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Gothic Tales

Tekijä: Arthur Conan Doyle

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Arthur Conan Doyle was the greatest genre writer Britain has ever produced. Throughout a long writing career, he drew on his own medical background, his travels, and his increasing interest in spiritualism and the occult to produce a spectacular array of Gothic tales. Many of Doyle's writings are recognized as the very greatest tales of terror. They range from hauntings in the polar wasteland to evil surgeons and malevolent jungle landscapes. This collection brings together over thirty of Conan Doyle's best Gothic tales. Darryl Jones's introduction discusses the contradictions in Conan Doyle's very public life-as a medical doctor who became obsessed with the spirit world, or a British imperialist drawn to support Irish Home Rule-and shows the ways in which these found articulation in that most anxious of all literary forms, the Gothic.… (lisätietoja)
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I really enjoyed these old stories on CD. The are not scary by todays standards so don't expect that. I truly enjoyed listening to them in my car. My favorite is the story about the man who wouldn't die. The Narrator, Gary Furlong, is amazing! He really makes the stories come alive. I hope to find more books read by him. Buy this audiobook! You wont be disappointed. ( )
  Calactress | Oct 4, 2022 |
Arthur Conan Doyle

Gothic Tales

Oxford University Press, Paperback, 2018.

12mo. xl+549 pp. Edited by Darryl Jones with an Introduction [ix-xxxiii] and Notes [501-49]

First published, 2006.
First published as an Oxford World’s Classics paperback, 2018.

Contents

Introduction
Note on the Text
Select Bibliography
Chronology of Arthur Conan Doyle

The Tales

The American’s Tale [London Society, Christmas 1880]*
The Captain of the ‘Polestar’ [Temple Bar, Jan 1883; CDS]
The Winning Shot [Bow Bells, 11 Jul 1883]
J. Habakuk Jephson’s Statement [Cornhill Magazine, Jan 1884; CDS]
John Barrington Cowles [Cassell’s Saturday Journal, 12-19 Apr 1884; TCP]
Uncle Jeremy’s Household [Boy’s Own Paper, Jan-Feb 1887]
The Ring of Thoth [Cornhill Magazine, Jan 1890; CDS]
The Surgeon of Gaster Fell [Chambers’s Journal, 6-27 Dec 1890; CDS]
A Pastoral Horror [People, 21 December 1890]
‘De Profundis’ [The Idler, Mar 1892; CDS]
Lot No. 249 [Harper’s, Sep 1892; CDS]
The Los Amigos Fiasco [The Idler, Dec 1892; CDS]
The Case of Lady Sannox [The Idler, Nov 1893; CDS]
The Lord of Chateau Noir [The Strand, Jul 1894; CDS]
The Third Generation [RRL, 1894; CDS]
The Striped Chest [Pearson’s Magazine, Jul 1897; CDS]
The Fiend of the Cooperage [Manchester Weekly Times, 1 Oct 1897; CDS]
The Beetle-Hunter [Strand Magazine, Jun 1898; CDS]
The Sealed Room [Strand Magazine, Sep 1898; CDS]
The Brazilian Cat [Strand Magazine, Dec 1898; CDS]
The New Catacomb [The Sunlight Yearbook, 1898; CDS]
The Retirement of Signor Lambert [Pearson’s Magazine, Dec 1898]
The Brown Hand [Strand Magazine, May 1899; CDS]
Playing with Fire [Strand Magazine, Mar 1900; CDS]
The Leather Funnel [McClure’s, Nov 1902; CDS]
The Pot of Caviare [Strand Magazine, Mar 1908; CDS]
The Silver Mirror [Strand Magazine, Aug 1908; CDS]
The Terror of Blue John Gap [Strand Magazine, Aug 1910; CDS]
Through the Veil [Strand Magazine, Nov 1910; CDS]
How It Happened [Strand Magazine, Sep 1913; CDS]
The Horror of the Heights [Strand Magazine, Nov 1913; CDS]
The Bully of Brocas Court [Strand Magazine, Nov 1921; CDS]
The Nightmare Room [Strand Magazine, Dec 1921; CDS]
The Lift [Strand Magazine, Jun 1922; CDS]

Explanatory Notes

*Date and place of first publication; if this is not used as copy text, the source is given with an abbreviation: CDS = The Conan Doyle Stories (John Murray, 1929); TCP = ‘The Captain of the Pole-Star’ and Other Tales (Longmans, Green & Co., 1890); RRL = Conan Doyle’s Tales of Medical Humanism and Values: Round the Red Lamp (Methuen, 1894).

