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Robert W. Chambers’ The King in Yellow, which had a profound impact on True Detective season 1, was a strange book even for its time. While ostensibly a collection of short stories, it is in fact a hidden narrative of psychosis and madness. There (somewhere) in the text is the story of The King in Yellow and a play that drives anybody who reads it mad.

If you compare this to the first season of True Detective, one can see that strange visions, an eerie setting, and the shifting of time fit within these weird fiction parameters. In this post, we are going to look at how Writer Nic Pizzolatto and Director Cary Joji Fukunaga collaborated and created one of the greatest seasons of television put to film.

What is Weird Fiction? Definition of the Bizarre

Weird fiction is a genre of writing that focuses predominantly on the supernatural. These supernatural elements include the strange, eerie, and unexplainable. It explores the limits of the human mind and includes cosmic horror, forbidden knowledge, and encounters with horrific adversaries. Much of the time, writers in this genre blend horror, fantasy, and science fiction.

Authors in this genre crafted varying stories of horror and the inexplicable. Some stories featured men envisioning their own safety shortly before execution, while others featured travelers encountering long-dead gods thought to be asleep. These stories were strong departures for the norm. They caused audience to think and fear the unknown. What is more troubling then the dark and mysterious eons of eternity? According to weird fiction authors–not much.

A Brief History of Weird Fiction

While it’s difficult to say just when weird fiction came about, one can argue that it was popularized in the 19th and 20th centuries. Authors Edgar Allan Poe, Ambrose Bierce, and Algernon Blackwood contributed largely to the development of this style. Poe focused his efforts on horror and the macabre. He showcased his talents in “The Tell-Tale Heart,” and “The Pit and the Pendulum.” Bierce, meanwhile, used elements borrowed from ghost stories in his tales, such as in “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.” Blackwood, meanwhile, emphasized the eeriness of the world and nature, such as in the story “The Willows.”

The genre became popular with the writings of H.P. Lovecraft, who focused his stories on cosmic horror and joined them together with the Cthulhu mythos. Meanwhile, other writers within his circle–including Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E. Howard–wrote similar stories that contributed to this genre. For example, Howard’s most notable creation, Conan, ventured into the realms of sword and sorcery. However, most, if not all, of his stories had something supernatural included, such as monsters, sorcerers, and dark forgotten lands.

Weird Fiction in True Detective

In the context of True Detective, the influences are obvious if you know where to look. Ideas from the aforementioned Robert W. Chambers and H.P. Lovecraft make appearances. Mystery writers impacted the show as well. These influences include Raymond Chandler and, most notably, Edgar Allan Poe’s detective character, C. Auguste Dupin, who solved the murders in the Rue Morgue. Writer Nic Pizzolatto was a teacher and aspiring writer before his breakout success with the first season of True Detective. Before the show ever took form, he wrote short stories that he published in Between Here and the Yellow Sea (2006). In this way, the literariness of the first season is evident.

Meanwhile, the show also utilizes philosophies that ere on a darker side, including Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Alan Moore. The shows belief system operates consistently. For instance, Cohle exudes nihilism and there are nihilistic experiences throughout the show. Meanwhile, Marty tries to stay positive even though he is flawed, which leads to the final uplifting line of the show. With consistent beliefs in place, the themes and tones of the show are both vibrant and engaging.

Cosmic Visions from Beyond the Pale

Weird fiction is all over the first season of True Detective. The plot, the characters, the setting, and the overall tone are pulled straight from a turn-of-the-century pulp magazine with a few updates.

The first thing worth mentioning is Rustin Spence “Rust” Cohle’s visions. Cohle, played adroitly by Matthew McConaughey, experiences strange lines of light and visions of strange symbols. Some online reviewers have opined that Cohle seems to suffer from synesthesia, which is “a neurological condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway (for example, hearing) leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory pathway (such as vision)” (Psychology Today). In other words, one’s senses cross over into other senses creating visions of sound or the noises of visuals.

