THE DEEP ONES: "The Wendigo" by Algernon Blackwood

"The Wendigo" by Algernon Blackwood (pub. 1910)

Discussion begins February 1.

ONLINE VERSIONS

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10897
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wendigo

PRINT VERSIONS

The Wendigo by Algernon Blackwood
The Ithaqua Cycle by James Ambuehl, ed.
Best Ghost Stories of Algernon Blackwood
Masters of the Weird Tale: Algernon Blackwood

MISCELLANY

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algernon_Blackwood
http://www.litgothic.com/Authors/blackwood.html
http://www.thecimmerian.com/master-of-terror-algernon-blackwood/

>1 semdetenebre:

Kudos for posting the link to the fine Blackwood essay from The Cimmerian by my buddy Al Harron.

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I downloaded this story from Project Gutenberg onto my cell phone as I don't have access to a print version.

I'll be reading this one out of The Ithaqua Cycle.

The late and much-missed Steve Tompkins wrapping his erudite brain around "The Wendigo" and many other matters:

http://www.thecimmerian.com/larry-fessenden-and-the-spirits-of-the-lonely-places...

>4 artturnerjr:

I think Larry Fessenden is going to be remembered one day as the Val Lewton of our time. THE WENDIGO is a great horror film, and reading the Blackwood story makes me want to re-watch it. I'll eventually get to a Fessenden post in the Off Topic- Film/TV thread.

More on the story at hand shortly...

I really enjoyed the story, but it seemed so very familiar to me. I kept wracking my brain about it, until I realized I first read it (a severely abridged version) when I was a kid, in a book called "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark."

Blackwood does a good job of keeping the reader's attention on how scared the characters are, which is a better way to inspire a feeling of fear than trying to describe how "scary" the monster is.

In Price's notes on this story, he says that the Wendigo is a genius loci or "spirit of the place." But as I read it, the real proto-Lovecraftian character of the Wendigo comes from its connection with the expanse beyond civilization and human boundaries, rather than a specific location.

>7 paradoxosalpha:

Blackwood's prose of Simpson's panicked search for his missing guide in the woods was especially effective. I also liked his attention to detail of the wilderness and landscape of the Fifty Island Lake. It reminded me of Jack London's writing style.

I really enjoyed this story. Chapter VIII, in which the Wendigo-Défago is exposed is truly a paranoid and chilling scene. It reminded me pretty intensely of Carpenter's remake of THE THING. In fact, considering that it was written in 1910, this story is extremely cinematic in its flow and imagery. I'm surprised that it hasn't been adapted yet (Fessenden's version of the legend notwithstanding).

"Oh, oh! This fiery height! Oh, oh! My feet of fire! My burning feet of fire ...!" is just brilliant in its fearsomely creepy potentialities.

I initially thought that the last few paragraphs in which the men return to the camp to find Punk and the "real" Défago awaiting them was unnecessary and unbalanced the feel of the tale, but then you get this:

In some ways it was more terribly moving than anything they had yet seen—that idiot smile as he drew wads of coarse moss from his swollen cheeks and told them that he was "a damned moss-eater"; the continued vomiting of even the simplest food; and, worst of all, the piteous and childish voice of complaint in which he told them that his feet pained him—"burn like fire"—which was natural enough when Dr. Cathcart examined them and found that both were dreadfully frozen. Beneath the eyes there were faint indications of recent bleeding.

Nicely done! Just pile horror on top of horror, Mr. Blackwood!

> 8

Yes - Jack London also came to mind for me. The rough, naturalistic Canadian location was a wise choice and was pretty groundbreaking for a 1910 horror story, I think.

Lovecraft also kept coming to mind, of course. Besides having the "Odour Out of Space", if you will, the line "savage and formidable Potencies lurking behind the souls of men, not evil perhaps in themselves, yet instinctively hostile to humanity as it exists." sounds like a theme that HPL would explore a little later on in his stories.

I'm reading the second volume of I Am Providence. I just read a section dealing with Lovecraft's thoughts on Blackwood. I'll try to post those later.

I love the way Blackwood builds the mood with these phrases (capitalization omitted): panic of the wilderness, power of untamed distance, enticement of the desolation, terrible solitudes, call of the wild, talking against darkness, invasion of panic.

Sorry so late in joining the discussion, folks - the story was longer than I thought.

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My Amazon review as it will appear (as it better appear, anyway) when they post it:

4.0 out of 5 stars THE CALL OF THE WILD Meets "The Call Of Cthulhu", February 2, 2012

By Art Turner "decipheringhobshog.blogspot.com" (Rockford, IL USA)

(Note: This is a review of the eBook version of Algernon Blackwood's "The Wendigo".)

