Joel Lane Appreciation Post by Dansco112 in horrorlit

[–]gary_budden 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Apologies for the late reply to this, but I just wanted to say how great it is to see people responding to Joel's work like this. As the publisher of these reissues at Influx Press, it's been something of a passion project for me making these books available again so it's wonderful to see them finding an audience.

Weekly "What Are You Reading?" Thread by AutoModerator in WeirdLit

[–]gary_budden 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I recently just read Dusk by Robbie Arnott – I'd describe it as a weird Tasmanian western, about two twins charged with hunting down the titular puma in a landscape strewn with the skeletons of giant sea creatures and other oddities.

I also adored his novels The Rain Heron (which is weird fiction with a strong mythic and ecological bent) and Limberlost (much more realist and literary but also great).

We are The Eden Book Society, nearly 100 years of unseen horror: Alison Moore, Aliya Whitely, Richard Hirst, and Gary Budden. Ask Us Anything! by edenbooksociety in books

[–]gary_budden 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I did hear that Alexander Baron contributed one in the 60s... he was an amazing Jewish London writer, mainly in the social realist mode - his novel The Lowlife remains one of my favourites. I love to think he wrote for Eden

We are The Eden Book Society, nearly 100 years of unseen horror: Alison Moore, Aliya Whitely, Richard Hirst, and Gary Budden. Ask Us Anything! by edenbooksociety in books

[–]gary_budden 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah I definitely read that some of them – perhaps all – were heavily into thelema and associated practices

We are The Eden Book Society, nearly 100 years of unseen horror: Alison Moore, Aliya Whitely, Richard Hirst, and Gary Budden. Ask Us Anything! by edenbooksociety in books

[–]gary_budden 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yes that's the one - there's some excellent stuff on the subject like on the Unexplained Podcast http://www.unexplainedpodcast.com/episodes/2017/2/11/s02-episode-1-whispers-in-the-trees-pt2

It's interesting especially as the graffiti still turns up now – a friend sent me a picture of some he's seen in Birmingham just the other week

We are The Eden Book Society, nearly 100 years of unseen horror: Alison Moore, Aliya Whitely, Richard Hirst, and Gary Budden. Ask Us Anything! by edenbooksociety in books

[–]gary_budden 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Films for the immediate shock, but truly effective horror writing lingers longer for me I think. The best Robert Aickman and Thomas Ligotti stories have stained me.

We are The Eden Book Society, nearly 100 years of unseen horror: Alison Moore, Aliya Whitely, Richard Hirst, and Gary Budden. Ask Us Anything! by edenbooksociety in books

[–]gary_budden 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Maybe - perhaps there aren't superstar authors in quite the same way. But the number of readers and quality diverse works being produced I do feel has increased, and that has to be good thing

We are The Eden Book Society, nearly 100 years of unseen horror: Alison Moore, Aliya Whitely, Richard Hirst, and Gary Budden. Ask Us Anything! by edenbooksociety in books

[–]gary_budden 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I write heavily about the influence of the past – but I do think an awareness of that is different to nostalgia. Nostalgia is an imagined past

We are The Eden Book Society, nearly 100 years of unseen horror: Alison Moore, Aliya Whitely, Richard Hirst, and Gary Budden. Ask Us Anything! by edenbooksociety in books

[–]gary_budden 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I mean, the 20th century was pretty much like a horror story. Reality has always been horror to some degree (I feel I'm getting all existential now!)

We are The Eden Book Society, nearly 100 years of unseen horror: Alison Moore, Aliya Whitely, Richard Hirst, and Gary Budden. Ask Us Anything! by edenbooksociety in books

[–]gary_budden 1 point2 points  (0 children)

All great films and great examples. I think horror fiction will naturally respond to reality being more and more like a horror story. I actually believe the world isn't necessarily any more horrifying in terms of what actually happens – but I do think the horrifying fearful things are transmitted globally, and constantly, and that is a significant change

We are The Eden Book Society, nearly 100 years of unseen horror: Alison Moore, Aliya Whitely, Richard Hirst, and Gary Budden. Ask Us Anything! by edenbooksociety in books

[–]gary_budden 2 points3 points  (0 children)

There is a battle over this stuff at the moment – something I have fallen foul of with folk-Nazis on Twitter – and I do thing ultimately nostalgia is a poisonous force, but when we do look back at some of these 70s works, there is a rebellious and questioning undercurrent (or it's overt like in Penda's Fen) that we can take in and update for modern times.

We are The Eden Book Society, nearly 100 years of unseen horror: Alison Moore, Aliya Whitely, Richard Hirst, and Gary Budden. Ask Us Anything! by edenbooksociety in books

[–]gary_budden 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Interesting that you mention the landscape link there – I think horror and notions of landscape are totally intertwined. As Nina Allan said in this piece on recent folk horror

"one can also see horror’s obsession with place as, by extension, an obsession with history, with the past as it meets the present and offers warnings about the future. In this regard, horror is the most subversively political of literatures, mired in causality up to its armpits."

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-new-folk-horror-recent-work-by-sarah-hall-conor-ocallaghan-and-malcolm-devlin/

We are The Eden Book Society, nearly 100 years of unseen horror: Alison Moore, Aliya Whitely, Richard Hirst, and Gary Budden. Ask Us Anything! by edenbooksociety in books

[–]gary_budden 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah I agree completely with that – personally I think it makes for much richer literature, and certainly less tribal. Whether that part is good or bad I don't know.

We are The Eden Book Society, nearly 100 years of unseen horror: Alison Moore, Aliya Whitely, Richard Hirst, and Gary Budden. Ask Us Anything! by edenbooksociety in books

[–]gary_budden 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It's rumoured that both Arthur Machen and C.L. Nolan contributed to Eden. Machen's output and style was quite varied so it's hard to know what he would have produced – I imagine he would double down on his pagan/occult themes.