asandwich

First, I’d better come clean: I read The Great God Pan because Stephen King told me to. King has never been shy about name-dropping his influences, and this particular story is one of his biggest, apparently. If I ever find and decide to re-read my copy of Danse Macabre, I’ll probably need to get “I’m reading this because Stephen King told me to” printed on a tee-shirt for all the books I read there-after.

Right then; The Great God Pan.

I read this last week and gave it 3 stars, and was somewhat dismissive of it for reasons I cannot entirely seem to remember very clearly. Go figure.

However, I found my mind wandering back to the details of the story regularly over the past few days, so I finally decided to re-read it again this morning. Which I guess is why I’m here right now, when I should really be cleaning the oven.

Being reasonably short at about 50 pages, it’s hard to say too much about the story itself without just retelling the whole thing, so let me briefly summarise: a doctor performs a revolutionary new operation on the brain of a young woman he ‘saved’ as an orphan, which enables her to see something that very quickly drives her completely insane. Nine months later, she dies in childbirth. The child is sent away to live in Wales.

Fast-forward twenty three years later, and a number of suicides amongst the London gentry is the talk of the city. Several gents take it upon themselves to investigate the cause, and begin to realise that all signs are pointing towards the involvement of a certain ‘lady of ill-repute’.

As Twenty-First Century horror enthusiasts, we’re both desensitised and spoiled by the ever-ascending levels of depravity and graphic violence that we constantly expose ourselves to - Victorian horror fiction seems rather antiquated and quaint by comparison. But what I find thoroughly fascinating is that this tale was written for an audience who still wore top hats and chiffonne bonnets, and travelled around by horse and carriage, yet plays very much upon that lurking sense of mind-obliterating horror, lying just beyond the veil of our mortal perceptions - which is still very much a key theme in contemporary horror fiction and shows little to no signs of abating any time soon.

Machen was a Nineteenth Century precursor to Lovecraft who, despite perhaps not being an altogether great writer, has a strong enough premise with The Great God Pan to set imaginations alight. Strong enough to have me coming back for a second go.

Anyway, it’s only 50 pages long. Just give it a try. Stephen King said so.