The Great Return by Arthur Machen

An underdeveloped quickie by an otherwise great author

Welsh author Arthur Machen (1863–1947) is a respected old-school master of the fantasy and horror genres. His novella The Great Return was published in 1915. Because it is quite short, it probably just barely qualifies as a novella. It is so short, in fact, that it’s difficult to summarize the plot without giving away any secrets or surprises.

The narrator, a Welshman, frequently scans the local newspapers for items about “remarkable occurrences.” This man’s profession is unclear, but he has an avid enough interest in the occult to investigate matters that suggest an inkling of the supernatural. Vague mentions in the papers of unusual goings-on lead him to the coastal village of Llantrisant. Some mysterious lights have been seen out at sea, and some folks have heard the peal of a bell from no apparent source. That’s about all I can tell you. Machen draws on a combination of Christian mysticism and old Welsh pagan folklore for this story. This isn’t really horror because it’s not really scary, but it does fit into the Twilight Zone range of spooky fantasy.

The Great Return, unfortunately, reads more like The Mediocre Return. This is more of an idea for a story than an actual story. One can imagine a Stephen King novel based on this premise, and knowing Stephen King, that novel would be way to long. As Machen presents it here, however, it’s way too short. Not much happens in the first three chapters. Some minor rumblings occur in chapters four and five. Then in chapter six it takes a big leap and goes full-on occult fantasy in the seventh and final chapter. The payoff is too little too late. A big problem with this tale is the way it’s narrated. The story is related by a long-winded narrator who’s full of himself and digresses into subjects you don’t want to hear about rather than focusing on the miraculous supernatural events at hand. His personality is obtrusive. A disembodied third-person narration would have been more successful.

I only recently discovered Machen, and I’ve been singing his praises in this blog over the past year. His novels The Great God Pan, The Terror, The Hill of Dreams, and in particular The Three Impostors are all very good. The Great Return is the first piece of writing by Machen that hasn’t impressed me. It’s not going to stop me, however, from continuing to work my way through his corpus of writings. 

The Complete Tales of Edgar Allan Poe, Part III: 1844–1849

Treasures are few in this batch

This year I set out to read the compete short stories of Edgar Allan Poe. To make this task manageable, I have broken these 65 tales into three sizable portions. The first and second installments in this series followed Poe’s published output chronologically. This, the third of such reviews, covers the last five or six years of Poe’s career.

In this third batch of short fiction, you won’t find much of what is considered classic Poe. “The Cask of Amontillado,” a story every American reads in school, is the headliner here. “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar,” about a mesmerist who hypnotizes a dying man to see if the trance will survive the transition to the afterlife, is another skillful tale of horror and suspense. “The Purloined Letter,” is the third and final mystery starring Poe’s detective C. Auguste Dupin. It’s a familiar title in Poe collections, but a bit overrated. It’s the least ingenious and satisfying of Dupin’s trio of adventures.

A few other tales of horror, suspense, or science fiction include “The Premature Burial,” “The Oblong Box,” “The Sphinx,” and “Von Kempelen and His Experiment”—all capable efforts, but none of them earth-shattering. As with the previous two batches of Poe tales, a good portion of these 24 works are humorous stories, or at least intended to be. Such titles as “The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq.,” “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether,” and “X-ing a Paragrab” give some indication of what you’re in for. In most cases, Poe’s comedy has not held up well over the intervening century and a three-quarters. “Some Words with a Mummy,” however, really is quite a funny piece of social satire.

Another interest of Poe’s was gardening. “The Domain of Arnheim” is an expanded retread of his 1842 story “The Landscape Garden.” Neither of these are really stories but rather essays in which Poe pontificates on what makes a good landscape garden. Poe’s final published story, “Landor’s Cottage,” is also devoted to this subject. Poe describes his perfect landscape, perfect house, perfect furnishings, even his perfect woman. None of these three “tales” have any plot, they’re all quite boring, and when it comes to nature, Poe is no Henry David Thoreau or Walt Whitman. His natural descriptions read as surprisingly geometric rather than poetic.

Overall, reading Poe’s complete stories has proved rather disappointing. If you buy any collection of Poe’s tales of mystery, horror, and/or suspense, you’re probably going to get twelve to fifteen stories that are the cream of the crop. Most of Poe’s comedic attempts won’t be included in such collections, as they have deservedly faded into obscurity. On the whole, I would say Poe missed more than he hit, at least for a 21st-century audience, but the same could probably be said for his contemporaries Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville. At least Poe did leave us with some masterpieces­—like “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Masque of the Red Death,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and “The Cask of Amontillado”—that are among America’s best works of short fiction.

Stories in this collection

The Spectacles

A Tale of the Ragged Mountains

The Premature Burial

Mesmeric Revelation

The Oblong Box

The Angel of the Odd

Thou Art the Man

The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq.

