Part Four of the CONTROVERSIES thread which continues from Part One HERE, Part Two HERE and Part Three HERE.
Further discussion will hopefully be made in the comment stream below. Everyone is welcome to contribute on any aspect of book reviewing controversies and related matters.
Lovecraft.
Our community taking sides on this is like fighting over the course history already took, here a literary history of which we are all part – when we know it can’t be changed. That’s not me sitting on the fence but just sayin’.
Time to move on, yes, to a new iconic symbol for an award, but not by destroying a past icon whose mind none of us really know.
http://www.ligotti.net/showthread.php?p=118971#post118971 (this public post and onward…)
Discussion by my Facebook friends: HERE
ST Joshi goes for the kill on the HPL controversy:
http://stjoshi.org/news.html (His post dated 19 Nov.)
The funniest (seemingly heartfelt) book review I have ever read. One about the Ligotti Penguin Classics book: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1427629309?book_show_action=true
Further to my earlier link on this thread about the Aickman Centenary book – Johnny Mains’ Facebook post to ‘friends’ about this and other matters: HERE
A couple of days ago, I ran a temporary Facebook post quoting from Laird Barron’s statement about me (that I originally quoted HERE by a contemporaneous copy and paste earIy in October this year). Feeling physically better in recent weeks, and more chilled out about this controversy, I now felt able to address it publicly. A few people reported that they had also fallen out with Laird or been ‘unfriended and blocked’ by him and many sympathised with my feelings. Thanks for their support.
One person, however, wrote to me privately as a result of the sometimes aberrantly diffuse discussions on Facebook. He said that Laird might have meant to say “YOUR ACTIONS WERE deficient, full stop.” rather than “YOU ARE deficient, full stop.” as he did say. Although I would disagree with the facts of the former version, I can see it would not have been a personal attack. So I give Laird the benefit of the doubt.
I give my due respect to all those touched by this controversy. Meanwhile, the Anthology book in question will no doubt be a great treasure for posterity.
A remarkable story by Allyson Bird just reviewed by me here: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2015/12/20/cassildas-song-editor-joe-pulver/#comment-6074
Discussion of my real-time review of ANIMAL MONEY by Michael Cisco:
http://www.ligotti.net/showthread.php?p=120031#post120031
I paid £21 to Spectral Press last July for the hardback Leytonstone so that I could read and hopefully review it. Not received it to date. It is now in the post to me, they have recently told me again. I have always needed to ask them for info, because they never volunteered info to me. That’s all I know about Spectral Press and otherwise I have rarely bought their books. I hope they recover from their current financial problems.
Interesting in this context: http://www.gingernutsofhorror.com/9/post/2016/01/the-fallout-where-that-leaves-ginger-nuts-of-horror-and-the-small-press.html
I still have not received ‘Leystonstone’, by the way. I will record it here when or if I do.
Note: https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1047562215274192&id=163305013699921
and then a message to me on 5 January 2016: “Due to a mix up, your book which was meant to have been sent last Wednesday by my wife has now been sent off today by me. Many apologies for this.”
I don’t understand why Spectral haven’t at least sent all the customers pdf and ebook copies of the titles they had ordered. That’s the least they could be doing. It’s not what you ordered, but at least you’d have the option of reading the book while waiting for them to pay back your money.
The Ginger Nuts of Horror post is very peculiar, given that they don’t pay their contributors either. They got riled up with me on Facebook over that, and started talking about it being a labour of love, etc. Not sure how that distinguishes them from TQF, Holdfast, Fur-Lined Ghettos, the BFS, and all the other little community projects that they’d decided to class as despicable for not paying contributors.
I have today received the Leytonstone hardback, unsigned and unnumbered. I shall be starting a review of it here: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2016/02/24/leytonstone-stephen-volk/
Lois Tilton resigns from Locus because, she claims, they have be been censoring her reviews: http://file770.com/?p=26987
Sounds from the comments like they introduced a positive-comments only policy. I can see why she stepped down. I stopped reading the Believer once I heard they had the same rule.
