Who Goes There! distills Robert W. Chambers's long preoccupation with thresholds-social and psychological-into episodes where a sentry's challenge becomes a test of identity. In urbane, magazine-honed prose, he fuses quick dialogue and painterly description with a cool penumbra of the uncanny. Poised between fin-de-siècle weirdness and the brisk society romance that made him a bestseller, the book probes loyalty, masquerade, and the perilous art of passing. Trained as an artist in Paris and New York, Chambers brought an illustrator's eye and a market-savvy feel for serial suspense to his fiction. Early exposure to Symbolist aesthetics and the succès de scandale of The King in Yellow shaped his tonal range. Here those strands meet: surface and costume serve intrigue, while cosmopolitan milieus sharpen questions of recognition and concealment. Recommended for readers tracing the evolution of American popular modernity from decadent unease to high-society melodrama. Admirers of The King in Yellow, scholars of genre permeability, and general audiences alike will value its crisp dialogue, atmospheric set pieces, and elegant meditation on how we answer, and evade, the call to declare ourselves.
Quickie Classics summarizes timeless works with precision, preserving the author's voice and keeping the prose clear, fast, and readable-distilled, never diluted. Enriched Edition extras: Introduction · Synopsis · Historical Context · Brief Analysis · 4 Reflection Q&As · Editorial Footnotes.