Arthur Machen, Thoughts?

[Extollager]

Another topic -- Machen's lesser-known works. I take it that a handful of stories and perhaps Far-Off Things (which I remember fondly) and Things Near and Far are still read.

But what about, say, Dr. Stiggins? I owned a copy for years before giving it to the university here. Recently I checked it out and thought I'd try it now. But no: it is unreadable. (Machen himself thought ill of it.) Or has anyone read The Canning Wonder? (Not I.)

I recently read the collection of four stories plus intro and afterword, The Bowmen and Other Legends [sic] of the War. It all seemed prettyperishable stuff, as, I'm sure, Machen would have expected it would prove to be.

Everything Lovecraft ever wrote, down to (if they survive) his grocery shopping lists, has, I suppose, been printed or will be printed. But what about 11 years' pieces for the Evening News? I take it that I great deal of this reportage wasn't signed. Has anyone tried to figure out what was by Machen, and then to reprint it?

 

[j d worthington]

Given that there are Machen scholars out there, I'm sure it has at least largely been sorted out, but reprinting it... that's another matter. Even HPL's ephemera tends to have something to it, as it was almost always written very much by his own lights; but much of Machen's trivia was written (as I understand it) as pure journalism, with no intent other than to earn pay. As with the bulk of Poe's critical reviews, this relegates so much of this material to, frankly, pure dreck, devoid of interest to any save the most obsessed when it comes to those interested in the tiniest trivia of Machen's life -- and, rightly or wrongly, Machen simply has never commanded the sort of following Lovecraft has for a very long time now.

On the other hand, some of Machen's work certainly exceeds Lovecraft in pure artistic quality, so it is something of the usual trade-off....

You mention Far-Off Things, but I scarcely ever see a mention of his other two books in that set, Things Near and Far and The London Adventure.I see you mention going to the latter, but what about the former? Have you read this one?Have you read either of these? (I have not, to date; but I do have both set aside to read at some point.)

 

[Extollager]

Hi, JD! Nice to hear from you.

You're right about Lovecraft writing largely to please himself (some ghosting aside) while Machen experienced much of his working life, as a newspaperman, as drudgery. From time to time he mentions some of the matters on which he reported that seemed of more than usual interest, and perhaps these plus some of his book reviews and interviews would be worth reprinting. Perhaps not.

I'd rate Far-Off Things as being, if I were to have one book by Machen, the one. It is something I read again every few years. I have read it six times. I've read Things Near and Far once or twice, but it is overdue for another visit. As I recall it has quite a bit about his time as an actor with the itinerant Benson company. Mostly he seems to have had bit parts. Probably in this book, as often in his autobiographical writing, he offers impressions and little detail. The London Adventure perhaps three times. I think it has been described as something you can read as a "pendant" to the other two books. London Adventure shouldn't be read till one has read around a fair bit in Machen's work. It has occasionally anecdotes of his life, but it is not really an autobiography.

I think people now will often tend to be a bit hard on these books (and other nonfiction by Machen) because they reflect the now largely bygone genre of the familiar essay such as we associate with Charles Lamb, Chesterton, & others. Let us not be too quick to censure it; it lasted, surely, something like a century and a half or more. A great many readers were pleased.

 

[Extollager]

A few messages back I offered a glimpse of the "William Law" edition of Jacob Boehme, the pietist visionary. I am entertaining in my own mind the hypothesis that reading Law's own "Behmenist" writings plus/or translations of Boehme may help to account for the change in Machen's writing from the Decadence-influenced fiction such as "The Great God Pan" to later stories such as "N." Another influence on his imagination and outlook may well have been the prose of Coventry Patmore; perhaps Patmore did much to displace (say) Algernon Charles Swinburne. Unfortunately hardly anyone reads Patmore now. Of course no one could be much less in tune with the tenor of our times than the poet of The Angel in the House, which might be one reason he would be worth reading, but one might begin with The Unknown Eros (poems), the aphorisms of The Rod, the Root, and the Flower, and essays in books such as Religio Poetæ. Certainly I found "The Point of rest in Art" in the latter to be the key to Tom Bombadil.

 

[j d worthington]

That last would be reason enough to look his work up for many, I suspect... and, I hope, I shall be one.

