The Pendragon Legend - An Ironic Hungarian Homage to Britishness

The Pendragon Legend (1934)
Antal Szerb
 
Amusing and ironic inter-war Hungarian take on occult themes - post-modern well before its time - The Pendragon Legend is no masterpiece but remains very interesting with some affectionate insights on how educated others saw the British in the 1930s - their class system, their literature, their national character, their empire and their 'stiff upper lip'.

Szerb has been re-introduced to London by Pushkin Press. This is recommended as a pleasant amusing read that is a cut above the conspiracy schlock that has appeared in the wake of the Da Vinci Code. It is sad to note that he died in a labour camp in 1945. The witty irony of this book shows that a man who could laugh at himself and create a nice anti-hero also died that day. 

Popular posts from this blog

On the Lovecraftian

The Alchemist (1908) The Cats of Ulthar (1920) H P Lovecraft Cthulhu's Reign (2010) Editor, Darrell Schweitzer The Lovecraft Anthology: Volume I (2011) Editor, Dan Lockwood   The Black Wings of Cthulhu (2012) Editor: S. T Joshi   I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H P  Lovecraft (2013 Edition) S T Joshi At some stage, we should review all of Lovecraft's stories but we mention two only to start the ball rolling, the first only to dispose of it as juvenilia. The Alchemist must be regarded as o ne of Lovecraft's weakest stories but then he was only 17 or 18 and it was his first. The basic story line is fairly trite (which we will not repeat for the sake of spoilers although it is barely worth the effort). However, Lovecraft is good at absorbing Gothick memes and replaying them effectively. In other words the story is worth reading for its 'atmosphere' as an antiquarian throw-back to the world of 'The Castle of Otranto' or of Ann Radcliffe over a cen
Read more

Weird Fiction in Liberal London - China Mieville's Kraken

Kraken (2010) China Mieville We are definitely not into spoilers so it is hard to go too far into the story of this dark fantasy on a scientific theme. A preserved and valuable giant squid disappears from the Darwin Centre at the Natural History Musum and one of its staff, Billy Harrow, discovers a world of cults and magic that threaten apocalypse. So far, so very obviously dark fantasy, but China Mieville adds, with Kraken , a major work to a genre that owes a great deal to the psychogeographical cult of London as the world's most magical city. Its fault is that of all modern creative fantasy - far too many ideas for a basic story line that could be culled from any urban thriller. Although resolved satisfactorily, there are moments when you feel that greatness has eluded Mieville because of an inability to develop fewer ideas in more depth. In the end, despite hints of something deeper, and some remarkable invention and (in places), yes, ideas, it ends up being an ente
Read more

Thomas Ligotti and Twenty First Century Nihilism

Nethescurial/The Mystics of Muelenberg from Grimscribe: His Lives and Works (1991) My Work Is Not Yet Done (2002) Teatro Grottesco (2006) The Conspiracy Against The Human Race (2011) This review is essentially about the later Ligotti of the current century. We hope to return to the earlier Ligotti in a later review but we can set the scene with just two stories from his second major collection Grimscribe: His Lives and Works (1991). Nethescurial , for example, appears to be a very obvious homage to Lovecraft almost to the point of pastiche in terms of structure and mood although it is clearly very much a Ligotti production. It is as if Ligotti decided to see how he could take as many Lovecraftian tropes about ancient cultic lore and the dark occult, refine them to their basics and come up with a definitive layered narrative oozing unease rather than outright horror. Ligotti is at his best not in trying to present something visceral, disgusting or terrible but in presenting som
Read more