Product Description: When we think of ghost stories, we tend to think of cub scouts cringing by a fire, s'mores at the ready, as some aging camp counselor tries to scare them witless with yet another tale from the crypt. But as Michael Chabon's marvelous introduction reminds us, the ghost story was once integral to the genre of the short story. Indeed, as he points out, it can be argued that the ghost story was the genre. Dickens's "A Christmas Carol," Henry James's "The Turn of the Screw"--most of the early short story writers wrote ghost stories as a matter of course. And the best writer of ghost stories, the acknowledged master, was M.R. James. In Casting the Runes, we have twenty-one tales that, in Chabon's words, "venture to the limits of the human capacity for terror and revulsion...armed only with an umbrella and a very dry wit." The stories here represent the best of James's work. They are set in the leisurely, late-Victorian, middle-class world of country houses, seaside inns, out-of-the-way railway stations, and cathedral closes, where gentlemen of independent means and antiquarian tastes suddenly find themselves confronted by terrifying agents of supernatural malice. But what these tales are really about, writes Chabon, "is ultimately the breathtaking fragility of life, of 'reality,' of all the structures that we have erected to defend ourselves from our constant nagging suspicion that underlying everything is chaos, brutal and unreasoning." The tales in Casting the Runes are both chilling fun and, as Chabon concludes, "unmistakably works of art." Anyone who loves short fiction or who enjoys a good scare will find these stories an irresistible delight.
Great stories---bargain basement , shoddy Edition. AVOID Oxford University Press has committed an outrage---a violation!---and the publishers should be ashamed of themselves. Montague Rhodes James (1865-1936) is, for me, the Grand Master of the Terrifying Tale, and for those not acquainted with his works---well, I envy you the chilling delight of meeting up with James's menacing, atmospheric prose for the first time. Read the tales and relish their keen sense of terror, which belies the avuncular, scholarly style and antiquarian sensibilities in which James was so well-versed.
That said, it's a shame that so many readers will encounter James for the first time in Oxford's new collection of "Casting the Runes & Other Ghost Stories", which is the cheesiest, shoddiest edition of James's work I have ever encountered. In light of James's dark brilliance, this slipshod edition is the equivalent of serving Kristal Champagne in a plastic coke bottle, or offering Sevruga caviar from a tuna can.
I was initially excited at getting all of my favorite Jamesian tales of terror bound up in a new hardback volume from OUP. Imagine my intial shock when the tiny tome arrived---and I do mean TINY. Check out those book dimensions carefully, folks: this edition is a teensy vanity hardback about the size of the little abridged poetry volumes booksellers stock during the holidays for stocking stuffers, usually kept at the cash register.
Think about that for a second. Think about getting twenty-three James tales, 293 pages in total, into a teeny-tiny little book. Think of just how miniscule the print on those stories would have to be, or how absent the book would have to be of anything resembling normal margins.
Well, think about it, and then think hard before wasting your money on this edition, because this is pretty much M.R. James for Lilliputians. I have 20/20 vision and I need a magnifying glass to read the type comfortably. Oh, and remember all the scholarly annotations supplied by James scholar Michael Cox in the previous edition? As one reviewer noted, the asterisks are still there, but the annotations have been gutted.
Even better, apparently to save on paper and space the Oxford editors, in their infinite wisdom, cut out the James essay "Stories I Have Tried to Write" that appeared in the previous edition. Mind you, this is an essay that has graced *every* edition of "Casting the Runes" since the first publishing run, and they just---cut it out.
Oh, it gets better. In place of the erudite Cox, we now have Michael Chabon's witless introduction, in which Chabon appears eager to show how many literary works he is familiar with, but proves unable to get the name of James's protagonist in "Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You, Lad" right. Given that Chabon professes in the first sentence of his review that "Oh Whistle" is one of the finest short stories ever written, one would think M. Chabon would realize the name of the story's hero is Parkins, not Parke.
This edition is so shabby, cheap, and shoddy as to make even the most fervent bibliophile yearn for a good book-burning. James deserves better, and I hope his ghost haunts Oxford University Press.
One of the great voices in horror First, about M.R. James:
He is excellent! He is one of the best, most underappreciated voices in horror. Lovecraft admired him. His stories, though old, are quite scary. Also, they are very well written. As Chabon points out in his intro, Poe and Lovecraft weren't the best literary stylists. Most people cite "Oh, Whistle..." as James's best story, but I think I'll vote for "Count Magnus." Certainly all of them are good. More than that, they are REQUIRED reading for anyone who wants to have a basic understanding of horror literature. It is also a hell of a good read.
Second, this edition:
I was greatful to a previous reviewer for explaining the asterisks. There are asterisks without footnotes all over this book, as well as other Oxford University Press books (The Monk). Now we know that these are residue from a previous edition that HAD footnotes. Perhaps you might want to get that version.
However, I take great issue with the disparaging of Michael Chabon's essay on M.R. James. If you don't get the edition with his introduction, I recommend going to the bookstore and reading through it anyway. His comments are very illuminating on James and ghost stories in general.
An inexplicably dreadful edition Beware! If you love James or desire to discover him, this new edition of OUP's anthology is not the way to go. A previous and superb OUP edition was edited and annotated by Michael Cox. His fascinating comments are cued by asterisks that are liberally sprinkled throughout the text. In the current version, all the annotations are gone--but the asterisks remain! One can imagine how many readers must be scratching their heads over them. In place of Cox's excellent work, there is an innane introduction by the fashionable novelist Michael Chabon, who tells nothing of James's publications and incredibly little of his life (not even his dates), and explores only one of the stories, persistently misidentifying the protagonist, Parkins, as Parkes. You can't make this stuff up. What was OUP thinking? Why fix something that not only wasn't broken, but was something to be admired? I bought this volume as a gift--it's a handsome hardback--but plan on asking for a refund.
find it The art of Dr. James is by no means haphazard, and in the preface to one of his collections he has formulated three very sound rules for macabre composition. A ghost story, he believes, should have a familiar setting in the modern period, in order to approach closely the reader's sphere of experience. Its spectral phenomena, moreover, should be malevolent rather than beneficent; since fear is the emotion primarily to be excited. And finally, the technical patois of 'occultism' or pseudo-science ought carefully to be avoided; lest the charm of casual verisimilitude be smothered in unconvincing pedantry. -H.P. Lovecraft
Though less well remembered today than some other authors of Gothic ghost stories--like J. S. [John Sheridan] LeFanu, whose work he edited, Bram Stoker, and Henry James (no relation), or their successors H.P. Lovecraft, Algernon Blackwood, and the like--M. R. James is one of the great early horror writers. This story, which concerns a mysterious and unpleasant Mr. Karswell, who takes creepy exception to a negative review of his book, The Truth of Alchemy, shows off James's talents to good effect, combining genuine scares with a droll wit. But what makes this edition particularly appealing are the 12 splendid black-and-white drawings by Jeff White--an artist with whom I am not familiar and about whom I could find nearly nothing on the Web--that accompany the text. This slender volume seems certain to get any reader looking for more stories by Mr. James and more books illustrated by the estimable Mr. White
GRADE : A
Some of the Greatest Ghost Stories of M.R. James This is a great collection of the short horror stories of M.R. James, the best of the early 20th century horror writers (arguably, the best of the entire century!)
James was a professor and antiquarian who sets most of his stories in the contemporary (early 1900's) ruins of England's medieval past. The title story is a marvelous tale of a vicious crank whose occult revenge is turned against him. Other stories included are:
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Trevor
