Bloggamazy

Future blogs about my latest informal thoughts or diary-room entries are now to be moved to the Megazanthus blog linked here:
http://www.myspace.com/megazanthus.

Knottier narratives will resume their appearance on this Weirdmonger blogspot, meanwhile.

Extremity in Fiction & Prejudices

'Prejudice' is, for me, thinking you won't like it, i.e. before trying it or having tried something in the past which has put you off seemingly similar things since then.

There are perhaps separate concerns about extremity in Horror Fiction:

(a) What is or is not literature - and do you like it? (Concerns with intellectualism and how you see these things).

(b) Does extremity in horror fiction prevent the genre itself (which contains 'quieter' horror) being successful by prejudicing many readers against it. And does it create a 'vicious circle' of extremity outdoing extremity to the detriment of the genre?

(c) Regarding the narrow field of readers who already read horror fiction avidly, are some of them prejudiced against extremity (or against 'quietness' indeed as the other side of the coin) within a genre of fiction (literature?) they already love?

(d) How do aspects of (b) & (c) fit into one's own considerations of (a) and how they affect one's approach to (b) and (c) and one's general reading?

Re 'readers' above, this also applies to 'writers' and their own practice and prejudice.

*
Art is as necessary as food and air.

Extremity within the Horror Fiction area of Art is not necessarily necessary within any one particular work but extremity of any kind is necessary within the potential armaments of Art. You're not forced to read or view the results, but the potentiality to shock must be available. Humanity and human existence and the human mind hang on humanity's perceived frailties as well as its perceived virtues (and Art is the finest mirror (often significantly cracked) for these perceptions): otherwise none of it would be human.
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GENERAL
There have been many postings since I made this blog's topic list but I hope it serves a purpose as linked from HERE

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Nemophile becomes Weirdtongue

I've now written an alternative first chapter of this free novel-in-progress, one more in keeping with the new title of Weirdtongue.

It is here: HERE.

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Proust and 'Magic Fiction'

For some weeks I've been trying to formulate a new literary term: Magic Fiction (as an obverse of Magic Realism). Today, I had a Road to Damascus: Proust's work is the ideal example of Magic Fiction. I am still struggling with the definition of Magic Fiction by the means of brainstorming.


A discussion thread (two pages) dwelling on these concerns: HERE.

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the nemOphile

My next novel has just started HERE.

This will involve the Weirdmonger, Blasphemy Fitzworth and Padgett Weggs but I hope and intend that it will be more real-based and less wordy (no chance!) and less cosmic/wild than my previous novels.
This particular posting is, of course, apocryphal.

Magic Fiction (continued)

I used the expression ‘Magic Fiction’ as a sort of obverse of a more common expression: 'Magic Realism'. I think the greatest exponent of the latter is Salman Rushdie. Giving real world historic and contemporary events a magic quality that only fiction can accomplish.

But then, I recently read ‘Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell’ which I consider to be a major work of something quite different from Magic Realism. Somewhere in this massive book (a passage I can never re-find!) is a section about fiction itself being used as a magic weapon in a war. And I saw magic not as the usual ‘occult’ or ‘mysticism’ or ‘fantastical’ or a book of spells like anything ending –omicon. It was fiction magic … magic fiction. This is what I’m trying to tease out as a discrete and new element in fiction. Nothing weird, nothing paranormal, nothing thaumaturgical. Perhaps (hopefully) a New Magic that is quite rational.

This Road to Damascus was coupled and 'inspired' by my own work on "dream sickness" in my 2005/6 novels, and all the paradoxes that that experience created reinforced my desire to use fiction as a battle against, say, ‘bird flew’.

It’s worked so far!

The Candlemass Stories

GRASS

CANDLEMASS

CANDLEMASS (2)

LEFT FOOT

LEFT FOOT (2)

SNAIL TRAIL

SNAIL TRAIL (2)

SILLY AUTOMATIC

CLIMB DOWN EVERY MOUNTAIN

CLIMB DOWN EVERY MOUNTAIN (2)

THE MISSING ARROW

GRASS (2) or THE MISSING ARROW (2)


True Horror Art is out-of-season dusty Christmas baubles hanging in a sepulchrally quiet gallery or museum complete with rows of study-cubicles or carrels and then you realise the carrels are pews and one who was born at Christmas stares down at you from the roof.