In Ep. 1, Cohle sees True Detective’s version of Chamber’s the Yellow Sign in the form of birds flying through the sky. This symbol mesmerizes Cohle, and unsettles the audience, as the same sign was apparent on the skin of a deceased woman shortly before. Moreover, throughout much of the series we find that Cohle hallucinates sensory experiences, and sees streaming lights as he drives. In the final episode of the season, Cohle hallucinates a void that ostensibly reveals the otherworldly nature of the antagonist, whether he imagines it or not.

Cohle’s hallucinations are very much inspired by Lovecraftian lore, and more particularly the monsters that hide in the shadows. These are the others that humanity can’t see with their own eyes and with their own senses. It is the world beyond the veil. In “The Music of Erich Zann,” by H.P. Lovecraft, the protagonist finds himself in a wretched battle of survival against the forces of the unseen and with the void itself, that whirls, mocking, outside of Zann’s window. Likewise, in “The Dunwich Horror” by the same author, a massive invisible monster wreaks havoc on a community, killing many, and leaving invisible footprints in its wake.

Thusly, True Detective‘s emphasis on an invisible world and the fantasy of H.P. Lovecraft come together within the genre. Cohle’s ability to see beyond the veil grants him a focus that other lawmen do not possess, and it ultimately allows him to solve the murders. In contrast, many of Lovecraft’s protagonists encounter the horrors of beyond by proxy. Yet, they must cross this invisible veil in order to see the truth of the world in which they live. While True Detective may not use literal monsters, the monster(s) in the first season still hides amongst the weeds, and beyond the veil of reality.

Carcosa as a Weird Setting

Continuing, one could draw tangible parallels to Carcosa, in which the literal land and old fort where Erroll Childress has taken up his rituals are hidden in the swamps of Louisiana. Carcosa, as it is used in the show, was no doubt inspired by The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers, but it comes from Ambrose Bierce’s short story “An Inhabitant of Carcosa” (1886). Chambers, an author or darkly atmospheric peices, borrowed from Bierce, another author of similar caliber. In response, Pizzolatto borrowed from them.

In examination, we can see parallels between the way in which it was implemented in True Detective season 1, and how it is portrayed in other works. As it was originally conceptualized by Ambrose Bierce in 1895, it is an eerie and foreboding place. It is inhabited by death and decay, and haunted by an undead narrator. Meanwhile, in Robert W. Chambers’s The King in Yellow collection, Carcosa is realized in a foreboding play that can literally drive the reader to madness. The land of Carcosa exists within the text as a haunted or “cursed” place. Chambers references it as “lost” and “dim” and filled with black stars and lost moons. The paradoxical nature of its descriptions feed into the cosmic horror of it all.

Chambers writers:

“Strange is the night where black stars rise,/
And strange moons circle through the skies,/ But stranger still is/
Lost Carcosa.”

Meanwhile, in True Detective, we find that the killer, Erroll Childress, has created a sort of ritual chamber within a labyrinth in an old Civil War fort. Director Fukunaga and company discovered this place while scouting locations in Louisiana. Carcosa, in this instance, is not possibly cursed, but is absolutely cursed by the death of innocent children. If it is not cursed by children, then at least by the real tragedies that have occurred there, such as ritualistic sacrifice, torture, and rape.

In response to fan theories about the shows relationship to Chambers’s The King in Yellow, Fukanaga stated: “I think for Nic (Pizzolatto ), he definitely enjoys those references. For us we’ll take the signifiers in terms of content and lace them throughout. So, yes, it definitely did. Black stars. Different forms of yellow are definitely peppered throughout the show.” Some references were “planned,” he stated, and some were “spontaneous.”

The Shifting Sands of Time

Time is a strange beast in weird fiction. Often, time is the deus ex machina in the story that helps the protagonist miraculously appear somewhere else to succeed. Often times, they traverse time to simply die in the horrors of an infinitesimal void. For example, many of Lovecraft’s stories feature characters passing out in danger and then waking up in safety. “Dagon,” (1917) for example, features a narrator who loses his grip on reality when confronted by a horrible fish God. He wakes up near his boat some time later unsure of how he had clawed his way from near death.

