Arthur Machen

Here's a recent article from BBC Magazine on the philosophy of Machen: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22648328

I think Arthur Machen deserves the points for innovation in "psychogeography" assigned to him by the article, but the sidebar's designation of him as the "first modern horror writer" is rather a stretch.

I was a little surprised not to see Machen among the topmost authors in our Deep Ones story file thread.

Very nice to see an article on Machen featured on a major news outlet site, although by the end, I thought I was reading about a self-help guru: "Struggling to change things around us, we forget that another kind of change is possible - an inner change, through which we can enter a richer and more spacious world that was there all along. "

In our Deep Ones reading experience to date, Machen seems to be writing more about fearsome transmogrifications which lead to glimpses of an outer reality that only causes madness and death.

We should nominate some more Machen, certainly!

I think we've already covered his best and most influential, with "The White People" and "The Great God Pan" respectively. My favorite is probably "A Fragment of Life," which is really the story that I think HPL's "The Silver Key" wanted and failed to be. But for this group we should probably cover "The Novel of the Black Seal" (not a novel, but a component story of The Three Impostors.)

I still haven't read the third volume of the Joshi/Chaosium edition of Machen's weird stories, so I'd be game for any of those.

ETA:
> 3 In our Deep Ones reading experience to date, Machen seems to be writing more ... madness and death.
"A Fragment of Life" bucks that trend, in fact. As does The Hill of Dreams, from what I understand.

> 4

Actually, in its original magazine publication "A Fragment of Life" ends with the protagonist and his wife both dead. The disjunct between the magnificent perceptions and visions of Lucien Taylor, and the reality (or should that be "reality"?) revealed in the final couple of pages of The Hill of Dreams, is truly wrenching and shocking.

The introduction to the Tartarus Press edition of "A Fragment of Life" (it's unsigned; I'd tentatively ascribe it to Tartarus proprietor Ray Russell*) sheds some light on Machen's thinking: "Ambrose suggested in "The White People" that there is a danger in seeking to attain an ecstasy and a knowledge that has been lost to mankind. This may in fact be the definition of true evil."

* Not the Ray Russell of "Sardonicus" of course; he publishes fiction as R. B. Russell

ETA - the missing half-sentence that should now make some sense of the first paragraph. There are two examples of Machen's tendency to "madness and death", you see...

I read "The Novel of the Black Seal" some years ago and, to be honest, I was somewhat puzzled by it. So, I'd definitely like to see what the group would do with it.

And a happy birthday to Machen, who turns 151 today!

Happy 153rd, Mr. Machen.

Is the Great God Pan "gothic"?

... but mostly posted here for entertainment purposes...
http://www.theguardian.com/books/interactive/2014/may/09/reading-gothic-novel-pi...

>9 Crypto-Willobie:

That is good fun, indeed, perhaps nothing more than the stylised graphic design and those icons!

>9 Crypto-Willobie:

Thanks for sharing this!

>9 Crypto-Willobie:

Thanks for sharing. 8)

>9 Crypto-Willobie:

Dunno. But it's not a novel!

A very well-done article about how the origins of the Faery folk eventually led to the Weird work of Machen, et al. The website itself looks very interesting, too.

https://www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk/misc/fairy-lore-arthur-machen/

>14 semdetenebre:
Agreed, though it has been pointed out to me that this article was previously printed in Faunus in 2011.

>15 Crypto-Willobie:

And now I see an acknowledgement of that fact by the author at the very end of the reprint.

>9 Crypto-Willobie: Maybe? Not sure, and "The Great God Pan" is the only one of Machen's stories that I've read (listened too, actually). It seems to straddle Gothic and Weird. Not sure what I thought of it.

>17 WeeTurtle: I'm not sure of anything...

>18 Crypto-Willobie: Not a bad way to go about it. I'm not sure, either.