Yesterday’s ghostly quote was from Heart of Darkness, where Marlow visits Kurtz’s widow at the end of the book. I can’t wait to start reading A Christmas Carol, so I can find the passage that Conrad nods towards.
On the ghostly theme, I’m enjoying Walter de da Mare’s Ghost Stories. Think empty houses with lonely people left to their own thoughts and haunting themselves, and you have de la Mare:
If, it appeared, you only remained solitary and secluded enough, and let your mind wander on its own sweet way, the problem was always bound to become, if not your one and only, at least your chief concern. Unless you were preternaturally busy and preoccupied, you simply couldn’t live on and on in a haunted house without being occasionally reminded of its ghosts.
I’m a sucker for a well written ghost story.
Around this time of year, I always pick up A Christmas Carol with the intention of re-reading it. Unfortunately other things usually get in the way and I only read a few pages, although this year I’m determined to reach the end.
I was reminded of a passage in another book that refers knowingly to Dickens’ classic. Can you guess where it’s from?
I rang the bell before a mahogany door on the first floor, and while I waited he seemed to stare at me out of the glassy panel – stare with that wide and immense stare embracing, condemning, loathing all the universe. I seemed to hear the whispered cry, “The horror! The horror!”
From the Stacks: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Most people probably know that Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was turned into the film Bladerunner. The novel was published in 1968, although the film wasn’t released until 1982, just a few months after the author’s death. So Dick didn’t get to see this cinematic reworking of his future, along with other films based on his work (Total Recall in 1990 and Minority Report in 2002).
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