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Reader and Collector, v. 3, issue 3, June 1944

Page 6

6.
maritime knowledge, and its clever selection of hints and incidents suggestive of latent horrors in nature, this book at times reaches enviable peaks of power.

The Night Land (1912) --- is a long-extended (538pp) tale of the earth's infinitely remote future---billions of billions of years ahead, after the death of the sun. It is told in a rather clumsy fashion, and as the dreams of a man in the seventeenth century, whose mind merges with its own future incarnation; and is seriously marred by painful verboseness, repetitiousness, artificial and nauseously sticky romantic sentimentality, and an attempt at archaic language even more grotesque and absurd than that in Glen Carrig.

Allowing for all its faults, it is yet one of the most potent pieces of macabre imagination ever written, and is said to have been the author's favorite among his works. The picture of a night-black, dead planet, with the remains of the human race concentrated in a stupendously vast metal pyramid and besieged by monstrous, hybrid and altogether unknown forces of the darkness, is something that no reader can ever forget. Shapes and entities of an altogether non-human and inconceivable sort---the prowlers of the black, man-forsaken, and unexplored world outside the pyramid---are suggested and partly described with ineffable potency; whilst the night-bound landscape with its chasms and slops and dying volcanism takes on an almost sentient terror beneath the author's touch.

Midway in the book the central figure ventures outside the pyramid on a quest through death-haunted realms untrod by man for millions of years---and in his slow, minutely described, day-by-day progress over unthinkable leagues of immemorial blackness there is a sense of cosmic alienage, breathless mystery, and terrified expectancy unrivalled I the whole range of literature. The last quarter of the book drags woefully, but fails to spoil the tremendous power of the whole.

Mr. Hodgson's later volume, Carnacks, the Ghost-Finder, consists of several longish short stories published many years before in magazines, in quality it falls conspicuously below the level of the other books. We here find a more or less conventional stock figure of the "infallible detective" type---the progeny of M. Dupin and Sherlock Holmes, and the close kin of Algernon Blackwood's John Silence---moving through scenes and events badly marred by an atmosphere of professional "occultism". A few of the episodes, however, are of undeniable power; and afford glimpses of the peculiar genius characteristic of the author.

Something of Mr. Hodgson's career---which included the sea, and which closed heroically with death on the battlefield in 1918---has been told in the article by Mr. Koenig. Here, certainly, is an author not to be ignored; and one may be confident that the years will win him a position close to the rank of fantaisistes.

Note
Two of Lovecraft's stories, "The Rats in the Wall" and "The Dunwich Horror" appear in one of the best omnibus books published, "Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural," edited by Herbert A. Wise and Phyllis Fraser and recently issued by Random House.

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6. maritime knowledge, and its clever selection of hints and incidents suggestive of latent horrors in nature, this book at times reaches enviable peaks of power. The Night Land (1912) --- is a long-extended (538pp) tale of the earth's infinitely remote future---billions of billions of years ahead, after the death of the sun. It is told in a rather clumsy fashion, and as the dreams of a man in the seventeenth century, whose mind merges with its own future incarnation; and is seriously marred by painful verboseness, repetitiousness, artificial and nauseously sticky romantic sentimentality, and an attempt at archaic language even more grotesque and absurd than that in Glen Carrig. Allowing for all its faults, it is yet one of the most potent pieces of macabre imagination ever written, and is said to have been the author's favorite among his works. The picture of a night-black, dead planet, with the remains of the human race concentrated in a stupendously vast metal pyramid and besieged by monstrous, hybrid and altogether unknown forces of the darkness, is something that no reader can ever forget. Shapes and entities of an altogether non-human and inconceivable sort---the prowlers of the black, man-forsaken, and unexplored world outside the pyramid---are suggested and partly described with ineffable potency; whilst the night-bound landscape with its chasms and slops and dying volcanism takes on an almost sentient terror beneath the author's touch. Midway in the book the central figure ventures outside the pyramid on a quest through death-haunted realms untrod by man for millions of years---and in his slow, minutely described, day-by-day progress over unthinkable leagues of immemorial blackness there is a sense of cosmic alienage, breathless mystery, and terrified expectancy unrivalled I the whole range of literature. The last quarter of the book drags woefully, but fails to spoil the tremendous power of the whole. Mr. Hodgson's later volume, Carnacks, the Ghost-Finder, consists of several longish short stories published many years before in magazines, in quality it falls conspicuously below the level of the other books. We here find a more or less conventional stock figure of the "infallible detective" type---the progeny of M. Dupin and Sherlock Holmes, and the close kin of Algernon Blackwood's John Silence---moving through scenes and events badly marred by an atmosphere of professional "occultism". A few of the episodes, however, are of undeniable power; and afford glimpses of the peculiar genius characteristic of the author. Something of Mr. Hodgson's career---which included the sea, and which closed heroically with death on the battlefield in 1918---has been told in the article by Mr. Koenig. Here, certainly, is an author not to be ignored; and one may be confident that the years will win him a position close to the rank of fantaisistes. Note Two of Lovecraft's stories, "The Rats in the Wall" and "The Dunwich Horror" appear in one of the best omnibus books published, "Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural," edited by Herbert A. Wise and Phyllis Fraser and recently issued by Random House.