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)?

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.

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! :-)

I’ll be free this monday,finally, so I’ll join in on the new one.

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!

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!

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?

“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 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.

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!