brb going to chatgpt for spector vs rector in the style of joe dolce.
― Fizzles, Sunday, 25 December 2022 15:37 (one year ago) link
https://mario.wiki.gallery/images/thumb/b/b5/Blooper_-_MarioPartyStarRush.png/1200px-Blooper_-_MarioPartyStarRush.png
Magnus's companion, earlier today
― partez Maroc anthem (Noodle Vague), Sunday, 25 December 2022 16:25 (one year ago) link
"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."
― dow, Tuesday, 27 December 2022 04:11 (one year ago) link
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
(Mark Valentine) *https://specialcollections-blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=24166
― dow, Saturday, 31 December 2022 20:39 (one year ago) link
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 81 And Azazel taught men to make swords, and knives, and shields, and breastplates, and madeknown to them the metals of the earth and the art of working them, and bracelets, andornaments, and the use of antimony, and the beautifying of the eyelids, and all kinds of costlystones, and all2 colouring tinctures. And there arose much godlessness, and they committed fornication, andthey3 were led astray, and became corrupt in all their ways (…)
― mark s, Sunday, 1 January 2023 12:22 (one year ago) link
cheers for that Azazel
― Wyverns and gulls rule my world (Noodle Vague), Sunday, 1 January 2023 12:28 (one year ago) link
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
― koogs, Friday, 6 January 2023 17:45 (one year ago) link
just watched Schalcken, it's on iPlayer until Saturday. loved all the Flemish art references
― koogs, Wednesday, 18 January 2023 20:42 (one year ago) link
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
― Kieth Encounter (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 18 January 2023 20:53 (one year ago) link
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.
― I would prefer not to. (Chinaski), Thursday, 2 November 2023 09:38 (ten months ago) link
any word of a new wrong-headed James adaptation on the BBC this year?
― no gap tree for old men (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 2 November 2023 09:47 (ten months ago) link
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'.
― I would prefer not to. (Chinaski), Thursday, 2 November 2023 09:52 (ten months ago) link
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.
― emil.y, Thursday, 2 November 2023 17:44 (ten months ago) link
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 would prefer not to. (Chinaski), Saturday, 4 November 2023 14:46 (ten months ago) link
i know andrew a little -- literally reviews editor for mojo, gave my book a nice thumbs up -- and (relatedly but anyway) i like him
― mark s, Saturday, 4 November 2023 14:53 (ten months ago) link
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.
― I would prefer not to. (Chinaski), Saturday, 4 November 2023 16:01 (ten months ago) link
And the podcast is good! Just a bit what emil.y said, basically.
i enjoyed the podcast! thanks for sharing it
― budo jeru, Sunday, 5 November 2023 01:43 (ten months ago) link
> any word of a new wrong-headed James adaptation on the BBC this year?
apparently the Christmas schedule is published (in drips and drabs) from start of December. i guess anything like this will be in the can already but I've not heard.
drama costs are sharing though (see cancellation of doctors) and i can see this being something they would cut (even though it's probably less than strictly's glitter budget)
― koogs, Sunday, 5 November 2023 10:55 (ten months ago) link
sharing - soaring
decided last night it was that time of year to start a re-read, at least until i get distracted by something else
so, my first thought/question. in "Canon Alberic" exactly how long has the sacristan been successfully dodging that demon? feels like it's not as lethal as one would suppose
― Tyler Perry's Cystitis (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 22 November 2023 15:40 (ten months ago) link
Canon Alberic himself managed a few years before it got him in bed, which also raises some questions
so as someone who will never not be thinking abt these stories, i think there's several possible things going on here (possibly all at the same time)
to establish the jamesian ground, you will perhaps recall that there is a story later in the first collections where the inconvenienced afterwards afterwards admits that the inconveniencer might have had no real power except to scare; being a threat only to the weak of heart (maybe)
well, the demon may only have the power to harass -- like a bully repeating the same annoying phrase over and over, the demon erodes the sacristan's sense of self and safety and the sacred simply by never letting up and always being there no matter how often or where he he prays
also (possibly): the sacristan is the caretaker of the church in which the scrapbook is housed rather than the actual owner of the book? thirdly (maybe): scrapbook, sacristan and demon are all in the actual church, which acts as a general protection against the worst?
