“the foppishly speculative”

Maybe I was a bit hard on M.P. Shiel’s “The House of Sounds” (a bit more on that in a moment). But I did enjoy the following passage. Although it may be a bit of a stylistic rip-off of Poe, the fact remains that Poe never got around to writing it, but Shiel did:

“By a whim of his mood the few books which now lay within the limits of his patience had all for their motive something of the picaresque, or the foppishly speculative: Quevedo’s ‘Tacaño’; or the system of Tyco Brahe; above all George Hakewill’s ‘Power and Providence of God.'”

(Yes, “above all.” *laughing*)

That’s it… I was wondering for the past several years what exactly was wrong with Tyco’s system, and now I realize that it’s just too foppishly speculative.

Actually, I wonder which books of philosophy most fit this description. One good nominee would be anything by Paracelsus. Or any work by one of the medium-level stars of Neoplatonism: Iamblichus, for example. In Bristol next week, we ought to form a “Foppishly Speculative Realism” splinter group.

But back to the main point… What I dislike about Shiel’s story is the way it fails to hold together systematically. One thing that Lovecraft has in common with Poe is that both are able to make you believe in what they’re talking about, building up to it step by step. More than this, their nonfiction essays on how to write fiction show both of them to be perfectly aware of the need to do so.

Shiel’s story, however imaginative, is one that features one “cool” idea after another, but the wires are showing. I never forget that I’m reading a story by someone who is trying hard to write a story. Also, as I said the other day, it’s a simple crossbreading of “Rue Morgue” and “House of Usher”, with the weird water-house thrown in as a new idea. And the “sailing through the Orkneys” part simply reminds me of Frankenstein too much.