Ostensibly, a reprint of the 1991 Peter Haining / Robert Hale edition of the ‘Best Supernatural Stories’; despite the lurid re-titling, this remains a welcome re-issue. The fifteen tales represent Buchan’s uncanny contributions to monthly literary magazines, such as Blackwoods Magazine in the UK and Atlantic Magazine in the US.

What swiftly hits today’s reader as lasting less well is the passé Celt slang and the cultural references of the time that, naturally enough, permeate throughout. The stag-hunting, cigar-chomping, colonial old boy network represented may well alienate – or, at least, tire – most interested women readers these days, and, likely, several male. Yet, equally tempering is Buchan’s healthy scepticism of Christian doctrine and a receptive take on human nature. An antidote to more smug contemporaries, Kipling and Chesterton.

Buchan’s sickly, part-incapacitated boyhood affords him a sensitivity to the natural world that partially explains the authenticity of landscape he delineates in his subsequent Richard Hannay cycle of novels. The allied machismo, therefore, is something well observed rather than a description of himself.

Consequently, in his autobiography Memory Hold the Door, Buchan confesses to ‘summers of pagan idleness’ by the Tweed during his student days, where, according to Haining, ‘he mostly fished or read, but occasionally let his sense of adventure get him into trouble.’ This included skirting the borderland of Scots country law, joining poacher gangs and such; an element of compensating danger that also found voice in those later heroic thrillers.

So, the best entries here reveal aspects of his personal mortality on the one hand, and feral learning on the other. ‘Basilissa,’ ‘The Watcher by the Threshold,’ ‘Tendebant Manus’ and ‘The Death Notice’ find him exploring the former theme, with ’No-man’s-land’ and the deceptively succinct ‘The Keeper of Cademuir,’ the latter. ‘A Journey of Little Profit’ is a neat enough ‘Devil’s bargain’ tale, but an early example too bogged down with showy, geographical detail.

An exception to these themes is the fantastically child-like and still highly readable ‘The Magic Walking Stick’; its wide-eyed, wish-fulfilling concept gloriously evoking the ‘Listener’ / ‘Lost Valley’ era of Algernon Blackwood. Just as such writers are clear influences, so are those he’d inspire. The metaphysical chase climaxing ‘No-man’s-Land’ and the somnambulant, night time follower of ‘The Grove of Ashtaroth’ prefigure the later, more lurid scenarios from fans Lovecraft and Robert Howard. You can see why these tales so fired such frustrated psyches. Watch out for the rising self-loathing – surprising and brilliant – from both the protagonists.

Saturday, 23 April 2011

Sleep No More: Railway, Canal & Other Stories of the Supernatural by L.T.C. Rolt, The History Press

Susan Hill, in her introduction to this reissue from 1948, highlights what made ‘Tom’ Rolt so singular; ‘a trained engineer, a railway enthusiast and the owner of a narrow boat in which he navigated the inland waterways of England and Wales’; and - oh yes - a car restorer, hill walker and philosopher to boot. They made real men then, my father’s generation, whose own CV was almost as broad. Shed theorists’ one and all.

There is yet more within Sleep No More that defines this self-taught artisan as a Jack Of All Trades. Its fourteen stories directly reflect Rolt’s stated interests through their keen knowledge of environment and setting, lending, at least, a picturesque authenticity. He seems as assured delineating the intricacies of iron-smelting operation (in ‘Hawley Bank Foundry’) as he does in Grand Prix racing (in ‘New Corner’). Where he falls down is where he inevitably falls back upon a literary knowledge parallel with our own. As a mere writer of short fiction therefore, he harbours no great advantage. His influences are clear and more than borderline derivative for today’s supernatural imbiber.

‘Music Hath Charms’ replaces the grave-recovered pipe from MR James’ ‘Oh Whistle and I’ll Come To You, My Lad’ with a music box; while the aforementioned ‘Hawley Bank Foundry’ resolves itself with a weirdness Lovecraft would have regularly achieved. ‘Hear Not My Steps’ presents a version of the vengeful phantom reminiscent from Bram Stoker’s ‘Judge’s House,’ while ‘The House Of Vengeance,’ ending the collection, harbours the dated Satanic echoes of Dennis Wheatley.

Still, ‘Bosworth Summit Pound,’ ‘Cwm Garon’ – the best tale here - and the too short but pleasingly Pagan ‘The Shouting,’ each harbour a lyrical atmosphere that raise Rolt above the banal. (Oh yes; he was also a poet on the sly). The latter in particular bravely forsakes explanation of its mysterious, ‘off-camera’ ritual for ambiguity, the manner of which Robert Aickman might have been proud. Coming in at just 129 pages, these stories apparently represent the sum total of Rolt’s fiction, whose main works were non-fiction and technical. Despite the derivative source material, it is still testament to him that I am left wanting rather more than he will now be able to give.