hsut@pur-ee.UUCP (Bill Hsu) (10/10/85)
Re: Mark Leeper's review of The Doll Who Ate His Mother
Well, looks like Ramsey Campbell is finally making his
way across the Atlantic. Back when I used to read horror regularly,
Campbell was one of my favorite authors. Recently, he has been
putting out more conventional horror novels, the only distinguishing
features being the overwhelmingly bleak world view expounded in his
fiction (quite a contrast to his happy interviews and book introductions)
and his terse, effective prose.
Campbell started out as a Lovecraft clone and a member of August
Derleth's Arkham House stable, but soon turned out to be an interesting
and original writer. The earlier stuff is fairly straightforward and
easy-to-read horror, but his later stuff is much denser and the convoluted
prose and deliberate vagueness of his descriptions of every day life
competes for attention with the relative simplicity of his plots.
His first collection (The Occupant of the Lake???) is a good sampling
of his Lovecraft period (out-of-print and too expensive, sigh). The
second collection Demons by Daylight is very uneven, with some neat
little pieces. The third collection (Height of the Scream???) is
representive of the "difficult" Campbell, an unsettling anthology of
pictures of the vagueness and horror of everyday experience. There
is also an anthology Campbell edited, Superhorror, with a nice
Campbell story in it.
I don't care much for Campbell's stuff after Height of the Scream.
The Doll Who Ate His Mother had some nice moments but was rather uneven.
I couldn't finish The Parasite --- it seemed painfully conventional.
A lot of Ramsey Campbell reads badly as conventional horror. I consider
more of a good writer who happens to enjoy working within the confines
of the genre (another good example would be Ian McEwan and his chilling
first novel, The Cement Garden). Campbell achieves interesting effects
with minimal means (read some of the stories from his third collection
to see what I mean). Too bad he decided he needed more money and started
cranking out more commercial stuff.
Bill Hsu
{allegra,decvax,ihnp4,ucbvax}!pur-ee!hsut