POETRY SPECIAL: Wayside Bundle - Constance Hargreaves (actually Frank Baker)

 

Here's an unusual post for Pretty Sinister Books and the second one inspired by a post I read at A Hot Cup of Pleasure, a book blog hosted and written by Neeru.  This is not unrelated to the content of my own blog for the book that Neeru wrote about in the inspirational post is the renowned Miss Hargreaves, a marvelous fantasy about a fictional character who comes to life.  I wrote about Miss Hargreaves and its author Frank Baker in this blog's inaugural year and it continues to attract the attention of people who rarely come here to read about murder, mayhem and horror. Miss Hargreaves is the antithesis of the kind of books I usually write about, but it still celebrates the human imagination and is, ultimately, a treatise on the power of creativity.  These are also aspects of genre fiction that I discuss in the many books of crime, adventure and supernatural that usually pop up here.

Wayside Bundle (1959) is a book of poetry by Constance Hargreaves, the title character of Baker's fantasy novel. She never existed but in the imagination of Norman Huntley, the protagonist of that novel. Baker, as a gift for his literary friends who had read the novel and fallen in love with the character, created this volume of her poetry alluded to over the course of the novel.  Features of her character's personality crop up in the subject matter of the poems which makes it all the more enjoyable for anyone who has read the novel Miss Hargreaves.  

THINGS I LEARNED: Many of the poems are written in doggerel verse, a feature of her writing mentioned in the novel, but there are also non-rhyming poems and more formal structures like a couple of sonnets and two poems that use the arcane form of a triolet, a short poem of eight lines with only two rhymes used throughout. I'd never heard of a "triolet" until I read these two examples.  I had to look up whether or not the form actually existed.  Here is a brief overview of a triolet according to the American Academy of Poetry: "French in origin, and likely dating to the thirteenth century, the triolet is a close cousin of the rondeau, another French verse form emphasizing repetition and rhyme. The earliest triolets were devotionals written by Patrick Carey, a seventeenth-century Benedictine monk. British poet Robert Bridges reintroduced the triolet to the English language, where it enjoyed a brief popularity among late-nineteenth-century British poets." For an example of the triolet devoted to a serious topic rather than the usual lighthearted verse, they cite Thomas Hardy's "How Great My Grief," a poem I did not know. In fact, I didn't know Hardy wrote anything other than bucolic and melodramatic family saga novels.

And so since I apparently am one of the lucky souls who has acquired one of the rare 350 copies of Wayside Bundle -- ostensibly by Constance Hargreaves, but really written by Frank Baker -- I offered to post some of the poems here.  Neeru mentioned in a comment on her post that some of the Hargreaves poems from this pamphlet (it's a mere 24 pages of handmade laid paper and stapled to a flimsy cardboard cover) are published in Bloomsbury's reprint of Miss Hargreaves.  This is the edition that nearly everyone in the book reviewing blogosphere has read since it was released in 2009 and why there is a mini cult surrounding the novel these days. Neeeru left a list of the poems in her comment and I've decided to post some of the poems that were not reprinted in that edition.

Without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, the poetry of Miss Constance Hargreaves!

This is a footnote that appears at the bottom of "to the Reader"
Miss Hargreaves refers to her relative in the novel when first introduced to Norman's parents

FFB: Wishes Limited - W. A. Darlington

THE STORY: A little bit of Cinderella, a dash of Kafka, and a whole lot of lampooning the publishing world await you in Wishes Limited (1922). The novel begins as a bizarre fairy tale, tosses in a ludicrous parody of "The Metamorph-osis", but turns out to be an often hilarious satire about the creation, publication and public reception of a ribald bestselling novel.

THE CHARACTERS:  John Benstead, burgeoning novelist whose only work so far have been stories and vignettes, is eager to marry Beth, his longtime girlfriend.  To his shock she refuses his ardent proposal. She much prefers to wait until both have enough money to live on.  After some cajoling and begging Beth somewhat begrudgingly agrees to a pact with John -- she will leave him alone for one month and if he can write his first novel, get it published and make enough money she vows to accept his marriage proposal. John immediately sets to work, struggling with ideas for a comic romance modeled on his own failed engagement.  After multiple starts and stops and mountains of crumpled and torn up paper he wishes for help and poof -- or rather CRASH! -- his fairy godmother Florinelle appears direct from the ceiling.

Florinelle is far from your average fairy godmother.  For one she's looks about sixteen years old, much younger than 27 year-old John. She arrives costumed stylishly -- a short yellow flapper dress "cut low at the neck," "extremely high heeled shoes, a floppy black hat" and carries instead of a magic wand "a brilliant sunshade." For another she's plagued with labor problems. It seems that the fairy world has been overrun with union rules and the djinns and other fairy creatures who do all the real magical work are unhappy and are threatening to strike. She has been hard at work trying to appease them. But she heard John's plea for help and will do her best to fulfill his dreams. Then she begins to outline the rules: only one wish every 30 days, wishes are limited to twelve words and no more ("Oh! like a telegram, " says John), and Rule 7 (one of the least favorite mortals like to hear) no wishes for money or jewels. She needs John to make his wish soon as she's on the Conciliation Committee and they're very busy and she needs to get back to avert the impending strike. And so John carefully words his wish to be a bestselling novelist and Florinelle waves her sunshade and it's done. John finds it hard to believe it was so instantaneous, but keeps his mouth shut.

Possible colleague of Florinelle? John's fairy
has blond plaits and shuns cigarettes
(illustration by Lewis Baumer)

As she is about to leave Florinelle lets John know that she had to turn his next door neighbor into a black beetle because he frightened her as she appeared through the wall of his apartment on the way into John's home. John is concerned and pleads with her to turn him back into a man. But she reminds him of Rule 19 - one wish per 30 days -- and says he'll have to wait until next month. Then as abruptly as she arrived Florinelle vanishes. We don't hear from her again for many pages. Upon her exit havoc ensues.