The Purloined Letter

The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade

Some Words with a Mummy

The Power of Words

The Imp of the Perverse

The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether

The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar

The Sphinx

The Cask of Amontillado

The Domain of Arnheim

Mellonta Tauta

Hop-Frog

Von Kempelen and His Experiment

X-ing a Paragrab

Landor’s Cottage

The Lighthouse (a fragment left unfinished)

The Haunted Woman by David Lindsay

Interesting Freudian take on the haunted house

Scottish author David Lindsay is best known for his 1920 debut novel A Voyage to Arcturus, a trippy work of science fiction that was years ahead of its time and influenced many later sci-fi writers. Lindsay published a half a dozen novels in his lifetime, none of which brought him any success, but over time Arcturus has developed somewhat of a cult following. Lindsay’s second novel, The Haunted Woman, was published in 1922. This story is more down to Earth, taking place in recognizable present-day England. As the title suggests, however, this novel belongs in the horror genre, and it also dabbles in a bit of science fiction as well.

Marshall Stokes and Isbel Loment are engaged to be married. Isbel, an adult orphan, lives with her wealthy aunt Mrs. Moor. Although all three are Londoners, Isbel and Mrs. Moor are temporarily residing in Brighton, Sussex, where Marshall frequently visits them. Mrs. Moor is in the market for a new home, and the trio decide to look at a country estate named Runhill Court in nearby Worthing. Marshall is acquainted with the owner of the house, a widower named Mr. Judge. Judge had previously consulted Marshall for his opinon regarding some strange occurrences that took place within the house. Marshall has yet to see the house, however, so he decides to kill two birds with one stone and turn his visit into a family outing. Judge is absent from the house at the time, but the visitors are granted entrance by the caretaker.

For years, rumors have circulated about strange happenings at Runhill, not necessarily ghost stories but tales of inexplicable sightings, such as a phantom staircase that appears on occasion. Such unusual phenomena, if any, seem to revolve around a certain upper chamber called the East Room. When visiting the house, Marshall and Mrs. Moor encounter nothing unusual, but Isbel hears a faint and persistent music that the others do not detect. Later, when left alone in a corridor, Isbel finds a mysterious staircase and feels compelled to ascend.

The Haunted Woman is a horror story more eerie than terrifying. It won’t scare the pants off of you, but it definitely delivers a creepy feeling. The story deals in psychological horror, and in fact, one of the things I like best about this book is the psychological authenticity with which Lindsay draws his characters. Unlike most British fiction of this time period, these characters aren’t the impeccable betrothed lovers with their stereotypical spinster aunt. They have flaws, quirks, and ulterior motives, just like real people, and their relationships are far from perfect. There is an undercurrent of sexual infidelity throughout the book, which is unusual for prim and proper English lit. Many of the characters, though in committed relationships, seem to have wandering eyes.

The horror elements of the story are more unexpected than typical haunted house fare. Lindsay’s story is quite original, I cared about his characters, and he kept me anticipating what would happen next. I was firmly gripped and involved for most of the book’s length. I wish it had more of an ending, however. The build-up of tension deserves a better payoff, and it almost feels as if a chapter were missing at the end of the book. I don’t demand total resolution, but I was not satisfied with the outstanding ambiguities of the conclusion. That’s a shame, because for the most part, this was quite an enjoyable read.

The Three Impostors by Arthur Machen

Brilliantly constructed web of horror

Welsh author Arthur Machen (1863–1947) is a recent discovery of mine, and I have been greatly impressed by everything of his that I’ve read thus far. Machen primarily wrote in the horror and fantasy genres, but his work has the quality of great literature that transcends genre fiction. His writing is somewhat analogous to Edgar Allan Poe’s horror work, but Machen’s books, written from the 1890s to the 1930s, are naturally more modern in style. Readers of today will be surprised by how Machen’s novels and stories were ahead of their time. His horror fiction is still scary, and he’s admired by many contemporary writers in that genre, like Stephen King and Peter Straub.

Machen’s novel The Three Impostors was published in 1895. The table of contents might give the impression that this is a collection of short fiction. The chapters have names like “The Novel of the Black Seal” and “The Adventure of the Missing Brother.” These are not stand-alone stories, however. All the elements of the book fit together like an ingeniously integrated puzzle. The stories don’t necessarily follow a linear chronology, and the various scenes are intertwined in unexpected ways. The way the story unfolds is somewhat reminiscent of the circular narrative structure of the film Pulp Fiction.

