'Tis the Season = M.R. James

Oh that reminds me - the latest Blacklisted is an MR James special: https://www.backlisted.fm/episodes/199
The most excellent Andrew Male is the main guest.

I say 'reminds me' because my first thought when I saw the episode was 'don't let it be Gatiss'.

How is that as a podcast? The books they cover look like a really good range, but I'm a bit worried about general Media Liberal conservatism.

They do cover good books and I've discovered lots of great things through them but yeah, it's a bit Mojo for books.

i know andrew a little -- literally reviews editor for mojo, gave my book a nice thumbs up -- and (relatedly but anyway) i like him

I didn't mean to give the impression that any of that was about AM! I know him a little too (if one day record shopping and a few beers talking about Larkin counts) and totally agree. He's great and easily one of the best guests they have on Backlisted.

And the podcast is good! Just a bit what emil.y said, basically.

i enjoyed the podcast! thanks for sharing it

> any word of a new wrong-headed James adaptation on the BBC this year?

apparently the Christmas schedule is published (in drips and drabs) from start of December. i guess anything like this will be in the can already but I've not heard.

drama costs are sharing though (see cancellation of doctors) and i can see this being something they would cut (even though it's probably less than strictly's glitter budget)

sharing - soaring

decided last night it was that time of year to start a re-read, at least until i get distracted by something else

so, my first thought/question. in "Canon Alberic" exactly how long has the sacristan been successfully dodging that demon? feels like it's not as lethal as one would suppose

Canon Alberic himself managed a few years before it got him in bed, which also raises some questions

so as someone who will never not be thinking abt these stories, i think there's several possible things going on here (possibly all at the same time)

to establish the jamesian ground, you will perhaps recall that there is a story later in the first collections where the inconvenienced afterwards afterwards admits that the inconveniencer might have had no real power except to scare; being a threat only to the weak of heart (maybe)

well, the demon may only have the power to harass -- like a bully repeating the same annoying phrase over and over, the demon erodes the sacristan's sense of self and safety and the sacred simply by never letting up and always being there no matter how often or where he he prays

also (possibly): the sacristan is the caretaker of the church in which the scrapbook is housed rather than the actual owner of the book?
thirdly (maybe): scrapbook, sacristan and demon are all in the actual church, which acts as a general protection against the worst?

alberic by contrast was the maker of the book and in bed (hence presumably not in church lol); possibly also ill and weakened? (tho it also says his departue was "rather sudden" or similar, which speaks against any vulnerability others had observed… )

(or a bed-ridden ?) of illness)

the sacristan keeps the book in his house - this is where he takes it out of the chest when offering it to Dennistoun. the picture of King Solomon with the demon does show a victim with what seems like a broken neck tho without looking back that might be vague in a Jamesian way. "the power only to harass" still feels like a plausible read tho

like i don't want an actual canonical (thousand apologies) solution, i think it's just the first time i've thought about this specific thing

the detail that Dennistoun burns the original picture but has taken and keeps a photograph of it feels like it wants to be a relevant hint

This year's bbc ghost story for christmas appears to be

"Kit Harington and Freddie Fox star in Mark Gatiss’ adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Ghost Story for Christmas: Lot No.249."

( https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/mediapacks/bbc-christmas-whats-on-tv-iplayer-2023 )

"The Residence at Whitminster" last night. goes on a bit.

important related poll: Daddy Longlegs

that's right

general thought now i'm halfway or so thru the stories: James experiments with lots of different ways of narrating (despite his alleged conservative grumpiness). he chops the viewpoints of the stories up thru manuscripts (obv), reported accounts, narrator's voices, hints at and deferrals of plot developments. i guess i knew this but looking at it now i wonder if this presents an impediment to suitably Jamesian film adaptations - the need to tell a straight story flattens out the experience of reading them

what if his entire body of work is in fact the scrapbook of canon alberic

uh this is my strong view fwiw. james uses framing devices because seeing ghosts directly is hard - for good reason. framing devices - that is to say a manuscript within a story, an engraving within a tale told by an innkeeper - is much harder to manage in film in a consistent way. you need to use sepia tints, or visibly different clothes or whatever. in a story the tone and medium is the same. the frame is permeable and natural and not evident.

time to re-up my laborious essay on framing devices in ghost stories i guess sorry not sorry

https://diasyrmus.com/2009/10/29/mr-james-r-kipling-d-welch-three-ghost-stories-for-all-hallows-even/

excellent, and apologies if i've seen this before and forgot it in classic "my head" style

not at all. i think i diffidently offer it every now and again, but v much in “a link?” way. nothing to do with your head.

Thanks for the link Fizzles. I enjoyed it. The contemporaneous (ish) nature of those three writers would signal something? I think of Freud writing 'The Uncanny' in 1919, haunted by an entire continent of ghosts and James, in his role as provost, having to write letters of consolation to the parents of boys in his college.

