Machen, Arthur

The Three Imposters and Other Stories: The Best Weird Tales of Arthur Machen, Volume 1 ( Call of Cthulhu Fiction Series)

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More chilling than gore
A Bit Dry But Worthwhile
Convinced to buy Vol. 2
One of the Great Masters of the Macabre
A Review of the Three Imposters with a Calumny against Joshi

The Three Imposters and Other Stories: The Best Weird Tales of Arthur Machen, Volume 1 ( Call of Cthulhu Fiction Series)
Arthur Machen , and S. T. Joshi (Editor)
Manufacturer: Chaosium
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1568821328

Book Description

Some of the finest horror stories ever written. Arthur Machen had a profound impact upon H.P. Lovecraft and the group of stories that would later become known as the Cthulhu Mythos. This first volume of Chaosium's Arthur Machen collection begins with the chilling "The Three Impostors" in its complete form, including the rarely seen sections "The Decorative Imagination" and "The Novel of the Iron Maid." Rounding out the first volume are "The Great God Pan," "The Inmost Light," and "The Shining Pyramid," all are excellent tales. Introduction by S.T. Joshi.

This book is part of an expanding collection of Cthulhu Mythos horror fiction and related topics. Call of Cthulhu fiction focuses on single entities, concepts, or authors significant to readers and fans of H.P. Lovecraft.

Customer Reviews:

More chilling than gore.......2006-08-03

This review is only about the title story, or rather, short novel. It is a circular story, as it ends where it begins. Characters have multiple identities and strange coincidences abound. It is a macabre joke, a foundational book of the cosmic horror a la Lovecraft and his Ctulhu mysteries. It is also a peak of the late Victorian era and much more. What makes it more than a genre story is the poetic quality of its literature. There are paragraphs that would make little perfect prose poems.

Along several months, or years, Dyson and Phillips meet different persons, who have in common the search for a shy and nervous young man with a little black moustache and big spectacles. Each one of these persons tells his or her story in inserted chilling tales, full of the imagery that would later become cliche. This is no cheap horror: it has a great sense of humor, it is not about axe-grinding nor about phantoms and exorcisms. It is pure cosmic horror, the horror of hidden forces and obscure memories of a remote past. It is a horror of strange gatherings and incognoscible conspiracies. The inserted stories are often compiled independently of their contextual frame: "The novel of the Dark Valley" is an adventure in the loneliness of the Rocky Mountains, with a pre-Kafkian touch that makes you go pale. "The novel of the Black Seal" happens in the Welsh wilderness, with a mad scientist and beings from the past. "The novel of the Iron Maiden" includes a collectionist of instruments of torture. "The novel of the White Powder" is about a substance that transforms humans into something indefinible and horrific. Finally, ""The story of the Spectacled Young Man" closes the circle and "explains" everything.

Like a good Englishman, Machen is a master of the understatement. More than showing, he insinuates to let the readers feel for themselves all the weight of the horror of the world, the mysteries that haunt us, and the strangeness of this life. Little surprise, then, that this was one of Jorge Luis Borges's favorite books, since much of his beloved subjects are here: ancient and undecipherable languages; stories lost in time; mirror games; equivocal identities; implacable gods; and somber mansions. Much recommended.

A Bit Dry But Worthwhile.......2005-06-17

Other reviews are longer and more in-depth. This is meant as a quickie.

The title story is the heavy-hitter of this collection; it ties several shorter stories together under one title. The other stories are much shorter but have their twists and turns as well.

The language is not as dry as one might expect from stories written a century ago.

Worth four stars out of five.

Convinced to buy Vol. 2.......2004-05-03

As the title says, I found this collection so intriguing that I will be buying the next volume (The White People and other Tales). The only work that I had previously known by Arthur Machen was "The Great God Pan", which has shown up in so many anthologies that I am thoroughly sick of it, although it is a good read the first few times through. "The Inmost Light" was quite disturbing to me in terms of plumbing the depravity of the human soul. "The Shining Pyramid" was a good supernatural detective story, in my opinion, although the intuitive leaps made by the protagonist would have made Fox Mulder proud. This clearly inspired quite a few of Robert Howard's stories.

