<a href="http://feedbooks.com/book/457" target="_blank">The Great God Pan</a> by Arthur Machen is a very influential book by a writer who's largely forgotten these days. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Machen" target="_blank">Arthur Machen</a> was one of those admirable working hacks who was as happy to turn out a journalistic think piece as he was a supernatural horror story. What mattered was getting published and getting paid. Good man.

<em>The Great God Pan</em> was first published in 1890 then reissued, revised and extended four years later. It caused something of a sensation at the time for its decadence and sexual content. They're both rather mild by present fashions, but in late Victorian times this seemed deeply shocking.

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Though he was later to make a living as a Fleet Street hack on the London <em>Evening News</em> the younger Machen moved in bohemian and occult circles. They influenced much of his early work, including this novella. It inspired both Lovecraft and Peter Straub's first big hit, <em>Ghost Story.</em>

Stephen King has been a long-time admirer of Machen and once described this piece as, 'one of the best horror stories ever written. Maybe the best in the English language' . In another interview King said the piece 'surmounts its rather clumsy prose and works its way relentlessly into the reader's terror-zone. How many sleepless nights has it caused? God knows, but a few of them were mine. I think "Pan" is as close as the horror genre comes to a great white whale'.

Got to read it now, haven't you? There's a wonderful group dedicated to keeping Machen's work alive, <a href="http://www.machensoc.demon.co.uk/" target="_blank">The Friends of Arthur Machen</a>. I highly recommend their site if you'd like to know more about this very interesting writer. And here's an extract from <em>The Great God Pan</em> to give you a taste of his work -- the full piece is a pdf at the end and you can find other formats in the link in the opening paragraph. Yes, the prose is a little rich for modern tastes -- as it is with most writers of this era. But Machen was a writer who worked with the imagination. And that is as current as ever.
<blockquote>'Look about you, Clarke. You see the mountain, and hill following after hill, as wave on wave, you see the woods and orchard, the fields of ripe corn, and the meadows reaching to the reed-beds by the river. You see me standing here beside you, and hear my voice; but I tell you that all these things — yes, from that star that has just shone out in the sky to the solid ground beneath our feet—I say that all these are but dreams and shadows; the shadows that hide the real world from our eyes. There is a real world, but it is beyond this glamour and this vision, beyond these 'chases in Arras, dreams in a career,' beyond them all as beyond a veil. I do not know whether any human being has ever lifted that veil; but I do know, Clarke, that you and I shall see it lifted this very night from before another's eyes. You may think this all strange nonsense; it may be strange, but it is true, and the ancients knew what lifting the veil means. They called it seeing the god Pan.'</blockquote>
<a title="Machen - The Great God Pan.pdf" href="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/457-original.pngblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Machen-The-Great-God-Pan.pdf">Machen - The Great God Pan.pdf</a>