I also wonder if the frames *produce* the ghosts somehow. A kind of slippage between worlds: the time is thrown out of joint and the ghosts come calling.

James reading the stories to his Christmas audience is yet another frame of course

i think the 'frames produce the ghosts' is right, at least in the terms i wrote in that piece - as i say 'frames are also portals'.

interesting point about the period. it is of course well known that the boer war had a direct impact on MR James, Arthur Conan Doyle and Kipling, and generally led to a long victorian period of seance and table tapping. I'm also reminded of W Benjamin on Leskov in The Storyteller

With the WorId War a process began to become apparent which has not halted since then. Was it not noticeable at the end of the war that men returned from the battlefield grown silent - not richer, but poorer in communicable experience? What ten years later was poured out in the flood of war books was anything but experience that goes from mouth to mouth. And there was nothing remarkable about that. For never has experience been contradicted more thoroughly than strategic experience by tactical warfare, economic experience by inflation, bodily experience by mechanical warfare, moral experience by those in power. A generation that had gone to school on a horse-drawn streetcar now stood under the open sky in a countryside in which nothing remained unchanged but the clouds, and beneath these clouds, in a field of force of destructive torrents and explosions, was the tiny, fragile human body.

i'm not sure any passage has better described what changes after generational death, and psychologically, spiritually, what it does. the ghost stories are both entertainments but also the psychological environment was propitious. imagination requires that is not a simple transaction though.

sorry, i'm post christmas part and i'm aware that's not v lucid! will try and do better tomorrow.

TPTV tonight 20:30 the stalls of barchester 1971
13th a warning to the curious 1972
15th lost hearts 1973

(all under the banner of 'a ghost story for Christmas'.

i noticed fopp was selling these as well, the bfi boxed sets. not particularly cheap though.

)

This one is pretty comprehensive I think. The bfi price is on the high side given that it's DVD rather than BR, but plenty of other places seem to have it for ~£20.

https://www2.bfi.org.uk/blu-rays-dvds/ghost-stories-christmas-expanded-six-disc-collection#:~:text=This%20expansive%20edition%20collects%20over,of%20the%20Ghost%20Stories%20for

wasn't that cheap in fopp. although maybe that was the brs. hmv.com has it for 22, down from 36.

TPTV are showing at least disks 2, 3 and The Signalman from disk 4 over christmas (and The Night Of The Demon)

Night of the Demon seems to be on TPTV all the time

which is good, obviously

now watching THE STALLS OF BARCHESTER (1971), starring robert hardy, mavis from coronation street and mr smith from please sir!

not entirely cinematically solving the scrapbook aspect of the written fiction lol (this one being particularly scrapbooky iirc)

i signed up to TPTV in the hope that it had NIGHT OF THE DEMON, but currently no :(

There is a bloke at my meditation class who is the spit of Niall MacGinnis' Carswell (in hippy trousers). I check my pockets every time I leave.

yikes

night of the demon on tptv on the 19th
ash tree 20th
treasure of Abbott Thomas 21st

I meant to say the other day: I have a rip of Night of the Demon if anyone wants it. Bung me a webmail.

tonight is the Night Of The Demon

few more in the epg now:
20th The Ash Tree (1975)
21st The Treasure Of Abbot Thomas (1974)
23rd Sigma (1977)
24th The Ice House (1978)
25th Whistle And I'll Come To You (2010)

Ice House is kinda proto-Clive Barker, in its preoccupations with class and sexuality. That and Sigma aren't MR James adaptations tho - and I don't think the 2010 Whistle, title aside, really is either.

Stigma, obv

Stigma Male

both have been on before (2021) and talked about upthread (spoilers, i guess)

'Tis the Season = M.R. James

I don't know what TPTV is or how to watch it (is it this? https://www.tptvencore.co.uk/), but THE ASH TREE is on Youtube and I'm going to watch it soon in order to somewhat keep up with this thread.

a replacement copy of COUNT MAGNUS AND OTHER GHOST STORIES arrived last week, after my last copy was lent out a few years back and sadly never returned. it's been great to read the first few stories again!

tptv is uk freeview ch 82

https://talkingpicturestv.co.uk/schedule/

(not sure i like the new schedule page which seems to be downloading 26 days of data (with pictures) before showing you the one day you're interested in)

ah, thanks!

I just watched the Ash Tree. It's a good adaptation, I think. Slightly confusing in the chronology (deliberately I guess but it would be difficult to work out what was going on without some knowledge of the story I think?) but creepy where it needs to be and brutal with regards to Mothersole. Final scene in the bedroom is grim and great.

is there a consensus vieew on what james's best short stories are, if i want to read a few over the break?

apparently there's an audiobook with michael hordern, which is great casting