The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories by Robert W. Chambers
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Dangerous Reading

Alternating between fin de siècle New York and Paris, many (but not the majority) of these stories allude to another manuscript which is not present, the eponymous The King in Yellow. The experience is one of reading the second half of Cervantes’s Don Quixote but knowing the first half only through the second.

The King in Yellow is a play, fragments of which are strewn throughout the stories. It is referred to as a the “the supreme work of art.” However, it has been banned in several countries, whether because of obscenity or subversiveness is unclear. What is clear is that those who read it are frequently driven mad and die. Even mere proximity to a copy of the book generates disturbing dreams and illusions.

If there were some sort of resolution of the situation, for example a denouement of the threads in some intellectual or social conclusion about the adverse power of literature, the stories might be satisfying. As they stand, though, they are vapid individually and incoherent collectively.

Chambers‘s talent in describing an alternative Gilded Age world, in which New York City is transformed into a provincial capital of the late Holy Roman Empire and Paris into a finishing school for young American artists, is impressive. So is his ear for accents. And his skill in symbolic manipulation is considerable. But none of this talent seems to serve a purpose. There is no development, just fragments thrown down like bread crumbs that lead nowhere.

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