This is strange, but intentionally so to subvert the reader’s chance at understanding the horror of something so horrible.

Time also works differently in this genre. In Chamber’s The King in Yellow, the narrator of “The Repairer of Reputations” has considerable past damages to be aware of and important work to look forward to in the future. Meanwhile, in “The Mask,” the protagonist must wait patiently for a revelation to occur in order to understand the effects of a magical liquid. Additionally, we find dreams and alleys contorted in the text that revel in a complete understanding of time and space. It cannot be so because of our conventional understanding of time as a linear construct as opposed to views of time out of sequence.

In True Detective season 1, the initial scenes feature Rust and Marty investigating the death of a woman named Dora Lange in 1995. This is intercut with interviews with them in the future. By playing with time, Fukanaga is able to distort the audeinces’s own sense of what is happening in a rational way. We know mystery stories in chronological sequence: first they work together to get clues, and then they get the bad guy. Yet, in True Detective season 1, the flashforwards give us a sense of unease. Cohle is wearing a jumpsuit that is oddly similar to prison clothing, and he gives his interview in a sterile environment that is befitting a prison cafeteria. This misdirection plays with the idea of time and makes the audience question what exactly happened in the intervening years.

Meanwhile, the Yellow King in the show has a cooldown period that is less consistent than most famous serial killers, like Ted Bundy or John Wayne Gacy. This irregularity invites comparisons to the oddity of time in the genre and how time plays a crucial role. There are multiple victims in the show, but the years seem to range from 1990 (possibly earlier) to 1995. That gives a rough cool down period of every 5 years. Again, time works as a thematic element in this way, and allows Cohle to believe that he may strike again.

Later in the season, as older men and investigators, Cohle and Marty continue to search for the Yellow King. Their reflections on previous investigations lead to both conflict and resolution. They learn to work together, but acknowledge how the years have slipped away. Time is like that in weird fiction. While it can operate as a deus ex machina, it is also a reminder that the frailty of life is over in an instant.

In Conclusion

Weird fiction permeates off of True Detective season 1. The use of this genre’s tropes is effective when melded with the mysterious natures of Cohle’s visions, the setting, and the usage of time. As viewers, we are pulled into the world of weird fiction, and we are invited to engage with a story that is unrelenting, violent, and filled with surprises. Nonetheless, there are many more weird fiction stories out there that use the conventions of weird fiction as a catalyst to pull us into the unreality of their very own Carcosa.

Works Cited

Psychology Today. “Synthesia.” Sussex Publishers, LLC. 2023. Web. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/synesthesia

Guerrasio, Jason. “True Detective Director Cary Fukunaga on the Yellow King Theories.” Esquire. March 2, 2014. Web. https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/interviews/a27619/true-detective-cary-fukunaga-interview/

I discovered The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers (1895) as if I were a character in a H. P. Lovecraft story. Imagine that I had just heard about the Necronomicon and strolled into a library. There, on the front desk was The King in Yellow. A little peculiar? Yet, I wasn’t sure if it was a tongue-in-cheek nod to books of cosmic terror or not. Certainly, it felt as though this book was mentioned in passing in some biographies and snaps of author biographies. Still, I never seemed to be able to find a clear answer as to what this book was about….

Who was Robert W. Chambers?

Robert W. Chambers was an artist and short fiction writer largely known for The King in Yellow, which was published in 1895. While not always discussed, his fiction acts as a precursor to other weird fiction stories. While, and while he dabbled in the strange and exotic, he also focused his writings on historical fiction. In respect to this, he published the following books in the genre: The Red Republic, Lorraine, and Ashes of Empire. Chambers passed away on Dec. 16, 1933.

Writer Paul St John Mackintosh states in “The Secret Chambers of the Heart: Robert W. Chambers and ‘The King in Yellow’” that the small amount of published work from the writer lends itself to his stature as a literary hero.