The novel Hidden Souls appears in bookstores overnight, becomes all the rage but for all the wrong reasons. Instead of the harmless comic romance John planned on the book is a tawdry potboiler, with several racy scenes, and lots of shocking language. It horrifies John that his name is on the front cover.  As if that isn't enough to deal with he finds himself entrusted with the care of Mr. Spalding (now a black beetle) and he carries his neighbor everywhere in a small box, always looking for a safe place to stow him and spending too much time consulting with his friends on the proper diet for a black beetle.  Needless to say his friends and relatives don't think much of John's sudden transformation into a "modern" writer indulging in eccentricities like taking up with strange insect pets. John somehow manages to keep Mr. Spalding safe from harm despite many close calls with insecticide, household pets and overfeeding with grease and bad greens.

The whole novel has a raucous Wodehousian feel, the humor is both witty and ridiculous. John has an aristocratic male confidante, there are old biddies and matriarchs on nearly every page expressing their outrage about Hidden Souls, saucy servants talk back, a couple of ivy-covered professors including a confused entomologist pontificate, and Beth who wants to believe John's outrageous tale grows impatient with his excuses for why she must wait a full month for genuine proof of magical events. Darlington balances all his farcical elements with some trenchant attacks on the world of bestsellers, the hazards of becoming an instant sensation, and the wild fancies of rabid fans of pop lit.

I was especially pleased when Darlington added a final twist in the climax involving the magical transformation of Mr. Spalding's return to human form. John's ingenious plan backfires and he is accused of a crime leading to a farcical courtroom scene that British writers always seem to excel in.

QUOTES:  Rose, the second housemaid, appeared in the doorway. She was a rural product, with robust health and limitless amiability which accompany complete lack of brain.

He felt an outcast. He would have felt a pariah, if he had been quite certain how to pronounce it.

"Please!" she said, putting her whole soul and about seventeen E's into the word.

It is not easy to know how to begin a conversation with a lady upon whom, last time you saw her, you committed assault and battery. The books of etiquette, which overflow with advice on How to Eat Asparagus and Remain a Gentleman, What to Do with Your Cherry-stones, or the Correct Form of Address to the Wife of a Rural Dean, are silent upon such problems of everyday life as this.

THINGS I LEARNED: When John misplaces Mr. Spalding early in the book he asks his landlady if she has seen any black beetles around.  She replies that there is one but "he's that artful you wouldn't believe." She puts down Keating's everywhere but the bug "goes around it as clever as a Christian."  I figured this was some form of insecticide. And it was. A very popular one as it turns out with some hysterical looking advertisements like the one shown at right.

John takes Beth to Coldstream for their honeymoon. "You know, where the Guards come from." John's noted to have been a former rugby player back in his university days and I thought he meant the Coldstream Guards were an athletic team. But no, he means "the oldest regiment in the British Regular Army in continuous active service" as the Guards state on their own website. The group date back to the days of Cromwell when it was known as Monck's Regiment and was based in Coldstream, Scotland. Only after George Monck's death did the Regiment become known as Coldstream Guards.

W. A. Darlington by Lafayette (14 August 1928)
courtesy of National Portrait Gallery website

THE AUTHOR: William Aubrey Cecil Darlington (1890-1979) was primarily known for being the leading theater critic for Daily Telegraph during the 1920s.  He also served a stint as London Drama Corespondent for the New York Times. In addition to his criticism and theater writing he penned four comic fantasy novels, the most successful being Alf's Button (1919) which tells the story of a soldier who inadvertently releases a genie (or djinn as Darlington prefers) when he rubs one of his uniform buttons. He later discovers the button was manufactured from scrap metal that originally was an ancient Arabian lamp. Alf's Button was subsequently turned into a hit stage play and was filmed three separate times in 1920, 1930 and 1938, this last version starred Alistair Sim as the Genie and a group of comedians known as "the Crazy Gang" as the soldiers. Thanks to those extremely popular adaptations the book remained in print for close to four decades. The latest edition I uncovered was dated 1956. A less popular sequel appeared in 1928 called Alf's Carpet which I will be reviewing later this year.

Among Darlington's extensive non-fiction works are The Actor and His Audience (1949) and Through the Fourth Wall (1920), a collection of essays on theater, performance, and remembrances on actors and actresses of the early 20th century, all of which first appeared in Daily Telegraph. He also wrote biographies of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1933) #15 in Great Lives; J. M. Barrie (1938) and Laurence Olivier (1968), more an appreciation of Olivier's movie acting, published as part of "Great Contemporaries", and only 92 pages.

EASY TO FIND? As of this writing there are exactly four copies of Wishes Limited offered for sale. There is only one hardcover edition and no other English language edition at all. None of the copies offered come with a dust jacket which frustrates me because the other DJs of Darlington's works are attractively designed and illustrated (see photo at right). Like many of Herbert Jenkins' books the front board is stamped with a cartoon illustration. In this case it appears to be a gigantic version of Mr. Spalding in beetle form chasing poor John. But such a scene never occurs in the book. The beetle remains regular sized throughout the story.

