The Dark Chamber
Description of the 2005 edition (Cold Spring Press):
Originally published in August 1927 while its author was bound over in jail awaiting trial, The Dark Chamber has achieved a legendary status among fans of weird fiction. Leonard Cline's third novel, it is remembered today thanks to H. P. Lovecraft, who called it "extremely high in artistic stature." The novel has been called a precursor to Paddy Chayefsky's book Altered States, 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, into the dark chamber of his mind. This edition also reprints as an Afterword a rare essay by Cline, "Logodaedaly," and includes an Introduction by Douglas A. Anderson that discusses the novel's acclaim and influence among H. P. Lovecraft's circle of friends.
Leonard Cline
Leonard Lanson Cline (1893–1929) was an American novelist, poet, short story writer, and journalist.
In 1927 he published The Dark Chamber, arguably his most famous work. It was described by H. P. Lovecraft in his Supernatural Horror in Literature as "extremely high in artistic stature". A review proclaimed, "he has opened a squamous dungeon of the mind and explored it with the erudite perversity of a cheerier, juicier Poe. Like all horror stories it is belittled by its own theatricality yet it remains an amazingly worded orgy of the more unspeakable human propensities."
More books by Leonard Cline
