Fiction

[apaleífo̱]

I'm amazed how many people like and enjoy M R James.
Seems like masochism to me. I read them all, years ago on the urging of someone close, but I always wished I hadn't. It took me ages to get the lingering aftertaste out of my mind. I will admit they're very well written, which is why they stick with you, but where's the moral, where's the edification,... what's to like?

Don't you think your response is rather extreme? Seems like a matter of taste to me: some people enjoy reading a good, old-fashioned ghost story -- and I certainly consider myself a part of that happy company -- and others don't. There is certainly nothing immoral or reprehensible in M.R. James' fiction and, in fact, I am tempted to wonder whether you have actually read that much of his fiction, since I expect that you would have noticed that he is actually a Christian and his ghostly tales are always clearly set in the Christian universe, often with a sense of supernatural retribution against those foolish enough to dabble in the occult. I recall a particularly clever tale of his about three foolish 16th-century Oxford students who decide to experiment in conjuring with unfortunate results.

Edit: I realise, looking back on my remarks, that I may have sounded a bit short and impatient and, if so, I earnestly apologise. I do not mean to condemn your own opinion, which you have every right to hold as much as I do mine -- merely to point out that M.R. James' fiction (and, indeed, supernatural horror general) ought not to be assumed immoral or spiritually unedifying when, in my opinion, the opposite is true. But please do not think that I mean to arbitrarily contradict you in a spirit of bitterness -- I only mean to defend an opinion which I earnestly hold to be right.

 

[JennyG]

Don't you think your response is rather extreme? Seems like a matter of taste to me: some people enjoy reading a good, old-fashioned ghost story -- and I certainly consider myself a part of that happy company -- and others don't. There is certainly nothing immoral or reprehensible in M.R. James' fiction and, in fact, I am tempted to wonder whether you have actually read that much of his fiction, since I expect that you would have noticed that he is actually a Christian and his ghostly tales are always clearly set in the Christian universe, often with a sense of supernatural retribution against those foolish enough to dabble in the occult. I recall a particularly clever tale of his about three foolish 16th-century Oxford students who decide to experiment in conjuring with unfortunate results.

well, perhaps that was extreme And a bit mischievous even, because I knew you would strongly disagree! Sorry.
Don't misunderstand though....yes it's a matter of taste, and no I wasn't saying they're immoral. I've read all the ghost stories that are generally printed together as a collection, but you're quite right, I don't remember them all that well - I tried hard to put them out of my mind, and eventually to some extent succeeded.
I suppose my gripe is really with horror fiction per se, which I never could see the fun in. M R James is obviously a master of the genre, but that's just the trouble - I really don't want to dwell, by way of entertainment, on the sort of things he so convincingly evokes.
You're probably thinking that if I don't like horror I shouldn't read it! And you're quite right, ...and I don't.
But just to be a bit provocative... I suppose if there is a moral dimension, it would be Paul's telling us to think on "whatsoever things are lovely..." which to me doesn't include partially-decayed corpses coming crawling across the lawn to wreak vengeance on the living - etc.

-----Added 11/22/2009 at 04:10:47 EST-----

cross-posted! I didn't see your edit till mine went up.
You weren't at all short or impatient! What you said was perfectly justified, and in any case I have to apologise too. I already knew we disagreed on this subject and I'm afraid I may have posted partly to, well not exactly provoke I hope, but maybe to give an opening for debate?
Especially unfair when I'm just about to log out and head for bed!
I must get you to try and explain another time about the pleasure of horror (!)
Perhaps if I hadn't one time, years ago, used them as bedtime reading when I was alone in the house...

