I loved this book. You can definitely see where Lovecraft drew inspiration from Chambers, but I think they each have very unique styles of horror. It seems to me the brilliance of both is sort of in giving the reader a set of puzzle pieces to put together for themself. The difference I find is that Lovecraft will give you just enough pieces to see what the picture looks like - and he's really good at giving you *just* enough! - whereas Chambers kind of gives you a lot of pieces which seem like they should fit together, but don't quite, or not neatly. Almost like one of those AI generated images of people's bedrooms, where none of the shapes quite make sense if you look at them closely. Very much - as you say - like a fever dream. I feel this is most true of The Prophet's Paradise. That was my favourite section - really chilling.
I'm not sure how much inspiration Lovecraft drew from Chambers. From his correspondence, it seems like Lovecraft read The King in Yellow in the late 1920s, after he'd written a number of the defining works of his Mythos. Lovecraft did reference some of the elements of Chambers' fiction, especially in "The Whisperer in Darkness", although he didn't really do more than mention them in passing. Chambers seems to have been far more of an influence on the Mythos writers who came after Lovecraft, and especially on the Call of Cthulhu RPG. One detail I love is that Lovecraft and August Derleth wrote to each other after reading The King in Yellow, expressing disbelief that Chambers of all people had written such a powerful piece of weird fiction. They knew Chambers only as a best-selling romance writer (his work was huge in the 1920s), and finding out that he wrote a book like this would be like learning that Barbara Cartland wrote pulp horror novels in the 1970s.
@@ScottDorward Ah, so the Necronomicon would already have been mentioned in his work before he read this then. Thanks for the correction, I had the timeline wrong. That's a great note from the Lovecraft-Derleth correspondence. Finding out Chambers was a romance writer was definitely an amusement to me, but not too difficult to square with the tone and subjects of a few of the stories.
I always felt this about Lovecraft and Ligotti, that in some way they had information I didn't, that their work was real and seeping into the world through the cracks of another too close to our own, so I very much look forward to reading this. thanks Olly.
Yes, The King in Yellow is very strange. I read it and dramatized one of the episodes in it many years ago. (The one about the artist and his model on a bleak winter night, where a strange man is seen in the distance from the studio window, Every time the artist looks out the window the strange old man is still there. It upsets the artist so much that he can't get the picture right and he ends up slashing it to pieces. The violence is so believable.) Chambers wrote in all sorts of genres some of his best work is set in Paris in the Latin Quarter during the time of the Commune. I think he may have invented the character Mr. Keene, tracer of lost persons. Those of you who are old enough may remember that radio drama. Very eerie at times. But my favorite scary story is The Lost Room by Fitz James O'Brien. In that book a man comes home one night a bit three sheets to the wind, and climbs up to his room in an apparently lower class rental unit. Only when he gets there he finds that a party is going on. The guests invite him to join them. He must be mistaken; only it seems he isn't. It's his room, but who are these people. Or is it his room, and if it isn't where is his room ? And he wanders around looking for a room he cannot find while the party goes on. I dramatized this, too and I think I published it in a collection of short playss. O'Brien was an immigrant and contemporary of E.A. Poe, but less well known. Still, his name deserves greater attention in the horror genre.
Excellent book. The off-kilter obscure(and extremely detailed) mythology contained in this, Lovecraft, and more recently Thomas Ligotti can make even the most skeptical think that they had access to things we aren't supposed to know, or that the idea may have come from "Outside."
I was lucky :) I'm a bookseller and bought it for 25, didn't know it was a first edition till 6 years after I got it haha. Because of oli I do a twice a week search for Heather Lewis books in the company hoping to find any of her stuff priced right.
I read all the stories. Even though the remainder of them probably qualify as some of his romances, even they were sort of skewed. He carried on his trick of linking through devices (and sometimes characters) and there were themes of drugs and drink and sex that were not mainstream fiction material for the time. Also, they just read ... strangely. He has a trick of emphasizing some details and blurring others that is universal across all the stories, and although the weirdness level is variable, there is a degree of weirdness throughout. He's pretty unsettling.
Just a note on the strange emphasizing of curtain little details and drug themes, if you fallow the rabbit hole deep enough you find some interesting connections between chambers, Lovecraft and the town of Providence USA (yes as in the symbol "the eye of Providence" that is on the dollar bill. This book genuinely has potential to be maddening because of the strange little that strike the average reader as merely odd. Many moment are designed to be mundane and to most but if the reader has been following the correct teachings and using particular substances these often can come off as subtle winks and nodes or even in some instances as directed to the reader on a personal individual level. When a book seems to know a person better then they know themselves and won't explain why...it can drive the less stable a little bit loopy.
Read this back in college too many years ago. Loved it then, seems like it might be time for a reread, especially because I can't think of anything more Uncanny.
The King in Yellow reminds me of The Great God Pan. Not that they are the same, but they are of the same time period, sort of, and they are unique. I believe both inspired H.P. Lovecraft.
Just found your channel recently Olly and I really love your book reviews. You have given me a ton of great recommendations and I really appreciate your insights and measured analysis.
The few excerpts from the play were tantalizing (I was particularly fond of Cassilda's Song). It makes me wish I could read the play, even knowing what it does to the reader!
Hastur was originally created by Ambrose Bierce in his "HAITA THE SHEPHERD". Since then the deity has resurfaced in various authors' works including King's short story "GRAMMA". The 2018 Indian horror film "TUMBBAD'' also took inspiration and created a deity called Hastar.
If I'm picking yellows I liked Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" more than the Chambers' book. The Gilman story has gotten a lot of new eyes on it in the last few years because of #MeToo.
Weird you upload this as I'm reading book! It seems fitting with the theme though. Once youre aware of the King in Yellow, the King in Yellow becomes aware of you
Olly, you are in for a treat if you are yet to see Season One of 'True Detective'. Perhaps the oddest book I have read is 'The Night Land' by William Hope Hodgson. Originally published in 1912, it is a very long tale about the last days of Earth set in a very far future. Lovecraft possibly got some ideas from here as well.
It's the kind of thing that, if you don't know what to expect, you won't be disappointed. So darn weird and as you say, seeming to come from uncanny and bizarre knowing. (shudder!). I kept thinking, not in a judging or dismissive way, of mental illness, as if documenting insights into some stranger's uncanny ability to convey the experience and being haunted by it. Quite a tour-de-force. Brrr!
An interesting note is that the idea of Carcosa comes from an even earlier book where it sort of represents a depressing ruin of an afterlife for those who embraced the ultra-hedonistic movements of the time.
