Mar 16
A bit of Horror History in an article all about the Belgian Nightmare Factory of Horror Fiction - Marabout Fantastique!
The Belgian Nightmare Factory: Marabout Fantastique and the Horror Bookshelf That Built a Generation
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A bit of Horror History in an article all about the Belgian Nightmare Factory of Horror Fiction - Marabout Fantastique!
The Belgian Nightmare Factory: Marabout Fantastique and the Horror Bookshelf That Built a Generation
La vie est atteinte de torticolis sempiternel, ce qui l’empêche de regarder en arrière. Faisons comme elle, le passé appartient à la mort, qui est jalouse de son bien.
Jean Ray, Malpertuis
The City of Unspeakable Fear was a good novel, but it was its' translator's afterword that actually sold me on it being a great one. Mostly by tying the novel's own themes of forgeries and coincidences into a history of forgeries and coincidences surrounding the author and the various artists who've adapted his work. I often feel like good, entertaining reviews are closer to stories than anything else, which coupled with my love for stories about stories, means I'm tempted to play around with creating a fake review as the setup for a story. It would be a trick with a venerable tradition behind it; I'd be building on a framework that a great house has already been built on. But it seems a fun place to explore.
November 1934. This one of the less racy Margaret Brundage covers for WEIRD TALES, illustrating what I think is supposed to be a scene from the cover story, " Queen of the Lilin" by E. Hoffmann Price. Other stories in this issue include "The Golden Glow" by S. Gordon Gurwit; "Concert to Death" by Paul Ernst; Part 5 of the serial "The Trail of the Cloven Hoof" by Arlton Eadie; "Voodoo Vengeance" by Kirk Mashburn"; an installment of the Conan story "The People of the Black Circle" by Robert E. Howard; "Feigman's Beard" by August Derleth"; "Le tableau" by Jean Ray (translated as "Nude with a Dagger," which would also have been a customary Brundage cover subject); and "The Music of Erich Zann" by H.P. Lovecraft.
Jean Ray - Le Carrousel des Maléfices - Marabout - 1964
Jean Ray - La cité de l'indicible peur, Bibliothèque Marabout - Fantastique, 1971.
Cover art by Henri Lievens
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Malpertuis by Jean Ray
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note: If you did not finish but feel you read enough to form an opinion, you may choose a ‘Yes’ option instead of 'Partly' (e.g., Yes, I didn’t like it). Similarly, if you’ve never heard of a book until now but formed an opinion from this post, you may wish to select a “no” option e.g., “No, but I want to.”
Malpertuis is a puzzle box of nested narratives wrested from a set of manuscripts stolen from a monastery. A bizarre collection of distrustful relatives has gathered together in the ancient stone mansion of a sea-trading dynasty for the impending death of the occult scientist, Uncle Cassave, and the reading of his will. Forced to dwell together for the remainder of their lives within the stifling walls of Malpertuis for the sake of a cursed inheritance, their banal existence gradually gives way to love affairs and secret plots, as the building slowly exposes a malevolence that eventually leads to a series of ghastly deaths. The eccentric personalities it houses—which include an obsessive taxidermist, a hypochondriac, a trio of vengeful sisters and a former paint store manager who has gone mad—begin to shed like skins to reveal yet another hidden story buried in the novel’s structure, one that turns the haunted-house tradition on its head and culminates in an apocalyptic denouement.
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Jean Ray - La Belgique Fantastique (Henri Lievens)