'Tis the Season = M.R. James

well i've bookmarked that list anyway, hope it's full of people who are good like MRJ not just boring cargo cult MRJ *cough*Susan Hill*cough*

yeah i swear i've watched Barchester on TV in the last few years

> (opposite it on ch5 is a ghost story about an antique book dealer...)

this was by Susan Hill...

i know that's what made me think of her

nb i have never nor will i ever read her work

I've taught The Woman in Black a few times. It's a bad book. The upsides are the film from 1988 and particularly the stage show, which is just terrific.

A Warning to the Curious starring Peter Vaughan is on iPlayer now, proper East Anglian uncanny

That story is the subject of the best episode (or two) of ‎A Podcast to the Curious, going into detail on James' experience of WW1 and how it plays into the story. Though they gloss over the strangely mutable dig site (Paxton takes a train back from the dig, then later on they all walk to it from the hotel in half an hour or so.)

the passage where paxton mentions the train is odder even than that really -- bcz he's clearly describing being shadowed on his walk back to the hotel! i wonder if what it means (but doesn't say at all clearly) is that he was aiming to catch a train first thing in the morning from seaburgh (since he now has the crown) but actually never does: instead he returns to the hotel and slumps there in despair

this allows the dig to be not far from the hotel on the outskirts of the town (of course coastal trains also had stops every two minutes in the 1900s)

Aye, you recall that too, friend mark.

he's clearly describing being shadowed on his walk back to the hotel! i wonder if what it means (but doesn't say at all clearly) is that he was aiming to catch a train first thing in the morning from seaburgh (since he now has the crown) but actually never does: instead he returns to the hotel and slumps there in despair

i thought he was being shadowed on his walk from the dig to the station? i guess he does say 'take a train back' which is ambiguous, but he mentions getting into the carriage, if he then got too spooked and jumped out again he probably would have mentioned that too. i think in the podcast they say he got the train to hide the fact of where he was digging but there's nothing in the text to support that.

this article shares my feeling that it's just a slip of james' mind, around which we are free to construct whatever spooky explanation we choose ("the sheer fear that Paxton experiences while being chased along the beautifully desolate beaches and forests forces the very logic of the topography to dissolve" suggests another article on the tv version):

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~pardos/ArchivePleasing.html

yes you're right i'd totally forgotten the bit abt the porter (possibly bcz it's a bit too like a similar passage in casting the runes)

the opening paragraph also strongly suggests that the burial mound is on the outskirts of the town (which is not very big even now)

Not sure the extent to which these were oral stories before they were published or whether that matters too much but I hadn't noticed and it's worth thinking about

many of them were written to be read aloud iirc

(funny that 'M R James' doesn't find this thread but 'MR James' does despite not being a match for title)

anyway, Lost Hearts on bbc4 tonight (and this has been recently repeated, assuming it's the same version with the creepy white children, but my recording missed the end)

I thought Warning to the Curious was great, and I don't think I'd seen it before

haha yes i suspect my ineffective suggested explanations derive from reading the essay ledge links to several years ago and then forgetting i'd read it and simply internalising some of its rejected explanations

Oh I meant the 72 BBC film with Peter Vaughan, it's never been one of my favourites but they did good work with it

watched it yesterday, and yes is good. as mark says, the mound in the story is clearly v much within walking distance of the town (and have indeed walked it myself p much).

also despite reading it many times had not noticed that paxton gets a train back to seaburgh after acquiring the crown and they walk there when putting it back.

definitely feels like a slip of the narrative rather than anything else.

http://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/ernst.jpg

I was pleased and unruffled by the way the film took liberties with the story, or at least I think it was taking liberties, been a while since I read the original. Maybe a bit unnecessary in the ending but the cinematography was gorgeous and spot on

definitely liberties but i think they worked well enough like you say.

i prefer the story ending of him which is probably too grotesque to manage or desire to do on film.

You don't need to be told that he was dead. His tracks showed that he had run along the side of the battery, had turned sharp round the corner of it, and, small doubt of it, must have dashed straight irito the open arms of someone who was waiting there. His mouth was full of sand and stones, and his teeth and jaws were broken to bits. I only glanced once at his face.

