In this episode, JF and Phil paddle into the marshlands of Algernon Blackwood’s 1907 masterpiece The Willows, a tale Lovecraft once called the finest weird story of all time. They explore how a narrative in which almost nothing happens can conjure a cosmic dread more potent than a legion of monsters, and how Blackwood’s genius lies in revealing the spiritual
horror latent in landscape itself. Topics include zones, the limits of human
reason, and the terror of brushing up against an otherworld that lies just
beyond the riverbank—near at hand, yet somehow separated from us by an
unbridgeable gulf.
Photo by Derek Dye, via Wikimedia Commons.
REFERENCES
Algernon Blackwood, “The Willows”
Weird Studies, Episode 55 on “The Wendigo”
SCTV
Algernon Blackwood, “The Psychology of Places” in The Lure of the Unknown
Weird Studies, Episodes 14 and 15 on Stalker
Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols
Sue Clifford and Angela King, England in Particular
Michael Dames, Pagans Progress
J. G. Ballard, English fiction author
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