John Linwood Grant writes occult detective and dark fantasy stories, in between running his beloved lurchers and baking far too many kinds of bread. Apart from that, he enjoys growing unusual fruit and reading rejection slips. He is six foot tall, ageing at an alarming rate, and has his own beard.
“Hampton pointed to the grave, which had been torn open as if by a wild animal of hellish strength. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘The monster itself!’ And there amidst the rotting remains crouched a thing of nightmares, gibbering as it gnawed on a decaying human thigh-bone. I nodded. ‘Very nice. That’s not a proper ghoul, though. You, dear Hampton, have been reading too much Lovecraft.’ I took his arm. ‘Fancy a pint?’ And as we walked away, I thought that perhaps I heard a Meep of disappointment from within the grave.”
Five go Mad in Arkham (J Linseed Grant)
c. sam wood
We’re actually here to find the ghul of Middle-Eastern myth, not the dog-headed, corpse-crunching ghoul that it became in the pages of Weird Tales. We’re doing it in two parts, because there’s a lot to work through. Today we’re hunting backwards, from the 1930s to the 1730s (a few years earlier, actually, but it didn’t sound as good).
H P Lovecraft went askew. Or, if you want to put it a nicer way, he drew on the confused works of European translators and earlier authors, and developed his own particular take on the whole concept of the ghoul. So it’s fine, we can still be chums, but how did it all come about?
Nowadays, a ghoulish manner is ascribed to those who have an unhealthy pre-occupation with death and disaster. Those who gather around accidents and car crashes are described as ghoulish. This use of the word ghoul was fairly well established by the start of the 20th century – an unpleasant mentality rather than a creature of horror. Galsworthy, for example, wrote in his 1918 collection Five Tales:
“But then he was such a worthless vagabond, a ghoul who had robbed a dead body.”
Seeking inspiration away from the Gothic vampires and werewolves, Lovecraft developed his own species of ghoul. His story Pickman’s Model (1926) is a good example. In the story, the narrator is introduced to various works by a gifted artist, Richard Upton Pickman. The narrator is fascinated but appalled. Pickman’s art is grotesque, and so, it seems at first, is his imagination.
pickman’s model, by delano and pugh (lovecraft anthology 2)
Listen—can you fancy a squatting circle of nameless dog-like things in a churchyard teaching a small child how to feed like themselves? The price of a changeling, I suppose—you know the old myth about how the weird people leave their spawn in cradles in exchange for the human babes they steal. Pickman was shewing what happens to those stolen babes—how they grow up—and then I began to see a hideous relationship in the faces of the human and non-human figures. He was, in all his gradations of morbidity between the frankly non-human and the degradedly human, establishing a sardonic linkage and evolution. The dog-things were developed from mortals!
These are the ghouls with which most readers of weird fiction are acquainted. Dog-headed creatures who live in groups or packs, and who burrow beneath graveyards, feasting on the remains of the dead. They’re HPL’s ghouls, but they’re not the ghoul or ghul of ancient folklore.
If you want to step closer to the real ghul in fiction of the same period, you can do worse than turn to Henry S Whitehead, one of Lovecraft’s friends. He was one of the few who came close to the true nature of the ghul, in his story The Chadbourne Episode, published seven years after Lovecraft’s Pickman’s Model.
The face was covered with an equal bristle-like growth, unshaven for a month by the appearance. Above the tight-shut, menacing mouth which divided a pair of square, iron-like broad jaws, the facial hairs were merged or blended in what seemed from my viewpoint a kind of vague smear, as though the hair were there heavily matted. From this sinister figure there then emerged a thick gutteral, repressed voice…“Come – come he-ar. Come – I will show you what you look for.”
Whitehead’s ghouls have a Persian origin in the story, and take livestock and children, drawing them close to befuddle and then consume them. This is more promising stuff, but where are Lovecraft and Whitehead getting their basics?
Hanging out in the early twentieth century and wondering about writing a series of blasphemous supernatural tales, writers wanted source material to get the juices flowing. When it came to ghouls, there weren’t many sources.
