Glen Hirshberg's Blog - Posts Tagged "peter-straub"
Epistles from Readercon 2014: Heading Out
Having escaped Paul Tremblay's trunk when he was busy snapping illicit photos of the writers in the car that had pulled up alongside us,
I crept back to my room, scraped the bits of...no, I don't even want to know who else Paul Tremblay keeps in his trunk, or what happened to them...anyway, I changed, steeled myself, and reemerged for one last glorious day at Readercon: Peter Straub
waxing eloquent and magnanimous over a long, quiet breakfast conversation,
Mary Rickert delivering a deceptively gentle excerpt from The Memory Garden (and then passing out Forget-Me-Not seeds), John Langan surprising us all with a deft and disturbing action sequence from a new story. Then standing up, as the night's last reader, and letting Good Girls rip for the first time.
Getting a response from a readinged-out crowd that felt absurdly generous and tremendously reassuring. Then bad mousse
and great conversation with Langan, a light-hearted and laughing Ellen Datlow (full of good projects, as ever), Daryl Gregory (whose work I have recently discovered, and think is most decidedly worth YOUR discovering), and the charming Liza Trombi of Locus, before stumbling upstairs into the sauna--wait, that was someone's ROOM??--where maybe 80 writers, editors, conversationalists, friends, saw the CON out the way it came in: with clever chatter, whiskey way too strong for little hobbit Hirshbergs to touch, book recs, movie recs, genuine mutual admiration, and friendship. Sean Moreland, great last chat, looking forward to more next week. So good seeing everyone. More, please...
I crept back to my room, scraped the bits of...no, I don't even want to know who else Paul Tremblay keeps in his trunk, or what happened to them...anyway, I changed, steeled myself, and reemerged for one last glorious day at Readercon: Peter Straub
waxing eloquent and magnanimous over a long, quiet breakfast conversation,
Mary Rickert delivering a deceptively gentle excerpt from The Memory Garden (and then passing out Forget-Me-Not seeds), John Langan surprising us all with a deft and disturbing action sequence from a new story. Then standing up, as the night's last reader, and letting Good Girls rip for the first time.
Getting a response from a readinged-out crowd that felt absurdly generous and tremendously reassuring. Then bad mousse
and great conversation with Langan, a light-hearted and laughing Ellen Datlow (full of good projects, as ever), Daryl Gregory (whose work I have recently discovered, and think is most decidedly worth YOUR discovering), and the charming Liza Trombi of Locus, before stumbling upstairs into the sauna--wait, that was someone's ROOM??--where maybe 80 writers, editors, conversationalists, friends, saw the CON out the way it came in: with clever chatter, whiskey way too strong for little hobbit Hirshbergs to touch, book recs, movie recs, genuine mutual admiration, and friendship. Sean Moreland, great last chat, looking forward to more next week. So good seeing everyone. More, please...
Favorite Horror?
[From my August interview with Gingernuts of Horror.]
Q: What is your all-time favourite horror novel, and film?
A: Again. Impossible. But you asked about “favorite” as opposed to best or scariest, so that’s what I’ll try and answer. Film: Either the original John Carpenter “The Fog,” which made me fall all the way into lifelong love with ghost story telling, ghost story atmosphere, lighthouses in fog, static-riddled radio in the middle of the night; or else one of the Val Lewtons—I’m thinking “I Walked With a Zombie” or “Cat People”—for pretty much the same reasons.
Novel? The answer might be different if you said collection or book. But novel? Peter Straub’s If You Could See Me Now would be way up there, for all the reasons mentioned in the film notes above. Ramsey Campbell’s Incarnate, which just plain scared the shit out of me. I couldn’t admire The Haunting of Hill House more, think it’s a masterpiece, but it’s too cold to be my favorite. If I’m picking one? I think I’m going The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which has all the atmosphere, all the storytelling charm (and how), plus astonishing psychological insight—it’s so much more complicated and beautiful and sophisticated a book than people who haven’t read it think—heart, Aristotelean choices, footsteps on cobbled, echoing streets, lost letters, profound consequences, regrets…it’s got it all. - See more at: http://www.gingernutsofhorror.com/5/p...
Q: What is your all-time favourite horror novel, and film?
A: Again. Impossible. But you asked about “favorite” as opposed to best or scariest, so that’s what I’ll try and answer. Film: Either the original John Carpenter “The Fog,” which made me fall all the way into lifelong love with ghost story telling, ghost story atmosphere, lighthouses in fog, static-riddled radio in the middle of the night; or else one of the Val Lewtons—I’m thinking “I Walked With a Zombie” or “Cat People”—for pretty much the same reasons.
Novel? The answer might be different if you said collection or book. But novel? Peter Straub’s If You Could See Me Now would be way up there, for all the reasons mentioned in the film notes above. Ramsey Campbell’s Incarnate, which just plain scared the shit out of me. I couldn’t admire The Haunting of Hill House more, think it’s a masterpiece, but it’s too cold to be my favorite. If I’m picking one? I think I’m going The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which has all the atmosphere, all the storytelling charm (and how), plus astonishing psychological insight—it’s so much more complicated and beautiful and sophisticated a book than people who haven’t read it think—heart, Aristotelean choices, footsteps on cobbled, echoing streets, lost letters, profound consequences, regrets…it’s got it all. - See more at: http://www.gingernutsofhorror.com/5/p...