 

[apaleífo̱]

Don't you think your response is rather extreme? Seems like a matter of taste to me: some people enjoy reading a good, old-fashioned ghost story -- and I certainly consider myself a part of that happy company -- and others don't. There is certainly nothing immoral or reprehensible in M.R. James' fiction and, in fact, I am tempted to wonder whether you have actually read that much of his fiction, since I expect that you would have noticed that he is actually a Christian and his ghostly tales are always clearly set in the Christian universe, often with a sense of supernatural retribution against those foolish enough to dabble in the occult. I recall a particularly clever tale of his about three foolish 16th-century Oxford students who decide to experiment in conjuring with unfortunate results.

well, perhaps that was extreme And a bit mischievous even, because I knew you would strongly disagree! Sorry.
Don't misunderstand though....yes it's a matter of taste, and no I wasn't saying they're immoral. I've read all the ghost stories that are generally printed together as a collection, but you're quite right, I don't remember them all that well - I tried hard to put them out of my mind, and eventually to some extent succeeded.
I suppose my gripe is really with horror fiction per se, which I never could see the fun in. M R James is obviously a master of the genre, but that's just the trouble - I really don't want to dwell, by way of entertainment, on the sort of things he so convincingly evokes.
You're probably thinking that if I don't like horror I shouldn't read it! And you're quite right, ...and I don't.
But just to be a bit provocative... I suppose if there is a moral dimension, it would be Paul's telling us to think on "whatsoever things are lovely..." which to me doesn't include partially-decayed corpses coming crawling across the lawn to wreak vengeance on the living - etc.

The Holy Scriptures are altogether lovely and yet they recount tales about ghosts, witches, rapes, murders, etc. To equate the Scriptures, of course, with mere fictions would be blasphemous and it is not my intent to do so: yet I would argue that the presence of such things in a text should not automatically disqualify it, because according to Paul's criterion, if we were to keep our eyes away from anything that mentioned such things, we would have to avoid certain portions of the Bible.

Finally, the representation of evil in a work is most important: is evil being glorified or vilified in a text? If it is being glorified, then it is not "lovely" because it denies the beauty of our Lord's edicts and rightly ought to be avoided. If, however, it supports the themes that the Scriptures uphold (divine retribution, the triumph of good over evil, etc.), then why should it be condemned?

I recall the Protestant theologians Richard Baxter, Henry More, and Joseph Glanvill all remarking that ghost stories (in their case, true stories of the supernatural) are important because they emphasize the reality of the supernatural to those who are oscillating in their faith. I sometimes wonder whether in this day and age, we have become so immured in post-Enlightenment skepticism that ghostly tales seem grotesque and needlessly gratuitous to us in a way that they would not have seemed to our 17th-century forefathers. I hastily add that I am not accusing you of in any way being such a person -- only that I feel that our culture's attitude towards ghosts, witches, and other such topics of discourse has changed dramatically from the attitudes prevalent in the earlier epochs of the Reformation.

Another thing that ought to be considered is the difference between true, Satanic evil and fictional objects of terror. The 18th-century statesman Edmund Burke wrote a splendid essay on Beauty and the Sublime and, as Burke is a greater philosopher than me, I shall selectly quote a few paragraphs from his essay and allow you to make of them what you will:

The passion caused by the great and sublime in nature, when those causes operate most powerfully, is astonishment; and astonishment is that state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror. 1 In this case the mind is so entirely filled with its object, that it cannot entertain any other, nor by consequence reason on that object which employs it. Hence arises the great power of the sublime, that, far from being produced by them, it anticipates our reasonings, and hurries us on by an irresistible force. Astonishment, as I have said, is the effect of the sublime in its highest degree; the inferior effects are admiration, reverence, and respect.

And further on:

I am sensible that this idea has met with opposition, and is likely still to be rejected by several. But let it be considered, that hardly anything can strike the mind with its greatness, which does not make some sort of approach towards infinity; which nothing can do whilst we are able to perceive its bounds; but to see an object distinctly, and to perceive its bounds, is one and the same thing. A clear idea is therefore another name for a little idea. There is a passage in the book of Job amazingly sublime, and this sublimity is principally due to the terrible uncertainty of the thing described: In thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, fear came upon me, and trembling, which made all my bones to shake. Then a spirit passed before my face; the hair of my flesh stood up. It stood still, but I could not discern the form thereof: an image was before mine eyes, there was silence, and I heard a voice,—Shall mortal man be more just than God? We are first prepared with the utmost solemnity for the vision; we are first terrified, before we are let even into the obscure cause of our emotion; but when this grand cause of terror makes it appearance, what is it? Is it not wrapt up in the shades of its own incomprehensible darkness, more awful, more striking, more terrible, than the liveliest description, than the clearest painting, could possibly represent it?

