"Such books remind us that we are all strangers and pilgrims."

http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/roundtable/beyond-the-fields-we-know.php

Michael Dirda

Beyond the Fields We Know

"Far too long, I think, the realist novel has dominated our thinking about the course of English literature. Let us honor the marvelous as well as the matter of fact! It is time we paid more attention to metaphysical fiction, whether labeled fantasy, supernatural thriller or spiritual psychodrama. Some high spots of this lineage include Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, James Hogg’s Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, George MacDonald’s Phantastes, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer. These demanding and disturbing novels of Machen, De la Mare, and Blackwood belong in their company. But there are many more examples in the twentieth century, from the light-hearted to the tragic: Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Lolly Willowes, David Garnett’s Lady Into Fox, David Lindsay’s A Voyage to Arcturus, Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, H.P. Lovecraft’s The Shadow Out of Time, Charles Williams’ All Hallow’s Eve, John Crowley’s Little, Big, and Philip K. Dick’s The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, to mention just a few. Such books remind us that we are all strangers and pilgrims."