Blackwood was a great writer of cosmic horror - my personal favourite, in fact, for the depth and frequency of his insights written in crystalline prose - and as you so insightfully show, his ideas about the human condition are relevant to modern society, namely how the "monstrous reality" you illustrate comes to life when the ruling elite and its bourgeois hangers-on impose their hollow version of reality on society, shrinking the inner life of the spirit and magnifying the world of empty materialism to horrifying proportion. It's uncanny, in fact, what a vivid, lucid mirror Blackwood's best stories hold up to our decadent society. Thank you for bringing his timeless work to our attention.
Having never heard of Blackwood, I have discovered what a huge body of writing is his. The local library has 2 or 3 of his books on the shelf but something like 20 available as e-books. I will pick up a couple this week. I was struck by the example of the boys who wanted to burn up the girl who did not think they way they think. We are overly familiar with this kind of intolerance, but actually destroying the enemy in the flesh crosses the line that the woke around us don't have to cross. They never have to smell burning hair or hear screams of pain, something like bomber pilots who drop their bombs and fly away to their home base. The power of the woke underscores the need for alternate avenues for speech and community, and thank you for so generously providing them.
Thank you, Allen. I take especial pride in being able share a new author, clearly one who has been under-appreciated. It was Harry, who comments here often enough, who turned me on to Blackwood, and I can't thank him enough. I'm very much looking forward to reading more of his work.
I'm glad that you glommed onto the woke trouble following a piece about atheism with particular focus on scientism. I was worried that due to my emphasis, the relation to wokism might be missed. So I'm happy to see you got what I was after. Scientism and bad atheism underwrite woke ideology. That statement in the Blackwood tale about "a pandemonium of hate and fear, of striving to escape, of agonised, bitter warring to find safety, peace—salvation"--says it all in so many ways. And I find it unnerving when we get scientistic folk (like Peter Beghossian and Dan Dennett) distancing themselves from the very phenomena they have engendered. There's a reason woke lawn signs say "I Believe Science is Real."
Blackwood was a great writer of cosmic horror - my personal favourite, in fact, for the depth and frequency of his insights written in crystalline prose - and as you so insightfully show, his ideas about the human condition are relevant to modern society, namely how the "monstrous reality" you illustrate comes to life when the ruling elite and its bourgeois hangers-on impose their hollow version of reality on society, shrinking the inner life of the spirit and magnifying the world of empty materialism to horrifying proportion. It's uncanny, in fact, what a vivid, lucid mirror Blackwood's best stories hold up to our decadent society. Thank you for bringing his timeless work to our attention.
Thanks for the recommendation in the first place, Harry. And thanks for your participation here in the comments.
Having never heard of Blackwood, I have discovered what a huge body of writing is his. The local library has 2 or 3 of his books on the shelf but something like 20 available as e-books. I will pick up a couple this week. I was struck by the example of the boys who wanted to burn up the girl who did not think they way they think. We are overly familiar with this kind of intolerance, but actually destroying the enemy in the flesh crosses the line that the woke around us don't have to cross. They never have to smell burning hair or hear screams of pain, something like bomber pilots who drop their bombs and fly away to their home base. The power of the woke underscores the need for alternate avenues for speech and community, and thank you for so generously providing them.
Thank you, Allen. I take especial pride in being able share a new author, clearly one who has been under-appreciated. It was Harry, who comments here often enough, who turned me on to Blackwood, and I can't thank him enough. I'm very much looking forward to reading more of his work.
I'm glad that you glommed onto the woke trouble following a piece about atheism with particular focus on scientism. I was worried that due to my emphasis, the relation to wokism might be missed. So I'm happy to see you got what I was after. Scientism and bad atheism underwrite woke ideology. That statement in the Blackwood tale about "a pandemonium of hate and fear, of striving to escape, of agonised, bitter warring to find safety, peace—salvation"--says it all in so many ways. And I find it unnerving when we get scientistic folk (like Peter Beghossian and Dan Dennett) distancing themselves from the very phenomena they have engendered. There's a reason woke lawn signs say "I Believe Science is Real."