West India Lights [Textbook Binding]

Henry S. Whitehead (Author)

Product Details

• Textbook Binding
• Publisher: Arkham House Pub (June 1946)
• ISBN-10: 9997541464
• ISBN-13: 978-9997541468
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,836,451 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Tales of Exotic Terror, August 30, 2011

By 

W. H. Pugmire "I never can be tied to raw, ne... (Sesqua Valley) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: West India lights (Hardcover)

From the inside-flap:

This second and final collection of the supernatural tales of the late Rev. Henry S. Whitehead follows JUMBEE AND OTHER UNCANNY TALES..., and what Orville Prescott said of that earlier book, reviewing it in the New York Times, holds equally true for WEST INDIA LIGHT--

"With deceptive gentleness and clerical decorum Dr. Whitehead wrote of voodoo spells, fiendish manikins and other terrors to be found in the tropic nights of the Virgin Islands. So quietly did he edge up on his horrors that his stories seem quite like the truthful reminiscences they purport to be, which means they are pretty good."

WEST INDIA LIGHTS contains further narratives of Gerald Canevin and a variety of other tales. In this book for the first time in print anywhere appears Dr. Whitehead's remarkable tale, "'Williamson'," which every editor who saw it shied away from publishing; here, too, is "The Great Circle," one of the longest of Canevin's adventures, and here are such tales as those convincing stories of ancestral memory--"Scar Tissue" and "Bothon," which will delight the Atlantis-enthusiast, the horror story, "The Chadbourne Episode," that curious tale of a "magicked" mirror, "The Trap," and such stories from Weird Tales as "Black Terror," "The Shut Room," "The Left Eye," "Sea Change, etc. The title tale is of especial interest to the connoisseur as a variant telling of the story told in SEVEN TURNS IN A HANGMAN'S ROPE. Also included in this volume is Dr. Whitehead's essay, "Obi in the Caribbean," which originally appeared in The Commonweal and has been out of print for two decades.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

S. T. Joshi included "The Trap" is his Corrected Text Arkham House edition of H. P. Lovecraft's THE HORROR IN THE MUSEUM (1989), where he notes: "I discovered Lovecraft's role in Henry S. Whitehead's 'The Trap'; in a letter to R. H. Barlow (25 February 1932) he reports writing the entire central section of the story. In letters Lovecraft refers to another story by Whitehead, 'The Bruise,' for which he supplied a synopsis; and although William Fulwiler, who brought this matter to our attention, believes that Lovecraft may have actually written the story (published as 'Bothon' in WEST INDIA LIGHTS), I am not convinced that Lovecraft contributed any prose to this work."

The stories express what I find to be mild racism, but others have found this author very racist in his writing of the dark races among whom he lived and whom he evokes in his weird fiction. As weird fiction, the tales of Henry S. Whitehead are superb and unique. He wrote very well, his narratives flow with urban grace and intelligence. This is an excellent collection of his work. I wish we knew more about its author from a biographic point of view.