F@200: Frankenstein in Baghdad - Ahmed Saadawi

Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi
Penguin Books
ISBN: 978-0143128793
281 pp. $16
Publication date: January 23, 2018

For the first post in my year long salute to "Frankenstein @ 200" I've chosen a brand new book first published in Iran and winner of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction. Saadawi's novel is a phantasmagorical work that incorporates fantasy, Arabic folklore, and wartime horror in a unique retelling of the Frankenstein story. The novel is Saadawi's reaction to the inescapable violence and endless killing of a wartorn city. He envisioned a sort of Nemesis who would haunt the streets of Baghdad seeking out murderers, terrorists and soldiers responsible for innocent victims of war and bombings. In place of Victor Frankenstein we have the junk dealer Hadi who inadvertently creates a Frankenstein monster of sorts when he tries to find missing body parts for a friend's blown-up corpse. When Hadi travels to the Baghdad morgue he discovers that no attempt has been made to separate or identify any stray limbs and that they have been dumped together according to body part. The morgue attendant tells Hadi, "Just take any arm. What does it matter?" In wartime Baghdad corpses and severed limbs have become so commonplace they are just like so much junk to be piled into a bin and disposed of as quickly as possible.

Saadawi has found a way to take the basic concept of Frankenstein's thirst for god-like power and subvert it. The Creature in his novel is not as soulless as Shelley's monster. It is not without identity nor is it without purpose. Just the opposite, in fact, as Saadawi makes the perceptive point that being composed of so many body parts it is a collective of multiple identities. As for the soul there is an entire chapter devoted to the bodyless soul of a hotel guard who is the victim of a terrorist's suicide bombing attack. For the length of the chapter he travels looking for his body while Saadawi reminds us of the Muslim religious belief that without a body the soul will never be able to enter Heaven.

Ahmed Saadawi (photo: ©Safa Alwan)

The guard's soul discovers the body Hadi has reassembled and settles himself inside thus reanimating the corpse and simultaneously reawakening the many "memories" of the violent ends each separate body part endured. The soul of the hotel guard acts as a spirit of vengeance and the body sets out to find those responsible for its various destructions. As each "memory" succeeds in its act of retribution the body part dissolves making it necessary to find a replacement. What more perfect metaphor could be imagined for the relentless cycle of pointless death during wartime?

Sounds utterly gruesome, right? Why read something so truly horrifying and gut wrenching? And yet it's a masterful satire, tinged with biting humor and powerfully moving sequences, never once is there the temptation to sentimentalize the story with grief stricken longing for the horribly butchered victims of war. One character combats her grief for her missing soldier son with an untold capacity for the hope of his return. It is this missing son's  nose that Hadi finds and attaches to the creature Saadawi has dubbed the Whatsitsname (or perhaps the term is translator Jonathan Wright's invention). Each chapter focusses on one of the many characters in the novel with a trio of them -- Mahmoud, one of several journalists, Hadi, and the Whatsitsname -- taking center stage in the weaving narrative. The most original aspects of the novel are the incorporation of fantasy and supernatural. Saadawi cleverly manages to draw on the rich history of Arabic folklore familiarly known to Western readers from the 1001 Nights.

Edmund Dulac painting, 1907 edition of The Arabian Nights

The novel opens with a sort of Iranian X Files division blandly called by the drab and bureaucratic name The Tracking and Pursuit Department, headed by an egotistical and nearly incompetent Brigadier Majid who is surrounded by muscular young male servants who trot out at a moment's whim to serve tea in his offices. Slowly we learn that the Tracking and Pursuit department is primarily in charge of preventing terrorist attacks by predicting possible violent plots and ending them before they ever occur. They employ not only soldiers but a complex network of astrologers, parapsychologists, mediums, soothsayers, and "people who can communicate with spirits and djinns." Mahmoud interviews the Brigadier about the department trying his best to understand why the army would call for help from what he thinks are a bunch of crackpots. Majid replies "It's work. You don't know how many weird stories we have to deal with. The aim is to get more control, to provide information about the sources of violence and incitement to hatred and to prevent a civil war." In one chapter the reader learns that even among these specialists in the occult there is a war for power. Several sorcerers manage to locate the creature known as the Whatsitsname and using their varied talents in spell casting are trying to control the creature in order to eliminate each other so each man can become the chief sorcerer. As the senior astrologer later says to Brigadier Majid: "What's the point of predicting where a crime is going to happen when you can wipe out the criminal before he becomes one?"

Original Arabic edition (Al Kamel, 2013)

Ultimately, it is the creature itself with its multiple identities, its amassed experience and perceptions of the world "remembered" through each body part who "emerges from a daydream" to deliver the true horror of the relentless violence: "There are no innocents who are completely innocent or criminals who are completely criminal." He realizes the most telling aspect that will undermine his mission " [that] every criminal he had killed was also a victim." His rampage is pointless and he longs to be destroyed.  Yet even as the One Who Has No Name realizes his futility he becomes an omnipresent threat.  He is seen everywhere and becomes everything.  Fear spreads and the Whatitsname is called a Shiite extremist, an agent of foreign powers, an enemy of anyone who has an enemy. Even the Americans working to preserve peace blame the creature on an ingenious man trying to subvert their case. Such is the chaos of life in wartime and such is the power of fear.

As in Shelley's Frankenstein a resolution of sorts comes about only with an ironic punishment of the creature's inventor. Only when a face can be put on the creature rather than a name can the hunt end and a criminal be caught. But recalling the creature's observation we are forced to ask ourselves was the true guilty party found and captured? Saadawi offers us no pat answers here. There is no real peace either.  There is only resignation and surrender as the violence subsides temporarily only to make way for more. 

