Book Review: The House on the Borderland By William Hope Hodgson

 

The House on the Borderland By William Hope Hodgson

92 pages, paperback

First published January 1, 1908

Classic is a hyperbole that often lacks meaning thanks to overuse.  I first read this one when I was a teenager as Lovecraft wrote about it at length in his essay about Supernatural horror. That is at least my memory of it. Much of Lovecraft’s DNA is found in this short novel that blurs the haunted house tale with cosmic horror on a scale that is hard to believe existed in the first decade of the 20th century.

This novel is one hundred and fourteen years old at this time. Considering all the elements involved it is not crazy to say it is one of the major influences of Weird Tales (the magazine – altogether). Hodgson himself was a character and more than just a little interesting. He was well known for poems and essays before Borderland, he had lived at sea for many years. He ran away from boarding school at thirteen and spent four years on a ship as a cabin boy. After two years of study, he went out again as a sailor but was so bullied he started to work out purely in self-defense. The mean and crass behavior became a theme he explored in his stories set at sea.

Once he became famous he was even on stage with Harry Houdini. When he was just twenty-two years old, he opened a School of Physical Culture. Offering training, and diet help, it was like an early CrossFit gym. He wrote his first fiction in 1904 a story called Goddess of Death. Borderland was only four years later.

I know I am straight edge and far from an expert. I have been reading lots of 60’s new wave about drugs and when I read parts like “It might have been a million years later, that I perceived, beyond the possibility of doubt, that the fiery sheet that lit the world, was darkening.” It sounds like a bad trip to me. I know he was a health and fitness dude but he also traveled the world and I bet he picked up drugs. I mean it was thirty years before LSD was invented by accident. So what do I know. Opium??? Maybe the dude was writing about time and cosmic issues before many others.

The narrative structure of the two boys on the fishing trip who find the book that explains the weird house they found with the nasty reputation gives the cosmic events a bit of separation, it is one of the few weak elements of the novel. Considering when and by whom this was written the cosmic themes are incredible. I find it impossible to not grade this highly on that curve.
 

Even the moments of horror cliché are well done. Consider how the house is introduced.

“There had stood a great house in the centre of the gardens, where now was left only that fragment of ruin. This house had been empty for a great while; years before his—the ancient man's—birth. It was a place shunned by the people of the village, as it had been shunned by their fathers before them. There were many things said about it, and all were evil. No one ever went near it, either by day or night. In the village, it was a synonym of all that is unholy and dreadful.”

The letters that take you inside the house and the madness is that “holy shit you’ll never believe this,” method that Lovecraft would beat to death. Can’t blame Hodgson and I suppose that is natural way to start a story about a house, out of space and time being invaded by half-swine guys.  For me, the book worked best when the house was a portal to the cosmos.

“And then, suddenly, an extraordinary question rose in my mind, whether this stupendous globe of green fire might not be the vast Central Sun—the great sun, round which our universe and countless others revolve."

 The double sunset decades before Luke watched the Tatooine suns was super powerful for me in this reading. I think the first time maybe I was more into the swine dudes.   
“The inner story must be uncovered, personally, by each reader, according to ability and desire.”

True, true Mister Hodgson but I think this novel is so overshadowed by Lovecraft it is sad we have to remind people that Howie had influences too. Having recently re-read At The Mountains of Madness it is hard for me to say which one holds up better. House on the Borderlands is a classic that deserves fresh eyeballs.