=====================================================

Having recently finished the Sherlock Holmes canon, I was impressed enough with Arthur Conan Doyle to try some of his non-Sherlockian works. The only one to enjoy some popularity on its own is The Lost World (1912). But I came across this volume of “Gothic Tales” by chance in the bookstore, flipped through it idly, said to myself “Well, why not? I know Conan Doyle is a master storyteller, it stands to reason that even his worst stories would be readable, so let’s see how well he can manage the Gothic stuff, shall we?”, and here we are.

This volume contains 34 stories published in the course of 42 years (1880–1922); the first six predate the Sherlock Holmes canon, the last piece is some five years older than the last appearance of the most famous sleuth in fiction. You might think such a time span would give you a fine opportunity to appreciate ACD’s development as a short story writer. It is not so. He was a master from the beginning.

“The American’s Tale” is a Wild West story complete with flytraps expanded from six inches to ten feet for man-eating purposes. Outlandish stuff, but not bad at all for a lad of 21! “The Captain of the Polestar”, written but three years later, belies the tender age of its author. It is rather a spooky ghost story set on a whaler trapped by ice at 81 degrees latitude. The title character is an Ahab-like figure seeking his doom with singular persistence, while the narrator is a ship doctor who finds his rational mind challenged by the captain’s character and the mysterious circumstances aboard. The story is vividly told as a series of journal entries and, just by the way, contains some of ACD’s most evocative descriptions:

Nothing but the great motionless ice-fields around us, with their weird hummocks and fantastic pinnacles. There is a deathly silence over their wide expanse which is horrible. No lapping of the waves now, no cries of seagulls or straining of sails, but one deep universal silence in which the murmurs of the seamen, and the creak of their boots upon the white shining deck, seem discordant and out of place.

[...]

I think I have already mentioned the extraordinary silence which prevails in these frozen seas. In other parts of the world, be they ever so barren, there is some slight vibration of the air – some faint hum, be it from the distant haunts of men, or from the leaves of the trees or the wings of the birds, or even the faint rustle of the grass that covers the ground. One may not actively perceive the sound, and yet if it were withdrawn it would be missed. It is only here in these Arctic seas that stark, unfathomable stillness obtrudes itself upon you all in its gruesome reality. You find your tympanum straining to catch some little murmur, and dwelling eagerly upon every accidental sound within the vessel.

Apart from the very fine writing (if that is not literature, so much the worse for literature!) and the absolutely masterful storytelling (very often in the first person, hard to equal and impossible to surpass), ACD’s wide and varied reading is the thing that impressed me most in these stories. The man’s curiosity was apparently insatiable. He must have read voraciously on any subject under the sun, from ancient and recent history to paranormal and supernatural phenomena, with a good deal of genuine science (mostly medicine, of course, but also archaeology, ethnology and what not) thrown in for good measure. Extremely diverse settings ranging from the arctic to the equatorial and from the Wild West to the Far East are more than welcome, too. Some random notes follow.

It cannot be denied that in some ways the author was rather naive and simplistic. “John Barrington Cowles”, apart from an impressive female villain, is a story about mesmerism. ACD was fond of psychic nonsense from an early age and his notorious immersion into spiritualism in the 1920s was nothing if not the climax of a lifelong interest in such matters. Also indicative of his all too Victorian ideas is reading character on the face (“the chin and lower jaw beautifully rounded off, and yet sufficiently developed to promise unusual strength of character”) or making simplistic observations about the difference between the sexes (“an extraordinary mixture of masculine decision and womanly tenderness”). And yet, on the whole, his characters, including his villains, are more complex than usual for those blissfully ignorant times. Also, there is some scepticism around.

