David Tibet

This is an interesting selection of what I would call mostly old-fashioned ghost stories. Some of them are very familiar, and I wondered, "Why anthologize them again?" But this is Tibet's personal selection, and I think they benefit from being printed together. Especially memorable is the Algernon Blackwood tale of a young man who decides to step outside of societal norms to experience true freedom and love. There is also an interesting story by Aleister Crowley, and the DK Broster story is also very interesting, and one I hadn't read before. The book will introduce you to a few authors you may not know. The other contributions are consistently interesting as well, although "Smee" by AM Burrage is a good idea poorly executed. The odds and ends that Tibet includes, such as translations from Gilgamesh, don't add a whole lot to the volume. And the stories by Stenbock are also contained in Tibet's volume dedicated to that author. Still, this is a beautiful book, a good investment, and I'll probably pick up its sequel.… (altro)

First, this is a beautiful edition with an an excellent introduction and some wonderful pictures of the author, printed on high quality paper. It's a great book to hold in your hands and read. These are not the complete works of Count Stenbock, but I presume the editor, who knows a great deal about Stenbock and has edited some of his works previously, chose these because they are the best or the most representative. They are generally fun to read. Stenbock, who spoke several languages, wrote well. And his plots are certainly strange, though I'm not sure how decadent anything here is. Perhaps it depends on your state of mind. Reading these stories and poems (and one rather incongruous essay), I felt an immediate attraction and sympathy for the author. As I did when looking at the pictures of him, I felt that he would have been a fascinating person to know and have conversations with. His stories, though obviously written by an intelligent adult, often have a childlike innocence. They also have a childlike simplicity at times, which mars their effectiveness. In terms of the plots, there is nothing missing, but the narratives often lack complications or much suspense about where they are going. The atmospheres and ideas are good, but the execution is lacking. Or perhaps I'm judging them wrong. I'm sure Count Stenbock himself loved his stories--his world was too complicated already. Overall, the poems may be of higher quality. They have some nice images and definitely have ambiguities the stories lack. One or two are also more direct about same-sex love, a subject that naturally wends its way through Stenbock's works. To summarize, this is a book I'm glad I read because it introduced me to a fascinating, though minor, character. As someone who loves stories of this type, I also appreciated my moments of immersion into his character and obsessions. I would probably re-read the poetry, though I'm not sure about the stories.… (altro)