'Tis the Season = M.R. James

This isn't cheap but the concept is pretty great: a book about the real life settings of hundreds of ghost stories
http://tartaruspress.com/ghost-story-gazetteer.html

I just heard a reading of "Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book" on the Ephemeral podcast. Inspired me to download Ghost Stories of an Antiquary. Happy Holidays.

Asking gpt-3 to write a moomin story in the style of m.r. james. 'in the style of' doesn't seem to work so well but this one gets a bit meta:

As the moon rose high in the night sky, the moomins gathered around their cozy little house, huddled together against the chill of the autumn air. In the distance, the forest was alive with the rustling of leaves and the howling of the wind, but the moomins were safe and warm inside their home.

Suddenly, a knock at the door startled them all. Who could it be at this late hour? The moomins hesitated, but eventually one of them bravely opened the door to find a stranger standing on their doorstep.

The stranger was tall and thin, with a long, curved nose and a strange, otherworldly air about him. He introduced himself as Mr. James, a traveler who had been lost in the forest for days. The moomins welcomed him inside, offering him a cup of tea and a warm fire to sit by.

As they talked, Mr. James told the moomins of his adventures in the forest, of the strange and wondrous creatures he had encountered, and of the many dangers he had faced. The moomins listened with rapt attention, entranced by his tales of adventure.

But as the night wore on, the moomins began to sense that there was something not quite right about Mr. James. His stories seemed too fantastical, too far-fetched, to be true. And there was a glint in his eye, a hint of malice, that made them uneasy.

As the moomins prepared for bed, Mr. James retired to his room, but they could hear him muttering and chanting late into the night. And when they woke the next morning, they found that Mr. James had disappeared, leaving behind only a strange, cold feeling in the air.

The moomins knew then that they had been visited by a mysterious and dangerous creature, one that threatened to upset the balance of their peaceful world. But they were strong and brave, and they knew that they would overcome this threat, just as they had overcome all the others that had come before.

And so the moomins went about their days, keeping a watchful eye out for any further signs of Mr. James, determined to protect their home and their way of life from the dangers of the forest.

As the sun set over the peaceful Moomin Valley, the Moomins gathered around the fire to tell each other ghost stories. Little My was the first to speak, her voice trembling with fear as she told the tale of the ghostly Moominpappa who roamed the woods at night, searching for lost souls to haunt.

But it was Snufkin's story that truly chilled the Moomins to the bone. He spoke of the Moominmamma who, long ago, had been possessed by a dark spirit and had begun to prey on the other Moomins, luring them into her clutches with her sweet words and gentle touch.

The Moomins listened in horror as Snufkin described how the Moominmamma had lured Moominpappa into her embrace, only to reveal her true, monstrous form and devour him whole. And now, he warned, she was coming for the rest of them.

As the fire crackled and the night grew darker, the Moomins could hear the sound of soft footsteps approaching. And then, from the shadows, the Moominmamma emerged, her eyes glowing with malevolent intent as she reached out to embrace them all.

The Moomins screamed in terror as they were pulled into the darkness, never to be seen again. And in the silence that followed, the only sound was the Moominmamma's chilling laughter, echoing through the empty valley.

classic snufkin

Count Magnus was underwhelming on several levels. I swear I take no joy in this, and if i was less hungover and more energetic would have a good think about what's wrong with the commissioning process, the cultural expectations and a bunch of other non-Gatiss factors that wind up with these rote simulacra of past glories. Schalcken the Painter was on BBC4 the night before and tho that has a few minor issues of its own the yawning gulf in quality and ambition probly just soured Magnus even more.

at least if it was bad that would've been something

no wait, one more thing. Adaptation is adaptation, fine, it's not just about faithfulness to the source text. but what fucking use is a Count Magnus with all of the horror and dread flattened out of it?

didn't realise it was on - will have to fit it on over the next few days. stoked for the disappointment.

not sure whether my memory is up to its usual tricks, or I've never heard of schlacken the painter.

it's been discussed somewhere this year i think? if not this thread, then maybe Wyrd Britain or one of the old TV movie threads

it isn't a strictly functional ghost story maybe, but it pisses over this latest effort

magnus is a pmtough ask translating across mediums IMO but trust gatiss to fvck it up lol

pmtough = p tough

yeah i asked myself what a good version would look like and i'm not at all sure. but not this one

then i thought maybe the Beeb should start A Borges for Christmas and give it to fucking Danny Boyle or someone

considered opinion: Gatiss isn't a big James fan

The Tractate Middoth was ok and the other one was crap, I'm in no hurry to watch this.

I meant The Mezzotint

I think I missed his version of The Mezzotint, or at least I remember nothing about it. Probably commented on ilx somewhere if I did watch it but can't be fucked to search. I suspect Gatiss *is* a James fan but yeah, his adaptations have been deeply underwhelming for the most part, this one included. His own one, The Dead Room, I thought was a genuinely good addition to the canon.

