MR James


Being ignorant has its advantages. The best is maybe the amazement experienced when you found a new outstanding author. Browsing at an old book store, I recently found MR James, aka Montague Rhodes James. It took me only 5 reais to buy "ghost stories", but the pleasure to read such a book is priceless. He´s one of the most important examples of what is called "Gothic mystery". His creeping stories are generally happening to the regular British citizen who, all of a sudden, finds himself in a trivial situation that unfolds into a major supernatural event. Many of them happen to professors, scholars, and such well read men, skeptic, who have to bow and accept their complete ignorance of what is happening, or where it will lead them. An interesting point is also the recurrence of the traveling individual, not aware of local lore and tradition. An innocent victim, so to speak.
Far from being exceedingly amazing, his stories are creepy for their verisimilitude. It could happen to any of us, at any time, buying our grocery, or lodging at a country inn.
The supernatural creatures are mostly inherently evil, and not only "wandering souls", eager to find freedom. Their evil is a mean in itself, and their only purpose is to make us scream and run.
Spiders are one of his favorite evil animals. In the "Ash Tree", he loads an ash tree with them. In other stories, evil as they are, they come to set old quarrels, as in the "tractate middoth".
Probably this has something to do with the author and his own beliefs. He was a linguist, a scholar himself, teaching at traditional English schools such as Cambridge. He became famous there for his "Christmas terror nights", and even after his death, tradition held for many years (don´t know if they still do it).
In his bibliography there are also some kid´s books. I couldn´t go that far yet, but certainly it´s not easy to portrait him talking about small bunnies, flowers, and armoured heroes.