“Playing with Fire” is the first story seriously dealing with spiritualism, séances, spirits and all. Considering the stupendous silliness of the subject (if you excuse the alliteration), the story is surprisingly entertaining. The first-person narrator declares he was merely “amused” in the beginning, shaken by the experience later, and finally left in the dark as to the meaning of it all. He is aware that spiritualism is often mixed with “much that is foolish, and much that is fraudulent”. An earlier story, “‘De Profundis’” (1892), deals with telepathy, which the first-person narrator considers “proved”, but the story ends with a charming twist in the tail which actually disproves the phenomenon, or at least provides an alternative explanation in that particular case. ACD’s solid scientific training furnished him with a fine counterpoint to the more gullible side of his nature. Besides, as a character from “The Leather Funnel” wisely observes:

The charlatan is always the pioneer. From the astrologer came the astronomer, the alchemist the chemist, from the mesmerist the experimental psychologist. The quack of yesterday is the professor of tomorrow. Even such subtle and elusive things as dreams will in time be reduced to system and order.

“J. Habakuk Jephson’s Statement” is based on the famous mystery with Mary Celeste, an American brigantine discovered adrift and deserted in 1872. As every true writer of fiction, ACD makes no attempt to get right even the few things known for certain and boldly builds an engrossing if improbable version of his own. Nor is it as racist as the passionate prophets of Political Correctness would have you believe. The villain is black, certainly, but his vile plans and deeds are clearly the result of white savagery: that much is made perfectly clear. “The Striped Chest” and “‘De Profundis’” are two stories more in which sailing, ships and the sea are major characters. ACD was evidently familiar with that subject as well.

“The Ring of Thoth” is a story inspired by ancient Egypt: pure fantasy but quite effective, even haunting. I don’t know if Egyptomania was all the rage among the late Victorians, but ACD certainly knew a good deal about Egyptian mythology and the art of mummification. This knowledge is put to a most effective use in “Lot No. 249”, rather a long and very intense story slightly let down by a commonplace ending. It contains another of those atmospheric descriptions mingled with philosophic reflections that simply must be quoted:

In a certain wing of what we will call Old College in Oxford there is a corner turret of an exceeding great age. The heavy arch which spans the open door has bent downwards in the centre under the weight of its years, and the grey, lichen-blotched blocks of stone are bound and knitted together with withes and strands of ivy, as though the old mother had set herself to brace them up against wind and weather. From the door a stone stair curves upward spirally, passing two landings, and terminating in a third one, its steps all shapeless and hollowed by the tread of so many generations of the seekers after knowledge. Life has flowed like water down this winding stair, and, waterlike, has left these smooth-worn grooves behind it. From the long-gowned, pedantic scholars of Plantagenet days down to the young bloods of a later age, how full and strong had been that tide of young, English life. And what was left now of all those hopes, those strivings, those fiery energies, save here and there in some old-world churchyard a few scratches upon a stone, and perchance a handful of dust in a mouldering coffin? Yet here were the silent stair and the grey, old wall, with bend and saltire and many another heraldic device still to be read upon its surface, like grotesque shadows thrown back from the days that had passed.

The term “Gothic” is very vague in the first place. It is stretched somewhat beyond its tenuous definition here, but this is not necessarily a bad thing. Variety is always appreciated in fiction, especially in a “genre” short story collection, and ACD provides that in spades.

“Uncle Jeremy’s Household” is not really a Gothic story at all, but a crime mystery instead. Again, the villain is conveniently foreigner (Indian here, Swedish in “The Winning Shot”, but it must said there are plenty of British villains on these pages as well), but he, or in this case she, is granted some complexity. Other non-Gothic gems include “The Los Amigos Fiasco”, a hilarious comedy about a failed execution with electricity, written a little over two years after the first person got the chair in New York; “The Case of Lady Sannox”, another comedy, but rather a grim one, about a practical joke which is played on an eminent surgeon and makes “his great brain about as valuable as a cap full of porridge”; and “The Lord of Chateau Noir”, a story set during the Franco-Prussian War that makes a point, as do some of Maupassant’s masterpieces, of stating yet again an old truth still beyond the comprehension of many people, namely that, in a war, there is no difference between victors and vanquished: all are human, and all lose in the end.

