{"id":2451,"date":"2016-07-16T19:28:33","date_gmt":"2016-07-16T19:28:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/greydogtales.com\/blog\/?p=2451"},"modified":"2016-07-22T21:23:55","modified_gmt":"2016-07-22T21:23:55","slug":"excavating-ramsey-the-great","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/greydogtales.com\/blog\/excavating-ramsey-the-great\/","title":{"rendered":"Excavating Ramsey the Great"},"content":{"rendered":"

He was published by Arkham House<\/em> in 1962. His first collection came out in 1964. We devoured his Cold Print<\/em> collection in 1985. He’s been called many things (as well as Mr Campbell Sir) – “Perhaps the finest living exponent of the British weird fiction tradition”<\/span> and \u201cThe leading horror writer of our generation\u201d<\/span>. And he’s still at it. Not only writing, but turning up at meetings or adding his musings to Facebook groups, as if Pharaoh himself had suddenly turned up to point out that your mud-bricks are a bit sloppy.<\/p>\n

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black labyrinth<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So we felt that we had to draw your attention to the release of The Booking<\/em> by Ramsey Campbell<\/strong><\/span>, from Dark Regions Press<\/em>. It would have been wrong not to.<\/p>\n

Just as compelling, this new novella is illustrated by one of our favourite artists, Santiago Caruso<\/strong>, whose fantastic work we’ve shown here many times.<\/p>\n

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black labyrinth\/caruso<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And we’ll get to it in a moment, really we will, but you know us \u2013 we have to ramble our way into things…<\/p>\n

As loyal listeners know, we sometimes ponder here on the whole Post-Lovecraftian, New Lovecraftian scene (Disloyal listeners get sent a black-edged card and a marked calendar. Never ask where they went)<\/em>. So it’s worth a brief mention of Campbell’s role in this.<\/p>\n

Cambell’s first collection was The Inhabitant of the Lake and Less Welcome Tenants <\/i>which contained his early Lovecraftian pastiches. By 1969 he began to distance himself from Lovecraft and in his collection Demons by Daylight<\/em> (1973)\u00a0 he was ploughing an independent furrow. He did in fact say at one point that he was looking more to Vladimir Nabokov<\/strong> (1899 – 1977) in terms of style when he wrote Demons<\/em>. And you can’t go far wrong with Nabokov.<\/p>\n

Then in 1980, when he had a body of work behind him, Campbell edited New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos<\/em> for Arkham.<\/p>\n

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We have a dog-chewed copy of it from when it first came out (the dog-chewing came later). And in that book he said, in his capacity as editor:<\/p>\n

\u201cIn this anthology I have tended to favor less familiar treatments or uses of the Mythos…. They contain few erudite occultists, decaying towns, or stylistic pastiches…. Indeed, one of our tales hints at the ultimate event of the Mythos without ever referring to the traditional names.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Incidentally, if you’ve never read New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos<\/em>, the contents are rather interesting:<\/p>\n