The Buffalo Hunter Hunter (2025) by Stephen Graham Jones

https://open.substack.com/pub/jayrothermel/p/the-buffalo-hunter-hunter-2025-by?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1vg2di 

"Flow stretches a person beyond his usual limits."

https://open.substack.com/pub/jayrothermel/p/flow-stretches-a-person-beyond-his?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1vg2di 

Interlacing: an aesthetic

Ackroyd spells out his aesthetic thesis in Albion: the origins of the English imagination (2002):

[….] The association with the weaving of tapestry is apposite here, and the poetic technique has become known as that of “interlace.” The “interlace structure” has thus been defined as expressing “the meaning of coincidence,” the recurrence of human behaviour, and the circularity of time5 as the thread of words crosses and recrosses itself in endless weaves and knots.

  It is not simply a technique, therefore, but a vision of the world. The great stone crosses of Northumberland and Cumberland, hewn in the early eighth century, are carved with abstract interlace patterns in which bands or threads or vines turn back upon themselves to form woven intersections or knots. They may be symbols of eternity, like the spirals upon even more ancient stone, but they seem also to display a delight in intricacy or ornament for its own sake. Ivory caskets, sword-hilts, brooches and rings are emblazoned with the same labyrinthine device; a large gold buckle, discovered during the excavations at Sutton Hoo and dated to the early seventh century, has an interlacing of snakes and birds’ heads wrought upon it. It was what the Beowulf poet described as “hring-boga ,” ring-coiled. The manuscript illuminations from the seventh and eighth centuries are irradiated by interlace; the initial pages of the Lindisfarne Gospels are peculiarly rich in this art, with one page bearing several thousand “intersections” while in another only two threads or bands are employed to create an entire and effortlessly detailed “carpet-page.” The pattern occurs at a later date. When one Middle English poem, known as The Owl and the Nightingale, is depicted in terms of “chain-stitch”6 the relation to the “carpet-page” of the illuminated gospels is reinforced. If it is indeed a vision of the world, it is one which has no beginning and no end; there is no sequence and no progress, only the endless recapitulation of patterns and the constant interplay of opposing forces. Thus “interlace” has variously described Malory’s Le Morte Darthur and Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, Langland’s Piers the Plowman and the penitential lyrics of the thirteenth century. The term has been used to define the novels of Charles Dickens….

https://jayrothermel.substack.com/p/hawksmoor-1985-by-peter-ackroyd?r=1vg2di

THE PERSON FROM PORLOCK

"The Person from Porlock," Reg mused, half aloud. "Wouldn't it be funny if it turned out that they were deliberately and purposely upsetting the works of other men. Suppose it were their whole object in life–”

Reg’s matter-transfer project is cancelled as unworkable. That night, as he and his wife discuss Coleridge’s “Kublai Khan” misfortune, Reg connects it to the countless human errors that wrecked his work on the Bots-Wellton theory.

Next day Reg lays out this theory to his immediate supervisor. Borge is concerned, but not about practical errors made by Reg's team.

“For six years you've been turning out miracles. I hate like the devil to see you come up with something like this, Reg. Surely you must realize it's all the result of overwork and fatigue. No one is going around interfering with your work. Your mind refuses to admit defeat so it's automatically throwing it off on someone else. I'm no psychologist, but I'll bet that's close to the right answer. I want you to have Walker at the Clinic examine you. I'm willing to bet he recommends a long rest. give you six months with pay if necessary. But I can't let you back in the lab unless you do this. A repetition of yesterday's performance and the whole place would be shot up. You've got to get rid of this Person from Porlock business.”

Reg peels the corporate onion until, higher up the food chain:

Millen leaned forward, his almost ominous seriousness returning. "You've done a good job, Reg. Better than we hoped for a while. It looked for a time as if you weren't going to get it.”

Raymond F. Jones does an outstanding job letting his protagonist balance between collapse and explosion. Reg's petty bourgeois social position as an engineer is well-observed. And the poetry recitations with Mrs. Reg are acutely humanizing.

“The Person from Porlock” has had a healthy lifespan in anthologies, from Groff Conklin to Hartwell & Cramer.

---

Requiem at Rogano (1979) by Stephen Knight

https://open.substack.com/pub/jayrothermel/p/requiem-at-rogano-1979-by-stephen?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1vg2di 

The Eye of Osiris (1911) by R. Austin Freeman

https://open.substack.com/pub/jayrothermel/p/the-eye-of-osiris-1911-by-r-austin?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1vg2di 

Reading notes: H.P. Lovecraft, an evaluation (1955) by Joseph Payne Brennan (1918 - 1990)

https://substack.com/profile/113283846-jay-rothermel/note/c-97463697?r=1vg2di

On “The Thing From Outside” (1923) by George Allan England

"The Thing From Outside" (1923) by George Allan England braids together several familiar story elements.

There is the empty Canadian forest, against which five individuals confront an unknown entity.

✓"The Wendigo" by Blackwood

There is the invisible entity itself, only an enemy perhaps because of its undecidable character.

✓"The Damned Thing" by Ambrose Bierce

England does an outstanding job depicting human collapse before the unknown. In the paragraphs below, a desperate and articulate argument jump-cuts sharply in time, as characters and their circumstances (and the reader) are wrong-footed by a well-executed narrative slingshot.

     "But," added the Professor, "I can't imagine a Thing callously destroying human beings. And yet—"

He stopped short, with surging memories of his dead wife. "What was it," Jandron asked, "that destroyed all those people in Valladolid, Spain, that time so many of 'em died in a few minutes after having been touched by an invisible Something that left a slight red mark on each? The newspapers were full of it."

     "Piffle!" yawned Marr.