They might have glanced at archaeologist R Campbell Thompson’s 1903 work The Devils and Evil Spirits of Babylonia, nattily subtitled:
BEING BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN INCANTATIONS AGAINST THE DEMONS. GHOULS, VAMPIRES, HOBGOBLINS, GHOSTS. AND KINDRED EVIL SPIRITS, WHICH ATTACK MANKIND. TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL CUNEIFORM TEXTS
We say they might (Thompson returns next time), but it’s more likely that they turned to other works. There were passing mentions of ghouls or gouls in literature during the 19th century – a reference to gouls by Byron in 1813; the fact that in Hans Christian Andersen’s tale The Wild Swans (1838), the princess heroine has to get round ghouls chomping on a corpse in a cemetery when trying to save her brothers; a mention by Poe… odds and sods, basically.
Most influential were the various translations of One Thousand and One Nights, or Arabian Nights (kitāb ʾalf layla wa-layla). The first European version of Arabian Nights was a translation by Antoine Galland at the beginning of the 18th century. Galland took his inspiration mainly from an Arabic text from Syria and produced Les Mille et une nuits, contes arabes traduits en français.
Trivia note: Two of the best known stories, “Aladdin’s Lamp” and “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” are not from the original Arabic sources. They appeared first in Galland’s translation, and he said he got them directly from an old storyteller.
Unabridged and unexpurgated translations followed in the Victorian period – John Payne’s The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night (1882), and then Sir Richard Francis Burton’s version (1885) – nicked mostly from Payne but with extra ‘erotica’. Both these were offered by private subscription because of their racy nature (by the standards of the times).
A number of the French and English translations had stories of ghouls, but in many cases the characteristics were exaggerated from the Arabic. For example, the pre-occupation with feasting on corpses dug from graves is most likely an invention of Galland and his successors, made to increase the Eek! Factor for Western audiences. Ahmed K. Al-Rawi, writing in the journal Folklore (2009), goes so far as to say that this idea does not feature in any of the original Arabic sources concerning the ghul.
illustration for vathek, by westall (v&a gallery)
Writers like Lovecraft, Whitehead and Clark Ashton Smith were all familiar with the Arabian Nights. They would also have known of the classic novel Vathek by William Beckford, from 1786. Beckford, influenced by the Galland translation, wrote Vathek as a piece of Arabian Gothic, cannily hitting two markets at once – the growing Gothic movement and a contemporary fascination with oriental matters.
“Do you then perform the office of a Goul? ‘Tis true you have dug up the dead, yet hope not to make her your prey…”
So everything stems from Galland and his translation. In Part Two, we’ll roll up our sleeves and go into Arabic and Babylonian myth to extract the true ghul, its origins and the reason why seven is a very powerful number…
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In the meantime, if you want a version of A Thousand and One Nights which captures more of the flavour of the original material, you could do worse than have a look at this, described as “very readable” and “strongly recommended for anyone who wishes to taste the authentic flavour of those tales”. It’s a 1990 translation by Husain Haddawy, based on the 1984 Arabic version of Muhsin Mahdi.
I don’t write vampire stories, and I probably never will. I could argue at length that the whole vampire thing’s been done to death, only to proved wrong by a magnificent piece of contemporary fiction. I’ll leave it to others to decide. I do, however, write stories of revenants, my Returned, who are darker than most vampires and seriously lacking in capes or erotic dread. As I sold one of these stories, A Stranger Passing Through, to an anthology the other week, here’s a taster from another part of the sequence, purely for fun:
the seven, of assyrian legend
You ask what we are. We are crippled children, vomited from our graves – sick, secretive and self-destructive. This is how it has always been, since long before crosses and crescents, or the pointless spattering of holy water.
They say that Assyria was at its height when the first of us came forth. We are liars, though, and I suspect that the tale was invented to make us sound more grand. Each of us returns to the world alone, in darkness and ignorance, filthy and half-mad. Try making that sound romantic.
