Arthur Machen

Quote Originally Posted by Evans

I think he thought the same re that last remark. He swore off writing any more sensationalist 'horrors' after The Three Impostors (it's telling that he didn't consider The White People a story of that type)

As The White People lifts heavily from his tale The Ceremony from Ornaments in Jade, retelling many of the same elements, it's possible he saw it as an extension of his prose poetry, as it lacks some of the more lurid elements from The Great God Pan or The Three Impostors.

To be honest, after now delving in to his work as a whole, I don't particularly consider Machen a 'horror writer' any more. He wrote so few of them, and his overall artistic literary ambition mostly lay in exploring a larger canvass. The White People, The Hill of Dreams and A Fragment of Life were his great masterpieces. Only White People could be deemed horror, and even then it doesn't purely aim for 'horror' as much as it does awe.

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and almost certainly wrote those last stories solely because he and his family needed the money.

It's a mixed blessing, really. On the one hand it's nice to see Machen back writing about eerie pagan mysticism themes again, but on the other hand... they serve as a reminder of how Machen simply isn't nearly as good at doing this sort of thing as he used to be. He had already said everything he could about these subjects, and done so to a high standard he could no longer match.

I shall read Opening the Door when my heart stops feeling like it is going to explode.