Transcribe
Translate
Fantasy Commentator, v. 1, issue 7, Summer 1945
Page 155
More information
digital collection
archival collection guide
transcription tips
FANTASY COMMENTATOR 155 in works of novel-length to keep this quality of integrity confined to one all-important mood---unmarred by the other elements present. V What must our final conclusions be? It seems to this writer that in To Walk the Night and The Edge of Running Water there has been attained---without any cheapening---a refinement and maturity of the intellectual type of horror tale so well exemplified by the works of Howard Phillips Lovecraft. None may gainsay the greatness of Lovecraft, but it would appear that Sloane has humanized the cold, often abstract inhumanity of the Lovecraftian concept of the universe. Of course, there will always be a narrower circle of readers who will revel in the pure, unsullied type of psychological weird tale, the umixed story of atmosphere and mood. Machen, de la Mare, Blackwood, Onions and Henry James are among its greatest exponents. Lovecraft---while perhaps not at the very top---has his own unique place of honor among the elect of this pantheon. He will always be remembered as a host in whose writings the reader of analytical mind and subtlest intuitions may find his greatest enjoyment. But we have a larger group of those who demand more action in their reading. They like the weird and fantastic, the spectral and horrifying, but they want something to happen in their fiction---happen in the physical sense rather than merely in a psychical one. They want more events---swiftly moving---and have no patience with psychological subtleties or abstruse cosmic concepts. In short, they want a story! They want recognizable characters and situations which are readily grasped. They demand a measure of self-identification in the persons involved. And to make this more extensive circle of readers more fully appreciative of the greatness of the Lovecraftian attitude is a task well worthy of the best efforts of all of us who know and revere Lovecraft, we who believe that they are missing one of the noblest reading experiences of a lifetime in not being able to take Lovecraft straight. Sloane must be remembered and honored as one who has reinterpreted basic concepts amazingly similar to the superb visions of the great master, expressing them in a form more intelligible and palatable to this wider segment of the reading world. Perhaps his work may well point the way towards the future when the epochal viewpoint of Lovecraft in weird literature may be made cognizable to a vaster portion of the book world. Perchance even some day a sublimation of the the mythos into the greater domain of the novel of character and manners may come. Only then, perhaps, will the world know what a great mind passed on when Howard Phillips Lovecraft died: what a true genius this man was who created a whole new world in literature. A fair share of credit must therefore be extended to William Sloane, who has done a great deed in carrying the spirit of Lovecraft's works towards a more complete and satisfying artistic perfection and maturity. ---oOo--- The Garden at No. 19---concluded from page 146 zlement at the weight of the footsteps he heard on the stairs---steps far too heavy for any human foot to have made. In some episodes of this novel we may be reminded of Marsh's Beetle and the whole mood of the story is probably very close to that of Buchan's Dancing Floor and even more so to Lovecraft's "Case of Charles Dexter Ward." In the last analysis, however, Jepson is himself---his work a comparatively unknown and refreshing addition to the list of great weird tales. ---Matthew H. Onderdonk
Saving...
prev
next
FANTASY COMMENTATOR 155 in works of novel-length to keep this quality of integrity confined to one all-important mood---unmarred by the other elements present. V What must our final conclusions be? It seems to this writer that in To Walk the Night and The Edge of Running Water there has been attained---without any cheapening---a refinement and maturity of the intellectual type of horror tale so well exemplified by the works of Howard Phillips Lovecraft. None may gainsay the greatness of Lovecraft, but it would appear that Sloane has humanized the cold, often abstract inhumanity of the Lovecraftian concept of the universe. Of course, there will always be a narrower circle of readers who will revel in the pure, unsullied type of psychological weird tale, the umixed story of atmosphere and mood. Machen, de la Mare, Blackwood, Onions and Henry James are among its greatest exponents. Lovecraft---while perhaps not at the very top---has his own unique place of honor among the elect of this pantheon. He will always be remembered as a host in whose writings the reader of analytical mind and subtlest intuitions may find his greatest enjoyment. But we have a larger group of those who demand more action in their reading. They like the weird and fantastic, the spectral and horrifying, but they want something to happen in their fiction---happen in the physical sense rather than merely in a psychical one. They want more events---swiftly moving---and have no patience with psychological subtleties or abstruse cosmic concepts. In short, they want a story! They want recognizable characters and situations which are readily grasped. They demand a measure of self-identification in the persons involved. And to make this more extensive circle of readers more fully appreciative of the greatness of the Lovecraftian attitude is a task well worthy of the best efforts of all of us who know and revere Lovecraft, we who believe that they are missing one of the noblest reading experiences of a lifetime in not being able to take Lovecraft straight. Sloane must be remembered and honored as one who has reinterpreted basic concepts amazingly similar to the superb visions of the great master, expressing them in a form more intelligible and palatable to this wider segment of the reading world. Perhaps his work may well point the way towards the future when the epochal viewpoint of Lovecraft in weird literature may be made cognizable to a vaster portion of the book world. Perchance even some day a sublimation of the the mythos into the greater domain of the novel of character and manners may come. Only then, perhaps, will the world know what a great mind passed on when Howard Phillips Lovecraft died: what a true genius this man was who created a whole new world in literature. A fair share of credit must therefore be extended to William Sloane, who has done a great deed in carrying the spirit of Lovecraft's works towards a more complete and satisfying artistic perfection and maturity. ---oOo--- The Garden at No. 19---concluded from page 146 zlement at the weight of the footsteps he heard on the stairs---steps far too heavy for any human foot to have made. In some episodes of this novel we may be reminded of Marsh's Beetle and the whole mood of the story is probably very close to that of Buchan's Dancing Floor and even more so to Lovecraft's "Case of Charles Dexter Ward." In the last analysis, however, Jepson is himself---his work a comparatively unknown and refreshing addition to the list of great weird tales. ---Matthew H. Onderdonk
Hevelin Fanzines
sidebar
