|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
Frequently Bought Together
Product Details
|
Product Description
Book Description
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Convinced to buy Vol. 2,
By
This review is from: The Three Impostors and Other Stories: Vol. 1 of the Best Weird Tales of Arthur Machen (v. 1) (Paperback)
As the title says, I found this collection so intriguing that I will be buying the next volume (The White People and other Tales). The only work that I had previously known by Arthur Machen was "The Great God Pan", which has shown up in so many anthologies that I am thoroughly sick of it, although it is a good read the first few times through. "The Inmost Light" was quite disturbing to me in terms of plumbing the depravity of the human soul. "The Shining Pyramid" was a good supernatural detective story, in my opinion, although the intuitive leaps made by the protagonist would have made Fox Mulder proud. This clearly inspired quite a few of Robert Howard's stories.Clearly, the crown jewel of this collection is "The Three Imposters." The deeper I got into this novel, the more engrossed I became. It is made up of 14 short stories, each of which is part of an overarching storyline that involves the protagonist, a golden coin, a man with spectacles, and 3 people who are not who they say they are. Each successive short story drew me in further. Some of the best reading I have done in years!
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Review of the Three Imposters with a Calumny against Joshi,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Three Impostors and Other Stories: Vol. 1 of the Best Weird Tales of Arthur Machen (v. 1) (Paperback)
If you're familiar with Machen, you've probably read the frequently anthologized chapters of "The Three Imposters" -- "The Novel of the White Seal" and "The Novel of the Black Powder" -- as stand alone short stories. I found that I appreciate them more after having read them in their original context as chapters or "novels" of this odd picaresque (or maybe arabesque) novel. In "The Three Imposters", these "novels" appear as stories narrated by characters within the main plot. It's an interesting idea. However, the "novels" stand out as better stories than the narrative in which they are imbedded. So I'm not sure it's such a good idea. The book ends with a truly gruesome finish -- even for Machen.This is definitely a worthwhile read even if you've read the aforementioned novels. As usual, skip Joshi's introduction. For example, Joshi finds the source of Machen's numinous sense of horror in -- surprise! -- Machen's Victorian discomfort with sexuality. Not to mention the fact that he was a Christian, too. Ooh those Christians just hate sex! I suppose we are then to believe that Machen undertook the translation of Casanova's "Memoirs" as some sort of penance, like the protagonist's hair shirt in Machen's "Hill of Dreams". (Machen's "Memoirs" is still the standard translation in English, by the way.) Or could it be the case that Machen was more subtle than the freshman composition caricature of a sexually repressed Victorian Anglo-Catholic Joshi draws in his introduction; that in fact one of Machen's great themes is the reconciliation of sensuality with mysticism? Not surprisingly Joshi, who professes a peculiarly coarse and unreflective variety of atheistic materialism, is blind to this possibility. Whatever happened to E. F. Bleiler or Lin Carter? (Well, they're dead, sadly. But can't Chaosium and Dover find a better editor for their Weird Fiction?)
4.0 out of 5 stars
the objective approacher,
By jan erik storebø (norway) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Three Impostors and Other Stories: Vol. 1 of the Best Weird Tales of Arthur Machen (v. 1) (Paperback)
arthur machen is a great writer. his approach to his own material is calm, cold and scientific. sometimes it feels like a public servant writing a report (by that I am refering to his technical approach, like detective novels, this does NOT mean boring, it means details, objective considerations, etc), without passion. arthur machen most times only hints at what's going on, maybe letting some character come with a theory (this is what I mean by scientific). his style is suggestive. not being a passionate writer, machen doesn't carry you away, but he sure can make you believe his stories. his stories mostly dwells at one thing (a personality change, for example), making the story sometimes too boring. his greatest accomplishment is his stories about the little people, where there are many interesting stories.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Want to see more reviews on this item?
|
Most recent customer reviews |
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
|