And finally a last quote:

I hope, in what I am going to say, I shall avoid presumption, where it is almost impossible for any mortal to speak with strict propriety. I say then that whilst we consider the Godhead merely as he is an object of the understanding, which forms a complex idea of power, wisdom, justice, goodness, all stretched to a degree far exceeding the bounds of our comprehension, whilst we consider the Divinity in this refined and abstracted light, the imagination and passions are little or nothing affected. But because we are bound, by the condition of our nature, to ascend to these pure and intellectual ideas, through the medium of sensible images, and to judge of these divine qualities by their evident acts and exertions, it becomes extremely hard to disentangle our idea of the cause from the effect by which we are led to know it. Thus when we contemplate the Deity, his attributes and their operation, coming united on the mind, form a sort of sensible image, and as such are capable of affecting the imagination. Now, though in a just idea of the Deity perhaps none of his attributes are predominant, yet, to our imagination, his power is by far the most striking. Some reflection, some comparing, is necessary to satisfy us of his wisdom, his justice, and his goodness. To be struck with his power, it is only necessary that we should open our eyes. But whilst we contemplate so vast an object, under the arm, as it were, of almighty power, and invested upon every side with omnipresence, we shrink into the minuteness of our own nature, and are, in a manner, annihilated before him. And though a consideration of his other attributes may relieve, in some measure, our apprehensions; yet no conviction of the justice with which it is exercised, nor the mercy with which it is tempered, can wholly remove the terror that naturally arises from a force which nothing can withstand. If we rejoice, we rejoice with trembling: and even whilst we are receiving benefits, we cannot but shudder at a power which can confer benefits of such mighty importance. When the prophet David contemplated the wonders of wisdom and power which are displayed in the economy of man, he seems to be struck with a sort of divine horror, and cries out, Fearfully and wonderfully am I made!

I have no time to fully delineate my own philosophy that I have built after reading Burke's essay (and based around my other readings), but it is my opinion that to equate the supernatural horror in fiction with the mundane horrors and evils that occur in the universe that we actually live in is incorrect. There is a certain atmosphere, a certain sublimity that is meant to be evoked in these fictional accounts of the supernatural encroaching upon the material world -- and it is my belief that it would be a gross injustice to believe that this sublimity could be in any way Satanic in nature.

Edit: Well, now I just saw your last post -- and I shall never forgive you for having so deliberately provoked me into throwing myself into the fray for supernatural horror once again! Not that it's all that difficult, as the size of this post probably already attests!

 

[calvinich]

Ah, so nice to feel at home with other readers . I also love scifi/fantasy, and historical fiction, alternative history, and most of the classics. I love Tolkien, Lewis, and Jordan, and Stephen Lawhead, Orson Scott Card's Ender series, some of Heinlein, and Herbert, and Niven and Pournelle. The Russians (Tolstoy and Dostoevsky) are also favorites, and Milton, and Quo Vadis, and Moby Dick and the Iliad/Odyssey/Aeneid (okay those were definitely an acquired taste, but I love them now).

CredoFidoSpero/Ashley,

Which Heinlein novels do you like?

 

[David]

I don't like fiction much, but my favourite novel would have to be A Scanner Darkly by Philip K Dick. It's worth noting that the movie adaption is just as good, and quite faithful to the novel.

 

[CredoFidoSpero]

CredoFidoSpero/Ashley,

Which Heinlein novels do you like?

I read a lot of his books when I was younger, like Stranger in a Strange Land, Friday and the Lazarus Long stories, but Starship Troopers is by far my favorite and the only one I have reread in recent years (it's nothing like the movie).

