The Willows

[Old Dwarf]

By Algernon Blackwood is a short story @ 50 pages an early 1900's
work that HP Lovecraft considered the greatest Supernatural Story.

It's slipping into that time of frost on the pumpkins & the goblins will
get you ,if you don't watch out. So of course I'm getting ready for Cthulhu Wars
to finally ship by reading some vintage Mythos stuff.

I had heard of Blackwood but never read any thing by him, he wrote a
lot of Ghost Stories" but also did some "Weird Fiction" that fitted
into the Mythos.

Blackwood was an outdoorsman & the Willows reflect his awe of Nature
as it takes place on a canoe trip of 2 men down the Danube River. A
lot of adjectives are used (but if you read Lovecraft you know he loved adjectives)
and of course the writing is from another age. To the modern reader it seems
to go on & on the point of just saying "enough please get on with it".

This slow build up from the mundane appreciation of Nature & the gradual
wrongness of things, is what impressed old HPL. It's understated & produces
that sense of "things from the Outside" without the gory details.

I enjoyed the read & the man knows how to set a scene but if your into
Steven King or todays British Horror writers (Blackwood was a Brit)
you may find the Willows a bit tame.

OD