The Great God Pan

Written by Arthur Machen

Narrated by B. J. Harrison

An experimental surgery. A plague of suicides. Through layering pieces of testimony, the connection between these events leads to a startling conclusion.

Inspired by a trip to a graveyard in Wales, the novella was originally not well received. The Great God Pan is now considered an excellent example of Gothic fiction, and has influenced such writers as Bram Stoker, H.P. Lovecraft, Stephen King, and Ray Bradbury.

• Language: English
• Publisher: B.J. Harrison
• Release date: Jan 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9781957934211

Arthur Machen

Arthur Machen (1863-1947) was a Welsh mystic and author. Born Arthur Llewellyn Jones, he was raised in Monmouthshire in a prominent family of clergymen. He developed an early interest in alchemy and other occult matters, and obtained a classical education at Hereford Cathedral School. He moved to London, where he failed to gain admittance to medical school and soon focused on his literary interests. Working as a tutor, he wrote in the evening and published his first poem, “Eleusinia,” in 1881. A novel, The Anatomy of Tobacco (1884), soon followed, launching his career as a professional writer. Machen made a name for himself as a frequent contributor to London literary magazines and achieved his first major success with the 1894 novella The Great God Pan. Following his wife’s death from cancer in 1899, he briefly joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and began conducting research on Celtic Christianity, the legend of the Holy Grail, and the stories of King Arthur. In 1922, after a decade of working as a journalist for the Evening News, he published The Secret Glory—a story of the Grail—to popular and critical acclaim. This marked the highpoint of his career as a pioneering author of fantasy, horror, and supernatural fiction whose work has been admired and praised by William Butler Yeats, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Stephen King.

Reviews for The Great God Pan

[readingover50 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A short novella, easily read in an hour or two. The story was based on an interesting idea, but I found the presentation too disjointed for my liking. The book is presented as a series of events. All are connected, but we don't know exactly how until the very end of the book. Most of the "atrocities" in the book take place out of our sight, so the reader is left to use his imagination for the most part. First published in the 1890's, the books writing style definitely shows it's age. I don't think it holds up as well as some others in the genre.

[moniquesnyman-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

An exceptional, suspenseful story that prickles the imagination. Beyond its time, certainly, but a classic horror nonetheless.

[ed9pendragon · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

When I was young I swore by H P Lovecraft while my friend championed Machen. At the time I thought The Hill of Dreams pretty insipid compared to anything with Cthulhu in it. Several decades on I felt that I have to give Machen another chance, as it were, and this edition of The Great God Pan (and the two companion pieces in this volume, The White Pyramid and The Shining People) provided the opportunity.Machen fin-de-siècle novels are still a taste I have yet to acquire. By today's standards the horror (and Machen tends to get his characters to refer to 'horror' in case we can't put a word to their feelings) is pretty tame, more alluded to than described. The title story is about the degradations that are begat on a particular individual and visited on those that come into intimate contact with her. The answers to the mysteries are obvious to the reader, but the narrators and protagonists, not to mention the dilettantes and flaneurs of Late Victorian Britain, seem blind to the implications of what they are investigating, and the tale seems rather overlong as a consequence.The other two slighter tales are, strangely, more convincing. The White People suffers from a clumsy framing device, but the ever-flowing and scattergun chattiness of the child narrator in the central portion strike me as typical of children's descriptions generally, in the way that the dialogue in the opening section (on the nature of evil) is rather artificial and less true to life. The Shining Pyramid has been described as almost an occult Sherlock Holmes story, but I find the detective figure's deductions, for all their apparent logic, come over as pure leaps in the dark as far as realism is concerned, and the climax oddly anti-climactic.Machen's strengths are in creating atmosphere, whether in gloomy London or the eerie depths of the countryside. Claustrophobia is induced by descriptions of dark streets or fog-bound moors and woods, intensified by a general geographical vagueness. Characterisation is less successful; in all three stories I had little sense of individuality, for the men in particular, and had to keep looking back in the text to see who was who in any given passage. While I was unmoved by these tales, I would still like to revisit some of his other stories like The Great Return to see if time has played more fairly with them in my memory. But I'm almost certain my youthful obsession with Lovecraft is a thing of the past, so I shan't waste time on him.A brief word of praise here for this edition's cover artist Chris Iliff, due to his capturing precisely the look I imagined Machen ascribing to the title story's femme fatale. No wonder men went mad staring into those eyes! The Foreword by Ramsey Campbell is, like Machen's prose, strong on atmosphere but comes over chiefly as eulogising, while Tomos Owen's notes (which add in some of the historical, cultural and literary contexts) are workmanlike if not very inspired.

[kristelh_15 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This novella was written in 1894 and is included in NPR best 100 Horror Novels and Stories. This story has a doctor who believes he has the right to mess with a young girl that he is taken in and therefore her life is his. A picture of the paternalism of the medical field in this period of time when men were the dominate members of physicians. The doctor does some kind of surgical procedure and Mary is able to see into the world beyond our reality. She has an encounter with what is considered the God Pan, a Roman god. A satyr, Satan. Mary's life is destroyed but not only her life but her child and many other men are destroyed because this physician felt he had the right to do this experiment on this young woman. It is a bit disjointed and somewhat hard to follow. There are characters that are briefly introduced and I am not so sure they really needed to be. Over all, I can understand why this was included in NPRs list of 100 best horror novels and stories. This one is a novella.

[michaeladams1979 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Somewhat disjointed, but ultimately satisfying tale of the trespasses of science into the supernatural. Seems to be a bit of a theme with Machen, after reading Novel of the White Powder and this; the blending or imposition of the medical, scientific, rational worldview, and the the occult, mythological, spiritual system of belief upon one another. An author I will need to catch up more with in the future.