Simon Bestwick’s lengthy summary of the Spectral Press matter: http://simon-bestwick.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/spectral-press.html
Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction #54 Editorial – Page 12 onward –
DOUBLE STANDARDS regarding the Spectral Press matter:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9oCWBEs0S7OZ0diWTJOU3RSN28/view
I’m surprised I didn’t get more blowback over this. Sorry by the way for not including this very site in my list of interesting community projects – it slipped my mind when writing that you had begun to have additional contributors, like we do.
Jeff VanderMeer to his Facebook Friends here about Weird Tales…
Some earlier public context: http://www.jeffvandermeer.com/2012/08/20/weird-tales-ann-vandermeer-and-utter-stupidity/
A personal extract from the above Facebook link:
Des Lewis I find good quality weird literature these days at Undertow Publns, Ex Occidente Press and various other bespoke places.
Like · Reply · 2 · March 8 at 4:44pm
Jeff VanderMeer I would just add the caveat that Ex Occidente has a long history of taking people’s money for orders and then never sending books.
Like · Reply · March 8 at 11:41pm
Des Lewis It certainly has that reputation but in my experience a false one. I have bought about 90 different books from them with no trouble. That’s the only thing I can safely go on. I think there was some issue at one stage on the postal system between Romania and USA.
Like · Reply · March 9 at 7:21am · Edited
Des Lewis PS: I should also have added The Third Alternative and Black Static as a steady stream of good quality Weird Liteature over the decades.
Like · Reply · March 9 at 7:17am · Edited
Spectral Press opens its doors again HERE.
I am sometimes asked how I choose certain books to review and why I get involved or interested in certain literary controversies.
I hope this does not sound pretentious, but my choice of books to buy stems from what I claim is a preternatural knack of knowing what books to enjoy, hoping by this to keep a catholic and eclectic taste in hyper-imaginative books afloat in an uncertain world, to my benefit and to their benefit. I also enjoy the process itself of real-time reviewing and feel that it can expose aspects of and connections between books, thoughts and things that are positive.
Meanwhile, I feel I have no axe to grind as I am not active in getting my own stuff published. In the last 16 years, I think I have only submitted a handful of my own works to publishers, ones that have been solicited from me.
As to actual or potential controversies, I admit that there is a certain ‘rubber-necking’ tendency in myself, but I also feel that these lines of controversy should be known as far as possible in the hope they will eventually be transcended or at least cauterised one by one.
I trust the works themselves are what posterity will remember and make judgements by.
Des, you have always appeared honest in whatever you say and as balanced in your reviews as one could hope for! –Harold
Interpretation of Ligotti’s beliefs from his fiction – http://www.ligotti.net/showthread.php?p=121861#post121861
I feel like you can learn quite a bit about his beliefs from the posts he gives thanks to on Ligotti Online, like during that big debate about anti-natalism a while back.
A public Facebook argument sparked by the Spectral Press controversy HERE
I think the literary content of that ridiculous argument was quite negligible!
Interesting on Spectral Press discussion if you can reach this FB page…
And on this FB page, too.
Weirdtongue Palaver revisited: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2016/04/11/weirdtongue-palaver-re-visited/
This Riley matter is rumbling again here on Twitter and on closed Facebook pages.
And now on a public FB Page.
PS: and now on many others (half an hour later)!
Main HWA debating point on DAR here as far as I can see.
The beliefs expressed in manner and substance by DAR in the past as shown by the evidence are anathema to me and I find it difficult to connect these expressions with the friendly and horror genre-enthusiastic chap I met at a convention six or seven years ago.
Reading now at above link, I see DAR has offered his resignation personally on that thread, explaining that he once was a jurist before and also a Trustee of HWA in the past, without problem. Meanwhile, I stand by my previous post above as a simple statement of fact.
Some interesting additional material on this FB thread if you can reach it.
Discussion here: http://www.ligotti.net/showthread.php?t=10652
(I am away from my main computer for the next few days, so may not be on-line.)
I think this is a key thread on this topic: https://www.facebook.com/groups/Horrorwritersassoc/permalink/10153408957391581/
This seems to be another HWA ‘scandal’.
PS: Monica, whose FB thread it is, was an author in Nemonymous, and I noticed this serious issue earlier today here in UK.
Part Five of this thread will continue HERE.