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hopterque posted:Well it sure is a weird feeling reading the Laird Barron short story collections and having them get closer and closer and closer to where I grew up. I just started The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All and the second story totally takes place on the Olympic Peninsula at Lake Crescent where I have been many, many times and have driven by at night in dense fog and swam in and skipped rocks across. It even mentions my hometown by name! Would that be "The Redfield Girls"? I love that story.
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Feb 25, 2014 00:04
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PateraOctopus posted:It's been about five or six months now since I read The Imago Sequence and I legitimately can't remember anything from a single one of the stories except the bit in the barn in "Hallucigenia." The stories all felt exactly the same. I really do not understand the love for this author. Maybe you just don't like Barron? You can not like an author without having to conclude they are terrible. For example, I'm not really fond of Clive Barker, but I recognize that's more a matter of my personal tastes than any failing of his.
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Feb 25, 2014 00:15
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Gary the Llama posted:Would that be "The Redfield Girls"? I love that story. Yeah, it is. Reading through it right now (Lake Crescent owns and is gorgeous and also incredibly creepy and oppressive when there's thick fog, which is pretty frequent there).
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Feb 25, 2014 00:21
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Ornamented Death posted:Maybe you just don't like Barron? You can not like an author without having to conclude they are terrible. For example, I'm not really fond of Clive Barker, but I recognize that's more a matter of my personal tastes than any failing of his. Clive Barker's work was relatively novel at one time. He was too influential for his own good, now his stuff is not only not that scary, it seems derivative.
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Feb 25, 2014 02:06
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PateraOctopus posted:It's been about five or six months now since I read The Imago Sequence and I legitimately can't remember anything from a single one of the stories except the bit in the barn in "Hallucigenia." The stories all felt exactly the same. I really do not understand the love for this author. There are certainly some major similarities between his work. He is fond of ultra-masculine, whisky swilling heavy smoking protagonists. Even the protagonist of The Croning, an erudite geologist, has a past as a bit of an adventurer and drinks like a fish. Despite that, I think there are enough variances to make each story interesting. More recently he has begun branching out a bit more - female protagonists, a sociopathic protagonist, that odd Lovecraft mythos story (which a lot of people didn't like but I thought was pretty good), the Ligotti story, and reaching back further the story written by an actual eldritch abomination and Proboscis, the latter of which which was quite strange and which I did not like much or understand at the time but which grew on me as I thought about it more. I get why people wouldn't like him, but I don't think his stories are as similar as you suggest. Other horror writers show about as much stylistic homogeneity, I think. Lovecraft and Ligotti spring to mind as two authors who put their own stamp on every page they write and it is hard to mistake them as any other writer. Not that that in itself is an excuse - both of those writers are fairly flawed, in their own ways. Neurosis fucked around with this message at 03:52 on Feb 25, 2014 |
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Feb 25, 2014 03:49
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Ornamented Death posted:Maybe you just don't like Barron? You can not like an author without having to conclude they are terrible. For example, I'm not really fond of Clive Barker, but I recognize that's more a matter of my personal tastes than any failing of his. I don't think he's terrible, I just don't understand what people like about him. I've heard him praised for many different things that I have not actually perceived in his writing. He seems to be a very talented surrealist but that's not what I've heard him praised for, nor is it the genre in which his writing is marketed; as a horror writer his writing does nothing for me whatsoever. Neurosis posted:There are certainly some major similarities between his work. He is fond of ultra-masculine, whisky swilling heavy smoking protagonists. Even the protagonist of The Croning, an erudite geologist, has a past as a bit of an adventurer and drinks like a fish. Despite that, I think there are enough variances to make each story interesting. More recently he has begun branching out a bit more - female protagonists, a sociopathic protagonist, that odd Lovecraft mythos story (which a lot of people didn't like but I thought was pretty good), the Ligotti story, and reaching back further the story written by an actual eldritch abomination and Proboscis, the latter of which which was quite strange and which I did not like much or understand at the time but which grew on me as I thought about it more. I get why people wouldn't like him, but I don't think his stories are as similar as you suggest. It's not just stylistic homogeneity, though, it's subject matter--like, Lovecraft and Ligotti have their own very distinctive voices but they use them to tell distinct and memorably different stories, whereas to me most Barron stories seem to be about a bitter loner investigating something seemingly-normal and gradually having their perception of reality break down around them until they break through to some terrible and unexplicated understanding of *SOMETHING* as the story ends. Just about everything I've read of his seems to be a slightly different setting for that same series of events to happen in. I'm aware that I've read stories called "Proboscis" and "Bulldozer" and "Procession of the Black Sloth" but I couldn't tell you anything that happens in them. "Strappado" is the only story of his that really sticks out in my head and it doesn't follow that general formula--but I also didn't think it was terribly interesting, either. He's definitely not for me, and I don't really see what he's doing that puts him at the forefront of modern horror fiction where so many critics and readers have placed him. If he does something for you, great, but I don't get anything out of his writing. Maybe I'm missing something.
