Book Review: "The King in Yellow" by Robert W. Chambers
316 pages
The King in Yellow is a collection of short stories written in the 1890s by the author & painter Robert W. Chambers. It is divided in two halves; the first half is a series of horror stories connected to each other by the idea of a fictional play, "The King in Yellow", the simple reading of which causes insanity; the second half is completely different (and in fact was not included in the original publication of the collection) and deals with the generally romantic misadventures of bohemian artists in Gilded Age Paris.
I checked out this book due to the recommendation of one of my favorite authors, horror maestro H. P. Lovecraft, who cites Chambers' horror stories as one of his influences. I have to admit that, coming from this perspective, The King in Yellow was rather disappointing. Lovecraft's stories are "cosmic horror", based around the idea that humans are utterly insignificant, trapped in a universe where awesome alien forces pursue their incomprehensible goals which may, purely by accident, result in our annihilation. The goal is to produce a sense of awe in the reader, an awe that bridges the gap between the scientific and the mystic. The King in Yellow, though, fundamentally fails at even inducing fear, let alone inspiring awe. Its horror stories have utterly predictable "twist" endings that can frequently be summed up as "...but it turned out that she was DEAD!!!" This is an ending that is unsurprising even in childish ghost stories; for a serious author to use it is frankly embarrassing, and caused me to roll my eyes rather than wet my pants. Really, these "twists" were so silly that I do not feel at all guilty about spoiling them for you, as there's really nothing to spoil. You'll get to these endings and say to yourself "Really, that's it? The creepy, clearly unnatural dude with occult powers is, in fact, a creepy, clearly unnatural dude with occult powers? But...I already know that!"
Furthermore, both the horror stories and the more conventional second half of the book are marred by a mawkish Victorian sentimentality. The stories are filled with beautiful, fragile, and "pure" young women prone to trembling lips and nervous outbursts. They are all placed on a pedestal and treated more like statues than human women - in one of the stories quite literally! This is a trope that is obnoxious even in the hands of the best writers, and here it's just nauseating. It's made even worse by Chambers' repeated attempts to make his characters bohemian, daring, and possibly immoral. I...I'm not actually sure what evidence there is to suggest that any of them are any of these things beyond their own claims. OK, they get drunk a lot, are sometimes rude, and occasionally go on unchaperoned dates with women. Even at the height of Victorian propriety, this can hardly be considered "shocking"; at best it is moderately indecent. And this was written in the 1890s, the age of Oscar Wilde in England and La Moulin Rouge in France, which is clearly the sort of vibe that Chambers is fumblingly striving for, so there's really no excuse for his prudish "immorality".
All of this being said, the stories are not complete failures, and actually have many good points which somewhat balance its many failings. First of all, Chambers can write. His prose is rich and descriptive, full of evocative details. It is very clearly influenced by Poe & the Symbolist poets, and though he is far from being the equal of any of them, he's still a damn fine writer. There is a dreamy, drifting quality in the text which would certainly add to the horror and nightmarish quality of the stories if there actually was any horror to begin with.
There is also the imaginary titular play, which is by far the best feature of the whole book. It supposedly consists of two acts. The first, supposedly, is rather banal, if somewhat disquieting. But the second act...well, I'll let Chambers speak for himself:
"No definite principle had been violated in those wicked pages, no doctrines promulgated, no convictions outraged. It could not be judged by any known standard, yet, although it was acknowledged that the supreme note of art had been struck in 'The King in Yellow,' all felt that human nature could not bear the strain, nor thrive on words in which the essence of purest poison lurked. The very banality and innocence of the first act only allowed the blow to fall afterward with more awful effect."
It's an excellent idea, and a wonderful basis for a horror tale in the best of styles. His treatment of this imaginary book is also admirable. It is left as a vague threat or presence, more often than not sitting in the background and only vaguely connected to the main thread of plot. Knowing full well his own limits, Chambers says little of the actual contents of the play, and never quotes from the terrible second act. He describes the play as involving "Carcosa where black stars hang in the heavens; where the shadows of men's thoughts lengthen in the afternoon, when the twin suns sink into the Lake of Hali..." but what these weird images signify is left suggestively vague. He occasionally pulls quotes from the first act, from which one can, with a bit of detective work, piece together some notions of that act's plot. But of the terrifying second act, there is nothing more than these sparse suggestions. It's a lovely, tantalizing framing, and it makes his failure to properly capitalize on his own brilliant invention all the more disappointing and even tragic.