FFB: The Other Side of Green Hills - John Keir Cross

One of the serendipitous rewards of having created this blog is discovering another side to a writer I am already familiar with. Take the case of John Keir Cross, an obscure Scottish writer whose collection of strange and supernatural fiction The Other Passenger I thought was his only noteworthy book. In researching his work as part of my preparation for a foreword to the upcoming reissue of The Other Passenger from Valancourt Books, I learned that the bulk of his work was in children's fiction under his own name as well as his fictional alter ego of "Stephen McFarlane." He wrote a mix of science fiction, detective novels and fantasy for children with much of it published only in the UK. One of the more obscure books published in both the UK and the US is The Owl and the Pussycat (1946) reviewed here under its more familiar US title The Other Side of Green Hills. Also, I thought I would arouse your interest using the US title since the original one is an allusion to the well known nonsense poem by Edward Lear and might cause a bit of confusion as it did me.

Green Hills is the name of a house in the Scottish countryside where several children are spending their Christmas holiday. The "other side" refers to an elaborate alternate dimension on the grounds where the Owl and the Pussycat live. These are not literally two anthropomorphic creatures as in Lear's poem, but an elderly violin playing gentleman and his companion, a little girl about ten years old. The focus of the story is on Geraldine, one of the youngest of the children spending her holiday at Green Hills. It is her uncanny ability to penetrate the Other Side that allows all the children to see and speak with the Owl whose real name we never learn, and the little girl known only as Pussycat.

Sounds a bit too strange already, right? I was reminded of C.S. Lewis' Narnia Chronicles in which another world is accessible through that magical wardrobe located in Professor Kirke's massive home. In The Other Side of Green Hills Geraldine first discovers the alternate universe when she falls into a secret basement after uncovering a trapdoor in a cottage she and her friends are exploring. After being rescued she claims that she was pushed though no one was anywhere near her as she is told by the older children in the group. Later when all the children are visited by the elderly eccentric Owl and the angelic, forever young Pussycat we learn that there are weird creatures known as Moon People who are the enslaved minions of the wicked sorcerer Titus. They are trying to kidnap Geraldine for an unknown purpose. The elderly Owl knows why, but is too terrified to reveal the secret of Titus' motives until it is almost too late.

The Owl talks a lot about the concept of paradox which he first introduces to the children in an optical illusion included in the many macabre illustrations done by artist Robin Jacques. He explains this familiar drawing of cubes done in black and white (see illustration at left) as a tool in appreciating how the Other Side exists. "It all depends on how you look at it," he tells the children." Then -- as he so often does -- the Owl bursts into song: "Look once, look twice./Look round about --/And in a trice/What's In is Out." Staring at the drawing the children discover that the cubes look as if they are going in or rising out of the paper. And this is also the key to understanding how adults are unable to see into the Other Side or be visited by any of its occupants. Adults, of course, grown too lazy in their thinking and accustomed to their grown up ways tend not to have the ability to see differently as do children the Owl explains.

Though the story begins with a lighthearted fantastical tone as The Owl regales the children with anecdotes of the Other Side, and revealing his philosophy of life through a series of songs with seemingly nonsensical lyrics, much of the story descends into a dark realm atypical for a children's book of the 1940s. The story will turn into the age old battle between good and evil, innocence and experience, with the children helping rescue Geraldine from the clutches of Titus and the Moon People. Eventually the Owl will divulge the secret motivations of Titus and his search for missing pages in a Book of Secrets the children find. The story is imbued with an increasingly eerie atmosphere, magic rarely is used for good, and the reader cannot help drawing an analogy with the battle that takes place in the climactic pages as a fantastic rendering of post World War 2 England after the Blitz.

Interestingly, these eccentric fantasy characters and incidents echo what is found in Cross' strange adult stories of wanton cruelty, inescapable violence and haunted individuals who populate the pages of The Other Passenger (1944). The theme of an alternate world is explored more metaphorically as characters discover they are trapped within their cursed interior lives. I'll have more about that book in the coming months along with news about its reissue and release date.

NEW STUFF: The Rabbit Back Literature Society - Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen

Quick! Give me the name of a Finnish novelist. Or any  writer from Finland.

Aha! I thought so. Somehow Finland gets overlooked in the world of letters. I certainly couldn’t come up with someone. Not even an obscure writer of a forgotten award winning book though Finland does boast such a writer: Frans Eemil Sillanpaa, winner of the 1939 Nobel Prize in Literature. Just in case you’re wondering he wrote over fifteen novels, the most well known of which was Nuorena nukkunut translated into English as The Maid Silja (or Fallen Asleep While Young). News to me.

I do know one Finnish writer now. His name is Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen but this knowledge comes only after I’ve finished reading his first novel Lumikko ja yhdeksän muuta (2006), translated into English as The Rabbit Back Literature Society (English transl., 2015). Where has he been all my life? Well, he’s been writing short stories with a science fiction/fantasy bent for the past twenty plus years while also teaching Finnish language and literature in an “upper secondary school” which I guess is Finnish high school. A prizewinner himself of a handful of Finnish genre fiction awards for his stories Jääskeläinen's first English translated book will perhaps open the door for a wider audience. A quick look at the bookselling sites already turn up two works – his award winning short “Where the Train Turns” and another story in the Finnish speculative fiction anthology It Came from the North, both offered in digital versions only.

Jääskeläinen’s storytelling is riveting, his skill in creating a sinister atmosphere is palpable, and his writing reveals some trenchant observations that are deeply evocative. No doubt all these qualities are due in part to the efforts of translator Lola M. Rogers who artfully renders Jääskeläinen’s text in English without losing its Finnish flavor. On his blog Jääskeläinen has written: "It’s obvious that English isn’t my native language and I don’t feel completely comfortable using it this way. Finnish is my guitar and when using it I’m like Jimi Hendrix. On the other hand English is for me like a bagpipe in the hands of a rabbit when I try to express my thoughts with accuracy and precision." Nevertheless he was impressed with Roger's work as translator and feels it captures his intent better than he could had he translated himself. Yet to me this book should not be known only as Finnish writing; this is universal writing touching on resonant topics that we all experience regardless of our native tongue.

