Why Read/Study Leonard Cline?

I first read Leonard Cline's third novel The Dark Chamber in 1988, and found it so intriguing and well-written that I sought out his other writings. Some months later I finally got a copy of his first novel, God Head, which confirmed for me that Cline was a major talent of his time. And since then I have collected his writings and researched his life. Here I am presenting some of the results of years of research as I prepare my book about Cline.

Why do I find Cline so interesting? It's not an easy question to answer, but let me give a partial reply here by reprinting two of my "Late Reviews" (from a book of the same name, see here) about what I think are Cline's two best novels.

 

Cline, Leonard. God Head (New York: Viking Press, 1925)

Leonard Cline’s first novel, God Head, is not fantastical but it is mythopoeic. It is set in northern Michigan on the shores of Lake Superior, vaguely during the First World War. Cline’s narrator, Paulus Kempf, is a labor agitator, and after the police break up a strike he was fomenting, Kempf flees into the woods for his life. There, at length, he comes to a small settlement of Finns, who take him in and help him regain his health. During his recovery, Kempf is told tales from the Kalevala, of Kullervo, Lemminkainen, and Väinämöinen, and these stories shape the narrative and influence Kempf’s developing ideas. Thereby he comes to think of an immortality of the flesh through the masterdom of humanity, and Kempf tests out his ideas on the Finns, lusting after the wife of his host, playing on the superstitions of the old people, and creating of the frowning face on the cliff a chanting god head to symbolize his dominance. This bald précis does not convey the majesty of this work, nor the brilliance of its style. On original publication Laurence W. Stallings wrote of it in The New York World: “It would be eminently fair to believe that Leonard Cline could write rings around half a dozen of our ten best novelists” (21 October 1925); and Donald Douglas wrote in The Nation: “More than anything else it is Mr. Cline’s prose holding light like a steel net which transmutes a wild melodrama into an ordered and thrilling rhythm of word and scene and folklore” (6 January 1926). An English edition was published by Jarrolds in 1927, under the title Ahead the Thunder

God Head is the single-best forgotten novel that I have ever encountered.

Cline, Leonard. The Dark Chamber (New York: Viking Press, 1927).

Leonard Cline’s third novel, The Dark Chamber, is perhaps best remembered today due to its mention by H. P. Lovecraft in his famous essay “Supernatural Horror in Literature,” where he calls it “extremely high in artistic stature.” The novel may also be seen as a precursor to Paddy Chayefsky’s Altered States (novel: 1978; film: 1980), for it tells the tale of a man, Richard Pride, who, in attempting to recall the lost moments of his life, resorts to stimulation by means of music, smells, and drugs, until he taps into hereditary memory. The story of Richard Pride is framed by a scenario which intentionally recalls the legend of Ernest Dowson; for the novel’s narrator, Oscar Fitzalan, is a musician who has been summoned to play various types of music that will stimulate Pride’s memory. Fitzalan also has his own ambitions, and he is writing music to accompany a forgotten poet’s prose poems that were written to a barmaid who didn’t understand or appreciate them.

It may seem odd that while Cline's novel has been most often read and appreciated as one firmly placed within the weird tradition in literature, this approach is not the best for an understanding of Cline’s work. There is no doubt that Cline knew well the pleasures of the weird in literature, music and art. Indeed, the references within The Dark Chamber tend to be exclusively on the macabre side, and Cline uses these references to build character and atmosphere, making for some striking associations (e.g., what can one think of a character like Miriam Pride who “reads Baudelaire endlessly”?). Cline’s other work is remarkably varied, and it is a striking body of work for such a short life (Cline died in 1929 at the age of thirty-five).

Thus, the best approach to The Dark Chamber is from outside the genre rather than from within it. And in taking such a view, we see that Cline has taken all of the stock elements of the Gothic—the crumbling mansion with its eccentric family, the mad scientist, his estranged wife, the ghostly daughter, the pathetic servant—and placed them in a contemporary setting, with talk of jazz and free love, in a place just far enough away from New York City (in fact, just up the Hudson River) that the cold light of realism is dimmed by the shadows of the hills and woods. Cline’s novel attempts to portray, as realistically as is possible, the kind of eccentric modern people who might inspire suspicions of witchcraft, vampirism, and lycanthropy. Nothing overtly supernatural happens in the book, but there is a hovering tenseness and horror apparent throughout, even from the very first line.

Like other Gothics, the story takes place in a closed society, into which comes a stranger, here a musician who tells the tale in a beautiful prose with a measured cadence. It is a quality of prose worthy to sit on the shelf beside that of Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood. And it is perhaps Cline’s ultimate tongue-in-cheek that such a tale of brooding horror be written in such a polished and beautiful prose. Occasionally, Cline’s grasp falters a bit, perhaps when intending to burlesque some elements of the Gothic, such as in naming the mad scientist “Richard Pride,” the crumbling mansion “Mordance Hall,” and the dog “Tod” (the German word for death, a joke which Cline even felt he had to point out). Yet Cline’s control is otherwise unwavering, and precisely on target.

The Dark Chamber is a masterpiece of weird atmosphere—intelligent, well-crafted and well-written, and one of those books that earns subsequent readings by revealing further depths on each encounter.