Clearly, the crown jewel of this collection is "The Three Imposters." The deeper I got into this novel, the more engrossed I became. It is made up of 14 short stories, each of which is part of an overarching storyline that involves the protagonist, a golden coin, a man with spectacles, and 3 people who are not who they say they are. Each successive short story drew me in further. Some of the best reading I have done in years!

One of the Great Masters of the Macabre.......2003-11-19

Arthur Machen (1863-1947), an English author best known for his eerie stories about supernatural creatures and situations, served as a major influence on later explorers of the macabre. H.P. Lovecraft, for example, cited Machen as an authority and even wrote articles about him on occasion. The introduction to this compilation of some of Machen's best stories, written and edited by S.T. Joshi, underscores the author's ability to shock his Victorian contemporaries, who blasted his works publicly by labeling them obscene. Joshi argues the ridiculousness of this criticism, for Machen actually was an orthodox Anglo-Catholic who presented the concepts of nature as a corrupted influence that only civilization with its strict rules can negate. That's one way to view Machen's work: with a lot of scholarly blather. For most horror fans, it simply does not matter whether this author used horror as a means to support the social status quo. What is important is that Machen wrote cracking good stories that are not only eerie but also inspired future writers in the genre.

The best story in this collection is arguably the first one, "The Great God Pan." This horrific tale boils down to one sublime theme: don't mess with Mother Nature. A doctor performs a brain experiment on a young lady with absolutely horrific results, although the scope of the terror isn't widely known at first. As the story unfolds, we discover that this woman had a physical experience with something beyond our realms of perception, something so bizarre that our frail little minds can barely grasp the implications of such an unholy union. The result is a child, a very special child with a very evil character. This wicked offspring consequently ravages her way through the upper crust of British society, luring men into her clutches and then performing acts on them that cause the dupes to die in a quite terrible manner. There are some clever twists and turns throughout the story, such as bringing one of the doctors present at the beginning of the story back into the plot towards the end, that I quickly realized is a trademark of Machen's writing style. "The Great God Pan," perhaps better than any other story in this collection, shows the influence this author had on Lovecraft and others. Like the author of "The Mountains of Madness," the narrator here only alludes to shocking incidents in an oblique way, leaving it up to the reader to fill in the terrible blanks.

"The Inmost Light" and "The Shining Pyramid," while intriguing in their own ways, do not seem to pack the emotional punch of the "The Great God Pan." One story that does rise to the level of greatness is "The Three Imposters; or, The Transmutations," a sprawling epic that forms the bulk of the book. This is a wonderfully constructed oddity, a larger story built up of numerous interlocking smaller tales that could well stand on their own. Two characters, a Mr. Dyson and a Charles Phillips, encounter three individuals looking for a mysterious man wearing spectacles. The three people tell various stories to one or another of these men, including one set in the American West, a wacky yarn about an overachiever who imbibes a mysterious white powder with horrific results, and "The Novel of the Black Seal," my favorite story by far. In this intense tale concerning our lack of knowledge about the ancient past, a scientist going on retreat to the wilds of Wales mysteriously disappears forever after attempting to prove his theories about a weird little seal inscribed with the most curious markings. Parts of this story read like a mystery novel, as the main character in the story (a female servent/secretary type) discovers the aftermath of weird goings on and attempts to investigate the strangeness. I thought Machen achieved an amazing level of taut pacing with this story, and the conclusion to "The Three Imposters" shows the author bringing together the story in a satisfactory way.