alberic by contrast was the maker of the book and in bed (hence presumably not in church lol); possibly also ill and weakened? (tho it also says his departue was "rather sudden" or similar, which speaks against any vulnerability others had observed… )
(or a bed-ridden ?) of illness)
― mark s, Wednesday, 22 November 2023 17:23 (ten months ago) link
the sacristan keeps the book in his house - this is where he takes it out of the chest when offering it to Dennistoun. the picture of King Solomon with the demon does show a victim with what seems like a broken neck tho without looking back that might be vague in a Jamesian way. "the power only to harass" still feels like a plausible read tho
― Tyler Perry's Cystitis (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 22 November 2023 17:49 (ten months ago) link
like i don't want an actual canonical (thousand apologies) solution, i think it's just the first time i've thought about this specific thing
the detail that Dennistoun burns the original picture but has taken and keeps a photograph of it feels like it wants to be a relevant hint
― Tyler Perry's Cystitis (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 22 November 2023 17:50 (ten months ago) link
This year's bbc ghost story for christmas appears to be
"Kit Harington and Freddie Fox star in Mark Gatiss’ adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Ghost Story for Christmas: Lot No.249."
( https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/mediapacks/bbc-christmas-whats-on-tv-iplayer-2023 )
― koogs, Wednesday, 6 December 2023 12:42 (nine months ago) link
"The Residence at Whitminster" last night. goes on a bit.
― Honnest Brish Face (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 6 December 2023 17:11 (nine months ago) link
important related poll: Daddy Longlegs
― mark s, Wednesday, 6 December 2023 17:16 (nine months ago) link
that's right
general thought now i'm halfway or so thru the stories: James experiments with lots of different ways of narrating (despite his alleged conservative grumpiness). he chops the viewpoints of the stories up thru manuscripts (obv), reported accounts, narrator's voices, hints at and deferrals of plot developments. i guess i knew this but looking at it now i wonder if this presents an impediment to suitably Jamesian film adaptations - the need to tell a straight story flattens out the experience of reading them
― Honnest Brish Face (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 6 December 2023 17:20 (nine months ago) link
what if his entire body of work is in fact the scrapbook of canon alberic
― mark s, Wednesday, 6 December 2023 17:38 (nine months ago) link
uh this is my strong view fwiw. james uses framing devices because seeing ghosts directly is hard - for good reason. framing devices - that is to say a manuscript within a story, an engraving within a tale told by an innkeeper - is much harder to manage in film in a consistent way. you need to use sepia tints, or visibly different clothes or whatever. in a story the tone and medium is the same. the frame is permeable and natural and not evident.
― Fizzles, Thursday, 7 December 2023 18:59 (nine months ago) link
time to re-up my laborious essay on framing devices in ghost stories i guess sorry not sorry https://diasyrmus.com/2009/10/29/mr-james-r-kipling-d-welch-three-ghost-stories-for-all-hallows-even/
― Fizzles, Thursday, 7 December 2023 19:02 (nine months ago) link
excellent, and apologies if i've seen this before and forgot it in classic "my head" style
― Honnest Brish Face (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 7 December 2023 19:14 (nine months ago) link
not at all. i think i diffidently offer it every now and again, but v much in “a link?” way. nothing to do with your head.
― Fizzles, Thursday, 7 December 2023 19:55 (nine months ago) link
Thanks for the link Fizzles. I enjoyed it. The contemporaneous (ish) nature of those three writers would signal something? I think of Freud writing 'The Uncanny' in 1919, haunted by an entire continent of ghosts and James, in his role as provost, having to write letters of consolation to the parents of boys in his college.
I also wonder if the frames *produce* the ghosts somehow. A kind of slippage between worlds: the time is thrown out of joint and the ghosts come calling.
