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If this book were expanded to include 'The White People' it would feature all of Machen's truly essential short horror fiction from his somewhat frustrating, but thoroughly fascinating career. The Great God Pan/The Inmost Light (published together) and The Three Impostors were the two books that cemented Machen's posterity as a 'horror writer', despite him not writing all that much in the genre otherwise, while The Shining Pyramid is just really damn frightening.
Ok, I've gone back and forth and thought about this review. I have not read the second volume (will soon), but this is how it seems to me. This book contains two important works: "The Great God Pan" and The Three Impostors. "The Great God Pan" is something of misstep that mashes together two different short stories. The first, and smallest, is the best: a scientist opens up the doors of perception and the horrible truths of the Outside comes pouring in. The second, the bulk, deals with sexual ho...
I have long eagerly awaited reading something by Arthur Machen. Supposedly one of the grandfather's of Weird fiction, an important influence on H.P. Lovecraft, I was hoping for another author of the same caliber (and perhaps somewhat similar to) Algernon Blackwood. He turned out not to be quite quite as good and somewhat different in approach.This is volume one of a three volume set and contains the novella "The Great God Pan", two short stories "The Inmost Light" and "The Shining Pyramid" and t...
Had been wanting to explore some Arthur Machen for a while now. Finally got around to it with The Three Impostors and Other Stories. This is essentially a collection of short stories that are all connected to one degree or another. Together they speak to events that are underpinned with some dark and sinister circumstances. They do build some tension and engender an over-arching sense of creepiness, but the horror quotient really never rises above that. In their day, the themes dealt with in the...
When Arthur Machen’s The Three Imposters was headed to press, John Murray, his London publisher, got cold feet. The year was 1895;the scandal of the Oscar Wilde trial was still fresh in the public’s mind; and, Murray worried that Machen’s depiction of pagan cults devoted to sex and murder might run afoul of the censors. He requested cuts. Machen reportedly changed one word. The book was published without incident.Reading it today it is hard to imagine what the fuss would have been about. But Mac...
***1/2"The Three Imposters and Other Stories" contains the title novel, plus the novella, "The Great God Pan," and two short stories, "The Inmost Light" and "The Shining Pyramid." I would rate the novella and short stories as four out of five, with the novel being a three.The novel holds the same structure as the short stories, more or less, with one character (a man named Dyson in all but one of the stories contained in this book) investigating and being told a strange story by another characte...
Machen is, as should be, a little strange. Cerebral horror sure, but not particularly horrific. Quaint. Suspenseful build up to a reveal you probably see coming because you've been exposed to so much horror since this was written. So not scary, and nothing really is unless you believe it's possible. A little creepy perhaps. I like this sort of thing though, popularized now, or rather, exemplified in Lovecraft: ancient rites, old gods, horrible books --it's really more of a book lovers horror. Ce...
Synopsis: several short stories in the horror vein. Includes: The Great God Pan, The Inmost Light, and The Shining Pyramid. Machen died in 1947.
Arthur Machen is a a little-known author of weird stories who strongly influenced H. P. Lovecraft. His stories were mostly ignored at the time they were first written, though he was for a while able to make a living from them. This book is the first volume of a three-volume set that contains his earliest stories. It also includes the novel (or novella) The Three Impostors. The last is part horror story and part mystery as two amateur investigators are unwittingly involved in the search for a mis...
This originally came to my attention a few years ago through a list of books favored by Borges. Based on this collection, a decent shorthand for Machen's work would be to describe it as a mix between H.P. Lovecraft and G.K. Chesterton - the unspeakable horror of a world beyond our understanding, as viewed from the vantage of an urbane, literary, often witty yet deeply religious late Victorian London. The first three pieces in this collection are definitely of interest, but the main event is The