The idea of Carcosa is a place where individuals who've lost their minds and have given themselves to their insanity. Hastur isn't just any regular king: he's the King of All; they call him the Envoy because he interacts with humanity more than any of the Old Ones.
I read the King in Yellow about 7 years ago, honestly don't remember much. The book that came close to driving me mad was The Purple Cloud by MP Sheil. Harlan Ellison also has some extravagantly bizarre stuff.
@@CriminOllyBlog at the 50% point pair it with "The Hashish Eater Apocalypse of Evil" by Clark Ashton Smith It's a poem that won't take long, but should provide an interesting experience.
My recommendation for a story along the same lines would be The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson. Very eery story and reminiscent of The King in Yellow and Lovecrafts work.
was very strange as i began listening to the audiobook from a random recommendation from a horror books site and saying this guy's good, i hope he's making more books and then leanrning this was written more than a hundred years ago... fascinating, really really enjoyed the first story with this weird cyberpunk angle to it including suicide booths... also out of nowhere the exclusion legally of a certain ethnicity was like woah... this is of its era Also was this the origin of the woman in white kind of ghost story then
I have only read the first two stories so far however I agree with how disturbing it is. Which reminds me that there is a podcast that is about the king in yellow, a fictional story that uses the concept of madness, the King, and the lands of Carcosa. It's called "Malevolent", with its scary notion of not being in control in life and death situations with creatures not from this world.
I read The King In Yellow when I was a teen. I'm glad I read it then, when a lot of horror was still new to me. I enjoyed it then. I'm not sure how I'd feel about it decades later. I think of any weird writers off the top of my head. Some literary weird writers include Julio Cortazar, Dino Buzzati and Bruno Schulz.
Ethical Suicide Parlors stem from Vonnegut, with FUTURAMA a post-literate reference. The King In Yellow as a play was performed in Paris as an oblique reference to the Grand Guignol theater, where transgressive excess ruled. Chambers manages in those first four stories to evoke an eerie, realistic, surreal adjunct to Lovecraft's work, as you cite. Similarly, "An Inhabitant of Carcosa" by Ambrose Bierce is linked to HPL's work, probably because Lovecraft used Far Carcosa as a referent.
That was great. Would love to see you do a Lovecraft video sometime. I’ve just finished the 2008 Necronomicon collection and feel like I’m not getting it
I read The King in Yellow in my early 20s. I'm currently listening to an audiobook here on TH-cam. I love weird fiction, with my favorite writer being H.P. Lovecraft.
My first brush with King in Yellow was as a preteen in my junior high school library six decades ago. An excerpt, specifically the couple pages regarding the opening of the "Government Lethal Chamber" was included in a book with a title something like, "100 of the World's Greatest Short Stories". Great age to learn about the attractiveness of suicide. The book is out of copyright in the U.S. and can be read online.
I learned of it in the 1980s, when it was mentioned in a biography of Aleister Crowley I read. The concept of a book, or some other item, which, when read or understood, causes madness, was something I had always found fascinating. In the 10th Grade, I wrote a short story called, "The Curse of the Claw," about a strange sculpture, which caused insanity when an individual finally understood its meaning. I would recommend watching the movie, "Into the Mouth of Madness." It's plot could be described as, "H.P. Lovecraft meets 'The King in Yellow'." Do YOU read SUTTER KANE? :)
Great review. Though the word wasn't in the vocabulary in 1920, let alone in 1895 when The King in yellow was written, the setup for The Repairer of Reputations, the geopolitcal situation he describes especially in the United States...is pretty much a perfect description of a fascist state. It's pretty ingenious that this is the first story in the collection. This is the story that describes what happens when teh King in Yellow becomes spread through a society. Think of Mr. hastane's obsession with napoleon, too. It's rather brilliant. I do like some of thel ater stories in the collection too. "The Street of the Four Winds" is a haunting little tale and I really enjoyed "The Street of the First Shell", too. Chambers was in paris during the period and saw some of the results of the Franco-Prussian war firsthand. Maybe taht's why this, his second and most well-regarded book today, is also his weirdest and most intense. That said his later fiction can be quite diverse. As well as romantic fiction there's "proto" science fiction and ghost stories, and some, what we might now call political thrillers. Still, nothing quite on this level, so far as I've seen so far.
@@CriminOllyBlog Set your expectations a little bit lower and I think you may enjoy some of it. The Slayer of SOuls (what a cool title eh) was a pretty neat thriller with some occult overtones and some weird turn-of-the century politics. There are some pretty effective ghost stories. often the tales do have a romantic (as in, love story) factor. I haven't read nearly all of it and certainly I don't think much is as timeless as King in Yellow.
If you get a Lovecraft vibe from this, you should check out Chambers' story "The Maker of Moons", which he wrote a year after King in Yellow and is, I think, better than anything in that book. I remember it being very Lovecraftian avant la lettre. Chambers did write other fantastic/weird stuff but none of it was as well received in its time, and I think Lovecraft's advocacy is the main reason that he's remembered at all now.
I read all of Chambers' surviving weird fiction a few years ago when researching a podcast series about his work. None of it lives up to The King in Yellow and much of it is dull. There is some heavy overlap between his romantic fiction and his weirder work, with many of his weird fiction really just being romance stories with a little window dressing. "The Maker of Moons" is a rare standout, but I'd say most horror fans won't find much to enjoy in his work beyond The King in Yellow.
Kurt Vonnegut in Timequake (one of his last books) also has the suicide booths unsure if Futurama came first also I'm a new sub! Love your descriptions and conceptualizations!
There used to be a great blog called Conceptual Fiction that had an interesting if less kind perspective on the gulf between this book and Chambers’ others. He theorised that Chambers didn’t have the drive or ambition enough to take his vision to the fullest expression of it, and so fell back on easy pieces that would sell, hence why only 4 stories in the book are weird.
The poem "Carcosa" at the start references a short story by Ambrose Bierce, "An Inhabitant of Carcosa" written in 1886, which inspired Chambers. Chambers work, in turn, inspired Lovecraft and other members of his writing circle, contemporary and current. Carcosa, the King in Yellow (or commonly the Yellow Emperor) and the Yellow Sign have since taken on a life of their own, expanding into a modern mythos that have influenced many, including George R. R. Martin whose "Song of Fire and Ice" references a city of Carcosa wherein lives a dark sorcerer called "The Yellow Emperor." Stephen King's Crimson King in his Dark Tower series strongly resembles the King in Yellow. It is a deep rabbit hole indeed and a fun one worth exploring.