EDIT: (February 2nd 2010 - Candlemass): CANDELARIA: http://www.ligotti.net/showthread.php?p=38732

Missing Visitor

Those of you have read past Part (21) of THE VISITOR 1974 may be interested to learn that a section of this part (The Story of The Red Ocelot) was inadvertently missed out from it. This has now been restored.

des

The (Neo)-Ominous Imagination

"There seems to be a basic element of horror in most things", has been written elsewhere.


I call that the Ominous Imagination. We need a neo-ominous one, perhaps! As to gross-out horror impeding the growth of the horror arts in general, that's partly true, but also how art-mediators package it. Extreme Horror in an art museum is just another way to package it. Blatant jagged noises played as music, yet another.

There are not so much individual prejudices against various forms of art or music or writing, but a mass anti-hysteria where we all follow mutely the pattern-trails laid for us by coordinated paper chasers who *do* have individual prejudices.

Perhaps.

Modern Art / Wordy Weird

Yet the point about my question - with regard to what people *consider* to be modern art - is it *possible* any longer to confront or insult the audience? I suggest not...because it's all been done before. Blank canvases and stale food in the corner of a glass case and...

So where can one go? Not confront the audience (because that is now impossible), but challenge them, comfort them, give them what they want so you make a lot of money, pander to them, or simply ignore them.

So, yes, following on from above with further reflection, I suggest that 'ignoring' an audience *is* far more possible these days than 'insulting' them.

Then the topic, inevitably, leads to a further question. Are there artists who want to insult an audience or need to do so? And, if so, why?

And is ignoring an audience a new art form? The extreme of this attitude would to keep the work in a cupboard. Buried Art. Has Buried Art replaced Modern Art?

This does not sit well, personally, with me giving away all my new works in recent years on free blogs? But I feel that that act may be a brand of Buried Art. Overexposed free Art (which nobody reads) is akin to Buried Art!

(brainstorming)


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A contribution to the recent 'Self-Mythology' thread on Shocklines:-

What Des Lewis has achieved is to literally create his own genre of fiction; a genre in which the standard values are often turned upside-down. Most fiction seeks clarity-- Des seeks ambiguity. Most fiction expresses a small number of simple, often recycled ideas; Des builds labyrinths of ideas, in which subtle shades of meaning flourish.

Pick up a copy of Poetry Magazine, and you'll find the same verbosity and subtlety of meaning. But Des does it in short story and novel form. This is perfectly legitimate, but people get confused when they read him and use the same yardsticks to judge his fiction that they'd use to judge the horror fiction that they're used to.

Wordy Weird should be recognized as being its own subgenre, and Wordy Weird stories should be judged in comparison to each other, not directly measured against traditional horror stories, etc. It's Appalachians and orangutans.

Revisiting The Visitor

Pleased to say that I've just this minute completed the laborious task of re-typing my 1974 novel THE VISITOR starting from: HERE.


Forty-four postings in all.

This incorporates small sections of 'The Egnisomicon' (1967).

Modern Art / World Cup

I love all forms of modern art. Anyone got strong views for or against?

I only give two examples at this stage:

(i) Modern serious (classical?) music such as that by Penderecki*, Ligeti, Thomas Ades, James MacMillan etc. etc. really conveys, for me, the feel and ethos of Horror fiction and films!!

*have you heard his 'Threnody For the Victims of Hiroshima', just as one example?


(ii) The World Cup. The Final yesterday stamped forever the intrinsic dark symbolism of the event for me. Ranging from Figo's headbutt, Rooney's kickback into balls, Zidane's insane or (more likely) gratuitous act last night (both clownish and vicious), playing a single match with many random matchballs (not one noumenon of a matchball for the players to devote their team spirit), the dreamlike dives - not of graceful dancers or birds but human bodies clumsily burying themselves into the Earth ball itself...

In contrast, I watched the BBC's goals of the tournament, one after the other in quick succession (including the beautiful ballet of the best goal of them all), and I was glad I had been part of it all, even as a spectator through the reality screens: yet another 'Big Brother'-like extravaganza of mixed emotions. Modern Art at its best and worst.


Re Zidane's Kiss, in particular, I think that is the essence of an art event or 'happening', whereby one cannot gauge the intentionality, yet it is art (if one deems it a work of art - and this particular one was an art event for millions, I feel, in one go, rather than trooping for years by a urinal in a museum), and all great art, I feel, creates a lasting image in your mind together with (mixed) emotions that also last.

Mythly is near Manningtree

I'm in for the long haul or the broad brushstoke of things actually working in the round - rather than the precise grammatical point.