As for the point about the familiar essay... well, it is still done to some degree. Ellison has done quite a bit of a slightly more modern form of it in various places (e.g., his Hornbook); various other writers have as well. And when it comes to Machen's entries in that form... at his best, he was one of the best at it (Far-Off Things being a prime example) and, as I've mentioned elsewhere -- in the thread about Lovecraft's epigraphs, for example -- such things should be of considerable interest to anyone deeply taken with the fantastic, whether horror, sf, or fantasy. Lamb, for instance, has been quoted by many (not least being HPL, from "Witches, and Other Night-Fears" for "The Dunwich Horror") to great effect; and reading the actual essays adds even more to the appreciation of the stories using these quotations.

Frankly, I've long grown tired of the imposition of a separation between the various branches of fantastic literature and "literature" in general. I still think such is important when drawing the distinction between that which was written strictly as popular entertainment, and that which (even if published in popular journals) emerged more from a writer's personal vision and concerns (hence was closer to genuine "art"; that is, honest self-expression as a primary goal), though even there one has to use such a distinction with some caution. It can also, of course, be useful for specific purposes in other relations... but as a general thing it is, in my view, quite meretricious and even a false dichotomy.

Hence, viewing fantastic literature in its relation to general literature can greatly enhance the enjoyment and lasting impact of both; and the casual essay you mention is an excellent example of how each influences the other, often to the benefit of both.

 

[Extollager]

I'm giving Machen's Hieroglyphics a second reading, and perhaps will have something to report about it here one of these days. That book discusses his literary theory of "ecstasy." G. K. Chesterton praised Machen's book:

"The work is dominated by a very clear and imaginative and sustained critical principle. The principle is, in my opinion, absolutely right. By the light of it the author proceeds with great ability to admit some writers to greatness and to reject others,* making the selection not be any superficial or snobbish feeling for mere tone and form, but by a real sense of original creative impulse. Mr Machen realises one fact, for instance, which alone ought to give his work a high place among really delicate and profound estimates of literature. That is to say, it points out that Pickwick is a mystical work, celebrating like the Odyssey the wanderings of a man amid the unknown. Mr Machen in indicating that Dickens is essentially a poet, indicates something which the present writer has prayed day and night might be adequately expressed by somebody somewhere." (quoted in Gawsworth 173)

*I think this makes Machen sound more dismissive of some writers than he is. He cites, for example, Jane Austen as a writer who did not write books that pass the test he proposes -- but he allows that such books may be interesting, amusing, etc.

I am sympathetic to Machen's view here. That "ecstasy" or beauty or wonder may be found in greater abundance in some "realistic" literature than in some overtly fantastic writing. I think that making this discovery is one of the very greatest experiences that some of us can have in our whole reading lifetimes.

Btw, Machen disparaged some Russian literature that he had read in translation (or maybe just read about), but I wish he could have read and commented on Turgenev's "Bezhin Meadow," which, for me, would be one of the first stories that would come to mind as a "mundane" story that has a sense of wonder. Also Chekhov's novella "The Steppe."

 

[j d worthington]

I am sympathetic to Machen's view here. That "ecstasy" or beauty or wonder may be found in greater abundance in some "realistic" literature than in some overtly fantastic writing. I think that making this discovery is one of the very greatest experiences that some of us can have in our whole reading lifetimes.

I must admit to having serious disagreements with GKC on a number of levels, though I admire his abilities as a writer (and in fact think The Man Who was Thursday is one of the great fantasy -- or even terror -- novels)... but, shorn of certain elements, I would tend to agree with him here.

On the statement quoted above -- I think this continues a discussion we were having some time back in the "terror vs. horror" thread about the lack of a poetic sensibility in so many of the latter works; or, for the matter of that, of (IMO) the bulk of writing in general. I would agree with you that such a discovery is one of the keenest pleasures when it comes to the arts or, more broadly, to the experience of life; it gives more resonance and emotional satisfaction, allows one to live on more levels, than the more literalistic approach. I have long had this debate with a friend of mine, who loves science fiction, but stumbles when it comes to fantasy or "horror" because of its supposedly greater implausibility. Unfortunately, she is bound by that literalistic view which simply blinds her to the poetic approach to life, hence can't even really enjoy something such as fairy tales save on an abstract, intellectual level... and became completely at sea when it came to the delicate nuances of something such as Onions' "The Beckoning Fair One" (as an example).

