THE DEEP ONES: "The Book" by Margaret Irwin

"The Book" by Margaret Irwin

Discussion begins November 10, 2021.

First published in the September 1930 issue of The London Mercury.



BIBLIOGRAPHY

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?91773

SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS

The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories
The Satanists
Women's Weird: Strange Stories by Women, 1890-1940
Alfred Hitchcock's Bar the Doors
The 2nd Fontana Book of Great Horror Stories

ONLINE VERSIONS

No online versions found to date.

ONLINE AUDIO VERSIONS

No online audio versions found to date.

MISCELLANY

https://weirdfictionreview.com/2012/08/weirdfictionreview-coms-101-weird-writers...
https://www.tor.com/2018/08/15/a-little-dark-reading-margaret-irwins-the-book/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Irwin
https://tinyurl.com/4ad46yeu

Psyched for this one. I knew I had it in The Weird, but I'm surprised to notice that I also have it in a more portable and convenient volume The Satanists!

My first attempt at reading this during the weekend foundered when the 1yo decided that the e-reader was much too interesting to let dad have it. A new attempt on Monday night, after she'd gone to sleep, went better.

I rather liked the story, anyway. Irwin tends to "tell" rather than "show" regarding Corbett's changing attitudes and fortunes, but I didn't mind that here.

Lovecraft would undoubtedly have told us a whole lot more about the book's origin and author, but leaving it vague worked well enough.

I liked the opening pages of this story best: the quest among a wide assortment of reading materials for something that would satisfy, and the onset of the shift in the Corbett's perspective.

While HPL and his colleagues in yog-sothothery might be more inclined to provide citation details for the book, such as author, title, and place of publication, and maybe even have offered a snippet of translated text, I thought Irwin was actually a little more detailed about the physical features of the book and Corbett's interaction with it than we have found in other bibliographic horror.

Despite its warm and persistent reception, I don't know if I would quite rank this one up there with book scares like "Vastarien" by Thomas Ligotti or "More Light" by James Blish. Haining's editorial note in The Satanists implied that he had included it just in order to have a woman author in the collection, which I thought was a little rude. I mean, authorial diversity is good in its own right, but making such a point of it looks like counterproductive tokenism.

While Blish's may be the better story (I have not read the Ligotti), I think this one came closer to actually scaring me. Corbett's rationalizing murdering his daughter was disturbing, even though he didn't go through on it.

The credible character ready-to-murder-at-supernatural-direction reminded me a bit of Edward Erdelac's story "Black Tallow" which I read in Dark Rites of Cthulhu earlier this year.

And this, from What the Hell Did I Just Read: "If an Angel Appears and Speaks to You ... Of course they, too, could be imposters, so if they ask you to do something morally questionable--like stab your own child or something--you'll need to use your own judgment. Let's face it: if there is a god and he's the type to think it's unreasonable to refuse such a request, we're all screwed anyway." (Abraham grumbles and looks shifty.)

By that logic, good chunks of the OT could be summarized as "we're screwed".

Jephthah's daughter? Yeah, not even an angel in that one.

>2 paradoxosalpha:

Great cover.

>3 AndreasJ: Irwin tends to "tell" rather than "show" regarding Corbett's changing attitudes and fortunes

That observation gave me pause: did she, though? I can see the rationale for saying so. Yet it wasn't a lazy sort of telling: Not, he began to have murderous thoughts, and his family were quite frightened of his rude and unusual behavior toward them, which he'd never shown before. It's more the sort which brings us into his head, as if he is the one telling us of his changed attitudes, and for that reason it works on me.

(I was reminded of a line from Skinny Puppy's "Convulsion": "He's seeing monsters. He's losing his mind, and he feels it going", sampled from a U.S. Navy training film on the hazards of LSD -- around 22:02.)

That part in which he rationalized the murder of his own child had the same tone.

I really enjoyed reading this, at once campy and unsettling.

>10 elenchus:
Thanks - I've always wondered about the source of that sample. Hard to believe that Too Dark Park just turned 31!

Thinking back on the story, I'm curious about the ghostly hand associated with the book and bookshelf, and which tugs on the daughter near the end. Is it a manifestation of the book itself, and whatever entity is operating there? Or did that entity somehow ensnare a more traditional ghost to serve its purposes? Seems to me either interpretation would fit.

Another example in how Irwin's stripped down style differs from HPL or Chambers. I easily could see getting some backstory or archival references (names, characterizations of the ghost or the manner in which it was brought into the book's orbit, if that's what the author conceived) had they written this story. I don't recall Irwin making any references at all, only the description of what it did -- or recollections from the children on similar behavior earlier.

I liked this one, especially the corruption of Corbett's tastes and perceptions -- particularly the "pathologies" he finds in several authors. (Coincidentally, I just finished re-reading Treasure Island.)

The continuous additions to the text are something rather novel in "bibliographic horror".

It's an odd mixture of ghost story (that ghostly hand and Corbett sensing his house is haunted), demonic possession, and embodied evil in the manuscript. One wonders if Corbett's uncle was a satanist.

I do wonder exactly what caused Corbett's last minute decision to burn the manuscript. Was it his sudden tenderness for Jean -- though he then goes on to refer to by the alien name of Jeannie?

>13 RandyStafford: The continuous additions to the text are something rather novel in "bibliographic horror".


I'm fairly sure I've seen it in another story, but that will likely have been written later than this (and possibly inspired by this).

I don't have the book at hand to check, but wasn't the implication that Jeannie was an old nickname and his using it again signified renewed affection?

>12 elenchus: ... I'm curious about the ghostly hand ... whatever entity is operating there?

I'd taken it to be his 'learned uncle' aka 'the Dean'. I thought at first that the uncle was going to take over his body like in the Lovecraft story. Having said that, I took the fingerprint to be the Devil's Mark; which pushed me into Faust territory. Which left me unsure of either interpretation.

The old pea-souper aside, I thought the story a bit lacking in atmosphere—it didn't really get me tensed up. Well, I suppose I was a little worried about the dog ...

This was a re-read for me. I've been plodding through The Weird so slowly I'm not sure how long ago I first read it, but I do have a vague sense of being a little bit underwhelmed. Maybe I was looking for something more Lovecraftian back then, and the more straightforward diabolic temptation and threat to loved ones seemed a bit hackneyed.

I was more attuned to the story on this reread (from Women's Weird, this time). On a personal level I've noticed I'm worse at getting my thought in order and getting down in writing than I was when I joined this sight, so I applaud Margaret Irwin's summaries of our Great Authors for their concision (and if they are one-sided, still, arguments could be made in defence of them) as well as for demonstrating the effect of the book - or The Book - on Corbett's state of mind.

The threat to the family dog, and then to Jean, seemed truer this time. Or more likely it just struck a chord this time around, for some reason.

I assumed that the book was not directly connected to the learned uncle, but it was an old grimoire that had made its way from its original owner (most learned magicians in the Middle Ages were Clergy, I learned from the Esoterica YouTube channel) to the Dean's library, to be inherited by his nephew and stuffed into the family bookcase.

Why would the power behind it (the ghost of the man who wrote it, it seems) come to life now? I've got a vague memory that "accidie" (spiritual sloth) was regarded as a sin in the Middle Ages. Maybe Corbett's listlessness opened a chink in his spiritual armour?

In Medieval Europe, most learned people of any kind were clergy.

Indeed. So it follows that most learned magicians (rather than witches, or cunning-men, etc.) were clergy, and their books genuinely could wind up in ecclesiastical libraries.