From the land of Stoker, WB Yeats or Le Fanu in 1828 we received another invaluable luminary bizarre fairy tale. Fitz James O'Brien was also, of course, a life of "story" (as his colleagues of the pen as Poe, Bierce or Quiroga). After his first dabbled in poetry, Mr. O'Brien - more Irish inmposible! - He spent all his considerable inheritance in the bad life at a time he edited his first newspaper, which made him fall from grace and seek pastures flowered in the U.S., where he began to end his career as a horror writer with the intent to continue to finance their desvaneos bohemian smoothly. After building up a reputation as one of the most notorious revelers in New York, the writer enlisted in the Civil War, where he received a fatal wound that embody and, finally, trigger death in 1862. He was only 33 years.
With its wicker literary-plying between Poe bizarre horrific and surreal atmosphere of root almost proto-pulpera "- it was clear that sooner or later end up O'Brien entering the typical bunch of "pioneers Lovecraftian" ; way of being ungrateful pointed out in my opinion and have suffered authors as disparate as Hodgson, Machen or own Bierce.) I'm such a fan of Lovecraft as anyone, but these authors deserve to be held by themselves, not because he inspired a later writer. anthologies like "The Myths of Chtluhu" or "The Horror As Lovecraft" are always interesting and certainly very helpful when authors disclose darker, but the mania of mixing apples with oranges "True we might consider Machen, Dunsany and Blackwood as ancestors of Lovecraft, but ... "Mary Wade Wellman ? What Fitz James O'Brien, for that matter? - I do sometimes wonder that publishers are thinking.
But back to O'Brien, his best and most diverse fantasy stories can be gathered in the (hopefully not yet out of print) edition of Valdemar "The Diamond Lens and Other Stories of Terror and Fantasy" . The story's title volume is a well documented scientific fantasy, featuring the experiments of a man in search of more powerful lens, which allows you to scan up to the very essence of things. When you get the diamond lens, you can access a strange microscopic world of lyricism in which people find fascinating. The story is as much fairy tale as ucronia disturbing, and shows the ability to link topics O'Brien opposites in a whole very interesting narrative and poetic language (this is perhaps the best definition of his style).
In this volume are also two stories to remember. One is his well-known "What is that?" -a sometimes translated as "What was that?" - a tale of being invisible was written before Maupassant wrote his masterpiece in this regard: "The Horla" , And of course long before Wells Griffin made his entry into the literary mythology. The story of a seance that becomes nightmare for the intervention of the invisible body of difficult description in the bed of the narrator of the story, is among those that remain in the reader's mind long after reading. As an example, the unforgettable moment they decide to make a cast of strange being, and it reveals the less disturbing appearance. Essential. And then there's the long story called "The Miracles Smith" , which I always reminded me of a monster movie from Universal . We are experiencing bad very bad with souls and mechanical devices, boy-shaped robots programmed to be sent as a Christmas gift and massacre all the families of the houses in which they appear, and a hunchbacked evil mistreated by their masters who try to end them face the love of a woman. A real treat "pulp" -in fact "Weird Menace" might qualify -to be enjoyed from start to finish.
But it is not here, because "The Lost Room" another work of art is perhaps forgotten. A variation of great symbolic and fondled theme "haunted room" in which a guest reflects on the residence where he lives, with all the objects that surround him and the memories associated with them, and return to it after a walk, he finds that everything has changed and that some mysterious inhabitants seem to mock him and his sanity, while delivering a strange and disturbing practice. An atmospheric gem line at the same height, but more-than the other and more famous works of the writer. Complete the book a couple more lurid fantasies O'Brien style that complement quality and above the other four stories. All these deserve to be discovered.
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