By Harry Markov
Samuels, Mark. The Man Who Collected Machen and Other Weird Tales. Chomu Press (March 16 2011). 178pp. US $12.50 ISBN-13: 978-1907681059.
I had no prior knowledge of Mark Samuels or his work. Picking his collection, The Man Who Collected Machen and Other Weird Tales, was the result of Samuels’ comparison to Howard P. Lovecraft, as promoted in his bio, and a very bizarre title. I admit to being frivolous in how I choose my reading materials, but so far, I have yet to see my intuition mislead me.
Mark Samuels proved to be the perfect introduction to the sort of weird horror I have been in search of these last few months. At the same time, the similarities with Lovecraft’s works help to anchor me within something familiar. The main parallel between Samuels and Lovecraft is to be found with the narrator. With the exception of “The Age of Decayed Futurity”, all of the stories feature the familiar male narrator, with a Caucasian-sounding name and inclinations of the scholarly variety, who leaves the confines of the modern and known world and enters a new, unexplained one that has been there all along.
More of Lovecraft can be discovered in Samuels’ “The Black Mould”, the story of a sentient mould that comes to be in the crater of a dead world, orbiting the rim of the universe. There is the familiar fear of the cosmos, present in Lovecraft’s fiction, as the mould evolves into one of the most frightening consumers of worlds and stars alike. As the mould grows and develops a hive-mind consciousness, it suffers from endless nightmares, which trigger its reproductive system as a means to seek release. What strikes true fear in “The Black Mould” is the mould’s complete unawareness of the apocalypse it’s ushering in. The mould is as much the victim of its nightmares as all other life forms in its path. Unlike with Lovecraft, there is no black-and white-situation, where the extraterrestrials seek out life for their own malicious purposes. In a sense, we’re even less significant to our harbinger of death; this cosmic horror is itself plagued by a pantheon of horrors.
Further similarities can be found with the Voolans, the race that lives below the surface of the world in “A Contaminated Text”, and the manner with which narrators either disappear or die or lose their sanity. At the same time, one cannot say that Samuels borrows from Lovecraft in excess. While Lovecraft opts for the sudden revelation of the Other, the alien and monstrous face of the world as a means to emphasize the horror, Samuels submerges the reader gradually. Lovecraft chooses to destroy his narrators with a sudden jolt and tremor, while Samuels has the weird and the terrifying assimilate and digest the narrator.
The opening story, “Losenef Express”, is exemplary of Samuels’ technique as the narrator, one Eddie Charles Knox, begins the tale drinking in a café, then commits murder and, upon fleeing, boards the Losenef Express, a train full of the dead that reaches the starting point rather than the ending point of the journey. Samuels provides no explanation for what’s happening. It just does and the reader has no choice but to accept the irregularities in the space-time continuum as something inherent to the world. The paradox of the tale reminded me of the impossibility of the Penrose Stairs, otherwise known as the “Impossible Staircase”.
“The Man Who Collected Machen”, the titular story of the collection, remains one of my least favourite ones, because I know nothing about Arthur Machen, which I think is a prerequisite to enjoying the story to the fullest. Samuels adopts a similar approach of submersion, having the narrator Robert Lundwick, a great Machen enthusiast, perform his research routine, but then use the introduction of Aloysius Condor as a trigger to transport Robert into the alternate city of London. To the outsider, the story is unremarkable, but to the ones already indoctrinated in the works of Machen, I assume the pleasure will be ,as there are several references to the “Lost Club”, a story by Machen that has been cut off from all archives and also the name of the “Condor’s Society of Arthur Machen”. While I cannot connect the dots, I’m positive of their significance as an important nuance in comprehending the text.
I didn’t feel confident about Samuels’ appeal, until I read “THYXXOLQU”, and the rest of his stories dealing with language and its different manifestations. Words have power. Everybody has heard this expression, and devoted readers rely on words to transport them into new worlds and replace one reality with another. Following this thought, isn’t it logical to assume that the true fabric of reality consists of words and languages, rather than atoms? In “THYXXOLQU”, Samuels presents language as a disease that alters and disfigures our dimensions. Infection of reality as a trope is also present in “A Contaminated Text”, in which a single book contaminates all others in the newly opened Megabiblioteca in Mexico. The contamination is so potent that it affects the people who have read the diseased text, and their sanity. However, while the events in “THYXXOLQU” are real, the contamination in “A Contaminated Text” appears to be all in the minds of the victims.
Language, however, is not always the culprit. In the story “Glickman the Bibliophile”, the written word is the victim as the Apocalypse of Information takes place. This story taps into the horror of all bibliophiles – the destruction and desecration of the written word. As with “A Contaminated Text”, a madness spreads through humans worldwide and they turn into savages bent on the destruction of all books. Through the eyes of the author Henry Glickman, as he’s given the grand tour of his new publisher Nemesis Press [the name of the press is a warning sign], the reader learns that the people behind Nemesis Press are, in fact, anti-thinkers who seek to eradicate culture. Apart from the hard-hitting images of books being devoured and then vomited, the true horror comes from the realization that the most passionate advocates of this apocalypse are the ones who once praised books and knowledge.
What I love about The Man Who Collected Machen and Other Weird Tales is the multiple use of themes, tropes and elements. It’s as if stories nod to each other, in appreciation of each other. For instance, both “Xapalpa” and “A Question of Obeying Orders” share the dark ritual of decapitating a corpse and staking its body in its grave as a means to prevent it from rising. I spotted Hitler as a recurring name and Mexico as the setting of “A Contaminated Text” and “Xapalpa” alike. In theory, this repetition should reflect negatively on Samuels, as he is, to a point, recycling ideas and imagery. However, Samuels is such a master wordsmith in his worlds that even repeated ideas take on a new and potent meaning. At the same time, the collection comes off as cohesive and arranged with a clear idea as to why these stories are featured.
“The Tower” serves as an excellent closing story. I think Samuels has written it to serve as an afterword and meditation on the themes present in the collection. The fact that the story has not been published prior to this anthology, unlike all the others, reinforces my suspicion. While I did nod and agree with all the opinions the narrator presented in the story about the nature of society and the state of the world, I felt as though nothing happened and that Samuels hijacked the narrative in order to deliver his personal views.
Even so, The Man Who Collected Machen and Other Weird Tales remains a dark delight. I have found all tales within these pages highly entertaining, as well as thought-provoking. You won’t make a mistake with this collection.
You can purchase The Man Who Collected Machen and Other Weird Tales through Amazon.com.
Bio: Harry Markov: Priest of the Elder Gods of Weirdness, bookaholic, novelist, and freelance writer. Follow him on Twitter at @harrymarkov.