THE DEEP ONES: "The Tower of Moab" by L. A. Lewis
ForumThe Weird Tradition
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1semdetenebre
"The Tower of Moab" by L. A. Lewis
Discussion begins November 2, 2022.
First published in Tales of the Grotesque: A Collection of Uneasy Tales (1934).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
https://isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?947738
SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS
Return from the Grave
The Century's Best Horror Fiction 1901-1950
ONLINE VERSIONS
No online versions found to date.
ONLINE AUDIO VERSIONS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2699wDb9Ek
MISCELLANY
http://desturmobed.blogspot.com/2016/01/la-lewis.html
https://vaultofevil.proboards.com/thread/2497/lewis-tales-grotesque
https://tinyurl.com/mv5jxbs
Discussion begins November 2, 2022.
First published in Tales of the Grotesque: A Collection of Uneasy Tales (1934).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
https://isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?947738
SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS
Return from the Grave
The Century's Best Horror Fiction 1901-1950
ONLINE VERSIONS
No online versions found to date.
ONLINE AUDIO VERSIONS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2699wDb9Ek
MISCELLANY
http://desturmobed.blogspot.com/2016/01/la-lewis.html
https://vaultofevil.proboards.com/thread/2497/lewis-tales-grotesque
https://tinyurl.com/mv5jxbs
2papijoe
Without a free online version or a copy of my own, I had to rely on the audio version to refresh my experience of this story when I read it in print long ago. I recall at the time associating it with "A Night of Serious Drinking" by Rene Daumal.
While it was what I thought a particularly good reading in the audio version, I would miss an occasional word due to the raspy British drawl, at least in the earlier paragraphs.
Yet the sense of horror still burned through my long jaded sensibilities. The plight of the demon tormented woman and his own final revelation of the Tower are still stunning.
I don't believe one needs to believe traditional notions of damnation and demonic oppression to be effected by this. The narrator was obviously a skeptic, and the description of his perception is to my mind all the more effective in light of his disbelief.
Most disturbing, what if the Theosophists he cites are correct about the persistence and power of thought forms? If so then this vision related in the story has in fact erected the Tower of Moab...
While it was what I thought a particularly good reading in the audio version, I would miss an occasional word due to the raspy British drawl, at least in the earlier paragraphs.
Yet the sense of horror still burned through my long jaded sensibilities. The plight of the demon tormented woman and his own final revelation of the Tower are still stunning.
I don't believe one needs to believe traditional notions of damnation and demonic oppression to be effected by this. The narrator was obviously a skeptic, and the description of his perception is to my mind all the more effective in light of his disbelief.
Most disturbing, what if the Theosophists he cites are correct about the persistence and power of thought forms? If so then this vision related in the story has in fact erected the Tower of Moab...
3housefulofpaper
>2 papijoe:
I would miss an occasional word due to the raspy British drawl, at least in the earlier paragraphs.
Yes, there’s a reference early on that I missed when I listened to the audio version, but now that I've been able to read the story (in The Moons at Your Door), I find that I don't understand it. It's "My parents had been killed in an air-raid, and the paternal capital, once of comforting dimensions, was brightening the life of Russia" (my italics) - any idea what that means? I don't think it's a saying (in the proverbial sense). My best guess (without being able to research into the facts at all) is that the narrator is expressing dissatisfaction with high wartime taxes (inheritance tax/death duties) supposedly going to the USSR as a war ally.
I nominated this story, on the strength of some positive mentions somewhere or other, and that YouTube reading. I found it at least as powerful on reading it myself.
As the story sets up, and noted in >2 papijoe:, a Christian (or rather, I suppose, an Abrahamic) belief system isn’t demanded for the story to work, as the Theosophical ideas mentioned as part of the narrator’s researches suggest an alternative way in which the tower, and the angelic and demonic entities he sees, could be real/been brought into being.
On a side note, Mark Valentine has contributed story notes to The Moons at Your Door and apparently the tower in the story may well have been suggested by a real structure, “Jezreel’s Tower, built in Gillingham, Kent, by an obscure sect, the New and Latter House of Israel, a millenarian offshoot of the Southcottians.”
I would miss an occasional word due to the raspy British drawl, at least in the earlier paragraphs.
Yes, there’s a reference early on that I missed when I listened to the audio version, but now that I've been able to read the story (in The Moons at Your Door), I find that I don't understand it. It's "My parents had been killed in an air-raid, and the paternal capital, once of comforting dimensions, was brightening the life of Russia" (my italics) - any idea what that means? I don't think it's a saying (in the proverbial sense). My best guess (without being able to research into the facts at all) is that the narrator is expressing dissatisfaction with high wartime taxes (inheritance tax/death duties) supposedly going to the USSR as a war ally.
I nominated this story, on the strength of some positive mentions somewhere or other, and that YouTube reading. I found it at least as powerful on reading it myself.
As the story sets up, and noted in >2 papijoe:, a Christian (or rather, I suppose, an Abrahamic) belief system isn’t demanded for the story to work, as the Theosophical ideas mentioned as part of the narrator’s researches suggest an alternative way in which the tower, and the angelic and demonic entities he sees, could be real/been brought into being.
On a side note, Mark Valentine has contributed story notes to The Moons at Your Door and apparently the tower in the story may well have been suggested by a real structure, “Jezreel’s Tower, built in Gillingham, Kent, by an obscure sect, the New and Latter House of Israel, a millenarian offshoot of the Southcottians.”
4papijoe
>3 housefulofpaper: In the reading, maybe because of the Russia reference, the phrase registered in my brain as “paternal capitol”. With your clarification from the print version I think your gloss is the only one I could think of that makes sense. It seems convoluted but at the time perhaps this was a reference that would have been more familiar to contemporary readers.
I think Jezreels Tower was very likely the inspiration. Millennial sects got into some weird stuff. In the town I used to live in a local belonging to an end of the world cult had carved what in his mind was a property deed in a large flat piece of granite. This created “God’s Ten Acres” as he made the Deity the owner.
Thanks for nominating this, I enjoyed reading it again!
I think Jezreels Tower was very likely the inspiration. Millennial sects got into some weird stuff. In the town I used to live in a local belonging to an end of the world cult had carved what in his mind was a property deed in a large flat piece of granite. This created “God’s Ten Acres” as he made the Deity the owner.
Thanks for nominating this, I enjoyed reading it again!
5RandyStafford
>3 housefulofpaper: I took the phrase to mean his family had investments in pre-Revolutionary Russia and they were expropriated in the Revolution. I know of at least one French writer, Theo Varlet, to which that happened.
(I only listened to the story in audio so I don't know if we're talking "capital" or "capitol".)
(I only listened to the story in audio so I don't know if we're talking "capital" or "capitol".)
6housefulofpaper
>5 RandyStafford:
If only I had checked the date of publication before spinning my theory - before WWII!
There were air raids in WWI, mostly along Britain's east coast (and by zeppelin as well as by primitive bombers) but they are overshadowed in popular memory by the Blitz.
I agree that expropriated Russian investments must be what the narrator's referring to here.
If only I had checked the date of publication before spinning my theory - before WWII!
There were air raids in WWI, mostly along Britain's east coast (and by zeppelin as well as by primitive bombers) but they are overshadowed in popular memory by the Blitz.
I agree that expropriated Russian investments must be what the narrator's referring to here.
