Horror is a feeling that cannot last long; human nature is incapable of supporting it.
This is the kind of quote that one would normally suspect might be found either very early in the narrative or as part of the denouement following the climax. Perhaps tellingly, however, it is expressed through the first-person narration at almost precisely the half-way point of the story as the opening line of a chapter titled “I Learn My Doom.” The effect is palpable because what follows is not an analysis of horror, but rather that sense of calmness and serenity which can be counted upon to eventually stem the tide of fear.
“I only referred to the intention of the writer. His plan is one thing and his execution quite another. His plan is not bad, but he fails utterly in his execution. The style is detestable. If he had written in the style of a plain seaman, and told a simple unvarnished tale, it would have been all right.”
The author of this adventure novel was meta before meta was fashionable...or meta. Like many novels written before the 1920’s, this one is constructed with a framing device in which the actual meat and potatoes of the narrative takes place in the past and is related second-hand by characters in the contemporary setting. Melick is one of the contemporary figures of the story and this quote is a critical commentary on the writing style of the actual author of the strange manuscript. The very criticism he voices about the manuscript would be parroted by some reviewers upon publication of this novel. Thus, one of the things that the author seems to be satirizing is his own writing. Or, at the very least, he might be preemptively satirizing the predictability of literary critics.
It occurred as far back as February 15, 1850.
The precision of the opening line of the novel is reflective of the times in which it was written. Even though by the posthumous publication date of 1888 the novel had long since attained the degree of respectability which had eluded through the 1700’s, many writers still felt compelled to strive for that sense of authenticity which 18th century novelists engaged in an attempt to make the new literary form as reputable as the enormously popular travel literature which dominated the era giving birth to the novel. Of course, a story about a civilization living beneath the Antarctic—in a tropical setting, no less—is capable of attaining only so much authenticity, but of the precise dating is not to create a sense of realism for the story itself, but rather the discovery of the manuscript purporting to relate that fantastical tale.
Here Featherstone stopped, yawned, and laid down the manuscript.
“That’s enough for today. I’m tired, and can’t read any more. It’s time for supper.”
One of the criticisms that has withstood the test of the time is abrupt and understated way with which the novel ends. For some, this ending on Featherstone’s fatigue of reading and coincident hunger seem not just anti-climactic, but potentially the sign of an unfinished or incomplete manuscript. Others, however, has taken Featherstone’s fatigue and desire to eat as a cover story for a much deeper and more problematic desire to assertively tear asunder the parallels between the story written in the manuscript and the contemporary story of those who are reading it. Still others remain just simply bewildered not unlike how many viewers are left feeling by the monologue delivered by the Tommy Lee Jones character in the film No Country for Old Men. It seems like Featherstone’s statement must certainly mean something, but getting at that meaning defies comprehension for many.
