the Machen story

“The White People” strikes me as a failure, on the whole, though maybe I’m just missing something.

The first section (the conversation on good and evil) is both insightful and brilliantly written. I was excited by the end of that section, and Machen seemed completely in control at that point.

The second section (the little girl’s notebook) is delightfully weird for the first 10 pages, but becomes a bit of a bore after that, for me at least.

And I also see no good reason not to paragraph it. (Anything we write is going to be read by real humans, and real humans are easily bored and distracted. Give them information and images in digestible chunks.)

I like the matter-of-fact transition to the final section, but find the section itself vague, confusing, unmoving, and somewhat spiritually pretentious. It certainly doesn’t live up to the ominous promise of the opening discussion.

Too little has been made of the stylistic bond between Lovecraft and Poe, and both take unfair criticism about style from various quarters. One of the things at which they both excel is that both are in constant communication with their readers. There is rarely a sentence where either of them lose me, in their best work. I never start skimming when reading Lovecraft or Poe. There are other stylistic links as well.