The novel opens with a prologue in which three shady characters appear to be leaving the scene of a murder—a murder that they have collaboratively committed, at least that’s what we gather from their conversation. At about the same time, two gentlemen bystanders happen upon the scene, Mr. Dyson and Mr. Phillipps. What follows is a series of stories, each more imaginative and brilliantly crafted than the last, in which these five characters—as well as the alleged murder victim, making an even half dozen—are continually brought together in a series of terrifying and suspenseful situations. The characters are all well-drawn, and the dialogue captivating. There’s also a mysterious gold coin involved that unites the various narrative threads (calling to mind Pulp Fiction’s briefcase).

Although The Three Impostors is one unified novel, it has enough creepy content and sick shit to fill up five or six novellas. Torture, murder, mob violence, cults, witchcraft, ancient demons, and monsters all make an appearance. What I like about Machen’s writing is that he presents macabre material in a way that is, for lack of a better word, realistic. His characters are skeptics, and he assumes his readers are skeptics, so he explains bizarre phenomena in a manner that has a scientific feel to it, drawing from concepts of evolution, anthropology, religious studies, and more. Though written in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Machen’s books call to mind some of the classic horror films of the 1960s and ‘70s, like Rosemary’s Baby, The Omen, The Exorcist, The Wicker Man, The Dunwich Horror, and The Shining (except some of those examples have to do with The Devil, while this book does not). Yet much like Poe’s work, the stories are lusciously narrated in the intelligent voice of an erudite gentleman of a century ago.

The Three Impostors is really a remarkable read. Machen grabbed my attention at the first page and kept me enthralled all the way through. The way all the parts fit together is really brilliantly conceived. Upon finishing the book, I want to read it again just to catch any details I might have missed. If it sounds like Machen might be up your alley, also check out The Great God Pan and The Terror.

The Complete Tales of Edgar Allan Poe, Part II: 1840–1843

Finding his stride, but still all over the map

This is the second of three posts reviewing the complete short stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Part I covered his career from 1832 to 1839. Part II looks at his stories published from 1840 through 1843. In this second batch of stories, Poe definitely shows improvement from his writings of the 1830s. Most noticeably, he no longer feels the need to fill his stories with gratuitous references to classical literature, romantic poetry, and untranslated quotes in various languages—at least not in his horror and mystery stories, which seem aimed at an intelligent general public. His humorous stories, however, still come across as pretentious, as if he were trying hard to show off his erudition. His comedic efforts are also not very funny, at least not 150+ years after the fact, anyway.

In the early 1840s, Poe wrote several of his best-known stories, tales that most readers would consider “classic Poe.” In his pioneering mystery story, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” Poe introduces the detective C. Auguste Dupin, an influential precursor to Sherlock Holmes and many other literary sleuths. Dupin makes a second appearance in “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt.” While “Rue Morgue” is a near-perfect classic, “Marie Rogêt” is merely good and suffers from a lack of conclusion. In the horror department, Poe made great strides with landmark offerings “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Masque of the Red Death,” “The Black Cat,” “A Descent into the Maelstrom,” and “The Pit and the Pendulum.” Upon rereading, the latter story feels a bit overrated—a Rube-Goldberg torture scenario that pulls its punches in the end—but the rest have held up well and deserve their acclaim as masterworks of the genre. “The Oval Portrait” and “The Colloquy of Monos and Una” are not great, but at least they’re in the right ballpark. “The Gold-Bug,” another of Poe’s best, is more of an adventure story in the same vein as many of Jules Verne’s adventures.

Outside of those genres for which he’s known, Poe is less successful. Humor stories like “Never Bet the Devil Your Head” and “Three Sundays in a Week” are lackluster comedic offerings in which Poe spends the entire story pointing out the absurdity of an idiom. “The Island of the Fay” is an inconsequential brief involving faeries. “The Man in the Crowd” consists of descriptive street scenes that never really lead anywhere. “The Landscape Garden” is not really a story at all but rather an essay on what makes a good garden.

Overall, this bunch of stories is better than his earlier work, but still the overall effect of Poe’s oeuvre is less than impressive. In reading his complete works, I’ve learned that one would be better off avoiding his humorous stories, which only serve to lessen one’s assessment of Poe as a writer. It would serve one better to look for a collection with a title such as Tales of Mystery and Terror, which is likely to contain most of his stories worth reading. Still, I’m going to stick it out for the last third of his career and will report back when I’ve finished.

Stories in this collection

Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling

The Business Man

The Man of the Crowd

The Murders in the Rue Morgue

A Descent into the Maelström

The Island of the Fay

The Colloquy of Monos and Una

Never Bet the Devil Your Head

Eleonora

Three Sundays in a Week

The Oval Portrait

The Masque of the Red Death

The Landscape Garden

The Mystery of Marie Rogêt

The Pit and the Pendulum

The Tell-Tale Heart

The Gold-Bug

The Black Cat

Diddling