This isn’t a fiction of Gothic clans, or fancy societies and ancient blood-lines. I could no more ‘sire’ another one of the Returned than I could give birth to a horse. It’s a doom, a punishment, whatever you want to call it, and we bear it on our own. It’s not a way of starting a new family and settling down with kids.
Are we all as monstrous as the ones I broke that night in Chelsea? Not quite. Some take their minds down other paths, quiet exercises in futility. I know a Catholic priest, Father Michael, who’s been Returned since the seventeenth century. Every thirty or so years he finds a small, godforsaken parish and does the Lord’s work until he’s been there too long, or until he runs out of ways in which to feed without causing serious harm.
Father Michael clings to his theories of redemption. That this is our Purgatory, and we must live with what we are until we find release. I remember sipping a good brandy and watching him across the dining-room table, many years ago. County Sligo, a broken-down parochial house. He’d just taken Evening Mass. I told him that I didn’t believe in Purgatory, the Day of Judgement or the Easter Bunny.
“Then maybe you need belief, of some sort. Maybe that’s what will free you.”
“It hasn’t done much for you,” I said, which was unkind.
“Not yet.” He poured me another brandy, unruffled. “But the Lord is patient.”
Father Michael is still waiting for his God to notice him.
And then there’s Lucas. Lucas was borderline, on the edge of total shut-down, when he found colour. And apparently I had to hear all about it. Spring, 1969, it must have been, because he was still living in the hotel at King’s Cross. One of those hotels where he was the only actual resident, and the other rooms saw ten or more occupants a day, scoring, screwing, stabbing. It was a symphony of curses and banging doors, the sound of flesh on flesh and broken springs.
I had kept up with him because he’d saved me from serious damage towards the end of the Second World War. It’s a long story, for another time, but because of that incident, I called on him whenever I was in London for a while. I was growing more reserved, more distant from my kind. He was travelling inwards in a different way. Obsessive compulsive, they might call it now.
I kicked my way past the prostitutes and the dealers, found the lift broken again, and took the stairs. Lucas was waiting for me, his door already open. He ushered me in without a word. His single room had been converted into a sort of bed-sitter. You could sleep and sit in it, certainly, but not much else. Lucas waited, expectant. His narrow lips were tugged into a smile, wrinkling up his face. He’d not been young when he was Returned.
“Well?” he asked.
The room was blue. Which is to say, everything in it was blue, every single thing. The walls had been painted a pale, morning sky colour, but at the edges they merged into a summer blue, more intense. He had taken a rickety wash-stand and painted that in shades of turquoise, while a desk and chair were indigo and ultramarine. I could identify twenty, maybe thirty shades of blue without even having to squint.
“What is it? You’ve taken up interior decorating?”
“No.” His smile widened. “I’ve found the point of it all, don’t you see? If it’s all blue, then it’s right. That’s how I put it right, see? I take an apple, and it’s all yellow and red and messed up, but if I paint it blue, then it’s OK.”
“Uh-huh.” I nodded. “So, how come you’re not wearing blue clothes, Lucas?”
He looked ashamed. “I’m not ready. I have to start on the outside, then move in towards me. I’m painting the corridor, over the next week, so the room is like a centre-piece for the whole floor. I’ve spoken to the owners.”
The owners. A filthy middle-aged couple who took their cut from the deals that went on up there and only washed the linen when it stood up on its own. They lived in the basement, in conditions worse than the rooms they rented out. What would they care?
“Nice.” I didn’t need to say much, because he filled up the next two hours with a non-stop lecture on the harmony of the colours, and how he couldn’t walk the pavements outside without blue leather shoes which had their soles painted… blue. If he’d been in Santa Monica or somewhere like that, he could have become Professor of Hippy Madness. In London he was just eccentric.
He was obsessional, no doubt about that. We ate fried potatoes, dyed blue before cooking, blue eggs, blue everything. The food dye went everywhere, and not all the paint around the room was properly dry. I watched his stained fingers as we ate. I remembered those fingers tearing open a man’s rib-cage, scattering innards across a field in France. A red day, not a blue one.
“I’m aiming for green next, maybe in a year or two,” he shared with me.
