{"id":1416,"date":"2017-07-05T13:46:58","date_gmt":"2017-07-05T17:46:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lucysnyder.com\/?p=1416"},"modified":"2017-07-05T13:53:41","modified_gmt":"2017-07-05T17:53:41","slug":"the-king-in-yellow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lucysnyder.com\/index.php\/the-king-in-yellow\/","title":{"rendered":"The King in Yellow"},"content":{"rendered":"

The King in Yellow<\/em><\/a> (first published in 1895) is a collection of short stories written by author Robert W. Chambers. Most of the tales in the collection are supernatural, and the first four \u00ad\u00ad\u2014 \u201cThe Repairer of Reputations\u201d, \u201cThe Mask\u201d, \u201cIn the Court of the Dragon\u201d, and \u201cThe Yellow Sign\u201d \u2014 all deal with the King In Yellow and his Yellow Sign.<\/p>\n

Who (or what) is the King in Yellow? In some tales, The King in Yellow<\/em> is the book of a popular play spreading like a virus through the cities. It destroys the sanity of all who read it:<\/p>\n

\u201cHave you never read it?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cI? No, thank God! I don\u2019t want to be driven crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n

I saw he regretted his speech as soon as he had uttered it. There is only one word which I loathe more than I do lunatic and that word is crazy. \u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a book of great truths,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d he replied, \u201cof \u2018truths\u2019 which send men frantic and blast their lives. I don\u2019t care if the thing is, as they say, the very supreme essence of art. It\u2019s a crime to have written it, and I for one shall never open its pages.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The concept of a madness-inducing book is familiar to anyone who has read much H.P. Lovecraft. Chambers\u2019 The King in Yellow<\/em> was a clear and considerable influence on Lovecraft\u2019s work, particularly his fictional, forbidden Necronomicon<\/em>, which was first seen in his 1924 short story \u201cThe Hound\u201d and which has been used as a horror trope in countless works by different authors and filmmakers since then. Lovecraft has been such an influential and popular author that the King in Yellow mythos is retroactively considered to be part of the Lovecraftian mythos.<\/p>\n

The stories in The King in Yellow<\/em> never fully reveal the contents of the play, but the reader discovers it contains at least two acts and three characters: Camilla, Cassilda, and the Stranger, who might be the King in disguise. The second story, \u201cThe Mask\u201d, opens with an excerpt of the play:<\/p>\n

Camilla: You, sir, should unmask.<\/p>\n

Stranger: Indeed?<\/p>\n

Cassilda: Indeed it\u2019s time. We all have laid aside disguise but you.<\/p>\n

Stranger: I wear no mask.<\/p>\n

Camilla: (Terrified, aside to Cassilda.) No mask? No mask!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other tales, the King is a strange, malevolent being who rules a planet called Carcosa, who uses a weird symbol called the Yellow Sign to signal his minions on Earth. The primary description of the world (and one of the main sources of the book\u2019s mythos) comes from \u201cCassilda\u2019s Song\u201d, the first excerpt of the fictional play at the very beginning of the collection:<\/p>\n

Along the shore the cloud waves break,
\nThe twin suns sink beneath the lake,
\nThe shadows lengthen
\nIn Carcosa.<\/p>\n

Strange is the night where black stars rise,
\nAnd strange moons circle through the skies
\nBut stranger still is
\nLost Carcosa.<\/p>\n

Songs that the Hyades shall sing,
\nWhere flap the tatters of the King,
\nMust die unheard in
\nDim Carcosa.<\/p>\n

Song of my soul, my voice is dead;
\nDie thou, unsung, as tears unshed
\nShall dry and die in
\nLost Carcosa.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Chambers\u2019 book experienced a recent resurgence in popularity because the first season of\u00a0True Detective<\/em><\/a>\u00a0used a number of elements from Chambers\u2019 mythos. Consequently, a whole new generation became interested in tales that tie in with the universe of the sinister King in Yellow.<\/p>\n

The King in Yellow<\/em> was on my to-read list for at least a decade. But once I started receiving invitations to write for KiY-themed anthologies, I took that as a clear sign that I needed to buckle down and read the book. I found that the first five stories in the collection are by far the most compelling in terms of story and imagery. The remaining non-supernatural tales about bohemian artists in Paris haven\u2019t aged well and tend to drag by modern standards; any reader who\u2019s sought out the collection because of his or her interest in True Detective<\/em> or Lovecraftian fiction can safely read the first half of the collection and skip the rest.<\/p>\n

The first story, \u201cThe Repairer of Reputations\u201d, was most impressive to me because it\u2019s a truly excellent example of a story with an unreliable narrator. The story could be taking place in a 1920 America filled with suicide chambers and dragoons of soldiers in bright uniforms, as the narrator presents it \u2026 or it could all be the delusions of a lunatic. The story works either way. The second story, \u201cThe Mask\u201d, is a science fantasy with some excellent, nightmarish imagery:<\/p>\n