[ocgreg34 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A young woman named Mary -- a foundling picked up off the streets by one Dr. Raymond -- becomes the unwitting subject in an experiment to allow a human to see what many consider to be the "real world", a wondrous place in which nature and all manner of creatures live just beyond the veil of what humans normally see. Witnessed by Dr. Raymond and his colleague Mr. Clarke, Mary wakens from the experiment, her eyes appearing to focus on something beautiful and far away. But soon her expression changes to horror, and she collapses to the floor in a fit of madness.Time passes and Mr. Clarke runs into a beggar who turns out to be an old chum. They walk together, and Clark learns of how his friend wound up in such dire circumstances. His friend tells him of his wife, a strange woman named Helen, who many claim to be beautiful and yet no one enjoys being in her presence. A sinister air hangs about her person and their home. She ruined him, he claims, and then disappeared. Clarke investigates further, and tales of madness and unexplained deaths surrounding a similar woman begin cropping up. Curious if she is somehow connected to the events with Mary, he questions Dr. Raymond about that night. The Doctor warns him to leave things be before something happens to him. Clarke, however, is determined to uncover the truth.Perhaps not as horror-filled by today's standards, The Great God Pan still manages to evoke chills not by blood and gore, but by providing moods and glimpses of evil. It's as if you notice something's not quite right, something that you can't see or explain, but you can't pinpoint it. The story works on your mind, wreaking havoc with your fears and imagination until you can't escape. That unknown element is probably more terrifying than knowing that a vampire or a zombie or some familiar creature is lurking about."The Great God Pan" is quite an unnerving tale and has earned its place as a classic horror tale. If you've not read it, I recommend checking it out.

[karl6steel · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Not really decadent enough for my tastes, though the ontological horror at the end is almost enough of a pay off.

I can imagine folks complaining about Machen's inability to vary his tone. All his characters sound the same (so no wonder virtually everyone's of the same class of Drones). For example, here are two characters talking:

"I was wide awake enough. Even if I had been dreaming as you say, what I saw would have roused me effectually."

"What you saw? What did you see? Was there anything strange about Crashaw? But I can't believe it; it is impossible."

We might say that Machen's displayed the smooth workings of this world of humans, beyond which lies the horror of Pan's world, where we have, for example, "the hideous form upon the bed, changing and melting before your eyes from woman to man, from man to beast, and from beast to worse than beast." In other words, the very blandness and sameness of the dialog, the indistinguishability of the characters, perfectly represents the world's unvarying and proper order. Change itself, then, is Machen's great horror.

[jen6e6moore · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An effective example of its genre - early cosmic horror, locating the horrific in inexplicable natural phenomena, and achieving its effectiveness through a lack of description of the specific horrors - but of course just as problematic as Victorian fiction will always tend to be. I'm intrigued by the fact, though, that there is a reading of this book, completely coherent with the text, where all the horrible consequences come from the original violation of a woman's agency and bodily integrity.

[sturlington_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Stephen King has said that this is a horror story that has haunted him all his life. The influence on his novels and others (including H. P. Lovecraft) is undeniable, but despite all the apologists, it is hard to see this story as anything other than an expression of fear and othering of women, especially women who assert their independence. There are two female characters, neither of which gets to speak for herself. One is a meek victim who is violated without much sense of guilt or remorse; consider these words by the doctor who performs brain surgery on her without her consent, causing her to literally lose her mind: "As you know, I rescued Mary from the gutter, and from almost certain starvation, when she was a child; I think her life is mine, to use as I feel fit."The other woman never actually appears on the page, but is only talked about. She victimizes men, with their consent, at least at first. She also terrifies every man in the piece, but she didn't particularly terrify me. Helen is a woman of independent means, who does what she wants when she wants, who indulges her own pleasures, and who cannot be controlled; therefore, she must be destroyed.I often find that these Pan-inspired stories are seething with misogyny. Compare with Harvest Home.

[isabelx_21 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"Consider the matter well, Raymond. It's a great responsibility. Something might go wrong; you would be a miserable man for the rest of your days.""No, I think not, even if the worst happened. As you know, I rescued Mary from the gutter, and from almost certain starvation, when she was a child; I think her life is mine, to use as I feel fit. Come, it's getting late; we had better go in."Dr. Raymond believes that 'a trifling rearrangement of certain cells' in the brain would allow anyone to see the Great God Pan but his foolhardy attempt to prove his theory ends in disaster, to the horror of his friend Mr. Clarke who was invited to watch the surgery. The rest of the story concerns Mr. Clarke's occult interests, which lead him to the intertwined stories of a strange young girl fostered by a farmer, a beautiful but somehow repulsive woman who married and ruined a friend of a friend, and of a series of suicides by rich young men with everything to live for.The sort of horror story without any monsters, but where the sense of evil permeates everything.

[la2bkk · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

On the positive, the work set a nice gothic tone at the outset and created an interesting story line. Lots of potential.Unfortunately, unnecessary characters ultimately made the narrative a bit confusing and the ending was very unsatisfying, e.g., simplistic and unimaginative.

[jameshold-1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

So disappointing. I don't understand Machen's revered reputation. All his stories follow this same general pattern: 1) man makes aquaintence of another 2) 2nd guy is doing some sort of research but won't say what 3) 2nd man wanders off 4) 1st man finds notes telling of mysterious people 2nd is out to find 5) 2nd man goes missing and story ends. So essentially nothing happens, no answer is offered, and you realize you wasted your time reading a bunch of empty baloney.

[rumpeltje · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

It could be me but the ending of this novel confused me. The end result is clear and also how the ending relates to the beginning. It is only hinted at what Helen actually was and what had happened in the woods.