Here we have another misstep from Pelan. By the time a reader gets to the end of this story, one can’t help but wonder . . . what the hell was the point of that?!
An unnamed narrator, a salesman, is making his rounds and being absolutely destroyed by rejection. He then stumbles upon a gigantic building which the locals call the Tower of Moab. Some cultists decided, about a hundred years ago, to make the Tower of Babel a reality, and so they built this thing in their attempt to break through the sky and into Heaven. They also put murals on the sides depicting popular scenes from the Bible, in particular the Book of Revelation.
The narrator becomes obsessed with the Tower. He gives up selling and takes up drinking while staring out the window of the pub at this thing. He then quits his job and takes up residence at the inn above him so he can contemplate this thing while getting completely smashed on bottle after bottle of whiskey. This guy puts it away like Jim Thompson, who had a habit of polishing off six pints of the stuff every day.
Before long, he starts noticing a light within this building, and he sees ghosts floating around it at night. He comes to the conclusion that the builders succeeded, and that the top of this building resides in Heaven. These spirits are actually angels.
SPOILER ALERT: Well, this isn’t really a spoiler alert because NOTHING FUCKING HAPPENS IN THIS STORY. There is no action, just some lousy drunk observing a really tall tower. In the end, he gets dragged away to the loony bin, and . . . that’s it.
Every piece of fiction must have a point. Otherwise, why write it? What exactly was Lewis’s purpose in publishing this tale? There doesn’t seem to be one. If you really want to stretch it, maybe he’s making a statement on how soul-crushing a sales job is, that it turns people into hallucinating drunkards. Not a bad thought, but still. Come on, now. END OF KINDA-SORTA SPOILERS.
Not only is there very little reward in reading this one, but there is also a lot of loose writing. This story would be best served streamlined, with a lot of the useless information cut out. The beginning, for example, is such an awful slog that most readers would give up on it right off the bat.
Not that the story is without merits. A lot of the useless parts are pretty funny, and it’s interesting to witness his ever-increasing whiskey habit. Aside from that, this story is kind of on the useless side. Pass.
[This story first appeared in TALES OF THE GROTESQUE, THE WEIRD, AND HORRIBLE, and it cannot be read online at this time.]
What's the point of Algernon Blackwood's 'The Willows', what's the point of Ramsey Campbell's 'The Companion', what's the point of Thomas Ligotti's ‘The last feast of harlequin’?
ReplyDelete'The Tower of Moab' contains some of the strangest imagery put to print up until that time and from a short story that is at least competently written, that's good enough for me.
I think Pelan favours too much pulp at the expense of some of the more celebrated 'ghost' stories (no mention of 'Three Mile's Up' or 'One Who Saw' for instance), the latter of which are also classifiable as 'horror'. He also seems to have chosen his 'must include' authors before he chose the stories. However, I think he hit the bullseye for 1934.
Paul W.
*Edit* Of course, there is not meant to be an apostrophe in 'miles'.
ReplyDeletePaul W.