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Feb 25, 2014 08:09
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PateraOctopus posted:"Strappado" is the only story of his that really sticks out in my head Wow yeah. I disagree with you as I really enjoy Barron but there was just something about "Strappado" unlike any of his other stories that just stuck with me for several days...heck months now even that really terrifies me and leaves my stomach a little nauseous. Maybe it was sensation of utter degradation at the end, being dumped in and confined in that oil drum. Maybe it was something about all these European/Asian/American glitterati/neo-imperialists giving in like the sheep they were and walking into the slaughter of their own volition. Maybe because I could see the same thing happening in Pakistan or someplace in Africa and being reported on CNN tomorrow. I don't know. He hit a deep primal nerve in me I didn't know I had with that story. Van Iblis was such a good idea for a Mythos cult though. Helical Nightmares fucked around with this message at 08:30 on Feb 25, 2014 |
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Feb 25, 2014 08:22
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Strappado was fairly odd. Again, one of those stories I like more in hindsight than I did at the time. I am a bit of a sci fi and fantasy geek and I like Barron's mythos building ones the most. Mysterium Tremendum, The Croning, Hallucigenia and The Light is the Darkness. Several people on these boards have said they thought The Light is the Darkness is terrible. Clearly something is wrong with me, because I loved it. That breakdown (investigation --> revelation) does describe a lot of his stories... I feel enough break the mould to keep it interesting, even if his bread and butter is what I like the most. Especially the more recent ones, even though I feel they're overall weaker.
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Feb 25, 2014 08:51
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I guess for me part of the problem is that Laird and Ligotti kinda do the same thing except Ligotti does it better. If you're not going to be better than Ligotti at the atmospheric thing then I'd rather you just write straightforward mythos stories.
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Feb 25, 2014 09:16
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TOOT BOOT posted:I guess for me part of the problem is that Laird and Ligotti kinda do the same thing except Ligotti does it better. If you're not going to be better than Ligotti at the atmospheric thing then I'd rather you just write straightforward mythos stories. If you can't be the best at something, don't even try. That's a great philosophy for life.
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Feb 25, 2014 13:43
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Procession of the Black Sloth was clearly intended to be a meta-story to cause the reader as much pain as possible trying to trudge through it.
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Feb 25, 2014 15:29
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It really was pretty bad. I love Barron and thought it was tedious as hell.
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Feb 25, 2014 15:56
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GrandpaPants posted:So it The King in Yellow actually worth reading? Reading through Amazon reviews, it seems like some of the stories therein are crap, but the Dover Mystery version seems like it cuts out all the lovely stories and adds some other ones from elsewhere in his career. I wound up buying this version and found it pretty hit and miss overall. That said, "The Repairer of Reputations" is essential reading, and the good stories are quite good.
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Feb 25, 2014 17:06
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If I were to get one Barron short story collection, which should I go for? Occultation, Imago Sequence, or The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All?
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Feb 26, 2014 03:39
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Ornamented Death posted:If you can't be the best at something, don't even try. We are in the cosmic horror thread, 'don't even try' should be our motto.
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Feb 26, 2014 04:33
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I figured out what bothers me about your last few posts. You're not consistent.TOOT BOOT posted:I think I actually prefer Laird Barron's more straightforward monster type stuff even if the other varieties are more well-written. This hallucinogenic dream logic style stuff really gets under my skin in an uncomfortable way, worse than Thomas Ligotti even. TOOT BOOT posted:I guess for me part of the problem is that Laird and Ligotti kinda do the same thing except Ligotti does it better. If you're not going to be better than Ligotti at the atmospheric thing then I'd rather you just write straightforward mythos stories. You'd rather Barron stick to monster stories because he's both better and worse than Ligotti at essentially the same thing.
