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An Omnibus of 20th Century Ghost Stories
An outstanding collection . . . unusual in its surprising selection of authors.--ALA Booklist. The finest literary masters of our time--Graham Greene, Joyce Carol Oates, Virginia Woolf, John Updike, Turman Capote, Muriel Spark and 21 others--have contributed to this excellent compendium of tales of the unexpected and the surreal.
374 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 1989
3 people are currently reading
27 people want to read
About the author
Robert S. Phillips
46 books8 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
American poet, author and editor, usually publishes under the name Robert Phillips.
Robert S. Phillips was born 1938 in Milford, Delaware and is the author or editor of some 30 volumes of poetry, fiction, criticism, and belles lettres and publishes in numerous journals. A graduate of Syracuse University's creative writing program, he is currently (May 2007) a professor of English at the University of Houston; he was also director of the Creative Writing Program there from 1991 to 1996. His honors include a 1996 Enron Teaching Excellence Award, a Pushcart Prize, an American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, a New York State Council on the Arts CAPS Grant in Poetry, MacDowell Colony and Yaddo Fellowships, a National Public Radio Syndicated Fiction Project Award, a Syracuse University Arents Pioneer Medal, and Texas Institute of Letters membership. In 1998 he was named a John and Rebecca Moore Scholar at the University of Houston.
[Portions of biographical sketch taken from Mr. Phillips' faculty home page at the University of Houston, http://www.uh.edu/cwp/faculty/phillip..., retrieved 11 May 2007.]
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American poet, author and editor, usually publishes under the name Robert Phillips.
Robert S. Phillips was born 1938 in Milford, Delaware and is the author or editor of some 30 volumes of poetry, fiction, criticism, and belles lettres and publishes in numerous journals. A graduate of Syracuse University's creative writing program, he is currently (May 2007) a professor of English at the University of Houston; he was also director of the Creative Writing Program there from 1991 to 1996. His honors include a 1996 Enron Teaching Excellence Award, a Pushcart Prize, an American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, a New York State Council on the Arts CAPS Grant in Poetry, MacDowell Colony and Yaddo Fellowships, a National Public Radio Syndicated Fiction Project Award, a Syracuse University Arents Pioneer Medal, and Texas Institute of Letters membership. In 1998 he was named a John and Rebecca Moore Scholar at the University of Houston.
[Portions of biographical sketch taken from Mr. Phillips' faculty home page at the University of Houston, http://www.uh.edu/cwp/faculty/phillip..., retrieved 11 May 2007.]
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December 16, 2022PLACEHOLDER REVIEWS
"A Little Place Off The Edgeware Road" by Graham Greene follows a man who frequents a second run silent film theater because it's usually empty, but this time he's joined by a talkative stranger who intimates an earlier act of violence. Nicely done, sparklingly written, this has an eerie setting and smartly ends on its punchline.
Edith Wharton's “Afterward” is a long, if slightly less dense, literary ghost story about a newly purchased house that manifests a most unusual form of haunting. Yes, it is a long read, but the emotional impact of the ending, when it does finally come, is pretty powerful. The meta-awareness of ghost stories – the couple find the idea of a haunted house very charming – is chronologically interesting as well.
An old seafaring salt finds himself tended through an illness by a mute, beautiful girl whose existence he cannot prove after she disappears in the sad, sentimental "Andrina" by George Mackay Brown
"Miriam" by Truman Capote, as might be expected, extremely well-written and observed. A tale of a perfectly happy shut-in widow who extends a kindness to a small girl and then is incessantly plagued by the child's increasingly wild (if benignly expressed) demands. Is it a ghost story, a doppelganger tale, an extended metaphor on childlessness? Hard to say.
Shirley Jackson's psychological piece "The Daemon Lover" has a woman wait expectantly for her suitor and then desperately seek him out. This story evokes frustration, desperation and anxiety over societal expectations of marriage, and ends with a powerful sense of a woman's alienation after being shut-out of love or marriage (her only other option is a barren room). Strong but kind of vague as well.
And then there's “The Jolly Corner” by Henry James. Yes, James is not easy to read - I called him a “dense” writer once and this story defines that adjective – yet he is also not an example of that humorous riposte “a writer who uses twenty words where one would suffice”; there is no repetition or stretching here. Every sentence is constructed deliberately to an exacting standard, a standard of imparting information subtly (if also abstractly at times). Every word chosen is not merely fraught with meaning, but freighted with it, packed and condensed. If words in the hands of an average writer are sticks or planks, for James they are concentrated bricks of verbiage, arranged delicately to convey complex meaning. This can make for rigorous, difficult reading, especially to those used to breezy, modern storytelling styles (see a master of the opposite form, Richard Matheson), and yet, approached with this knowledge, James can be exceedingly rewarding. I first heard “The Jolly Corner” as a dramatized episode of KPFA's 60's radio series THE BLACK MASS and was very impressed with James' unique take on the doppelganger. Having now read the actual text, I'm even more impressed. An expatriate, black-sheep member of a wealthy family returns to New York to oversee his real-estate holdings, including his family brownstone. He becomes fixated on what life might have been like for him, could have been like for him, if he had but stayed in America instead of fleeing his expected family obligations for the culture and gaiety of Europe. In doing this, he begins to deliberately “evoke” a specter of this alternate life... and that's all I'll say. It's not easy reading, but it is some of the most powerful writing I've ever read, placing you in a suspenseful moment like no other (it should probably be read all in one sitting). There's wonderful attention to detail (multiple in-story “twinnings” like two houses to be sold, and the black and white checkerboard marble floor, doors open and shut between rooms) and a marvelous conception of character and psychology (The narrator is fascinated by how his double will differ from him, and how he will be the same, and this allows the reader unprecedented insight into his character and assumptions). The confrontation scene is, as I said, intense. From a purely literary perspective – it's quite a feat!