It certainly isn't a matter of intelligence; she is tremendously intelligent, well-informed on many topics, and has a wide range of interests... but is seemingly "color-blind" when it comes to this aspect of things. To me, that is one of the saddest things I encounter in life as, even when one is in a particularly bad situation (whether economically, interpersonally, or otherwise), the awareness and appreciation of these levels enriches life and helps to sustain one through all the tedium, pain, or grief. Machen's more "extreme" form of it (genuine ecstasy) is, of course, quite rare, but even its lesser forms are, it seems to me, quite valuable as tools for survival both emotionally and physically.

Incidentally, I am slowly, gradually, reading my way through Karloff's anthology ...And the Darkness Falls, which has some fine supernatural tales, but also a fairly large representation of non-supernatural terror tales and, as with his earlier Tales of Terror, shows his fine appreciation for just this poetic awareness, even when turned (as is often the case with some of these tales) to the darker, conte cruel sort of material. Even in such cases as these, it adds a delicacy and beauty which makes the impact of such a tale much more complex and rich in texture... not all surprising, really, that someone who was such a student of Conrad would be so sensitized to this dimension of the art.

 

[Extollager]

I wrote, "That 'ecstasy' or beauty or wonder to which Machen refers may be found in greater abundance in some 'realistic' literature than in some overtly fantastic writing. I think that making this discovery is one of the very greatest experiences that some of us can have in our whole reading lifetimes."

My story, simply summarized and as I remember, was that I read science fiction and fantasy almost exclusively until college; however, I did love the Sherlock Holmes stories, though the surface mystery is always resolved along rational lines. Machen speaks very favorably of at least the early stories (drawing a distinction that other Holmes fans have drawn, too, about the somehow less compelling quality of much in the Sherlock canon after Doyle revised his original view, that Holmes did die from tumbling into the Reichenbach Falls). Though the surface mystery -- the puzzle of the missing object or whatever -- is dispelled, the sense of London as essentially mysterious remains, and so allies itself with Machen's criterion for literary art. I must have sensed at least in this case that a fantastic milieu was not absolutely necessary for the evoking of that quality I sought.

In contrast, the atmosphere of much science fiction is banal. For documentation of that claim, I could easily consult the postings I have made during this year about stories from Groff Conklin's anthologies. Many (by now means all!) of these stories have no beauty, poetry, wonder, nor any evident intention of having been written to catch that quality; and there is room in the world for such stories, too. In the right mood I might even read one of them with some satisfaction ... though if I were in that mood I might find something more effective in a non-sf story.

But to return to the "discovery" mentioned above -- I think many of us owe something to our early immersion in sf and fantasy, as something that confirmed in us a taste for Machen's "ecstasy," so that when it is present in non-fantastic writing that we enjoy later on, we are prepared for that. To listen to some professional readers (professors, etc.) talk, you would think that the purpose and value of literary art is to provide opportunities for the rehearsal of routine observations about race-class-and-"gender." You could have a classroomful of people talking about them as rooted out of some hapless text or other, while some non-participant in the corner is instead still savoring the "ecstasy." Did the others ever experience it?

I think, by the way, that I will have to check something C. S. Lewis wrote, originally in a 1940 lecture on what he called "the Kappa [ϰ] element"* in literary experience, and later developed in "on Stories" and An Experiment in Criticism, and get back with something from that work here in our discussion about Machen's "ecstasy."

*From κρυπτόν, krupton, neuter of kruptos "hidden." Lewis used the first letter of the Greek word to symbolize this.

 

[j d worthington]

I wrote, "That 'ecstasy' or beauty or wonder to which Machen refers may be found in greater abundance in some 'realistic' literature than in some overtly fantastic writing. I think that making this discovery is one of the very greatest experiences that some of us can have in our whole reading lifetimes."

Yes, I realize you wrote "to which Machen refers".... What was going on here was that I was referring to, though did not quote, the passage by GKC which you included earlier:

G. K. Chesterton praised Machen's book:

"The work is dominated by a very clear and imaginative and sustained critical principle. The principle is, in my opinion, absolutely right. By the light of it the author proceeds with great ability to admit some writers to greatness and to reject others,* making the selection not be any superficial or snobbish feeling for mere tone and form, but by a real sense of original creative impulse. Mr Machen realises one fact, for instance, which alone ought to give his work a high place among really delicate and profound estimates of literature. That is to say, it points out that Pickwick is a mystical work, celebrating like the Odyssey the wanderings of a man amid the unknown. Mr Machen in indicating that Dickens is essentially a poet, indicates something which the present writer has prayed day and night might be adequately expressed by somebody somewhere." (quoted in Gawsworth 173)

I was simply noting that, while I often have strong disagreements with Chesterton about things, this is one of those times in which I think he is right on target.

