‘Ghost Stories’ by M.R. James

I don’t have much time to read fiction nowadays because of professional reading but I cannot go without it so I’m trying to get to a compromise. I reached out for the shelf and grabbed Ghost Stories. I have always loved this sort of tales because my grandpa used to tell us ghost stories when I was a kid. I haven’t overcome this yet but no problem since I was looking for some light entertaining reading.

I’ve read two today and I’ve promised myself a couple of minutes everyday to read one a day. Extremely well-written, very haunting, very atmospheric, with the tension building up at each paragraph. Looking forward to the next one tomorrow  – oh the pleasures of self-indulging reading!!

James, M. R. (1994) Ghost Stories. London: Penguin.

 

 

‘An Outpost of Progress’ by Joseph Conrad

In a couple of weeks we will be posting a new short story in the ELT e-Reading Group and this time one of our members suggested reading Amy Foster. By a strange coincidence a student of mine came to class with a volume of Selected Short Stories by Joseph Conrad and when I mentioned that we would be discussing one of them, he simply gave me the book!

Of course Amy Foster is there, but there are also a couple of others that I hadn’t read before and perhaps the one that impressed me most in the whole collection was precisely the first one, An Outpost of Progress. The narrative is impeccable and it was written with almost cruel irony. In it Conrad touches on many issues that are also the heart of Heart of Darkness – isolation, great expectations & dellusion, the civilising effects of the presence of the others and the wilderness that outgrows and takes over what is supposed to be the human nature.

Few man realise that their life, the very essence of their character, their capabilities and their audacities, are only the expression of their belief in the safety of their surroundings. The courage, the composure, the confidence, the emotions and principles; every great and every insignificant thought belongs not to the individual but to the crowd: to the crowd that believes blindly in the irresistible force of its institutions and its morals, in the power of its police and its opinion. But the contact with pure unmitigated savagery, with primitive nature and primitive man, brings sudden and profound trouble into the heart.

Food for thought…

Conrad, J.  (1997) Selected Short Stories. Canterbury: Wordsworth Classics.

 

The Rain Horse

At the wood top, with the silvered grey light coming in behind it, the black horse was standing under the oaks, its head high and alert, its ears pricked, watching him.

This is one of the most haunting moments of The Rain Horse, a short story by Ted Hughes. There is no romantic vision of nature here, but at the same time I think a sort of romanticism permeates the text in the way nature reflects and influences the character, in the way Hughes personifies it, and in the almost Gothic description of the horse. I wish we could discuss it in the e-reading group, but unfortunately it is not possible for copyright reasons.

Fascinating and intriguing story.

Thanks to Sara Walker for sending me a copy.