One of the things I liked about Machen's stories is the emphasis he puts on atmosphere and background. Outside of Dickens, I cannot remember reading another author who describes the squalid streets and alleyways of London as well as Machen does. Joshi mentions this in his introduction to the book, but until you actually sit down and read the stories you simply won't grasp the detail Machen offers on every page. Moreover, this hyper atmospheric writing style extends to stories that take place outside the city as well. As anyone who has read horror knows, atmosphere is as important, if not more so, to a story than nearly any other element. With his bleak descriptions of the seedy London byways, Machen elevates horror to new heights.

In fact, all of the stories in this collection achieve greatness in their own unique ways. From what editor Joshi said in the introduction to this book, Machen failed to sustain his career in the long run. His later stories didn't sell well at all and seemed to be mere shadows of his former glories. Fortunately, we still have his creepy gems to read and savor today. If I had to rank Machen in the pantheon of grand horror writers, I would place him on more or less an even keel with Lovecraft but below Algernon Blackwood. But that comparison comes from only having read the few stories in this slim book. Certainly there are still Arthur Machen gems out there I have yet to see, so perhaps his stature will rise even higher in my eyes in the near future. Still, if you like Lovecraft and wish to read similarly themed stories, you need to pick up "The Three Imposters and Other Stories" soon. You won't be disappointed.

A Review of the Three Imposters with a Calumny against Joshi.......2003-04-16

If you're familiar with Machen, you've probably read the frequently anthologized chapters of "The Three Imposters" -- "The Novel of the White Seal" and "The Novel of the Black Powder" -- as stand alone short stories. I found that I appreciate them more after having read them in their original context as chapters or "novels" of this odd picaresque (or maybe arabesque) novel. In "The Three Imposters", these "novels" appear as stories narrated by characters within the main plot. It's an interesting idea. However, the "novels" stand out as better stories than the narrative in which they are imbedded. So I'm not sure it's such a good idea. The book ends with a truly gruesome finish -- even for Machen.

This is definitely a worthwhile read even if you've read the aforementioned novels. As usual, skip Joshi's introduction. For example, Joshi finds the source of Machen's numinous sense of horror in -- surprise! -- Machen's Victorian discomfort with sexuality. Not to mention the fact that he was a Christian, too. Ooh those Christians just hate sex! I suppose we are then to believe that Machen undertook the translation of Casanova's "Memoirs" as some sort of penance, like the protagonist's hair shirt in Machen's "Hill of Dreams". (Machen's "Memoirs" is still the standard translation in English, by the way.) Or could it be the case that Machen was more subtle than the freshman composition caricature of a sexually repressed Victorian Anglo-Catholic Joshi draws in his introduction; that in fact one of Machen's great themes is the reconciliation of sensuality with mysticism? Not surprisingly Joshi, who professes a peculiarly coarse and unreflective variety of atheistic materialism, is blind to this possibility.

Whatever happened to E. F. Bleiler or Lin Carter? (Well, they're dead, sadly. But can't Chaosium and Dover find a better editor for their Weird Fiction?)

The Physiology of Taste, or Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy
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Important socially, historically, and culturally--but not aestetically

love for gastronomy

Exquisite morsels - but a bland meal

The standard English edition of a landmark eccentric classic

Provides a timeless discussion of French food

The Physiology of Taste, or Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin , and Arthur Machen
Manufacturer: Dover Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Two Towns in Provence

ASIN: 0486422534

Amazon.com

You can't properly call yourself a gourmand (or even a minor foodie) until you've digested Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin's delectable 1825 treatise, The Physiology of Taste: Or, Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy. Brilliantly and lovingly translated in 1949 by M.F.K. Fisher (herself the doyenne of 20th-century food writing), the book offers the Professor's meditations not just on matters of cooking and eating, but extends to sleep, dreams, exhaustion, and even death (which he defines as the "complete interruption of sensual relations"). Brillat-Savarin, whose genius is in the examination and discussion of food, cooking, and eating, proclaims that "the discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a star."

