Weird Fiction discussion

In mid-November I will run a poll to help us determine our December group read. Please nominate up to two Weird Fiction works we should consider for the honor of our collective read and discussion.

I nominate Hammers on Bone by Cassandra Khaw as my first choice. It gives us a break from the somewhat SF centered nature of our November read.

Great, I will see what I can find!

I nominate The Eldritch Review: Literary Magazine: Issue #1 This, my second nomination, is unusual for us. We usually do collections of short stories or a novel. Once or twice we did a graphic novel. Never poetry or non-fiction. This nomination breaks that mold. It is for the first (and last) issue of a periodical devoted to weird fiction writing that came out in 2016. It is available on Kindle for $2.99.

I would like to nominate a book from a Norwegian author. I've done a lot of research and am yet to find a book written in Norwegian that's exclusively classified as weird fiction. Some seem to be close to the distinction, but they are mostly gothic tales, some form of ghost story, pure horror, psychological thrillers, dark fantasy or science fiction. We do have a lot of interesting stuff when it comes to the fantastic, but Wales and the art of fine dying from 2017 by Tone Wasbak Melbye seems to be a hidden gem and pure weird fiction. It's about a couple - Mari and Petter - who's travelling to Wales because Mari is writing a book that's part travel book and part how-to-live-your-life-to-the-fullest-book. Once there, they experience something strange and supernatural.

I read an interview with the author, and in Norwegian she says:

"Jeg prøver i boken å gjenskape den snikende uhyggen som følger med stemningen av oppløsning og flyktighet, det Lovecraft refererer til som «A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread», som kjennetegner den Underlige historien. Det virker det som jeg har lyktes med. Dette er en bok som i stor grad handler om hvordan det egentlig er å forholde seg til det paranormale på daglig basis."

English isn't my native language, so roughly translated, she says:

"I'm trying to recreate that creeping feeling of dread which accompanies an atmosphere of dissolution and transience, what Lovecraft refered to as 'A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread', which is characteristic of the strange/weird tale. I seem to have accomplished that. It's a book that's mostly about what it's like to deal with the paranormal on a daily basis."

She has been to Wales, and the places in the book are real. Worth noting too is her interesting description of Wales:

"Wales er nok det underligste landet av alle de stedene jeg har vært. På andre steder har jeg kanskje sett og opplevd merkeligere og mer spektakulære ting, men ingen steder har stemningen føltes så tettet av underlighet og virkeligheten virket så flyktig, landet så levende i seg selv."

English:

"Wales is probably the strangest country I've ever been to. I might have seen and experienced weirder and more spectacular things elsewhere, but nowhere else has the atmosphere felt so dense with strangeness, the reality seemed so transient, the land itself so alive."

Thankfully, there's an English translation of the book, available on Kindle, but since it's an obscure book, it has very few ratings. The original in Norwegian - Kunsten å være død i Wales - has a much higher rating with several great reviews, the lengthiest one which says it's horror fiction at it's core, but much more than that too, that it's surreal, eerie, creepy, that the prose is poetic, that Melbye makes use of Welsh mythology and finally compares it to The Horla by Guy de Maupassant in terms of mood.

I'm very intrigued and have been wanting to read this one for a long time.

That certainly looks like an interesting choice. On Amazon there is a free sample, the first six or eight pages, where one can make a determination on whether or not the book looks right for them. I felt the story started rather slowly. But it could pick up. So who knows? I did like the author's characterizations of the couple, loved the Welsh setting, and the text looked highly readable with lots of dialog and short, well-structured paragraphs.

Your English is perfectly fine, by the way, Nicolai. I could not tell any difference between your translation and the way a native speaker would have wrote what you did. The translator of Melbye's may be less skillful than yours though. In the work, he or she made some choices that looked slightly off to me, not jarringly so, but made me wonder if there might not have been a better way. It seemed too colloquial, for just one example.

"But the whole thing is a bit lame, isn't it?" A way of stating the matter most common to twelve-year-olds in the 1990s.

"Who comes up with stuff like that?" That word, "stuff". Again, intelligent as I think these two characters are, adults can express themselves better, more precisely.

I laughed to push the point, but to no avail. I have no idea what laughing to push a point means. Laughing to push, whatever that means, points, could just be a Norwegian thing.

And I could go on. But these examples, although of a type this translator does fairly frequently, are all mostly minor. They just seem slightly off. The main meaning still comes through. And when the plot gets going, I imagine they will fade to background. Lovecraft, who this author seems to be trying to follow in terms of tone, was so the opposite in his manner of writing.

If this nomination wins the poll, I'll certainly read it. Even if it doesn't, I would consider it for a buddy read. The only Scandanavian work we ever read in this group was John Ajvide Lindqvist's rather odd I Am Behind You, which I remember fondly. I'd be up for another viking.

You know what? I would also like to nominate No One Came For Me: weird and primal horror stories by Mary Hollow, who posted in the "Author Self-Promotion"-folder two months ago. I have read some of the stories, and they hold such great promise for the rest of the collection that I think it's worth a nomination. She has really given her short stories some serious thought, and so, thus far, it's an impressive debut. Also, it would be fun to have a debut author with us for a group read. I mean, I haven't asked her, but I hope she would be open to the idea.

Dan wrote: "That certainly looks like an interesting choice. On Amazon there is a free sample, the first six or eight pages, where one can make a determination on whether or not the book looks right for them. ..."

Thank you, I appreciate the compliment! The reason I mentioned it is because it's nigh impossible to translate into a language that's not your native language. There's just a very high likelihood that your translations will be, more often than not, slightly off, too colloquial or too much or too little of any other linguistic feature or quality. Simply because you have a different kind of relationship with and understanding of that language. So much so that you'll always be most naturally cognizant of your own native language. Subcognizant, even, if you see what I mean? You just "get it" and sense the right way to say things more readily and all that.

I took a quick gander at the free sample as well, and I think I know what you mean. It does say "Translated by the author", so I guess you get that kind of discrepancy because they're not a trained or experienced translator, and English isn't her native language. But if you feel like the examples/choices are minor, and you don't mind them that much, I guess that's acceptable.

What I can say, though, is that in Norwegian, those three examples feel slightly off to me as well. To call a book "døvt" (in English: lame, stupid or even daft) is actually something I imagine a Norwegian teenager would say between the years of 1990 and 2005.

"stuff" is her translation of "tull". I think "nonsense" ("who comes up with such nonsense?") might be better, but I'm not sure. I get what she's trying to do here, and given the use of the word "lame" earlier, she is at the very least consistent, which generally is a good thing in translation.

We do not laugh to push points at all in Norwegian. She wrote: "Jeg lo forsiktig, for å få ham med på moroa, men det virket ikke."

I think I would translate that part as "I laughed softly to show I was being funny, but it didn't work." or "I chuckled at my own joke, but he didn't react." Something like that?

In any case, I would love to do a buddy read of it someday if it doesn't win!

Poll is up; members notified.