Ancestral Shadows: An Anthology Of Ghostly Tales

Rating:
Summary: Ghost stories to live by
Review: Russell Kirk was not only an exceptional historian, moralist, cultural critic, and man of letters. He was also a superb prose stylist, as anyone who has read The Conservative Mind or The Sword of the Imagination knows. In Ancestral Shadows, a collection of ghostly tales written over a period of roughly twenty-five years, Dr. Kirk displays his mastery of the English language as he weaves startling and often stirring "tales of the preternatural." Eerdmans Publishing has done the reading public a real service in bringing out this handsome volume.

As Vigen Guroian notes in his helpful introduction, Dr. Kirk is widely regarded as having developed the gothic genre by imbuing it with a distinctive moral and metaphysical character. In "A Cautionary Note on the Ghostly Tale," included in this volume, Dr. Kirk himself writes: "Alarming though (I hope) readers may find these tales, I do not write them to impose meaningless terror upon the innocent...What I have attempted, rather, are experiments in the moral imagination." In this he succeeds admirably. The reader of his ghost stories is treated not only to terror and suspense, but to an occasional, delicious glimpse of the eternal order underlying our own.

The heart of the book is found in "A Long, Long Trail A-Winding" and "Watchers at the Straight Gate," a pair of tales about Frank Sarsfield, whose character is modeled after that of Dr. Kirk's hobo friend Clinton Wallace. These stories are eery and beautiful; I confess I never expected to feel uplifted by a ghost story. Other favorites of mine include the early "Ex Tenebris," which conveys, delightfully and gruesomely, Dr. Kirk's contempt for the modern bureaucrat, and "An Encounter by Mortstone Pond," a poignant reflection on the mystery of human existence.

As a native Michigander, I took a special delight in reading Dr. Kirk's descriptions of the region's land and people, especially in the part of the state he calls "stump country." He perfectly captures the essence of the place, both in its native richness and in the desiccation brought upon it by modernity.

Ancestral Shadows is a treasure. I commend it to lovers of gothic tales, admirers of Russell Kirk, and anyone who perceives, or has forgotten how to perceive, the supernatural character of human life.

Rating:
Summary: Among the best authors of the literary supernatural tale
Review: The publication of "Ancestral Shadows" is a major event for fans of the ghost story genre and Russell Kirk but also for the reputation of the literary supernatural tale. Russell Kirk (along with the recently deceased Jack Cady) ranks as one of the few top-notch, modern American ghost story writers, and for far too long Kirk's stories have been out of print. This book collects all but a very few of Kirk's lesser tales (which are available for die-hards and completists in the pricey but gorgeous recent Kirk collection produced by Ash-Tree Press in two volumes).

The stories in this collection include many of the best ghostly tales ever written, including "Lex Talionis," "Fate's Purse," "Watchers at the Straight Gate," & "The Invasion of the Church of the Holy Ghost." Not to mention Kirk's masterpiece, "There's a Long, Long Trail A-Winding"--if you can read this one alone in your home after dark and, once you finish it, not be driven to turn on every light in the house (and maybe your stereo as well), then you're a braver soul than I. Kirk indulges several of the genre's conventions and breathes new life into them while giving us a whole host of wonderful characters as unforgettable as the denizens of a Dickens novel. The collection does include two or three stories that drop below the high standard of Kirk's usual tales, but this in no way diminishes the his accomplishments as a virtuoso writer crafting prose that is as cultivated and engaging in its own way as that of Flannery O'Connor or F. Scott Fitzgerald.

The dust jacket blurbs--of the rare, substantive variety--lend much legitimacy to Kirk's status as a significant literary figure, culled as these blurbs are from such diverse sources as Ray Bradbury, Madeline L'Engle, T. S. Eliot, Thomas Howard, and Robert Aickman. I fully agree with Bradbury's blurb: "For too many years Russell Kirk, almost like the title of this book, remained half seen in the American literary scene. It is time his critics and readers brought him out into the full light. He deserves to be considered a fine writer and an amazing thinker in literature and in politics."

Kudos to Eerdmans for releasing this relatively inexpensive and very attractive volume. (The gorgeous, black-and-white sketch portrait of Kirk on the cover even has a ghostly tone to it and evokes association with the beautiful woodcuts Kirk made to illustrate his first volume of stories, "The Surly Sullen Bell.") I can only hope this book finds wide placement in libraries and bookstores around the country.

Rating:
Summary: The Hollow Lord of the Dark
Review: This collection of Russell Kirk's supernatural fiction ranges in quality from simply lordly and brilliant("What Shadows We Pursue") to utterly hollow and bombastic ("The Last God's Dream"). And too many of these stories are predictable. In other words, there aren't many chills here but the ones you will find are first-class. I think the reason for this is because Kirk put too much of himself into these stories. If you ever read at his autobiography, "The Sword of Imagaination" (written in the third person, incidentally), you will find its style digressive and ponderous, a style that is amply reflected in these stories. I am not advising you to pass on this collection, but just to get it at the library or wait for "Ancestral Shadows" to come out in paperback.