Before You Begin

Before you begin.

Anthony M. Rud's "A Square of Canvas" is a Weird Tales miniature about art, confinement and the terrible stories artists tell about themselves. It opens on the grounds of a New York asylum, where a young visitor meets an old patient who insists he is not John Chase, but the painter Hal Pemberton.

This LitLab edition separates the tale from the April 1923 magazine issue and gives it a full visual companion. The plates follow the asylum garden, the Long Island household, the Paris studio training and the objects that gather around Pemberton's account. Recaps unlock by reading unit, while story medallions keep their questions and echoes outside the images so the artwork can remain free of reader-facing text.

Read it as early Weird Tales psychological horror: less a puzzle about whether art can be powerful than a confession about what someone may excuse in the name of making it. The reader and download cuts both stop at the end of the story before the issue's closing material.