Chocoholics will be satisfied to know that "carefully prepared chocolate is as healthful a food as it is pleasant ... that it is above all helpful to people who must do a great deal of mental work...." He examines the erotic properties of the truffle ("the truffle is not a positive aphrodisiac; but it can, in certain situations, make women tenderer and men more agreeable"), the financial influence of the turkey (apparently quite a prize in 19th-century Paris), and the level of gourmandise among the various professions (bankers, doctors, writers, and men of faith are all predestined to love food). Just as engrossing as the text itself are M.F.K. Fisher's lively, personal glosses at the end of every chapter, which make up almost a quarter of the book. These two are soulmates separated by centuries, and Fisher's fondness for the Professor comes through on every page. As she notes at the end, "I have yet to be bored or offended, which is more than most women can say of any relationship, either ghostly or corporeal." --Rebecca A. Staffel

Book Description

A masterpiece on the subject of cooking as an art and eating as a pleasure, this 1825 classic on the joys of food and drink was written by a French politician and man of letters whose true passion centered on gastronomy. Includes recipes for pheasant, Swiss fondue, and other dishes. 41 illustrations.

Customer Reviews:

Important socially, historically, and culturally--but not aestetically .......2006-01-22

After reading some of the reviews concerning this book, I can certainly agree with much of the praise as well as the criticism. Filled with pithy euphimisms, chunks of this wonderful adventure in gastronomy are a revealing look at the life of the well-to-do author; other morsels seem be out of place, dry of wit, and ill-seasoned. Nonetheless, this is still a good read--there are some fascinating ancedotes as to life in the "new" United States which Savarin reports on after an adventure in the newly independent colonies. Worthy of any well-stocked bookshelf.

love for gastronomy.......2005-10-08

You cannot say you love gastronomy without having ever read this book!

Exquisite morsels - but a bland meal.......2004-03-09

Full disclosure: I admit I read this book based on juicy rumors from gastronomy sources that it was considered an "underground classic" and summarily treasured by modern (and well-placed) gourmet cooks. And to complete that thought, I'll spare you, dear review-reader, some suspense: this book disappointed me. I even found the notes (glibly called "translator's glosses") by the esteemed M.F.K. Fisher a bit dry. Maybe the late Ms. Fisher got caught in the same trap; her notes refer almost constantly to the author's fame and wit in *other* contexts but they're uneven in the current text.

Still, I stand behind the three stars. Brillat-Savarin is not a brilliant author, but his insights into at least a few well-chosen subjects shine across the nearly two centuries since these "meditations" were penned. Long before the Atkins craze gripped American nutrition, for example, one can find here (in Meditation #21: "On Obesity"): "... the principal cause of any fatty corpulence is always a diet overloaded with starchy and farinaceous elements ..." One wonders how our 20th century nutritional experts missed this--especially since the good author's book has been out nearly two hundred years and very popular across Europe for much of this time.

Other nuggets of wisdom are equally remarkable. His analysis of taste manages to turn the standard teeth-chew-the-food, stomach-takes-the-food scientific tract into a celebration of good flavors. A long meditation "on food in general" gives any reader new perspectives on coffee, chocolate, and especially truffles. But physiology is never far behind; the aforementioned tasting discussion includes a prophetic note about the contributions of smell. Fisher's contributions to--and obvious loving translation of--these bits bring the gastronomical poetry up to date.

Unfortunately, I've given you all the highlights. The remainder of this book is stuffed with essays either having little to do with gastronomy ("On Exhaustion?" Death? Hunting Luncheons?) or rambling on with little factual basis. Brillat-Savarin wrote this as a journal and it shows far too often; it's disorganized, didactic to the point of annoyance, and only occasionally stays true to the scientific promise of its title. And poor Ms. Fisher usually ends up as a bystander.

With these critiques in mind, I'd recommend 'The Physiology of Taste" as selective reading. A few of the essays are timeless and beautifully written. Most are turgid and make little sense to a 21st century food lover. Given Ms. Fisher's pedigree I'd hesitate to blame the translation; the author gets full credit and blame.

