Hmm, so, here I go being
revelatory and laying out some of my guilty pleasures for your scorn, and risking
the accusation of a lack of higher critical thinking, and some capricious
integrity. But who, reading this, will actually give a tinker’s cuss? From
experience, then, The King In Yellow is mentioned, I believe, in the Sky drama
series True Detective, and worse, in the ridiculous Kevin Bacon vehicle The
Following (a shocking piece of nonsense which I watched start to finish, the
writers of which were guilty of a musical anachronism that led me to write and
submit a goof for IMDB which has, to date, never been published, the dastards).
Whether or not they reference the collection of short stories by Robert
Chambers, in which the fictional play The King In Yellow is the precarious hook
onto which he hangs the first four stories, or the fictional play itself, which
doesn’t exist, is not clear, but what is clear is that it appears to have
influenced such luminaries as H. P. Lovecraft, Stephen King, and at least one
of the contributors to the Warhammer 40000 Universe.
Clear?
Whether or not I’m obfuscating,
the collection itself, published before the turn of the century (the 19th
century that is), is worth a punt if you like your prophecy woefully inaccurate
and your stories rambling and dated. Not that it lacks merit – the first story,
The Repairer of Reputations, is pugnacious and amusing if lacking verisimilitude,
with its narrator a truly unreliable fellow, and a city with suicide booths on
the streets for those whose reputations are irretrievably soiled. However, I’ve
read and proofed enough prose, written pre-1900, for Distributed Proofreaders of
Europe, to have become properly grumpy about it. The archaic turns of phrase,
ponderous syntax and florid verbosity make me puff out my cheeks and grub about
on the bedside table for something with more swearing and fewer characters
doffing caps and pontificating.
That said, this is a purely
emotional response to what must clearly be a seminal work of sorts, given its repeated reoccurrence
in modern culture, so with that in mind, I can’t be too harsh.
At least not without
seeming quite the curmudgeon.
There are about six
stories too many in the collection, of ten, given I can only remember four of
them with any clarity. One remains in the mind’s eye only because of its echoes
of the Orwellian trope of constant war, but whereas Winston Smith never sees first
hand any combat (because there likely isn’t any), Chambers’ character (whose
name escapes me) actually marches out of the gates and into a firefight with
the unnamed enemy. And it’s also tediously long.
Please do feel free to
read it yourself if you’re interested in the provenance of Bacon’s arch-enemy,
and don’t let my curmudgeonly ways deter you from your quest. Just don’t expect
Stephen King or Dan Abnett and you’ll be fine.
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