THE DEEP ONES: "The Man Who Went Too Far" by E. F. Benson

"The Man Who Went Too Far" by E. F. Benson

Discussion begins October 27, 2021.

First published in the June 1904 issue of Pall Mall Magazine.
First book publication in The Room in the Tower and Other Stories (1912).



BIBLIOGRAPHY

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?570133

SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS

H. P. Lovecraft Selects: Classic Horror Stories
The Ghost of Fear and Others
The Collected Ghost Stories of E. F. Benson
Dark Banquet: A Feast of Twelve Great Ghost Stories

ONLINE VERSIONS

http://www.searchengine.org.uk/ebooks/99/6.pdf

ONLINE AUDIO VERSIONS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E00cpFgd4tE

MISCELLANY

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._F._Benson
https://www.efbensonsociety.org/
https://tinyurl.com/yfvmxgly

Online for me, I thought I owned a Benson collection but I think now it's still on my list when browsing used bookstores.

ETA I note there's also a link for a Kindle edition on the page for the audio edition posted above.

This didn't work for me as a story. It dutifully ticked several boxes in the "sylvan dread" subgenre and brought up some interesting ideas, but for me it was more an academic exercise (not a criticism) than an enjoyable tale. Rather, I was reminded of a tedious conversation with a New Age convert, sort of remarkable for a story written 1904.

My first reading was through the audio link while at work, and I do wonder the extent to which that made a difference.

Among the ideas I found interesting:
- the "high summer" setting in place of cliched dreary winter or darkness
- transforming a source of horror for typical reader into a source of joy for character Frank
- Frank's literal acceptance of tat tvam asi

When a man's body dies, it passes into trees and flowers. Well, that is what I have been trying to do with my soul before death.

Potential horror in that line, but Benson doesn't seem to be going for anything like horror or even dread.

I, OTOH, liked it better than our two previous forays into sylvan dread. I can see what you mean by academic exercise, but, well, I guess I often enjoy those.

After Darcy's pronouncement on the unsoundness of Frank's approach I'd expected the end to be a bit more cerebral than getting jumped on by a literal Pan. Was Frank undone by a philosophical error, or simply by Pan being an asshole?

>4 AndreasJ:
A great question, and I'm going to have to revisit in text rather than listening to audio to have an answer.

In both this story and Forester's, Pan is frightening because he ignores categories, goes against the reductionism of modernity.

But Eustace's experience isn't fatal and is revelatory of the world's nature. He feels wonder and puzzlement, and he gets a career out of it. One gets the sense that Eustace really did have mysteries revealed to him.

Frank is much more concerned with joy, and we don't really get the sense he's really learned all that much. He's not really very philosophical given that Darcy's warning about pain being part of nature didn't occur to him. So, I suppose, we get the most trite outcome of all three stories: Pan stomping someone to death.

When I nominated this, I, relying on the Wikipedia entry, characterized it as a "Neopagan ghost story". While the Neopagan bit is obvious, I'm forced to wonder what possessed the editors at WP to class it as a ghost story?

They're evidently not alone in that perception, though, judging by the names of some of the collections it has appeared in.

>7 AndreasJ:

Thinking back on my acceptance of this categorization, I find I took it as laziness on the part of editors: Pan isn't a vampire or werewolf or zombie, so we'll just file this story along with our Ghost stories.

It was similar with the other stories featuring Pan, wasn't it? Though the Forster story, to take one example, does provide more cover in the sense that nobody "saw" anything directly of Pan but only behavior or activity presumed to result, similar to a poltergeist.

But then why not a "monster" rather than ghost?

I've read this twice: just now, and about a year ago. On both occasions I've been left really puzzled by the title. In what way did Frank go too far?

I took it to indicate that Frank's embrace of Pan was a step too far from the point of view of others like the narrator or us readers, though I never thought that Frank himself would agree to that assessment. Ironic then that he ended up dying, and I further infer that's a central reason he went "too far" from the perspective of others, but I believe he mentioned in the story that dying was not of particular concern to him.

Reposted in the correct thread:

I the opening paragraphs, Benson says that the locals will tell you Frank Halton's ghost walks through the woods. Sufficient justification for calling this a ghost story? Or maybe Pan is a spirit of sorts that only manifests physically on rare occasions?

I did think that Darcy took a long while to come up with his counter-argument, but to be fair to the character, and to Benson, I've heard it made many times in recent decades by the likes of Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins in a particular socio-political setting. Benson's would have been different (aware of the implications of scientific discoveries such as deep time and evolution by natural selection, but not engaged in any sort of organised counter-movement, maybe rather complacent?).

The way I read the story was quite revealing: I thought it was a bit verbose, a bit slow, was picking it up and putting it down...I finished it in a sitting when I temporarily lost my internet access. Mental note to make allowances for stories written over a century ago...