If you like “The King in Yellow”, then I recommend: “The Masque of the Red Death”, by Edgar Allan Poe, “An Inhabitant of Carcosa”, by Ambrose Bierce, “The King in the Golden Mask”, by Marcel Schwob, “Salome”, by Oscar Wilde, “The Seven Old Men” (A poem from “The Flowers of Evil”), by Charles Baudelaire, “Trilby”, by George Du Maurier, “The Three Impostors”, by Arthur Machen, “One of Cleopatra’s Nights”, by Theophile Gautier, “Lalla Rookh”, by Thomas Moore, and-if you can stomach it-“The Songs of Maldoror”, by Le Comte de Lautrémont. A similar creepy vibe can also be found in “Arabian Nights”, “The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám” and the weird stories of H.P. Lovecraft.
I know it's a while ago but for those interested I just picked up a copy of The King in Yellow at my local Waterstones. It is a hardback copy of the four stories that are connected, not the full book of short stories. It is a lovely book and is published by Pushkin Press, it cost me £9.99, you may be able to get it cheaper elsewhere.
Along the shore the cloud waves break, The twin suns sink beneath the lake, The shadows lengthen, in Carcosa. Strange is the night where black stars rise, And strange moons circle through the skies. But stranger still, is lost Carcosa. Songs that the Hyades shall sing, Where flap the tatters of the King, Must die unheard, in dim Carcosa. Song of my soul, my voice is dead; Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed, Shall dry and die, in lost Carcosa.
Enjoyed the video, i love this series, some of the best horror of all time. After reading the inspiration for this book (carcossa by ambrose bierce) i feel it helps knit it all together. (My opinion/theory/spoilers ahead) Carcosa is the ruins of a paradise, ruled by the king in yellow, hastur. This paradise was likely reached by the initial traveler, by dying (animals could not notice him). This land I believe is heaven, that was stripped and ruined by human greed. With god no longer in charge, the only paradise left is through the illusions provided by the king in yellow. Repairer of reputations, After his head injury the main character begins to accept the illusions over reality. And violenty refuses to let go of them, because reality is too much for him. The mask and prophets paradise are kind of linked, showing the uncanny ways of preservation leading to the play mentioned in the prologue. Showing time can be stopped or manipulated (and beautiful) also shown in Demoiselle d'Ys. Court of the Dragon and Yellow Sign are clear depictions of the illusion of the church vs the illusions of the yellow king (and we know how those end). Since we know from the court of the dragon, carcossa is where souls go when they die. And hastur calls himself the living god, implying the god we know is dead. So the knowledge driving people mad upon seeing the yellow sign is to see the truth. Mankind ravaged and overthrew heaven. Hastur now gives only the illusion of paradise, and malice to those who seek the old god. And knowing that only hastur can preserve that which we love, or turn back the clock, their faith and belief in society is useless, as are their efforts. The only truths left are illusion... or ruin. Sorry for the rant, wondering what others think of the theory
Chambers did write more weird fiction than just those four stories, and I believe someone put together a collection of them at some point. There are some things in common between Chambers, and Arthur Machen (pronounced Macken), and both were an influence on Lovecraft. There's more to discover, in that others have added to the yellow mythos. I strongly recommend the collections edited by the late Joseph S. Pulver Sr.. There's a review of one such in ODM#9. For more out there weird, I recommend 'The Circus of Doctor Lao', by Charles G. Finney, and, of course, 'The House on the Borderland', by William Hope Hodgson. If you fancy a more challenging read, try Hodgson's 'The Night Land'.
Just a brief pedantic note. Suicide is no longer a crime - and so people do not COMMIT (as in perpetrate or carry out: e.g. a mistake, crime or an immoral act) suicide. They take their own lives.
For weird I always point to Ann and Jeff Vandermeer's The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories. Maybe not the best recommendation for the weird genre, but I'd love to see you pick up some Brian Evenson, he is one of my favorites for horror and short stories and I really think you'd like his works. He is criminally underread in my opinion.
This sounds like an interesting premise. It reminds me of an episode of the 1980s Twilight Zone entitled "Need to Know," where someone claims to have discovered the secret of existence, and everyone that they tell it to immediately goes insane.
I wonder what Chambers' female readers thought, presuming this was just another of his popular romance novels. The title even suggests romance. Makes one wonder what the sly fox was up to.
An excellent short story, IMO, inspired by "The King in Yellow" is, um, "The King in Yellow" (2011, 4.79 out of 5 stars) by Literotica writer TamLin01. It is every bit as disturbing as the Chambers stories though it does contain, as you might expect, certain elements common to mostly every story on the Literotica site. Mostly. In the story a young man wants to impress a girl who is interested in the play and so he fabricates what he claims is the most complete edition of the play and presents it to the girl. She is delighted and refuses to believe that the text is fake. Spoilers: Sex, violence and madness ensue.
The one thing that really drew me to the king in yellow and especially repairer of reputations was the implementation of an unreliable narrator. Like the more you read the less you trust the narrators judgement and start to question everything that is presented to you. And while the other stories of the king in yellow don’t explicitly follow this trend of an unreliable narrator i do catch myself wondering whether some parts are purely delusions or actually accrue the way they are described. Anyways Iam late to the Party but still thank you for covering one of my favorite authors!
The weirdest book I've read would probably be "I'm Thinking of Ending Things." It's a very well written book with seamless transitions, but the ideas it inspires when you read it are kind of a mix of profound thought, deep thinking, and despairing truths. There really isn't much of a plot and the narrative kind of jumps all over the place, but there is a reason for it. An unnerving read, for sure.
I loved this book. It’s the only book that I ever finished and then went back and immediately began to reread. Didn’t enjoy the movie, Kaufman made it autobiographical and it didn’t work for me.
Cities of the Red Night by William Burroughs was the weirdest book I have read. It does not completely work, at one point I could not tell what was going on, but it is definitely uncanny
Wondering if you ever saw the 1994 film " In the Mouth of Madness" which is about a famous horror author who writes books that are slowly driving his readers insane. It's a Lovecraftian inspired story and got mediocre reviews but I love it. Sounds like something similar to what you are talking about.
