To what lengths would you go for a favourite author? Well, I certainly explored that question over the past weekend, as I did an 800+ mile round trip to London, staying for 29 hours before boarding the Caledonian Sleeper and speeding back up to Scotland again! The event was "Pleasing Terrors", a festival celebrating Montague Rhodes (M.R.) James at the Drayton Arms Theatre in SW5.
Alas for me, such was the time pressure I was under that I was not able to stay for Robert Lloyd Parry's Warning to the Curious performance on the Sunday evening, nor the Open Access Day at the Old College Library on the Monday. However, I was there for the two panels, and took part in the second one.
The first panel was on MRJ's "life and times"; it comprised Paula Dempsey, Tracy Hayes, Darryl Jones and Marisa Linton, and was chaired by Elena Tchougounova-Paulson. Darryl Jones has, of course, just brought out a biography of M.R.James, entitled For The Dead Remember, and so I was particularly interested to hear what he would say. I bought the book as soon as it came out so that I could read it before the symposium, and I was glad I did; it was very informative as well as being extremely readable. I'm also rather proud to say that one of my articles about MRJ, Father Nikola Reinartz and the Steinfeld glass got a hat tip in the endnotes! There was some interesting discussion about whether the stories - and particularly their antiquarian settings - remain "relatable" for a modern audience, whether MRJ demonstrated any empathy for his "victims" or not, and how he felt about women, especially women in academia.
Above, left to right: Paula Dempsey, Tracy Hayes, Darryl Jones, Marisa Linton.
The second panel was about Jamesian fiction and the classic ghost story tradition; it comprised myself, Reggie Oliver and Timothy J.Jarvis, and was chaired by Dan Coxon. All of us are, of course, writers, so the aim was to take a look at questions like why MRJ's stories are so influential, whether stories of demons etc still function if society is losing faith in organised religion, and who we consider to be continuing the Jamesian tradition (present company excluded). One of the things I mentioned was that both Reggie and I have written completions to MRJ's unfinished story The Game of Bear. I've read Reggie's version, which is (naturally) convincingly Jamesian, and it was very interesting to see how different is was from mine, even though we had both started from the same fairly substantial Jamesian opening, and I think we had both observed the Jamesian rules, such as they are. I also put in a plea for everyone to "read more Le Fanu". Considering how much MRJ admired him, I think Le Fanu is underappreciated in comparison.
