| Midnight |
[Jun. 5th, 2009|05:35 pm] |
12/5/09 - 26/5/09 - Ill
27/5/09 - Art: Cthulhu
28/5/09 - 31/5/09 -Ill
1/6/09 - Art: Commission
2/6/09 - Ill
3/6/09 - Art: Commission
4/6/09 - Ill
 Title - Midnight
Editor - Charles L. Grant
ISBN - 0-812-51850-0It was then he realized that hell could not be such a dreadful place, because in time, the damned soul would get used to it. Cold dread entered his bed and became a sleeping partner; nagging anxiety robbed him of appetite; black terror came out of the past and pointed a skeleton finger towards the future. - The Fly-by-Night Contents:- Old Clothes - Ramsey Campbell
- Road to Granville - Joseph Payne Brennan
- The Visitor - Leanne Frahm
- Sweets to the Sweet - Robert Bloch
- Masks - Douglas E.Winter
- The Fly-by-Night - R. Chetwynd-Hayes
- The Extension - Thomas Sullivan
- The Sacrifice - Julie Stevens
- The Spot - Dennis Etchison & Mark Johnson
- Overnight Guest - Craig Shaw Gardner
- Intimately, With Rain - Janet Fox
- Spring Fever - Susan Casper
- Pictures of a Woman Gone - Leslie Ann Horvitz
- The Green Man - Kelvin Jones
- Ceremony - William F. Nolan
- Of Memories Dying - Michael Bracken
- A Tapestry of Little Murders - Michael Bishop
- No Other Gods - R. Bretnor
In the little introduction to this book Mr Grant expounds upon the specialness of the hour of midnight and then presents us with a collection of very short stories, few if any of which have anything to do with the hour or concept of midnight. Some of these stories have no reference to time at all. The important bits of several take place in all hours of daylight. Some are spread across several days. One is specifically set in the morning. I'm certain at least half of these stories don't even contain the word "midnight".
Mr Grant's failure to either collect a dozen or so short stories relating to the concept of midnight or to retitle and retheme his collection into something appropriate to its contents is telling. As one progresses through the book errors of spelling and proofreading become more and more frequent, culminating in the middle of Of Memories Dying in a terrible mistake wherein a line beginning with a misplaced quotation mark reappears again two paragraphs later, sans misplaced quotation mark but erasing another line completely. This is on the same page as "sweetheart" is misspelt "sweatheart".
Mr Haines, all is forgiven!
I am led by the contents of this book to question whether or not it is actually a horror anthology. The cover blurb says so; the back cover is vague. Mr Grant's introduction is also vague. Poking Google with a suitably benighted keyboard informs me that Mr Grant produced several anthologies with such imaginative titles as Horrors, Terrors, Nightmares and Fears. Apparently he specialized in "dark fantasy and quiet horror".
Very well. Let us see what Mr Grant considers to be "quiet horror".
First impressions are important, and so one must question Mr Grant's decision to open this collection with a story by Ramsey Campbell. This very fact made me put off starting the book for about a week. Old Clothes is the kind of horror story that not only fails to frighten but, in the weakness of its terror, proves to be almost comical. The Evil Coat - a concept in itself that verges heavily into the realms of the stunningly ridiculous - is a pale shade of the eminently more menacing overcoat from A.E.D. Smith's The Coat. Comparison of the two stories is edifying. Mr Smith's Evil Coat does little more than float around but is described so convincingly that I remain impressed of the Evil Coat's menace several years after I last read the story. The actions of Mr Campbell's Evil Coat are hard to interpret as anything beyond earnest but misplaced generosity. The Evil Coat is trying to help the protagonist but isn't doing a very good job of it. When one comes away from a story feeling that the most sensible thing for the protagonist to have done would be to sit down and have a quiet but firm word with his macintosh, something has not gone right.
Is this Mr Grant's idea of horror - the generosity of [supernatural] strangers?
Road to Granville feels terribly old. There is something about the concept of the story that feels like it has been told and re-told hundreds of times; I am reminded of the various stories of people spirited off by fairies. The presentation adds nothing to the defaults of the trope beyond ending things more horribly than usual for the protagonist. Apparently Mr Grant's idea of horror is either going out in the sun [in which case, what is this story doing in a book called Midnight?], old age or encounters with unsettling strangers.
The Visitor is tries to be clever with ghost stories and fails badly. It is pretty obvious from the third or fourth paragraph what is going on. In order for the "surprise" ending to work the three characters must interact according to certain rules of who can and cannot do what. These rules are so strict, as they must be, that the narration cannot help but make it plain who is playing which role.
