A review from the "Theosophical Outlook," Volumes 3-4: If Christopher Morley were the author of Algernon Blackwood's "The Promise of Air," he might have described it on the jacket as being about blue eyes, advertising copy, Cambridge, the Rolls-Royce, Chopin, Schumann, the movies, wireless, airplanes, revolving desk chairs, the Kingdom of Heaven, yellow wagtails, perfumes and furs, flocks of stars, the winter temperature of robins, and analytical chemists. Because I once wrote a story about a fellow with an obsession to be cradled in billows of air, this Blackwood book was wished on me to review. E. P. Dutton & Co.'s announcement of "The Promise of Air" had not made me eager to spend my money for the book. Neither had earlier reviewers' appraisal of it delivered what the kids around Gross Park, Chicago, used to call the "cardy blow" in their Hamilton school days. The reviewers had declared with mild and reserved literary caution that one might like the book very much, or not so very much. It simmered down to a fifty-fifty case of plus and minus. I began reading "The Promise of Air" in the Hudson tubes. The air. as usual, was thick, vitiated, unsanitary, and unlovely. The pack of commuters from points on the Lackawanna who hemmed me in were chewing Life Savers, gnawing chicle, and gasping for green fields and sunny air. For once I was among, but in nowise of them. I had made a great discovery. The Blackwood book acted as the perfect antidote to the toxins of commuting. The Duttons should pile dunes of it at every station in tube and subway. It should be advertised in every packed and humid streetcar, elevated, and suburban train. Mr. Algernon Blackwood has put a pulmotor between book covers. It is deep breathing transmuted into print. It is a rhapsody on air, achieved, happily, with British restraint. It is the story of Joseph Wimble, and Joan, his wife, and Joan, his daughter. This odd Wimble individual has peculiar eyes, peculiar hunches, peculiar longings. He objects to his bones, his flesh, to his being on the ground. He regards gravity as the devil because it keeps him from soaring into the sun. At times he feels his heart flutter; he feels wings in it. He learns at school in "a flashing, darting, sudden way, like the way of a bird." He feels that life is much too rigid. The narrative moves rapidly forward with gusts of sentences, billows of paragraphs, swinging chapters. The whimsical theme is developed with emotional brilliance and elasticity. It swoops, and soars, and glides. It is a buoyant emotional statement of the restlessness of the race. It is ornithology without Latin. It's flying without a reference to aces, Caproni triplanes, or horsepower. At times you don't know what Mr. Blackwood is talking about, but that does not matter. You get the impression of lift and surge, which is what you want if you commute. "Fly at everything you're afraid of. That paralyzes it. It can't happen then," you discover. You also discover that "societies are cages. You're caught and you can't fly on." Here is Blackwood occultism hitting the earth with a bounce and shooting away on new slants. You are glad Mr. Blackwood has eschewed for the moment things like "Day and Night Stories" and "Julius La Vallon." You know what he means when he says: "A new language is floating into the world from the air - a new way, a bird way of communicating." And again: "A new language is wanted-a flying language with a rapid air vocabulary, condensed, intense." Whereupon he turns around and knocks the wind out of his lament by writing sentences like this: "January sparkled, dropped like a broken icicle, and was gone." An English writer who can carve a sentence like that out of the English language has no business to complain. He can have some of my money every time he chooses to write another book.

The promise of air From Algernon Blackwood

the promise of air From Algernon Blackwood

Algernon Blackwood was a prolific writer across short stories, novels and plays. His passion for the supernatural and for ghost stories together with a fascination for all things in the occult and mysticism created some of the most enthralling works ever written. HP Lovecraft referred to his works as that of a master. Henry James in referring to The Bright Messenger said "the most extraordinary novel on psychoanalysis, one that dwarfs the subject." Many other authors similarly lauded him. Today his works are beginning to regain their former popularity. Here we publish one of his classic novels, The Promise Of Air, one of a number of books that any fan of the occult should read.

Excerpt from The Promise of Air Yet his indifference to things was not so colour less as it appeared; but was due, perhaps, to the transference Of his interests elsewhere. His centre Of gravity hardly seemed on earth is one way Of expressing it. Behind the apparent stolidity hid something that danced and sang; something almost flighty. It was laborious explanation that he dreaded and despised, as though things capable Of being 'explained' were Of small importance to him. He was eager to know things he wanted to know, yet in a way he was too intensely curious, too impatient certainly, to put himself to much trouble to find out. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

British author Algernon Blackwood was a remarkably influential figure in the genre of "weird" terror. His tales rely on gradually mounting suspense and a sense of discomforting dislocation, rather than gore or explicit horror. The Promise of Air is a classic example of the unique brand of weird fiction that Blackwood pioneered. We are delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive Classic Library collection. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. The aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature, and our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. The contents of the vast majority of titles in the Classic Library have been scanned from the original works. To ensure a high quality product, each title has been meticulously hand curated by our staff. Our philosophy has been guided by a desire to provide the reader with a book that is as close as possible to ownership of the original work. We hope that you will enjoy this wonderful classic work, and that for you it becomes an enriching experience.

Algernon Henry Blackwood (1869-1951) was an English writer of tales of the supernatural. In his late thirties, Blackwood started to write horror stories. He was very successful, writing ten books of short stories and appearing on both radio and television to tell them. He also wrote fourteen novels and a number of plays, most of which were produced but not published. He was an avid lover of nature, and many of his stories reflect this. Although Blackwood wrote a number of horror stories, his most typical work seeks less to frighten than to induce a sense of awe. Good examples are the novels The Centaur (1911) and Julius LeVallon (1916) and its sequel The Bright Messenger (1921).