The notion of Paxton running after--after anything like this, and supposing it to be the friends he was looking for, was very dreadful to us. You can guess what we fancied: how the thing he was following might stop suddenly and turn round on him, and what sort of face it would show, half-seen at first in the mist--which all the while was getting thicker and thicker. And as I ran on wondering how the poor wretch could have been lured into mistaking that other thing for us, I remembered his saying, 'He has some power over your eyes.'

Can't visually improve on the master

I did believe it hadn't been shown since the 70s tho cos the tape was not in good nick

Anyhoo yeah Lost Hearts tonight which I'll no doubt watch later in the week and I don't love the liberties or the treatment so much

I did believe it hadn't been shown since the 70s tho cos the tape was not in good nick

Not so keen on them changing Paxton to an older man, it removes the possibility of the WWI readings, with Paxton's elders and mentors unable to save him as James was unable to help those he mentored who went off to die in the war - or more sinisterly Paxton following those he believes to be his elders and mentors to his death. Sounds a bit crass condensed like that maybe but the podcast goes into more detail on James' wartime role and how it plays into those readings.

incidentally my own reading of the story -- based on the chiming descriptions of ager and paxton (young very solitary men of obsessive tendency) -- is that the final terrible face he sees is his own

this isn't remotely canon lol -- and it occurs to me now (reading ledge's post but w/o checking the podcast) that it could certainly be elaborated, via earthworks-trenches and the wartime clash and sacrifice by the old of so many younger men on both sides, and the "martello tower" and the broken face with sand in it…

as for that mysterious train: "'The First World War had begun - imposed on the statesmen of Europe by railway timetables. It was an unexpected climax to the railway age" (A.J.P.Taylor)

ffs i have actual work to do this morning

I did believe it hadn't been shown since the 70s tho cos the tape was not in good nick

not helped by having a whacking great BBC ident in the upper left-hand corner of the picture

"Over on BBC Two, M.R. James’ The Mezzotint, adapted by Mark Gatiss, stars Rory Kinnear, Robert Bathurst, Frances Barber, John Hopkins, Emma Cunniliffe, and Nikesh Patel. This haunting tale, set in an old English college in 1922, it is guaranteed to bring some eerie fear to the audience."

(new years eve ish)

it is guaranteed to bring some eerie fear to the audience

great copywriting here

bbc christmas press release, bound to be a bit florid

also, xmas eve is the more traditional time for this. stop doing james wrong.

Gatiffs

moffe growing upon the scrapbook of a canon

Further to the discussion of Jamesian authors some way above, I really enjoyed both collections of Women's Weird. Sometimes stretching fairly standard horror to fit 'weird fiction', perhaps, but they're great anthologies, and there are a few antiquarian spooks in there to get a James-like fix.

Those look great. Might actually lose a fair bit of cash on that publisher in general, looks like they have loads of interesting stuff.

those do look good, thanks for the link

Yeah will give that a go.

Mezzotint an interesting choice for televising, all the action happens in a picture which makes no difference in the reader's imagination but hard to imagine it having a high spook factor on the screen.

very high risk factor making an artwork the centre of yr visual fiction!

itt: paintings that are plot-points in movies and TV that are terrible paintings (or excellent ones if there are any)

Aha, I was sure that I'd seen a version of 'the Mezzotint' before, and I had! BBC Classic Ghost Stories, 1986: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3389680/reference

I recall liking it a lot, too. I don't have an anti-Gatiss kneejerk reaction like some people do, but I do kind of wish he wasn't the only one reviving these stories.

Thanks for the link emil.y, hadn't heard of that publisher before. Wonder if there's much crossover with the British Library's anthologies of proper old ghost etc stories

https://shop.bl.uk/collections/british-library-fiction/products/a-phantom-lover-and-other-dark-tales-by-vernon-lee

tbf it's not full-blown kneejerk with Gatiss but he usually winds up disappointing me

I'm not sure any of the adaptations past or present have been that great tbh. The original Oh Whistle was about seven hours too long, the keystone cops chase at the end of A Warning to the Curious was pretty disappointing.

Nooo, lies, ledge, lies. Both of those are wonderful. (My favourite Xmas ghost story adaptation is The Signalman but that's not James so doesn't count on this thread, I guess.)

I want full on CGI monsters & gore not flapping sheets and a bloody nose.

none more goth!

https://norfolktalesmyths.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/lost-hearts-lost6.jpg

That made me think of Our Mutual Friend - "come up and be dead!" - which made me think of "I'll hold you living and I'll hold you dead" from the same - which made me think of the climax to A School Story.