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This is my first Machen's book, and its been kind of a unique read. The opening passages setup up for a weird ride building up on composition of stories within stories. Main protagonist, certain Mr Dyson, happens to come across multiple characters, all somehow related to elusive "bespectacled man". Throughout, the narrative changed the gears often, shifting from leisurely regard to a sudden dash in space of few pages. The second level tales can easily be stand alone short stories. These have ser...
It was bit boring and slow-paced, but it is excellent novel, full of imagination and creativity.
A manic, purposely convoluted and bizarre narrative nevertheless operates on a clear internal logic of mood and comes together for an oddly disquieting ending. Contains noted classics of supernatural horror literature Novel of the Black Seal and Novel of the White Powder, and while the rest of the book isn't quite as perfect, the work as a whole succeeds in painting London as a mysterious set of convolutions in which anything could happen.Love it. Classic Machen.
About midway through this novel I was exhilarated with unabashed excitement. I thought this would be one of the greatest, most brilliant things ever. But my excitement soon turned to ashes coming nearer and nearer to the final stretches once I realized far too many topics had been introduced to resolve it all in the end. I was correct in this assumption but at the same time I found it an immensely rewarding read. After I read it the first time I skimmed through the entire book and hunted for tho...
A bit slow due to age and the writing style but a good novel full of suspense and horror. Lovecraft, Poe and King can be seen throughout. Definitely recommended for genre lovers.
The Three Imposters is Arthur Machen's best work and a classic of Gothic horror.As the book opens, we are introduced to the three imposters, two men and one young woman, who are grinning evilly at each other upon the conclusion of their great heist. The three imposters are con artists extraordinaire who, throughout the novel, adopt various pseudonyms and personas to deceive other unsuspecting characters in their pursuit of ancient treasure. Their ultimate goal is the Gold Tiberius, which is in t...
I thought this was great, and enjoyed it a lot more than the more well known Great God Pan. This isn't really a novel but a group of interconnected shorts. The ways in which they are connected are strange and not always apparent, but there is a subtle thread weaving through everything that becomes somewhat clear by the gruesome end of the book. The tone of the episodes varies from the somewhat whimsical to the quick and punchily horrid to the deep and mysterious. "The Novel of the Black Seal" wa...
I had previously read The often anthologized 'The novel of the white powder' and 'The novel of the black seal' and was looking forward to experiencing this collection of short stories in its entirety. The book consist of several short horror stories (woven into a frame story) told to Phillips and Byron, the one a determined rationalist and the other somewhat a dreamer. Thematically the stories revolve around the decay of moral and the arts, somehow connected to a secret society possibly worshipp...
Machen's good as usual..but the only two stories which caught my attention were "The Novel Of The Black Seal" and "The White Powder"...rest of them are okay-ish. "The White Powder" IMO could be a source from where J.K. Rowling took the idea of Horcruxes..not sure though.
Arthur Machen is the master of slow building dread and eerie atmosphere. I think that the following passage is a great example of the previous statement. "I knew, I thought, if I knew what there were to dread, I could guard against it; but here, in this lonely house, shut in on all sides by the olden woods and the vaulted hills, terror seems to spring inconsequent from every covert, and the flesh is aghast at the half-heard murmurs of horrible things. All in vain I strove to summon scepticism to...
Starting from the very heart of London, they had made their way westward through the stony avenues, and were now just emerging from the red lines of an extreme suburb, and presently the half-finished road ended, a quiet lane began, and they were beneath the shade of elm-trees. The yellow autumn sunlight that had lit up the bare distance of the suburban street now filtered down through the boughs of the trees and shone on the glowing carpet of fallen leaves, and the pools of rain glittered and
"This history, if it chance to fall into good hands, may, perhaps, be of service in warning young men of the dangers and pitfalls that most surely must accompany any deviation from the ways of rectitude.Arthur Machen was admired by both Jorge Luis Borges and H. P. Lovecraft. In one of his letters to Frank Belknap Long, the latter said that "Machen is a titan, perhaps the greatest living author, and I must read everything of his". On the other hand, Aleister Crowley was also a fan of Machen and b...
While the Chaosium version (not an edition) is superior, with a scholarly essay by J. T. Joshi, there's a great deal of charm in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy. The essay by Lin Carter, "Bagdad-on-the-Thames" is singularly remarkable because it is the first essay by Carter that I've read where he plays it straight and reveals a literary and well-read side to his character. Unfortunately it also comes off as less than rigorous, because he makes some statements leading me to think that he didn't und...
