The only experience of Le Fanu I've had is through the Hammer film version of Carmilla. I can't even remember if it went by the same title, and presumably it did violence to the original novella, but for a schlock horror flick it was quite effective. I'll have to get hold of the stories now after this post.
Also, I think I read in an interview with Ramsey Campbell somewhere that certain stories of his were inspired by Le Fanu, in addition to Le Fanu's being a general inspiration. I'll have to look it up.
I thought this was about Justin Fashanu at first glance.
Foot Eater: The Hammer version of Carmilla was called The Vampire Lovers. I don't know if it was any good (it almost certainly had more lesbianism than subtlety); and it had two sequels, one fairly bad and one very bad.
As a matter of fact, it was Campbell I was thinking of when I mentioned writers who end their novels more happily than their stories. Campbell did talk about this tendency in an interview somewhere - he said something about feeling the need to provide at least some reassurance at the end of a book, but I don't think he said why.
Yes... though I do still wonder about the ending of The Face That Must Die.
The ending of The One Safe Place isn't terribly happy, either. But supernatural novels like Midnight Sun, The Hungry Moon and The Long Lost always seem to finish with the horror pretty much purged.
Here's what he says in the interview:
"I personally feel that the novels tend to fall apart at the end, more often than not. I think if there's one book that seems to get it right for me, it would be Count of Eleven. I suppose it's some kind of structural thing. In most of my novels, you tend to get a big climax and then a sort of epilogue. Which can, I think, work. I think it works in Incarnate in a way, you get a sort of ambiguous epilogue, and I think it works in Midnight Sun actually. Again, the epilogue and the last line are pretty deeply ambiguous. ... Now, wait a minute, let me think aloud about this. Isn't one of the things with the novels that, where I clearly in short stories don't feel any need at all to reassure you in any way, in the novels I do?"
He goes on to say that maybe it's the result of overidentification with the characters, but that he mostly tries to end on a deeply ambiguous note, though "it doesn't always come off."
Sounds most intriguing. I like MR James and Poe, so it'd be interesting to see how Fashanu compares.
Just re-read the end of The Parasite, Ramsey Campbell's first novel. The version I have has the happy ending, but I've read the other edition which ends on a decidedly downbeat tone. I think nasty endings are the hallmark of the early novelist, though there's something of a bell curve at work here. Stephen King's novels were dark in their early manifestations, took an upbeat swing in his middle period (mid-1980s), and have crept towards the disquieting more recently.
Larry: Le Fanu is less donnish than James (who admired him greatly), and less fevered than Poe. I daresay much the same could be said of Fashanu, though it is doubtful whether James ever read him.
Foot Eater: The unhappy ending of The Parasite (Pedantry Warning Campbell's second novel, after The Doll Who Ate His Mother) is only unhappy in a limited sense, as I recall, since the heroine's death serves to defeat the horror and prevent it growing and spreading. The same applies to the unhappy endings of Midnight Sun and possibly The Count of Eleven. What Campbell never does in his supernatural horror novels is end on the Lovecraftian note of sure and certain doom for us all - something he seems happy to do in his short stories and novellas when circumstances warrant it. The novels always end with the world, and at least some of the sympathetic characters, muddling through. Not that I object to that on principle, but there are times (e.g. Midnight Sun) when it seems forced and arbitrary.
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