     "I tell you," insisted Jandron, "there are forms of life as superior to us as we are to ants. We can't see 'em. No ant ever saw a man. And did any ant ever form the least conception of a man? These Things have left thousands of traces, all over the world. If I had my reference-books—"

     "Tell that to the marines!"

     "Charles Fort, the greatest authority in the world on unexplained phenomena," persisted Jandron, "gives innumerable cases of happenings that science can't explain, in his Book of the Damned. He claims this earth was once a No-Man's Land where all kinds of Things explored and colonized and fought for possession. And he says that now everybody's warned off, except the Owners. I happen to remember a few sentences of his: 'In the past, inhabitants of a host of worlds have dropped here, hopped here, wafted, sailed, flown, motored, walked here; have come singly, have come in enormous numbers; have visited for hunting, trading, mining. They have been unable to stay here, have made colonies here, have been lost here.' "

     "Poor fish, to believe that!" mocked the journalist, while the Professor blinked and rubbed his bulging forehead.

     "I do believe it!" insisted Jandron. "The world is covered with relics of dead civilizations, that have mysteriously vanished, leaving nothing but their temples and monuments."

     "Rubbish!"

     "How about Easter Island? How about all the gigantic works there and in a thousand other places—Peru, Yucatan and so on—which certainly no primitive race ever built?"

     "That's thousands of years ago," said Marr, "and I'm sleepy. For heaven's sake, can it!"

     "Oh, all right. But how explain things, then!"

     "What the devil could one of those Things want of our brains?" suddenly put in the Professor. "After all, what?"

     "Well, what do we want of lower forms of life? Sometimes food. Again, some product or other. Or just information. Maybe It is just experimenting with us, the way we poke an ant-hill. There's always this to remember, that the human brain-tissue is the most highly organized form of matter in this world."

     "Yes," admitted the Professor, "but what—?"

     "It might want brain-tissue for food, for experimental purposes, for lubricant—how do I know?"

     Jandron fancied he was still explaining things; but all at once he found himself waking up in one of the bunks. He felt terribly cold, stiff, sore. A sift of snow lay here and there on the camp floor, where it had fallen through holes in the roof….

From: Strange Ports of Call (1948) edited by August Derleth 

"Agate Way" (2025) by Laird Barron reviewed

Agate Way" (2025) by Laird Barron reviewed:
https://substack.com/@jayrothermel/note/c-96111726?r=1vg2di

Superhorror (1976) edited by Ramsey Campbell

https://jayrothermel.substack.com/p/superhorror-1976-edited-by-ramsey 

The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare (1908)

The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare (1908) provides every bit of delight the novel's reputation promises.

Six anarchist leaders discover they are all in fact police spies engaged in combatting anarchism. Only the anarchist leader, named Sunday, is not a cop. He leads Monday thru Saturday on a hallucinatory and nightmarish chase. All six heroes are committed to finding out the truth about Sunday’s identity.

Near the climax of the novel, the six find themselves on foot in open country, while their nemesis escapes in a balloon. This gives them a chance for some reflection, led by Syme, the man who is Thursday.

“When I first saw Sunday,” said Syme slowly, “I only saw his back; and when I saw his back, I knew he was the worst man in the world. His neck and shoulders were brutal, like those of some apish god. His head had a stoop that was hardly human, like the stoop of an ox. In fact, I had at once the revolting fancy that this was not a man at all, but a beast dressed up in men’s clothes.”

“Get on,” said Dr. Bull.

“And then the queer thing happened. I had seen his back from the street, as he sat in the balcony. Then I entered the hotel, and coming round the other side of him, saw his face in the sunlight. His face frightened me, as it did everyone; but not because it was brutal, not because it was evil. On the contrary, it frightened me because it was so beautiful, because it was so good.”

“Syme,” exclaimed the Secretary, “are you ill?”

“It was like the face of some ancient archangel, judging justly after heroic wars. There was laughter in the eyes, and in the mouth honour and sorrow. There was the same white hair, the same great, grey-clad shoulders that I had seen from behind. But when I saw him from behind I was certain he was an animal, and when I saw him in front I knew he was a god.”

“Pan,” said the Professor dreamily, “was a god and an animal.”

“Then, and again and always,” went on Syme like a man talking to himself, “that has been for me the mystery of Sunday, and it is also the mystery of the world. When I see the horrible back, I am sure the noble face is but a mask. When I see the face but for an instant, I know the back is only a jest. Bad is so bad, that we cannot but think good an accident; good is so good, that we feel certain that evil could be explained. But the whole came to a kind of crest yesterday when I raced Sunday for the cab, and was just behind him all the way.”

“Had you time for thinking then?” asked Ratcliffe.

“Time,” replied Syme, “for one outrageous thought. I was suddenly possessed with the idea that the blind, blank back of his head really was his face—an awful, eyeless face staring at me! And I fancied that the figure running in front of me was really a figure running backwards, and dancing as he ran.”

“Horrible!” said Dr. Bull, and shuddered.

“Horrible is not the word,” said Syme. “It was exactly the worst instant of my life. And yet ten minutes afterwards, when he put his head out of the cab and made a grimace like a gargoyle, I knew that he was only like a father playing hide-and-seek with his children.”

“It is a long game,” said the Secretary, and frowned at his broken boots.

“Listen to me,” cried Syme with extraordinary emphasis. “Shall I tell you the secret of the whole world? It is that we have only known the back of the world. We see everything from behind, and it looks brutal. That is not a tree, but the back of a tree. That is not a cloud, but the back of a cloud. Cannot you see that everything is stooping and hiding a face? If we could only get round in front—”

“Look!” cried out Bull clamorously, “the balloon is coming down!”