“His Carcosa Mythos is now almost as popular as H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, and references to the King in Yellow have become nearly as common as Cthulhu plushies,” he writes. “ … It is remarkable that Chambers’s work has earned this level of renown based only on the four stories and one poem cycle published in The King in Yellow (1895) which mention or allude to the eponymous supernatural monarch and his attendant mythos.”

But, as so often the case, a lack of material has garnered curiosity, attention, and ravenous followers.

Who, or What, is the King in Yellow?

The King in Yellow is a theatrical play in the aforementioned novel. If read by the characters, it will drive them to insanity. As stated in the text, Act I of the play is “ordinary” but reading Act II will drive any reader crazy with, apparently, horrific revelations.

An excerpt from the play appears at the beginning of the short story “The Mask”:

Camilla: You, sir, should unmask.

Stranger: Indeed?

Cassilda: Indeed it’s time. We all have laid aside disguise but you.

Stranger: I wear no mask.

Camilla: (Terrified, aside to Cassilda.) No mask? No mask!

The King in Yellow, Act I, Scene 2.

Meanwhile, the being itself, the King in Yellow, is a Gothic-horror entity that rivals the likes of Cthulhu in its mystery and foreboding. Characters fear the words of the book—even knowledge of the book—lest they be struck mad with its words. One of the characters who appears in the story “In the Court of the Dragon” reads from the play and finds himself prey to the story’s psychological unraveling.

“Death and the awful abode of lost souls, whither my weakness long ago had sent him, had changed him for every other eye but mine. And now I heard his voice, rising, swelling, thundering through the flaring light, and as I fell, the radiance increasing, increasing, poured over me in waves of flame. Then I sank into the depths, and I heard the King in Yellow whispering to my soul: ‘It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God!’”

After reading The King in Yellow, one gets a sense that Chambers has something strange and special encapsulated in the brief, yet oddly packed, book of short stories. It’s oddly packed because there are a lot of ideas in this book, and all of them are woven expertly throughout the pages. Truly, the concepts Chambers discusses and alludes to throughout (terror, love, doubt) are sometimes completely apparent. Other times, these same themes are buried like so many literary corpses.

Yet, madness laces each page like a sickness. For example: the end of the first short story ends in a frantic cry of the narrator:

“’Ah! I see it now!’ I shrieked. ‘You have seized the throne and the empire. Woe! Woe to you who are crowned with the crown of the King in Yellow!’”

The back of the 2014 Corundum Classics rerelease of the book adequately explains what I believe is a book that is plain difficult to explain sometimes:

“It is whispered that there is a play that leaves only insanity and sorrow in its wake. It tempts those who read it, bringing them upon them a vision of madness that should be left unseen. The stories herein traverse the elements of that play, and the words, themes and poetry, are permeated by the presence of The King in Yellow, weaving together to leave upon the reader the ruinous impression of the Yellow Sign.”

This is indeed a strange book. A strange, special book.

Truthfully, and as odd as it may seem, there is a sorrowful sort of love in these stories as well. And, the theme of the heart goes well with the stories in The King in Yellow. The poem “Prophet’s Paradise” demonstrates this through the use of a narrative verse that references previous and future themes of the book.

Each of the poem’s eight sections tells of odd love in some way. This goes from a narrator waiting on his love in the first section, to the outcry of love and pain from the third section. Here, the narrator describes that from a jar a woman “poured blood upon the flowers whose petals are whiter than snow and whose hearts are pure gold.” Sure, there is weird fiction here, but there is also hints from the romantic genre and from gothic horror itself.

Conclusion

Much of the The King in Yellow by Robert W Chambers follows in the vein of romantic writing in its sense of mystery, adventure, and spirit. As such, it’s a fantastic assortment of stories whose weaver, Chambers, is adroit in both manipulation and the macabre. I think the true terror of this collection is its believability. Chambers articulately describes environs, senses, and experiences with adroit clarity. Meanwhile, he hides portentous aspects of the story behind his back for the right moment. Then, when those moments come alive, they take the reader into places far off and unknown.

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True Detective Season 1: Weird Fiction, The Yellow King, and Cosmic Dread