Posted by
Icarus on Friday, October 27, 2006 1:08:01 AM
OK, so I'm not the most frequent blogger in the world. So sue me. ... Wait, If any Liberals are reading this ignore those three words. Ya'll have a tendency to take colloquialisms like that seriously.
Just wanted to let anyone who might happen by this page who lives in LA know where to go to find a good selection of pulp detective fiction, horror, mystery, science fiction and fantasy. That place is
Mystery & Imagination Bookstore. Even if you don't live in L.A. you can visit them online.
This is the only bookstore where I was able to find copies of Russell Kirk's collection of ghost stories and a couple of used copies of his novels. The last time I stopped by, tripping all the way up to there from my domicile behind the Orange Curtain, they still had a used copy of Kirk's
Creature of the Twilight, as well as a couple of Ash Tree Press editions of his ghost stories. If you only know Kirk from
The Conservative Mind you really need to get to know his fiction side as well.
If you can't afford to shell out for an Ash Tree's
Off the Sand Road or
What Shadows We Pursue, then I would suggest Eerdman's
Ancestral Shadows, which collects some stories found in the both the Ash Tree books.
National Review published a couple of articles discussing Kirk's belief in ghosts and the stories these beliefs birthed. John J. Miller writes takes it up in an article published online back in 2003, titled "
The Ghosts of Kirk". R. Andrew Newman gives his perspective in "
Russell Kirk's Ghosts".
Another author who took up the ghost story challenge and succeeded quite well is Andrew Klavan. Andrew is a regular at Libertas (see my blog role to your right). As regular, that is, as his internal editor, which has very high standards and is quite often rewarded, allows him to be. He wrote the novel True Crime, which Hollywood's Liberal group-think warped to the point where a crucial plot point was made absurd. He also wrote, back in 1998, a great ghost story titled
The Uncanny. Some folks who love Andrew's crime fiction were disappointed with this work. But for those who can think outside the box this is a great read. I strongly recommend it.
If Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House gives you the heebeejeebies, this Halloween try some good ghost stories by some solid conservatives.