The Tangled Muse by W.H. Pugmire

The Tangled Muse Reviews

• 
  Wilum Pugmire

  The official edition of this mammoth omnibus will be published late January. It contains all of the stories that I consider'd my best up to the time of compilation. Along with reprints there are some new things, including two tales in my new setting, the city of exiles called Gershom, in which the book's title story is set. Amusingly, I created Gershom in an attempt to write "modern urban horror fiction," inspir'd by a then-recent reading of an anthology of the New Weird. "Yeah," I assured myself, "these will be my utterly modern stories, removed from the Lovecraft thing!" HA! The first tale of Gershom, "Some Buried Memory," is a riff on "Pickman's Model," and "The Tangled Muse" is more a tribute to Oscar Wilde than anything else. When I thought of a city of exiles, I immediately thought of Wilde, exiled in France; & so I created a character whom I named "Sebastian Melmoth," which was Wilde's assumed name in exile. And then I brought it other persons from Wilde's fin-de-siecle world -- and all of a sudden my "totally modern urban setting" became a blend of Wilde's Victorian London and Baudelaire's Paris! So much for modernity!
  
  The book displays to full my new obsession of writing prose-poem/vignette sequences (I just finish'd my newest one last night, a 33,400 thing inspir'd by Lovecraft's Fungi from Yuggoth), and among the new original works are prose-poem sequences in memory of Oscar Wilde and Edgar A. Poe, plus "Uncommon Places," a 15,000 word sequence inspir'd by entries from Lovecraft's Commonplace Book.
  
  THE TANGLED MUSE is a beautiful beautiful book, superbly design'd by Jerad Walters, packed with illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley, Virgil Finlay, Hannes Bok, plus many thrilling original illustrations by the fantastic Swiss artist, Gwabryel. Jerad and I work'd to make the book feel as though it were publish'd in Wilde's age of Decadence, and thus we gave it a yellow front panel. The front cover illustration by Beardsley ( "Virgilius the Sorcerer, 1893) was chosen because we thought it rather looked like me in drag. The back panel is a fabulous reproduction of a detail from Jean Delville's stunning "Satan's Treasures" (1895). Harry O. Morris has also supplied some new mannequin images for the book.
  
  S. T. Joshi, my editor, has written an extremely generous Introduction, prefaced by a photo of he and I standing at the H. P. Lovecraft Plaque at John Hay Library in Providence, and the signature sheets are sign'd by both of us.
  
  I shall never have a more magnificent book publish'd. Cloth, in clear Mylar dust jacket, it sells at Centipede Press for $125. Limited to 150 copies.
• 
  Joshua

  This spectacular collection of Weird prose poetry was my first experience with WH Pugmire but will most assuredly not be my last. I have a fairly low threshold of expectation when it comes to pastiche, especially Lovecraftian pastiche, which made the exploration of this tome all the more blissfully surprising. Pugmire unashamedly pays frequent homage to the vaunted father of cosmic horror, but with a voice of such uniquely lyrical quality and with such a bent of tittering madness that it far surpasses the bland mediocrity so often associated with pastiche stories.
  
  Channeling some unholy amalgamation of Lovecraft, Wilde, and Baudelaire, WH Pugmire draws the reader in with a tantalizing glimpse of mauve mist that simply begs for more penetrating exploration. Before you know it, you're simply GONE, swept away in a haze of opium-tinged cigarette smoke, coppery-scented blood from lustful nibblings, and the ever-present perfume of the loamy grave. The imagery alone is worth the price of entry, tinged with cosmic madness, eldritch babblings, and enough dark, homoerotic allusions to keep Clive Barker enthralled.
  
  And though the visceral imagery and the unique quality of the prose poetry are indeed worth every penny of admission, the reader is not left un-tethered and drifting in a sea of symbolism, disorientation, and mysterious erotica. The tales themselves are grounded and cogent, often centering around the fey-touched mysteries of Pugmire's own Sesqua Valley, an unsettling and diabolically original locale that rings every bit as true and warped as Lovecraft's haunted New England. The re-occurring characters that provide the eerie pageantry of this storied (yet all too often mysteriously overlooked) valley are earnestly written, without camp or caricature. By the time you reach the end of this collection of tales, you'll sure be wanting to see more of all of them, most especially The Beast himself.
  
  It is to my detriment that it took me so long to begin my exploration of Pugmire's work and to the detriment of the world that Pugmire's very unique career has been quite slow the past few years. The work he has contributed to the field already has secured him a hallowed plinth in the halls of Weird Fiction for all time to come, but I will eagerly look forward to his poisoned quill hitting vellum once again.
  
  And as a final note about the presentation of these unique stories, Centipede Press rose to the occasion and published a tome truly worthy of the author's dark majesty. Gorgeous artwork by half a dozen contributing talents, good quality paper that feels sumptuous on the fingers, a garishly opulent red cloth binding, and even a dazzling little ribbon marker.
  
  Highest recommendations to all fans of the Weird genre who have not yet uncovered WH Pugmire's remarkable, impacting, and unsettling work.
• 
  Steven Vincent

  The Tangled Muse is a brilliant collection of weird fiction that is just as beautiful, strange and exotic as its author W.H. Pugmire. His characters and settings are vivid and captivating. He describes the world with such a clear and lyrical style of prose that every word and phrase weave and combine together like a dark lucid dream. I find myself reading and re-reading these wonderful tales and poems over and an over just so I can spend a little more time inside this talented author's dark and tangled mind.
  
  The signed hardcover edition of The Tangled Muse that I possess was published by Centipede Press in November of 2010 and is numbered 19 of 150. It is a big beautiful book, with gorgeous red and gold leather and cloth bindings. Inside you will find blood red endpapers and fantastic illustrations that add so much the overall reading experience.
  I have read so many of his wonderful stories and poems that his unique style of prose has become like a delicious opiate to my oft-troubled soul. If you love weird dark fiction as I do, I really and truly recommend anything and everything by this marvelous author, W.H. Pugmire.