“That might make meals easier.” Nothing had tasted bad, but there was something wrong about a plateful of blue food. At least next time I would be able to enjoy the salad. Lucas nodded, lost in his colours and his dreams.
As far as I know, he’s still there. One day I’ll find out which part of the rainbow he’s up to.
You can feel better now that you know the truth. Or you can feel worse. It doesn’t much matter to me. If there is a Heaven, it doesn’t want us. If there is a Hell, it cannot hold us.
We are Returned.
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Coming up next, our mid-week medley. That’ll be mid-week, probably.
The Gothic, the fantastic, the strange and the supernatural. These are our hunting grounds, and so it’s a pleasure to be interviewing Brian J Showers of Swan River Press today. An Irish publishing house, Swan River Press was founded by Brian in 2003, and boasts a wonderful range of classic and contemporary works in these fields.
Before we go over to our guest, we were browsing the Swan River Press list and noticed mention of Dorothy Macardle (a fascinating woman in her own right and an Irish author). This interested us because in 1941 she wrote a novel called Uneasy Freehold which was later adapted into a film called The Uninvited (1944) starring Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey.
Not only is this a great classic ghost film, but it was nominated for an Academy Award, and a few years ago it was chosen by Guillermo del Toro as one of his six favourite ‘fright flicks’. Here’s the trailer:
To add one of our regular trivia offerings, did you know that the lead screenplay writer for The Uninvited was none other than Dodie Smith – the author of I Capture the Castle and 101 Dalmatians? Bet you didn’t.
Swan River Press are planning an edition of stories by Macardle which have supernatural or mythic elements, reprinting her collection Earth-bound for the first time in many years, along with four additional tales, still under the Earth-bound title.
original cover (courtesy tartarus press web-site)
We quite fancy having a look at that, which should be out soon. For now we must crack on with our interview and stop getting diverted. Let’s hear from Brian J Showers…
greydog: Brian, many thanks for joining us. As a bit of scene setting, we should point out that you’re from Wisconsin originally, and yet you seem to have immersed yourself in Dublin and in Irish literature. What is it about the Irish and their literary tradition which drew you in so deep?
brian: There’s no doubt about it: Ireland’s contributions to genre and world literature are myriad and substantial, but I’m not certain there’s a “tradition” per se, at least where genre is concerned, as one would be hard pressed to find literary pedigrees between Stoker and Dunsany, or Maturin and Mervyn Wall; they all took inspiration from different sources, and in turn influenced disparate strands of literature (as opposed to being links in a chain). Of course I’m probably completely overthinking the question. I suppose I’m drawn to Irish literature simply because I landed in Ireland all those years back, and I was lucky enough that a big pile of books by Irish authors broke my fall. There are a lot of resources available to me here in Dublin—in the archives and libraries and even walking the city’s streets—and much I can explore first hand, so why not?
swan river press
greydog: Although you yourself write (about which more later), let’s talk about Swan River Press, which you founded. You made a deliberate decision to produce high-quality limited editions, finely bound—we believe that you even tried your hand at bookbinding yourself. Does this stem from a love of old-style volumes which have that tactile and visual appeal all of their own?
brian: I decided to publish high-quality hardbacks because that’s what I like reading. Apart from enjoying a good story, the haptic experience of reading is something I deeply appreciate. The weight of a book, the thickness and texture of its pages, even the volume’s dimensions and width of its margins—it all informs the reading experience. I buy a lot of small press books as well, like Tartarus Press and Egaeus Press. Anyone who has read their books will have familiarity with this experience. Since starting Swan River I’ve become very sensitive to book production values, and that contemporary mass market paper rankles my fingertips!