As for the rest of what you say... I think you are also right that a good deal too much sf tends toward that literalism and a rather flat approach... something which began before Campbell became such an influence, but which he and many others of that generation fostered by strongly urging writers to, in Hemingway's phrase, "kill your darlings". Which, really, strikes me as rather odd, as Campbell could do some fine atmospheric writing when he chose ("Twilight", for example) which was immensely powerful and very poetic in its sensibility. (It was also one of those which is included in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame short story volume, interestingly enough.) And, frankly, much of the best sf, to me, has that element to it, even if the prose itself is quite simple in structure... some of Clarke's pieces, for example; or Asimov at times, and even Heinlein.

However, this is something of a digression from the main point I was aiming at, which is that I would agree that this sort of awareness of the mystery of things and places -- something which, to me, has more than a bit of the pagan feel for the sentience of a place to it -- often is more frequent in "non-fantastic" literature, for most of the best of world literature (including even such a prototypical "realist" as Flaubert) contains that innate poeticism which is, in the end, an especially keen appreciation for the "inner life" of things, an awareness of them not simply as what they manifestly are, but what their symbolic content is, as well; that is, their wider implications and the things which they imply when viewed in light of their relationship with the world (or the universe) as a whole.

I don't know whether you are aware of it, but this was something which Lovecraft went on about quite a bit in his correspondence, urging his fellow writers, and especially those young writers who were just starting out, to cultivate if they wished to be sincere, genuine artists rather than simply purveyors of "entertainment enterprises". This is one of the things he praised so highly about Derleth's early works in the Sac Prairie saga, which work does indeed exhibit this kind of extremely keen insight and appreciation for this dimension of things.

 

[Extollager]

Yes, I realize you wrote "to which Machen refers"....

JD, I'm sorry -- my remark appeared to you to be some kind of attempt by me to set you straight. I wasn't thinking such a thing. Rather, I wanted to clarify my earlier comment, which I thought might have been unclear as well as inviting elaboration. To clarify, I inserted the italicized phrase, then wrote my augmented remarks. In its original form, "That 'ecstasy' or beauty or wonder may be found in greater abundance in some 'realistic' literature than in some overtly fantastic writing," could look like a clause grammatically attached to the preceding one, "I am sympathetic to Machen's view here," but mispunctuated and with an incorrect capitalization.

 

[malaksilver]

i may have to give this one a read

 

[Extollager]

Just received a curiosity on interlibrary loan. It is a limited edition, signed by Arthur Machen.

It is Precious Balms (1924),surely one of the oddest books ever published; it appears to be a reprinting of page after page of unfavorable reviews, in this case of Machen's own books. The final chapter, "The Other Side," appears to be a handful of favorable reviews. I wonder how many people who ever had the book in their hands read it through; I doubt I will be among their number.

However, the book (from Dalton State College in Georgia) apparently received enough use to require rebinding.

 

[j d worthington]

A) No offense taken at the above; simply clarification on both sides, I think.

B) I've frequently heard of Precious Balms and Machen's wry humor in putting it together, but I've never read it. (I have, however, been quite curious at times.) Incidentally, Diana Rigg may well have known about this, for (if memory serves) she herself put together a book of negative reviews of her with much the same sort of impish sense of humor as Machen felt.

And on the subject of getting your hands on such a thing... my first reading of Far-Off Things was about 30 years ago; it was a copy I got through interlibrary loan, and was one of an edition of 100 copies, all signed by Machen. Furthermore, it had apparently never been opened, as there were a number of folios which still remained uncut!

 

[Extollager]

I will have to check something C. S. Lewis wrote, originally in a 1940 lecture on what he called "the Kappa [ϰ] element"* in literary experience, and later developed in "on Stories" and An Experiment in Criticism, and get back with something from that work here in our discussion about Machen's "ecstasy."

*From κρυπτόν, krupton, neuter of kruptos "hidden." Lewis used the first letter of the Greek word to symbolize this.