No, my writing days are behind me I think. It's a hard thing to control. I did publish a couple of novels and some short stories. They are currently unavailable but I'm intending to republish them again at some point
Haven't read it yet but it's on the pile. Another person who many say may have written from experience is Whitley Strieber. Haven't read him either to make an opinion, but I've had my own experiences and dreams that in no way could have been made up by my feeble brain. So I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. As far as a disturbing, dark book I'll mention Babyf***** by Urs Allemanne. I may have misspelled his name. You're pretty smart, I know you can figure out what is under the asterisks. Oddly enough it is freely available on Amazon, and for a reasonable price, though I don't know for how long once word gets out. It's a small book, roughly 12 centimeters x eight or thereabouts. And short, about 80 pages, with German version on the left and English on the right. Doubt it would take you half an hour to read. It is pretty exclusively just this one guy's inner thoughts, I guess that's stream of consciousness. I would like another's take on it as I don't know what to make of it. No one likes censorship, but this thing makes you question, maybe some books should be put up on a high shelf at least? Don't quite know if it should be as available as I found it. But I guess anyone can find anything these days if they just want to look for it.
Was a good book I enjoy it . But nothing weird happened to me after reading it 🤗 Maybe I was already lost before reading it. Found nothing disturbing about it 🤪😶
😂 On the Road by Kerouac pushed me close to madness with extreme boredom while trying to finish it. I saved what was left of my sanity and gave up two thirds in. 😴
Might get in the Wordsworth edition as it’s under a fiver. Tried to read these as a teenager because of the lovecraft stuff but didn’t like them because they made much less sense to me than HPL stories.
Waiting for the day one of your reviews starts off kind of banal, reviewing some nondescript book, and then gradually you go bad, collapse into goo, and someone has to come in, sweep you up, and turn off the camera. OLLY’S LAST WORD, a hit on #WeirdTube.
Ha! That would be cool. (or on second thoughts maybe not) I have been toying for ages with the idea of doing a video that appears to be one of my normal videos but with things moving in the background and so on
It's almost as if there was/is something outside trying to " get in" to our world that HP Lovecraft ,Chambers and others tuned into. I know this is absurd!
It definitely felt like Chambers "tapped into" something. Repairer of Reputations felt like modern horror, something definitely later than 1895, and the predictions of WWI (although unknown to Chambers) are just downright eerie; as well as the concept of a reputation repairer, reading it now in the age of Google and your Online Presence that is tricky to leave behind you and can ruin your life.
Mh 👀 I'm always frustrated with Lovecraft... Like it never seems to get to the point and only hint at things or tippy toe around them mainly just making me feel grumpy and never being fully intrigued or entertained. Which is a shame as I like the ideas and background... I just rather wish he'd actually show us more and tell us more. Make it more exciting and thrilling. I'd love to read more about his world just from somebody else
The weirdest short novel I've read is one of those loony existentialist writers, Robbe-Grillet, called Jealousy. I read it twice before I learned that jalousie in French also means 'horizontal blinds', which he mentions continually while he describes his wife and her lover. Not weird in any overt way, but subtly because he goes back and forth in time, and describes the same things over and over.
I loved this book. You can definitely see where Lovecraft drew inspiration from Chambers, but I think they each have very unique styles of horror.
It seems to me the brilliance of both is sort of in giving the reader a set of puzzle pieces to put together for themself. The difference I find is that Lovecraft will give you just enough pieces to see what the picture looks like - and he's really good at giving you *just* enough! - whereas Chambers kind of gives you a lot of pieces which seem like they should fit together, but don't quite, or not neatly. Almost like one of those AI generated images of people's bedrooms, where none of the shapes quite make sense if you look at them closely. Very much - as you say - like a fever dream.
I feel this is most true of The Prophet's Paradise. That was my favourite section - really chilling.
That's a perfect analogy for what reading the book felt like
I'm not sure how much inspiration Lovecraft drew from Chambers. From his correspondence, it seems like Lovecraft read The King in Yellow in the late 1920s, after he'd written a number of the defining works of his Mythos. Lovecraft did reference some of the elements of Chambers' fiction, especially in "The Whisperer in Darkness", although he didn't really do more than mention them in passing. Chambers seems to have been far more of an influence on the Mythos writers who came after Lovecraft, and especially on the Call of Cthulhu RPG.
One detail I love is that Lovecraft and August Derleth wrote to each other after reading The King in Yellow, expressing disbelief that Chambers of all people had written such a powerful piece of weird fiction. They knew Chambers only as a best-selling romance writer (his work was huge in the 1920s), and finding out that he wrote a book like this would be like learning that Barbara Cartland wrote pulp horror novels in the 1970s.
@@ScottDorward Ah, so the Necronomicon would already have been mentioned in his work before he read this then. Thanks for the correction, I had the timeline wrong.
That's a great note from the Lovecraft-Derleth correspondence. Finding out Chambers was a romance writer was definitely an amusement to me, but not too difficult to square with the tone and subjects of a few of the stories.
I'm writing a novel inspired by these shorts. Thanks for highlighting them.
Good luck with it
I always felt this about Lovecraft and Ligotti, that in some way they had information I didn't, that their work was real and seeping into the world through the cracks of another too close to our own, so I very much look forward to reading this. thanks Olly.
I’m reading Ligotti now and I’m definitely getting that vibe
Yo I read this book last year and it was awesome. There was a good video by Tale Foundry that explored this story and I found interesting.
I'll check it out!
Q. Can a book send you mad? A. Have you read the twoddle that Prince Harry Wrote?
Yes, The King in Yellow is very strange. I read it and dramatized one of the episodes in it many years ago. (The one about the artist and his model on a bleak winter night, where a strange man is seen in the distance from the studio window, Every time the artist looks out the window the strange old man is still there. It upsets the artist so much that he can't get the picture right and he ends up slashing it to pieces. The violence is so believable.)
Chambers wrote in all sorts of genres some of his best work is set in Paris in the Latin Quarter during the time of the Commune. I think he may have invented the character Mr. Keene, tracer of lost persons. Those of you who are old enough may remember that radio drama. Very eerie at times.
But my favorite scary story is The Lost Room by Fitz James O'Brien. In that book a man comes home one night a bit three sheets to the wind, and climbs up to his room in an apparently lower class rental unit. Only when he gets there he finds that a party is going on.
The guests invite him to join them. He must be mistaken; only it seems he isn't. It's his room, but who are these people. Or is it his room, and if it isn't where is his room ? And he wanders around looking for a room he cannot find while the party goes on. I dramatized this, too and I think I published it in a collection of short playss. O'Brien was an immigrant and contemporary of E.A. Poe, but less well known. Still, his name deserves greater attention in the horror genre.
That does sound like a very creepy story - thanks for the recommendation
Excellent book. The off-kilter obscure(and extremely detailed) mythology contained in this, Lovecraft, and more recently Thomas Ligotti can make even the most skeptical think that they had access to things we aren't supposed to know, or that the idea may have come from "Outside."
