Night shadows : twentieth-century stories of the uncanny / edited and introduced by Joan Kessler.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Kessler, Joan.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Horror tales, American.

Horror tales, English.

Paranormal fiction.

Genre:

Fiction.

Physical Description:

xvi, 297 pages ; 23 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Boston : David R. Godine, 2001.

Summary:

This fine collection of fifteen stories straddles the thin border between ordinary anxiety and existential nightmare. These tales of dread and darkness ignore the traditional demons haunting country houses or popping up from unopened graves, but instead feature characters inhabiting the familiar scenes of quotidian life. That these are tales of ordinary people makes them all the more disquieting, their horrors more sharply edged, precisely because they are set in modern, everyday reality. What the protagonists have in common, regardless of age, status, or profession, is that at some point in their lives, by imperceptible degrees or with alarming rapidity, reality turns strange, the unthinkable becomes conceivable, and the specters of uncertainty, fear, and stark, sheer terror become their constant companions.

Many are studies of compulsion, of forces so powerful they subjugate the will; others are of obsession. The energies and tensions of family life also provide fertile ground: Wharton and Graves portray tormented (and tormenting) couples, while Campbell and Aickman explore unplumbed depths in a father-son and a mother-daughter relationship. In the stories by Truman Capote and Joyce Carol Oates, the uncanny is encountered in a fateful and unsettling regression to childhood.

The supernatural has probably never been far away, usually hovering nearby as (in the words of V. S. Pritchett) "blobs of the unconscious that have floated up to the surface of the mind." In this post-Freudian world we have writers who are unafraid to explore the meanings and parameters of the supernatural. From Elizabeth Bowen to Shirley Jackson, from Ray Bradbury to William Trevor, this selection savors the shadows of these nocturnal landscapes, providing us with momentary (and always literary) encounters with this most elusive, and least tamed, landscape of the human heart.

Contents:

"Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad" / M. R. James 3

The Shout / Robert Graves 25

Pomegranate Seed / Edith Wharton 47

The Demon Lover / Elizabeth Bowen 82

Midnight Blue / John Collier 91

Miriam / Truman Capote 98

The Daemon Lover / Shirley Jackson 112

Heartburn / Hortense Calisher 130

The Screaming Woman / Ray Bradbury 142

W. S. / L. P. Hartley 158

The Inner Room / Robert Aickman 171

Mrs. Acland's Ghosts / William Trevor 206

The Chimney / Ramsey Campbell 224

The Double Poet / Alison Lurie 244

The Doll / Joyce Carol Oates 270.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (page 295).

ISBN:

1567921809

OCLC:

47696330