The standard English edition of a landmark eccentric classic.......2002-11-21

The standard edition of this work in the US, and a lively one. Jean-Anthelme de Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826) is known for this book and for pithy maxims like "Adam and Eve sold themselves for an apple. What would they have done for a truffled fowl?" (That of course in the days when the truffles that most people heard of were real ones, not chocolate candies that look like them; and also when the real ones were much more plentiful and less expensive.) Memorable are the wonderful anecdotes of the kindly old priest and his "austere" meatless menu ("The Curé's Omelet," with "theoretical notes" afterwards) and of Brillat's scheme at a country inn to enhance a humble dish. This wide-ranging book established its author as an original and knowledgeable voice in French food writing, to be compared with Carême and Grimod de la Reynière.

Brillat-Savarin, among other roles, was the basis of Marcell Rouff's _The Passionate Epicure,_ a fictional book gently combining food and sex (naturally, as a friend of mine remarked, since it's French), which was widely read in English when the translation appeared in 1962. Marcella Hazan and (I believe) Julia Child cited it in their cookbooks. In his preface to the 1962 Rouff, Lawrence Durrell (himself a fashionable author at that time) explained that many in the Brillat-Savarin family "died at the dinner table, fork in hand" and that Brillat's sister Pierrette, two months before her hundredth birthday, spoke at table what are to food fanatics easily the most famous last words ever: "Vite! Apportez-moi le dessert -- je sens que je vais passer!"

Fisher's translation and notes are a lively part of this edition of Brillat-Savarin (happily reprinted recently). Some booksellers offer newer editions by different English translators; I don't know why. This semi-scholarly translation and editing, executed in France during the post-war period described in her autobiographical _Two Towns in Provence,_ was the work that established Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher among US gastronomic writers. Her later status as Official Food Celebrity encouraged journalists to cite her automatically (whether they had read her work or not), but at least this time, publicity and merit coincide.

Provides a timeless discussion of French food.......2002-11-10

Physiology Of Taste is an unabridged photomechnical reproduction of a classic 1925 edition and should be on the shelves of any serious and dedicated gourmet cook. Physiology Of Taste provides a timeless discussion of French food and cooking written in 1825 by a master at both culinary insight and writing. Whimsical reflection mixes with serious food insights in a most satisfying manner.

The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt (six volume set)

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The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt (six volume set)
Jacques Casanova
Manufacturer: G P Putnam's Sons
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000E4FPMA

Product Description

Illustrated with Italian 18th century engravings. This is the first complete and unabridged English translation of the memoirs. Volume six contains a bibliography of some of the various editions of the memoirs as well as a short list of commentaries, essays and criticisms. Volume six also contains the supplement outlining Casanova's career from 1771 (where his memoirs ended) up to his death in 1798. The volume titles are as follows (in sequence): Venetian Years; Paris and Prison; The Eternal Quest; Adventures in the South; In London and Moscow; and Spanish Passions. My best guess as to a publication date is late 1940s to early 1950s. Page numbers on the volumes are as follows (given in sequence): 729; 714; 650; 656; 637; 717 pages. This set of hardcover books was issued with dust jackets, in a slipcase.

Hieroglyphics: A Note Upon Ecstasy In Literature

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Hieroglyphics: A Note Upon Ecstasy In Literature
Arthur Machen
Manufacturer: Kessinger Publishing, LLC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 142862497X

The Angels of Mons The Bowmen and Other Legends of the War

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Fascinating Propaganda by a Master of Wierd Horror

The Angels of Mons The Bowmen and Other Legends of the War
Arthur Machen
Manufacturer: Hard Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 1406910570
Release Date: 2006-11-03

Customer Reviews:

Fascinating Propaganda by a Master of Wierd Horror.......1999-09-18

Arthur Machen, the Welsh author of such wierd tales as 'The White People' and 'The Great God Pan' worked as a propagandist for Britain in World War I and this is a collection of his work. His premiere effort, 'The Angels of Mons', is still occasionally unknowingly quoted by believers in the supernatural!

