{horror} – Page 44 – { feuilleton }

Weekend links 550

Illustration by Moebius for Les Robinsons du Cosmos (1970) by Francis Carsac.

• Notre Dame des Fleurs is a collection of art based on or inspired by the Jean Genet novel. The book, which includes some new work of mine, will be published in February. Editor Jan van Rijn has a trailer for it here. It’s limited to 150 copies so anyone interested is advised to pre-order.

• Books that made me: William Gibson‘s influential reading. Good to see him mention Suttree by Cormac McCarthy, an outstanding novel that might be better known if it wasn’t for the gravitational pull of McCarthy’s other works.

• Zagava have announced a paperback reprint of The Art of Ilna Ewers-Wunderwald, a collection of neglected Art Nouveau drawings and designs compiled by Sven Brömsel.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Black_Acrylic presents…He Stood In The Bath And He Stamped On The Floor: A Joe Meek Day.

• More yearly roundups: Our Haunted Year 2020 by Swan River Press, and The Year That Never Was by blissblog.

• New music: Spaceman Mystery Of The Terror Triangle by The Night Monitor.

• Ralph Steadman’s guided tour through six decades of irrepressible art.

• At Greydogtales: Valentine Dyall: Mystery and Mesmerism.

• At Wormwoodiana: The Esoteric in Britain, 1921.

• At Strange Flowers: Marie Menken’s Lights.

• I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight (1974) by Richard and Linda Thompson | Neon Lights (1978) by Kraftwerk | Lights (1980) by Metabolist

Sredni Vashtar, 1981

And speaking of Sredni Vashtar (see yesterday’s post)… Screenwriter and director Andrew Birkin has a YouTube channel where he recently posted his own adaptation of the Saki story, a 25-minute film I hadn’t seen before. Or at least I don’t remember seeing it before. Birkin’s note says that the film was made to accompany screenings of the third film in the Omen series, The Final Conflict, which he also wrote. I saw this at the cinema but don’t recall any short being shown with it (then again, I don’t recall much of The Final Conflict either). This must have been one of the last occasions when a short was commissioned to be shown with a first-run feature since the practice was discontinued soon after. Sredni Vashtar is a fitting companion for a horror film replete with sinister tragedies, but shorts and features weren’t always so well-matched. I saw Alien three times on its first run, and on each occasion had to sit through a documentary about the ongoing Mod revival. “Yes, yes, yes, you love your Parkas and Vespas but we’re here for the monsters and spaceships…”

Anyway, Birkin’s Sredni Vashtar is a superior adaptation of the story that’s all the more impressive when you read that it was shot in a mere five days. Saki’s tale is an unusual one for having a serious tone that sets it apart from the stories that surround it in the Chronicles of Clovis collection. The default Saki mode is one of cheerful flippancy whatever the subject may be, and it’s often the ironic distance between the events described and the offhand manner in which they’re related that makes his work so memorable. Sredni Vashtar‘s tale of an ailing boy’s revenge on an oppressive guardian seems to have been more heartfelt than many of his other entertainments. Alexander Puttnam, the son of film producer David Puttnam, plays the browbeaten Conradin, while Birkin’s mother, Judy Campbell, is the boy’s guardian aunt. Themes from Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana are put to good use, and would have helped tie the short to the Omen series, the first two of which were scored with Jerry Goldsmith’s thundering Latin chants. There’s also a fleeting reference to JM Barrie, whose life Birkin had dramatised for the BBC, while the film as a whole looks forward to the not-so-innocent childhood rituals that Birkin explored in his debut feature as director, The Cement Garden. Watch Sredni Vashtar here, and if you enjoy it do read the story as well.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Saki: The Improper Stories of HH Munro
• The Chronicles of Clovis and other sarcastic delights

Mr Sandman

The last cover reveal of the year isn’t my last cover of the year, two more will follow this one but they won’t be made public until next year. As before, I’ve only done the illustration this time, PS Publishing having an in-house designer who does the rest. Mr Sandman by SJI Holliday is another hardback novella, a horror tale with a sense of humour and a Monkey’s Paw-like warning about careless wishes:

Sophie is bored with her perfectly nice but deathly dull boyfriend Matthew. Sensing he’s about to lose her, Matthew takes her on a last-ditch attempt trip to the seaside, hoping to rekindle their dying flames. But things take a dark turn when Sophie visits Mr Sandman, a Haitian priest, who claims that he can change Matthew into the boyfriend that she wants. But does Sophie really know what she wants? Never has the phrase “be careful what you wish for” been more apt. Because Matthew does change…just not in the way that anyone could’ve predicted.

