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Dr. G.V. Loewen's avatar

This is one of my favorite short stories by Wells, who is also my literary avatar. One of my novels is my tribute to Wells, a failed art novel no less, as he himself had many thereof. It is perhaps fitting that the narrator's drunkenness allows him, at first, to have a rapport with the ghost that in sobriety he would not have attained. Similarly, perhaps, read a number of his novels after a few drinks.

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Rebekah King's avatar

Amazing idea - maybe I should do 'tequila and a tale' next! Have you seen 'Dead of Night' and if so, what did you make of the segment based on this story? It's got a lot more golfing.

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Matt Kelland's avatar

That was fun - didn't know that one. For some reason, I've always preferred listening to Wells to reading him.

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Rebekah King's avatar

And even better when it’s Richard Burton!

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Ruby's avatar

Love a random reference to the Masons, Grandad was a Mason

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Rebekah King's avatar

You can ALWAYS fit a random masons reference into a short story

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JoJo Magno's avatar

I am completely immersed in Wells lately. I'm currently halfway through Tono-Bungay which is like nothing you'd expect from the guy who wrote War of the World's.

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Dr. G.V. Loewen's avatar

I do think Tono-Bungay is actually one of his best efforts, and poignantly autobiographical.

I wrote a commentary on his 1899 'The Sleeper Awakes' which appears here:

https://drgvloewen.substack.com/p/a-modernist-gospel?utm_source=publication-search

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Rebekah King's avatar

Excellent! I’ll add them to my ‘to-read’ list

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Rebekah King's avatar

I think I only knew War of the Worlds and The Time Machine so it’s been really fun to discover all these other genres he worked in!

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Dr. G.V. Loewen's avatar

He wrote 90 books, including 51 novels, so there's likely something for everyone in such a corpus.

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