Edited by Peter Straub (Who I had a hard time placing: Didn't he write Jaws? No, that was Peter Benchley. The Exorcist? William Peter Blatty. Hrm. Turns out he wrote a few books that I've never actually read.), American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny (Volume 1 is 'From Poe to the Pulps', and Volume 2 is 'From the 1940s to Now') are Library of America anthologies of horror short stories.
I found the title a little off; I guess it's meant to suggest supernatural horror? The stories are mostly speculative except for a couple that aren't, and there are a few that aren't particularly terrible or horrific, but any anthology is going to be hit and miss, I guess. I do, however question an editorial mandate that wants 'Tales' to evoke campfire stories, but then includes Henry James as one of the authors.
I vastly preferred the first volume, which has a few classics that you've read a thousand times, but also a bunch of stories and authors that were new to me, at least. Fourteen of the 44 authors are women, many of whom I'd never encountered before. 'An Itinerant House' by Emma Francis Dawson, a 'protégé of Ambrose Bierce' who purportedly starved to death, is, while not perfect, especially fascinating; and Fancis Stevens' 'Unseen -- Unfeared' is well worth a look as well. Trolling the biographical notes, I learned that Harriet Prescott Spofford's 'The Amber Gods' (sadly not included -- we have 'The Moonstone Mass' instead) was remarked by Emily Dickinson to be "the only thing I ever read in my life that I didn't think I could have imagined myself". I have got to get ahold of that story! And I am amazed that I have not until now heard of Seabury Quinn, a lawyer specializing in mortuary law, who also happened to contribute 93 psychic detective stories to Weird Tales.
Of the more well-known authors, several of them seem to have been included to lend a little prestige to the collection, and certainly not on the merit of their stories. Some of the selections seemed a bit idiosyncratic as well, but maybe that's just because I'm really not a fan of 'The Thing on the Doorstep'.
I didn't like the second one nearly as well. Some of that is due to my very general preference for older literary styles (I tap out around Virginia Woolf), and probably some is due to there being half as many woman contributors, but I'm chalking the rest up to crap stories. Even so, I did love the Jane Rice story 'The Refugee' and 'The Events at Poroth Farm' by T.E.D. Klein (I've since found some other work by Klein available to read, but nothing as yet by Rice, more's the pity). And, although I usually find Michael Chabon too clever, I have to admit that 'The God of Dark Laughter' is an amazing parody of Ligotti's 'The Last Feast of Harlequin'. It was meant to be a parody, right?
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