Dreadful Thoughts Story Club 10: The Inmost Light
Welsh Anglo-Catholic occultist. Member (briefly) of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Avowed anti-materialist. Inspirer of everyone's favourite pathologically racist horror grandmaster: H.P. Lovecraft. Sometime scandaliser of (an easily scandalised) Victorian society. Fearer/Lover of fauns who gambolled oftentimes in the dingly dell. These are but a few pieces of the puzzle that is/was Arthur Llewelyn Jones – a.k.a Arthur Machen (1863-1947).
This week we focus our dreadful magnifying glasses on his 1894 tale, "The Inmost Light". A story of (among other things) urban & sub-urban London – a city that became for Machen (one source suggest) "as numinous…as the Gwent of his boyhood". Oh and then there are the small matters of (what may or may not be) a human soul, its absence, and (shriek!) what rushes in to fill the void.
So pop open the nearest rotund bottle of Benedictine, repeat (endlessly) the jingle "Once around the grass, and twice around the lass, and thrice around the maple-tree", and get typing some lovely and interesting words.
March 23, 2009
23 responses to Dreadful Thoughts Story Club 10: The Inmost Light
I liked the story, but with some reservations. Not to be dissing the bould Arthur, but weren’t the coincidences propelling his narrative just a little improbable? (Chap A bumps into Chap B, who tells him a sinister mystery story. On the very same night, Chap A finds a piece of paper in the street that is directly related to the same mystery. He gives it to Chap B, who then accidently stumbles upon the very place where he can use the note to resolve the mystery.) Or are we supposed to see the dark hand of Fate in all these seemingly accidental happenings?
There’s no Benedictine (or any other hard liquor) for me tonight, by the by, as I’m up early in the morning. I’ll pop back in sometime tomorrow.
Doubtful, A good place to begin.
I think Machen would see said “coincidences” as part and parcel of a mysterious otherworld that lies parallel to our own. In that sense I don’t think you could describe the events as contrived in the usual sense – say as in a Dickens novel. There’s a sort of inescapable momentum and force driving things toward a certain end I guess. The “coincidences” are, after all, recognised as such by the characters involved. Part of the chill they feel is down to apparent loose ends re-entangling themselves horribly.
Man but a pawn in the centre of an otherwordly vortex he can’t hope to comprehend and all that!
Can’t figure out if this is a deliberate mislead or not, but we’re surely encouraged to think that Salisbury (prosaic, literal-minded lump that he is) is going to end up getting his comeuppance. A numinous toe up the hole. A ruffling of his rational feathers.
Yet it doesn’t happen. The focus switches back to Dyson and the final revelation is his alone. Odd detail of construction.
I thought that Machen was aiming for the whole “there are dark powers controlling our destiny” type of thing, but I’m not sure if it actually works here. If that type of atmosphere is to succeed, it needs to have more of a point. (Like, for example, leading non-believer Salisbury to a fearful awakening, or something…)
And on a different note, Dr Black sure had an understanding wife! “Today’s to-do list: Make breakfast, iron shirts, sweep the kitchen, help Hubby by having my soul driven out of body.”
Sorry, posted the same comment twice.
I have a new bike, so I didn’t do my homework, but I hope the old push and pull will continue for another day or two. I’ve missed DT.
Meh. But that’s so predictable. I quite enjoyed the fact that Salisbury drops out of sight 3/4 of the way through and isn’t present for the pay-off. It’s an odd detail that makes the story stand out from standard “comeuppance” genre tales.
It’s notable too that the main “coincidences” happen in Soho – which represents a sort of city within the city. It’s where Salisbury finds the paper tossed at his feet and where Dyson bumps in to Dr. Black (after stooping to pick up his hat). It’s (as seen through Dyson’s eyes) a multi-ethnic, chaotic, dark but exciting place where such improbabilities seem less improbable. A place you wander absent-mindedly into. A place of magic.
And yes, Mrs. Black’s eagerness to please is off the scale!
Well the idea is to keep things boiling over till next Monday so there’s plenty of time to lavish on your new bike and get involved!
I’m still not wholly convinced … So I’m off to read the story again! Will return anon.
Another thought: how does a doctor recognise the “brain of a devil”? An abnormal brain, granted; a non-human brain, far enough; but a brain that is clearly not just abnormal but eeee-vil? Did it have a label on it? I know that the story suggests that the doctor merely has an intuition, but I can’t help wondering…
(I now have a worry that my doctor will examine an X-Ray and recoil from me shuddering, mumbling something about “an ingrowing toenail … of the Devil!”)