If “Gothic” can be extended to extremes of human behaviour, all these stories are very much in the right place. So are all others. “The New Catacomb” and “The Retirement of Signor Lambert” are nothing but trite marital melodramas on the surface. Just below that, however, these are harrowing studies of men pushed completely off balance. “The Leather Funnel” goes further by mixing a graphic cocktail of crime and punishment (in pre-Revolutionary France, as it were) with a theory about the interpretation of dreams which is at once modern for its time and utterly fanciful. One of my greatest favourites “The Pot of Caviare”, a chilling tale in which an international group (British, American, French) is besieged during the Boxer Rebellion in China and waits anxiously to be saved. You’ll see the ending long before the last page. And yet, such is ACD’s instinct for revealing detail and sheer narrative power, that I promise you will continue reading with morbid fascination until the end – unless, of course, you’re one of the apostles of Political Correctness who sees racism everywhere. Yes, the Chinese are not portrayed in a flattering way, but this is a minor point – as well as totally missing the point.

If your idea of “Gothic” is mostly an atmosphere of foreboding, you can hardly do better than “The Fiend of the Cooperage”, “The Brown Hand” and “The Silver Mirror”. The first of these is a more or less realistic tale about a mysterious killer and kidnapper, the other two are entirely fantastic variations on reincarnation and sort of time travel, respectively, but all of them share a palpable sense of doom. These stories are lighter fare compared to those in the previous paragraph. But they still leave traces, not to say scars, on the reader.

The stories are not all of equal merit, of course. But even the weakest have something fascinating to offer. “The Surgeon of Gaster Fell” is spoiled by a rushed ending, but the build-up and the sinister atmosphere are executed with something like perfection. “The Sealed Room” is totally unbelievable even by the most tolerant standards of the genre, but, all the same, it’s a tense page-turner until the horrifying end. The later stories are somewhat less inspired, but they do demonstrate ACD’s passion for keeping abreast with the latest technological stunts such as aviation (“The Horror of the Heights”) or automobiles (“How It Happened”). “The Third Generation” is certainly one of the lesser stories, but it deals, if rather obliquely, with the bold subject of venereal disease (syphilis, to be precise, on which ACD wrote his MD thesis!) and contains some even bolder freethinking nuances. “Talk about the sins of the father! How about the sins of the Creator!” – rather a wild claim for late Victorian times, even by a fictional character!

If Gothic fiction (or horror, or call it what you will) has a purpose beyond mere entertainment, this is the exploration of our minds and bodies confronted with the marvellous and the monstrous. ACD doesn’t disappoint here, either. Most of the stories are generously sprinkled with insightful glimpses into human nature under, let us say, peculiar circumstances. These usually come and go like a flash, but many of them made me pause and think. For instance, in “A Pastoral Horror” people get together “from the gregariousness of terror than from mere curiosity”. This is striking and, come to think of it, very perceptive. So is the seemingly simple statement “what a simple thing is retrospective wisdom!” Another such passage, which I shall quote with a bit of context this time, comes in “The Fiend of the Cooperage”, a scary story with a humorous ending set in the back of beyond, at the outskirts of Empire and the civilised world in Western Africa:

There is nothing finer than the way in which these outlying prickets of civilization distil a grim humour out of their desolate situation, and turn not only a bold, but a laughing face upon the chances which their lives may bring. Everywhere from Sierra Leone downwards I had found the same reeking swamps, the same isolated fever-racked communities, and the same bad jokes. There is something approaching to the divine in that power of man to rise above his conditions and to use his mind for the purpose of mocking at the miseries of his body.

Kipling (“At the End of the Passage”), Conrad (“An Outpost of Progress”) and Maugham (“The Outstation”) all wrote powerful stories about the lonesome Empire Builder driven to madness by climate and circumstances. ACD could do the same thing as well as anybody. In fact, he could do any kind of story with distinction.

Last and least, I am pleased to report the editorial work of Darryl Jones is excellent. For one thing, he has written a fine Introduction. It opens with a bang:

Arthur Conan Doyle is the greatest genre writer Britain has ever produced. Over the course of a long and very prolific career he earned enormous popularity and public acclaim, some degree of political influence, a knighthood, a very large amount of money, and towards the end of his life no little scorn and ridicule. He was a forceful personality: a big man, proud of his physique – ‘strong and active’, he called himself – and a man of considerable intelligence, of boundless energy, and of unassailable self-confidence. These were qualities which he brought to bear on a variety of endeavours, but especially upon the writing of fiction, of which he produced a great amount in an astounding variety of genres.

