoasters in which the possible insanity and / or unreliable narration of the protagonists creates ambiguity and metaphor. No such subtleties here - spooky things happen to bland dull decent chaps who react with prudence and probity.

3) Minutiae Uber Alles. Victorians had a deep passion for country landscapes, architecture, interior design, and couture. It is a rare tale indeed herein that escapes some rather lengthy discourse on one or more of the above topics. If you are the typical reader, this may get more than a bit tedious.

4) Quaint Rather Than Scary. The combination of familiar tropes, predictable linear plotting, staid minimally developed characters, absence of metaphorical content, and much ado about drapery and shrubbery drains whatever minimal spookiness might be found here away very quickly.

Ultimately there is some fine writing here (Gaskell, Le Fanu, M.R. James, Blackwood) and some of the more Gothic-leaning tales are fun (Stevenson, James) but ultimately this collection loses impact a bit too quickly. The similar Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories is a lot more entertaining because it brings in different eras, and the Oxford Book of Gothic Tales is even more fun for the reader.

Victorian novels are well worth the price of admission, Victorian mystery and detective stories are gems, but Victorian ghost stories are too limited in design and effect to make reading 35 of them much entertainment.