Book Description

Unlike most of Machen's other works, The Secret Glory is not usually considered a work of horror. Instead it is a semi-autobiographical tale of a young man, Ambrose Meyrick, and his attempt to struggle through the public school system all the while preoccupied with a childhood memory of the Holy Grail hidden in his native Wales. Arthur Machen is the pen name of Arthur Llewellyn Jones. Born in Wales in 1863, he went on to become one of the most respected horror writers of all times. Many prominent authors (from that time and the present) admired him -- Lovecraft, Arthur Conan Doyle, Oscar Wilde, and H.G. Wells to name only a few.

The Great God Pan and The Hill of Dreams

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The Great God Pan and The Hill of Dreams
Arthur Machen
Manufacturer: Dover Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0486443450

Book Description

Two works — one of imaginative and decadent horror, the other lyrical and introspective — comprise these books by one of the pioneers of supernatural fiction. The Great God Pan scandalized Victorian London with its suggestive visions of sexuality and paganism. The Hill of Dreams is a semi-autobiographical work about Machen's battles with his inner demons.

The White People and Other Stories: The Best Weird Tales of Arthur Machen (Call of Cthulhu Horror Fiction, 6035) (Call of Cthulhu Fiction Series, 6035)

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A Refreshing Change
Too Dry, Too Mundane
Volume 2 of Arthur Machen's work

The White People and Other Stories: The Best Weird Tales of Arthur Machen (Call of Cthulhu Horror Fiction, 6035) (Call of Cthulhu Fiction Series, 6035)
Arthur Machen
Manufacturer: Chaosium Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Customer Reviews:

A Refreshing Change.......2005-11-29

I often find myself drawn to the explicit- gore and carnage, ala Bentley Little and Richard Laymon, so the sublety of Machen's writing was quite a departure for me. The style is quite beautiful- this is a talented writer whose prose will sweep you away with its pure visual beauty.

You will not grasp the entire sequence of events first in these tales, you may have to read them a second time, but that is a pleasure given the author's pleasing style. Perhaps it is time to take a break from the overt that is so prevalent in books and films today, and return to a kinder, gentler time where what is not said can be even more horrifying than what is thrown in your face. This is Machen.

Too Dry, Too Mundane.......2005-06-17

Other reviews are longer and more in-depth. This is meant as a quickie.

Too many of these stories are short (three pages) and rather limp. I prefer stories that are either longer (more development) or harder-hitting (with action/horror/experimental text/uniqueness/something!).

And unlike the first volume in this series, the language is dry. When combined with the more mundane subject matter, this book does not merit the four stars I gave "The Three Impostors".

Worth three stars out of five.

Volume 2 of Arthur Machen's work.......2005-04-16

I was vary impressed by Chaosium's first collection of Machen's work, which was THE THREE IMPOSTERS AND OTHER STORIES. "The Three Imposters" was a narrative of interwoven tales describing a paranoid man's encounter with three people who are not who they seem. Each is an excellent story in its own right, but the whole is greater than the sum. Considering the success of the first volume, I decided to try the second.

If you don't know Arthur Machen, he wrote "weird" stories in the late Victorian - Edwardian period. They all have a distinctly British flavor that reminds me of M.R. James. Most of his stories are set in his homeland of Wales, where something of charm and magic remains beneath the hills. By necessity he began to write for a newspaper later in life, and a fictional account he wrote for the paper on spectral guardians for British troops in WWI became the "Angel of Mons" stories you can still read about today.

THE WHITE PEOPLE AND OTHER STORIES is an eclectic collection of Machen's weird stories, his poetry, and some of his later writings for newspapers. Despite being a fan of Lovecraft, I have always wondered what HPL meant when he consistently referred to a protagonist hinting at things unknown (to others), dropping outlandish names and meaning more than is said. Well, he borrowed this technique from Machen's "The White People", a story made to look like a young girl's diary. Her journal is just a collection of thoughts and experiences, and many things are hinted at as reminders to herself which we will never understand, but these brief glimpses are horrible enough. Machen's poetry collection, "Ornaments in Jade", also struck me as weirdly beautiful but also indecipherable. More is unsaid than said, hinted at than revealed. I felt that it relied on some code, a common frame of reference, that has been lost over the course of a hundred years. Perhaps his contemporaries felt the same way.