Yes, the doctor does seem to make rather a large judgmental leap.
“Do you think it could be evidence of some hitherto unknown brain malady, Gregson?”
“No. It’s the brain of the devil and the patient had to be destroyed”
“Yes…well…er…looks like it might rain later”
I read The Great God Pan (GGP) and The Novel of the White Powder last night, along with Inmost Light again.
Doesn’t this story and GGP have a lot of similarities (an experiment gone hideously wrong involving a clinical scientist/doctor and a weirdly acquiescent woman, multiple narrators, and bold, daring men taking it into their hands to terminate the existences of female monstrosities)?
On the subject of improbabilities, I’d like to quote Lovecraft on GGP: “the charm of the tale is in the telling … [but] coincidence is stretched to a length which appears absurd upon analysis”. Or ST Joshi: “[Inmost Light] makes a use of coincidence even more flagrantly implausible than [GGP]“
Conscious of the virginity that is being surrendered by the writing of this comment, I shall try to come quickly to the point, apologise profusely afterwards, and then blurt out my undying love for DT.
Okay… I found the opening conversation to be very stilted. For example, pleasantries are plonked in beside lines intended to advance the plot in a way that feels about as comfortable as An Taoiseach would be if he ever got photographed standing between a certain two portraits of his cherubic good looks.
To put this in a different way, which allows me then to broaden the point out to the rest of the story, the entire pace feels like the author is in a huge hurry, yet the reason for the haste is not apparent. Instead, the story feels like a draft framework that now needs to be fleshed out by him into something that might instil some interest/dread into the reader.
Now, this brings me to another point, the devil woman. Look, a bed-bound and mortal diabolical entity just is not scary. Fine, as Dyson perceptively says, other writers focus too much on blood. Yet, I too am far happier with psychological horror, but am disappointed by what I find here.
I also share Doubtful’s bemusement with the astonishing degree of coincidence employed in the story. Again, it is the fast pace that Machen maintains that makes these unlikely occurrences seem like sardines squashed in a tin.
In any event, I do take issue with Fustar’s defence of the nature of these coincidences (#3). Take the street fight that leads to Salisbury miraculously ending up with the coded note, as an example. The street fight is a complete decoy as it offers nothing else of relevance to the story. Instead of the fight, Salisbury might equally have just gone straight home and a golden eagle could have flown into his room that evening and dropped the note on his pillow instead. Why? Because to accept Fustar’s argument of “inescapable momentum� is to see the key events as being entirely predetermined and the means by which they happen as unimportant. Therefore, you can be as ridiculous or as mundane as you like.
In other words, to accept his point (and I even suspect that he may be right!) is to accept that the story’s “inescapable momentum� offers no hope at any stage and, therefore, that there is no page-turning suspense for the reader who is conscious of this style. If so (and to conclude on an open question), what is the point of such a tale?
Jesus, Machen’s taking a bit of a hammering! While I don’t want to play up the devil’s advocate (ha!) role too much I’ll try and explain why the “coincidences” don’t bother me and why I feel that criticisng the story on that level is somewhat redundant.
The question, for me, is not if the pile-up of coincidences is “improbable” from a realist perspective (it is!) but rather whether these “improbabilities” injure or weaken the story to any great extent.
I don’t think they do.
If the tale were, say, a realist detective/crime effort then I’m sure I’d find the improbabilities a bit hard to swallow. In the context of a horror tale about souls, magical spaces and places, and doors that can’t be closed once opened, I’m happy to allow Machen some licence.
And anyway – the coincidences are (as suggested before) clues that suggest, to the characters involved, that they are being led inexorably deeper and deeper into a horrible puzzle/mystery. They’re part of the architecture of the story. It’s not just sloppy writing.
Oh and welcome, Longman. Hope it didn’t hurt too much first time out!
Good to see the authorities haven’t silenced you yet, Fustar!
I’m sorry to come across as hammering Machen, but I did feel this story, while interesting, was a little weak. I certainly don’t think it’s sloppily written, but I’m just not sure that he pulls off the effect he’s trying for. In comparison, The Great God Pan is as improbable, but is much more powerful, if you overlook its misogyny and loathing of sex, as is Novel of the White Powder, and they deal with roughly the same subject matter: breaking the veil that hides the true metaphysical reality from our mundane one, bodily transformations, and so forth.
