tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2856547151523423474.post1941213237543752865..comments2024-03-12T12:38:23.542-04:00Comments on The Kind of Face You Hate: The Kind of Face You SLASH!!! - Day 5: It Won't Be Long Nowbill r.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17748572205731857892noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2856547151523423474.post-9345183880837640592010-10-08T22:57:35.051-04:002010-10-08T22:57:35.051-04:00"The Late Shift!" Holy crap, I read that..."The Late Shift!" Holy crap, I read that one years ago (probably in Dark Forces) and it's stuck with me. I just looked it up and confirmed that it is indeed the story I thought it was. I don't recall the plot, just the atmosphere. Neon and fog and nighttime nowhere places. <br /><br />I'm sucker for that milieu -- fluorescent lights and 24-hour markets and industrial parks after dark. When I was a kid, we used to hop fences and wander around golf courses after hours. There's something so appealingly artificial and surreal about those places at that hour...anyone recall the scene in THE INSIDER at the driving range?<br /><br />Our tastes are probably closer than you imagine, John.Frank Bnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2856547151523423474.post-56981265904672340462010-10-06T08:19:53.617-04:002010-10-06T08:19:53.617-04:00But minimalism does not mean "an absence of s...But minimalism does not mean "an absence of style", which is too often what I get from Etchison.<br /><br />"The stark, lingering final image conjured up with a few skillfully chosen words"<br /><br />That sounds great to me, but "skillfully chosen" is not what I'm seeing. I'm seeing dashed off. I read a story last night, for today's post, that I thought was absolutely superb -- I think it's close to what you're describing, but which I rarely get. More on that later.bill r.https://www.blogger.com/profile/17748572205731857892noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2856547151523423474.post-45088623285626865552010-10-06T03:54:15.601-04:002010-10-06T03:54:15.601-04:00And I agree with anonymous, the early stuff is muc...And I agree with anonymous, the early stuff is much better. But that seems to be the case with all the "Big Names" of modern horror.Johnnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2856547151523423474.post-68635059368233063772010-10-06T03:48:24.912-04:002010-10-06T03:48:24.912-04:00There's almost never a memorable turn of phras...<i>There's almost never a memorable turn of phrase, or anything like that.</i><br /><br />That's pretty much his style, stripped-down, not drawing much attention to itself, almost taciturn in effect. I figure at his best it's a perfect match for Etchison's moody, enigmatic stories.<br /><br />Generally, I tend to think minimalism suits horror better than more advanced styles. The stark, lingering final image conjured up with a few skillfully chosen words, free of explanation or embellishment, is the crux of a lot of good to great horror stories. Very few horror writers (eg, Aickman, M.R. James) have proven capable of producing fine writing AND a powerful horror story at the same time. Writers like that are very much the exception to the rule, in my experience.Johnnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2856547151523423474.post-62211303369243602852010-10-05T19:34:31.965-04:002010-10-05T19:34:31.965-04:00With Etchison, the early stuff is much better. &qu...With Etchison, the early stuff is much better. "The Late Shift" is terrific, as is his first collection, "The Dark Country." Diminishing returns from there, unfortunately. On a trivial note, he wrote the novelization of "Videodrome" under a pseudonym.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2856547151523423474.post-25598857055606808852010-10-05T15:07:46.757-04:002010-10-05T15:07:46.757-04:00Will - I'm not really complaining about the co...Will - I'm not really complaining about the confusion in Etchison's stories. That's clearly on purpose, and sometimes I think it works. It's just his prose.<br /><br />John - You call it clear and sharp, but I'd say it's clear and soft. There's almost never a memorable turn of phrase, or anything like that. It's what HAPPENS in his stories that sometimes make them interesting, but I get nothing much from his prose.<br /><br />I can't remember if I've read "The Late Shift" or not.bill r.https://www.blogger.com/profile/17748572205731857892noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2856547151523423474.post-82726846764492435072010-10-05T14:20:01.041-04:002010-10-05T14:20:01.041-04:00It's been a while since I looked at any of Etc...It's been a while since I looked at any of Etchison's work, but his writing always struck me as some of the best horror has to offer, really sharp and clear but with a touch of menacing vagueness, intimations of not quite rightness that only gradually resolve into something tangible. Maybe not quite in Aickman's league, but much closer to it than most of his contemporaries (and just about all of his successors, probably).<br /><br />Have you read "The Late Shift"? (It's in, among other places, Kirby McCauley's Dark Forces anthology.) I still figure, on a sentence by sentence level, it must rank high among the best horror stories I've read. Not a word wasted (or lacking), not an offkey note sounded in the whole thing, no matter how dark and bizarre things get in it.<br /><br />A little like Campbell, he generally portrays a slightly off-kilter reality, a world where even the most ordinary details acquire a touch of strangeness that can sometimes get feeling a little heavy-handed, and some of his endings verge on being too oblique for their own good. But, for just handful of his better short stories, I'd easily rank him in the top tier of horror writers, modern and classic, whose works I've enjoyed.Johnnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2856547151523423474.post-11209982779586883312010-10-05T13:50:10.879-04:002010-10-05T13:50:10.879-04:00I read Red Dreams in high school and had the same ...I read <i>Red Dreams</i> in high school and had the same kind of confusion about what was going on in some of the stories; your comparison to Campbell is perfectly apt. Still, I'd like to get a hold of a copy again for a review. I recall liking two anthologies Etchison edited, <i>Cutting Edge</i> and <i>Metahorror</i>.Will Erricksonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16285306262078600804noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2856547151523423474.post-79361467438131375382010-10-05T13:44:08.774-04:002010-10-05T13:44:08.774-04:00As a prose stylist, Etchison is much better than L...As a prose stylist, Etchison is much better than Laymon, because so is everybody else. Matheson, in his heyday, was minimalist but very smooth. Etchison too often uses cliches, or just has no life at all. None of these people are close to Aickman.<br /><br />But Etchison can still be very effective, because his imagination is skewed just enough.bill r.https://www.blogger.com/profile/17748572205731857892noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2856547151523423474.post-80848059555900205152010-10-05T13:39:40.453-04:002010-10-05T13:39:40.453-04:00I think his writing is quite a bit better than pul...I think his writing is quite a bit better than pulp-level quality. It tends to minimalism, but, even in his earlier stories, I've found, it's usually a minimalism heavy with the weight of things unstated, as opposed to the lightness and relative simplicity of the pulps. I would say Etchison is much closer to a writer like Robert Aickman in sophistication than, say, Richard Laymon, but probably the best point for comparison would be Richard Matheson, always one of the best horror writers at using less to suggest more (though, of course, pretty uneven at times, too--like just about every genre writer with a sizable body of work, I guess).Johnnoreply@blogger.com