Algernon Blackwood (1969-1951) is a writer who is little-known and rarely read today; if people are aware of him and his work at all in the 21st century, it probably due to his influence on the great American weird/horror fiction writer H.P. Lovecraft (The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)). That's a shame, simply because when Blackwood's work was at its best he was as good at conveying a mood of sublime cosmic awe and/or terror as any writer living or dead.

"The Wendigo" is a fine example of this. Although the setting in the upper latitudes of North America may remind the reader more of Jack London (The Call of the Wild (Dover Thrift Editions)) than the haunted New England towns typical of Lovecraft's stories, the tale's central narrative of a human being driven insane through an encounter with a fantastic creature representing the awesome indifference of the cosmos to mankind is an important precursor to HPL's work. It's also a story that can creep the bejeezus outta you, particularly if you read it (as I did) on a chilly winter night.

"The Wendigo" isn't perfect - there is an over-reliance on ethnic and racial stereotypes that the modern reader will no doubt find annoying (at least), and repeated references to one of the central character's "pluck" began to grate on my nerves after a while (I'm pretty sure they had thesauri back in Blackwood's day, too), but nevertheless this is an eerie, atmospheric story that I would highly recommend to fans of classic weird and horror fiction.

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(Note: Believe it or not, I did not read anyone's posts here before I wrote that. Once again, it appears we are homo gestalt, my fellow Weird Traditionalists. :) )

>7 paradoxosalpha:

Blackwood does a good job of keeping the reader's attention on how scared the characters are, which is a better way to inspire a feeling of fear than trying to describe how "scary" the monster is.

Exactly. This is of course very much in the great weird fiction tradition of respect for the readers' imagination - if you just hint at the central horror, the reader will come up with something that's ten times as scary as anything you could ever write. That's one of the main reasons I love the genre so much.

>9 semdetenebre:

It reminded me pretty intensely of Carpenter's remake of THE THING.

Oh, yeah. That, and that similiar sort of isolated wintry (although presumably sub-arctic, in this case) setting that we both enjoy so much. 8)

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A finally, slightly off-the-wall thought: was anyone else reminded of The Blair Witch Project while reading this? I'd kind of like to think that the filmmakers were inspired by this story, although I susspect it's merely cultural osmosis at work.

>12 artturnerjr:

"The Wendigo" was a long one, wasn't it? Good review - I was a bit puzzled by the overuse of "pluck" myself. There was also an occasional overly-melodramatic sentence here and there, but such instances would pretty consistently be overwhelmed by the sheer terror of events.

In I Am Providence, Joshi notes, "In a sense, Blackwood sought the same sort of return to the natural world as Dunsany. But because he was, unlike Dunsany, a mystic (and one who would, perhaps inevitably, later find himself attracted to occultism), he would see in the return to nature a shedding of the moral and spiritual blinders which in his view modern urban civilization places upon us; hence his ultimate goal was an expansion of consciousness that opened up to our perception the boundless universe with its throbbing presences"

He goes on to say " It was not long before Lovecraft was ranking Blackwood correctly as the leading weird writer of his time, superior even to Machen" .

Hmmm.... "The Wendigo" does go quite a ways in support of such a strong statement. Apparently HPL even considered "The Willows" to be the greatest weird story ever. How lucky for us that we'll be discussing it next week!

As a mystic, I don't think Blackwood deserves to tie Machen's shoelaces. Especially after reading that awful Xmas yarn.

just finished! i find myself nodding with many of the comments above. not sure what i was expecting (other than cannibalism, and not moss!) since my exposure to the Wendigo legend is through Marvel comics (Alpha Flight...Canada's super heroes!) and the movie Ravenous which i think I saw in high school, i thought there would be a bit of violence. The author builds the sense of isolation well, i enjoyed the passages on the search for Defago and when the three hunters encounter him/the wendigo

what do lions smell like?

>8 lammassu:

Yes - Blackwood evokes that chilly landscape extremely well!

>11 bertilak:

Vivid phraseology, yes. I'd have liked to have had some of the oaths and extreme cursing spelled out, too. Might give things a DEADWOOD-like feel. :)

>14 paradoxosalpha:

You know, I think the sum total of my experience in reading Blackwood consists of "The Wendigo", "The Willows" and that Xmas misfire.

>15 brianjungwi:

Ha! You're right! Now that's an everyday association that few would make, even in 1910: "pungent and acrid like the odor of lions." I had forgotten about RAVENOUS - a really good film!

Here's the book in which "The Wendigo" was first published:

>18 frahealee:

Your Algonquin experience surely enhanced the layers found in Blackwood's tale, along with your immersion in the story while reading it. He's top-notch at evoking those rugged, primeval landscapes. The Holdstock book sounds interesting - will add it to my TBR list.

New: expanded, revised edition of Mike Ashley's essential Blackwood biography

http://wormwoodiana.blogspot.com/2019/03/blackwood-redux.html?utm_source=feedbur...