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Post by benedictjjones on Aug 26, 2008 18:15:28 GMT
^^^FINALLY ORDERED vol1 and vol3 of the collections. vol 2 was indeed a bit more expensive on amazon than the other two (although not as much as £70).
i shall post some thoughts once i have read and digested.
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Post by lobolover on Aug 30, 2008 9:04:16 GMT
The Novel of the White Powder,The Novel of the Black Seal and the Novel of the Dark Valley from "The three impostors","The white people" ,"The great god pan"."The red hand","The shining pyramid" (mared by a somewhat homlesian aproach) and "The innermost light" are all I can think of for now-
anyone read his "Children of the Pool"? Id like to know if its worth the read.
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Post by marksamuels on May 28, 2009 22:19:07 GMT
The one that got me on the whole Arthur Machen jag to begin with; yes, the first Machen book I ever owned. Village Press 1974 Machen takes on London by wandering the streets, drawing on his thirty or forty years sequence of memories. His conclusion? No-one can know London in its essence; it is a redoubt of ultimate mystery filled with lunatics and mystics. Quite right. Mark S. |
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Post by monker on Jun 5, 2009 7:50:54 GMT
The Novel of the White Powder,The Novel of the Black Seal and the Novel of the Dark Valley from "The three impostors","The white people" ,"The great god pan"."The red hand"," The shining pyramid" (mared by a somewhat homlesian aproach) and "The innermost light" are all I can think of for now- anyone read his "Children of the Pool"? Id like to know if its worth the read. I've never read any Sherlock Holmes novels or stories so I wouldn't know but The Shining Pyramid is my favourite Machen tale. If anything I liked the investigative bits as it gave the story a kind of credulity. My favourite devise in the whole story may have been glossed over if it were written in a different style. Just thought I'd have a whinge.  |
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Post by lobolover on Jun 19, 2009 21:04:40 GMT
Have read a bit more of him, and I can't say he realy got "The Great Return" right . Would have been so much better to keep the mystery throughout then to actualy blab it all out halfway through .
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Post by marksamuels on Jun 19, 2009 22:21:12 GMT
Lobo
You might prefer "The Terror" in that case (if you don't already know it). Machen doesn't lay his cards out on that one until close to the end. But don't read up on it in advance!
Mark S.
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Post by lobolover on Oct 12, 2009 17:29:14 GMT
Thanks Mark . I already know of the majority of wortwhile fiction by Machen thanks to the help of Mr. Worthington .
It was rather that......it felt like Machen didn't know how to resolve this later and yet explain everything properly .
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Post by pulphack on Mar 15, 2011 14:03:21 GMT
Odd to see that the second Chaosium collection was mentioned on here as being harder to get, as I picked up the first and third from a charity shop the other week, and when I asked about the second (hoping it might just be out the back) there was no joy. The coment that the problem with them is that the 'good' - or at least best known - stories are scattered amongst the volumes is a fair point, but I figure that if you like Machen, then you LIKE him and so it doesn't really matter. Very good collections, spanning the breadth of his style. I hadn't read any for a few months, having finally exhausted the two paltry collections I had, so it was actually nice to see the more obscure stuff getting in as the two pb's I'd previously picked up were 'greatest hits' type collections.
Incidentally, nice to see the scan for The Art Of Wandering, which is as wonderful today as the first time I read it, about fifteen years back.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 15, 2011 22:20:48 GMT
I'd recommend The Three Imposters (which is the first Chaosium collection) as a good starting point for Machen. Also, does anyone know why the 2nd Chaosium paperback (The White People & Others) seems to be selling for £70 or thereabouts? Good lord! Really? I bought this on Amazon about a year ago for about £7. On top of that, I'll second the recommendation of The Three Impostors collection as a solid place to start; if memory serves, it includes The Great God Pan as well. |
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Post by Dr Strange on Mar 16, 2011 13:15:26 GMT
does anyone know why the 2nd Chaosium paperback (The White People & Others) seems to be selling for £70 or thereabouts? Good lord! Really? I bought this on Amazon about a year ago for about £7. Me too - it's the only volume of the three that I do have, and I only bought for the title story. It's good, but it's not that good. |
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Post by lemming13 on Mar 17, 2011 8:48:01 GMT
Yes, I got all three from Amazon for £18 altogether, about a year ago. All his work is available in ebook format, though, if you look around (but I'm NOT giving away my 'real' versions, sorry).
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Post by Johnlprobert on Mar 17, 2011 13:16:11 GMT
Certainly it was very hard to get hold of Volume 2 for a while -perhaps the first edition had a smaller print run? Anyway I do think the three Chaosium volumes make a nice set, but for anyone who likes their paperbacks to have posh covers there's a Penguin Classics Machen edition coming out at some point!
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Post by valdemar on Apr 19, 2012 8:15:31 GMT
'The Great God Pan' is a great place to start. It's also one of the very few stories that has ever given me a sleepless night after reading it. The cool, calm description of the destruction of the young girl, Mary's mind, is horrific and deeply troubling. Doctor Raymond is asked by Clarke of the consequences should his experiment go wrong. He answers: ''I think her life is mine, to use as I see fit.'' If you do not shudder inwardly at such callousness, then you must be made of stone. It does go horribly wrong, and the sweet Mary is left a complete vacant idiot. That's only the start of the story. Get a copy. Read it - you'll love it. |
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Post by Knygathin on Jun 1, 2012 21:36:35 GMT
How do you feel about a collection like Tales of Horror and the Supernational, in which some tales have been pulled out of a larger work like The Three Impostors?
Is that alright? Or is it corrupt? Would Arthur Machen have approved of this? Should those tales be kept and read in their original context?
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Post by ramseycampbell on Jun 3, 2012 7:10:26 GMT
How do you feel about a collection like Tales of Horror and the Supernational, in which some tales have been pulled out of a larger work like The Three Impostors? Is that alright? Or is it corrupt? Would Arthur Machen have approved of this? Should those tales be kept and read in their original context? I do think it's worth reading them in context, but individual episodes ("The White Powder", "The Black Seal") began to be anthologised as early as the twenties, presumably with Machen's approval. |
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