I thought, too, of the King in Yellow wrapped in the fantastic colours of his tattered mantle, and that bitter cry of Cassilda, \u201cNot upon us, oh King, not upon us!\u201d Feverishly I struggled to put it from me, but I saw the lake of Hali, thin and blank, without a ripple or wind to stir it, and I saw the towers of Carcosa behind the moon. Aldebaran, the Hyades, Alar, Hastur, glided through the cloud-rifts which fluttered and flapped as they passed like the scolloped tatters of the King in Yellow.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cIn the Court of the Dragon,\u201d the third story, is loaded with creepy atmosphere, and the fourth story \u201cThe Yellow Sign\u201d, is an equally evocative tale of madness and the undead.<\/p>\n

So what is it about these 120-year-old stories that remain compelling to modern readers and writers? Chambers gives the reader brief, vivid glimpses of the dark fantastic \u2026 and nothing more. When you finish the book, you have an image in your head of the King, but no idea who or what he actually is or wants. Was he human? Is he an alien? An ancient, diabolic god? What happens in the play? What happens to the characters taken by the King? Their ultimate fates are no clearer than the mists of Carcosa.<\/p>\n

Chambers left us a puzzle in the form of a book, and we who follow his literary path cannot help but try to solve it with our own stories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The King in Yellow (first published in 1895) is a collection of short stories written by author Robert W. Chambers. Most of the tales in […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1419,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[31,65,58,35],"tags":[9,98,99,95],"class_list":["post-1416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-review","category-dark-fantasy","category-fantasy","category-horror","tag-horror","tag-king-in-yellow","tag-lovecraft","tag-short-stories"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.lucysnyder.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/kinginyellow-e1499276717364.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8qT6f-mQ","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1436,"url":"https:\/\/www.lucysnyder.com\/index.php\/whats-weird-fiction\/","url_meta":{"origin":1416,"position":0},"title":"What’s Weird Fiction?","author":"Lucy A. Snyder","date":"July 12, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Weird fiction can refer to a couple of different types of literature, depending on who's discussing which books and stories. Classic Weird Fiction \"Classic\" weird fiction is the type of late 19th Century\/early 20th Century speculative fiction written by authors such as H.P Lovecraft, Robert Chambers, William Hope Hodgson, Lord\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "dark fantasy"","block_context":{"text":"dark fantasy","link":"https:\/\/www.lucysnyder.com\/index.php\/category\/dark-fantasy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lucysnyder.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/looming-low-cover-spread.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lucysnyder.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/looming-low-cover-spread.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lucysnyder.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/looming-low-cover-spread.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":2090,"url":"https:\/\/www.lucysnyder.com\/index.php\/garden-of-eldritch-delights\/","url_meta":{"origin":1416,"position":1},"title":"Garden of Eldritch Delights","author":"Lucy A. Snyder","date":"July 31, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"My new collection Garden of Eldritch Delights was released by Raw Dog Screaming Press on October 18th. You can order it direct from the distributor or via Amazon or Barnes & Noble. This is my third collection with RDSP. The first two, While the Black Stars Burn and Soft Apocalypses,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "My Books"","block_context":{"text":"My Books","link":"https:\/\/www.lucysnyder.com\/index.php\/category\/my-books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lucysnyder.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/EldritchDelights-e1533052283615.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lucysnyder.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/EldritchDelights-e1533052283615.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lucysnyder.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/EldritchDelights-e1533052283615.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lucysnyder.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/EldritchDelights-e1533052283615.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1468,"url":"https:\/\/www.lucysnyder.com\/index.php\/unreliable-narrators\/","url_meta":{"origin":1416,"position":2},"title":"Unreliable Narrators","author":"Lucy A. Snyder","date":"July 20, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Caitl\u00edn R. Kiernan\u2019s dark fantasy novel The Drowning Girl: A Memoir\u00a0and Robert W. Chambers\u2019 supernatural story collection The King in Yellow\u00a0have several themes in common\u2014ancient malign gods, hauntings, and madness-inducing works of art, for instance\u2014but one of the most interesting is how the two authors handle unreliable narrators. An unreliable\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "dark fantasy"","block_context":{"text":"dark fantasy","link":"https:\/\/www.lucysnyder.com\/index.php\/category\/dark-fantasy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lucysnyder.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/unreliable.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lucysnyder.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/unreliable.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lucysnyder.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/unreliable.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lucysnyder.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/unreliable.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lucysnyder.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/unreliable.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lucysnyder.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/unreliable.jpg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1686,"url":"https:\/\/www.lucysnyder.com\/index.php\/the-ministers-black-veil\/","url_meta":{"origin":1416,"position":3},"title":"\u201cThe Minister\u2019s Black Veil\u201d by Nathaniel Hawthorne","author":"Lucy A. 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Upon reading\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "book review"","block_context":{"text":"book review","link":"https:\/\/www.lucysnyder.com\/index.php\/category\/book-review\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lucysnyder.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/The-Turn-of-the-Screw-LaFarge.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lucysnyder.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/The-Turn-of-the-Screw-LaFarge.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lucysnyder.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/The-Turn-of-the-Screw-LaFarge.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lucysnyder.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/The-Turn-of-the-Screw-LaFarge.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lucysnyder.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/The-Turn-of-the-Screw-LaFarge.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lucysnyder.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/The-Turn-of-the-Screw-LaFarge.jpg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":2421,"url":"https:\/\/www.lucysnyder.com\/index.php\/tales-from-the-lake-vol-5\/","url_meta":{"origin":1416,"position":5},"title":"Tales From the Lake Vol. 5","author":"Lucy A. 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