Yeah reading Ligotti at the moment and definitely get a similar vibe
One of my most prized possessions is a first edition second printing of this book. Love it.
That's great. I have a first UK edition that I stumbled across many years ago in a used bookstore in NYC.
WOW - that's cool
I was lucky :) I'm a bookseller and bought it for 25, didn't know it was a first edition till 6 years after I got it haha. Because of oli I do a twice a week search for Heather Lewis books in the company hoping to find any of her stuff priced right.
@@corygeorge7916 good luck with the Lewis quest!
Great review! I agree completely. What was going on in that guy’s head!?
I read all the stories. Even though the remainder of them probably qualify as some of his romances, even they were sort of skewed. He carried on his trick of linking through devices (and sometimes characters) and there were themes of drugs and drink and sex that were not mainstream fiction material for the time. Also, they just read ... strangely. He has a trick of emphasizing some details and blurring others that is universal across all the stories, and although the weirdness level is variable, there is a degree of weirdness throughout. He's pretty unsettling.
Yes!🙄
Interesting, I do think I'll try some more of his work at some point
Just a note on the strange emphasizing of curtain little details and drug themes, if you fallow the rabbit hole deep enough you find some interesting connections between chambers, Lovecraft and the town of Providence USA (yes as in the symbol "the eye of Providence" that is on the dollar bill. This book genuinely has potential to be maddening because of the strange little that strike the average reader as merely odd. Many moment are designed to be mundane and to most but if the reader has been following the correct teachings and using particular substances these often can come off as subtle winks and nodes or even in some instances as directed to the reader on a personal individual level. When a book seems to know a person better then they know themselves and won't explain why...it can drive the less stable a little bit loopy.
Nice one Olly, now I have to read it.
😁
Read this back in college too many years ago. Loved it then, seems like it might be time for a reread, especially because I can't think of anything more Uncanny.
The King in Yellow reminds me of The Great God Pan. Not that they are the same, but they are of the same time period, sort of, and they are unique. I believe both inspired H.P. Lovecraft.
Yeah, I can see that
Just found your channel recently Olly and I really love your book reviews. You have given me a ton of great recommendations and I really appreciate your insights and measured analysis.
Yay! I suggested this to you in the comments a while ago. So happy to hear what you thought!
PS - There's a fantastic graphic novel of the first half of the stories available that's amazing.
Oooh that sounds interesting!
Thank you 😊😊😊
Good recommendation. House of Leaves story, and the crazy book experience,
made me crazy.
That book is definitely an experience
Thank you for the podcast link, that sounds like a fun way to experience this book.
Hope you enjoy it!
Definitely have to get to this soon.
It's so good
The few excerpts from the play were tantalizing (I was particularly fond of Cassilda's Song). It makes me wish I could read the play, even knowing what it does to the reader!
Hastur was originally created by Ambrose Bierce in his "HAITA THE SHEPHERD". Since then the deity has resurfaced in various authors' works including King's short story "GRAMMA". The 2018 Indian horror film "TUMBBAD'' also took inspiration and created a deity called Hastar.
If I'm picking yellows I liked Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" more than the Chambers' book. The Gilman story has gotten a lot of new eyes on it in the last few years because of #MeToo.
Wow, yes. I had it recommended and thought it was stunning especially since it's not just woo-woo "made up" kind of suffering. 🙁
I'm reading that this month :)
Look into Ambrose bierce where the king of yellow came from (inhabitant of carcosa)
Weird you upload this as I'm reading book! It seems fitting with the theme though. Once youre aware of the King in Yellow, the King in Yellow becomes aware of you
Eeek
Olly, you are in for a treat if you are yet to see Season One of 'True Detective'. Perhaps the oddest book I have read is 'The Night Land' by William Hope Hodgson. Originally published in 1912, it is a very long tale about the last days of Earth set in a very far future. Lovecraft possibly got some ideas from here as well.
I've read The House on the Borderlands by Hodgson and really loved it.
That one really creeped me out… the pig people 😬
It's the kind of thing that, if you don't know what to expect, you won't be disappointed. So darn weird and as you say, seeming to come from uncanny and bizarre knowing. (shudder!). I kept thinking, not in a judging or dismissive way, of mental illness, as if documenting insights into some stranger's uncanny ability to convey the experience and being haunted by it. Quite a tour-de-force. Brrr!
Okay, out of all these comments yours is the only one that makes me want to read this! Thanks 😊
@@joanthompson5606 hope it works for you 😁
Really like this book. Was surprised when you said it was part of your Disturbing Books project as I never thought of it in that way.
I can see why people suggested it, but yes agree that it doesn't really fit my definition
Thanks Olly! I just ordered a nice hardcover edition from Amazon. Can't wait to read it.
Hope you enjoy it!
An interesting note is that the idea of Carcosa comes from an even earlier book where it sort of represents a depressing ruin of an afterlife for those who embraced the ultra-hedonistic movements of the time.
Oh interesting, thank you!
Have you seen "in the mouth of madness?" John Carpenter movie with the tag line "do you read Sutter Kane?" An oblique reference to Stephen King.
I have! Great movie
i guess you saw "In the mouth of Madness"?! if not...( one of favs)
I did!
The idea of Carcosa is a place where individuals who've lost their minds and have given themselves to their insanity. Hastur isn't just any regular king: he's the King of All; they call him the Envoy because he interacts with humanity more than any of the Old Ones.
Originally described by the great Ambrose Bierce.
I read the King in Yellow about 7 years ago, honestly don't remember much.
The book that came close to driving me mad was The Purple Cloud by MP Sheil.
Harlan Ellison also has some extravagantly bizarre stuff.
I'll have to check out The Purple Cloud
@@CriminOllyBlog at the 50% point pair it with "The Hashish Eater Apocalypse of Evil" by Clark Ashton Smith
It's a poem that won't take long, but should provide an interesting experience.
Those Futurama booths always remind me of the Final Solution chambers in Barbarella.
I don't remember those - it's been decades though!
My favorite story from the collection is the demoiselle D’ys. That one really felt like a fever dream and I just love rereading it
My recommendation for a story along the same lines would be The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson. Very eery story and reminiscent of The King in Yellow and Lovecrafts work.