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Feb 26, 2014 04:43
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Ornamented Death posted:I figured out what bothers me about your last few posts. You're not consistent. Those parts are about a year apart. When that guy posted a page ago saying none of Barron's hallucinogenic stories made a lasting impression on him, I realized the same was true for me. I haven't read any Ligotti in 3-4 years but I can remember the basics of more of his stories now than the Laird Barron stories I read a year ago. Sometimes first impressions change when you've had some time to think about it, I remember seeing Children of Men and some other movie in the same week in 2006. At the time I thought Children of Men was pretty mediocre and the other movie was great. A month or two later I realized I was still thinking about some of the imagery in Children of Men while I had stopped thinking about the other movie. At this point I can't even remember what the other movie was that I supposedly liked so much.
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Feb 26, 2014 05:15
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GrandpaPants posted:If I were to get one Barron short story collection, which should I go for? Occultation, Imago Sequence, or The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All? Imago Sequence and Occultation you can't go wrong with. Just don't read them back to back as he uses similar themes in both. The Beautiful Thing... is a step down in quality.
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Feb 26, 2014 05:51
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Ornamented Death posted:I figured out what bothers me about your last few posts. You're not consistent. Dude, not everybody likes Laird Barron. That's okay. Nobody is saying that you're wrong for liking him. Different tastes.
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Feb 26, 2014 08:57
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Glad this thread went into some Barron talk since I've recently started reading The Imago Sequence and am having a hard time getting interested in it. Note that I've just read the first two stories, but they were so dreadfully bland and predictable that I'm hesitant to continue. Only first impressions however, I'm aware of that. The first story, Old Virginia, was so straightforward and characters so ungripping that I kind of felt like I was reading an plot overview rather than a short story. It was a few days until I started again reading the next story and I found that I completely forgot what Old Virginia was about. Not a good sign. Shiva, Open Your Eye was better but still very lacking in the former half. The protagonist is an eternal avatar of a hateful, incomprehensible God, some sort of Nyarlathotep, and all he does is make people look at statues and disappear to the eternal voidbowel-dimension of Azathoth-Sothoth? Ok. Great. Now I'm on Procession of the Black Sloth, a story this thread seems to dread. Look forward to it! I'll give it and a few more stories an honest go.
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Feb 26, 2014 12:21
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Hallucigenia is the high point of The Imago Sequence. Read at least that before rendering judgment.
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Feb 26, 2014 12:37
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I find that Laird Barron is becoming a better writer as he goes along, so it's interesting to follow him just for that reason.
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Feb 26, 2014 18:11
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I'm also just starting The Imago Sequence. Picked it up after it was recommended in the thread. It's definitely above the median for short horror fiction, but I'm two stories in and despite good elements it feels a little unpolished. I think my biggest problem is that it feels to me like he can't keep a firm hold on his narrators' voices. In Old Virginia I never felt like I was seeing things through the narrator's eyes, and his reactions to things rang false. In Shiva, Open Your Eye it was like the narrator kept switching between his two aspects (mortal manifestation of something eternal nearing the end of its life / the eternal thing itself). I never got the sense that I was listening to the former fumbling to understand the latter, which is the part of the story that really interested me. Did anyone else get that, or is it just me? How do people feel about Barron's characterisation overall?
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Feb 26, 2014 20:16
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This seems like the place to post about horror novels in general, so I'm sorry if any of the books I'm about to mention are not strictly "cosmic" horror. Right now I'm reading Teatro Grotesca by Ligotti and Houdini Heart by Ki Longfellow. Anyone read the latter? I'm only 50 pages in but I'm enjoying it. Also, I'm looking for some recommendations. I really like the Barker that I've read, Penpal by David something, Ligotti and Barron, and I really really enjoyed House of Leaves.
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Mar 5, 2014 22:30
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Check out The Cipher by Kathe Koja. It's one of those hauntingly creepy books that I despised at first for being so loving affected in its prose but something about it really stuck with me
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Mar 6, 2014 02:27
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Lil Mama Im Sorry posted:Also, I'm looking for some recommendations. Check out DarkFuse. They've published quite a lot in the last two years, and most of it is pretty good.
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Mar 6, 2014 03:44
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Thanks for the recs. I'm gonna check all of these out!
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Mar 7, 2014 02:29
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Also checkout Windeye by Brian Evenson, it's amazing.
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Mar 7, 2014 09:18
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The news was only released a couple of days ago, but Michael Shea passed away last month. If you're a regular in this thread, chances are good you've read at least one story by him even if you don't recognize his name.
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Mar 8, 2014 05:09
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"Fat Face" was pretty widely anthologized, if memory serves. RIP.
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Mar 8, 2014 05:15
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Anyone have an opinion on Simon Strantzas or Scott Nicolay? Barron is recommending them on his blog but he has steered me wrong before.
