This summer, I have mostly stayed away from writing and instead focused on replenishing myself with reading — and, to further that replenishment, letting go of any feeling of obligation that I write about that reading. So I’m not even going to mention it here! But a couple of pieces […]
Arthur Machen’s 20th century writings are simultaneously fascinating and frustrating. These days, if Machen is known by general readers, it is not for the relatively more recent works, but rather for his extraordinary writings of the 1890s (even if some of them were not published until later): “The Great God […]
Arthur Machen’s short story “The White People” remains a masterpiece and perhaps his most difficult work of fiction — what Absalom, Absalom! is for Faulkner, what Finnegans Wake is for Joyce, “The White People” is for Machen. Though Machen wrote the story when Joyce was a teenager and Faulkner a toddler, its challenges […]