Perhaps this is all just a personal preference, but I will say this: I’ve read M.R. James’s “A Warning to the Curious” numerous times in modern paperback editions, but I once had the pleasure of reading this familiar tale in a first edition copy, and not far from Aldeburgh where the story is set. The experience was profound. Like I’d never read it before. It was the same story, yes, the same words, but somehow reading it that time and in that edition was . . . well, it was unique. The font, the ragged-cut pages, the typesetting—it made the story fresh again. I hope some day someone will pick up a Swan River Press edition and experience a similar sort of excitement.
greydog: Your authors range from those long gone to contemporary writers. Was that the intention right from the start, or did the idea of showcasing contemporary authors such as Reggie Oliver, John Reppion and Rosalie Parker come later?
brian: When I first started publishing, I think it was mainly because I wanted to work with other authors—which would kind of imply they’re still alive, right? It’s important to showcase contemporary writers and it’s something I’d like to do more of. If it’s to be of any value, then genre literature must continue to evolve and develop, authors must be allowed to showcase the fruits of their imaginative labours, and it’s the duty of publishers to ensure that’s possible.
The other side of that coin is seeking out and reprinting the lost and forgotten, which has its own challenges. Being an Irish publisher—and the only publisher in Ireland to specialise in literature of the fantastic—I also feel it’s my job to represent Irish writers, both living and dead, as best I can. So I’ve got these three impulses influencing my publishing choices. Given that I only publish five or six books per year, it can be a struggle to get a good mix each year. But I try.
greydog: And of the classic writers, whose works were you most pleased about being able to offer?
brian: Of course I’m proud of them all for various reasons. When I choose to publish a book, classic or otherwise, it’s because I’ve a genuine passion for it and would like to share it with others. I got a lot of good feedback on Mervyn Wall’s The Unfortunate Fursey, which was a real treat to publish. It’s a novel that had been in print on-and-off over the decades and already commanded a dedicated cult readership, so it was a privilege to connect a few more people with Wall’s masterpiece of satirical fantasy.
I was also proud to republish a lost Le Fanu novella, “The Fatal Bride”, in Reminiscences of a Bachelor, which hadn’t seen the light of day since 1848. We revived it just in time for his 200th birth anniversary in 2014. And then in issue six of The Green Book I ran a short story by Bram Stoker that I’d discovered while mucking about in the archives—it turned out to be his second ever published story, a ghost story no less, and had been previously unknown to scholars. Moments like that make everything worth it.
greydog: Your journal, The Green Book, is produced twice a year and was praised by editor Ellen Datlow. It contains articles on Irish Gothic, supernatural and fantastic literature. Would you describe it as an easily accessible journal, or is it more for those with scholarly inclinations?
brian: The Green Book is meant to be smart, but accessible; scholarly, but readable. It’s very much modelled on Tartarus Press’s excellent journal Wormwood, edited by Mark Valentine. I suppose I started The Green Book so as to have a venue in which to print those bits and pieces I’ve come across over the years that I couldn’t otherwise incorporate into a book, but felt deserved exposure anyway. Like that lost Bram Stoker ghost story I mentioned above or playwright Christine Longford’s long out-of-print introduction to the Penguin edition of Uncle Silas. I also wanted a place in which to publish thoughts and explorations by others, like Steve Gronert Ellerhof’s essay on Ray Bradbury’s sojourn in Ireland and Nicola Gordon Bowe’s portrait of Lord Dunsany as a collector. Although The Green Book might come off as a fairly niche sounding publication, I’m happy at the variety we’ve accomplished over the years, and I hope it continues for many more.
greydog:You’re currently collaborating with Liberties Press to publish Uncertainties: Twenty-Two Strange Tales. How did this come about? Is it your first collaborative venture with another publisher?
brian: I’ve worked with other publishers as a writer before, but, yeah, on this level I believe it’s the first time I have collaborated with another publisher in this way; as an editor, but with quite a bit of freedom to shape the project how I’d like it. Essentially Liberties are the publisher here, and I commissioned stories from authors who have worked with Swan River in the past—and some who haven’t, but who I’ve been wanting to work with anyway. Uncertainties presented a marvellous excuse to do that.
