M.R. James and the Uncanny

I just finished reading "A Warning to the Curious," M.R. James' masterpiece of quiet, understated dread (an etext is available here). With its sustained air of uncanniness and oblique terror, it remains a benchmark of horror fiction. The original story and 1972 BBC adaptation are both major sources of inspiration for the aesthetic, still only vaguely defined, referred to (hesitantly sometimes) as "hauntology" by the likes of the ever engaging Simon Reynolds (particulary in his article in the November, 2006 issue of The Wire), k-punk, who wrote about it extensively here, and then there is this website devoted to the subject. K-punk also wrote a fascinating post here about seeking out the places the BBC used when filming their adaptations of "Warning" as well as James' "Whistle and I'll Come to You" (filmed in 1968)--the film stills are a tease for those of us not lucky enough to have seen them and put me in mind of "Lonely Water," a strange and quite troubling public service film featuring Donald Pleasance. More info on James can be found here.

(June 11: I finished Grief late last night and my first impressions were more than borne out. It was a keenly observed, gorgeously written, and subtly moving meditation on grief. In all respects, a far superior work of art than Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking.)

(I am now reading Aamer Hussein's The Blue Direction. Hussein is a London-based short story writer who was born and raised in Karachi, Pakistan. "I've finally found a temporary home: I live in a state of longing, all year round." From "This Other Salt.")

(June 29: I'm still, pardon the pun, haunted by hauntology. It is so very suggestive, so allusive and elusive, etc. But I'm still more than a little puzzled as to what it all means, if anything. Am I alone in this?)