T. E. D. Klein

[BAYLOR]

“We are living in a day when there are no more secrets, when my twelve-year-old nephew can buy his own grimoire, and books with titles like The Encyclopaedia of Ancient and Forbidden Knowledge are remaindered at every discount store. Though my friends from the ‘20s would have hated to admit it, the notion of stumbling across some moldering old ‘black book’ in the attic of a deserted house – some compendium of spells and chants and hidden lore – is merely a quaint fantasy. If the Necronomicon actually existed, it would be out in paperback with a preface by Colin Wilson.” "Black Man with a Horn")

Have you ever heard the story of Harry Martindale and the Treasury House of York and The Ghostly Roman Legion ? This one a mystery that no one can really explain.

 

[Sargeant_Fox]

“In later days he’d met their counterparts in other walks of life. There were the military creeps – Nam-droppers, he called them – with their contempt for civilians and penchant for macho-sounding jargon, and the technocreeps, their conversation larded with intimidating scientific terms. There were religious creeps who’d found Jesus or Jehovah and wanted everyone to know, and survival creeps who’d lectured him on the joys of butchering game. He’d met wine creeps and fashion creeps who worshipped labels, literary creeps who read only experimental novels by foreign authors, and consumer creeps who boasted of bargains no one else had heard about. He’d endured harangues from unsmiling left-wing creeps with schemes to promote a worker’s revolution, and from right-wing creeps with stockpiles of weapons in their basements. Genealogical creeps had bragged about their illustrious ancestors, Mensa creeps about their IQs. Astrology nuts at the office had given him worthless tips on the market. Fruitarians at the gym had warned him that everything he ate was poison, even most vegetables. Cabdrivers had assured him that national elections were fixed and that they alone knew who was behind it. Their one common denominator, the single sure mark of the creep, was that they were, every one of them, In The Know, privy to information denied to other mortals or that others were simply too stupid to see.” ("Nadelman's God")

This is a standout paragraph! Ever since I first read Klein's "The Events at Poroth Farm" I noticed his pleasure at crafting a passage as much as plotting.

 

[Sargeant_Fox]

Have you ever heard the story of Harry Martindale and the Treasury House of York and The Ghostly Roman Legion ? This one a mystery that no one can really explain.

Nope, it was news to me till now. Thanks, I'll check it out.

 

[Sargeant_Fox]

Since I've read Reassuring Tales and Dark Gods with lots of gusto, I figured I may as well read The Ceremonies and be done with Klein's complete oeuvre; so I ordered it today. I'm very curious to learn how he pads out 40 pages of "Poroth Farm" into 600 pages.

 

[Sargeant_Fox]

I've started The Ceremonies today.

 

[Sargeant_Fox]

I'm 100 pages into The Ceremonies; it's remarkable how fast-paced it is, so much has been covered already in terms of backstory, setting and characters. An impressive move, narrative-wise, is that Klein doesn't bother to keep up a mystery. We know immediately who the Old One is, more or less what he wants, and we get to see him manipulate Carol and Jeremy in his masterplan. I'm a big fan of the reader knowing more than the characters, it's more suspenseful if you helplessly watch the innocent moving into danger unawares, especially if the author gives you reasons to be invested in their well-being. Thankfully Klein is good at characterization too.

 

[Sargeant_Fox]

I'm 350 pages into The Ceremonies, the breeziest, briskiest 600-page novel I've read in a long time. Despite Klein's refusal to keep up a mystery, it's so propulsive! The slow unfolding of the Old One's plans, so transparently narrated, takes none of the suspense away from it. It's also refreshing to see the villain's plan not always going according to plan and him having to act on his feet, which modern entertainment has by and large forgotten.

It's also remarkable how the plot adheres so closely to the 40-page novella without anything feeling padding out or incongruous. The major enigma so far is how Sarr's mother, with her visions, is going to fit into it.

 

[Sargeant_Fox]

And today I finished The Ceremonies. I was loving it so much I atypically used the morning to finish the last 50 pages.

The ending in my view is weak, but after such a good build-up and a sustained sense of dread, it'd be difficulty to meet expectations. I think Sarr's mother was underused, if not misused; her vision powers were strong when necessary, but useless when the plot requires it.

These quibbles aside, this experience went better than I expected. I'm not used to reading horror novels, so I was on the fence about a 600-page horror novel, but the overall pacing, suspense, characterization, description held my attention without I once wavering.

As an Arthur Machen, I was also pleased that he could inspire such a good novel; it can't always be Howie and his padded Mythos. Klein masterfully incorporates "The White People" into the novel while weaving his own snake mythology.

All in all, I'm very glad I spent the last 3 months slowly reading T. E. D. Klein. Pity it's the end of the journey.

 

[Sargeant_Fox]

Apropos of Machen, I just remembered that he wrote a prose poem called "The Ceremony" that bears more than a passing resemblance to Klein's novel. Although he name-drops "The White People" a lot, I don't believe he mentioned this short work:

Ornaments in Jade/The Ceremony - Wikisource, the free online library

 

[Extollager]

So: neopagan (but ancient) shenanigans evoke a primordial monster -- that kind of thing?

 

[Sargeant_Fox]

In the novel, an ancient god has lived on Earth for millennia. In the 19c, before dying in its current form it finds a minion who spend the next 100 years carrying out preparations. These are the "ceremonies" that will help the god be reborn from the depths of the Earth, the planet being a sort of egg of it.

 

[Extollager]

Got it -- thanks.