Didn't realise Schalcken was on BBC4, have already arranged a rewatch with a friend for our own Ghost Stories For Christmas shenanigans. I remember thinking it was wonderful when I last saw it but not much about what happens! We've already done a rewatch of The Exorcism from Dead of Night and oh man, if you haven't seen that one you really should. Powerhouse of a scenery-chewing performance as the centrepiece of that one, and deeply political. Also Clive Swift.

gattis is forever on book shambles podcast and its various offshoots talking about that stuff - I've just been listening to their stay-at-home-festival stuff they did during lockdown. which makes it more of a mystery why he never quite nails it.

haven't seen magnus yet because parents TV only gets sport and afternoon quiz shows, somehow

i quite enjoyed mezzotint right up to the final moments bcz i tht rory kinnear was p good and then they gerald's gamed it lol

tbf this error goes all the way back to casting the runes / night of the demon == climactic horror being underwhelming after all

fond tho everyone justly is of:
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/horrormovies/images/e/e8/The_Bad_Dude_Night_of_the_Demon_%281957%29.jpg

Of course Night of the Demon is great but it's the cat that's the scary monster

emil.y I haven't seen The Exorcism as far as I know and I'll look out for it

"Poor Bilbo Baggins! He set out on his journey to the Shire on the next day, as he had planned, and he reached England in safety; and yet, as I gather from his changed hand and inconsequent jottings, a broken hobbit"

perhaps bcz forewarned it wd be poor i didn't hate this (tho my co-viewers were very underwhelmed): jason watkins playing wraxall (or wraxhall as gatiss calls him and fraxhall as voiceover magnus pronounces him) as bumptiuously irritating and silly, with austin powers moves. which is a reading (the swedes in the original story none of them extend their chats with him lol) even if it makes him p hard to care about. no harm bringing in the countess as a new exposition deliverer (rather surprisingly in life james actually spent time with women but he didn't write so many). the bystanders were more wickerman complicit than the original story quite suggests -- as if they need a sacrifice and feel bad for him even if he is super-annoying -- but actually i quite like this evolution. bcz he knows and wills the ending, and sees the victim as his pet's lunch more than sociology, magnus as voiceover strips out abt half of the device by which the reader observes wraxall's terror mouintg = the reader reading w's increasingly panicked journal over his shoulder: also i think it was gatiss doing fake swedish, which fvck that.

the look of the setting was (to say it 18th century style) pleasantly BOSKY, tho not i think v swedish, it was filmed nr beaconsfield, which probably undermines w's sense of solitude. my co-viewers were "there's not much to it!" -- well no, despite being somewhart cryptically warned off wraxall wakes the terror and the terror goes after him, that's literally it, the value and weight of the story is in the measure of the mounting dread not the rubber tentacle lol.

here's a passage quoting from W's journal piling up the dread: "as I sit here in my room noting these facts, I ask myself (it was not twenty minutes ago) whether that noise of creaking metal continued, and I cannot tell whether it did or not. I only know that there was something more than I have written that alarmed me, but whether it was sound or sight I am not able to remember." i'm not going to say this idea is literally unfilmable, but gatiss made no adequate attempt and found no adequate solution, in favour of cutting to -- and then p much past -- the chase

imv gatiss is a malignant mediocrity who never fails to extract the mysterious transformative element from his subject matter before representing, adapting or reviewing it.

i *partially* agree with it being more or less unfilmable, but feel someone with an imagination and an understanding of the mechanics of james’ ghost stories might make a decent fist of it. i don’t think gatiss has an ounce of imaginative capability in his entire frame. I haven’t seen CM yet tho. am almost reluctant to, tho like you thought the mezzotint was actually fairly acceptable, again mainly because of rory kinnear, who is an incredibly good actor at minimal conveyance of thought and emotion. just magically good at it. and also v good at amplifying that subtle approach on stage as well, which is a total mystery to me how you do it.

oh and merry xmas/wobs etc all!

by making Wraxall a buffoon you basically eliminate the possibility of sympathetic terror

the emphasis all very much on the wrong things as per

otm (in advance of me having seen it but p certain it’s otm).

while we’re here i want to rep once again for The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance, which i read again the other day and feel is neglected esp as it has the important element of a f’ing sinister punch and judy show.

the painting was a classic of bad art in a movie :D

this is the de la gardie MRJ is generally assumed to have had in mind:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/91/Jakob_delagardi.jpg

wikipedia on the de la gardies then and now:
The family's social status in France is uncertain; the founder, Ponce d'Escouperie, son of a tradesman, came to Sweden as a mercenary in 1565 and took the name Pontus De la Gardie when registered by the House of Knights. He was given the title friherre in 1571 and married Sofia Johansdotter Gyllenhielm, an illegitimate daughter of king John III in 1580.

