Episode 190 – Here Be Shrubs: On Algernon Blackwood's 'The Willows'

Weird Studies

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel

Society & Culture, Arts, Philosophy

4.8 • 688 Ratings

🗓️ 7 May 2025

⏱️ 75 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, JF and Phil paddle into the marshlands of Algernon Blackwood’s 1907 masterpiece The Willows, a tale Lovecraft once called the finest weird story of all time. They explore how a narrative in which almost nothing happens can conjure a cosmic dread more potent than a legion of monsters, and how Blackwood’s genius lies in revealing the spiritual horror latent in landscape itself. Topics include zones, the limits of human reason, and the terror of brushing up against an otherworld that lies just beyond the riverbank—near at hand, yet somehow separated from us by an unbridgeable gulf. Photo by Derek Dye, via Wikimedia Commons. REFERENCES Algernon Blackwood, “The Willows” Weird Studies, Episode 55 on “The Wendigo” SCTV Algernon Blackwood, “The Psychology of Places” in The Lure of the Unknown Weird Studies, Episodes 14 and 15 on Stalker Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols Sue Clifford and Angela King, England in Particular Michael Dames, Pagans Progress J. G. Ballard, English fiction author Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Spectrevision Radio
0:02.0	Welcome to Weird Studies, an arts and philosophy podcast with hosts Phil Ford and J.F. Martel.
0:20.0	For more episodes, or to support the podcast,
0:23.3	go to weirdst. This is J.F. Martel.
0:53.8	Well, it's out. My book, reclaiming art in the age of
0:57.8	artifice, was reissued yesterday by basic books in a beautiful new edition, featuring a new
1:03.3	afterward by yours truly and a marvelous introduction by the novelist Donna Tart. To mark the occasion,
1:09.3	I'll be giving a lecture on May 22nd on our learning
1:12.2	platform, Weirdosphere. I'm calling it, what is ideology, art and politics in the 21st century.
1:19.6	And that's ideology as it's spelled in one chapter of the book, IDIO, you know, like idiot.
1:26.8	If you'd like to attend, visit weirdestphere.org.
1:30.6	Purchasing a ticket makes you a Weirdosphere member with discounts on all future offerings.
1:36.7	Today we bring you a conversation, somewhat overdue, I think, on Alderman Blackwood's classic
1:42.7	weird tale, The Willows. Originally published in 1907,
1:47.1	The Willows was a landmark for H.P. Lovecraft. He liked it even better than the Wendigo,
1:52.3	another Blackwood masterpiece that Phil and I discussed all the way back in episode 55.
1:58.2	In his seminal essay, Supernatural Horror in Literature, Lovecraft wrote of The Willows,
2:03.6	Quote, Here art and restraint and narrative reach their highest development, and an impression
2:09.8	of lasting poignancy is produced without a single strange passage or a single false note,
2:15.9	end quote.
2:16.9	Indeed, the Willows is so focused on the Eldridge note it's trying to hit, that in rereading it for this episode, I was surprised by how much incident it actually contains.
2:27.3	Of course, this is incident on a scale we might associate with Samuel Beckett rather than, say, Charles Dickens.
	...

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