Uncommon Places: A Collection of Exquisites

by W.H. Pugmire, Gwabryel (Illustrator)

Like poison leaked from some acidic brain, this book will haunt you with the language and vision of the lost.

For more than four decades, W. H. Pugmire has delighted and astonished his many devotees with vignettes of perfumed prose-poetry that rival the work of Baudelaire and Clark Ashton Smith. In this new collection, which contains both new and reprinted pieces, Pugmire once again stakes his claim to be the most accomplished prose stylist in contemporary weird fiction. Here we find the shades of Lovecraft, Poe and Oscar Wilde—that dandified British author whose life and work hover over this collection like a sea-mist. We explore the shadows spawned in Sesqua Valley... Providence, Rhode Island... and Gershom, a city of artistic exiles. The title work is an impressive sequence of prose-poems, each segment inspired by an entry in Lovecraft's Commonplace Book, fusing delicate prose-poetry with the terror that only the landscape of the fantastic imagination can elicit.

This new collection includes all of the original works which first appeared in The Tangled Muse, Wilum Pugmire's highly-limited (and now, out of print) Centipede Press omnibus, together with a number of newly-written and rather disturbing prose-poems that see their first publication here. The title work also appeared in The Tangled Muse, but the author has added 10,000 additional words to it for this edition — most of the new material being a segmented sequel to J. Vernon Shea's The Haunter of the Graveyard.

Uncommon Places features cover artwork and interior illustrations by the fantastic Swiss artist, Gwabryel, specially commissioned for this edition.

Contents:
- An Identity in Dream
- Artifice
- Cesare
- The Host of Haunted Air
- Hempen Rope
- Cathedral of Death
- House of Legend
- Inhabitants of Wraithwood
- In Memoriam: Oscar Wilde
- The Zanies of Sorrow
- In Remembrance: Edgar A. Poe
- Keepsake
- Postcard from Prague
- Necronomicon
- Sickness of Heart
- The Tangled Muse
- Chamber of Dreams
- Some Distant Baying Sound
- Some Buried Memory
- Your Ghost on Glass
- Letters from an Old Gent
- Uncommon Places

Genres: Horror, Weird Fiction, Lovecraftian

270 pages, Paperback

First published February 28, 2012

About the author

Wilum Hopfrog Pugmire (born William Harry Pugmire, 1951–2019) was a writer of weird fiction and horror fiction based in Seattle, Washington. His works typically were published as W.H. Pugmire (his adopted middle name derives from the story of the same title by Edgar Allan Poe) and his fiction often paid homage to the lore of Lovecraftian horror. Lovecraft scholar and biographer S.T. Joshi described Pugmire as "the prose-poet of the horror/fantasy field; he may be the best prose-poet we have" and as one of the genre's leading Lovecraftian authors.

Wilum lived in Seattle, WA and wrote Cthulhu Mythos fiction full-time. He was the self-proclaimed "Queen of Eldritch Horror". Writing weird fiction was his life, but congestive heart failure slowed his writing. He considered his finest books to be Some Unknown Gulf of Night (Arcane Wisdom Press 2011), Uncommon Places (Hippocampus Press 2012) and The Tangled Muse (Centipede Press 2011).

Reviews

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another typically heady vintage from the master-vintner of the weird, romantic, decadent and phantastical, the Queen of Eldritch Horror, W.H. Pugmire. Some of this material is reprinted from earlier collections, but they take on a fresh hue and flavour from their new context, and the reprints from the pricey 'Tangled Muse' volume are appreciated. The original material is nothing short of intoxicating, especially the title piece, a remarkable set of fragments and stories inspired by items from HP Lovecraft's Commonplace Book. Inhabitants of Wraithwood is the other highlight among the new material, a phantasmagoria shot through with pre-ordained doom, perverse eroticism, dark sensualism, and macabre aestheticism. Pugmire is the single most *unique* voice in weird fiction today and these fermentations of all that is outre and phantasmal belong in every connoisseur's cellar.

[Dominique Lamssies · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of short pieces is typical of Pugmire in that it is full of elegant and decadent prose that challenges the reader's perceptions of beauty. He is also the rare writer who can bring a sense of beauty and sensuality to the Lovecraftian mythos. Highly recommended.

[Otto Hahaa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tämä on toinen lukemani Pugmiren kirja, ja tässä mennään vielä syvemmälle nyrjähtäneeseen mielenmaisemaan. Tässä on muutama pidempi tarina, joissa on ihan juonikin, mutta enimmäkseen nämä ovat lyhyitä proosarunoja. Ne vaativat oman mielentilan lukemisekseen, kylmiltään ne voivat tuntua omilta parodioiltaan tai nyrjähtäneen tekoälyn tuotoksilta (GPT-93 tms.), mutta oikealla hetkellä ja oikeassa mielentilassa luettuna niissä on oma vissi charminsa.

Näissä tarinoissa Lovecraft saa seurakseen Poen ja Wilden, ja edellisen vuosisadan vaihteen dekadenssi on tuotu meidän vuosisadan vaihteeseemme. Tarinoissa on unenomainen tunnelma, ja siinä ne ovat lähempänä Poeta kuin Lovecraftia. Lovecraftin tarinat, varsinkin hänen myöhäisemmät, tapahtuvat rationaalisessa todellisuudessa, jos ei yliluonnollisia kummituksia ole, vaan jotain jotka menevät yli ihmisen käsityskyvyn. Pugmiren tarinoissa on puolestaan tapahtumia, jotka ovat mitä suurimmassa määrin yliluonnollisia, ja rationaalisen selityksen etsiminen on turhaa.

Edellisestä kirjasta tuttuja outoja (vai pitäisikö sanoa ”kummia”) teemoja, kuten silmien suutelu, huomasin. Sanasto on taas frevenssisanakirjan loppusivuilta, eli sanakirjaa pitää välillä selailla.