Properly capitalizing on his own inventions since 1986,
--mark
The King in Yellow is a collection of short stories written in the 1890s by the author & painter Robert W. Chambers. It is divided in two halves; the first half is a series of horror stories connected to each other by the idea of a fictional play, "The King in Yellow", the simple reading of which causes insanity; the second half is completely different (and in fact was not included in the original publication of the collection) and deals with the generally romantic misadventures of bohemian artists in Gilded Age Paris.
I checked out this book due to the recommendation of one of my favorite authors, horror maestro H. P. Lovecraft, who cites Chambers' horror stories as one of his influences. I have to admit that, coming from this perspective, The King in Yellow was rather disappointing. Lovecraft's stories are "cosmic horror", based around the idea that humans are utterly insignificant, trapped in a universe where awesome alien forces pursue their incomprehensible goals which may, purely by accident, result in our annihilation. The goal is to produce a sense of awe in the reader, an awe that bridges the gap between the scientific and the mystic. The King in Yellow, though, fundamentally fails at even inducing fear, let alone inspiring awe. Its horror stories have utterly predictable "twist" endings that can frequently be summed up as "...but it turned out that she was DEAD!!!" This is an ending that is unsurprising even in childish ghost stories; for a serious author to use it is frankly embarrassing, and caused me to roll my eyes rather than wet my pants. Really, these "twists" were so silly that I do not feel at all guilty about spoiling them for you, as there's really nothing to spoil. You'll get to these endings and say to yourself "Really, that's it? The creepy, clearly unnatural dude with occult powers is, in fact, a creepy, clearly unnatural dude with occult powers? But...I already know that!"
Furthermore, both the horror stories and the more conventional second half of the book are marred by a mawkish Victorian sentimentality. The stories are filled with beautiful, fragile, and "pure" young women prone to trembling lips and nervous outbursts. They are all placed on a pedestal and treated more like statues than human women - in one of the stories quite literally! This is a trope that is obnoxious even in the hands of the best writers, and here it's just nauseating. It's made even worse by Chambers' repeated attempts to make his characters bohemian, daring, and possibly immoral. I...I'm not actually sure what evidence there is to suggest that any of them are any of these things beyond their own claims. OK, they get drunk a lot, are sometimes rude, and occasionally go on unchaperoned dates with women. Even at the height of Victorian propriety, this can hardly be considered "shocking"; at best it is moderately indecent. And this was written in the 1890s, the age of Oscar Wilde in England and La Moulin Rouge in France, which is clearly the sort of vibe that Chambers is fumblingly striving for, so there's really no excuse for his prudish "immorality".
All of this being said, the stories are not complete failures, and actually have many good points which somewhat balance its many failings. First of all, Chambers can write. His prose is rich and descriptive, full of evocative details. It is very clearly influenced by Poe & the Symbolist poets, and though he is far from being the equal of any of them, he's still a damn fine writer. There is a dreamy, drifting quality in the text which would certainly add to the horror and nightmarish quality of the stories if there actually was any horror to begin with.
There is also the imaginary titular play, which is by far the best feature of the whole book. It supposedly consists of two acts. The first, supposedly, is rather banal, if somewhat disquieting. But the second act...well, I'll let Chambers speak for himself:
"No definite principle had been violated in those wicked pages, no doctrines promulgated, no convictions outraged. It could not be judged by any known standard, yet, although it was acknowledged that the supreme note of art had been struck in 'The King in Yellow,' all felt that human nature could not bear the strain, nor thrive on words in which the essence of purest poison lurked. The very banality and innocence of the first act only allowed the blow to fall afterward with more awful effect."
It's an excellent idea, and a wonderful basis for a horror tale in the best of styles. His treatment of this imaginary book is also admirable. It is left as a vague threat or presence, more often than not sitting in the background and only vaguely connected to the main thread of plot. Knowing full well his own limits, Chambers says little of the actual contents of the play, and never quotes from the terrible second act. He describes the play as involving "Carcosa where black stars hang in the heavens; where the shadows of men's thoughts lengthen in the afternoon, when the twin suns sink into the Lake of Hali..." but what these weird images signify is left suggestively vague. He occasionally pulls quotes from the first act, from which one can, with a bit of detective work, piece together some notions of that act's plot. But of the terrifying second act, there is nothing more than these sparse suggestions. It's a lovely, tantalizing framing, and it makes his failure to properly capitalize on his own brilliant invention all the more disappointing and even tragic.
Properly capitalizing on his own inventions since 1986,
--mark