Extollager
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- Aug 21, 2010
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With regard to Machen’s last novel – so to call it because it is a prose fiction too long to be a novella – Dr. Reiter sympathizes with the consensus that sees The Green Round as a failure. Having read it with enjoyment five times, I’m interested in how to account for the appeal of an old man’s book, written for money, so easily faulted for a thin plot, etc.
Perhaps The Green Round may be understood in the light of an essay by C. S. Lewis that ought to be much better known by readers of fantasy, the blandly-titled “On Stories,” in which, to oversimplify, Lewis extols the value of literary works that must necessarily deal with a sequence of events – something has to happen – but which are primarily concerned with some state of imagination that is more timeless. He gives the example of William Morris’s The Well at the World’s End and says (I quote approximately from memory): Can someone really write a story that captures what we sense when we read the words ‘the well at the world’s end’? Morris came close enough to make the book worth many readings.” We must use a net of words, Lewis says, to try to capture an elusive, poetic awareness. So perhaps the next time Dr. Reiter or other critics propose to read The Green Round, they would benefit by reading Lewis’s essay first; and see if Machen’s net of words – incidents, quotations from an obscure [fictional] book and allusions to Shakespeare and Wordsworth, notebook jottings – does capture the elusive fish, at least for a time.
For those who think they wish Machen had tied things together more firmly, had been more “forthcoming” – it might be worthwhile for them to read Joan Lindsay’s Picnic at Hanging Rock, which leaves must unsure, and then to read (if they can find it) The Secret of Hanging Rock, the “solution.” Picnic is a haunting novel with real affinities to The Green Round – spoiled, I would say, by the second book.
Incidentally, it seems very possible to me that Lindsay got the idea for her novel from a few late pages in The Green Round that tell about a mysterious experience on Mt. Nephin in Ireland. You can read a very rare Machen presentation of the incident here:
It Goes On The Shelf
Reiter might want to refine his thinking about Machen’s “Little People.” He equates what are in fact three different sorts of beings: (1) the nasty evolutionary offshoots of “The Novel of the Black Seal” and “The Shining Pyramid,” of Machen’s early horror stories; (2) the weird beings (dark faeries?) of “The White People”; (3) the goblins of The Green Round, “Out of the Earth,” etc.
On page 192 a couple of items in his summary of The Green Round are misleading. (1) He seems to imply that a Welsh woman is murdered during the time Hillyer is vacationing in the country. Machen specifically says the outrage happened about a fortnight before Hillyer’s arrival. (2) It does not seem correct to characterize Hampole’s A London Walk as an “occult book.”
And I think he is far too dismissive of the late stories, notably “N.” He may be too susceptible to the attitudes of critics such as S. T. Joshi. Frankly, so far as I’m aware Machen has attracted little or no commentary from first-rate critics. Those commenting on him are often people who, it seems, mostly know weird fiction, people who know Lovecraft far better than Wordsworth, Keats, or Blake.
I have written on some of the late Machen stories earlier this year at the Wormwoodiana blog.
On "N":
Wormwoodiana: Guest Post: Snug Conversation in Machen’s “N” and Other Stories, by Dale Nelson
On "The Exalted Omega":
Wormwoodiana: Guest Post: Machen, Kipling, and Two English Ladies at Versailles: Stories Not Quite Told, by Dale Nelson
On "The Tree of Life":
Wormwoodiana: Guest Post: Machen’s Teilo in “The Tree of Life” and the Talosian Situation by Dale Nelson
Dale Nelson
Perhaps The Green Round may be understood in the light of an essay by C. S. Lewis that ought to be much better known by readers of fantasy, the blandly-titled “On Stories,” in which, to oversimplify, Lewis extols the value of literary works that must necessarily deal with a sequence of events – something has to happen – but which are primarily concerned with some state of imagination that is more timeless. He gives the example of William Morris’s The Well at the World’s End and says (I quote approximately from memory): Can someone really write a story that captures what we sense when we read the words ‘the well at the world’s end’? Morris came close enough to make the book worth many readings.” We must use a net of words, Lewis says, to try to capture an elusive, poetic awareness. So perhaps the next time Dr. Reiter or other critics propose to read The Green Round, they would benefit by reading Lewis’s essay first; and see if Machen’s net of words – incidents, quotations from an obscure [fictional] book and allusions to Shakespeare and Wordsworth, notebook jottings – does capture the elusive fish, at least for a time.
For those who think they wish Machen had tied things together more firmly, had been more “forthcoming” – it might be worthwhile for them to read Joan Lindsay’s Picnic at Hanging Rock, which leaves must unsure, and then to read (if they can find it) The Secret of Hanging Rock, the “solution.” Picnic is a haunting novel with real affinities to The Green Round – spoiled, I would say, by the second book.
Incidentally, it seems very possible to me that Lindsay got the idea for her novel from a few late pages in The Green Round that tell about a mysterious experience on Mt. Nephin in Ireland. You can read a very rare Machen presentation of the incident here:
It Goes On The Shelf
Reiter might want to refine his thinking about Machen’s “Little People.” He equates what are in fact three different sorts of beings: (1) the nasty evolutionary offshoots of “The Novel of the Black Seal” and “The Shining Pyramid,” of Machen’s early horror stories; (2) the weird beings (dark faeries?) of “The White People”; (3) the goblins of The Green Round, “Out of the Earth,” etc.
On page 192 a couple of items in his summary of The Green Round are misleading. (1) He seems to imply that a Welsh woman is murdered during the time Hillyer is vacationing in the country. Machen specifically says the outrage happened about a fortnight before Hillyer’s arrival. (2) It does not seem correct to characterize Hampole’s A London Walk as an “occult book.”
And I think he is far too dismissive of the late stories, notably “N.” He may be too susceptible to the attitudes of critics such as S. T. Joshi. Frankly, so far as I’m aware Machen has attracted little or no commentary from first-rate critics. Those commenting on him are often people who, it seems, mostly know weird fiction, people who know Lovecraft far better than Wordsworth, Keats, or Blake.
I have written on some of the late Machen stories earlier this year at the Wormwoodiana blog.
On "N":
Wormwoodiana: Guest Post: Snug Conversation in Machen’s “N” and Other Stories, by Dale Nelson
On "The Exalted Omega":
Wormwoodiana: Guest Post: Machen, Kipling, and Two English Ladies at Versailles: Stories Not Quite Told, by Dale Nelson
On "The Tree of Life":
Wormwoodiana: Guest Post: Machen’s Teilo in “The Tree of Life” and the Talosian Situation by Dale Nelson
Dale Nelson
And for the record im not trying to dismiss Machen. Ive liked everything by him that ive read.