The goal is to maybe find a new audience for Swan River authors, while Liberties can deliver to their readers the types of stories you don’t normally find on the shelves here in Ireland. John Connolly wrote the introduction (which was very good of him) and he makes the astute observation that Ireland was once a powerhouse contributor to the canon of the literary uncanny—we’re talking Melmoth, Dracula, Uncle Silas, Dorian Gray—but for one reason or another we’ve not done a whole lot since the early twentieth century. Certainly the scene here pales to the thriving small press communities in the UK or Canada. Anyway, I’m excited to see how the book is received—I hope people like it.
the dublin ghost story festival, by alisdair wood
greydog: Swan River has also announced the Dublin Ghost Story Festival, which is to take place on 19-21 August 2016. Adam Nevill is Guest of Honour and John Connolly is Master of Ceremonies. What can attendees look forward to there?
brian: They can look forward to a great time! I feel like we’re hosting a party or something. Mainly I found I really enjoyed going to the UK to attend conventions like World Horror or Fantasycon. I meet such great people there, I come home with a pile of wonderful books, brimming with ideas. I’d always wanted an excuse to lure all those people to Dublin, which is a great city to visit. I mean, it makes a lot of sense to host a ghost story festival here too, especially given the city’s connection to genre literature. But what can attendees look forward to? We’re hoping to keep the emphasis on the social—we want to give people the time to talk about and celebrate the literature that brings us together. We’ll have panel discussions, a dealers’ room, a performance of M.R. James’s ghost stories by Robert Lloyd Parry, a good few pints of Guinness, and I’ll be giving tours of the city’s darker corners. What could go wrong? You should come along!
greydog: We’d love to – but writing is a harsh mistress when it comes to time. We should move on to Brian J. Showers the writer next, but first we’ll mention that a big chunk of greydogtales has been in honour of William Hope Hodgson, who influenced our own fiction. Hodgson of course set The House on the Borderland in a remote part of western Ireland. Are we right that you’re an enthusiast of his work?
brian: I love The House on the Borderland. Absolutely love it. I collect editions of it as well. Although Hope Hodgson was English, and wrote the novel in Wales, I like to think of it as the great Irish novel. Tongue in cheek, of course. I suspect Hodgson just needed an exotic setting, like Transylvania, though unlike Stoker he’d actually visited the location where he was to set his most famous fiction. I know some people don’t like the second half of the narrative, where the Recluse has that fabulous cosmic vision that would give Stanley Kubrick a run for his money, but I think it’s a remarkable imaginative achievement. And the attack of the swine-things—why hadn’t someone turned this into a mind-bending cult film long ago? The book holds a real magic for me, and I give it a re-read on occasion. One of these days Swan River Press will publish an edition too. It’ll be a real indulgence, an extravagant affair, one of these days . . .
rathmines, circa 1910
greydog: Your books The Bleeding Horse and Old Albert are both set in Rathmines, a part of old Dublin and one not known to us. Maybe you could say something about the fascination of the area, and why you chose it as a setting.
brian: Both The Bleeding Horse and Old Albert are comprised of a series of linked supernatural tales, all set in the same south Dublin neighbourhood. The stories—all fiction, mind—combine history, geography, folklore, and the uncanny; I’m always pleased to hear that people enjoy them. The Bleeding Horse won the Children of the Night Award in 2008, which is pretty cool too. My interest in Rathmines is pretty simple—it’s where I live. Naturally I wrote about it. It’s where I landed when I first came to Dublin, and it’s where I still live today. I was drawn to the history of the neighbourhood, the long stretch of brooding Georgian terraces along the main road, the back mews, the decaying flats—all presided over by the giant green dome of St. Mary’s Church and further down the road the red-brick clock tower of the Rathmines Town Hall clock. To be honest, my official response to your question was to write those two books. I’ve a few more stories about Rathmines I’d like to tell. I’ll get to them eventually.
greydog:You’ve also edited a collection of essays on Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. What in particular interests you about Le Fanu?
brian: That would be Reflections in a Glass Darkly published by Hippocampus Press in 2012, which I co-edited with Gary Crawford and Jim Rockhill. I’m proud to say the book was nominated for a Stoker award too; our intent was to assemble the definitive Le Fanu sourcebook, compiling all the primary sources we tend to refer to ourselves time and again—now all in one place. Le Fanu, for me, is like a neighbour. He lives down the block from me. He’s an author who has grown increasingly familiar to me over the years—hell, I live down the road from where he’s buried and on certain Sundays clear his grave of weeds.