German edition title is
Laura's Disappearance in the Snow

The novel is an exploration of the art of writing (sometimes the artlessness of writing), the gift for storytelling, the act of creation itself all set in the context of a fantastical mystery involving the disappearance of a Finnish writer of children’s stories, the elite group of young writers she mentored and the possible murder of one of those writers over thirty years ago. This makes it sound like a mystery novel, and it is. To be more specific it turns out to be something of a literary detective story -- but it is so much more as well. In Jääskeläinen's own words it is also a love story, a ghost story and a fairy tale.

Under Laura White’s unorthodox, often nightmarish, tutelage the nine writers of the Rabbit Back Literature Society have matured into bestselling authors and household names each with their own cultish following. Enter Ella Milana, a substitute teacher with aspirations to write, though her first love has always been literary research. Her graduate thesis was on Laura White, the children’s author who gathered the nine young writers under her wing and guided them to the top of Finland's bestseller list. When White comes across Ella’s one venture in short story writing published in the local newspaper she invites Ella to become the honored tenth member of the Rabbit Back Literature Society. While at a party where Ella is introduced to the rest of the members Laura White vanishes. Ella wants to find out why the writer disappeared and where she might be. Her research background turns her into a literary detective as she digs into the buried secrets, both literal and metaphorical, within the cult group she has joined.

We get to know the group through a strange interrogation ritual known as “the Game”. Thankfully, Jääskeläinen veers away from the usual metafiction motif of the writer as demigod and all riffs of creating that usually follow. Instead, he seems to be satirizing the writer's life. These members, though successful and popular with their fans, are at their heart a secretive, reclusive bunch festering in a morass of prurient curiosity and career jealousy. He seems to be vilifying the writer’s life and not celebrating it. He captures perfectly the writer’s capacity for all consuming envy when confronted with an artistry he knows he can never achieve.

We listen as the Society members voice their regrets and confessions of failure when they compare themselves to the original tenth member, a super genius of a writer who wrote mind-bogglingly great stories. That they can never remember his name is telling -– his talent was more important to them than his personality or his identity. They never got to know him, nor did they want to, it was his words, his stories that they desired. He was a cipher of a boy, almost always silent until he was called upon to read from his notebook. Only then did he command their attention and they were awestruck by the power of his words. His notebook soon becomes an object to be coveted by the rest of the group. Her penetrating research and relentless questioning of the Society members leads Ella to believe that the boy’s sudden and violent death might well have been a murder. Who among the Rabbit Back Society was zealous enough to kill in order to possess the boy’s notebook filled with fantastic ideas and literally awesome writing?

Along the way we are treated to metaphysical discussions of identity, the perception of the self, the need for writers to rely on others’ lives for their stories, and the loneliness of living a life as a constant observer rather than a participant. Ella's dreams are revelatory and often prophetic. Dream imagery and mirror imagery dominate the story. There are vignettes about seemingly innocuous incidents as in the sequence when Ella finds herself fantasizing about a stranger based solely on his attractive profile until he turns his head and she sees his face in full. Then everything evaporates and her opinion changes to one of disgust and indifference. It’s a universal moment that we can all relate to eloquently captured and evocatively rendered. It says so much about how Ella thinks and feels and will have repercussions as she begins to uncover and make public the secrets of the Rabbit Back Literature Society.

Because Jääskeläinen’s first love is fantasy he finds a way to interweave elements of the surreal into his densely packed narrative all the while embracing the Nordic countryman’s love of ancient mythology and folklore. There are gnomes and wood nymphs and water nixies lurking within the town of Rabbit Back. Some of the citizens make a supplemental income as Mythological Mappers who will inspect your house and yard for any variety of creatures and let you know where it is safe to stroll and where you ought to avoid. A subplot involves an inexplicable "infection" that has changed the contents of books in the public library. Ingrid Katz, head librarian and a member of the Society, has made it her mission to destroy all the infected books for fear that the contagion will spread to other books. How can one have all copies of Crime and Punishment end with Sophie shooting Raskalnikov because she feels it her duty to rid the world of an undesirable? What else might happen to other great works of literature if that infected book were allowed to exist alongside others? Laura White is in love with folklore and mythology and her stories -- though she never intended them for children -- are populated with fanciful creatures and talking animals. Martti Winter's home is surrounded by marauding packs of dogs that never stop howling and seem to be on constant patrol guarding something hidden out in the forest.

The Rabbit Back Literature Society sets up many mysteries but does not answer them all. This may frustrate some readers who prefer to have no plot threads left hanging. For others who embrace the mysterious in everyday Life it offers many rewards, plus the opportunity to discuss possibilities for those unanswered questions. Like a gourmet meal it is a book meant to be savored, digested and contemplated. From its highly original opening to the final jaw dropping pages that completely transform the story's narrative this is wholly immersive reading experience. And to carry on with the food analogy it will have you craving more from the writer. Since this first book was published ten years ago Jääskeläinen has written three more novels, none translated into English. Let us hope that this changes. And very soon.