Yes -- I have just reread "On Stories." This essay ought to be of interest to anyone who thinks of the "sense of wonder" as important for his or her reading preferences. It mentions American science fiction magazines, the eerie short stories of Walter de la Mare, The First Men in the Moon, King Solomon's Mines, Lindsay's Voyage to Arcturus, The Last of the Mohicans, Morris's The Well at the World's End, and many more, ranging from The Wind in the Willows to the Odyssey. It argues that Story (which doesn't equal "plot") is sometimes an attempt to capture, at least for a time, in a sequence of events, style, etc. something that isn't sequential -- and I think this must be akin, at least, to Machen's "ecstasy." I don't have time to write much, or precisely, here, but would commend the essay to anyone who cares about such things.

 

[Extollager]

Yes -- uncut Machenian pages: I have had the same copy of The London Adventure on interlibrary loan at least twice, and some of the pages remain uncut (or I suppose I should say partially cut, since one can look inside and read them).

Having finished Gawsworth, I would say that it becomes largely concerned with recording Machen's production, in the 1920s and 1930s, of introductions, pamphlets, short stories now known only to his more persistent readers ("The Cosy Room" etc.) -- writings done to order. Yet the last or almost the last thing Gawsworth mentions is something I've found agreeable enough to read several times, The Green Round. If that were not by Machen, it would be even less known than it is; still I may read it again someday.

At present I read a little in Hieroglyphics before lights out. I think it would be almost intolerable as something to read straight through, since its redundancies mostly exhibit what was clear enough while Machen declines, sometimes, even to acknowledge questions that might be put, or so it seems so far. (This current perusal is my second reading, my first having been in Oct.-Nov. 1975. My reading log has a comment: "[FONT=&quot]Worth noting as one of the first sustained pieces of literary criticism that I read; I don’t know that I took from it much other than a desire to read The Pickwick Papers" -- [/FONT]which, alas I still have not read to the end; that one, and Dombey and Son, being somehow the two Dickens novels I've never read even once.)

 

[Extollager]

And here just now, another ILL Machen book, signed and with uncut pages: Notes and Queries, a 1926 volume of reprints from T. P.'s Weekly, 1908-1909. This book's from the University of Rochester in New York. In the intro, here again -- Machen mentions it elsewhere, probably more than once* -- is the reference to the hideous redbrick madhouse that has been built "at the very gates" of Caerleon. "Another pustule on the corrupt body of industrialism."

This appears to be the building to which Machen refers:

It is now known as St. Cadoc's Hospital, Caerleon. It was built in 1906 as the Newport Borough Asylum for up to 350 inmates.

South side of St Cadoc's Hospital,... (C) Jaggery :: Geograph Britain and Ireland

*I'm not necessarily faulting him for repeating himself, as another journalist, Malcolm Muggeridge, was to do in his own day. Machen did not necessarily assume that very many people would track down his copious writings and thereby notice his reuse of anecdotes.

 

[Extollager]

I have, for the time being, I think pretty well finished my return to Machen. In this period I have reread The London Adventure and half of Hieroglyphics; I have read about half of the small book War and the Christian Faith; I read the small book The Bowmen and Other Legends of the War; and have read Gawsworth's Life of Arthur Machen. Of course none of the Machen items are usually regarded as his finest work!

A couple of observations on what I did read.

1.Machen comes to seem to be a solipsistic author. He has come to be regarded as a pioneer writer about the strange side of London, but you actually get little about London other than the admittedly attractive, though sometimes tongue-in-cheek, notion of the city as a visible symbol of the great unknown. But after a time one tires a bit of Machen's continuous opposition of himself against the age.

2.Related to that problem -- Machen as apologist for things he believes in seems generally unwilling to be bothered to work at it. His two great enemies are materialism and what he calls Protestantism, which he sees as much akin, in that both deny the sacramental significance of things. As an apologist for the Christian faith, he is pretty shabby. I think he may have noted a breezy quality in Chesterton's writings. But in something like The Everlasting Man, there is, along with a decidedly popular and sometimes playful manner, much that holds up pretty well even the better part of a century later. Not so with Machen, and indeed I would hardly think that his writings stimulated much thought in their day -- although somewhere I saw that it was reading Machen that moved some notable or other to conversion to Roman Catholicism -- which was not his own church preference, although he attended when on holiday somewhere. There's merit in his proposal of "ecstasy," as he defines it, as the touchstone for fine literature, but there is a host of topics he seems not to want to bother with; but surely a writer on literature needs to make some worthwhile discriminations. When one thinks of C. S. Lewis's Surprised by Joy, which is a searching discussion of literary experience as well as an autobiographical work with an element of apologetics, one may realizes how very much better done may be some matters that Machen hardly bothers with.