YES! I need to reread that.- I read it as a teenager and it really made an impression on me
was very strange as i began listening to the audiobook from a random recommendation from
a horror books site and saying this guy's good, i hope he's making more books and then leanrning
this was written more than a hundred years ago... fascinating, really really enjoyed the first story
with this weird cyberpunk angle to it including suicide booths... also out of nowhere the
exclusion legally of a certain ethnicity was like woah... this is of its era
Also was this the origin of the woman in white kind of ghost story then
Glad you enjoyed it too - I really did think it was a weird and effective read
I have only read the first two stories so far however I agree with how disturbing it is. Which reminds me that there is a podcast that is about the king in yellow, a fictional story that uses the concept of madness, the King, and the lands of Carcosa. It's called "Malevolent", with its scary notion of not being in control in life and death situations with creatures not from this world.
Strange seeing you mention this book, I just yesterday added it to my TBR after seeing it mentioned in a Lovecraft book that I am currently reading!
Junji Ito has a manga Cat Diary which was a fun read.(I'm here for the crime...not the horror.) I had never heard of him before trying cat manga.
That does sound fun
So much fun, filled with his love of cats and great careful observations.
sounds fascinating! just ordered it from the library
Enjoy!
I honestly really loved this book
It was so unusual
I read The King In Yellow when I was a teen. I'm glad I read it then, when a lot of horror was still new to me. I enjoyed it then. I'm not sure how I'd feel about it decades later. I think of any weird writers off the top of my head. Some literary weird writers include Julio Cortazar, Dino Buzzati and Bruno Schulz.
Ethical Suicide Parlors stem from Vonnegut, with FUTURAMA a post-literate reference. The King In Yellow as a play was performed in Paris as an oblique reference to the Grand Guignol theater, where transgressive excess ruled. Chambers manages in those first four stories to evoke an eerie, realistic, surreal adjunct to Lovecraft's work, as you cite. Similarly, "An Inhabitant of Carcosa" by Ambrose Bierce is linked to HPL's work, probably because Lovecraft used Far Carcosa as a referent.
Grand Guignol theatre began three years after Chambers wrote The King In Yellow.
I’ve been reading this book and am nearing the end. I enjoyed hearing your insights. Very thought provoking!
That was great. Would love to see you do a Lovecraft video sometime. I’ve just finished the 2008 Necronomicon collection and feel like I’m not getting it
I read The King in Yellow in my early 20s. I'm currently listening to an audiobook here on TH-cam. I love weird fiction, with my favorite writer being H.P. Lovecraft.
Awesome! Are you taking part in the week of weird this week?
My first brush with King in Yellow was as a preteen in my junior high school library six decades ago. An excerpt, specifically the couple pages regarding the opening of the "Government Lethal Chamber" was included in a book with a title something like, "100 of the World's Greatest Short Stories". Great age to learn about the attractiveness of suicide.
The book is out of copyright in the U.S. and can be read online.
I learned of it in the 1980s, when it was mentioned in a biography of Aleister Crowley I read. The concept of a book, or some other item, which, when read or understood, causes madness, was something I had always found fascinating. In the 10th Grade, I wrote a short story called, "The Curse of the Claw," about a strange sculpture, which caused insanity when an individual finally understood its meaning. I would recommend watching the movie, "Into the Mouth of Madness." It's plot could be described as, "H.P. Lovecraft meets 'The King in Yellow'." Do YOU read SUTTER KANE? :)
Love In the Mouth of Madness - I need to watch it again!
Crowley? What was he connection? I've read many Crowley biographies but I haven't come across that before
I forget the connection--it wasn't significant. But "The King in Yellow" is mentioned in his autobiography.
King in yellow and ito are a perfect combo. Just finished Gyo last night and onto Tomie.
I had zero interest in this book until I watched this video. Your description and analysis were so compelling that now I can’t wait to read it!
Hope you enjoy it!
I just finished listening to a reading of it. It took me a long time to get through. There's a lot to process. I really loved the stories at the end
Great review.
Though the word wasn't in the vocabulary in 1920, let alone in 1895 when The King in yellow was written, the setup for The Repairer of Reputations, the geopolitcal situation he describes especially in the United States...is pretty much a perfect description of a fascist state. It's pretty ingenious that this is the first story in the collection. This is the story that describes what happens when teh King in Yellow becomes spread through a society. Think of Mr. hastane's obsession with napoleon, too. It's rather brilliant.
I do like some of thel ater stories in the collection too. "The Street of the Four Winds" is a haunting little tale and I really enjoyed "The Street of the First Shell", too. Chambers was in paris during the period and saw some of the results of the Franco-Prussian war firsthand. Maybe taht's why this, his second and most well-regarded book today, is also his weirdest and most intense. That said his later fiction can be quite diverse. As well as romantic fiction there's "proto" science fiction and ghost stories, and some, what we might now call political thrillers. Still, nothing quite on this level, so far as I've seen so far.
Interesting, thank you! I'd definitely consider trying some of his other work as there was so much that was great in these stories
@@CriminOllyBlog Set your expectations a little bit lower and I think you may enjoy some of it. The Slayer of SOuls (what a cool title eh) was a pretty neat thriller with some occult overtones and some weird turn-of-the century politics. There are some pretty effective ghost stories. often the tales do have a romantic (as in, love story) factor. I haven't read nearly all of it and certainly I don't think much is as timeless as King in Yellow.
If you get a Lovecraft vibe from this, you should check out Chambers' story "The Maker of Moons", which he wrote a year after King in Yellow and is, I think, better than anything in that book. I remember it being very Lovecraftian avant la lettre. Chambers did write other fantastic/weird stuff but none of it was as well received in its time, and I think Lovecraft's advocacy is the main reason that he's remembered at all now.
Cheers - I'll check that one out
I read all of Chambers' surviving weird fiction a few years ago when researching a podcast series about his work. None of it lives up to The King in Yellow and much of it is dull. There is some heavy overlap between his romantic fiction and his weirder work, with many of his weird fiction really just being romance stories with a little window dressing. "The Maker of Moons" is a rare standout, but I'd say most horror fans won't find much to enjoy in his work beyond The King in Yellow.
I do get mad once a month as soon as I look at my checkBook and see the money I spent on things that I shouldn’t .
LOL
I can’t wait to read this book again now
Kurt Vonnegut in Timequake (one of his last books) also has the suicide booths unsure if Futurama came first also I'm a new sub! Love your descriptions and conceptualizations!
Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk is possibly the weirdest book I have read.
There used to be a great blog called Conceptual Fiction that had an interesting if less kind perspective on the gulf between this book and Chambers’ others. He theorised that Chambers didn’t have the drive or ambition enough to take his vision to the fullest expression of it, and so fell back on easy pieces that would sell, hence why only 4 stories in the book are weird.
