ST Joshi wrote a big King overview once (which missed out the Dark Tower series if I remember correctly) and was mostly negative. He can be needlessly cruel but I have to admit I got a lot of pleasure out of him completely trashing IT (which I think has several good things going on). But oddly he really liked Gerald's Game, Dark Half and a bunch of others that generally aren't favourites.― Robert Adam Gilmour, Tuesday, 3 October 2017 17:58 (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
wait, do ppl take ST Joshi seriously? I haven't read very much -- mostly his intros to Lovecraft collections -- and based on them I've always taken him for an idiot.
― mark s, Tuesday, 3 October 2017 18:12 (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
Sometimes, there's certainly a backlash against him happening. I disagree with a lot of his opinions (some of which are very odd), but he deserves a ton of credit for the writers he's helped (living and dead), I think he helped build a scene and sometimes he's one of the only honest prominent voices in the scene. Sometimes he's very on the money.
What's he said idiotic in those intros?
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Tuesday, 3 October 2017 18:25 (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
it's ages since i read them, i remember my scornful response better than anything i was responding to
― mark s, Tuesday, 3 October 2017 18:31 (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
I should also say he deserves a bit of the backlash, but I just hope people don't try to push him out.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Tuesday, 3 October 2017 18:36 (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
Joshi's criticisms of King (at least the ones I've read) are incoherent, and seem mostly a reaction to his bestsellerdom
― Number None, Tuesday, 3 October 2017 23:36 (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
He put King's "Night Surf" in American Supernatural Tales.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Tuesday, 3 October 2017 23:40 (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
They only thing I've read by Joshi is his introduction to the Arthur Machen collection he edited for Penguin, which was fine as far as it went (he clearly knows a lot about gothic/supernatural literature), though the collection itself weirdly omits Machen's best-known story, The Great God Pan. However, Joshi's reaction to the HP Lovecraft awards controversy was definitely the height of idiocy:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/nov/11/hp-lovecraft-biographer-rages-against-ditching-of-author-as-fantasy-prize-emblem
― Gunpowder Julius (Ward Fowler), Wednesday, 4 October 2017 09:41 (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
yes i just reread joshi's intro to the penguin "call of cthulhu" collection: ward's "fine as far as it goes" and "clearly knows a lot" are precisely fair, though his actual written style persistently irritates me -- with great knowledge comes great comic-book-guy is part of the problem, but he's also sometimes weirdly tin-eared as a critic. for example, he describes "the shunned house" as nostalgic -- i know what he's getting at, that the setting for HPL’s subject matter switched from where he used to live (Providence) to where he now lived, New York (“The Horror at Red Hook” etc), but he’d moved BACK to providence w/in literal months of writing “Red Hook", and, well, "nostalgic" is just so un-reread as a word to use of "The Shunned House" even if you can explain why he chose it.
he then goes on to make a pompous meal of HPL's "philosophy" (the universe is big and the gods are bad: none of them care a fig for humankind) in the context of the prior history of faiths. he is very much NOT qualified to be the comic-book-guy of comparative religion…
more to the point, somewhere else i'm p sure i read him dissing m.r.james -- he omits him from his pantheon in this intro -- and that is quite likely what first riled me tbh
― mark s, Wednesday, 4 October 2017 13:08 (fifty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
Holy crap... I had never heard of HPL’s ‘on the creation of n___s’ poem before. Jesus fucking Christ, fuck him.
― harbinger of failure (Jon not Jon), Wednesday, 4 October 2017 13:21 (forty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
Ward- it gets so much worse than that, but let's take this over to the Speculative Fiction thread.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Wednesday, 4 October 2017 14:01 (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
It's hard to summarise but the speculative fiction community is more uncomfortable with Lovecraft than ever but he's also more popular than he's ever been.
Old school Lovecraftians like Joshi are really overprotective of HPL and they have not been handling the debates well. Joshi has been ranting on his blog more often. He keeps contradicting himself by saying Lovecraft is secure and unimpeachable yet also in danger from these pesky new critics.
Some file Caitlin R Kiernan in here because she was super pissed about the World Fantasy Award bust being changed.
Add to that revisionist Cthulhu mythos stories like Ballad Of Black Tom and Lovecraft Country (which Jordan Peele might be adapting for television) which address Lovecraft's bigotry.
I think some people railing against Lovecraft are being silly though. A moderator at the Necronomicon convention said he couldn't allow Lovecraft to stay in the canon and some writers have made really silly statements. Some idiots assume Joshi is white.
Here's Paul St John Mackintosh who gives a bigger overview...
Joshi recently appeared in Alan Moore's Providence.