 

[JennyG]

Hey c,
thanks for posting all that. I've read it carefully and I see it goes well beyond my own (knee-jerk) dislike of the genre.
Of course it throws a very heavy onus on the individual writer, to live up to Burke's conception!
But I see that it is at least possible. here's the bit I was most interested in actually (not Burke but you):

I recall the Protestant theologians Richard Baxter, Henry More, and Joseph Glanvill all remarking that ghost stories (in their case, true stories of the supernatural) are important because they emphasize the reality of the supernatural to those who are oscillating in their faith. I sometimes wonder whether in this day and age, we have become so immured in post-Enlightenment skepticism that ghostly tales seem grotesque and needlessly gratuitous to us in a way that they would not have seemed to our 17th-century forefathers.... I feel that our culture's attitude towards ghosts, witches, and other such topics of discourse has changed dramatically from the attitudes prevalent in the earlier epochs of the Reformation.

As it happens, just last night someone asked me "do you believe in ghosts?"
(it was apropos of the house where I live actually. I'm sure you'd love it. It's only about 140 years old, but it has a bit of a history, and occasionally some slightly odd and inexplicable things have happened)
A few hours later and I could have quoted you! I said yes I do, on the grounds that complete scepticism can belong only to the rationalist materialist. If you believe in God then you believe in the supernatural, and the rest (or at least the possibility of the rest) follows. Even before reading yours I felt it was quite an important point to insist on, so there you go!

On the other hand I don't think I will ever share your enthusiasm. My other formative experience of the kind (besides reading MRJames in a dark empty house)
was when I somehow got hold of a copy of E A Poe at the age of 9 and had read The Fall of the House of Usher and The Pit and the Pendulum in a kind of mesmerised horror before my mum got wind and confiscated it. I have never really forgiven him, him and his evil twisted imagination...
By the way, I like your avatar. We had that picture on the wall for years

 

[Ivan]

Okay...I'm going to say it...apologize in advance.....


John Irving.

 

[apaleífo̱]

Hey c,
thanks for posting all that. I've read it carefully and I see it goes well beyond my own (knee-jerk) dislike of the genre.
Of course it throws a very heavy onus on the individual writer, to live up to Burke's conception!
But I see that it is at least possible. here's the bit I was most interested in actually (not Burke but you):

I recall the Protestant theologians Richard Baxter, Henry More, and Joseph Glanvill all remarking that ghost stories (in their case, true stories of the supernatural) are important because they emphasize the reality of the supernatural to those who are oscillating in their faith. I sometimes wonder whether in this day and age, we have become so immured in post-Enlightenment skepticism that ghostly tales seem grotesque and needlessly gratuitous to us in a way that they would not have seemed to our 17th-century forefathers.... I feel that our culture's attitude towards ghosts, witches, and other such topics of discourse has changed dramatically from the attitudes prevalent in the earlier epochs of the Reformation.

As it happens, just last night someone asked me "do you believe in ghosts?"
(it was apropos of the house where I live actually. I'm sure you'd love it. It's only about 140 years old, but it has a bit of a history, and occasionally some slightly odd and inexplicable things have happened)
A few hours later and I could have quoted you! I said yes I do, on the grounds that complete scepticism can belong only to the rationalist materialist. If you believe in God then you believe in the supernatural, and the rest (or at least the possibility of the rest) follows. Even before reading yours I felt it was quite an important point to insist on, so there you go!

