Arthur Machen’s The White People

[joysilence]

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY dfordoom)

Arthur Machen’s The White People deals with the idea of other realities that intersect what we think of as our everyday reality. The worlds of pagan antiquity, the realms of faerie, still exist but not everyone can perceive them. These are disturbing worlds, sensual worlds, and for those who come in contact with them the results are not always happy. The story also deals with the notion of Sin as having nothing to do with ordinary concepts of right and wrong; rather it is a striving for things that are not meant for mere humans, in some ways it’s a striving to be godlike, or to possess knowledge and powers and experiences that are forbidden. In the story a man I given a journal to read, a journal kept by a young girl. It describes her experiences with these other realities, and these forbidden things.

Machen was interesting in being very much a decadent writer at a time when decadent writing had passed out of fashion, and was considered somewhat dangerous in the wake of the Oscar Wilde trials. The White People dates from 1899. Machen was a very considerable influence on the writers of weird fiction of the 1920s an 1930s, writers like Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith. I just can’t recommend Machen’s work highly enough – a truly wonderful writer.

Ann Radcliffe's The Italian (1797)

[joysilence]

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY dfordoom)

The Italian is the first of Ann Radcliffe’s novels that I’ve read. I can certainly see why Jane Austen just couldn’t help herself and had to parody this style of book in Northanger Abbey. The absurdly complicated and melodramatic plot that relies on so many ridiculous coincidences was too easy a target to be ignored. The other great fault of the book is that the characterisations are just too black and white. The book does have considerable strengths though. Radcliffe is exceptionally good at creating suspense and in ratchetting up the tension. Her prose is pleasing, and although she’s been criticised for going overboard with the descriptive passages I didn’t find that a problem at all in The Italian. It’s also worth considering that a reader in the 1790s would probably have found it easier to empathise with characters like the Marchese and his wife and their obsession with family honour.

Despite its faults The Italian is great entertainment. Radcliffe’s feeling for landscape and the way she relates the landscape to the story and to the emotional states of her characters and to their situations is also impressive. Of the early gothic novels I’ve read I still prefer Matthew Lewis’s The Monk but I do want to read more of Radcliffe’s novels.