R. H. Barlow's Eyes of the God

 

R.H. Barlow co-wrote a number of stories with H.P. Lovecraft, who he first corresponded with when Barlow was 13. Lovecraft spent time with Barlow and his family in the summer of 1934, and all signs (but no certain, undeniable evidence) point to Barlow having been Lovecraft’s lover that summer, when he was 16 and Lovecraft 44. Lovecraft died three years later.

Barlow wrote not just pulp sci-fi fantasy, but also poetry and essays. For a few years he was connected to the Activist Poets, an outsider group sometimes considered, probably not quite rightly, avant garde. He moved permanently to Mexico in 1943, where he became a successful anthropologist. In 1944 he received a Rockefeller Foundation grant and in 1946-48 a Guggenheim Fellowship. He eventually became head of the Department of Anthropology at Mexico City College, a position he still held when he committed suicide on January 2, 1951 at age 32.

Barlow’s fantasy-sci-fi-horror work is often unexpectedly ironic, very much unlike the determinedly unhumorous Lovecraft, and often features characters deluded and usually destroyed by their desire for power. His stories can certainly be considered early players in the field of what has become called “cosmic horror,” in which all of human experience is revealed to be empty and pointless in the face of a never-ending indifferent universe. In Barlow’s stories, both leaders and ordinary people have strange, terrible fates awaiting them. I’m finding the stories pretty entertaining, even if Barlow will never be one of the greatest figures of early pulp fantasy. There’s no shortage of fantasy weirdness (and unintentional silliness) in his work, that’s for sure.

Hippocampus Press recently released an expanded version of Barlow’s selected writing, and I list what it includes below from the details on their website.

I can recommend this work to those of you who like weirdo outsider non-formula fantasy fiction, or if you are interested in those few spots where anti-modernist fantasy writing is so far outside the norm that it nearly converges with super-modernist avant gardism. Please notice that I said “nearly.”

From the website:

https://www.hippocampuspress.com/other-authors/fiction/eyes-of-the-god-selected-writings-of-r.-h.-barlow-revised-and-expanded

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Second Edition, Revised and Expanded (2022)
Edited by S. T. Joshi, David E. Schultz, and Douglas A. Anderson
596 pages!

In 2002, Hippocampus Press published Eyes of the God, a selection of R. H. Barlow’s fiction and poetry. Barlow’s ascending reputation during the past two decades, as one of the most brilliant members of the Lovecraft Circle, has necessitated this radically expanded edition, which includes many more works of fiction, among them several additions to Barlow’s intriguing “Garoth cycle” of fantasy tales. In addition, Barlow’s vibrant writings during his years in Mexico led to some striking narratives about Mexican and Native life in his adopted country.

Additional poems by Barlow have also been found, including those that display his increasing devotion to the Activist school led by Rosalie Moore, Lawrence Hart, and others.

But the most significant additions in this volume are Barlow’s two dozen essays, ranging from memoirs of Lovecraft (including his lively reports of Lovecraft’s stay at his Florida home in 1934); essays on H. G. Wells, Henry S. Whitehead, and other weird writers; his moving and insightful autobiography; and a vivid account of his witnessing a bullfight in Mexico.

All told, this definitive compilation of the totality of R. H. Barlow’s writings reveal a dynamic mind that saw both beauty and wonder in the people and environment he experienced in his short thirty-two years of life.

The Changeling by Joy Williams

Talk about an ambivalent reaction to a book. There were so many things about Joy Williams’ The Changeling that I loved and quite a few that I didn’t like at all.

Positives:
Fabulous imagery, often very disjointed and yet logical in its odd associations, a psychological weirdness that reminded me of Shirley Jackson. A still quite contemporary-seeming American surrealism that was often deeply convincing.
Propulsive, unforgettable sentences with a relentless drive.
An interest in psychological perverseness and the fringes of human complexity.
A vivid collapsing of the boundaries between the human and the animal.

Negatives:
A lack of narrative energy and focus, despite the intense energy of the sentences. Events in the book meander more than develop, and at times the momentum of the narrative comes nearly to a complete stop while the powerful sentences just kept going. There are significant stretches of the book that feel like the story is going nowhere.
Unconvincing portrayals of the real, especially when it comes to the nature of events. The “real world” in the book is at times at odds with the “dream world” and at times seems to blend with it. While that’s interesting when I put it that way, in practice the passages that seemed to be taking place in reality were often not convincing and relied boringly on coincidence and the unlikely. “Maybe it’s all a dream” is both unconvincing in terms of the narrative and also a boring cliché.

I also had mixed feelings about the stream of consciousness passages, which had a sort of “look what I can do” showiness that felt imitative and not essential.

Add it all up, I guess, and there’s a mix of less convincing story and narrative elements with fascinating writing and world view.

Sometimes I read the reviews on Amazon of ordinary people who write responses to an author or book, and I found all sorts of people saying things not all that different from what I’m saying about not only this book but others of hers as well: brilliant writing and strange thinking but unfocused stories that people lose interest in.

So my conclusion: at best, brilliant. At other times, an unconvincing pile of words that’s not headed anywhere. And no, I’m not saying something here that’s anti-experimental fiction. Experimental fiction still usually has narrative drive, and this book isn’t especially experimental anyway. The introduction to the 30th Anniversary Edition comes from Rick Moody; Williams’ work seems most connected to the context of later 20th century American realism even while the realism of this book is very thin.

Anyway, if you’re a fan, help me understand what you like about Joy Williams’ work.