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Episode 443 - The House of Sounds (Patreon)

Published:
2019-03-15 21:01:42
Imported:
2021-07

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Content

Listen up! It's The House of Sounds by M.P. Shiel!

Special thanks to our reader, David Moore!

Next up: Mr. Arcularis by Conrad Aiken

Comments

Anonymous

BelKnap's back baby!

Richard Horsman

This is one of the oddest stories you've done, up there with "The Snout" or that one about the guy whose brain gets put in a dinosaur. Not sure I thought it was good exactly, but I definitely couldn't look away.

Jason Thompson

I hate to pick on the dead, and "The House of Sounds" is a cool-sounding *title*, but "blah story by racist pedophile" is definitely not a strong pitch for the MP Shiel Literary Podcast

Anonymous

Huh. I don't know what I expected from this tale, but it wasn't a horror tale about some guy's balls dropping.

Richard Horsman

That linked version of Mister Arcularis seems to be missing some text compared to this one on The Internet Archive: <a href="https://archive.org/stream/31stories00unse/31stories00unse_djvu.txt" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://archive.org/stream/31stories00unse/31stories00unse_djvu.txt</a> Unfortunately neither seems to be particularly well formatted. I may have to hit the library for this one.

Anonymous

Thanks for introducing me to the wonderful world of Ear Lavage porn on YouTube.There appears to be several methods including dry and wet ,sometimes using a softening agent 5 days before.The wet uses a bulb syringe,water pik type device or a classic bulb and tube system.The remains mostly resemble small bits of leafs or stones.Very Lynchian episode Coop!

Anonymous

To quote Krusty "Well that went on forever." or maybe better "What the hell was that?" I get HP getting all hot and bothered by it, but I've never found his purple prose so tedious. It's really bad when practically every obscure, abstruse, tenebrous word (practically in every other sentence), when looked up produced something else equally arcane. Case in point - Sardanapalus led to Ashurbanipal. Thanks for that Shiel. Were you trying to help somebody out on the first SAT? But yeah, ear problems suck and can be the basis for weird, horror and scifi stories that don't require re-reading every paragraph ad nauseam.

Anonymous

I like sensory confusion. I do not like senseless confusion.

Anonymous

The dinosaur brain transplant story was FABULOUS. Right up there with Day of the Dragon.

Anonymous

For some reason Harfager recounting the backstory made me think of McSweeney's A SHORT HISTORY OF THE ICELANDIC CONVERSION TO CHRISTIANITY FOR BOSTONIANS, which I think has vastly outlived its amusement factor, but is still better than this week's story: <a href="https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/a-short-history-of-the-icelandic-conversion-to-christianity-for-bostonians-part-vi-a" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/a-short-history-of-the-icelandic-conversion-to-christianity-for-bostonians-part-vi-a</a>

Anonymous

I feel like someone challenged M.P. Shiel to out-Poe Poe, and this story was the result. Wow. None more Gothic! This is definitely best read online, so one can easily look up the more antiquated and arcane words. Does anyone think that the Harfager family history was inspired by Hamlet, specifically the Claudius/Gertrude/King Hamlet triangle? Also, I wonder if this story was an influence on Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast series, with its gigantic crumbling edifice inhabited by an ancient, doomed family that conducts bizarre rites and employs a mysterious, malignant man?

Anonymous

Halfway through the podcast I realized I had read this before and struggled to finish it.

Anonymous

Okay, so originally this globe thing had 4 million lead balls, each about 1/3 inch diameter? That means they’re about 0.019 cubic inches in volume. Lead weighs about 0.4lbs per cubic inch, which means 8 balls to an ounce (rounding a bit as Harfager says about 1/3 inch). The whole lot comes in at over 15 1/2 tons. That’s a lot of lead! Did they ring up their local, 14th century lead merchant and order fifteen and a half tons of lead, to be delivered as 4,000,000 tiny balls? Or have they had the ‘lead delivery man’ bring round the monthly order of 700-odd balls and tip them down the ‘deathball chute’ for the past 500 years? Is it a family business, handed down from father to son?!?

Anonymous

I remember Shiel being mentioned as a paragon of English prose writing by various sources. This is the first story of his I've read, and if it's any indication of his other works, I'm truly baffled by that statement. For me, this is the worst kind of purple prose, a prose that delves into the obscure just to be obscure. There is never any sense of deliberate usage to create atmosphere like in Lovecraft's better stories. I can almost picture Shiel brooding over a 200 year old dictionary, randomly selecting words that have an air of the recondite about them. I had to pick up my volume of Bierce's collected works to wash away that unpleasant taste with some actually great English prose.

Anonymous

Yay I got my shoutout! It would need to be on the episode where the story is an interminable Poe rip off written by a child molester... but I appreciate it anyway!