>11 housefulofpaper:

I quite liked the writing; I suppose I like that Edwardian style. I never did manage to ... well, I can't find the correct phrase ... 'work it out' is wrong—it's not a detective story or a crossword puzzle. The best way I can put it is that I feel I haven't properly finished with the story, but can't work out how to do so. Does that make sense? It has left me unsatisfied. Perhaps there is no deep meaning and Benson was merely going for atmosphere with, possibly, just a nod to literary fashion, as regards Pan?

>12 alaudacorax:

Reggie Oliver regularly reviews new books for Wormwood magazine. In the latest issue (no. 37) he reviews a new anthology of old stories: Wildwood, Tales of Terror and Transformation from the Forest, edited by William P. Simmons. The book includes the four "Pan" stories we've looked at recently.

Oliver makes this observation, which may shed light on what's going on under the surface of these stories (as also, as Oliver says, "by implication", in Arthur Machen's "The White People" too):

In all of these stories the beauties as well as the perils of the pagan deity are adumbrated. In Saki, Forster and Benson, both the peril and the beauty are linked to hints of forbidden homoeroticism. Of the three, Benson's is the most interesting (though not necessarily the best) story because it conflicts the beauty of paganism with the sterner demands of Christianity and reluctantly allows the latter to win through. Benson's father was, of course, Edward White Benson, Archbishop of Canterbury, and one can detect in this story, a fictional representation of Benson's mostly unsuccessful struggle to cast off his ecclesiastical background in favour of a more sexually and aesthetically liberated lifestyle.

Blackwood was heterosexual but, Oliver notes, he too "had an intensely orthodox Christian father".

If the struggle between Paganism and Christianity equating to the struggle between sensuality and stern duty/self-control brings to mind a story we did a few years ago, yes John Buchan's "The Grove of Ashtaroth" is also in the book.

I did know about Benson's, in fact, about all three of the above-named authors' sexuality; but in an imperfectly remembered way. I haven't read nor do I own a biography of any of them, so I was shy of making half-baked speculations as to how far it fed into their choosing to use Pan, and how they used him, in these stories.

Despite having an interest in fin de siecle literature I'm not at all clued up on 19th century gay culture, so I don't have any idea how many gay authors would have used Pan in their work, whether it was a commonly understood code (with a degree of formal or agreed meaning), or more of an available symbol that was just obvious one to use.

Any such use always ran parallel to other usages of the word, naturally, and not everybody would be aware of all the various usages. There are always Straights (in both senses of the word!) and probably it was easier to be oblivious to a sub-culture before mass communication. I'm reminded of an observation on the gay construal of men living together in a "Bohemian" way in Victorian times, and how such a meaning completely passed by Arthur Conan Doyle, when he set up Holmes and Watson rooming together at 221b Baker Street. It's described as Bohemian several times in the stories, as I recall.

>13 housefulofpaper:

So pleased to read that Oliver quote, and to know about Wildwood.

I find homoeroticism always an ambivalent theme: undeniably important, perhaps especially in that era, but also too easily used as an explanation beyond its power, so to speak. But that may be my own bias more than anything.

How great to see so many of our stories included in that book, and commented upon specifically.

>13 housefulofpaper: Not sure about other countries but here in the US, the kindle edition of Wormwood: Tales of Terror & Transformation From the Forest is currently $1.99 on Amazon, (paperback = $11.99).

>13 housefulofpaper:

I just had to read the story again in the light of your Reggie Oliver quote.

I'm not sure I fully agree with him about the story allowing 'the sterner demands of Christianity' to 'win through'.

First of all, I'm confused about what Benson is doing with Frank's apparent conflation of Pan with Christianity. It's not at all clear to me from the story that we are to take it as a sin; which would have had a certain logic to it. It reads to me, rather, that Benson would be in sympathy with such beliefs.

At the same time, I'm not at all sure exactly what is going on at the end. After the terror and screaming, the narrator seems to be describing almost a beatitude to Frank's death ... something like a Christian martyr, but a martyr for 'the other side'? It seems to conform to Frank's words in those few paragraphs starting "That never struck me ...", and to be depicting both the horror and the death as things to be (from Frank's point of view) welcomed.

Having said that, I don't fully believe it and I strongly suspect that Benson didn't really have clear ideas on what he was doing with that ending. I'm reminded that when I recently read through my collected Benson I enjoyed it very much but didn't really think him as good a writer as those—Blackwood and M. R. James, for examples—he brought to mind.

>14 elenchus:

Would it be naive of me to suspect that the homoeroticism of the story might have been simply accidental and incidental on Benson's part (though surely not unnoticed)?

