Thom Ryng

This stage play text was written to fulfill a literary hoax, one that in fact helped to inspire the notorious Necronomicon of Lovecraft. In the weird fiction of Robert W. Chambers, The King in Yellow was a play with a degenerative effect on the morals and sanity of its readers. Thom Ryng is not the first to flesh out the text of the play; in his introduction he suggests that he is perhaps the eighth, and he refers specifically to two earlier attempts: one by Lin Carter and one by James Blish. (I've read both.) In the first edition of the Ryng version, the conceit was that the text had been recovered from a 19th-century French edition. In this softbound reprint, editorial and authorial matter confesses its actual late-20th-century composition in the distant wake of Chambers' fiction. It has been produced on stage at least once, if we are to believe the current edition.

Materially, the book is a sturdy softcover volume with a generous font size. I was a little disappointed that the cover had the false Yellow Sign originally designed by artist Kevin Ross and corrupted in the editorial process for the Chaosium role-playing game Call of Cthulhu. (Chambers' original Yellow Sign was probably the "inverted torch" insignia that appeared on the binding of early editions of Chambers' story collection The King in Yellow.)

There is a vein of socio-political commentary that is disturbingly prescient (the author implies that it could have been causative), considering that the book was written in the 1990s. Readers are also furnished with a Hasturian incantation to achieve magical invisibility.

When I read this book, the experience was attended with appropriate inter-textual synchronicities. The Oedipus eyes of Thales echoed my recent philosophical reading in Nietzsche criticism (to wit, The Shortest Shadow and Foucault's Lectures on the Will to Know). Also relating to that reading, but opening onto a perpetual return to a secret place, is the play's portrayal of Truth as a phantom who is martyred.

Overall, I was suitably impressed, instructed, and infected by Ryng's deposition from the ether of this dread volume.… (plus d'informations)

Eidolon is a book by Kaspar Hauser. It is published by Sardation Press but I think it is POD from Lulu.com. Lulu is partly a vanity press, partly a way for small companies and individuals to get their work into print. GW Thomas used to publish books from Lulu.com and I liked most of those. Some other stuff, well Where Goeth Nyarlathotep was an outstanding mythos novel. The Coming of T'loal sucked eggs
badly and Leviathan's Ghost was an unreadable morass that had so many problems with typos and structure it made me think the author flunked out of middle school. I never would have heard of Eidolon if it hadn't been for Glynn Barrass' chapbook from Rainfall Books. Now that I've been burned a few times my esteem for Mr. Barrass' discretion is taking a nosedive. Sardathion Press is devoted to a style of writing
they refer to as subminimalist, whatever the heck that means. Price for this trade paperback with 156 pages is $14.95 with no discounts. The cover is wonderfully moody and mysterious; it is the best thing about the book.

Frankly, I don't get this book. Maybe I'm obtuse. I guess the author knows he's writing fiction. I guess. I mean at the back is an appendix titled Mythology, where he explains some of the entities he writes about. Of course, then Mr. Hauser writes "Azathoth was well known to H.P. Lovecraft and his circle..." Not invented by, well known by. Apparently the book is based on a series of recurring dreams had by the author, starting when he was taking a nap on the first day on a new job at a book store (one uncharitably wonders how long he
maintained that employment). He then goes on to state that he believes these dreams were the experiences of a sixteenth century English monk traveling in Germany. And I go on to wonder if he is one of the crowd that believes the Cthulhu mythos is really real. Even HPL himself threw his hands up over this.

As to the text it is a series of Cantos, or prose poems each inspired by one of his dreams. They were by and large modestly engaging if considered fiction although I really prefer short stories and novels to poetry or "prose poems," which are kind of like free verse poems when the author cannot master a taxing verse form. Some of the images were kind of cool. If thought to be factual they read like a bunch of twaddle. I'm not sure who this book is aimed at, perhaps the author's
immediate circle of friends? Maybe he found some release in
committing them to the printed page.

Even mythos completists could probably give this a miss without regret.

Interestingly, considering the name Kaspar Hauser, which must be a pseudonym, he was a bit of a sensation in mid-19th century Germany. Reading the Wikipedia entry on him is a much better experience than slogging through this book: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaspar_Hauser… (plus d'informations)