Life & Wisdom Quote by Nigel Kneale

There is a particular kind of writerly contempt that doesn not bother to argue; it simply withdraws recognition. Kneale dismissing "Something like The Haunting" as "not worth the slightest consideration" is not just a review, its a boundary line. He is refusing to grant the work the one currency that matters in creative circles: serious attention.

The phrasing does a lot of covert work. "Something like" makes the target generic, almost interchangeable, as if the title barely matters and the whole mode is beneath him. "From me" turns the verdict into a statement of authority: this is not a democratic judgment but a hierarchy being asserted, with Kneale positioning himself as custodian of standards. It is also a neat act of self-branding. By denying consideration, he implies he has a coherent aesthetic to protect: a vision of what horror should do (unsettle intellectually, engage social reality, resist cheap theatrics) rather than merely what it should deliver (shocks, chills, tasteful spookiness).

Context matters because Kneale came up shaping British genre storytelling at a time when horror and sci-fi were fighting for legitimacy on television and in the public imagination. In that climate, snobbery can be strategy. The insult signals anxiety about dilution: if prestige horror becomes synonymous with a certain polished, ghostly refinement, where does that leave the harsher, more paranoid, politically keyed dread Kneale specialized in?

The subtext, then, is less "this is bad" than "this is the wrong kind of good."