The Weird Tale: Arthur Machen, Lord Dunsany, Algernon Blackwood, M.R. James, Ambrose Bierce, H.P. Lovecraft

by S.T. Joshi

This landmark study, written by one of the premier critics of weird fiction, proposes a radical new theory of the weird tale. S. T. Joshi sees horror fiction as the "consequence of a worldview," whereby authors consciously restructure the nature of the universe in accordance with their philosophical presuppositions. Joshi analyzes in detail the work of six pioneering writers of weird fiction from the period 1880-1940: Arthur Machen, author of "The Great God Pan" and "The White People" who feared that science was robbing the human imagination of mystery; Algernon Blackwood, a pantheist who, in such works as "The Willows" and "The Wendigo," sought to expand human consciousness and evoke both terror and we; Lord Dunsany, a fantasist whose work anticipated that of J. R. R. Tolkien and who pleaded for the reunification of humanity with the natural world; M. R. James, who exhibited the limitations of the conventional ghost story; Ambrose Bierce, dark satirist whose tales underscored the folly and corruption of the human species; and H. P. Lovecraft, whose "cosmic" philosophy depicted a world, and an entire universe, in the process of inexorable decline. Throughout this book, Joshi writes incisively of individual works of terror and fantasy while examining the lives and philosophies of the authors he discusses. This work, first published in 1990, has taken its place as a seminal text in the interpretation of weird fiction.

Genres: Nonfiction, Horror, Weird Fiction, Literary Criticism, Lovecraftian, Essays, History

292 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Sunand Tryambak Joshi is an Indian American literary scholar, and a leading figure in the study of Howard Phillips Lovecraft and other authors. Besides what some critics consider to be the definitive biography of Lovecraft (H. P. Lovecraft: A Life, 1996), Joshi has written about Ambrose Bierce, H. L. Mencken, Lord Dunsany, and M.R. James, and has edited collections of their works.

His literary criticism is notable for its emphases upon readability and the dominant worldviews of the authors in question; his The Weird Tale looks at six acknowledged masters of horror and fantasy (namely Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, Dunsany, M. R. James, Bierce and Lovecraft), and discusses their respective worldviews in depth and with authority. A follow-up volume, The Modern Weird Tale, examines the work of modern writers, including Shirley Jackson, Ramsey Campbell, Stephen King, Robert Aickman, Thomas Ligotti, T. E. D. Klein and others, from a similar philosophically oriented viewpoint. The Evolution of the Weird Tale (2004) includes essays on Dennis Etchison, L. P. Hartley, Les Daniels, E. F. Benson, Rudyard Kipling, David J. Schow, Robert Bloch, L. P. Davies, Edward Lucas White, Rod Serling, Poppy Z. Brite and others.

Joshi is the editor of the small-press literary journals Lovecraft Studies and Studies in Weird Fiction, published by Necronomicon Press. He is also the editor of Lovecraft Annual and co-editor of Dead Reckonings, both small-press journals published by Hippocampus Press.

In addition to literary criticism, Joshi has also edited books on atheism and social relations, including Documents of American Prejudice (1999), an annotated collection of American racist writings; In Her Place (2006), which collects written examples of prejudice against women; and Atheism: A Reader (2000), which collects atheistic writings by such people as Antony Flew, George Eliot, Bertrand Russell, Emma Goldman, Gore Vidal and Carl Sagan, among others. An Agnostic Reader, collecting pieces by such writers as Isaac Asimov, John William Draper, Albert Einstein, Frederic Harrison, Thomas Henry Huxley, Robert Ingersoll, Corliss Lamont, Arthur Schopenhauer and Edward Westermarck, was published in 2007.

Joshi is also the author of God's Defenders: What They Believe and Why They Are Wrong (2003), an anti-religious polemic against various writers including C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, T. S. Eliot, William F. Buckley, Jr., William James, Stephen L. Carter, Annie Dillard, Reynolds Price, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, Guenter Lewy, Neale Donald Walsch and Jerry Falwell, which is dedicated to theologian and fellow Lovecraft critic Robert M. Price.

In 2006 he published The Angry Right: Why Conservatives Keep Getting It Wrong, which criticised the political writings of such commentators as William F. Buckley, Jr., Russell Kirk, David and Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Phyllis Schlafly, William Bennett, Gertrude Himmelfarb and Irving and William Kristol, arguing that, despite the efforts of right-wing polemicists, the values of the American people have become steadily more liberal over time.

