Ahh, there we go!! Finally!! I was aching to get to this one!
-The Great God Pan
and Other Horror Stories (2020)
-Helen's Story (2013)
Arthur Machen.
Okay, let's arrange this kind of like I did the Poe review...
Standout stories-
3. The Three Impostors
4. The Inmost Light
8. The Red Hand
9. The Shining Pyramid
10. The Tree of Life
There's 10 others, but for me, these are the goodies.
Overall observations-
Poe has more humor and fun in him than Lovecraft, but you can still feel the demons gnawing at him.
Lovecraft is totally bleak and mirthless. At least in his stories.
Machen, you can just tell he's having fun.
Like a Victorian era Stephen King.
"The Three Imposters" "The Red Hand" and "The Shining Pyramid" are a trilogy of the Dr. Dyson character.
His buddy, Phillipps, tags along for "Imposters" and "Hand".
Dyson is like Machen's Sherlock Holmes.
"Imposters" weaves the anthology connections around like "Trick R Treat".
Yeah, this ain't "Creepshow" it's "Trick R Treat".
Neat!
I can totally picture "Imposters" as a movie with Cushing and Lee.
Or Price and Lorre.
"Red Hand" and "Pyramid" could've been mashed up as the sequel.
Dyson and Phillipps remind me of Doctor Castleton and Bainbridge from "A Strange Discovery".
Gotta wonder if Dake got inspired by Machen.
"Imposters" is 1895, "Discovery" 1899.
It's entirely possible.
If you were a Poe-head back then, Machen would have been right up your alley.
Personally, I'm sure of it. I take the leap of faith there. I think Dake wanted to fanfic these guys solving the ending of AGP, and he changed the names, and that's what we got.
Poe and H.G. Wells get quick little shout-outs.
Machen's awful politics don't really show up.
If you didn't know about them, you'd think he was lovely.
But, I know about them, and Rosanne Rabinowitz knows about them.
(I'll save it for the Helen review)
Machen's dark take on fairies, and the superior everything in Earthsea, especially "Tehanu" really ruin Peter Beagle's "Sooz" for me.
If Beagle was going for fantasy-horror, Machen is better.
If Beagle was going for empowerment of an S.A. victim, "Tehanu" crushes him to powder.
Beagle blurbed "The Telling" He was a Le Guin reader. He had a better example right fucking there.
33 fucking years ahead of his thing.
Sigh.
Historical trivia tidbits-
Geology and archeology created a "time revolution" that we take for granted today, but was foremost on people's minds in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Machen was the first to layer deep-time onto gothic horror.
The "fairies are a lost strain of caveman" thing he plays with was revolutionary at the time.
Machen makes ancient lost races of myth and legend dark-fairies; HPL takes it the next step, and makes them E.T.s
In Machen's writings, one sees the whole HPL recipe (spread especially across "Pan" "White Powder" and "Black Seal" (the latter two contained in "Imposters")). Secrets that leads to madness. Tentacles. Goo. Ancient religions. Lost races.
Machen and H.G Wells were going to be in a magazine together called "The Unicorn", but it went bust after 3 issues. Wells went on to fame, Machen didn't.
Oscar Wilde loved "Pan"
"The Three Imposters" scared the shit out of Arthur Conan Doyle.
The Oscar Wilde indecency trial set Machen back, because everyone got all "Satanic panic" after that, and wanted morally upstanding pabulum.
Notice the backlash moral panics never hit the J.K. Rowling types. 🙄
Aaaand, that's it.
Ah!! There! That's Poe, Lovecraft, and Machen out of the way; now it's all smooth sailing through progressive rebuttals.
Speaking of!!
Helen's Story (2013)
Overall review-
I think I've easily got my new favorite of this whole goddamned marathon.
I knew somehow in my gut it would be special, but it surpassed expectations, and was wonderful.
Just what I needed.
Rabinowitz's prose struck me as very....Alan Moore-ish. Particularly when he makes Swamp Thing get all cosmic trippy.
In fact, I think I like hers better.
She flows into it more naturally.
And oh, Hell yeah, this story would make Arthur Machen spin in his grave all right. 😏
Specifics (mild spoilers)-
I knew from the cover, and the description, and from reading "Pan" that the rebuttal had to have a lot of sex-positive feminism.
Hahah!! Yup!!! Gives Ursula Le Guin a run for her money! 😎👍
Every little plot nugget of "Pan" pops up, so if you didn't read "Pan" you'd be all set.
But...I'd still recommend reading "Pan" all the same.
Technically, you could jump into "Empire Strikes Back" without "A New Hope" but come on.
So, plot wise...
Helen is alive and well in the 2010's, and is a painter rising up in fame.
Her death in "Pan" was faked by Machen.
In fact, Helen openly points how how dumb and illogical the "Pan" ending is! 😆
Her friend/lover from "Pan", Rachel, inexplicably vanished into some magical dimension, and Helen is still trying to get her back.
When I got the book, I described "Helen's Story" and thus Helen as "the 'Maleficent' of 'Pan'".
She's more like a Frankenstein Monster, in that she's a powered being who doesn't know her own strength.
Rabinowitz doesn't all the way make her a hero, but she's not a malevolent villain either.
She's complicated.
The Victorian era definitely wasn't her proper time.
Hell, we've probably got a few centuries to go to be fully ready for Helen.
The "vile debauchery" Machen shudders at wouldn't make anyone inured to 21st century porn blink.
Rabinowitz fills in those gaps.
In the "Pan" era flashbacks, Helen encounters the character of Villiers, and Rabinowitz uses him to tear into Machen.
It's one scene on one page, but she gets it all in. Gorgeous. 😏
I won't spoil the exact ending, but it's the opposite of what Machen had intended for her.
Transcendence instead of disintegration.
Easter eggs (full spoilers)-
Helen mentions at the beginning of the 20th century, she ran into one like herself.
He was hidden under a trench coat, and gloves, and a hat, but his beard was sticking out, and he reacted to her in fear, and dived into a cab.
I'm pretty goddamned sure this was Wilbur Whateley (from "The Dunwich Horror")!!
If so, coooooool!! 😎👍
It has to be! The history of this story? You have to Easter-egg that in. You have to.
Like the Dake thing from the Machen book, I'm taking the leap of faith on that.
So yes!! "Helen" is HPL rebuttal-quel canon!!!!!! 🥳
Also, I can see going back over my Poe notes that the lineage of "Great God Pan" is a mashup of "Mesmeric Revelation" and "The Case of M. Valdemar".
Then Pan's babies are "Dunwich Horror" and Jason Voorhees's retro-origin in "Jason Goes To Hell".
And if course, this one.
Aaaand, that's it!
Yeah, fuck it, I'm gonna save my Linux overhaul for after the next batch.
Or, maybe I'll do the whole book pile. We'll see.
So!! Up next: Black Tom, Vellitt Boe, and the Ring-Shouters.
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