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Mar 10, 2014 10:08
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Neurosis posted:Anyone have an opinion on Simon Strantzas or Scott Nicolay? Barron is recommending them on his blog but he has steered me wrong before. I'm a huge fan of Strantzas. His style is like Ligotti mixed with Aickman, its great.
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Mar 10, 2014 17:21
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Liking Strantzas. Not as overtly horror as other writers, but very solid prose and some creepy ideas. Brandon Bell wrote a reply to The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: http://lovecraftzine.com/magazine/i...brandon-h-bell/ It's fairly well written but I'll have to think before I can reply. How much I agree with Ligotti varies depending on how lovely my life is at the time and how much I'm drinking.
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Mar 17, 2014 16:22
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Neurosis posted:Liking Strantzas. Not as overtly horror as other writers, but very solid prose and some creepy ideas. Yeah, I don't even see the worth in responding to TCATHR; Ligotti has publicized his personal demons over the years and even though TCATHR is non-fiction, I think it's best enjoyed as a companion piece to his fiction. A "how-to-Ligotti" manual, if you will.
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Mar 18, 2014 09:31
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I'm looking for more horror short stories. I really, really liked Windeye, by Evenson, and then moved on to Imago Sequence, which felt really lacking or unfocused after how brief and effective Evenson's work seemed. I liked Hallucigenia, but felt like it could have been about half as long and would have been much better. I really like old pulp horror, like Horror of the Heights, Novel of the White Powder, Irwin Cobb's Fishhead, stuff like that as well. Any recommendations based on those preferences? Newer stuff mostly - I've got a big collection of late-19th and early 20th century pulp horror already.
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Mar 25, 2014 18:11
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a foolish pianist posted:I'm looking for more horror short stories. I really, really liked Windeye, by Evenson, and then moved on to Imago Sequence, which felt really lacking or unfocused after how brief and effective Evenson's work seemed. I liked Hallucigenia, but felt like it could have been about half as long and would have been much better. I really like old pulp horror, like Horror of the Heights, Novel of the White Powder, Irwin Cobb's Fishhead, stuff like that as well. You're probably looking for Jeff and Anne Vandermeer's The Weird, the most comprehensive anthology of 20th century weird fiction ever assembled, it's also the best place to start when looking for new authors to read, as anyone included there will be at the very least readable.
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Mar 26, 2014 21:45
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Friendless posted:I'm also just starting The Imago Sequence. Picked it up after it was recommended in the thread. It's definitely above the median for short horror fiction, but I'm two stories in and despite good elements it feels a little unpolished. I think my biggest problem is that it feels to me like he can't keep a firm hold on his narrators' voices. In Old Virginia I never felt like I was seeing things through the narrator's eyes, and his reactions to things rang false. In Shiva, Open Your Eye it was like the narrator kept switching between his two aspects (mortal manifestation of something eternal nearing the end of its life / the eternal thing itself). I never got the sense that I was listening to the former fumbling to understand the latter, which is the part of the story that really interested me. I was pretty disappointed in this book overall. Outside of the characterization issues, Barron's writing was just good enough to let me figure out what he's shooting for with each story, but not good enough to really make me give a poo poo. The stories can be a bit scatterbrained at times, and I kept feeling the same sense of disappointment at the endings. The Imago Sequence, the story the book took its title from, was probably my favorite of the bunch but even it suffered from an ending that just sort of...happened. I don't think I'll really dig through his other stuff at this point. I know he seems relatively popular around here, and he seems to have cool ideas, but he just doesn't tell the story well.
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Mar 26, 2014 21:45
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DFu4ever posted:I don't think I'll really dig through his other stuff at this point. I know he seems relatively popular around here, and he seems to have cool ideas, but he just doesn't tell the story well. I have never liked anything Laird Barron has written, he's kind of Steven Kingy and mid-70s to early 90s horror but without the redeeming aspects of either. A lot of dissolute men piss farting around for ages. And who finds witches scary anyway? After the Wickerman there's nothing you can do with them. There is very little that is compelling about his stuff at all.
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Mar 26, 2014 21:54
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God drat Thomas Ligotti is depressing
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Mar 28, 2014 03:52
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NickRoweFillea posted:God drat Thomas Ligotti is depressing Indeed he can be, along with a gently caress-ton of other adjectives. For me, he's up there with a list of writers I find truly effective in that they don't allow the reader to choose their emotion about the material; they (the authors) are consistent in making the reader feel a certain way as they probably felt while writing the words. Call it hyperbole, but I find Ligotti as talented as McCarthy, Helprin, Faulkner, et. al.
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Mar 28, 2014 04:02
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