Joshi, who lives with his wife in Moravia, New York, has stated on his website that his most noteworthy achievements thus far have been his biography of Lovecraft, H. P. Lovecraft: A Life and The Weird Tale.

Reviews

[Scott Rhee · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The true weird tale has something more than secret murder, bloody bones, or a sheeted form clanking chains according to rule. A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint, expressed with a seriousness and portentousness becoming its subject, of that most terrible conception of the human brain---a malign and particular suspension of defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of umplumbed space." ---H.P. Lovecraft, "Supernatural Horror in Literature"

Preeminent Lovecraft scholar and amateur literary critic S.T. Joshi ("amateur" is not intended to be insulting; he admits it in the first paragraph of the introduction) spends a large chunk of his introduction in his book "The Weird Tale" trying to describe what a "weird tale" isn't and ultimately finds himself going back to the above definition. It's as good a definition as any.

Joshi's book is, admittedly, for a niche audience. Only a select group of readers actually know what "weird" fiction is, and not everyone in that group actually likes it, so Joshi's book has a very limited appeal.

If, however, you have actually read---and enjoy---stories by Arthur Machen, Lord Dunsany, Algernon Blackwood, M. R. James, Ambrose Bierce, and H. P. Lovecraft (bonus points given if you're actually familiar with at least half those writers), then this might be a worthwhile book to read.

Lovecraft may be the most familiar name on the list and, according to Joshi, the author who is still widely read. Joshi himself is somewhat biased (again, he admits this), as he is a huge Lovecraft fanboy.

Some of the other authors are hardly remembered for their oeuvre, having been relegated to, at best, a literary footnote. Dunsany, for example, essentially invented the "sword-and-sorcery fantasy" genre, which was immediately taken up by, and vastly improved upon by, J.R.R. Tolkein.

Joshi tries to encourage readers to pick up some of these authors, as they were certainly gifted in specific, albeit self-limiting, areas. For example, James was widely regarded as one of the best writers of Victorian-era ghost stories, but that's about all he ever wrote.

While I have read, and love, some of the works of Blackwood ("The Willows" is a chilling horror novella) and Bierce, I have tried to read Machen and Dunsany to varying degrees of success. Machen's style is so overwrought as to almost be unreadable, and Dunsany's fantasy is, while beautifully poetic, just pure silliness. James's ghost stories are, by today's standards, laughably un-scary.

Of course, there is something to be said for reading these old 19th-century gems. Many of them are brilliant and wonderful snapshots of a particular era in our history of a pre-industrial world unsullied by fears of world-wide global destruction. Fears were so much simpler then...

[Jennifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

You can tell a fair amount about Joshi's opinions and preferences just by the number of pages dedicated to each of the six authors covered in his work The Weird Tale. Lovecraft, of whom Joshi is an unabashed fanboy, rates 62 pages; Blackwood, 46; Dunsany, 45; Machen, 30; Bierce, 25; and James, 10. The painfully short shrift Joshi gives M.R. James is somewhat hysterical in light of the author's later being asked to edit and annotate the Penguin Classics editions of James' collected stories - deep within the notes of which he comments that he came to find his chapter on James here "somewhat uncharitable." Machen, on the other hand, only rates the extra five pages over Bierce to allow for the extra vitriol Joshi directs at his philosophies and his writings.

There's a long tradition of authorial bias in literary criticism, however, and it's not so much Joshi's tendency to play favorites that undermines The Weird Tale as his repeated assertion that "good" work simply can't be criticized. (Ex. pg 85: "On Dunsany, many critics - and I will include myself in this number - find his early work so flawless as to be virtually uncriticizable.") Academic literary criticism is not simply nit-picking at flaws; it's intended to contextualize and elucidate an author's works for the reader's better understanding. Joshi's inability - or possibly simple unwillingness - to offer much more than biographies, story summaries, and praise of those authors he most prefers leaves the reader intrigued but unfulfilled, and wondering if perhaps they hadn't better look for a more "critical" opinion elsewhere.

[Maxwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

S.T. Joshi is perhaps the most prolific and distinguished scholar in his field, Weird Fiction in general and H.P. Lovecraft studies in particular. The man edited and wrote introductions for half the books in my library, so he’s been on my radar for awhile. I finally began with The Weird Tale, which he considers to be his magnum opus, and I could immediately see why. Joshi has a reputation for exhaustive erudition and impeccable scholarship, but also blunt-force stubbornness (which is only a demerit if you disagree with him), and this book lives up to his reputation.

