Edited, with an introduction, by John Pelan. Jacket illustrationby Russell Kirk ('Uncle Isaiah').
The classical ghost story is traditionally though of as a
very British pursuit, a genre which was both influential and popular for more
than a century, but which reached its peak and began a steady decline midway
through the twentieth century. The American writer Russell Kirk would therefore
seem to be an unlikely candidate to assume the mantle of such authors as
Sheridan Le Fanu and M. R. James: his first collection of short stories, The
Surly Sullen Bell, was not published until 1962, with further collections of
stories appearing in 1979 and 1984.
Yet Kirk easily and gracefully took the classic ghost
story, infused it with his own cosmopolitan outlook and conservative nature, and
demonstrated that it was by no means a dead or even dying genre, but one that
could speak of ancient fears, remorseless evil, and quiet courage in a modern
world that would seem to have no room for such things. His stories begin with a
deceptive calm, in which ordinary people go about their everyday tasks; but soon
his protagonists face choices which will forever mark their characters (should
they survive) or their souls (should they not). Kirk called his stories
'experiments in the moral imagination', and time and again he demonstrates how
the seemingly isolated actions and choices of one person have echoes which
resonate far beyond their immediate situation.
What Shadows We Pursue, the second of two volumes
from Ash-Tree Press collecting together Russell Kirk's short supernatural
fiction, returns to the themes, settings, and in some cases characters of his
first collection, Off the Sand Road. Kirk's characters — some honourable,
some not — battle quiet terrors that assail them from within as well as from
without, and this theme finds its fullest expression in two of his finest tales:
'The Invasion of the Church of the Holy Ghost', which begins this volume, and
'Watchers at the Strait Gate', which ends it. In Kirk's tales, few people are
either wholly good or bad; the inhabitants of his distinctive world come in
shades of grey, and the landscapes in which they walk are haunted as much by
each other as by any dwellers from other, unknown lands.
Contents:
- Introduction by John Pelan: 'The Wizard of
Mecosta'
- The Invasion of the Church of the Holy Ghost
- What Shadows We
Pursue
- The Peculiar Demesne of Archvicar Gerontion
- Uncle Isaiah
- The
Reflex-Man in Whinnymuir Close
- The Cellar of Little Egypt
- Skyberia
- Lost Lake
- The Last God's Dream
- Ex Tenebris
- Watchers at the Strait Gate
- Appendix: Fate's Purse
