Sneaky Weird
The Man Who Collected Machen by Mark Samuels (Chomu Press, 2011)
I’m at a loss how to summarize the stories in The Man Who Collected Machen. More directly philosophical than the stories of Arthur Machen (the ones I’ve read, at any rate), less viscerally disturbing than those of Laird Barron, not quite as surreal as the stories of Thomas Ligotti (or maybe just displaying a different form of surrealism), giving a Lovecraftian imagination a Borgesian twist, their power seems to stem from contemplation as much as from plot. Not that there isn’t plot: A man wandering the lost and forgotten streets of London knowing he will forever be alone; another man possibly looping though time and space; a soldier seeking asylum in an abandoned, nearly empty town; a recluse searching for a tower near the city that only he sees rising in the distance, from which only he hears chanting; a new language that infects and overthrows other languages; a library built in homage to Jorge Luis Borges’ story “The Library of Babel” infected by a book that changes all other books into the same book. In a cover blurb, Reggie Oliver is quoted as saying, “Like most writers who are confident of their own abilities Samuels is not afraid to acknowledge influences. Hints of Machen, Poe, Lovecraft, Borges and Ligotti are to be found in these stories, …”; again, stories in conversation with other stories, a writer responding to his reading.
Location figures strongly throughout the collection. London in “THYXXOLQU” becomes the center of linguistic infestation; King’s Cross in the title story and “The Tower”; the Mexican city of “Xapalpa” where an American hears of another American who died there of a fever he himself may be feeling; and in “Nor Unto Death Utterly by Edmund Bertrand” an English moor where a recluse resides in his “half-cavernous structure” on a cliff above the sea, a not-too distant cousin to Poe’s House of Usher with a flavoring perhaps of the afflicted land in H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Colour Out of Space.” Merging with this landscape is an appreciation, even nostalgia for the past. From “The Tower”: “As I wandered in the early morning sunlight, golden and dazzling, it seemed to me that the remains of the past were more beautiful than what was to come. The future offered no prospect but a soulless death, all the more terrifying for its not being acknowledged. The solidity of the past, the idea of permanence, was over, and it had been replaced by a new ethos of disposability and change for its own sake, under the guise of so-called ‘progress’. But progress toward what destination?” “The Tower” as well as the story immediately before it, “The Age of Decayed Futurity,” suggest puppet masters controlling the course of society and individual lives.
Because these stories work large through mood and ideas, describing one too closely might ruin the surprise of its unfolding, its shifts in tone and direction. I will just say that I enjoyed the collection, but “Xapalpa” and “Nor Unto Death Utterly by Edmund Bertrand” were particular favorites. The former takes place in a small Mexican village an American visits while considering where to spend his retirement. The latter has a similar feel to Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” (the setting also seems similar to that in Lovecraft's "The Colour Out of Space") and would make enjoyable reading in the company of that story and maybe Ray Russell’s “Sardonicus” for their evocation of a remote location, an imposing and eerie ediface, and the sense of threat found there.
Reading of similar interest:
Jorge Luis Borges: Ficciones & Labyrinths (story collections; not horror)
Arthur Machen: Tales of Horror and the Supernatural (collection)
Algernon Blackwood: Best Ghost Stories of Algernon Blackwood (collection)
H. P. Lovecraft: H. P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction (collection)
Thomas Ligotti: Grimscribe & My Work is Not Yet Completed (collections)
Fred Chappell: More Shapes Than One (collection)
Poppy Z. Brite: Wormwood (collection)
Caitlin R. Kiernan: To Charles Fort, With Love (collection)
Thursday: Curfew by Phil Rickman
The Man Who Collected Machen by Mark Samuels (Chomu Press, 2011)
I am writing these lines from a deserted residence situated, I suspect, in the maze of streets to the southeast of King’s Cross, that dim region of London Incognita. I found the house, abandoned for years, when I was lost. It is a squat Georgian villa in the most squalid quarter of the district, its mock-portico decayed, its peeling stucco exterior riddled with weeds. I know now I cannot find my way back from there, and this fact must ultimately put an end to my former existence.
—first paragraph, title story
I’m at a loss how to summarize the stories in The Man Who Collected Machen. More directly philosophical than the stories of Arthur Machen (the ones I’ve read, at any rate), less viscerally disturbing than those of Laird Barron, not quite as surreal as the stories of Thomas Ligotti (or maybe just displaying a different form of surrealism), giving a Lovecraftian imagination a Borgesian twist, their power seems to stem from contemplation as much as from plot. Not that there isn’t plot: A man wandering the lost and forgotten streets of London knowing he will forever be alone; another man possibly looping though time and space; a soldier seeking asylum in an abandoned, nearly empty town; a recluse searching for a tower near the city that only he sees rising in the distance, from which only he hears chanting; a new language that infects and overthrows other languages; a library built in homage to Jorge Luis Borges’ story “The Library of Babel” infected by a book that changes all other books into the same book. In a cover blurb, Reggie Oliver is quoted as saying, “Like most writers who are confident of their own abilities Samuels is not afraid to acknowledge influences. Hints of Machen, Poe, Lovecraft, Borges and Ligotti are to be found in these stories, …”; again, stories in conversation with other stories, a writer responding to his reading.
Location figures strongly throughout the collection. London in “THYXXOLQU” becomes the center of linguistic infestation; King’s Cross in the title story and “The Tower”; the Mexican city of “Xapalpa” where an American hears of another American who died there of a fever he himself may be feeling; and in “Nor Unto Death Utterly by Edmund Bertrand” an English moor where a recluse resides in his “half-cavernous structure” on a cliff above the sea, a not-too distant cousin to Poe’s House of Usher with a flavoring perhaps of the afflicted land in H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Colour Out of Space.” Merging with this landscape is an appreciation, even nostalgia for the past. From “The Tower”: “As I wandered in the early morning sunlight, golden and dazzling, it seemed to me that the remains of the past were more beautiful than what was to come. The future offered no prospect but a soulless death, all the more terrifying for its not being acknowledged. The solidity of the past, the idea of permanence, was over, and it had been replaced by a new ethos of disposability and change for its own sake, under the guise of so-called ‘progress’. But progress toward what destination?” “The Tower” as well as the story immediately before it, “The Age of Decayed Futurity,” suggest puppet masters controlling the course of society and individual lives.
Because these stories work large through mood and ideas, describing one too closely might ruin the surprise of its unfolding, its shifts in tone and direction. I will just say that I enjoyed the collection, but “Xapalpa” and “Nor Unto Death Utterly by Edmund Bertrand” were particular favorites. The former takes place in a small Mexican village an American visits while considering where to spend his retirement. The latter has a similar feel to Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” (the setting also seems similar to that in Lovecraft's "The Colour Out of Space") and would make enjoyable reading in the company of that story and maybe Ray Russell’s “Sardonicus” for their evocation of a remote location, an imposing and eerie ediface, and the sense of threat found there.
Reading of similar interest:
Jorge Luis Borges: Ficciones & Labyrinths (story collections; not horror)
Arthur Machen: Tales of Horror and the Supernatural (collection)
Algernon Blackwood: Best Ghost Stories of Algernon Blackwood (collection)
H. P. Lovecraft: H. P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction (collection)
Thomas Ligotti: Grimscribe & My Work is Not Yet Completed (collections)
Fred Chappell: More Shapes Than One (collection)
Poppy Z. Brite: Wormwood (collection)
Caitlin R. Kiernan: To Charles Fort, With Love (collection)
Thursday: Curfew by Phil Rickman