As a writer, I’m drawn to that sense of melancholy and inexorable doom found in so many of his stories.“Green Tea”drew me in, but there’s plenty more to explore, and even re-reads prove fresh. I’ve heard commented frequently enough how absolutely modern some of his stories feel, and I think that’s true. It’s a pity he’s not taken more seriously as even a minor Irish author. The Irish Arts Council are now resident in his house on Merrion Square, but I get the impression they’re not too bothered about him. Anyone who visits Dublin should really make the effort to visit Chapelizod. Find yourself a nice place in the Phoenix Park just near the churchyard wall and read “The Village Bully”. The geographical details described in the story are still there, and you can watch the climax of Le Fanu’s tale unfold before your eyes.
greydog: Dublin’s actually on our touring list – our editor-in-chief is very fond of Ireland, having been a number of times. While you’re here, feel free to share anything coming from Swan River Press this year – or do you have more fiction of your own in the pipeline?
brian: I’m sat here answering these questions in a pub in Rathmines, just across the road from St. Mary’s College, where Old Albert is set. Were the music quieter, I’m sure I could hear the clock tower tolling away the hours. Sadly, I’m not moved to write any more of my own stories—at least not just yet. In another window I’m copy-editing Fritz Leiber’s The Pale Brown Thing, which I’ve had planned for publication for a while now—I’m happy to announce here that it’ll be our next book after Dorothy Macardle’s Earth-Bound.
For those who don’t know, The Pale Brown Thing is an early version of Leiber’s classic and World Fantasy Award-winning novel Our Lady of Darkness. Leiber apparently regarded both versions as “the same story told at different times”, the way one might recollect memories with variation—and in his afterword, John Howard explains why he thinks the two texts should happily exist side by side, each worthy of exploration. The Swan River Press edition is notable not only because it will be the first time The Pale Brown Thing has been reprinted since 1977, but also for the foreword by the Californian poet Donald Sidney-Fryer.
Donald knew Fritz when the latter had moved to San Francisco and was writing Pale Brown Thing/Our Lady. Why is that so exciting? Those already familiar with various aspects of Leiber lore will know that not only is The Pale Brown Thing semi-autobiographical, but Leiber also worked into the narrative thinly disguised versions of his friends. Donald Sidney-Fryer, who is now in his eighties, appears as one of the novel’s most memorable characters: the flamboyant decadent Jaimie Donaldus Byers.
sidney-fryer
greydog: Strange that you should mention Donald Sidney-Fryer. Only a few days ago we posted a piece about plans for a biographic film on Clark Ashton Smith, and he has apparently been a key source for that project (see the emperor of dreams).
brian: It’s a real privilege to correspond with Sidney-Fryer (who signs his letters to me “Donaldo”) while preparing this book. It’s been worth it for that experience alone. It’ll be a great book for sure.
greydog: Being serious Leiber fans, we look forward to it – we’ve never actually read The Pale Brown Thing. But for now we must thank you for sparing so much time, and let you get back to work.
brian: Right, that’s me. I’m going to close the lid on my computer and have another pint before they toss me out. Wish me safe home. I’m fairly certain the Blackberry Man is still lurking somewhere out there.
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Nervous listeners may be reassured to know that Brian returned safely, and his endeavours continue. You can find out lots more about Swan River Press at their own website. Indulge yourselves – and don’t forget to look out for the Uncertainties collection, due out in June.
Come back with us in time, dear listener, to a very special moment. Picture, if you will, two attractive, light-hearted people, very much in love and determined to do good in the world. Now forget that. Burn the picture. Replace it with an eccentric Yorkshire drunk who works in a pub and a tough Sarf London girl who has just finished university. Add the fact that they aren’t exactly going out, and are constantly arguing, and you have today’s True Story…
the author’s pantry, circa 1979. every cask contains the same essential food group.