― I would prefer not to. (Chinaski), Thursday, 7 December 2023 20:35 (nine months ago) link
James reading the stories to his Christmas audience is yet another frame of course
― Honnest Brish Face (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 7 December 2023 20:42 (nine months ago) link
i think the 'frames produce the ghosts' is right, at least in the terms i wrote in that piece - as i say 'frames are also portals'.
interesting point about the period. it is of course well known that the boer war had a direct impact on MR James, Arthur Conan Doyle and Kipling, and generally led to a long victorian period of seance and table tapping. I'm also reminded of W Benjamin on Leskov in The Storyteller
With the WorId War a process began to become apparent which has not halted since then. Was it not noticeable at the end of the war that men returned from the battlefield grown silent - not richer, but poorer in communicable experience? What ten years later was poured out in the flood of war books was anything but experience that goes from mouth to mouth. And there was nothing remarkable about that. For never has experience been contradicted more thoroughly than strategic experience by tactical warfare, economic experience by inflation, bodily experience by mechanical warfare, moral experience by those in power. A generation that had gone to school on a horse-drawn streetcar now stood under the open sky in a countryside in which nothing remained unchanged but the clouds, and beneath these clouds, in a field of force of destructive torrents and explosions, was the tiny, fragile human body.
i'm not sure any passage has better described what changes after generational death, and psychologically, spiritually, what it does. the ghost stories are both entertainments but also the psychological environment was propitious. imagination requires that is not a simple transaction though.
― Fizzles, Thursday, 7 December 2023 21:14 (nine months ago) link
sorry, i'm post christmas part and i'm aware that's not v lucid! will try and do better tomorrow.
― Fizzles, Thursday, 7 December 2023 21:20 (nine months ago) link
TPTV tonight 20:30 the stalls of barchester 197113th a warning to the curious 197215th lost hearts 1973
― koogs, Monday, 11 December 2023 19:56 (nine months ago) link
(all under the banner of 'a ghost story for Christmas'.
i noticed fopp was selling these as well, the bfi boxed sets. not particularly cheap though.
― koogs, Monday, 11 December 2023 19:57 (nine months ago) link
)
― koogs, Monday, 11 December 2023 19:58 (nine months ago) link
This one is pretty comprehensive I think. The bfi price is on the high side given that it's DVD rather than BR, but plenty of other places seem to have it for ~£20.
https://www2.bfi.org.uk/blu-rays-dvds/ghost-stories-christmas-expanded-six-disc-collection#:~:text=This%20expansive%20edition%20collects%20over,of%20the%20Ghost%20Stories%20for
― JimD, Wednesday, 13 December 2023 13:19 (nine months ago) link
wasn't that cheap in fopp. although maybe that was the brs. hmv.com has it for 22, down from 36.
TPTV are showing at least disks 2, 3 and The Signalman from disk 4 over christmas (and The Night Of The Demon)
― koogs, Wednesday, 13 December 2023 13:40 (nine months ago) link
Night of the Demon seems to be on TPTV all the time
which is good, obviously
― Honnest Brish Face (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 13 December 2023 17:03 (nine months ago) link
now watching THE STALLS OF BARCHESTER (1971), starring robert hardy, mavis from coronation street and mr smith from please sir!
not entirely cinematically solving the scrapbook aspect of the written fiction lol (this one being particularly scrapbooky iirc)
― mark s, Wednesday, 13 December 2023 17:37 (nine months ago) link
i signed up to TPTV in the hope that it had NIGHT OF THE DEMON, but currently no :(
― mark s, Wednesday, 13 December 2023 17:39 (nine months ago) link
There is a bloke at my meditation class who is the spit of Niall MacGinnis' Carswell (in hippy trousers). I check my pockets every time I leave.
― I would prefer not to. (Chinaski), Wednesday, 13 December 2023 17:48 (nine months ago) link
yikes
― mark s, Wednesday, 13 December 2023 17:50 (nine months ago) link
night of the demon on tptv on the 19thash tree 20thtreasure of Abbott Thomas 21st
― koogs, Wednesday, 13 December 2023 19:15 (nine months ago) link