Nothing to Do With Anything

[moon_custafer]

but Marjorie Bowen’s “The Sign-Painter and the Crystal Fishes” is the oddest early-20th-century weird tale I’ve ever read. I can’t even compare it to Aickman, because it’s not quite as creepy — more gothic/romantic. Really the best way I can describe it is “like coming across the last episode of a six-part miniseries, that no one else you talk to afterwards seems to have seen or heard of.”

https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/b/bowen/marjorie/sign-painter/

Comments

[batwrangler]

Wow.

I wonder if it isn't a fix-it fic with the serial numbers obliterated by time?

[moon_custafer]

Never thought of that. What would the original be? Something with an 18th-century setting, in which the bad guy may not get away with his crimes forever, but his equally nasty son goes unpunished?

[teenybuffalo]

Thanks for introducing me to this; I like it. The sense of deep discomfort, and of things that the characters understand that we don't, is very Aickman. Bowen doesn't go for the gross-out or the sense of dread, as he would, but prioritizes the romance and sense of sadness and longing desolation. If it reminds me strongly of another writer, it would be Joan Aiken.

Ooo! You know, the sense of dread plus beautiful images, decay, and coming in after having missed the first few episodes, reminds me of William Morris's "The Hollow Land," only my favorite short story ever.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15948/15948-h/15948-h.htm

[moon_custafer]

Joan Aiken, yes! One of my favourites of hers is Dido and Pa, for things like the prophecy that a bird will be the last thing the Margave will see before he dies; or the implication that I think is there that the street kids somehow know everything that’s going on and their games and rhymes reflect this.

[teenybuffalo]

I was honestly never sure what was up with the motif of the street kids singing topical play-rhymes the instant the subject matter happens. But I love Dido and Pa even though it's impossible for me to recommend to people without saying "You have to read the first six books for context..."

When I was a kid, one of the things I loved was that the adults were mostly evil hypocrites who would sell you out as soon as look at you, except for a few kind-but-clueless or embittered-but-fair adults. It cultivated a healthy distrust.

As an adult these days, I still appreciate all that, plus there's a downplayed tragedy in the fact that Dido has grown up to be tough and smart and a good person, yet she still has some remnants of love for her father, and then he shows up in person and obliterates the remnants. Then Dido has to deal with the fact that he's a murderer/child abuser/attempted regicide, yet he also writes magic music that can make the terminally ill well again.

Relatedly, Mr. Twite's obnoxious doggerel sounds like Conrad Aiken to me.

Soulful

[palain-7.livejournal.com]

“like coming across the last episode of a six-part miniseries, that no one else you talk to afterwards seems to have seen or heard of.”

And that miniseries would be channel 11 (CHCH) 's production of "Carnival of Souls'.

Re: Soulful

[moon_custafer]

I do need to watch that movie all the way through sometime.