On the other hand I don't think I will ever share your enthusiasm. My other formative experience of the kind (besides reading MRJames in a dark empty house)
was when I somehow got hold of a copy of E A Poe at the age of 9 and had read The Fall of the House of Usher and The Pit and the Pendulum in a kind of mesmerised horror before my mum got wind and confiscated it. I have never really forgiven him, him and his evil twisted imagination...
By the way, I like your avatar. We had that picture on the wall for years

Dear Jenny,
First, I'm so sorry for taking so long to get back to this thread -- Thanksgiving holidays, as usual, consisted of organizing grocery shopping sessions and actual cooking, all of which took much more time than I expected. At any rate, thank you for your kind words and I am awfully glad to hear that I may have at least softened your perspective on supernatural horror fiction! As for being traumatized by Poe, I can hardly say that I blame you, seeing as how I had the exact same experience myself at roughly the same age -- I also read Poe's Pit and the Pendulum and happened to catch the old 1960's Roger Corman film version starring Vincent Price and was absolutely petrified with fear for months afterwards. I absolutely hated Edgar Allan Poe for the longest time, but for reasons which I do not entirely understand myself, I persisted in reading him and hating him simultaneously and eventually became the fanatic that I have become today.

I must add, however, that I am not so much a fan of Poe as I used to be -- mostly because I feel that though his tales are brilliant, they do not focus as much upon the supernatural as I would like. Psychological horror is always interesting, of course, but hardly achieves the full potential of Burkean sublime that supernatural horror possesses.

Also, congratulations on setting the record straight on the existence of ghosts -- I've had conversations very similar to yours with several friends and relations over the course of the last few years -- most of them ending with all concerned regarding me as possessing a mild form of insanity -- but I always tend to err on the side of belief rather than skepticism when I hear any account of ghostly hauntings or really any supernatural activity in general. Though it is quite amusing sometimes to hear the often ridiculous "explanations" that atheists will construct in order to understand certain "phenomena" that they can't quite fathom.

And thanks for the avatar compliment! Yeames' painting is one of the few 19th-century English Civil War paintings that I can tolerate (probably since it doesn't have an obvious pro-Charles bias), and I always found the face of the Puritan interrogator to be fascinating due to the sympathetic but rather inscrutable expression that Yeames gave him: the conflict between the interrogator's obvious pity for the child and his duty as a soldier of Parliament is brilliantly underplayed.

 

[Daniel Haley]

Dune series!!!

 

[TheDow]

I tend toward fantasy in my fiction.

Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan

I like this series, and have recently returned to them as the newest book recently came out. Jordan has successfully built a world with cultures that is truly stunning. I'd start with Book 1, Eye of the World, and read the prequel, A New Spring after book 9 or so. If you've already read the series, and are re-reading to get caught up for book 12, then start with A New Spring. It really did a great job at reminding me about Jordan's world-building skills.

Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin

This series is gritty and graphic at times. Martin has no qualms about killing characters off, and really makes it a gripping read. Great writing of medieval politics and intrigue. If ONLY he'd write the next book. Slacker.

Dragon Prince and Dragon Star trilogies by Melanie Rawn

Magic is a common element of fantasy series, and this is one of the most innovative treatments I've seen. Rawn also writes the emotion of love and her characters VERY well. I really enjoyed this series, as did my wife.

Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling

This series deserves its place as one of the top series. And it's not written entirely for kids. Rowling is an excellent storyteller! The movies are quite good, yes, but they don't touch the books.

The inaccurately named Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Trilogy by Douglas Adams

I know I said I tend to fantasy, but I really enjoy reading this series. Science fiction comedy.

 

[Megan Mozart]

Harry Potter... hands down. I haven't really read much fiction since I finished them. Now I read Christian non-fiction theology and the like.

Readhttp://http://www.puritanboard.com/f54/witchcraft-today-fundamentally-different-than-condemned-scripture-53614/#post693318 this post if you want to read about my story on how obsessed I was with Harry Potter but then I got out of it.

 

[Philip]

Favorite authors:

J.R.R. Tolkien--modern-day mythology if it's possible
G.K. Chesterton--excellent short stories, great novels, great ideas, did not hold Calvinism in high regard, though
C.S. Lewis--nothing more need be said here
Fyodor Dostoevsky--some of the best Christian philosophy ever written
Charles Dickens--great character names
Alexander Dumas--high adventure at its finest
Victor Hugo--Les Miserables is possibly the greatest novel ever written
Lewis Carroll--on opium? Yes, great writing nonetheless
Stephen Lawhead--probably leaning toward openness theism/universalism, but great storytelling
Terry Pratchett--leaves me in stitches every time

 

[TheDow]

Oh, I forgot to mention Lawhead! Agreed on his theology, and it perhaps is a little more dangerous, as his Cele De organization purports to be a Christian one. However, excellent storytelling, certainly.