Some of the descriptive passages are quite fine, though, and the scene where he sees the transformed Mrs Black in the window is admirably chilling. It has given me the impetus to find a copy of The White People, which I’ve never read (to my shame!).
A great line: “I had a good classical education, and a positive distaste for business of any kind.”
A few other points (now Willow has settled).
1) The conversations between Dyson & Salisbury may seem stilted but it’s worth bearing in mind that a) The story’s well over a hundred years old, and, b) that the affected nature of it mimics the stylings of decadent Victorians like Wilde et al.
2) I don’t agree that the “street fight is a complete decoy” that “offers nothing else of relevance to the story” at all. It provides background colour for one thing, painting Soho as an “uncivilised” otherworld (far from Oxford St) where plots, schemes and secrets get played out by desperate characters. More importantly it alerts us (we subsequently realise) to the existence of a trade in terrible things – with the thing in question here seeming to cause misery for everyone it touches.
It also, crucially, forces Salisbury to wrestle with his own prosiac-mindedness. He feels compelled to pick up the paper tossed apparently randomly in his direction. He scolds himself for this compulsion, trying to tell himself that the event has no meaning, but he still picks it up, pockets it, and nearly panics the following morning at the thought that it might not be there.
3) I think the face of a thing that is not quite human glimpsed for a moment at a window is a genuinely scary image! It scared me. I mean, come on – face at the window. It’s a classic!
Ah, nice to see Fustar joining the ranks of those who can’t sit down long. Because of Willow, of course, not haemmaroids.
I’ll be free this monday,finally, so I’ll join in on the new one.
I didn’t have a problem with the dialogue either. It seems par for the course of that time. (I recommend MP Sheil if you want to experience some seriously florid dialogue; he makes Lovecraft look like Hemingway).
And I’d agree with you that it’s nice the way the story leaves a mysteriousness around the nature of the people who obviously steal and are trying to sell the opal. Who is Q? Or Mr Davies? Although I wonder if we are supposed to see a conspiracy of fiendish traders in “that which man was not meant to meddle with”, or just criminals who’ve stumbled across something outside their experience.
Thanks for the responses.
I must have not been clear enough on the “stilted dialogue” point, as I was misunderstood by you both. It had nothing to do with Mr. M using the language of the day and rather the rushed nature of the affair, which makes their conversation more artificial than it ought to have been.
Equally, Fustar, I do appreciate the genre that I am reading(!) and I accept (would have always accepted) the basic tenet of your most recent point on coincidences.
However, I remain firmly of the view that there are too many such highly improbable occurences for a story of this length. In other words, there is just not enough opportunity for an atmosphere to be created that allows me to suspend my disbelief as a reader.
Therein lies the key to my disappointment with this story. Roll on the next one!
It definitely does have all of those similarities, but, for me anyway, one key difference. The Great God Pan starts off superbly with that brilliant first chapter (which was apparently a self-contained short story before Machen expanded it), but bogs down a bit in its development. The Inmost Light on the other hand starts off somewhat sketchily (well, after the beautifully evocative opening line) with the meeting of Salisbury and Dyson, but really becomes gripping as it develops. By the end, I was positively hooked.
I guess both have endings that would be considered rushed and inconclusive by a lot of modern readers, but the vague nature of the conclusions is precisely what appeals to me about a lot of weird fiction (and it’s pretty common across the weird spectrum). That said, I think The Inmost Light’s vague conclusion is a lot more effective than the one in The Great God Pan.
I did have a bit of a problem with the dialogue between Salisbury and Dyson at first, but eventually got over it. It’s not really dramatically worse than some other Victorian dialogue I’ve read over the years. Machen was definitely stronger at descriptive prose than dialogue, though. Really, I’m absolutely mad for that opening line about the ‘deformities of London.’ It’s exactly the sort of thing I’d have killed to write back when I was trying my hand at my own weird tales.
It seems that Brian Cowen’s bare gut has drawn attention away from poor Arthur Machen, so I’m just chiming in to say that I read The White People last night and was very impressed by its strange, sinister atmosphere and wonderfully creepy vagueness. And yes, the end of The Great God Pan is pretty weak! So, can I get a badge now?
Sorry, I know I’ve neglected this. Didn’t see recent developments coming! Will promise to be on the ball for next one, which I’ll announce shortly.
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