The baronial title ended with his eldest son John De la Gardie. Pontus De la Gardie's second son, Jacob De la Gardie, was given the title count of Läckö in 1615; his grandson Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie became a favourite of Queen Christina and married her cousin, Countess Palatine Maria Eufrosyne of Zweibrücken (a sister of Charles X Gustav of Sweden).

The De la Gardie of Läckö comital lineage is extinct. The current head of the family, Carl Gustaf De la Gardie (1946– ), lives outside Linköping.

linköping is the swedish for microwave

CM is the one where Chorazin is referenced isn’t it? For all those Spectre vs Rector fans out there.

yup

chorazin-ah as MES refers to it 😇

pronouncing it convincingly would've been a good idea too

it has the same root as chorizo: he was on the black pilgrimage there to meet the prince of the air SPICY MEDITERRANEAN SAUSAGE

its-a me magnus

brb going to chatgpt for spector vs rector in the style of joe dolce.

https://mario.wiki.gallery/images/thumb/b/b5/Blooper_-_MarioPartyStarRush.png/1200px-Blooper_-_MarioPartyStarRush.png

Magnus's companion, earlier today

"as I sit here in my room noting these facts, I ask myself (it was not twenty minutes ago) whether that noise of creaking metal continued, and I cannot tell whether it did or not. I only know that there was something more than I have written that alarmed me, but whether it was sound or sight I am not able to remember."

from Wormwoodiana blog:

At the Cambridge University Library Special Collections website* Clarck Drieshen discusses the authentic medieval magical document, held by the library, which was deployed by M R James in his New Year's Eve 1931 ghost story 'The Experiment'. A fresh look at the manuscript identifies it as one known in other collections of 15th and 16th century magical texts and, by comparing these and re-examining the text, he reveals that James may have mis-read the name of the presiding spirit.

As he observes: "This changes the nature of the ritual from an angelic to a demonic one". The misinterpretation sounds itself like an incident that might have occurred in a Jamesian story, no doubt with drastic consequences . . .

(Mark Valentine) *https://specialcollections-blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=24166

it's true that james mis-decrypts a demon's name (""assaell", elsewhere known as "azazel") for one ordinarily associated with angels ("raffaell") -- he indicates his uncertainy with a question mark in the text and didn't have time or opportunity to go back and check as the story was on deadline and the library had closed for christmas -- but i am unconvinced james ever saw this ritual as in any routine way "angelic"! or perhaps more accurately that he would even have considered "angelic" a shorthand for things only nice and good: this is magic and it requires the advice and assistance of those we should not treat with, and it is always evil

in fact the otherness and predatory peril of angels (yes fallen, but they're still angels) sat directly within his purview as a scholar -- he himself had discovered or recovered a section of the latin translation of the biblical (or more accurately apocryphal) book of enoch, in which all this is expanded at some length. azazel even gets a passing mention (as a kind of sauron-when-still-fair figure):

Chapter 8
1 And Azazel taught men to make swords, and knives, and shields, and breastplates, and made
known to them the metals of the earth and the art of working them, and bracelets, and
ornaments, and the use of antimony, and the beautifying of the eyelids, and all kinds of costly
stones, and all
2 colouring tinctures. And there arose much godlessness, and they committed fornication, and
they
3 were led astray, and became corrupt in all their ways (…)

cheers for that Azazel

Am now very worried for this instagrammer, who may not have read any MR James. LEAVE IT BE, MIKE, FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT’S HOLY pic.twitter.com/cV2HfD5Qbe

— Helen Macdonald (@HelenJMacdonald) January 4, 2023

just watched Schalcken, it's on iPlayer until Saturday. loved all the Flemish art references

The climax is a little ripe I think - and I like expressionism over realism! - but the journey to it has lots of beautiful creepiness and creepy beauty, yes. And on reflection the whole thing, like all Flemish art, is about accountancy

I listened to the Christopher Lee readings over the last couple of days. God he's good. As ever with good readers, it's the way he manages silence.

I say 'listened to' as they make some nice use of different props and you get a sense of the ordering and layering James is doing with different narrative perspectives and devices but the re-enactments are largely pointless as drama.

any word of a new wrong-headed James adaptation on the BBC this year?

Oh that reminds me - the latest Blacklisted is an MR James special: https://www.backlisted.fm/episodes/199
The most excellent Andrew Male is the main guest.

I say 'reminds me' because my first thought when I saw the episode was 'don't let it be Gatiss'.

How is that as a podcast? The books they cover look like a really good range, but I'm a bit worried about general Media Liberal conservatism.

They do cover good books and I've discovered lots of great things through them but yeah, it's a bit Mojo for books.

i know andrew a little -- literally reviews editor for mojo, gave my book a nice thumbs up -- and (relatedly but anyway) i like him

I didn't mean to give the impression that any of that was about AM! I know him a little too (if one day record shopping and a few beers talking about Larkin counts) and totally agree. He's great and easily one of the best guests they have on Backlisted.