In fairness to Machen -- he was, for much of his life, a hack writer and he seems to have known it. He would not have expected, when he wrote some of the things collected during the 1920s Machen boom, that they would ever receive more than a moment's attention from someone sitting down with a newspaper. Also, the style is almost always pleasing, although I found Dr. Stiggins simply unreadable (and I don't think Machen thought much better of the thing himself).

For myself, I suppose I will continue to return to Far-Off Things and "N" as particular favorites; and I have a mild liking, at least, for some of the lesser-known stories, including the late "novel" The Green Round. I am frankly ambivalent about horror fiction, but several stories in this vein have impressed me, although a rereading just now of "The Great God Pan" confirms my sense that the most effective part is "The Experiment," and the rest one could forgo, which means leaving out the entire Helen Vaughan thriller. "N" is my favorite of the wonder-tales, with its delectable antiquarian element relating to Hampole's London Walk etc. I also think well of "The Great Return," the Grail short story. I doubt I will ever read again The Secret Glory. One of these days I will probably reread "A Fragment of Life," an early effort, I suppose, by Machen to throw off the horror mode.

 

[j d worthington]

Not quite in agreement with you on "The Great God Pan", though I do think there are serious flaws in the work. Nonetheless, I also think there are lengthy passages of considerable power and grace as well. I would also, of course, put "The White People" at a very high mark; and as for "A Fragment of Life"... well, that has always been one of my personal favorites for the delicate way it approaches the subject, and the genuine feeling of Machen's "ecstasy" it captures with gradually increasing scope. I also see it as closely related to both "The Great God Pan" and "The White People", as (if you will) the obverse of the terror side of that coin, much as some of Blackwood's tales (such as "The Man Who Played Upon the Leaf") are allied to such things as "The Willows", "The Wendigo", "The Damned", etc.

 

[Fried Egg]

I stumbled upon the Tartarus edition of "Ritual and Other Stories" in the library the other day, apparently a collection of his less than supernatural stories. I picked out "The Town of Long Ago" at random and read it. It was a rather enjoyable and poetic piece.

Which reminds me, I really must get around to reading "The Hill of Dreams" at some point...

 

[Randy M.]

Not quite in agreement with you on "The Great God Pan", though I do think there are serious flaws in the work. Nonetheless, I also think there are lengthy passages of considerable power and grace as well. I would also, of course, put "The White People" at a very high mark; and as for "A Fragment of Life"... well, that has always been one of my personal favorites for the delicate way it approaches the subject, and the genuine feeling of Machen's "ecstasy" it captures with gradually increasing scope. I also see it as closely related to both "The Great God Pan" and "The White People", as (if you will) the obverse of the terror side of that coin, much as some of Blackwood's tales (such as "The Man Who Played Upon the Leaf") are allied to such things as "The Willows", "The Wendigo", "The Damned", etc.

I also disagree about "The Great God Pan," perhaps a bit more strongly than J.D. For the most part Machen's mystery-like approach to the horror story appeals to me, but in this story it causes some pacing problems; I think one can make the same criticism of "The Terror" though, again, I enjoy the story. (Didn't occur to me in the past but "The Terror" reads a bit like a fore-runner of the cozy catastrophe.) Still, I think it's part of the approach Machen uses to push the reader to imagine worse things than he actually describes, and since my first reading of the story in the 1970s I've found that effective.

Perhaps I particularly value this story because I see traces of it in works like Thomas Tessier's Finishing Touches and more openly in M. John Harrison's The Course of the Heart (an expansion of his short story titled "The Great God Pan").

I found it interesting in rereading the collection Tales of Horror and the Supernatural that Machen's approach to his stories changed, I'm guessing, somewhere around WWI. If that collection is a fair representation of the bulk of his writing, then the stories after "The Bowmen" aren't quite as intense as his earlier stories. He allows more wry humor and at times appears more interested in creating the weird moment rather than the frightening moment, though certainly those are not mutually exclusive.


Randy M.