j d worthington
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- May 9, 2006
- Messages
- 13,889
I don't have a lot of time tonight, so I'll only lightly touch on a couple of things; I hope to get into this more extensively over the next day or two.
First... I'm a bit confused. When you bring up Wilmarth, I thought you were referring to "The Whisperer in Darkness" (where he is the narrator); then you mention the "wind-creatures" and question whether "Wilmarth" is implicated... do you mean Peaslee here (and below)? Because the "wind creatures", I assume, are what Edmund Wilson scornfully referred to as the "invisible whistling octopus" from that story.... Just trying to clarify, as at the moment, I'm not sure quite what your question applies to....
Now... on the subject of "shock" rather than "confirmatory" endings... I think it all depends on the story, really. The vampiric entity of "The Shunned House", for instance, is finally confirmed in such a way that it is, I think, intended to be a "shock" moment; and unfortunately it hits some people as ludicrous, while others see it as extremely powerful. (I fell more toward the former when I first read this story; that particular phrase was an unpleasant jolt for me which frankly took away from what was -- and is -- otherwise one of my favorites among HPL's tales.) On the other hand, there are those stories where he has been carefully preparing and foreshadowing in such a way that the reader would almost have to be (to quote Rod Serling, "blind or three days dead" to miss what's coming; both "Pickman's Model" and "The Shadow Out of Time" fall into this category. This fits in very well with what he said in a letter (to Smith, if memory serves) about essentially creating a hoax with the same care as a crooked lawyer would cook up testimony to confirm the case he has been stating. Simply put, it is an attempt (and, I think, generally a successful one) to present a reasonable enough case for the outrageous "truth" that readers are given that momentary frisson of "suspension of disbelief" as the last stone is finally laid down and the pattern becomes complete. This is why he so heavily hints at what the final revelation is long before we get there, and why these hints come to be more and more in the nature of slowly revealing that final moment in themselves. For example, the insistence throughout "Pickman's Model" on Pickman's "reverse toboggan" down the evolutionary scale, the utter realism of his art, etc., until we have the photograph itself mentioned, though only in the final line is it actually described. No one could avoid knowing beforehand what it is, but that final line puts the last nail into the edifice he has been building. The same is true for the hints in At the Mountains of Madness which lead to what Danforth has seen. Same with "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", where the narrator's opening statements prepare the reader (albeit unconsciously) for the final moments of the tale.
This is where it is difficult to talk about his development of his tales without getting into his style, for it is in his careful choice of words that he makes this sort of preparation for his endings, so that everything inbetween is building to that final passage in such a way that it is all logically tied together and foreshadowed in each word of the story that has gone before. Looking at his manuscripts, one sees this plainly in his marginal notations and the like to himself to tie this or that together more tightly, to make reference to something that is mentioned on the first page at another point in the narrative (or vice versa) and build on these hints, etc., etc., etc., or else the interlineations where he went back and inserted things to the same purpose, over and over throughout in order to more tightly knit the structure together. In this, he was as obsessive as Cornell Woolrich.
Hence, I strongly disagree with you, for instance, on the final revelation of "The Shadow Out of Time", though I will also admit that I viewed it that way when I first read the tale. It was only on revisiting it some years later that I found it to be an intensely powerful climax which, yes, combined that "ontological terror" with pity for Peaslee, because at that point I was able to see just how awful such a final confirmation would be; a person simply doesn't recover from that sort of complete obliteration of the structure of his or her most fundamental conceptions of reality, and Peaslee is thus completely bereft, isolated in a particularly subtle and horrific way where others can sympathize, yes, but not really comprehend, for it has not happened to them personally. Which is why the reader is given as much information leading to this climax as he is: to bring us as close as possible to Peaslee's own experience, including his alienation when he finds himself (even in dream) in the body of the ancient organism which housed the mind of that member of the Great Race.
At any rate, that's all I have time for tonight. I'll try to get back to more of this tomorrow; as it is, I'm going to be getting an extremely short night's sleep; but I thought I'd put this in while finishing my supper before going to bed. Hope it proves of interest....
