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Arthur Machen - Opening the Door
Oct. 3rd, 2007 01:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
joysilenceLJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY dfordoom)
One good thing about our library system – if they buy anything decent for their collection you know they’ll be selling it off within a few months, so if you’re patient you end up owning the book for almost nothing. This time I picked up a little anthology called My Favourite Horror Story, with stories selected by a group of prominent modern horror writers. I bought it for a single story, an Arthur Machen story I’d never even heard of, Opening the Door. This is late Machen, from 1931, but it’s a classic Machen tale. It has the usual themes one associates with his work, especially the sense of a different and rather alien reality lurking behind the everyday world. And like all his best work everything is merely implied or hinted at, and you’re left wondering if anything really happened.
dfordoom)One good thing about our library system – if they buy anything decent for their collection you know they’ll be selling it off within a few months, so if you’re patient you end up owning the book for almost nothing. This time I picked up a little anthology called My Favourite Horror Story, with stories selected by a group of prominent modern horror writers. I bought it for a single story, an Arthur Machen story I’d never even heard of, Opening the Door. This is late Machen, from 1931, but it’s a classic Machen tale. It has the usual themes one associates with his work, especially the sense of a different and rather alien reality lurking behind the everyday world. And like all his best work everything is merely implied or hinted at, and you’re left wondering if anything really happened.
