rbadac (December 31, 1999)Mr Packard has come to Brioni in the Adriatic for a much-needed rest from his duties in the Civil Service. The salt sea air and seven hole golf course promise a relaxing environment to ease his overworked nerves-- that is, if it weren't for that unusual pair that persist in popping up now and again: the stocky, silent yokel with the short, birdlike little man who is forever looking up at an angle of thirty- five degrees about.Seated overlooking the shore watching an incoming storm brew, Mr Packard finds himself in company with these two, and after some perfunctory discussion on the existence of the Devil, the little man decides to tell his story.
Seems he had been acquainted in his youth with a friend who lived at Gauntry Hall, famed for its Long Gallery and for a malevolent legend concerning New Year's Eve. No one stays there on that night. When the family dies out, the Hall passes to the ownership of a couple named Relf who, being sceptical of the legend, propose to have a New Year's Eve party there, and the little man is one of the guests.
New Year's Eve is called Hogmanay-Night, and old customs include going from door to door asking in rude rhymes for cakes or money, the 'first foot' offering to whomever enters one's house first (see Ramsey Campbell's 'Calling Card' !), or to run three times *deasil* round houses cloaked in cowhide while being beaten with staffs similarly dressed, or to form circles and fire guns thrice into the air ('shooting the witches'), all part of activities of Epiphany, the Twelve Days of Christmas, which culminate on Twelfth Night (Jan.6).
Check your local ordnances first. Thanks to Luc for the New Year story, and a very Happy New Year to everyone here at a.b.g-f. ! And remember: a millenium has 1000 years, not 999. Don't cheat yourself.
rbadac, still on the Julian calendar for most of his bills
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Robert Suggs (December 31, 1999)
NOW we're talkin'. Got the Visiting Star out of our systems--let it go visit some other relatives, as it's one of the few Aickmans that doesn't converge harmonically with my celestial spheres. Or something. Wakefield is always a welcome topic, particularly one of his five or ten best tales, as "Look Up There" certainly is. It's been anthologised here and there, but tends to rest in the shadow of "The Red Lodge" and "Blind Man's Buff." Since I'm reading Wakefield anyway (albeit later HRW) I'll give this one a second look. It'll help us fritter away the time before "Wakefield 2000" appears (just kidding, wouldn't that be an AWFUL title??). SEVENTEEN new opuses, at any rate.As for your pharisaical reminders about the true date of the millennium, help yourself. Your story has grown tiresome. The world determines historical dates through usage rather than rules, just as it does with language. Any day now "irregardless" will be in your Webster's.
Rob
Trying to find out what channel "Dick Clark's Rockin' New Year's Eve" is on, and what time Three Dog Night will be singingoOo
William Allison (January 3, 2000)
Well you guys have gone and made me dig up my Dalby-edited Best of Wakefield volume (luckily I knew where that box was). I'm sorry to admit I've read very little Wakefield to this point (or if I read it a while back in some anthology I've completely forgotten it). I did read "The Red Lodge" in the 8th Fontana and thought the writing was a bit strained, though it certainly had its moments. "Look Up There" I found more effective (despite being less outwardly "horrific"), with a smoother feel to it. I'm now digging into the rest of the book with greater interest; thanks for getting me started.Bill A.
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Robert Suggs (January 3, 2000)
I think you'll like what you find. It's a good bet you've read "Blind Man's Buff," perhaps one of the essential ghost stories, a gem of simplicity. I don't think you'll find the writing strained in that one. Most of the best stuff is in the first two HRW collections, "They Return at Evening" and "Old Man's Beard" (or, left-side Atlantic, "Others Who Returned"). But he dribbled out some good stuff intermittently in his middle collections and there are a number of winners in "Strayers from Sheol," of which you, Bill, will be happy to know I've recently upgraded my jacket to the Arkham edition you helped me find! Also check out "Triumph of Death," which I THINK is in the Dalby U of Chicago edition, if I'm not wrong. An overrated story, to my mind anyway, has been "Eleventh Hole at Duncaster." I think the golf aspect (a turnoff for me) attracted a lot of anthologists looking for variety of approaches, so it was one of the three Wakefield stories people seemed to know for a long time.Wakefield wrote some better ones (and some worse).Rob
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Robert Suggs (January 5, 2000)
(Tap, tap tap) Is this thing on?Groovy. Um, I just wanted to say one thing about "Look Up There." And it's that this is the prototypical Wakefield "less is more" approach. It's intriguing that in a genre based on the careful buildup of atmosphere for effect, HRW tried to condense a story down to the essentials. He did have some success with longer form ("Lucky's Grove" and "It Cometh and It Passeth By"), but he's probably at his best with the quick, simple thrust. You can get the gist of this story across in a couple of sentences. Try this with, say, "Casting the Runes." He does this of course not only in "Blind Man's Buff" but also "Frontier Guards" (his most underrated story) and another favorite of mine, "Into Outer Darkness"(?--it's the leadoff in "Clock Strikes Twelve").
In that regard, Wakefield's belief is a story needs a gimmic; what he called an "idea" in some of his introductions. Haunted golf course. Haunted animal huntsman. Haunted book publisher. Looking at this approach, we tend to roll our eyes. But as often as not, he made it work for him. So the one thing--okay, it was two things--I wanted to say was that he likes it simple and he likes a neat idea.
Also, he likes that indelible image that just gets under your skin. The bit with the craned neck is masterful. What a horrible effect of a haunting. This is near-Metcalfian. Think about those two female corpses in "Triumph of the Night." The red moths on the canvas in "Mr Ash's Studio." So the two, okay three things I wanted to say were that Wakefield liked simple sketches, neat ideas and indelible images.
And perhaps best of all, he didn't explain things! This is a significant difference from the Victorians and especially the Jamesians- -to whom the antiquarian exposition and document pastiche is so all- fired important--that Wakefield deserves great credit that he never receives. Particularly in the "Sheol" era tales. Many of his ghosts are never explained at all. How much more powerful is the haunting in "Look Up There" when we never know just what it is that was seen? Anyone know the old story "Amundsen's Tent?" (author unknown to me) The story consists of people lining up and peering into Amundsen's tent and gasping in horror, one by one, until we're dying to know: WHAT THE HELL'S IN THAT TENT?? So--okay, it was three, no four things. Sue me, I like the story. What was in that long gallery of Wakefield's? Even the scream of "LOOK UP THERE!" is actually offstage, giving it yet another level of separation from the reader.
Speaking of the indelible image, I wouldn't mind discussing "Old Man's Beard," the tale. Oddly enough, Michael Cox chose this one for his Oxford English ghost story anthology; hardly the essential Wakefield tale, though fine enough. It's also not typical of HRW, with its distinctly Freudian, almost Aikmanovian (Aikmanovulan? Aikmanticular?) and distinctly sexual element right in the foreground. An oddball jaunt for him it would seem.
Rob
oOo
rbadac (January 4, 2000)
Robert Suggs wrote:
> As for your pharisaical reminders about the true date of the
> millennium, help yourself. Your story has grown tiresome. The world
> determines historical dates through usage rather than rules, just as
> it does with language.You're right. It IS the millenium. It says so right here on my can of Budweiser.
r(burp)dac
ooOoo