 

[MMasztal]

Currently, in the little free time I have for fiction reading (classic literature doesn't count here), I've enjoyed Frank Peretti's and Ted Dekker's stuff.

 

[Virginia Marine]

I love historical fiction: The Richard Sharpe series by Bernard Cornwall and the Master and Commander series by Patrick O'Brian are my favorites...

 

[Theogenes]

Dune series!!!

I heartily agree!

 

[JennyG]

Hey c,
I've been busy too (even though we don't do Thanksgiving...)

.... on setting the record straight on the existence of ghosts -- I've had conversations very similar to yours with several friends and relations over the course of the last few years -- most of them ending with all concerned regarding me as possessing a mild form of insanity -- but I always tend to err on the side of belief rather than skepticism when I hear any account of ghostly hauntings or really any supernatural activity in general.

yes,- this question really does interest me, and I think it was quite a matter of course for intelligent people to take ghost stories (in real life) seriously, certainly well into the 19th C. (it gets a bit murky with all the Spiritualist nonsense that became fashionable as Christian belief began to decline).
It took me even some years, after I was converted, to see which of my habitual thought-patterns actually belonged to a Godless state of mind. Automatic scepticism on supernatural phenomena was one.

Though it is quite amusing sometimes to hear the often ridiculous "explanations" that atheists will construct in order to understand certain "phenomena" that they can't quite fathom.

Of course it doesn't do to swallow things uncritically, but yes, they are terrified of acknowledging the existence of anything extra-material in any way, shape or form (I encountered one who would not even admit that abstract nouns correspond to anything in reality).

And thanks for the avatar compliment! Yeames' painting is one of the few 19th-century English Civil War paintings that I can tolerate (probably since it doesn't have an obvious pro-Charles bias),

The Stuarts were all bad news. It's a pity Charles and his cohorts (wrong but wromantic) were such gifts to the painters and cheesy fiction writers - culminating in the surpassingly awful Bonnie Prince Charlie. That loser completely captivated my own young imagination I'm sorry to say, as depicted for eg in D K Broster's novels....I would have done better with, well I can't bring myself to say Poe or James, but there must be some nice, wholesome ghost stories I could have been reading. Only in most non-niche fiction after about 1870, you can be pretty sure that any unexplained manifestations will not remain so for long, because rationalism must prevail.

...and I always found the face of the Puritan interrogator to be fascinating due to the sympathetic but rather inscrutable expression that Yeames gave him: the conflict between the interrogator's obvious pity for the child and his duty as a soldier of Parliament is brilliantly underplayed.

yes, he's great.

 

[he beholds]

Currently reading Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina"

Great book. Nabokov is my favorite. I've also been reading Cormac McCarthy lately. Good stuff, especially The Road and Blood Meridian.

I also love Proust. In Search of Lost Time takes effort but it is well worth it. Proust will change your life (j/k). Read the new translation.

The Road was Incredible. I haven't read anything else by him, but my husband reports that anything he writes is incredible.

I did not particularly like Anna Karenina. It was too soap-operyish. I prefer Dostoevsky (who also can employ soap opera story lines!) and I LOVE Brothers Karamazov.

why read fiction? I will just wait for the movie

The book is always better!!!

if this is really true, then I guess I need to read No Country for Old Men by McCarthy because the movie was just about perfect. I am excited to see The Road with Viggo Mortensen because I have heard the novel was awesome. A few years back when I found out Scorcese's next film would be Shutter Island, I checked the book out from the library because I was excited to get into the story. I only got through a third of the book.

You really should read The Road. It is short and unlike anything you can imagine.