Mr Jones has plenty of interesting things to say about ACD’s rampant imperialism, fluctuating opinion on the Irish Question and lifelong passion for spiritualism. At least some of it seems irrelevant, but the editor does find some stimulating parallels between the rest and the Gothic tales. I’ll leave you to discover them for yourself. Suffice it to say Mr Jones makes a solid case that ACD was “a conflicted, or even a divided, figure” who used Gothic tales as a vehicle for self-exploration that was not possible in mainstream fiction. It is a fine introduction indeed, scholarly yet accessible, and written with appreciation that never degenerates into adulation. It is full of spoilers, of course, and thus best read (as you’re advised in the beginning) as an afterword. I would the essay is best read as an introduction to the second reading of the stories. I’m sure there will be one in the future.

The Notes are intelligent and informative, often illuminating. I had no idea, for example, that the young ACD served as a ship doctor on a whaler, no doubt an experience that informed the writing of “The Captain of the Polestar”. He also lived for a while in Feldkirch, Austria, where he attended a Jesuit school in his teens. No wonder the setting in “A Pastoral Horror” is drawn with such meticulous attention to detail. (Much of this can be gathered from the excellent Chronology as well.) Mr Jones has done a fine job with anything from history and heraldry to cricket and medicine, plus a good deal of rather obscure language (e.g. “Dutch uncle”, “bistouries”, “mephitic”). On the downside, some cross-references between the notes are plain wrong. But that’s just a quibble.

To sum up, if you have read and enjoyed some Sherlock Holmes stories, and are wondering what other short fiction ACD wrote, make sure to get a copy of this Oxford World’s Classics edition. You will not be disappointed. Highly enjoyable stuff! ( )
  Waldstein | Apr 24, 2021 |
Tämä arvostelu kirjoitettiin LibraryThingin Varhaisia arvostelijoita varten.
The term "gothic" is used for this audiobook collection of short stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Most are not gothic by today's terms at all. Granted, some stories were interesting but the majority were dull. The narrator was very good, and he made the stories come alive. Some of the stories have good humor in them, so if you like mysteries or adventure tales I would recommend this. ( )
  lesindy | Nov 17, 2019 |
Tämä arvostelu kirjoitettiin LibraryThingin Varhaisia arvostelijoita varten.
I obviously know Doyle for his Sherlock stories, and was aware of some of his other pulp and gothic stories, but this collection, and in particular, the introductory essay, gave me a better appreciation for Doyle and his work.

By our standards some of the ideas don't seem original and may seem silly, and Doyle's notions of race, colonialism, and sex, can be off putting, but he was a talented writer with lots to say.

Hearing the stories in an audio format can make the stories more accessible and have certainly helped with my commutes. ( )
  smcgurr | Jan 26, 2019 |
Tämä arvostelu kirjoitettiin LibraryThingin Varhaisia arvostelijoita varten.
I'm not a fan of Victorian literature. Doyle's stories contain all the attitudes that I despise. Women are lovely but weak and prone to fainting. Blacks are savages, as are most other races. You can read a man's character easily by studying his face. Christianity is the true religion (this is a thought spoken by several characters, although Doyle did not consider himself a Christian, but a Spiritualist). That being said, Gary Furlong does an outstanding job in performing 30+ Doyle stories, with multiple character's voices and excellent accents. Doyle's stories provide a wide variety of supernatural or just scary themes. We have all sorts of mania, seances, mummies, vampires, and some pretty sadistic revenge. Almost all have a protagonist with medical training, which of course allows the author to use his expertise in this field. Each story takes about 30 minutes of listening time, so this would be a great companion for a Doyle fan who commutes by car. ( )
  wdwilson3 | Jan 17, 2019 |
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Arthur Conan Doyle was the greatest genre writer Britain has ever produced. Throughout a long writing career, he drew on his own medical background, his travels, and his increasing interest in spiritualism and the occult to produce a spectacular array of Gothic tales. Many of Doyle's writings are recognized as the very greatest tales of terror. They range from hauntings in the polar wasteland to evil surgeons and malevolent jungle landscapes. This collection brings together over thirty of Conan Doyle's best Gothic tales. Darryl Jones's introduction discusses the contradictions in Conan Doyle's very public life-as a medical doctor who became obsessed with the spirit world, or a British imperialist drawn to support Irish Home Rule-and shows the ways in which these found articulation in that most anxious of all literary forms, the Gothic.

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