The Weird Tale builds on H.P. Lovecraft’s seminal essay Supernatural Horror in Literature, explicating his Modern Masters--Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, Lord Dunsany and M.R. James, adding Ambrose Bierce and Lovecraft himself to round out his thesis, which is more or less that the sometimes-deemed intangible and ephemeral aesthetic project of Weird fiction can be traced back to the philosophical outlook of the author, each of whom is excavated in individual chapters. The canonized Weird writers were preoccupied (for highly variant reasons) with the limitations of human perception, the bluntness of our investigative instruments, and Joshi submits that this perspective led to writing a coherent genre of atmospheric, philosophically oriented supernatural horror fiction. The real monster in any Weird tale is the author, who wants to besmirch any cherished beliefs you have of your own importance as pathetically, tragically pompous and delusional. Their villains won’t make you fear for your life, they’ll excise it of all meaning and value because they are so big and important and indifferent so as to reduce your sense of proportion to crushing insignificance.

I liked The Weird Tale a lot--it is insightful, sensitive, well argued, encyclopedically researched and, most important of all, I agreed with nearly all of it. Joshi’s rhetorical strategies are so old fashioned as to seem fresh and vital, without any of the obscurantist critical theory that has usurped the totality of academe’s critical apparatus. He imparts insights, critiques, commentaries which he arrives at from an exhaustive reading of his subjects (he claims to have read every published word from all his subjects, and I believe him), which he supports by delineating quotes and evidence from his very thorough knowledge, including the academic taboo of biographical context, to create coherent and illuminating readings. This (now absurdly outdated) approach has much to recommend it, but is particularly effective because of the dearth of meaningful analysis on the Weird subgenre, not yet encumbered by decades of theories about theories about theories.

But, again, agreeing with a polemic enhances its resonance immeasurably. My enjoyment may have been smothered by Joshi’s high velocity rhetoric if I didn’t instinctively support his arguments, but they are still superbly wrought. For example, I am not as vociferously atheistic as Joshi, and although I have a taste for occult/esoteric philosophies, I tended to agree with him when he punctured brainless mysticism or sentimental religiosity, particularly in the sections on Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood, both great writers, but evanescent thinkers--there are points where Joshi is flippantly derisive of their supposedly insubstantial mysticism, but he is shrewd and discerning when recognizing its merit (or lack thereof) in a story. His materialism was the basis for fair aesthetic evaluations, so it didn’t really bother me. Anyway, he is equally impartial when disparaging scientifically oriented writers (Ambrose Bierce and Lovecraft) when their views damaged a story.

I skimmed the section on Lord Dunsany, because I have never read him before (although he is now high on my list), however I read the evaluation of Ambrose Bierce (who I haven’t read any stories from either) because he is such a compelling personality, and Joshi really brought him to life. On the other hand, I hate M.R. James and so does S.T. Joshi. Fans will probably be irked by James’ disrespectful and proportionally infinitesimal dismissal, by far the shortest chapter, but I have no interest in that dried up Etonian, who in my opinion possesses the felicity of literal dust and the narrative strategies of a sexually attenuated medieval bibliography. However, I read about Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood with more interest, and there are cogent and useful insights into both of their oeuvres. I have read their major works, but know next to nothing about their lives and ideas, and Joshi correlates and synthesizes perspicacious linkages between them, and draws meaningful conclusions. He is generous to Algernon Blackwood, and likes the stories I have read from Arthur Machen (which I liked too), but is very critical of his later work, which I haven’t read. Anyway, his analysis is powerful and compelling, but there is much territory left uncharted and I left these sections excited by the future work to be done in this field.

Of course, the most extensive, detailed and interrogative portion is saved for H.P. Lovecraft, S.T. Joshi’s favorite writer and mine. He draws some fresh insights into Lovecraft’s mythology, the Gods, monsters and alien cultures, offhandedly dismisses all of his early Dunsany-inspired fantasy as “boring” (I don’t disagree), and untangles the usual anxieties--miscegenation, cultural decadence, industrial capitalism, etc. Most compellingly, he champions Lovecraft’s philosophical position of Cosmic Indifferentism (a species of nihilism) with numerous evocative quotes and ideas, sourced painstakingly from Lovecraft’s tens of thousands of essays and letters, intimidatingly profuse ancillary material. Lovecraft never wrote a philosophical treatise, but his ideas, once scattered and incoherent, are rendered with muscular vitality because of Joshi’s encyclopedic knowledge and intuitive ability to apprehend patterns in enormous literary bodies. This is a very impressive feat of scholarship.

The value of Joshi’s interpretations aside, and I hope I have extolled their significant virtue, what about his thesis? Can Weird fiction necessarily be linked to the author’s wordview? For wildly variant reasons, each of the genre’s major authors believed virulently in the limits of human perception--Ambrose Bierce was a Civil War veteran, driven to pessimism by his traumas, which were sublimated into monsters and ghosts. For Blackwood and Machen, they held a pantheistic mysticism which privileged esoteric systems over the impressions of individual egos, and this manifested as awe-struck stories of sublime terror, often remonstrating with the industrial materialism of modernity. And, of course, H.P. Lovecraft was the sensitive barometer of 20th Century anxieties, mythologizing beauty and terror from Einsteinian physics and Darwinian biology’s humiliating discovery of our own unimportance in a chaotic and indifferent universe. I don’t think you could write a good Weird tale if you believed in a karmic universe, a benevolent cosmic order or even the dignities of the human spirit, and S.T. Joshi demonstrates this with aplomb and comprehensive evidence from the genre’s greatest writers.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.25⭐

CONTENTS:
Preface ✔
Introduction ✔
1. Arthur Machen The Mystery of the Universe
Machen being the author of novels, tales, essays, reviews, autobiography, religious tracts, translations, and many prefaces and introductions to other authors’ books; with the exception of the translations and the newspaper articles, Sunand Tryambak (S. T.) Joshi feels that his whole work is inspired by one idea and one only: the awesome and utterly unfathomable mystery of the universe which Joshi further states that a quotation from Macen's book Hieroglyphics: A Note upon Ecstasy in Literature may in fact provide one with all the background needed to understand Machen’s work: “Man is a sacrament, soul manifested under the form of body, and art has to deal with each and both and to show their interaction and interdependence.” Machen, Arthur. (1902). Hieroglyphics: A Note upon Ecstasy in Literature. London: Grant Richards. (p.73)

2. Lord Dunsany The Career of a Fantaisiste
When comparing Dunsany with Lovecraft Joshi writes "In weird fiction, the course of Dunsany’s writing is in its way even more remarkable than that of Lovecraft: whereas we can see that Lovecraft’s later novelettes and novels, although light-years ahead of his early tales, nevertheless are clearly similar to them in theme and substance, the work of Dunsany is constantly expanding in style, execution, and even philosophical orientation." Joshi points out also that Dunsany’s novels, both early and late, continue his anti-religious diatribe, as well as man's increasing distance away from nature toward industrialization. Joshi strongly contends that Dunsany's later work is just as strong and meaningfully Dunsanyian as his earlier work contrary to what some other critics think. Joshi contends that Dunsany's later work, which is significantly different from his earlier work is by no means inferior to it citing various examples in Dunsany's later writings exemplifying his points.

3. Algernon Blackwood The Expansion of Consciousness
The life and work of Algernon Blackwood are in some ways remarkably similar to those of Arthur Machen. Both were self-confessed mystics, they devoted themselves to a systematic onslaught against materialism and the advance of technology and both suffered extreme poverty in their youth as they tried to make their way as journalists. Joshi feels Blackwood's work which defines his philosophical purpose is to categorize the distinction of his stories by type: stories of awe, stories of horror, and stories of childhood. In Blackwood's tales of awe, he stresses that the human race occupies, to be sure, a small place in the cosmos, but that place is nonetheless vital and important. In Blackwood's tales of horror, the sense of horror is merely a matter of perception: the phenomena may be identical to awe, but whether one feels horror or awe will depend almost entirely upon the degree to which one is in tune with one's own cosmic consciousness. In conclusion Joshi states "In any case, Blackwood is perhaps a unique figure in stressing what might (a little fatuously) be called the optimistic weird tale: his cosmicism, in particular, lacks the chilling remoteness of Dunsany or the contracting horror of Lovecraft, and does so precisely because Blackwood typically sees the human being as an intimate part of the cosmos and not some minute excrescence upon it."

