THE DEEP ONES: "The Black Stone Statue" by Mary Elizabeth Counselman

"The Black Stone Statue" by Mary Elizabeth Counselman

Discussion begins May 26, 2021.

First published in the December 1937 issue of Weird Tales.



ONLINE VERSIONS

https://archive.org/stream/wt_1937_12/wt_1937_12_djvu.txt

BIBLIOGRAPHY

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?58031

SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS

Women's Weird 2
Weird Tales: 32 Unearthed Terrors
Half in Shadow

MISCELLANY

https://www.gadsdentimes.com/story/news/local/2020/10/23/scary-stories-by-late-m...
http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-3741
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Elizabeth_Counselman
http://www.fantasyliterature.com/fantasy-author/counselmanmaryelizabeth/
https://tinyurl.com/u8yca6vb

Weird Tales: 32 Unearthed Terrors for me.

>2 paradoxosalpha:

Same here.

I think I'm going to pick up Women's Weird 2 for this one.

Running interference with the landlady for Kennicott was a clever narrative trick, credibly accounting for the sculptor's intimate knowledge of Kennicott's backstory, while simultaneously providing an opportunity to come in contact with the creature.

And Counselman still found room for that trope of the manuscript from the grave! Bravo, madam.

I also appreciate the irony of outlining myriad "practical" uses for the creature's ability to petrify (all matter? only organic matter?), only to fling them out the window because of an artist's greed.

Maybe I had read this one before? In any case, everything seemed awfully predictable in light of the opening passages of the epistle.

The limitation of the transforming power being "unable to to penetrate to a third object" seemed implausible and arbitrary, and I think the plot could have been engineered to dispense with it.

It's interesting that many weird fiction writers tend to depict somewhat abnormal psychology in three occupations: scientists, scholars, and artists.

It's understandable the narrator thinks of the petrifying trick in terms of sculptor. What is less clear is why she goes on about the disdain of her inferiors -- while giving us no indication of the quality of her work. Perhaps it is assumed the directors of the museum know of it.

While the story went pretty much where I thought it would, I had some doubts until Kennicott made the mistake of not at least knowing our narrator was a sculptor. She seems very touchy and insecure.

It's also not often we have a weird menace that is worth "billions".

I liked this one despite the predictable plot.

>7 RandyStafford:

I think the narrator is male—Kennicott addresses him as 'old man'.
On the 'contempt of my inferiors' business, I came to the conclusion that Counselman is implying that the narrator is a lousy sculptor, but doesn't know it, quite deludedly thinking of himself as an unrecognised genius. Rather tragic figure, really.

>6 paradoxosalpha: - Maybe I had read this one before?

Yes—it seemed quite familiar to me but I don't think I'd actually read it. I think that perhaps the basic idea was something in the air at the time and I've read similar stories. The only one I can immediately bring to mind is Dorothy L. Sayers' 'The Abominable History of the Man with the Copper Fingers', published, at the latest, in 1928; but I'm sure I've read others if only I could put my finger on them. The bare bones of the story, of course, goes all the way back to Medusa and Perseus, or, perhaps, King Midas.

In fact, I wasn't very impressed with the story (on first reading) partly because of that very familiarity. I'm sure it's not very original—if only I could dredge up the depths of my memory.

It struck me as rather cynical, too. Both the main characters are avaricious and selfish, and pay for it. Though our sculptor's 'comeuppance' is triggered by his own conscience, so that's a redeeming factor—assuming he went through with it and didn't just start a new life somewhere with his ill-gotten gains.

>9 alaudacorax:

I said I wasn't impressed 'on first reading'. The more I think about it, though, the more there is packed in there.
The 'story within the story' seems quite a different genre, to start with*; it's quite a contrast—a clash, even—to the containing one.
Then she leaves you with so many questions. Did the directors of the museum believe a word of it? Did they put the 'statue' of the sculptor in the museum? What damage is that thing likely to do in the ocean? And the sculptor's wonderings about where he might be going to go, and his conscience-ridden embracing of what might come to be, have a quite horrific, Lovecraftian bleakness to them for an encasing story that I'd put more in a cosy, English-style 'spook story' world than Lovecraft.

* Much more what I think of—perhaps wrongly—as a typical Weird Tales story.

Hah! Thought I wasn't much impressed and had little to say about this one. Until I started writing ...

I didn't want to damn this one with faint praise as a typical weird story of the period, especially as I have it in two recent collections highlighting the overlooked women writers who contributed to the genre, and to Weird Tales itself.

But I did find it more conventional than the best stories from the big names. I could imagine it as an episode of a radio series of the time - and it probably needs saying that with Hollywood, radio drama, the "slicks" and the "pulps" all in their pomp, as well as comic books arising as a popular genre (or already there - remembering that they were an essential feature of newspapers before there started appearing on newsstands as separate publications - the standard pf popular fiction of all types coming out of the US was incredibly high.