>17 alaudacorax:

It's a question that I can't avoid asking myself. I find there's no way for me to answer it, as it seems at root autobiographical and I simply don't know the man. From the standpoint of interpreting the art, then, I consider it a valid consideration in terms of making meaning of the work. In this case, it doesn't go much further than that.

I suppose I have an ambivalent attitude toward Barthes' "death of the author" argument ... authorial intention does matter to me, but it's never the last word in terms of how I understand an author's work. Subconscious and unconscious meaning are always valid influences, not to mention pure accident and whatever I bring as a reader.

>17 alaudacorax:
>18 elenchus:

Apologies for not responding more quickly - migraine and then the after effect of the Covid booster has kept me quiet for a few days.

Sometimes the author's intentions are the last word for me - I think the example I'd cite is the Flannery O'Connor story we did a few years ago. I would have been all at sea with than, if the Catholic theology underpinning the character motivations hadn't been explained.

There's a danger that an autobiographical approach (assuming in the first place you know something of the author's life) is too reductive. On the other hand, it can of course be illuminating. There were some recent TV programmes about The Goon Show, as 2021 is the 70th anniversary of this BBC radio show, a big influence on Monty Python and many others. One of the programmes was the Goons (Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe) on a 1970s chat show, and more than one commentator wrote about how, with the distance of half a century or so, it was clear that all three men were still suffering from serving in WWII and how that trauma is clear in their work (especially Milligan's).

to bring this back to E.F. Benson, the whole Benson family are well known - not household names, but the ghost stories are still known, Benson's Mapp and Lucia stories are still popular, and if the family are mentioned in the pages of The Times Literary Supplement or The Book Collector, it's assumed the reader is well acquainted with them. And I trusted Reggie Oliver to be clued-up about them: not only as somebody active in the current British literary world (a professional playwright as well as a ghost story writer - which is a bit of a closed world now), but also from the same social background as the Bensons: Eton and University College, Oxford.

One of my current reads is Paul Robichaud's Pan: The Great God's Modern Return and I've just come upon Robichaud's look at this story. He winds up with a slightly ambiguous sentence that's given me pause for thought.

Its barely sublimated homoeroticism and theme of divine punishment suggest that the story is a warning about openly following illicit desire - Frank, after all, is 'The Man Who Went Too Far'.

I may be wrong here, but I'm taking this sentence literally, as meaning that Robichaud sees the story as a warning about 'openly following', as opposed to a warning about 'illicit desire' itself. If I buy into this (some time since my last read and a bit hazy), I really like the idea of the story as an allegory of the probable unpleasant outcome of Benson leading the kind of life he really wanted. I wrote above about feeling a little unsatisfied by the story; this idea seems to nicely round it out for me. More than that, I think I'd reread it as a rather more powerful tale. The trouble is, it's not an idea I remember getting from my own readings. And I suspect it's a bit too neat and tidy.

I'm going to have to reread it and see, sometime ...

I've added the Robichaud to my recon list, appreciate you sharing that.

>20 alaudacorax:
I bought that book last week, and was debating whether to alert you to its existence, or maybe you were doing lots of research in provicial libraries and suchlike, and having the work already done for you would spoil all the fun.

Just by chance, I clicked on a YouTube video of somebody going through his collection of 1970s/80s Pan science fiction paperbacks - the ones with the author name and title in rounded-off squares (he called them lozenges but they always reminded me more of loaves of bread). He noted that quite a few covers mixed Chris Foss style spaceships or other typical SF imagery with a pastoral, typical English landscape. Intentionally evoking Pan, or pure coincidence?

>21 elenchus:, >22 housefulofpaper:

I bought the Robichaud and a couple of other books because I wanted to get some idea of why Pan became so popular for a while in English literature (or the literature of the English-speaking world). I may have taken them out of good order by starting with Robichaud. However ...

I really don't know what to make of this book. It's a bit odd. Am I enjoying reading it? Yes. Am I learning stuff from it? Yes. But it's not the academic kind of book like, for example, the Cambridge Companions. I suppose you could say Robichaud wears his scholarship lightly. He travels through time from ancient Arcadia onwards, dealing with the receptions and depictions of Pan, and he appears to really know his stuff; but the book has an almost anecdotal feel to it, like going on a country ramble with some erudite chappie.

And then there are these passages in italics with which he finishes his chapters. It's hard to describe them: little passages of prose fiction; poems without the rhyme or structure; flights of fancy? LolaWalser, I think, used the phrase 'folk weird' somewhere around here (as opposed to 'folk horror'). It describes them quite well.

>23 alaudacorax:

I haven't started reading Robichaud's book yet, but I have flipped through it and I noticed Electric Eden in the bibliography. That book has the occasional "prose poem or flight of fancy" too (it probably has a link to Folk Horror too: the obvious one of being about Folk Music and Folk Rock, and more generally by being about the late '60s/early '70s zeitgeist in Britain.