|
|
Pangborn, Georgia Wood ListingsIf you cannot find what you want on this page, then please use our search feature to search all our listings. Click on Title to view full description
|
|
|
|
1 |
Pangborn, Georgia Wood THE WIND AT MIDNIGHT
Canada Ash-Tree Press 1999 1899562761 / 9781899562763 First Edition Private Press Hard Cover Fine Fine
176pp. Collects 25 tales, compared during her lifetime to those of Algernon Blackwood, as her tales avoid predictability, relying more on subtlety and style, also reversing many of the cliches of terror tales, and featuring women and children predominantly in the stories. There is also a recurring theme of madness, suicide, abandonment and despair in many of the tales. Introductory article on Pangborn by Salmonson. Review by Gail-Nina Anderson for All Hallows: Its perhaps inevitable that those various small, and much valued, presses which have in recent years set themselves the task of getting the elusive classics of supernatural back into print should quite quickly find themselves reprinting not the known names for whom weve been endlessly scouring the second-hand bookshops, but authors who have effectively been forgotten. Ash-Tree Presss early volumes filled the gaps on our shelves, but their re-discovery of Georgia Wood Pangborn, of whose work I must admit complete ignorance before the appearance of this collection, alerts us to the probability that there are more things lurking in vintage periodicals than have yet been anthologised. Mrs Pangborn (18721955) was a New Yorker, a college graduate, married with two children, and obviously popular as a contributor of fiction to the many magazines that flourished in the early years of this century. Magazine publication is, of course, essentially ephemeral, and the appearance of one novel and one collection of (largely non-supernatural) tales during her lifetime was obviously not enough to establish an enduring reputation. The fact that individual gems havent already been winkled out by anthologising editors, however, raises issues beyond simple availability. Pangborns work doesnt fit readily into our favourite patterns of how ghost stories operate. It isnt in the least Jamesian, deals very little with issues of legend and folklore, tends not to be frightening, and is much heavier on morals than it is on suspense. To say that her writing explores the psychology of the haunted state might invite categorisation alongside such later authors as Shirley Jackson, but the comparison I found myself making was with the relationship novels that E.F. Benson was producing at around the same time. Like those, Pangborns work takes advantage of the fact that popular fiction at this period could question social certainties and articulate the pressures of loneliness or mis-matched pairings, but in these particular stories the psychological tension also creates ripples in the fluid membrane between the worlds of the living and the dead. The result is delicate tales infused with the scent of memory, yet full of odd insights and unexpected observations. They are also, be warned, deeply sentimental in just the way Benson can be at his most annoying. Redoubtable editor Jessica Amanda Salmonson finds understandable interest in the way these stories, written for what was probably a largely female audience, domesticate and feminise some of the conventions of the genre. Her introduction raises issues of Womens Suffrage which throw only the dimmest of lights onto Pangborns fiction, and speculations about some personal trauma which, though investigation has turned up no clear evidence, hit it like a beacon. Remember that the stories were not intended to be gathered and read together, so the pattern of preoccupations is only now revealed by the form of this collection, but revealed it certainly is. Pangborns central motifs are the connections between past and present, how we deal with memory and regret and, more specifically, the relationship between mother and child. Heaven knows what tragedy in her own life may have triggered this, but over and over again mothers communicate with their children from either side of the barrier of death, women speculate on the value of a life without offspring to tend, and substitute mothers gladly take on the responsibilities of their one true role, sometimes prompted by the murmurings of birth-mothers gone before. Even where motherhood isnt a main motif it tends to creep in as an image, as in Andy Macphersons House, an interesting take on the ghost-reveals-crime format where the female protagonist is led by a broody mother hen and finds a vital clue in the maternal caressing of a sculpted baby cherub. Add to this the recurrent theme of mental illness, especially suicidal depression, and you have an emotional landscape, buried mere inches below the world of mundane social interactions, in which the appearance of a ghost or the efficacy of a gently-spoken curse might well be a matter of daily occurrence. By the end of the volume youve almost come to accept the coherence of this world view, taking it for granted that the dead mother will protect the child and the object from the past will project its reality onto the present. Unfortunately, this also means that youre able to predict where most of the stories are going. The collection is perhaps more satisfying for the speculations it sets up than for its narrative power. Pangborn is particularly good on the worrying ambiguity of the dream-state, especially in Bixbys Bridge, where an overwrought and bed-ridden young man seems able to live out an active and useful life through someone elses distant existence. There are poems here, too, fragile and poignant echoes of the familiar tropes and just as much of their time. I should have appreciated more bibliographical apparatus, with original publication dates that might have illuminated the way ideas developed and recurred. One of the stories, A Dispensation, is clearly a prequel to The Ghost Flower, but here appears later in the collection. But perhaps these shouldnt be subjected to too much critical scrutiny; best read them as period pieces, for their insights and images and style. To end with a quotation gives you the best of why Pangborn has been worth reviving: All night the March rain had frozen where it fell so that the world blazed under the morning sun like a jewelers window or a glass blowers exhibition piece, lovely and useless. (From The Ice Storm.) Limited to 500 copies.
Price:
35.55 USD
|
|
Add to Shopping Cart |
|
|
|