First... I'm a bit confused. When you bring up Wilmarth, I thought you were referring to "The Whisperer in Darkness" (where he is the narrator); then you mention the "wind-creatures" and question whether "Wilmarth" is implicated... do you mean Peaslee here (and below)? Because the "wind creatures", I assume, are what Edmund Wilson scornfully referred to as the "invisible whistling octopus" from that story.... Just trying to clarify, as at the moment, I'm not sure quite what your question applies to....
Now... on the subject of "shock" rather than "confirmatory" endings... I think it all depends on the story, really. The vampiric entity of "The Shunned House", for instance, is finally confirmed in such a way that it is, I think, intended to be a "shock" moment; and unfortunately it hits some people as ludicrous, while others see it as extremely powerful. (I fell more toward the former when I first read this story; that particular phrase was an unpleasant jolt for me which frankly took away from what was -- and is -- otherwise one of my favorites among HPL's tales.) On the other hand, there are those stories where he has been carefully preparing and foreshadowing in such a way that the reader would almost have to be (to quote Rod Serling, "blind or three days dead" to miss what's coming; both "Pickman's Model" and "The Shadow Out of Time" fall into this category. This fits in very well with what he said in a letter (to Smith, if memory serves) about essentially creating a hoax with the same care as a crooked lawyer would cook up testimony to confirm the case he has been stating. Simply put, it is an attempt (and, I think, generally a successful one) to present a reasonable enough case for the outrageous "truth" that readers are given that momentary frisson of "suspension of disbelief" as the last stone is finally laid down and the pattern becomes complete. This is why he so heavily hints at what the final revelation is long before we get there, and why these hints come to be more and more in the nature of slowly revealing that final moment in themselves. For example, the insistence throughout "Pickman's Model" on Pickman's "reverse toboggan" down the evolutionary scale, the utter realism of his art, etc., until we have the photograph itself mentioned, though only in the final line is it actually described. No one could avoid knowing beforehand what it is, but that final line puts the last nail into the edifice he has been building. The same is true for the hints in At the Mountains of Madness which lead to what Danforth has seen. Same with "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", where the narrator's opening statements prepare the reader (albeit unconsciously) for the final moments of the tale.
This is where it is difficult to talk about his development of his tales without getting into his style, for it is in his careful choice of words that he makes this sort of preparation for his endings, so that everything inbetween is building to that final passage in such a way that it is all logically tied together and foreshadowed in each word of the story that has gone before. Looking at his manuscripts, one sees this plainly in his marginal notations and the like to himself to tie this or that together more tightly, to make reference to something that is mentioned on the first page at another point in the narrative (or vice versa) and build on these hints, etc., etc., etc., or else the interlineations where he went back and inserted things to the same purpose, over and over throughout in order to more tightly knit the structure together. In this, he was as obsessive as Cornell Woolrich.
Hence, I strongly disagree with you, for instance, on the final revelation of "The Shadow Out of Time", though I will also admit that I viewed it that way when I first read the tale. It was only on revisiting it some years later that I found it to be an intensely powerful climax which, yes, combined that "ontological terror" with pity for Peaslee, because at that point I was able to see just how awful such a final confirmation would be; a person simply doesn't recover from that sort of complete obliteration of the structure of his or her most fundamental conceptions of reality, and Peaslee is thus completely bereft, isolated in a particularly subtle and horrific way where others can sympathize, yes, but not really comprehend, for it has not happened to them personally. Which is why the reader is given as much information leading to this climax as he is: to bring us as close as possible to Peaslee's own experience, including his alienation when he finds himself (even in dream) in the body of the ancient organism which housed the mind of that member of the Great Race.
At any rate, that's all I have time for tonight. I'll try to get back to more of this tomorrow; as it is, I'm going to be getting an extremely short night's sleep; but I thought I'd put this in while finishing my supper before going to bed. Hope it proves of interest....