"The Mysteries of the Joy Rio" by Tennessee Williams has always stuck in my head since I first read it years ago - it's the tale of an elderly gay man and the decrepit pleasure palace (once opera house, then grand cinema, now aging fleabag theater) where he spends his time at furtive fumbling in the dark with strangers following the death of his longtime lover. It impresses on a number of levels - a sad and touching ghost story, a symbolic examination of life and death (the grand hall awash with possibilities as a youth turned rotting, empty cavern desperately filled with hollow desires by the end) and also a surprisingly frank (if slightly coded) portrayal of the unspoken rules and practices of anonymous homosexual cruising during the early part of the 19th century. Extremely well-written, as would be expected.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a tale about which much has already been said. The mind and its breakdown, an unreliable narrator and her obsessions, the oppressive and infantilizing treatment of women make this a classic and a definite must-read. There's a bit of the “rationality” thread in this as well, with the newly born concepts of therapy and treatment, quackery though they are in this case.
"A Little Place Off The Edgeware Road" by Graham Greene follows a man who frequents a second run silent film theater because it's usually empty, but this time he's joined by a talkative stranger who intimates an earlier act of violence. Nicely done, sparklingly written, this has an eerie setting and smartly ends on its punchline.
Edith Wharton's “Afterward” is a long, if slightly less dense, literary ghost story about a newly purchased house that manifests a most unusual form of haunting. Yes, it is a long read, but the emotional impact of the ending, when it does finally come, is pretty powerful. The meta-awareness of ghost stories – the couple find the idea of a haunted house very charming – is chronologically interesting as well.
An old seafaring salt finds himself tended through an illness by a mute, beautiful girl whose existence he cannot prove after she disappears in the sad, sentimental "Andrina" by George Mackay Brown
"Miriam" by Truman Capote, as might be expected, extremely well-written and observed. A tale of a perfectly happy shut-in widow who extends a kindness to a small girl and then is incessantly plagued by the child's increasingly wild (if benignly expressed) demands. Is it a ghost story, a doppelganger tale, an extended metaphor on childlessness? Hard to say.
Shirley Jackson's psychological piece "The Daemon Lover" has a woman wait expectantly for her suitor and then desperately seek him out. This story evokes frustration, desperation and anxiety over societal expectations of marriage, and ends with a powerful sense of a woman's alienation after being shut-out of love or marriage (her only other option is a barren room). Strong but kind of vague as well.
And then there's “The Jolly Corner” by Henry James. Yes, James is not easy to read - I called him a “dense” writer once and this story defines that adjective – yet he is also not an example of that humorous riposte “a writer who uses twenty words where one would suffice”; there is no repetition or stretching here. Every sentence is constructed deliberately to an exacting standard, a standard of imparting information subtly (if also abstractly at times). Every word chosen is not merely fraught with meaning, but freighted with it, packed and condensed. If words in the hands of an average writer are sticks or planks, for James they are concentrated bricks of verbiage, arranged delicately to convey complex meaning. This can make for rigorous, difficult reading, especially to those used to breezy, modern storytelling styles (see a master of the opposite form, Richard Matheson), and yet, approached with this knowledge, James can be exceedingly rewarding. I first heard “The Jolly Corner” as a dramatized episode of KPFA's 60's radio series THE BLACK MASS and was very impressed with James' unique take on the doppelganger. Having now read the actual text, I'm even more impressed. An expatriate, black-sheep member of a wealthy family returns to New York to oversee his real-estate holdings, including his family brownstone. He becomes fixated on what life might have been like for him, could have been like for him, if he had but stayed in America instead of fleeing his expected family obligations for the culture and gaiety of Europe. In doing this, he begins to deliberately “evoke” a specter of this alternate life... and that's all I'll say. It's not easy reading, but it is some of the most powerful writing I've ever read, placing you in a suspenseful moment like no other (it should probably be read all in one sitting). There's wonderful attention to detail (multiple in-story “twinnings” like two houses to be sold, and the black and white checkerboard marble floor, doors open and shut between rooms) and a marvelous conception of character and psychology (The narrator is fascinated by how his double will differ from him, and how he will be the same, and this allows the reader unprecedented insight into his character and assumptions). The confrontation scene is, as I said, intense. From a purely literary perspective – it's quite a feat!
"The Mysteries of the Joy Rio" by Tennessee Williams has always stuck in my head since I first read it years ago - it's the tale of an elderly gay man and the decrepit pleasure palace (once opera house, then grand cinema, now aging fleabag theater) where he spends his time at furtive fumbling in the dark with strangers following the death of his longtime lover. It impresses on a number of levels - a sad and touching ghost story, a symbolic examination of life and death (the grand hall awash with possibilities as a youth turned rotting, empty cavern desperately filled with hollow desires by the end) and also a surprisingly frank (if slightly coded) portrayal of the unspoken rules and practices of anonymous homosexual cruising during the early part of the 19th century. Extremely well-written, as would be expected.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a tale about which much has already been said. The mind and its breakdown, an unreliable narrator and her obsessions, the oppressive and infantilizing treatment of women make this a classic and a definite must-read. There's a bit of the “rationality” thread in this as well, with the newly born concepts of therapy and treatment, quackery though they are in this case.
November 16, 2021
Some stories were definitely better than others. Toward the end of the collection I was about ready to put away the spooky books until October 2022.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews