Never too Late to Read Classics discussion

The Willows by Algernon Blackwood

Here is a fun audiobook of the Willows by the same narrator who has read all of HP Lovecraft's work. I hope you all enjoy it! :D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jexum...

Two friends are midway on a canoe trip down the Danube River. Throughout the story Blackwood personifies the surrounding environment—river, sun, wind—and imbues them with a powerful and ultimately threatening character. Most ominous are the masses of dense, desultory, menacing willows, which "moved of their own will as though alive, and they touched, by some incalculable method, my own keen sense of the horrible."

"The Willows" is one of Algernon Blackwood's best known short stories. American horror author H.P. Lovecraft considered it to be the finest supernatural tale in English literature. "The Willows" is an example of early modern horror and is connected within the literary tradition of weird fiction.

Enjoy!!

I've read this before, but will read it again!

Some quick thoughts...

This rather longish tale, published in 1907, is widely acknowledged by many horror mavens as Blackwood’s masterpiece. I first read this story as a kid and was thoroughly bored. It took a reread about 10 years later for me to really appreciate its virtues and since that time I usually dust off a copy and look at it again every 5-10 years. Like a number of Blackwood tales, this one is a bit of a slow starter for me, but the language in the opening section describing the Danube and its environs is quite evocative. This may be the most Machenesque of Blackwood’s stories and, for that reason if for no other, it’s easy see why Lovecraft admired it so much. It’s the classic example of not showing the reader too much: from the appearance of the “otters” that frame our heroes’ experiences within the willow-populated region, to the description of the extra-dimensional beings upon whose boundaries they unfortunately trespass, Blackwood’s prose is very understated.

I’m pleased this is the choice for November - I planned to read it last month but ran out of time.

I read this only because I saw it listed on my groups page as a November read for this group. I explain this fact so that you will all understand how I could go into this story not knowing it was horror. And since I was totally unfamiliar with Blackwood, I was doubly blind to this fact. Imagine! I began this story perceiving it as a piece of travel writing! Some kind of Thoreau-type ramble. Because his prose is so refined. Wow, what a thrill! When the weird stuff started happening I was totally blown away. This was a really remarkable reading experience. The expectations you take to a piece of art really shape how it effects you. And if you happen to stumble onto a masterpiece like this one, totally innocent, the experience can be just seismic.

I discovered Blackwood thanks to this group, when we read the short story, The Glamour of the Snow a few years ago.
Since then, I have gone on to read more of his works, including The Willows.
In 2006, my husband and I went on a river cruise on the Danube so this piece is particularly interesting for me. As the Danube approaches the
Black Sea, it is very wide, with lots of nature and no built up areas.
Blackwood shows us this very well-with excellent descriptive writing.

Ok, John has convinced me to read it. I enjoyed his The Wendigo for many of the same reasons.

Here's a link to the free copy I read at archive.org

https://archive.org/details/TheWillow...

My review is spoiler-free since I'm obsessed with thematic elements instead of story.

There are a number of his stories to read (free) online at
algernonblackwood.org

Like Rosemarie, I only discovered his books after joining Goodreads. John, I like your comments about The Willows. I have usually avoided horror stories, but just occasionally I read one without knowing in advance & it’s amazing. In contrast, high expectations have ruined a number of books for me that most people think are wonderful.

Trisha said: "high expectations have ruined a number of books for me that most people think are wonderful."

Yeah, the expectations trap is hard to avoid. How do you find a book your interested in without browsing for something your interested in? I mean, automatically, just by browsing for your tastes, you're in the realm of expectations. Book clubs here on GR can help though. I've been surprised a lot by the books I've read with them. This story was a rather extraordinary exception though. Because of his well-crafted prose I was totally convinced it was some 19th Century non-fiction travel writing thing. Ha!

I too didn't know this was a horror book. I thought it was a buddy adventure down the Danube river when I first started reading it. Like John i read it because it was listed on the books for November. It was scary but good.

My read for today, Friday the 13th.

Enjoy MikIko. It's kind of like a story you would tell around a campfire. Like " last year we went on a canoe trip with my buddy. Something terrible happened....."

I have to admit that I'm not a big fan of modern horror books but the classics, I really do enjoy, And thanks to this group, I've been introduced to authors I've never heard of.

This didn't feel like a horror book at the beginning. I really enjoyed the build up beginning with the wonderful description of the river and its surrounding. Then giving the sense that the willows were a part of something sinister.
One of my favourite sentences which summarizes my feelings when I'm out hiking....
"Far from feeling fear, I was possessed with a sense of awe and wonder such as I have never known. I seemed to be gazing at the personified elemental forces of this haunted and primeval region."

As the story progressed, I found myself wanting to know how it would end, how irrational the minds of the characters would become.
Then the ending....tying it to the first hints of something sinister when they set up camp.
Thanks for the good read, Patrick.

When I go camping, I like to fall asleep to the sound of the leaves rustling or rain falling on the tent, but after reading this, it'll be a while before I peacefully fall asleep in a tent again, haha.

I just listened to this.
I liked it. Very Lovecraftian. And the science was surprisingly good, talking about forth dimensional entities.

I think I might pick up something by Love craft. Everyone keeps referring to him. I do like horror stories every once in a while. This was just the right amount of scary.

Shannon said:

I think I might pick up something by Love craft. Everyone keeps referring to him. I do like horror stories every once in a while. This was just the right amount of scary.

You could do worse than familiarize yourself with Lovecraft. A couple of cautionary comments. First, while Lovecraft’s ideas proved to be hugely influential, some people find his writing style a bit off-putting. His prose can get pretty purple. Second, as many critics have noted, Lovecraft was a racist and sometimes those views bled into his fiction. Granted, that’s not terribly uncommon for pulp fiction from that era, but a modern reader might find the appearance of such ideas on the printed page a bit jarring.

If you’re looking for a starting point, I might suggest bypassing his really early stories; in my opinion his better stuff didn’t start seeing print until maybe the mid-20s. Check out, for example, “The Call of Cthulhu” (1928), “The Dunwich Horror” (1929), or “The Shadow over Innsmouth” (1936).

I hope it’s not inappropriate to mention this here. An acquaintance of mine in another book group just mentioned having read The Hollow Places , a 2020 novel by T. Kingfisher. I only mention this novel here because according to my acquaintance (and the book’s press) it was inspired in part by Algernon Blackwood’s “The Willows” (as well as by some of C. S. Lewis’ Narnia books). I confess that I have not read this particular Kingfisher book myself, but have read some of her short works, notably her rather moving 2014 fantasy tale “Jackalope Wives” (written under the name Ursula Vernon).