Phantoms at the Phil
Dec. 28th, 2005 09:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustOn Monday and Wednesday of last week, we went to Phantoms at the Phil events at the Lit & Phil - Newcastle's Literary and Philosophical Society. Until Chaz launched this project, I had not regarded ghost stories as a particularly seasonal event, but for two years running we have gone along to the Lit & Phil, drunk mulled wine, eaten mince pies and listened to stories, and I'm beginning to be persuaded.
Phantoms at the Phil is Chaz'z baby: he says the idea sprang from a conversation with Sean O' Brien, who was keen to write and to read some ghost stories for Christmas, and that the original plan may have been no more ambitious than to entertain a few friends at home. But in the course of an afternoon at the pub, they grew more ambitious, and now it involves Arts Council funding, small press publication and the altogether appropriate setting of the Lit & Phil, a private library in the heart of Newcastle (tucked in beside the Central Station, on the line of the Roman Wall). There is a long table along the far wall of the upstairs library, which is perfect as a focal point for an audience, and above it there runs a high gallery where musicians can lurk unseen, so that music descends mysteriously into the proceedings.
On Monday we had stories from the three original participants. Sean O' Brien, a poet himself, described the successive generations of a family of minor poets, beset by a creature of leaves who reminded me of the presences half glimpsed in Peter Bennet's poems; Gail's story was the unholy offspring of M.R. James and E.F. Benson (with added virtuoso Norfolk accent) and Chaz installed his ghost in the Baltic.
On Wednesday the old guard gave way to the Young Pretenders: crime writer Ann Cleeves took an entirely traditional premise - a young couple move into an old house - and made it, among other things, a sharp little character piece; SF and horror writer Simon Morden's hunorous treatment of horror motifs made them accessible to an audience who might have been expected to resist; and playwright Carol McGuigan brought Dickens' Christmas Carol to modern Tyneside, to the absolutely here and now, outside this building, tonight.
Reports of the death of the short story, or at least its serious illness, notwithstanding, this was a fine batch of tales. Given the platform, a number of writers, not all of them primarily story writers, and not all of them previously known for ghost stories, rose to the challenge and delivered two evenings of entertainment which demonstrated the breadth of material that genre could encompass. It's no surprise that the best story, in my opinion at least, came from Chaz Brenchley, master of the short story and author of my all-time favourite ghost story, The Insolence of Candles against the Light's Dying. But all the stories were interesting, all were entertaining, and some had a genuine charge, a frisson or an emotional pull.
The differences between the stories are obvious. But it is more interesting to draw out the echoes, coincidences, common points. The authors knew nothing of each other's contributions until they heard them read out: yet two of them referred to the apostle Thomas. The stories ranged further afield geographically than the previous year's narratives, all of which related to the library itself: yet two of them were shaped by the new Tyneside, that strange hybrid Newcastle-Gateshead. Two, if not three of the apparitions were not ghosts in the conventional sense; and two of the ghosts were not vengeful phantoms but benign. The six stories will make a strong collection when they are published; but that's not for another year yet. Meanwhile, I'm off to bed to re-read last year's stories.
Phantoms at the Phil is Chaz'z baby: he says the idea sprang from a conversation with Sean O' Brien, who was keen to write and to read some ghost stories for Christmas, and that the original plan may have been no more ambitious than to entertain a few friends at home. But in the course of an afternoon at the pub, they grew more ambitious, and now it involves Arts Council funding, small press publication and the altogether appropriate setting of the Lit & Phil, a private library in the heart of Newcastle (tucked in beside the Central Station, on the line of the Roman Wall). There is a long table along the far wall of the upstairs library, which is perfect as a focal point for an audience, and above it there runs a high gallery where musicians can lurk unseen, so that music descends mysteriously into the proceedings.
On Monday we had stories from the three original participants. Sean O' Brien, a poet himself, described the successive generations of a family of minor poets, beset by a creature of leaves who reminded me of the presences half glimpsed in Peter Bennet's poems; Gail's story was the unholy offspring of M.R. James and E.F. Benson (with added virtuoso Norfolk accent) and Chaz installed his ghost in the Baltic.
On Wednesday the old guard gave way to the Young Pretenders: crime writer Ann Cleeves took an entirely traditional premise - a young couple move into an old house - and made it, among other things, a sharp little character piece; SF and horror writer Simon Morden's hunorous treatment of horror motifs made them accessible to an audience who might have been expected to resist; and playwright Carol McGuigan brought Dickens' Christmas Carol to modern Tyneside, to the absolutely here and now, outside this building, tonight.
Reports of the death of the short story, or at least its serious illness, notwithstanding, this was a fine batch of tales. Given the platform, a number of writers, not all of them primarily story writers, and not all of them previously known for ghost stories, rose to the challenge and delivered two evenings of entertainment which demonstrated the breadth of material that genre could encompass. It's no surprise that the best story, in my opinion at least, came from Chaz Brenchley, master of the short story and author of my all-time favourite ghost story, The Insolence of Candles against the Light's Dying. But all the stories were interesting, all were entertaining, and some had a genuine charge, a frisson or an emotional pull.
The differences between the stories are obvious. But it is more interesting to draw out the echoes, coincidences, common points. The authors knew nothing of each other's contributions until they heard them read out: yet two of them referred to the apostle Thomas. The stories ranged further afield geographically than the previous year's narratives, all of which related to the library itself: yet two of them were shaped by the new Tyneside, that strange hybrid Newcastle-Gateshead. Two, if not three of the apparitions were not ghosts in the conventional sense; and two of the ghosts were not vengeful phantoms but benign. The six stories will make a strong collection when they are published; but that's not for another year yet. Meanwhile, I'm off to bed to re-read last year's stories.
