The White People and Other Stories: The Best Weird Tales of Arthur Machen, Volume 2 [Paperback]

I was vary impressed by Chaosium's first collection of Machen's work, which was THE THREE IMPOSTERS AND OTHER STORIES. "The Three Imposters" was a narrative of interwoven tales describing a paranoid man's encounter with three people who are not who they seem. Each is an excellent story in its own right, but the whole is greater than the sum. Considering the success of the first volume, I decided to try the second.

If you don't know Arthur Machen, he wrote "weird" stories in the late Victorian - Edwardian period. They all have a distinctly British flavor that reminds me of M.R. James. Most of his stories are set in his homeland of Wales, where something of charm and magic remains beneath the hills. By necessity he began to write for a newspaper later in life, and a fictional account he wrote for the paper on spectral guardians for British troops in WWI became the "Angel of Mons" stories you can still read about today.

THE WHITE PEOPLE AND OTHER STORIES is an eclectic collection of Machen's weird stories, his poetry, and some of his later writings for newspapers. Despite being a fan of Lovecraft, I have always wondered what HPL meant when he consistently referred to a protagonist hinting at things unknown (to others), dropping outlandish names and meaning more than is said. Well, he borrowed this technique from Machen's "The White People", a story made to look like a young girl's diary. Her journal is just a collection of thoughts and experiences, and many things are hinted at as reminders to herself which we will never understand, but these brief glimpses are horrible enough. Machen's poetry collection, "Ornaments in Jade", also struck me as weirdly beautiful but also indecipherable. More is unsaid than said, hinted at than revealed. I felt that it relied on some code, a common frame of reference, that has been lost over the course of a hundred years. Perhaps his contemporaries felt the same way.

There are other interesting compositions in this volume. "The Red Hand" brings back the investigating protagonists from "The Three Imposters," with a not-too-dissimilar plotline. "A Fragment of Life" seemed to be a glimpse into the everday life from a time long ago. It is almost novel length and simply describes the common affairs of a couple in turn-of-the-century London. If this sounds uninteresting, you'll have to read for yourself how a masterful author makes common situations uncommon. Finally, there are a series of stories written from Machen's journalistic days. Besides a group that are all related to the "Angel of Mons" category, there are a few others that describe other supernatural phenomena and are written in the first-person. They are so straight-forward and sincere that sometimes it is difficult to remember they are meant to be fiction.

Machen's overarching theme is that the material, everday world is merely a shadow of reality and that true living must penetrate that shadow to see the glories beyond. This is something he truly believed and it is evident in all of his stories. The reason these stories continue to frighten and thrill is that we desire to see what is beyond the veil, but we are also afraid of what we will find.

I often find myself drawn to the explicit- gore and carnage, ala Bentley Little and Richard Laymon, so the sublety of Machen's writing was quite a departure for me. The style is quite beautiful- this is a talented writer whose prose will sweep you away with its pure visual beauty.

You will not grasp the entire sequence of events first in these tales, you may have to read them a second time, but that is a pleasure given the author's pleasing style. Perhaps it is time to take a break from the overt that is so prevalent in books and films today, and return to a kinder, gentler time where what is not said can be even more horrifying than what is thrown in your face. This is Machen.

This is one of those collections which earns a lower rating through no fault of its own: it does the best it can with what it has, but the limitations of the material occasionally drag it down. This second, later collection of Machen's works begins brilliantly. "The Red Hand" is a murder mystery with a sinister paranormal bent, as readable as a mystery should be but in no way insubstantial. The prose-poems of Ornaments in Jade are remarkable: their brevity and style make them hugely consumable even though they demand considerable attention--but they pay that attention back tenfold with haunting, ambiguous, beautiful vignettes. "The White People" is a vivid dream, fluid and inexplicit, richly atmospheric while avoiding the clichés of the horror genre; its demands revisiting, and I plan to reread it soon. Those selections alone make this collection worthwhile--which is a good thing, because the rest of the volume flags. It's by no means bad--Joshi admits to editing out what's not worth reading, and what remains is perfectly consumable. A Fragment of Life and "The Coming of the Terror" are both beautifully paced revelations of old secrets which haunt the fringes of modern life, and I'll readily admit that my mixed response to the rest of the selections (most of which focus on World War I) may largely be an issue of personal taste. But on the whole, the second half of this collection lacks the vibrancy of the first: some stories have sour endings, some run too long, and none of them feel like essential, truly satisfying reading. That they're grouped together only exacerbates these flaws.

As a volume, The White People and Other Stories is as much about exploring Machen's oeuvre as reading his best work, and it balances coverage against accessibility. Joshi is a fantastic editor and he selects wisely, as well as providing a solid, authoritative introduction (although I wish there were also footnotes). So on that note, this collection is a success--but it isn't a must-have for the average reader. Ornaments in Jade and "The White People," however, certainly are, and a bit more Machen (like the other stories mentioned in this review) wouldn't hurt. At his best, Machen writes with deceptive fluidity: either gently poetic or unassumingly straightfoward, his prose flows along so smoothly that the reader may almost--but not quite--miss what's happening in the shady corners; in careful time he builds strong suspense and comes to the brink of revelation without treading so far as to lose the magic, and the effect is fantastic. This was my introduction to Machen, and I like what I see and intend to seek out more. He as an author I enjoy and recommend; this collection I can give or take.