Arthur Machen: The Three Impostors & Other Stories

[Sargeant_Fox]

I had come across Arthur Machen’s name several times before I read The Great God Pan last year. He popped up alongside Blackwood and Lovecraft when I looked for good classics, and I had by then read all the nice things Jorge Luis Borges wrote about his work. I found ‘Pan’ a fine read; besides the plot – the offspring of Pan and a mortal woman wreaks havoc in London – I admired the flow of the narrative and the fragmentary style through which Machen conceals a lot and implies many horrors.

So I got Chaosium’s The Three Impostors & Other Stories. Besides ‘Pan’, this volume collects “The Inmost Light”, “The Shining Pyramid” and The Three Impostors, introducing us to Machen’s alter ego, Mr. Dyson, a struggling writer fascinated with the occult and the mysteries of London. Dyson is also the most ineffectual amateur sleuth I’ve ever encountered, possessed of great deductive skills; but since his mysteries always have a supernatural bent, he never catches anyone.

“The Inmost Light” is a fine mystery story, similar to ‘Pan’ in that a scientist disturbs the laws of nature. “The Shining Pyramid” is the author’s first work to deal with a recurring theme, the “Little People” or fairies. It’s another fine mystery and a reminder of how the most ordinary places can hide incredible worlds.

Before I had read The Three Impostors, I knew my beloved Borges considered it a “secret masterpiece of literature”. So I had high expectations. Although I didn’t find it a masterpiece, I reveled in the idea of total strangers accosting Dyson and his friend Phillipps to tell them sinister tales. Machen, always subtle, turns London into the site of a feud between a young man and evil-worshippers after his innocence; it’s a city full of secrets, of rituals behind walls, and of coincidences that the author only hints at.

This volume of stories shows Machen possessed of macabre creativity and commanding a fluid prose. It produces unease in a few words and invites the reader to participate with his own imagination, which I think is what a good read should hope to achieve.

 

[j d worthington]

From some of your comments here, I'd suggest you dig up a copy of his "A Fragment of Life" and Far Off Things. Neither is a horror or suspense story (one is, in fact, a bit of autobiography), but each develops the theme you mention of "of how the most ordinary places can hide incredible worlds".....

 

[Sargeant_Fox]

I do have The White People & Other Stories, which includes A Fragment of Life. Haven't gotten to it yet though. Do you know any modern edition of Far Off Things? I think Machen's autobiogrphy would be quite an interesting thing to read.

 

[j d worthington]

I do have The White People & Other Stories, which includes A Fragment of Life. Haven't gotten to it yet though. Do you know any modern edition of Far Off Things? I think Machen's autobiogrphy would be quite an interesting thing to read.

According to this site, there was a printing as recently as 1997 (scroll down to the "New and Recent Publications" section):

Arthur Machen

I don't see that one as being available, though; and if you look at some of the sites such as Abebooks or Alibris or Biblio.com, you can find the earlier (even first American) printings for as low as $10 at times....

There are three volumes of his autobiography: Far Off Things, Things Near and Far, and The London Adventure. None of them is terribly hard to find through such sites, and usually for a quite reasonable price. You might also look into his (somewhat autobiographical) novel, The Hill of Dreams, as well as his essay Hieroglyphics: A Note Upon Ecstasy in Literature....

 

[Connavar]

I was wondering about a good place to start reading this author ?

Im interested because Robert.E Howard talked so highly of him in his stories. Even in a Lovencraft styled story saying The Novel of the Black Seal is one of 3 horror master novels alongside Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher and something by HPL.

Plus it never hurts to try an author with macabre creativity.


http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/p/edgar-allan-poe/fall-of-house-of-usher.htm

 

[Fried Egg]

There's an interesting article about Arthur Machen, coming soon after he was mentioned by Joshi in the introduction of the Lovecraft book I am reading, cited as one of his influences. I would be interested in knowning where to start too...

 

[j d worthington]

I am not at all so certain that Machen "is little read today". He is often included in horror/dark fantasy anthologies; there have been numerous editions of some of his better known works (such as "The Great God Pan", "The White People", "The Novel of the Black Seal", "The Novel of the White Powder", or The Three Impostors in general) in print lately; Tartarus Press, as I understand it, was set up originally specifically to collect together and publish his more obscure writings; and his name certainly crops up a heck of a lot. I actually know more people who have read Machen than have read Lovecraft, as far as personal acquaintance goes (which would not have been the case about twenty years ago).

Nevertheless, he isn't as well-known as he deserves to be, and I'm glad to see his work being mentioned again.

As for where to start... I'm not sure there's a particularly good or bad place to start (save with some of his journalism, which is likely to be of interest only to specialists these days), but one might begin with his landmark collection The House of Souls, which contained "Fragment of a Life", "The Great God Pan", "The White People", and "The Inmost Light". This is, I believe, currently in print in both hard and paper editions, and contains three of his best tales. ("The Inmost Light" is also good, just not on quite the same level as the other three, I'd say.)

There's also Tales of Horror and the Supernatural, if you can find it, which also includes his short novel, The Terror, as well as other pieces....

 

[Lobolover]

I believe the person would ned to be warned about Machen's mysticism, though .

 

[j d worthington]

I believe the person would ned to be warned about Machen's mysticism, though .

Why so, Lobo? Granted, Machen was a mystic; but then, so was Algernon Blackwood and, to some degree, H. Russell Wakefield. While it might be of interest, and add layers to an appreciation of his work, I don't know if they need to be "warned" about it. Frankly, I think it is one of the strengths of Machen's work, in that he brings this sensibility to so much that he wrote, giving it a feeling of a genuine vision of the world. This view can also be seen in his books of autobiography, as well as The Hill of Dreams, allowing them to have the same charm and feeling of the numinous as his fiction. Such gives his work a great deal more depth and resonance, I think, whether one knows about this being his actual inclination in life or not.

 

[Lobolover]

For one having read the "best" of Machen, reading stories like "The Rose Garden" or "The soldier's rest" can be a bit....anticlimatic . Even the "great return" as far as I am concerned was botched up by revealing all the basis of the strange events chronologicaly about midway through the text on . It kind of ruined my enjoyment of the story .

 

[j d worthington]

For one having read the "best" of Machen, reading stories like "The Rose Garden" or "The soldier's rest" can be a bit....anticlimatic . Even the "great return" as far as I am concerned was botched up by revealing all the basis of the strange events chronologicaly about midway through the text on . It kind of ruined my enjoyment of the story .

I see your point there. However, I think I'd warn people about his later writing (after that initial burst of really magnificent fiction of the late 90s and shortly thereafter -- with the exception of his autobiographical volumes, which are really quite good, and a few other pieces), as a great deal of that was severely affected by the mountains of journalism he wrote, becoming increasingly flat and tame; and he did recycle a lot of the same ideas in very similar ways in that later writing, as well. But the bulk of his earlier work is, I think, pure magic; a high point in the history of the fantastic tale.