Note: This may be seen as a cautionary tale of two inexperienced people doing it wrong, or a heart-warming story. We do NOT recommend it as a set of dog rescue guidelines.
So, it is 1979 (probably). She who is now our editor-in-chief finds this dog wandering the streets. It is a sad dog, a Staffordshire bull terrier who looks very lost. It has a name and a phone number on its tag. It is called Rocko. Obviously, after consultation, we call the number. Again and again. There is never any reply. The police can get no further than we can, and we’re pretty much pre-chip or database times here. Days later, no Rocko or similar Staffy has been reported missing, and no-one we ask can think of anything helpful.
We are stuck. We have never rescued a dog before. We don’t know where Rocko came from, and we don’t want the dog to be put down. We’ve been told the dog pounds may go down that road. Thirty plus years into the future, of course, we will have lots of options – shelters and rescue organisations we can trust. But we are young, so we try to look after the poor soul.
Rocko is soft. This is the sort of dog who looks at you apologetically if you tread on its paw by accident. The aggressive urges of a lump of plasticine. And Rocko is a she. We call her Rufus, because we do not like the name Rocko. Then we find that our editor cannot have dogs in her bedsit, due to an arsy landlord. Fortunately, the rest of the team (your not-as-drunk-as-he-used to-be author) is temporarily living in a disused room at the university when not assisting Tetleys Brewery in their life=beer mission. As we are not really supposed to be there, Rufus might as well not be there at the same time.
not rufus, but the nearest we could find
Rufus is delighted to have a new home (single room piled high with books and old crates). She is walked, well-fed and cuddled. She has teeth which can bite through a tin of dog-food – and do – but never gives so much as a nip to people. She is lovely. Dogs need company, so we don’t want her on her own too often. So one day, because of work shifts, sunspots or something else we completely forget now, Rufus is sent to stay with a mutual friend who has some spare time and access to a bit of grassy wasteland. During this time she wanders off, causing panic, but soon toddles back, and is overjoyed to be re-united with us.
We realise that she needs a proper home. So we take her to some parents far away from where we live, parents who do not know that they have always wanted a dog. They certainly don’t know that they have always wanted a large hungry Staffordshire bull terrier with a boy’s name and a girl’s parts.
After a certain amount of sarcasm, Rufus is housed by the sea with people who are there all the time. A perfect ending. Except for the fact that Rufus turns out to be not only pregnant (thanks to that grassy wasteland expedition) but very heavily pregnant. Parental sarcasm gets close to boiling point, but is survived.
Rocko who is Rufus is now Rusty, as a certain mother refuses to call a pregnant Staffordshire Rufus. A large litter of confusing pups is born. Some look Staffie-ish, some look more like golden retrievers. Amazingly, these are all farmed out to various other sarcastic relatives, and at last Rusty is comfy at home. She becomes a basking seal who occupies the sofa every day and is doted over by that certain mother. Rusty is always delighted to see us when we head coast-wards, and lives to a ripe old age. Actual perfect ending – in the end.
So what’s this got to do with lurchers and longdogs? Hang in there. Many years later, with another old dog at home but a bit worn out, editor-in-chief goes to Battersea Dogs’ Home and struggles back up north with a young, utterly bonkers dog found roaming the streets of London.
It has clearly been damaged by some horrible experience(s), and is rather hostile to anyone except the immediate family. By hostile, we mean a tendency to bite people’s calf muscles when alarmed, by the way, not merely bad-tempered. To the family, this little bundle of legs is loyalty exemplified, and like Rocko/Rufus/Rusty, is hugely affectionate, with never even the hint of a nip to our young son.
the late and adored lunatic jade, our very first lurcher
It is, yes, a lurcher. It is also definitely a she, and she is Jade. Spayed this time, thank goodness. Although she’s gone now, again at an advanced age, we loved her very much and she is one of the reasons why this site is called greydogtales. And she began our deep affection for lurchers. So there.
Next time: The obvious feature to follow this one – an interview with the owner of Swan River Press, Ireland’s only publisher of Gothic, fantastic and supernatural fiction…
arabian nights