There are other interesting compositions in this volume. "The Red Hand" brings back the investigating protagonists from "The Three Imposters," with a not-too-dissimilar plotline. "A Fragment of Life" seemed to be a glimpse into the everday life from a time long ago. It is almost novel length and simply describes the common affairs of a couple in turn-of-the-century London. If this sounds uninteresting, you'll have to read for yourself how a masterful author makes common situations uncommon. Finally, there are a series of stories written from Machen's journalistic days. Besides a group that are all related to the "Angel of Mons" category, there are a few others that describe other supernatural phenomena and are written in the first-person. They are so straight-forward and sincere that sometimes it is difficult to remember they are meant to be fiction.

Machen's overarching theme is that the material, everday world is merely a shadow of reality and that true living must penetrate that shadow to see the glories beyond. This is something he truly believed and it is evident in all of his stories. The reason these stories continue to frighten and thrill is that we desire to see what is beyond the veil, but we are also afraid of what we will find.

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'The Red Hand' and 'The White People'
Arthur Machen
Manufacturer: Aegypan
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1598181602

Book Description

This volume contains two of Arthur Machen's best stories: THE RED HAND, a murder mystery involving flint weapons, treasure and the chalking of a red hand upon a wall; and THE WHITE PEOPLE, a story thought by H.P. Lovecraft to be the second best horror tale ever written, which centers around a young girl's diary relating her encounters with the deadly inhabitants of an alternate world. "But I remember when I was five or six I heard them talking about me when they thought I was not noticing. They were saying how queer I was a year or two before, and how nurse had called my mother to come and listen to me talking all to myself, and I was saying words that nobody could understand. I was speaking the Xu language, but I only remember a very few of the words, as it was about the little white faces that used to look at me when I was lying in my cradle."

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Gothic Horror
The Great God Pan.
LOVE this little book - wish it never ended!!
The power of suggestion....
Dark Pagan Horror

The Great God Pan (Creation Classics)
Arthur Machen
Manufacturer: Creation Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1871592119

Book Description

"An incoherent nightmare of sex..." That was The Westminster Gazette's description of Arthur Machen's first book, The Great God Pan, upon its publication in 1894.

An unwittingly complimentary description for one of the greatest works of weird horror and decadence, in which Machen unfurls with his singular eye for the bizarre and macabre the tale of a young girl cursed by her unnatural parentage to become a creature of shape-shifting polysexual demi-human evil. Illustrated by Austin Osman Spare.

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It was otherwise, however, when within three weeks, three more gentlemen, one of them a nobleman, and the two others men of good position and ample means, perished miserably in the almost precisely the same manner. Lord Swanleigh was found one morning in his dressing-room, hanging from a peg affixed to the wall, and Mr. Collier-Stuart and Mr. Herries had chosen to die as Lord Argentine.

Customer Reviews:

Gothic Horror.......2005-12-02

I got this because the author was at one time affiliated with the Golden Dawn. It is horror that was an influence of H.P. Lovecraft. I liked it because the author maintains an aura of darkness that could be disturbing. This is neo pagan horror that you usually don't see any more. Stehpen King commercialized horror but this is more obscure. A few pages in I already thought highly of it. I thought it was cool that he was such an icon back at the turn of the last century.

The Great God Pan........2005-11-14

"An incoherent nightmare of sex . . . " - The Westminster Gazette.

