The Great God Pan

It's safe to say that Lovecraft owes a significant debt to Machen. The same story telling style but without the overwhelming archaic wording that makes Lovecraft tedious so often.
I am somewhat bored of this style as I've been making my way through a Lovecraftian Mythos anthology for two years now, but as this novella predates that I can't judge it fairly based on what followed it.
Very readable though I think I missed a great deal of the symbolism.

I'm hoping to get through as many folk horror classics as I can this year, and what better place to start than with Arthur Machen's The Great God Pan, a Christmas gift from my youngest (thank you Beano!). It quickly became apparent while I was reading this why Machen is held in such high regard among horror writers. His prose is insidious, carefully measured, the plot unfolding at just the right pace to keep the reader hooked, and the endings suitably, delightfully, quietly horrific. The second story in this collection, The White Powder, could have been written by Lovecraft, and I wasn't surprised to learn that old Howard considered Machen an important influence. The final story, The White People, is pure folk horror - bucolic setting, burial mounds, nymphs, rituals, local lore, and a mysterious statue in the woods. Loved it.

Didn't really get into it, while it remembered me quite a lot of Lovecraft's work, it didn't had the same strength or finesse. I was expecting to be more surprised than that but overall the story is quite predictable. While it might have been quite a shock when it came out, unfortunately this isn't the case anymore. And I profoundly disagree with this book being “one of the best horror stories ever written” as Stephen King said.

Is it very sacrilegious of me to be utterly meh about this novela? Well, sometimes I am sacrilegious to tales people love. It was a quick, easy read. But it just wasn't very well told. In fact, it TELLS you everything instead of showing. The woman is a vile and evil temptress, and all the men do is babble about what she does. We don't actually get any action, even in the climax. We are TOLD how the men disposed of this woman. Machen, I expected better. I'll have to MAKE myself read more at this point. Sort of like how I might have to make myself watch Miike's horror-esque films because I honestly didn't find Audition that good. Sigh.