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The Hill of Dreams
The Hill of Dreams
The childhood of Lucian Taylor in rural Wales is recounted, particularly the old Roman fort where Lucian has strange, sensual visions of the town in the time of Roman Britain. Further description of Lucian's adult attempts to make a living as an author in London, and the poverty and suffering that is found in the pursuit of art.
Book Excerpt
en, the cabinets for many years of his lonely meditations. Every path about his home, every field and hedgerow had dear and friendly memories for him; and the odor of the meadowsweet was better than the incense steaming in the sunshine. He loitered, and hung over the stile till the far-off woods began to turn purple, till the white mists were wreathing in the valley.
Day after day, through all that August, morning and evening were wrapped in haze; day after day the earth shimmered in the heat, and the air was strange, unfamiliar. As he wandered in the lanes and sauntered by the cool sweet verge of the woods, he saw and felt that nothing was common or accustomed, for the sunlight transfigured the meadows and changed all the form of the earth. Under the violent Provençal sun, the elms and beeches looked exotic trees, and in the early morning, when the mists were thick, the hills had put on an unearthly shape.
The one adventure of the holidays was the visit to the Roman fort, to that fantast
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Contrary to 'The Terror', or 'The Novel of the Black Seal' I found this ebook lengthy and more boring than expected. Given, that I followed due to the review of Gary 449 before me, I was surprised.
On the good side an adventurous country bumpkin gone author fails to learn the treacherous reality of becoming a selling author aka making a living by publishing. So, one good aspect is this includes, and is NOT reduced to, a cautionary tale about last century authors being ripped-off (cheated) by publishing houses, which steal their stuff by masking it with their own artful reformulation of the prose and style.
It also gives us reminders of how failing to be of use within your community causes a lack of the social networking it needs, when you have no agent and no marketing team hired. The rest of the story is less supernatural than the other two titles I mentioned above.
Format (.epub) was OK, and the prose of Arthur Machen was always more to my liking than the now celebrated H. P. Lovecraft. If dreams and madness among rural people are thrilling to you, then this is surely a worthy classic to know.
On the good side an adventurous country bumpkin gone author fails to learn the treacherous reality of becoming a selling author aka making a living by publishing. So, one good aspect is this includes, and is NOT reduced to, a cautionary tale about last century authors being ripped-off (cheated) by publishing houses, which steal their stuff by masking it with their own artful reformulation of the prose and style.
It also gives us reminders of how failing to be of use within your community causes a lack of the social networking it needs, when you have no agent and no marketing team hired. The rest of the story is less supernatural than the other two titles I mentioned above.
Format (.epub) was OK, and the prose of Arthur Machen was always more to my liking than the now celebrated H. P. Lovecraft. If dreams and madness among rural people are thrilling to you, then this is surely a worthy classic to know.
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This is Machen's masterpiece. Not a word I use lightly. Machen's descriptive powers are at their height here and his ability to decribe physical and psychological landscapes is nowhere more evident than in this book. The writing builds as the story progresses and the ending is the strongest I have ever read; it makes 'The Turn of the Screw' look like a damp squib. If you never read anything else by this writer, please, read this. If there's any humanity in you at all, it will have you staring at the wall for an hour after you finish it. Really.
07/01/2009
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