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Chain_of_Dogs posted:I've been going back the last few months and reading the things before Lovecraft, like A. Machen and R. Chambers. Anyone else read "The Hill of Dreams" or "The King in Yellow"? "The Hill of Dreams" is pure poetry. Read "A Fragment of Life", if you can find it and "The Three Impostors" or "The Great God Pan" if you want to get back to proper horror. On the subject of "The Three Impostors", I've always suspected that the Novel of the White Powder was Stephen King's inspiration for the short story "Gray Matter", in Graveyard Shift. Anybody else think that?
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Sep 2, 2015 06:32
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 18:32 |
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While we're on Arthur Machen, have an extract from John Betjemann's 'Summoned by Bells': "With Arthur Machen’s “Secret Glory” stuffed Into my blazer pocket, up the hill On to St. Merryn, down to Padstow Quay In time for the last ferry back to Rock, I bicycled — and found Trebetherick A worldly contrast with my afternoon. I would not care to read that book again. It so exactly mingled with the mood Of those impressionable years, that now I might be disillusioned. There were laughs At public schools, at chapel services, At masters who were still ‘big boys at heart’— While all the time the author’s hero knew A Secret Glory in the hills of Wales: Caverns of light revealed the Holy Grail Exhaling gold upon the mountain-tops; At “Holy! Holy! Holy!” in the Mass King Brychan’s sainted children crowded round, And past and present were enwrapped in one."
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Sep 2, 2015 06:49
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Or go for pitch black comedy and have an Eichmann-esque character who encounters the Great Old Ones and is completely unphased because he doesn't have the imagination or the moral capacity to understand why they're horrifying. "Hmm, yes, these eldritch entities seem like characters I can do business with: I shall ally them to my Cause!" *Throughout the story, gradually transmogrifies into a hideous meat puppet of forces lurking a shadow's width away, an ever-diminishing spark of his consciousness shrieking in horror as he experiences an excruciating and indescribable fate far, far worse than death*
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Sep 5, 2015 22:51
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