I read this book many years ago and was disappointed that the stories within didn't make me go mad. Just a little nutty.
The poem "Carcosa" at the start references a short story by Ambrose Bierce, "An Inhabitant of Carcosa" written in 1886, which inspired Chambers. Chambers work, in turn, inspired Lovecraft and other members of his writing circle, contemporary and current. Carcosa, the King in Yellow (or commonly the Yellow Emperor) and the Yellow Sign have since taken on a life of their own, expanding into a modern mythos that have influenced many, including George R. R. Martin whose "Song of Fire and Ice" references a city of Carcosa wherein lives a dark sorcerer called "The Yellow Emperor." Stephen King's Crimson King in his Dark Tower series strongly resembles the King in Yellow. It is a deep rabbit hole indeed and a fun one worth exploring.
If you like “The King in Yellow”, then I recommend: “The Masque of the Red Death”, by Edgar Allan Poe, “An Inhabitant of Carcosa”, by Ambrose Bierce, “The King in the Golden Mask”, by Marcel Schwob, “Salome”, by Oscar Wilde, “The Seven Old Men” (A poem from “The Flowers of Evil”), by Charles Baudelaire, “Trilby”, by George Du Maurier, “The Three Impostors”, by Arthur Machen, “One of Cleopatra’s Nights”, by Theophile Gautier, “Lalla Rookh”, by Thomas Moore, and-if you can stomach it-“The Songs of Maldoror”, by Le Comte de Lautrémont. A similar creepy vibe can also be found in “Arabian Nights”, “The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám” and the weird stories of H.P. Lovecraft.
I know it's a while ago but for those interested I just picked up a copy of The King in Yellow at my local Waterstones. It is a hardback copy of the four stories that are connected, not the full book of short stories. It is a lovely book and is published by Pushkin Press, it cost me £9.99, you may be able to get it cheaper elsewhere.
Along the shore the cloud waves break,
The twin suns sink beneath the lake,
The shadows lengthen, in Carcosa.
Strange is the night where black stars rise,
And strange moons circle through the skies.
But stranger still, is lost Carcosa.
Songs that the Hyades shall sing,
Where flap the tatters of the King,
Must die unheard, in dim Carcosa.
Song of my soul, my voice is dead;
Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed,
Shall dry and die, in lost Carcosa.
*goes mad*
Enjoyed the video, i love this series, some of the best horror of all time.
After reading the inspiration for this book (carcossa by ambrose bierce) i feel it helps knit it all together.
(My opinion/theory/spoilers ahead)
Carcosa is the ruins of a paradise, ruled by the king in yellow, hastur. This paradise was likely reached by the initial traveler, by dying (animals could not notice him). This land I believe is heaven, that was stripped and ruined by human greed. With god no longer in charge, the only paradise left is through the illusions provided by the king in yellow.
Repairer of reputations, After his head injury the main character begins to accept the illusions over reality. And violenty refuses to let go of them, because reality is too much for him.
The mask and prophets paradise are kind of linked, showing the uncanny ways of preservation leading to the play mentioned in the prologue. Showing time can be stopped or manipulated (and beautiful) also shown in Demoiselle d'Ys.
Court of the Dragon and Yellow Sign are clear depictions of the illusion of the church vs the illusions of the yellow king (and we know how those end).
Since we know from the court of the dragon, carcossa is where souls go when they die. And hastur calls himself the living god, implying the god we know is dead.
So the knowledge driving people mad upon seeing the yellow sign is to see the truth.
Mankind ravaged and overthrew heaven.
Hastur now gives only the illusion of paradise, and malice to those who seek the old god.
And knowing that only hastur can preserve that which we love, or turn back the clock, their faith and belief in society is useless, as are their efforts. The only truths left are illusion... or ruin.
Sorry for the rant, wondering what others think of the theory
Chambers did write more weird fiction than just those four stories, and I believe someone put together a collection of them at some point. There are some things in common between Chambers, and Arthur Machen (pronounced Macken), and both were an influence on Lovecraft.
There's more to discover, in that others have added to the yellow mythos. I strongly recommend the collections edited by the late Joseph S. Pulver Sr.. There's a review of one such in ODM#9.
For more out there weird, I recommend 'The Circus of Doctor Lao', by Charles G. Finney, and, of course, 'The House on the Borderland', by William Hope Hodgson. If you fancy a more challenging read, try Hodgson's 'The Night Land'.
Just a brief pedantic note. Suicide is no longer a crime - and so people do not COMMIT (as in perpetrate or carry out: e.g. a mistake, crime or an immoral act) suicide. They take their own lives.
Not pedantic at all, you’re right to pick me up on that
For weird I always point to Ann and Jeff Vandermeer's The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories.
Maybe not the best recommendation for the weird genre, but I'd love to see you pick up some Brian Evenson, he is one of my favorites for horror and short stories and I really think you'd like his works. He is criminally underread in my opinion.
I'd not heard of Evenson - I'll try and check him out. Thanks for the recmmendation
This sounds like an interesting premise. It reminds me of an episode of the 1980s Twilight Zone entitled "Need to Know," where someone claims to have discovered the secret of existence, and everyone that they tell it to immediately goes insane.
That does sound like a similar theme!
I wonder what Chambers' female readers thought, presuming this was just another of his popular romance novels. The title even suggests romance. Makes one wonder what the sly fox was up to.
Ha! I hadn't even thought of that
THE MOST DISTURBING BOOK EVER WRITTEN IS "MISS MACINTOSH, MY DARLING"
An excellent short story, IMO, inspired by "The King in Yellow" is, um, "The King in Yellow" (2011, 4.79 out of 5 stars) by Literotica writer TamLin01. It is every bit as disturbing as the Chambers stories though it does contain, as you might expect, certain elements common to mostly every story on the Literotica site. Mostly. In the story a young man wants to impress a girl who is interested in the play and so he fabricates what he claims is the most complete edition of the play and presents it to the girl. She is delighted and refuses to believe that the text is fake. Spoilers: Sex, violence and madness ensue.
Okay, that sounds interesting - will check it out
The one thing that really drew me to the king in yellow and especially repairer of reputations was the implementation of an unreliable narrator. Like the more you read the less you trust the narrators judgement and start to question everything that is presented to you. And while the other stories of the king in yellow don’t explicitly follow this trend of an unreliable narrator i do catch myself wondering whether some parts are purely delusions or actually accrue the way they are described.
Anyways Iam late to the Party but still thank you for covering one of my favorite authors!
