Algernon Blackwood: An Extraordinary Life

“It does seem slightly bizarre that two of Britain’s greatest writers of supernatural fiction, Algernon Blackwood and Arthur Machen, should be connected by dried milk.” (Ashley, p. 120).

 

I am immediately on board, with any book which included this sentence. Mike Ashley’s Algernon Blackwood: An Extraordinary Life (New York, Carroll & Graf: 2001), which appeared in Great Britain as Starlight Man, is an engrossing, profound portrait of Algernon Blackwood, writer, traveler, adventurer, spy, and mystic. As I have mentioned elsewhere, I first ran across Blackwood's short story The Willows in a Scholastic anthology, at the age of 11 or so; and even then the numinous prose stuck with me. Recently, I read Episodes Before Thirty, Blackwood's own memoir; a good baseline for regarding Blackwood’s outlook. Mike Ashley’s book further, and extensively, illuminated Blackwood’s history – doing outstanding work, especially considering the gaps in the paper trail from the author’s life. 

 

 Seemingly, the author knew everyone, encountering such disparate figures as P.D. Ouspensky, Rainer Maria Rilke, Lord Dunsany, Gurdjieff, and Sir Edward Elgar, among others. With a life starting in the Victorian Age, running through two world wars, and then ending in the atomic age (in fact, as Ashley detailed, Blackwood was a frequent contributor to radio, and pioneering television broadcasts as well). The only minor concern I have with the book is that the discussions of various works (of which I still have many to read) include frequent spoilers. A rewarding and worthwhile adventure.

-- by Jonathan Falk, November 2018

Algernon Blackwood's Episodes Before Thirty: Innocence and Experience in Old and New Worlds

Algernon Blackwood’s Episodes Before Thirty, from 1923 (a gift from a friend), was a revelation, to one who has previously read only his superb fiction. The book is a carefully-composed, thoughtful memoir, written by a man in his 50s, looking back on the travails and lessons of his youth; with an eidetic richness in its prose. The volume ran parallel to his fiction in some ways, in its concerns with the occult and supernatural, but offered other moods and elements, as well. Blackwood’s tales of supernatural mystery and occult events, provided my introduction to his writing. His powerful story, The Willows, which I read in a Scholastic anthology when I was about eleven, spoke to me, and stayed with me, even at that early stage of my life. 

Blackwood’s (by his own description) cocooned upbringing, with doting, yet austerely religious parents, was succeeded by harsh realities (contrasting with immersion in the spiritual qualities of the natural world, on a Canadian island, and other places), through his travels and various occupations in North America. The story begins in media res in New York City; with descriptions of tough living conditions reminiscent of George Orwell’s Down and Out In London and Paris. The autobiography also covered his childhood in Great Britain, and his introduction to Eastern thought, through a chance encounter with a volume of Patanjali.  From the future author’s immersion in the inferno of Tammany-era New York, to his succession of side hustles and jobs (including working as a journalist for the New York Times, and other newspapers), to his brief experiences with morphine (and one experiment with cannabis), to his transformative “meetings with remarkable men,” including attorney, poet, and mystic, Alfred Louis, the book provided a captivating experience.  Although, as a cryptic remark about occult experiences toward the end of the tome indicated, what is absent from the book was telling, also.

“These woods, this river, ruled the world, and somewhere in the heart of that old forest the legendary Wendigo, whose history I wrote later in a book, had its awful lair.”—p. 143

 -- by Jonathan Falk, June 2018