4. M.R. James The Limitations of the Ghost Story
Joshi is basically frustrated that James "knowingly limited his talents to a very restricted field and was profoundly out of sympathy with related branches of the weird tale." That restricted field being ghost stories. The Jamesian ghost embodies all those traits of primitive human beings that are most frightening to the civilized and rational: not merely ignorance but aggressively violent ignorance. The effect is achieved in remarkably subtle ways: hairiness is frequently used as a symbol for barbarity. Many commentators have noted the hairiness of the James ghost; perhaps Lovecraft expressed it best when he said that “the average James ghost is lean, dwarfish, and hairy—a sluggish, hellish night-abomination midway betwixt beast and man—and usually touched before it is seen” Lovecraft, H. P. Supernatural Horror in Literature. (1945). New York: Ben Abramson. pp. 432–33. Joshi sums up his study on James by stating "James showed little development over his career; if anything, there is a decline in power and originality and a corresponding preoccupation—bordering upon obsession—with technique." Joshi discusses him mainly because he feels he is clearly the perfecter of one popular and representative form of the weird tale.

5. Ambrose Bierce Horror as Satire
Joshi aptly sums up Bierce's satiric intent by stating "all he is interested in is a certain type of tableau in which a character is pitilessly placed in a grotesque or unbearable position. This is why so many of his tales—whether of war or of the supernatural—have irony as their central feature: the irony of a man killing his own father in battle; the irony of a husband killing his wife on a false suspicion of adultery; the irony of a man frightened to death by a stuffed snake. It is clear that these are the focal images that came to Bierce’s mind at the moment of inspiration; and he concocted a scenario of events—whether plausibly or not—to work these images into a narrative.
. . . Bierce’s importance in weird fiction rests upon his role as a satiric horror writer—or a horrific satirist. As such he simultaneously founded and closed a genre; he has no successors.

6. H.P. Lovecraft The Decline of the West
In 1921 Lovecraft wrote “No civilization has lasted for ever, and perhaps our own is perishing of natural old age. If so, the end cannot well be deferred.” See Some Repetitions on the Times (1933), first published in Lovecraft Studies, vol. 5, no. 1 (Spring 1986): 13–25.
Joshi examines the dominance of cosmicism [horror stories that involve occult phenomena like astral possession and alien interbreeding] which posits that humanity is an insignificant part of the cosmos and could be swept away at any moment and materialism along with maintenance of a careful realism in every phase of the story in Lovecraft’s fiction. Joshi states that Lovecraft's realism is not an end but a function that heightens the weird by contrast. Joshi highlights how Lovecraft virtually abandoned both supernaturalism and pure fantasy in his later work and shifted from supernaturalism to quasi science fiction.

Epilogue ✔

[Henrik · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitely an engaging and important book, and I agree with Joshi on many of the main points. There are times, however, when I find his strong opinions against a writer (especially M. R. James) a little over the top. It's good to know his views have mellowed a little since;-)

This copy is purchased from S. T. Joshi himself, with a personalized autograph: "To Henrik - a work I still regard as one of my best - S. T. Joshi". And he's right, it is.

(AUGUST 2011: No longer on the to-read list. After all, most books I've read once will be re-read again at some point. No need to make it specific here on GR;-))

[Andrew Higgins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recommend - thought the chapter on Dunsany was good - still thinking about and contextualizing with my explorations into Weird Literature....more to come.

[Louis · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great work of scholarship on an area of literature too often ignored by mainstream critics. Although I might be inclined to disagree with some of Joshi’s literary theory, it nonetheless constitutes a major contribution to the field. Josh offers a great introduction to several foundational figures of weird fiction, and his essay on H.P. Lovecraft may be of great value to both veteran Lovecraft readers and to curious readers with little to no experience reading his work.

[Dylan Rock · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating essays by S.T Joshi on the the weird fiction masters Arthur Machen, Lord Dunsany, Algernon Blackwood, M.R James, Ambrose Bierce and H.P Lovecraft.

[Eleonora Carta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un punto di partenza imprescindibile per accostarsi allo studio del weird.

[KadathVoyager · Rating 5 out of 5]

S T Joshi's overview of the 6 originators of the weird tale.....I always find something new to learn from Joshi, even about Lovecraft (and this is the 4th book about Lovecraft I have read by him). I am glad I chose this as the first book to read on my new Kindle, because the ability to look up words in the dictionary in the device was very useful for this book. I really enjoyed learning about the different words and concepts of philosophy. As well as reading about some of my favorite writers.

[Eddie Watkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

THE authority on Weird Lit, not that there are that many vying for the title. He has applied serious critical standards to a genre bloated with ephemeral crap (but to be more generous, even crap has its place). Very interesting read.

[Steve Wiggins · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great resource on some under-recognized writers of the weird. For anyone who wondered where Lovecraft drew his inspiration, this is a must-read. Further comments at: Sects and Violence in the Ancient World.