Robert M. Price's MOLDY MANUSCRIPTS vol. 04

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Last Updated on Monday, 02 April 2012 15:37 Written by Robert M. Price Monday, 05 December 2011 03:04

Jacques Derrida, father of Deconstruction, aptly said that people either love or hate Deconstruction. Once I was teaching a class on Postmodernism and Deconstruction, and one fellow, a retired professor if I recall correctly, was so outraged and incensed by what I was saying that he just could not control himself! He continually interrupted me to sound off about how outrageous Deconstruction’s methods and claims were! I had to ask him to be patient and hear me out. What I was really asking him was to try to be teachable, to stop defending himself against an idea that struck him as counter-intuitive. Give it a chance, try to understand it as its advocates do. If you still disagree, then you will at least be in a position to level an informed critique.

Now I am asking you to do me the same favor. Many readers have found Donald R. Burleson’s and my Deconstructive analyses to be unpalatable. Initially I reacted the same way to Don’s. But eventually I began to realize there had to be a method in this seeming madness. Burleson was no dummy! He must see something in it, so I started reading up on the subject—and I got converted! In what follows, please try to be open-minded.

Don’s “Identity and Alterity in Henry James's ‘The Jolly Corner’” first appeared in Studies in Weird Fiction #8 (February 1990). His “Arthur Machen's ‘N’ as Allegory of Reading” first appeared in Studies in Weird Fiction #7 (Spring 1990). My own “The Criticism of Azathoth” appeared (where else?) in Crypt of Cthulhu # 80 (Eastertide 1992).

Identity and Alterity in Henry James's "The Jolly Corner"

Arthur Machen's "N" as Allegory of Reading

The Criticism of Azathoth

Jeffrey Thomas Reviews Joseph S. Pulver Sr.'s "The Orphan Palace"

Last Updated on Monday, 02 April 2012 15:37 Written by Jeffrey Thomas Thursday, 17 November 2011 02:19

"Killing. Running. You can’t get away from you. You can cry, but when you’re done you’re still you." -- From The Orphan Palace.

We know him only as Cardigan (this name no doubt taken from the novel CARDIGAN by Robert W. Chambers, a literary hero of Pulver's). Cardigan is on a road trip across the country. Like a shark he must keep swimming; to stop might be the end of him. And like a shark, he is liable to tear into those who cross his path. Is Cardigan a serial killer, or a dark avenger? For he has been wounded, has Cardigan. Long ago he escaped the orphanage called Zimms, where he was tortured by a mysterious Dr. Archer and his staff. And so Cardigan is on the road back to Zimms, to right past wrongs. Having once run away from Zimms, and now running toward it, has he only traced one great zero?

On the road, Cardigan weirdly seems to encounter the same hotel again and again, with one of a series of oddly identical pulp fiction books in his hotel room in place of a Bible, furthering the sense that he has only been running in a circle -- an Ouroboros swallowing its own tale. Running like a rat in a treadmill, really going nowhere…except deeper into his own madness.

Read more: Jeffrey Thomas Reviews Joseph S. Pulver Sr.'s "The Orphan Palace"

Robert M. Price's MOLDY MANUSCRIPTS vol. 03

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Last Updated on Friday, 02 March 2012 16:00 Written by Robert M. Price Friday, 21 October 2011 16:27

I don’t go to theatre except for horror, Star Trek, and superhero movies. Sometimes I write reviews or review essays on them. You might think I am reading way too much into these flicks. See what you think. This time out I am exhuming a couple of reviews. Eli Roth’s Hostel has much more to it than meets the eye, as you will see, at least in my tortured psyche. My review appeared a few years ago in my newsletter/monthly essay on line, Zarathustra Speaks (subscribe for free at robertmprice.mindvendor.com). My review of The Whole Wide World appeared in Crypt of Cthulhu #93 (Lammas 1996), then in The Cimmerian 14 (October, 2004). I thought it might be worth another look now that a new film version of Conan is current.

And who doesn’t love Godzillla movies (whether or not they will admit it)? I prevailed upon Stephen Mark Rainey to allow me to reprint an article on them he ran in his pre-Deathrealm zine Japanese Giants. Mark, in case you didn’t know, is a polymath: a graphic artist, a musician, and a truly gifted writer of horror fiction. He and that other Marc (Cerasini) happen to be the world’s greatest authorities on Gojira and Toho Studios films.

Honeymoon in the Charnel House - Checking into Hostel

The Last Temptation of Conan

Godzilla in Retro

LORE Chats with Barry Longyear

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Last Updated on Saturday, 24 September 2011 19:43 Written by David A. Hill Friday, 23 September 2011 01:37

Barry B. Longyear is the first writer to win the Hugo, Nebula, and John W. Campbell Award all in the same year. In addition to his acclaimed Enemy Mine Series, his works include the Circus World and Infinity Hold series, Sea of Glass, other SF & fantasy novels, recovery and writing instruction works, and numerous short stories.

In your seminar, The Write Stuff, we get to find out why you started writing. Can you identify the point where you truly felt that you conquered those goals? The point at which you felt you "had arrived?"

There have been several times when I felt I had arrived: When I sold my first story to George Scithers at Asimov's in 1978, when I became the first writer to win the Nebula, Hugo, and John W. Campbell Awards in the same year, when I first saw books of mine on the shelves at a local bookstore, and just about every time someone writes in to tell me what something I've written has meant to them.  Then there are all the times when I beat myself up as a failure, not making the big bucks, not getting the book sales and placements I think I deserve, and so on. This is the kind of stuff that can give you a heart attack. I finally had to settle on writing as the goal because writing is what I love doing, whether it sells or not, and that no one really "arrives" until they drop you in that box and throw dirt on you. As it has been said many times before, "The joy is in the journey."

Read more: LORE Chats with Barry Longyear