What is Mr Grant's idea of horror here? Two old women having tea together? This story would have been much stronger - albeit more conventional, but better to have a good conventional horror story than a poor "clever" one - had it been told from the point of view of the other resident of the house.
Sweets to the Sweet is the same story as it was in Deadly Nightshade.
Masks is a mess. A troubled teen on Halloween is a good start but the ending is such a clumsy mess that it's hard to tell who the monster is, even though there's only two options. It does not help that the protagonist apparently has no sense of smell and, by extension from things that must have happened, also be rather deaf. The horror here is clear - the panic of a boy totally alone in his house on Halloween - and it pains me to say that this is one of the better stories here, despite its ending, simply because it has a clearly defined beginning, middle, end and point of horror.
The Fly-by-Night is a story I can't help but read on a metatextual level. Taken at face value it is a competently plotted, sturdily written tale of a man whose daughter is endangered by a supernatural monstrosity. Possessed of a whimsical beginning, solid middle and functional ending, with a clear point of horror elaborated on over the development of the tale, this makes The Fly-by-Night the best story in the book [unless you are a writer, in which case it is the second-best]. Mr Grant's concept of horror here is clear - the seduction of evil.
However there is a metatextual layer here. The monster can easily be read as a metaphor for the protagonist's incestuous lust for his daughter, its actions his actions. Reading Fly-by-Night with this in mind makes it a much more interesting story, adds a subtle dimension the presence of a man's shaving equipment in the daughter's bedroom and makes the last sentence much more horrifying. Whether or not this was the intent of Mr Chetwynd-Hayes is another question entirely.
Also, there is A Cat. Again.
The Extension is a more brutal thing that most of what's in Midnight, although this may be because it plays on one of my personal fears - live burial. The Extension suffers a little from a want of sensibility - sooner or later someone is going to give this man the number for the police, at which point things will come to an end, unless the protagonist is actually in hell, although it makes little difference from his point of view. Brief and to the point, and one of the stronger stories in the book. The point of horror is once again clear - a mixture of live burial and being unable to get help from the rest of the world no matter who you call, although the unkindness [and disbelief] of strangers is once again present.
The Sacrifice is the reason I was lent this book, and it was definitely worth the book crossing the Atlantic and my wading through everything before and after to read this story. Writers have a habit of making their protagonists writers also. Often there is no point to this; for a prime example, the protagonist of The Fly-by-Night is a writer when it has no impact on the plot whatsoever, and indeed he could have been of any other profession except possibly a clergyman without it making a blind bit of difference. In the case of The Sacrifice it is, for once, absolutely central to the plot. The point of horror is one that may well escape the understanding of the non-writer, but anyone who has ever been dragged out of bed at three in the morning by a member of their headcast will understand and be frightened by the idea here.
The Spot heralds the second half of the book. The first eight stories of the eighteen in total have contained the five best stories in the book, and after the last page of The Sacrifice it is all downhill. This story serves as a warning to the reader to stop now, shut the book and pick up something better. Henceforth, all is padding. The Spot is the most incoherent story I have ever seen published. Two men clean an apartment; one is invited into another apartment to clean what turns out to be a shadow, has a slightly odd encounter with an overweight cook/nurse/monster, leaves unharmed, the end. There are many horror stories that read as if the writer didn't know how to end their work, often resulting a short story that reads more like a prologue than a finished work, but this goes beyond that. It's not a story, it's three barely related scenes with no plot.
As said, this is the most incoherent published fiction I've read. I could name half a dozen fanfics better than this without trying. I find stories that make me go "I could do better than this" inspiring and heartening. Stories that make me go "anyone can do better than this" are depressing, doubly so when one notices that this story has two authors. Shame on both of them.
I can only assume that Mr Grant finds overweight women frightening ... unless he is relying upon either the spectre of old age or uncomfortable encounters with strangers to frighten. Again.
Overnight Guest is a morality tale with a mirror, competent enough but really not worth reading. Mr Grant is beginning to show his hand a little too much - once again the spectre of old age is at the heart of the horror.
Intimately, With Rain is about the best thing in the second half of the book, and might not seem so poor if it weren't in such shoddy company. In any case there's little in the way of horror here. At most this is a very thin ghost story, at least it's about a nervous breakdown. Mr Grant's favourite themes are all here - old age, infidelity [or rather sexual irresponsibility] and discomfort at meeting strangers. One begins to get a certain impression of the editor ...