_The Great God Pan_ is the first book of the Welsh writer of weird tales and mystic Arthur Machen, published first in 1894. This book was regarded as a form of decadent literature and was panned by critics of the Victorian era. Arthur Machen was a fascinating character and antiquarian whose weird writings reveal his learning in the occult and his mystical inclinations. Machen was an Anglo-Catholic opposed to modernism in all its forms who was to join the secret society of the Golden Dawn, though he would reject the nefarious doings of such individuals as Aleister Crowley. Machen had an enormous influence on later writers of weird tales including especially H. P. Lovecraft who mentions him in his essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature" as an important influence. This book, republished by Creation Classics, is complimented by automatic drawings of Austin Osman Spare, a friend of Machen and a fellow occultist and mystic. In addition, this book contains Machen's introduction to the story proper.

_The Great God Pan_ begins with a scientist/doctor and his friend attempting to perform a surgical operation on the brain of a seventeen year old girl, Mary, so that she may "see the Great God Pan". The doctor discusses his theories of "transcendental medicine", in which he believes he can control her through this operation. The operation fails and Mary is rendered an "idiot". The story then skips to the memoirs of Mr. Clarke, the friend of Dr. Raymond from the experiment on Mary. Mr. Clarke recounts a tale involving a young girl named Helen Vaughan, who encounters a pagan idol from Roman times in a field. The story involves murder and intrigue as well as a demonic sex change, which occur later in the tale. Machen's mystical inclinations can be seen as he presents the reader with an alchemical transformation.

Though this book was initially criticized harshly by the establishment in Victorian times, it has endured and set the place of Arthur Machen as an important writer of weird tales. Machen's stories are quite unique and his influence on subsequent writers of supernatural fiction continues to endure.

LOVE this little book - wish it never ended!!.......2005-09-24

Wow, I read this on a plane ride and didn't want to put it down. Machen did an amazing job of creating this atmosphere of terror and horror and dread and evil...without ever actually spilling blood and showing us what happened. The way he described what transpired with Helen was awesome. The way he led us along these different paths and then brought them all home so that everything made perfect sense was brilliant. I would have loved more of a backstory and more details into Pan...but that's minor. Can't say enough great things about this little book of "terror." Has something this short and this powerful been written in the last 20 or 30 or 40 years? Great stuff!

The power of suggestion...........2001-04-27

The REAL grandeur of this little gothic gem lies in the power of suggestion. Machen, much like a Nicholas Roeg film or the Lovecraft mythology, only hints at the unspeakable horrors in "Great God Pan" and therein lies the novel's strength, short and negligable as it may seem. It's up to the reader to "fill in the blanks", and make the right connections as to which abominations lurks beneath the sinister series of seemingly unconnected events, that are displayed in "Great God Pan."

Scattered around in the book are twisted images of the many abominable faces that the Great God Pan may take, drawn by the esoteric occultist Austin Osman Spare.

Dark Pagan Horror.......2000-12-03

I came to know about Arthur Machen and his work through the brilliant mastermind of H.P.Lovecraft; his references, both in fiction ("The Dunwich Horror" makes a very clear statement about Machen's influence in his body of work) and non-fiction ("Supernatural Horror in Literature"), ultimately inspired me to go search something about this author. Needless to say, I found virtually nothing in any bookstore. It was during a trip to Madrid, Spain, where I finally found a book by Machen containing "The Great God Pan" and many others. I was shocked.

"The Great God Pan" was the first story I read by Arthur Machen, and I only had to read the first few pages to know I was going to like it. Indeed, I did, although it was a little short for my taste.

The ideas Machen makes you travel through are some of the finest in horror literature, and the Cosmic view of Pan, is very near the likes of Lovecraft. One can easily see where the influence Machen exerted over Lovecraft is. The only difference is that Machen did believe in some supernatural force existing within the Universe, whereas Lovecraft was the complete opposite.

Dark Pagan Horror is what Machen delivers, and he does so with such a style, elegance (at least the Castilian translation, I still have to read the originals in English, but I am assuming the originals are much better) and wit, you just can't help but to stay with it until you are done.

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