I suppose I'm a descriptivist, not a prescriptivist.

But this thread is about self-mythliness whereby both sense and sensibility take a backseat to shooting the white water rapids of semantics, phonetics, graphology & syntax.

That sounds pretentious. It is. But what the heck.


LONG discussion Thread HERE!

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genres

I don't know about you, but I write in a genre of one.

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THE NEMONICON about this trade paperback.

NEMONYMOUS about this famous journal.

Irreducibles: the main DFL blog.

Weirdmonger Wheel: Shortened version.

THE HAWLER: the start of DFL’s 2006 trilogy of novels that can be read for free on the internet.

THE VISITOR: the start of DFL's 1974 novel where you can learn about ‘The Egnisomicon’ (1967), the Visitoral hordes and the unforgettable art Master. All free on the internet.

candlemass, snail trail, grass etc. (2006)

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Self-Mythologiser

Self-Mythology

Look at the words. Do you own up. If you are an artist, writer, musician etc. - do you self-mythologise? Do you present the image that fits most neatly with your work – helping it commercially or aesthetically or bothly. Or does the work and its pastness help to frame the mythology of self by hindsight? You are the myth, or you are your work: veiled by a nemonymity with which you attempt to cultivate a pique of detachment – yet creating hinterlands of perspective. You may own up to it, but do you actually own it, this self-mythology. Delivery by default mythly.

The Egnisomicon (1967)

'Etepsed-Egnis' was the first poem in THE EGNISOMICON (1967) - later rewritten for 'The Visitor' novel (1974). At last this poem is on the internet (as part 36 of 'The Visitor'), but it is the latter 1974 version, not the original. Part 1 of the novel starts: HERE

I would hope that the whole 1967 EGNISOMICON (a major collaboration with the Red Brain of the legendary 'Dagon' magazine) will later be blogged in full and unchanged, subject to various permissions.

*
Apocrypha:
'Etepsed-Egnis' - a story by DFL - that appeared in DAGON (1989): HERE



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World Cup / Dr Who / Big Brother

I don't know how common this practice is - but I'm sure in the past there was generally only one match ball. Now there are several potential matchballs - chopping and changing into play. With the one ball there was a crystallisation of purpose, a sort of godhead with which the team's 'spirit' could commune (intentionally or, more often, volitionlessly) whereby the team with a big spirit and, maybe, small technical skill could stand more chance.

On b&w small screen TVs - where I used to watch football - a completely different view of the Rooney incident would have changed the whole course of any post-match inquest. There were no panels no close-ups no slowmotion replays. They started when Brian Clough came on TV in colour with Brian Moore in the early seventies. So I blame him. And that's when I stopped watching football. Till now. And I am amazed and dismayed.

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I preferred the old 'slower' versions of Dr Who - particularly when William Hartnell was in the transformational hot seat.

Despite being a time traveller, Dr Who's style of adventuring (whatever time zone he is in 'storywise') seems to fit in with the fashion of filming techniques and audience taste of the era in which the adventures are first shown.

It would be good to see a modern episode in the style of an old one. As to an old one in the style of a modern one, well, that may be problematic - but I dunno...

I suppose the old Peter Cushing Dr Who films fit into that scenario somewhere... Daleks from an old Seventies cinema film meet the Daleks of an old sixties black and white episode - they combine as cohorts and then face the Daleks of Russell T Davies and grind them into the dust.
:-)

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From the human condition ... to the meaning of life. I've spent years watching BB hoping against hope to discover the meaning of life ... and when, at last, it comes (from the mouth of Glyn), they censor it!!

And, at the end of a recent summary programme, two tragic clowns in Nowhere (Lea & Pete) tussle with the fateful misunderstandings of human relationships amid the heavy balloons of entropy.

I think Nikki got the word 'delusionalized' from the translation of Sartre's 'In Camera'.

I am getting fed up with Pete's nervous laugh which becomes entrammelled sometimes with his genuine tourette tics. A nervous laugh is, however, a common tic with many people, as is a tic to keep saying 'you know' or 'Ermmm'? Pete is an obvious character who will do well after BB. I'm not sure he knows his own proclivitics, however.

Although I enjoyed Pete's earlier 'subdued' (!) diatribes against the multinoiac jungle-jealousy that was once rife in the house, I can't help thinking that it is easy for him to be the insulated showman who has eschewed any emotional involvement with any one of the others.