Worthing is a seaside town on the south coast of England that’s generally regarded as a poor relation of nearby Brighton. Despite this status the town does possess an award-winning pier which is the main focus of SJI Holliday’s story, so this seemed an inevitable focus for the cover as well. My idea was for something in the manner of Tom Adams, an artist who specialised in arrangements of carefully-painted objects on vague or sketchy backgrounds, with the backgrounds often depicting the location of the story. Having grown up in another seaside town blessed with three piers I’m well aware that all these structures aren’t the same so the pier details have been properly researched. The Tarot cards are an example of artistic licence, however, since the novella doesn’t mention Tarot divination. But with a narrative that concerns a visit to a fortune-teller’s booth this didn’t seem like too much of a stretch, as well as being a convenient way of depicting the main characters. Pamela Colman Smith’s cards were the model for these; the two main characters look a little stiff but that’s the way the figures are represented on her Lovers card, and the awkwardness of the relationship is a dominant theme. As for the cupcakes, these are all very relevant to the story but you’ll have to read the book to find out why.

Endpaper illustration.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Tom Adams Uncovered
• Out of season

Seasonal spectres

In today’s post, my latest cover for Swan River Press (previously). One tradition I’m always happy to endorse is the Christmas ghost story, when festive banalities are quelled by the words “Quis est iste, qui venit?” and “No diggin’ ‘ere!” Ghosts of the Chit-Chat delivers the chills with an outstanding tale—Basil Netherby by AC Benson—that I’d not read before and which is worth the price of entry alone. (That’s a photo of AC at the foot of the printed board, together with brothers EF and RH, both of whom are also represented inside.) But this is a solid collection with two early versions of familiar stories by MR James, together with a host of rarities. And the usual Swan River complement of related postcards, of course. Order it here.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Ghosts of the Chit-Chat
• The Far Tower: Stories for WB Yeats
• The Scarlet Soul: Stories for Dorian Gray
• “Who is this who is coming?”

Weekend links 548

The Aurora Borealis by Charles H. Whymper.

• “In 1829, when the celebrated Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai was almost 70 years old, he created more than 100 drawings of a dazzling array of subjects: playful cats, serene landscapes, even severed heads. Hokusai’s fame continued to grow after his death in 1849, and the suite of small, elaborate drawings was last purchased a century later, at a Paris auction in 1948. Then it disappeared from the public eye.” The British Museum now has the drawings which may be seen here.

• The week in cover design: Emily Temple compares US and UK covers for the same books, while Vyki Hendy collects recent titles with objects as the main feature of the cover designs. One of my recent covers (which will appear here soon) is less minimal than these but also features an arrangement of objects.

• The compilation experts at Light In The Attic Records have put together another collection of obscure Japanese music. Somewhere Between: Mutant Pop, Electronic Minimalism & Shadow Sounds Of Japan 1980–1988 will be released in January.

“A Jamesian world is one of cursed artefacts, endlessly subsuming landscapes, forgotten manuscripts and tactile beings that punish the curious and intellectually arrogant.” Adam Scovell visits the grave of MR James.

• Dragons and Unicorns: John Boardley on the lost art of the Hieroglyphic Bible.

• I almost missed John Waters’ favourite films of the year.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Sade’s Castle, Cardin’s House.

• Northern lights photographer of the year.

• Aurora Hominis (1970) by Beaver & Krause | Aurora (1971) by Tonto’s Expanding Head Band | Soft Aurora (1979) by Tod Dockstader