FFB: Foam of the Daze - Boris Vian



Tam Tam Books ed., English translation
Currently in its 3rd printing

The fantastical world of Boris Vian’s L’Ecume des Jours (1946) -- punnily translated as Foam of the Daze by Mark Harper -- is populated with kitchen mice that act as miniature housekeepers; deadly tools of assassination like the cop-killer and the heart-snatcher; and a mind boggling invention called a pianocktail, a combination robotic bartender and musical instrument that mixes, blends, and delivers potent potables by simply playing a tune on the keyboard. And Vian’s invention is not only limited to bizarre machines and anthropomorphic animals. The writer, also an accomplished musician, composer and friend of 1940s Parisian jazz and literary elite, was a lover of linguistic trickery and wordplay. Translating his many puns and jokes must’ve been a challenge to Harper who does an admirable job trying to capture the playfulness and humor that, as with most foreign language puns, are often untranslatable. For much of its brief but densely filled 220 pages the story is one of Vian’s most exuberant and joyous works.

Foam of the Daze is an unapologetic romance, a surreal fairy tale, and a literary satire all wrapped up in one delightful package. The story, however, is not all hearts and flowers though those two images feature heavily in the story. Vian scales the heights of delirious newfound love and plummets into the depths of despair when a mysterious illness threatens to end the ecstasy of a young couple’s honeymoon.

Wide eyed jazz lover Colin lives a carefree life enjoying cocktails and playing Duke Ellington records with his musician friend Chick who quickly meets and falls in love with the beautiful Alise. Colin is immediately jealous and longs for his own Alise. No sooner does he make his wish then he meets Chloe, as equally wide-eyed and optimistic as he is. It’s no coincidence that she bears the same name as a popular Duke Ellington song. There are no real coincidences at all in Vian’s world. Every action, every word of dialog has a purpose and is interconnected to every object and character in the story.

Boris Vian, circa 1940s

The most remarkable thing about this love story is the way illness is depicted. So often people talk about how their lives fall apart when a loved one is suffering a terminal illness. That is literally what happens to Colin’s world. His house begins to deteriorate, the ceiling crumbles, glass windows and tiles shatter, rooms shrink and doorways become almost inaccessible. All because Chloe has succumbed to an inexplicable malady, a miracle illness. Somehow a water lily has begun to grow around her lungs and heart. It’s not possible to operate and remove the plant without killing her. The only treatment method is to surround her with flowers and plants, tend and care for them so that in their beauty the water lily is shamed into withering and disappearing from Chloe’s body.

Filled with a soundtrack of Ellington’s music, multiple references to New Orleans and Memphis style jazz, and a subplot involving a satirical jibe at Vian’s good friend Jean-Paul Sartre who appears in the book as pop sensation Jean-Sol Partre, author of Vomit and other works of existentialist bestseller-dom, Foam of the Daze is like no other book I have ever read. Practically unclassifiable in the way it absorbs so many genres Vian's novel is bewitching and strange and hysterical and ultimately deeply moving. It’s an assault on the senses and the intellect. Imagine entering a floral shop crammed full of exotic plants and breathing in the mix of heady scents, taking in the wide array of colors and shapes, all while drinking an unnameable, rainbow hued cocktail with an indescribable yet utterly intoxicating flavor. This is what it’s like to read Vian’s novel.

Graphic novel adapted by Benoît Preteseille

His writing can be hilarious as in the sections making fun of collector mania. When Chick is not satisfied with owning Sartre’s books a wily bookseller coerces the musician into buying the writer’s fingerprints and old pants convincing him the items will increase in value as much as the writer’s books. Only a few pages later Vian tugs at our heartstrings in relating Colin’s desperate attempts to become gainfully employed often humiliating himself in the process so that he can earn enough money to keep buying plants and flowers that will help in his wife’s strange treatment plan. Not only do Colin and Chloe and their house suffer as the water lily infiltrates everyone and everything, but Chick and Alise undergo a rift in their relationship that leads to a surprisingly violent climax.

L’Ecume des Jours has been adapted into a movie by French director Michel Gondry and retitled aptly enough Mood Indigo, after the Ellington jazz standard, starring Audrey Tatou and Romain Duris as Chloe and Colin. The movie has already appeared throughout Europe at a variety of film festivals and will be shown at the Music Box Theater here in Chicago Sunday, May 11, 2014 as part of the Chicago Film Critics Film Festival. The movie has been picked up by Drafthouse Films and should appear in a limited release at art house cinemas sometime in the summer and eventually be released on DVD. A paperback tie-in edition is being released in the summer under the movie’s title. Anyone too impatient to wait for that edition can order Foam of the Daze directly from Tam Tam Books or any on-line retailer right now.

FFB: Just an Ordinary Day - Shirley Jackson

The introduction to Just an Ordinary Day (1997) written by two of Shirley Jackson's grown children tells how they received a box of manuscripts, carbon copies and typewritten sheets of unpublished stories as well as the original manuscript for The Haunting of Hill House and character notes for that novel. The two siblings began to think about putting together a volume of their mother's unpublished work.  In doing research they uncovered even more published work that had never been reprinted in book form.

Just An Ordinary Day brings together thirty vignettes and stories that were never published in Jackson's lifetime in the first half of the book. A second section reprints an additional twenty-two stories that originally appeared in a variety of magazines between 1943 and 1968. Though mostly women's magazines bought Jackson's stories I was surprised to see among the list of publications Harper's, Vogue, Gentleman's Quarterly, and Playboy. Three stories were purchased by Fantasy and Science Fiction but I have to say the fantasy content is very slight and none of them would I classify as science fiction by the widest leap of imagination. I can't believe they made it to that revered magazine. Clearly, Jackson was able to appeal to a wide audience even if her themes and topics seemed to be very similar as I moved along from story to story.