Anonymous

No Chris, YOU'RE awesome! So nice to hear my name on your podcast. I love you guys and getting to hear you twice as much as before does not lessen my joy at seeing new shows posted. Even if it is for such an irritatingly unsettling story as this.

Steve

I listened therefore to a story not less dully dismal than some turgid tale of the thoughts of Trump.

Steve
>>20887063

Thanks for reading this so we didn't have to.

Steve

In the Tatarus Press Guide to Supernatural Fiction, they say, "The House of Sounds: a revised version of Vaila, the main difference is that the frenetic language is toned down." To which my comment is, dear god! <a href="http://tartaruspress.com/s4.htm" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://tartaruspress.com/s4.htm</a>

Anonymous

Wow, this story was like an overly complicated, poorly executed Rube Goldberg machine. It had an overabundance of moving parts to accomplish very little. The reasons for the characters’ bizarre and counterintuitive actions were never adequately explained. Also, all the drama was turned up to 11. Really, there were 4 million members of the family? I think there are 3 million people in the mid-sized city where I live. Then the whole thing with the balls and the smaller balls and the bells and the rats. The house attached to a stone amphitheater by chains. It was way too much. The only reason I can think of for putting the rats in at the foot of the coffin would be so that the mostly dead person could feel the rats eating through their flesh until the brain was finally disconnected. And I suppose the murdered brother wants them all to suffer, but why would the rest of the family cooperate with that instead of just severing the head? Was there actually a murdered brother or was I just confused? This was an interesting listen, but I’m glad I didn’t try to read it. Since it was written by a racist pedophile I guess it could have been much worse.

Richard Horsman

If anyone liked the delirious tone and atmosphere of this story but struggled with...well, everything else, I highly recommend the Guy Maddin movie CAREFUL.

Anonymous

Aurora Borealis, mentioned in the story, has often been reported being accompanied by a crackling sound. There is no explanation for that. One possible cause could be that the charged particles interact with the nerves in the ear in some people, creating a temporary tinnitus.

Frederic

Chad, You should check out acupuncture for your ear problem. There are many possibilities I would see for treating your issue.

Neil de Carteret

Because of the Italian quote at the start I assumed it had been translated. This fitted with the (charitably) awkward vocabulary choices. Then it turned it be set in Shetland and written by a native speaker.

Neil de Carteret

Two things I did like though: first, it’s properly weird. The location of the house, the crazy brass engineering, the lead ball o’death machine, the massive brass pillar down the middle, the spooooky medieval history — none of it explained. And I genuinely love that. Secondly, the way the early part of story is a descent into hell. Out from London to Scotland. Out from mainland Scotland to Shetland. Out to the little island. Through cold weather to the house, which is itself at the bottom of a storm-drenched ravine. Across a waterlogged bridge to reach the door. By the time he got into the house I really felt like we’d travelled a very long way from normality. I liked that.

Anonymous
>>20986689

I'm sorry, but because the start of the "descent into Hell" you described is "from England to Scotland," all I can think of is the "Scotch Mist" episode of Garth Marenghi's Darkplace. "Actually, my grandmother lives in Glasgow. She says it's a wonderful city this time of year." "It isn't."

Anonymous

I didn’t want to be the first but now that the seal has been broken,I like to get my advice on solving Chad’s chronic medical condition that I have become recently aware.First keep your ears clean ,Q-tips are your friends and they also sell softening agents with a water wash bulb at various local drug stores and a website called Amazon.com.If that fails it seems like hot saunas would be an excellent way to help melt away your stress and built up earwax.If all else fails ,a low wax diet would be in order or a high wax diet.I refer to this as the earwax paradox,by actually increasing your wax consumption,you lower your ear wax.Plus shopping at Yankee Candle would be much more enjoyable.You could ask the salesperson with wax goes best with white or red wine.And seasonal offerings such as Peppermint for Christmas,Chocolate for Easter and the ultimate Chino de Mayo Taco/Salsa favored wax will make you at hit at many a party.

Anonymous

Is this the ear-wax community? At last a place to share my "Tales of the Unexpurgated"!! Having lost (through hard-living) my ability to produce ear-wax I enjoyed with a pang of nostalgia Chad's account of his ear-wax highs and lows. I'm a keen swimmer so I must take special care to avoid infections due to water in the ear. On a related tack- an old girlfriend was of East Asian descent and revealed to me an astounding ear-wax fact. East Asian and Caucasian ear wax can be profoundly different with many East Asian people producing dry, white and powdery ear-wax. I was amazed, but then I am, perhaps, easily entertained :) I look forward to more ear-wax related revelations on next weeks show- it's your turn Chris!

Anonymous

The weird architecture of the house makes a lot more sense once you realize that the story was originally written as a pitch for a 1990's point-and-click adventure game.