The weirdest book I've read would probably be "I'm Thinking of Ending Things." It's a very well written book with seamless transitions, but the ideas it inspires when you read it are kind of a mix of profound thought, deep thinking, and despairing truths. There really isn't much of a plot and the narrative kind of jumps all over the place, but there is a reason for it. An unnerving read, for sure.
Ugh. The movie is not good.
@@emilymosley3184 Yeah, that was awful. Of all the books to try to adapt that was the worst choice.
I do want to give that one a try at some point!
I loved this book. It’s the only book that I ever finished and then went back and immediately began to reread. Didn’t enjoy the movie, Kaufman made it autobiographical and it didn’t work for me.
Perhaps check out Ligotti as well. Some of his stories are in need of an editor (IMO),k but a lot is right on target.
Tonto went on to invent parkour and slam poetry.
Cities of the Red Night by William Burroughs was the weirdest book I have read. It does not completely work, at one point I could not tell what was going on, but it is definitely uncanny
Wondering if you ever saw the 1994 film " In the Mouth of Madness" which is about a famous horror author who writes books that are slowly driving his readers insane. It's a Lovecraftian inspired story and got mediocre reviews but I love it. Sounds like something similar to what you are talking about.
I did, it's a great film. I also liked Carpenter's movie 'Cigarette Burns' about a cursed movie
@@CriminOllyBlog Haven’t seen that one. Gotta check it out.
@@PieGuyBill it’s good - part of the Masters of Horror TV show
Love the trope too!
I'm reading Vonnegut's _Breakfast of Champions_ just now, so the answer to your question is "yes".
😂
I read a biography on Lovecraft and a lot of his work was based on dreams. The author of the bio thinks he was astral projecting.
Oh, interesting!
I'm envious that you haven't seen season 1 of True Detective yet, I wish I could erase my memory of it and watch it for the first time again.
I definitely need to watch it at some point
Look into the work of M John Harrison. Strangeness and weirdness abounds within his style of writing
I have only read a few of his short stories, but they always stuck with me. Thanks for the reminder!
In gratitude for reminding me of Harrison I will point you toward Lucius Shepard if you've never read him!
@@kevsplitterskull3209 Barnacle Bill the Spacer? Thanks for reminding me. Will put his name on me list
I'll look him up!
Cool video!
You mentioned that you used to write, do you still? Ever published anything?
No, my writing days are behind me I think. It's a hard thing to control. I did publish a couple of novels and some short stories. They are currently unavailable but I'm intending to republish them again at some point
The Un-Nigeled Title: Can a book make you mad?
Haven't read it yet but it's on the pile. Another person who many say may have written from experience is Whitley Strieber. Haven't read him either to make an opinion, but I've had my own experiences and dreams that in no way could have been made up by my feeble brain. So I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.
As far as a disturbing, dark book I'll mention Babyf***** by Urs Allemanne. I may have misspelled his name. You're pretty smart, I know you can figure out what is under the asterisks. Oddly enough it is freely available on Amazon, and for a reasonable price, though I don't know for how long once word gets out. It's a small book, roughly 12 centimeters x eight or thereabouts. And short, about 80 pages, with German version on the left and English on the right. Doubt it would take you half an hour to read. It is pretty exclusively just this one guy's inner thoughts, I guess that's stream of consciousness. I would like another's take on it as I don't know what to make of it. No one likes censorship, but this thing makes you question, maybe some books should be put up on a high shelf at least? Don't quite know if it should be as available as I found it. But I guess anyone can find anything these days if they just want to look for it.
Was a good book I enjoy it . But nothing weird happened to me after reading it 🤗 Maybe I was already lost before reading it. Found nothing disturbing about it 🤪😶
Based off Inhabitant of carcosa (Ambrose bierce)
Just bought it for my cosmic horror collection! It might help tip you over but not drive you mad? Think you have to be halfway there already lol
I liked "The Yellowv Sign" best. Fans of Chambers and Lovecraft might like Don Webb and Adam Neville.
Borges & Lafferty did the job for me. I'm mad.
Can a book send you mad? Yeah actually it was The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick
😂 On the Road by Kerouac pushed me close to madness with extreme boredom while trying to finish it. I saved what was left of my sanity and gave up two thirds in. 😴
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Aaargh!
@@idioz75 That was the way to have gone with Fear and Loathing
@@morebirdsandroses 😂 I can imagine. I have not read the book but I tried watching the movie. I gave up twenty tortuous minutes in.
@@idioz75 okay: here's what you do: if you see the damn thing, turn smartly on your heel and GO. 😁
It’s free on kindle unlimited!!
I didn’t feel right after reading it felt like the book Manchurian candidates you
Might get in the Wordsworth edition as it’s under a fiver. Tried to read these as a teenager because of the lovecraft stuff but didn’t like them because they made much less sense to me than HPL stories.
Waiting for the day one of your reviews starts off kind of banal, reviewing some nondescript book, and then gradually you go bad, collapse into goo, and someone has to come in, sweep you up, and turn off the camera. OLLY’S LAST WORD, a hit on #WeirdTube.
Ha! That would be cool. (or on second thoughts maybe not)
I have been toying for ages with the idea of doing a video that appears to be one of my normal videos but with things moving in the background and so on
It's almost as if there was/is something outside trying to " get in" to our world that HP Lovecraft ,Chambers and others tuned into. I know this is absurd!
It definitely felt like Chambers "tapped into" something. Repairer of Reputations felt like modern horror, something definitely later than 1895, and the predictions of WWI (although unknown to Chambers) are just downright eerie; as well as the concept of a reputation repairer, reading it now in the age of Google and your Online Presence that is tricky to leave behind you and can ruin your life.
Mh 👀 I'm always frustrated with Lovecraft... Like it never seems to get to the point and only hint at things or tippy toe around them mainly just making me feel grumpy and never being fully intrigued or entertained. Which is a shame as I like the ideas and background... I just rather wish he'd actually show us more and tell us more. Make it more exciting and thrilling. I'd love to read more about his world just from somebody else
The weirdest short novel I've read is one of those loony existentialist writers, Robbe-Grillet, called Jealousy. I read it twice before I learned that jalousie in French also means 'horizontal blinds', which he mentions continually while he describes his wife and her lover. Not weird in any overt way, but subtly because he goes back and forth in time, and describes the same things over and over.
😊
Keeping my comments simple 😂
Weirdest book I've ever read - Peter Roebuck's autobiography. A book about nothing. 🤔
Well I mean it is a sports book….