I'll admit I did not read this volume cover to cover. I randomly selected stories based on the titles or by the magazine in which the story was originally published. Admittedly this was not a very good way to discover what I wanted to read -- Jackson's darker fiction dealing with crime, the supernatural or domestic suspense tales. I hit gold with only three stories. "Nightmare" tells a story of surreal paranoia when a woman feels she is the subject of a bizarre advertising gimmick that seems to have taken over the city. An eerily evocative supernatural tale of people trapped in a painting ("The Story We Used to Tell") is a brief but chilling example of Jackson's gift for making the flesh creep. "The Possibility of Evil" about an anonymous letter writer was my favorite story of the batch I selected.

While perusing the other stories I learned that the bulk of Jackson's fiction was about suburban life, married couples and troublesome children ("Arch Criminal" and "I.O.U."), the problem with gossip in small towns ("The Very Strange House Next Door"), the malaise of housewifery and the desire to escape ("Maybe It Was the Car"), the dependence on neighbors for help and advice ("When Things Get Dark" and "I.O.U." again) and other similar themes. But in all of them Jackson managed to undercut the mundane and the superficial with an uneasiness and a cruelty that was often disturbing.

One of the most interesting things that Laurence Hyman and Sarah Hyman Stewart have done with this material is to point out the way Jackson liked to recycle plot ideas and even characters from story to story. The most fascinating juxtaposition is of two versions of the same story called "The Honeymoon of Mrs. Smith" in one version and "The Mystery of the Murdered Bride" in the other. In the former the story is more fleshed out, more direct with little ambiguity except for perhaps the very last line. In the second, and probably the first version, the story is vague and hazy. It seems unpolished. There's too much left to suggestion and the final sequence is just muddled. Jackson is trying to plant the idea that Mrs. Smith is oblivious that her new husband might be a wife killer with a couple of bodies buried in his past. I think the version called "The Honeymoon of Mrs. Smith" is the more successful of the two. Similarly, the entire plot of "Nightmare" was lifted and inserted as a minor incident in "The Omen", one of her stories published in Fantasy and Science Fiction that to my mind is representative of neither genre.

Her darker fiction is not well represented in this hefty volume. There is an ambiguous ghost story that has traces of crime fiction in "The Missing Girl" and "The Friends" is a nasty story of busybody Ellen who decides to put an end to the adulterous affair of her friend Marjorie by commandeering Marjorie's free time. But it is "The Possibility of Evil" where I found Jackson to be at her shining best. Published in the December 18, 1965 issue of The Saturday Evening Post (mistakenly noted as 1968 in this book) we get to know the inner workings of superficially kindly old woman Miss Strangeworth who in her spare time writes poison pen letters to the neighbors she is smiling to on a daily basis. When she has a mishap mailing a batch of those letters and some children help her by hand delivering a letter she dropped Miss Strangeworth gets a bitter taste of her own "good intentions". Deservedly, in 1966 "The Possibility of Evil" won Jackson the Edgar for "Best Short Story". This is the kind of story I've always felt was Jackson's strength. Though she may show traces of the underbelly of apparently peaceful suburban life in her more lighthearted domestic tales it is this kind of portrait of Adela Strangeworth that is her hallmark in American fiction.

FFB: The Starkenden Quest - Gilbert Collins

My write-up a few weeks ago of Dennis Wheatley's The Man Who Missed the War mentioned in passing that it shares something with books of the "lost race" subgenre of adventure stories, but it happens to be one of the more outrageous examples. This week's book, The Starkenden Quest (1925), is instead an anthropological treatment of the subgenre. There is a chapter entitled "The Mystery of the Ages" in which one of the more mysterious characters reveals his professorial background in a long lecture that manages to epitomize all of the philosophies of the lost race theme. It is a near desperate attempt to link all humans via religion, culture, mythology and race to one origin. The lecture almost convinces me that Collins was the Joseph Campbell of his day.

Down on his luck and down to his last few shillings, our narrator John Crayton finds himself marooned in Yokohama at the Four Winds Hotel. A financial disaster has nearly wiped out his bank account back home in England and he needs a job quickly in order to pay his hotel bill or risk jail in Japan. A fortuitous encounter with the shady and morose Abel Starkenden in a local bar changes his luck.

Starkenden has just single-handedly fought off a group of carousing and offensive sailors. Crayton is impressed by the fighting -- a combination of verbal assault and agile fisticuffs -- and he sidles up to Starkenden for a chat.  The conversation soon turns to Crayton's sorry state of affairs, his pathetic scouring of the want ads, and Starkenden's very strange job offer.  He asks Crayton to join him as a member of his team of explorers and will pay him £300 plus expenses throughout the journey. If Crayton accepts the position, Starkenden will also pay the outstanding hotel bill and release him from that obligation. What choice does he have really? He agrees and later at Starkenden's hilltop home in a British settlement in Yokohama he meets Gregory Hope who was similarly recruited as part of the team. The two listen to a series of legends and anecdotes about the Starkenden family and their ties to ancient mysteries and relics first discovered by his Norse ancestors.  Crayton and Hope find their lives almost immediately transformed from the lackluster to the astonishing.

The three set off in search of Starkenden's brother Felix who was abducted by a savage race known as the "devil men of the hills."  Armed only with an old map from Felix' one time exploring partner Starkenden is determined to find not only his brother, but the source of a hidden treasure trove of odd gems that emanate a powerful blue light that he calls "eyestones."  They are harder than diamonds and extremely rare which he believes make them the most valuable jewel on Earth.  Should they locate the source of the eyestones all three of them will be rich for the rest of their lives.

