The Woods Are Lovely,
Dark, and Deep
by S. T. Joshi
Campbell, Ramsey. The Darkest Part of the Woods. Intro. by Peter Straub. Harrogate, UK: PS Publishing, 2002. 350 p.
It is an error to believe that the city is Ramsey Campbells exclusive locus of horror. Although I myself have referred to him as the poet of urban squalor and decay, and while such of his most memorable novels as The Face That Must Die (1979/1983), Incarnate (1983), and The One Safe Place (1995) do indeed transmogrify the horrors of city life into something akin to a nightmare out of Goya or El Greco, Campbell is by no means limited to the metropolis in his search for weirdness. Some of his most distinctive worksThe Hungry Moon (1986), Midnight Sun (1990), The Long Lost (1993), The House on Nazareth Hill (1996)take place either in small towns or in sparsely populated regions bordering upon the untenanted rural landscape. For Campbell, no place is safe from horror, and that horror has for its chief effect, whether in the city or in the country, a corruption of the mind that can lead to suspicion, marital and familial discord, paranoia, and psychosis.
For the past decade Campbell has danced alternatively on either side of the nebulous borderline separating supernatural horror from psychological suspense, and his latest novel, The Darkest Part of the Woods, is fully enshrined within the domain of the supernatural. Somewhat surprisingly, Campbell returns to the setting of some of his earliest talesthe imaginary town of Brichester, nestled within the Severn Valley. But this Brichester, far from being the implausibly archaic nexus of Lovecraftian horror that it was in The Inhabitant of the Lake (1964), is a town fully enmeshed in the modern world, with its computers, cellphones, and televisions. And yet, Lovecraft is perhaps not far from Campbells vision in this richly complex, meticulously crafted, and chillingly terrifying work.
We learn that Heather Price, struggling to support herself and her adult son, Sam, as a librarian, is the daughter of Lennox Price, a man confined in the Arbour, a nearby mental hospital. Lennox, the author of a scholarly work, The Mechanics of Delusion, has himself become unhealthily fascinated with the dense woods that surround Brichester, and on occasion he leads other inmates in conducting anomalous rituals in a clearing deep in the heart of the woods. He refuses to explain what he is searching for aside from uttering the curious name Selcouth.
Matters are precipitated when Heathers long-lost younger sister, Sylvia, returns to Brichester after many years in America. Later she announces that she is pregnant, but refuses to reveal the father of the child. Sam, meanwhile, a man in his early twenties, finds himself unhealthily attracted to his young aunt.
The name Selcouth is finally elucidated (initially by an internet site) as one Nathaniel Selcouth, a sixteenth-century magician who built a dwelling in the Brichester woods and sought to create a messenger or servant that would mediate between him and the limits of the universe, both physical and spiritual. It is here that the Lovecraft influence manifests itself, and even moreso when Sylvia discovers Selcouths journal in an underground cavity deep in the woods. The echoes of Lovecrafts The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, with Wards discovery of Curwens journal, are evident, and Campbell makes no secret of it: Curwen, it appears, is known to have visited England in seach of Selcouths journals but failed to locate them. What follows are some of the most petrifying passages in all Campbells work, as successive characters brave the depths of the woods either to carry out or to thwart the sinister plans of the ancient mage.
The Darkest Part of the Woods is, however, far from merely an exercise in shudder-coining. Campbell, at the height of his form in fluidity of prose, sensitivity in character depiction, and mastery of narrative pacing, has produced a novel that continuously and lovingly shapes his characters as on a potters wheel. Every statement, every gesture, even every moment of silence contributes to the etching of each distinctive personality. At the same time, the evocation of the terrors of the natural landscape, and the horrors that can emerge from the centuried past, supply a backdrop of cosmic horror against which the characters appear to struggle in vain. It is remarkable, in a novel of this length, to find not a single wasted word, not a single sentence or passage that does not in some way contribute to that unity of effect which Poe believed was solely the province of the short story.
Campbell is one of those rare writers whose every word is worth reading. Peter Straub, in his brief but affecting introduction, has ably described Campbells prose as entirely personal, even idiosyncratic, quietly muscular, highly colored, ominous, subtle, and energetic. It is a style that puts that of nearly every other practitioner in the horror field (with the possible exceptions of T. E. D. Klein, Thomas Ligotti, and Straub himself) to shame. Campbell has learned well from his wide reading of mainstream literature, especially Vladimir Nabokov and Graham Greene, how to advance the plot and character at the same time. Consider this description of Sam, who is paralysed by the thought that he himself may have impregnated Sylvia:
As he leaned across the desk to peer through the glass he felt as if the night had exhaled an unhealthily warm sweetish breath in his face. It was only a hint of the wind that set the treetops beyond the common groping for the darkness overhead that no amount of stars could relieve. The vast distant chorus sounded more like a secretive whisper now, but was that wholly outside the house? He eased the sash down until wood met wood, then raised his head and risked closing his eyes while he strained to hear.
This passage represents an exquisite fusion of external and internal horror, of cosmic and psychological terror, that Campbell has made his signature contribution to the field.
Peter Crowthers PS Publishing is to be congratulated for undertaking the publication of Campbells work in the UK. That a writer of Campbells stature has no major publisher in the land of his birth is a scandal and an embarrassmentan embarrassment not to Campbell, but to the benighted publishers whose signal failure to recognize merit will be held to their eternal discredit.
Campbell, now in his mid-fifties, has nothing left to prove as a writer of horror fiction. His preeminence in his own day (in spite of the presence of noisier contemporaries whose facile work appeals more widely to an indiscriminate readership) is already assured, and he is close to rivaling Blackwood, Lovecraft, and even Poe as the loftiest figure in the entire history of weird literature. With dozens of novels and hundreds of short stories to his credit, Campbell could cease writing at any moment and be assured that posterity will take note of him. Yet one senses that Campbell feels he has miles to go before he sleeps; every work that he henceforth produces can only add to the towering monument of his achievement.