The Guide to Supernatural Fiction by E.F. Bleiler

The Guide to Supernatural Fiction Reviews

• 
  Shawn

  Yes, I read this reference book - cover to cover - took me 9 months. To get the general out of the way first - this is an excellent resource that offers critical analysis on "supernatural" fiction (we'll come back to that later) across a range from roughly 1800-1960. Most importantly, it offers specific takes on short fiction, a form that usually gets acknowledged but rarely gets rigorous treatment (outside of this book, the other great resources for critical writing on supernatural short fiction are
  The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural &
  St. James Guide to Horror, Ghost & Gothic Writers). For a dedicated list maker like me, it proved a bounty of information to add to my lists. If you are a casual reader of horror & supernatural fiction, you can probably skip it, but if you have an interest in the field as a whole, and enjoy reading things from a range of time, it's a great resource. In other words, this is a good way of figuring out whether a particular story or novel is worth your time
  
  Bleiler, like myself, seems to be a "Generalist" in his critical approach. The material covered here ranges from the Gothic novel, Fantasy novels, the classic "English Ghost Story" and the like. Essentially, "Supernatural" means we get a lot of "other" stuff than just "scary"/horror fiction - Reincarnation fantasies, Fantasy novels, Fairy stories, Religious Extrapolations, Sentimental Ghost tales, etc. This also means that another strand of the "scary"/horror genre is ignored - the conte cruel, stories of violence, monster stories that are rooted in the natural world, etc. If you want a good reference - a lot of Edgar Allan Poe stories are omitted because, for example, is there anything decidedly "supernatural" about "The Telltale Heart"?
  
  And, yeah, Bleiler seems to have exactly the critical tastes that a project like this needs - flexible, but able to spot crap and be blunt about it, while leaving the door open for a range of responses. There are occasional entries where he expresses opinions that go against the "accepted", at least in general, but it's been so long since reading it that I can't specifically name them. It's just a very good resource, is what it comes down to - there's even a motif index (as a former Anthropology student, I recognized and welcomed this concept) which allows you to access the mass of data from different angles (want to know what specific stories/novels have vampires? Howabaout mermaids? Howabout prophetic dreams?). There's even a supplement where Bleiler lays out a "phenomenology" of supernatural fiction (a bit too academic for my tastes) and argues that the term "supernatural" should be retired (as it implies "above" or "beyond" nature, and arises from religious/metaphysical conceits) and replaced with "contranatural" - well, THAT didn't happen but it's a good point (it reminds me of that 30s/40s attempt to introduce the term "supernormal", which also met with no success).
  
  Reading this whole book, I'll also admit, was frustrating and sad. Because, in truth, it almost demands the further creation of two volumes that will never be published. The first would be a parallel volume examining "non-supernatural" fiction of the same type (I'm at a loss of what to call it) that examines in the same style and format: Romanticism, the Frenetique movement, non-supernatural Gothics, Sensation Fiction, Penny Dreadfuls/Blood & Thunder pamphlets, Suspense fiction, Decadent fiction, the Conte Cruel, Dime Novels, Pulp fiction, etc. The second would be a continuation of Bleiler, covering 1960 until current times. Why will they never be written - well, I'm too old, don't have the resources and no one would pay me what it would take to do the work. We can only hope some bookish, critical, well-read child of wealthy parents reads this review at the right age and has the financial resources to start work down the right path, which would likely end in self-publication....we can only hope.