... which Spring Fever does nothing to improve. Apparently "quiet horror" means "being poor", and being poor as a consequence of sexual irresponsibility to boot. I begin to find it hard to believe that this book was published in 1985. It reads as if it were at least 15 years older.
Pictures of a Woman Gone feels like a pale imitation of The Woman Who Rode Away, a vastly superior story. This reduces the general level of coherence, adds something about a maybe-a-ghost and does nothing to convince one that the story was worth reading. There is a humourous metatextual level to the story in that one can read the protagonist's reiterated fears that he's not the man his wife wants or deserves as being a way of denying to himself the real truth: she's not the woman for him, because he's in love with his camera.
Exactly what the point of horror here is supposed to be I cannot say. Possibly it is infidelity, this story being the other side to Overnight Guest, but it's such a poor story that it's hard to say.
The Green Man is not a horror story. It is a prologue. Where is the rest of the book? Apparently vicars are frightened of sex and, upon seeing it, will be ... possessed by ... something ... maybe? Sexual irresponsibility strikes again. Mr Grant's choices grow repetitive.
Furthermore, if one wishes to convey that a character is timid and a bit of a wet hen, it is a bad idea to give him the surname "Bear".
Ceremony is a bad thing. It's hard enough to find a horror anthology that doesn't contain a Lovecraft homage or pastiche, but Ceremony reads like a homage to Brian Lumley's The Picknickers [itself a Lovecraft homage] with faint echoes of Lovecraft's The Festival. Comparing Ceremony to The Picknickers suddenly and dramatically reveals why Mr Lumley has enjoyed a long and successful career. Comparing Ceremony to The Festival reveals such a staggering difference in terms of quality, imagination and originality as to be nigh painful. For once the horror has nothing to do with old age, infidelity ... oh, but wait! Once again the protagonist is subject to the unkindness of strangers.
Of Memories Dying is a failure as a horror story. Two men meet in front of a school, drive to a burger joint. One eats a burger. They drive back to the school. One gets out, the other drives off. There is a nebulous hint that something out of the ordinary might happen a few pages after the story has ended. This is not a horror story. This is not even a prologue. This is ... pointless, utterly pointless, and the worst proofread part of the book to boot.
The author of A Tapestry of Little Murders is described in Mr Grant's mini-introduction to the story as writing "the way most of us wish we could, if only we were good enough". Apparently most of us wish we could overwrite things to the point of pretentiousness. This story has no real plot - man murders wife, leaves, kills a lot of small animals sort-of by accident, is run over by a stealth combine harvester after possibly dying in a car crash, or not, as the case may be - and seems to strain to convey some message about how killing innocent animals cures cancer.
The whole is conveyed in words chosen for being one syllable longer than is necessary. In one scene the protagonist, driving along, encounters a migration of toads and runs over a lot of them. This is described thus:Under his tyres he felt the vital amphibian plasma spill in life-quenching gouts, drain away with each revolution, each thumping revolution. If I ever write something like that, take my keyboard away from me. Please.
The squashing of toads goes on for four pages. Later the protagonist drives through a flock of mockingbirds, killing several, and then over a swarm of kangaroo mice, squashing even more. He guilts and gripes about how he's murdering innocent little things, oh woe. At no point does he so much as think to stop the car. I couldn't help but cheer for the combine harvester.
The only horror in this story is that Mr Bishop considers "But the mockingbirds." to be a viable sentence.
No Other Gods is another story about uncomfortable encounters with strangers. A rather up-himself minister has a parishoner suffering from either mental health issues or malignant supernatural harassment. He is ideally placed to help her with both. He does neither. She dies. He feels rather perturbed. It is vaguely suggested he might be next. The readers hope so, since he clearly deserves it.
So there we have Midnight, a collection of short stories that have nothing to do with midnight, or indeed night in general. This book might have been better titled The Unkindness of Strangers since it is strangers - actively malign or just plain discomforting on account of being unfamiliar - who carry about half the horror of the book. Most of the rest relies upon old age or punishment for sexual irresponsibility to horrify.
The only horror comes from the idea of re-reading the second half of this book.
This book is:
* - worth reading to see how not to write horror
* - trashy horror, with the emphasis on "trash"
* - accidentally comical in its ineptitude
This book is not:
* - worth buying second-hand
* - well proofread
* - good at all |
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