Hyper-Imaginative Literature (10)

 

From the Hyper-Imaginative Literature Group

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Here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/492148730623399/

Recent Des Lewis contributions to the ‘imaginary anthologies’ project:

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A project started by Arthur Straker, for us all to follow, if we feel inclined. He said “If I was to edit an anthology of twelve hyper-imaginative short stories it just might look something like this…”
Just might be this one, for me:.

The Inherited Clock by Elizabeth Bowen
A.B.O. by Walter de la Mare
The Trains by Robert Aickman
Flowers of the Sea by Reggie Oliver
The Vanishing Life and Films of Emmanuel Escobada
Where Their Fire is Not Quenched by May Sinclair
The Seed and the Sepulchre by Clark Ashton Smith
The Beckoning Fair One by Oliver Onions
The Death of Simon Fuge by Arnold Bennett
The Residence of Whitminster by M.R. James
Mark Stafford’s Wife by Charlotte Mew
The Hound by H.P. Lovecraft

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If you wish, please DO take this as an invitation to post a second quality twelve story HI-L anthology, but mine is not a ‘second division’ anthology to the first one I posted but a parallel book simply with its own separate gestalt.

THEY by Rudyard Kipling
THE SWINE TASTER by Rhys Hughes
THE SOCIABLE GHOST by Olive Harper
THE TELl-TALE HEART by Edgar Allan Poe
THE INSANITY OF JONES by Algernon Blackwood
MYSTERIOUS KÔR by Elizabeth Bowen
MARY POSTGATE by Rudyard Kipling
WHITE RABBIT by Georgina Bruce
THE MATADOR OF THE FIVE TOWNS by Arnold Bennett
SLOUGH by Glen Hirshberg
WOOD by Robert Aickman
THE VILLAGE THAT VOTED THE EARTH WAS FLAT by Rudyard Kipling

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A strong feature that justifies the ‘hyper’ in H-IL is the sudden up-slope of fabulous epiphany by an otherwise ‘sober’ writer, e.g.
Mary Postgate by Rudyard Kipling
Under the Garden by Graham Greene
The Figure in the Carpet by Henry James
The Death of Simon Fuge by Arnold Bennett
A Foreign Dignitary by Bernard MacLaverty
I can’t remember examples, but there is also William Trevor.
Of course, the ultimate writers as a H-IL pendulum are HG Wells and EF Benson, respectively between, say, Mr Polly and ‘SF’ works, or Mapp & Lucia and Caterpillars!
Any other examples?