Arthur Machen

[Robin Davies]

My copy of The Three Impostors is a cheap Corgi paperback which (presumably to make it sound more horrific) was retitled Black Crusade.

[Ibrahim]

"The Three Imposters is sort of all over the place, and none of the other stories are remotely on the level of Black Seal or White Powder"

I beg to differ. The prose of the other stories, especially the descriptions of London, on a sentence by sentence level far outshines the impostors' tales. Some of it is sheer poetry.

"the green weeping of a gaunt laburnum..."

It also occurs to me that the bespectacled young man's doom is far more terrifying ( because it is personal and particular) than the horrors described in the black seal & white powder, which are general; putrefaction awaits us all, while being an impressionable young man brainwashed into murder is a fate we may yet escape. To my mind, it is the framing device which presents the more sinister picture.

[njhorror]

YouTube

Oddly, Arthur Machen was name dropped by Lee and Moore during this Guardian interview:

'I'll write as if I'm trying to get sacked': Stewart Lee in conversation with Alan Moore – video | Culture | The Guardian

[Mr. Veech]

I'm not that familiar with Machen, but based on some quick research I did, it seems to me that he was a Christian. If that's true, then I'm very interested in his work for some reason.

A quintessentially Machen melancholy from The Three Impostors:

'It dawned upon me that I would write the history of a street. Every house should form a volume. I fixed upon the street, I saw each house, and read, as clearly as in letters, the physiology and psychology of each. The little by-way stretched before me in its actual shape,—a street that I know and have passed down a hundred times; with some twenty houses, prosperous and mean, and lilac bushes in purple blossom; and yet it was at the same time a symbol, a via dolorosa of hopes cherished and disappointed, of years of monotonous existence without content or discontent, of tragedies and obscure sorrows; and on the door of one of those houses I saw the red stain of blood, and behind a window two shadows, blackened and faded, on the blind, as they swayed on tightened cords,—the shadows of a man and a woman hanging in a vulgar, gas-lit parlor. These were my fancies; but when pen touched paper, they shrivelled and vanished away.'

[Frater_Tsalal]

I really need to read more Machen one day. So far all that I've read are The Hill of Dreams and Tales of Horror and the Supernatural (both the Tartarus versions). Perhaps when I order the new Reggie Oliver collection from them I will also order The Secret Glory (which I have heard many good things about). Kind of intrigued by his 1890's notebooks as well... anyone here read that?

Tartarus have reprinted The House of the Hidden Light!!!!

[Ibrahim]

Quote Originally Posted by James

Tartarus have reprinted The House of the Hidden Light!!!!

I'm not even that interested in the tome, but your enthusiasm is infectuous.

A mysterious book by a master of the mysterious. How could one resist?