Initially, Gilbert Collins' third novel appears to be just another in a long line of quest adventures similar to the work of Haggard, Bedford-Jones and all the Indiana Jones movies.  Among the many set pieces Starkenden and his two explorers-for-hire encounter are a run-in with Chinese pirates, crossing a raging river of white rapids in a most unusual fashion, and travelling through an ancient cavern equipped with a lantern made from a human skull. But it is their encounter with Starkenden's arch enemy Coningham that changes the team's intended plans. Coningham is seen in the company of Marah Starkenden, daughter of the explorer, and the trio believe she has been kidnapped. The object of the quest then immediately turns to rescuing Marah from the clutches of a man described as treacherous and evil. When they finally meet face to face in a cavern that is home to the lost race (ah, there it is!) of the Ktawrh, fearsome and dwarfish ape-like creatures, there will be multiple surprises in store for the explorers and the reader.  No one is who they say they are, assumed identities are unmasked, roles are reversed, and the novel becomes both a crime story and a fantasy adventure all at once.

For me what raises this above your standard She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed style of lost race tale (yes, there is a white goddess-like character) is the setting of Southeast Asia and Collins' painstaking detail to the geography, culture, superstitions and religions of that part of the world. Nothing is wholly made up here, much of it is based on facts circa 1925. In many lost race novels we mostly get imaginative fancies, absurd leaps in logic, monsters and weird creatures. While there is still an element of imaginative fantasy much of the story owes its success to Collins' insightful inclusion of anthropological discoveries and Darwinian theory.  I wouldn't recommend the book to a Creationist, that's for sure.

While E.F. Bleiler finds too much similarity to Haggard in The Starkenden Quest and criticizes its verbose length and complex plot (faults I am willing to forgive more easily) he praises Collin's other lost race novel Valley of the Eyes Unseen which he touts as "a convincing story of geographical adventure with adult detail, and an excellently imagined fantastic situation in Hellas."  I think the same can be said of The Starkenden Quest with the mere substitution of Indochina as the last word. Collins is well worth investigating for readers who like intelligent rousing adventures.

The Starkenden Quest was popular enough in its day to merit being reprinted in the pulp magazine Famous Fantastic Mysteries in the October 1949 issue. Several illustrations by the phenomenally talented Virgil Finlay are used from that issue for this post. Valley of the Eyes Unseen was also reprinted in a 1952 issue of the same magazine.  I suspect they both underwent extensive abridgement.

In 1930 after publication of three adventure novels Collins turned his writing to crime and detective fiction. He was born in 1900, but I could only trace his bibliography from 1922 to 1937.  I have no idea if he abandoned writing in the 1940s or if he died extremely young, perhaps one of the many casualities of World War 2. Any other info on Collins is greatly appreciated. I plan on reviewing one more lost race book and a few of his detective novels in the coming months.

Gilbert Collins Bibliography
Flower of Asia (1922)
Valley of the Eyes Unseen (1923)
The Starkenden Quest (1925)
Post-Mortem (1930)
Horror Comes to Thripplands (1930)
The Phantom Tourer (1931)
     US title: Murder at Brambles
The Channel Million (1932)
Chinese Red (1932)
      US title: Red Death
The Dead Walk (1933)
Death Meets the King's Messenger (1934)
The Poison Pool (1935)
The Haven of Unrest (1936)
The Mongolian Mystery (1937)
Mystery in St. James Square (1937)

Drawing on the Past #10: GILBERT JAMES

Work: The Five Jars by M.R. James
(Edward Arnold & Co., 1922)

Artist: Gilbert James

The Five Jars is subtitled "Being More or Less of a Fairy Tale Contained in a Letter to a Young Person." Its author M.R. James is better known as a writer of ghost stories for adults. Whether or not the story is truly intended for young people is a matter of opinion. The whimsical drawings by Gilbert James seem to imply that it is. A mix of the fanciful, the creepy, and the bizarre the story would appeal to any reader who appreciates the outre and the supernatural in fiction.

Once available only in its original rare 1st edition or the somewhat scarcer 1927 reprint (a copy of which I own and is pictured above) The Five Jars has been extensively reprinted in a variety of hardback and paperback editions. Numerous POD and eBooks make it even easier for anyone interested in reading the light and fanciful tale.

Below a sampling of the seven illustrations by James.  I found little on the artist other than that he illustrated in full color an edition of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (L. C. Page, 1899).

Click to enlarge any of the pictures below for better viewing.

Drawing on the Past #8 - BORIS ARTZYBASHEFF

Work: The Circus of Dr. Lao by Charles G. Finney
Publisher: Ben Abramson, 1945 (a reissue of the 1935 1st)
Artist: Boris Artzybasheff (1899 - 1965)

I first came to know of the work of Boris Artzybasheff through his dust jacket illustrations for Doubleday Doran's Crime Club mystery novel imprint. He did nearly every book of Clyde Clason's as well DJs for books by Stuart Palmer, Todd Downing and Aaron Marc Stein.  Those are the few who I can think of off the top of my head.  I'm sure there are more.

I always thought his trademark was fantastic surrealism. But he is a talented artist of many moods and styles. He illustrated several children's books and even wrote a few of his own. Writing must be in the family genes -- his father was noted novelist Mikhail Artzybasheff.

In my exhausting internet research on Boris (there is a wealth of info out there) I discovered a huge portion of his work was done for Time magazine.  Between 1941 and 1965 he did 215 covers, a mix of bizarre mechanical nightmares, humorous surreal illustrations, and surprisingly realistic portraits.  Among the more famous are his portraits are Josef Stalin, jazz musician/composer Dave Brubeck, and mystery writer Craig Rice.

For this post I have chosen some of his vividly imagined, other worldly drawings. To me it's very reminiscent of the artwork of Hannes Bok of Weird Tales fame. The illustrations below are taken directly from an illustrated edition I own of The Circus of Dr. Lao, the allegorical fantasy by Charles G Finney.  It became a very different story in the 1964 movie retitled The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao with Tony Randall in the title role(s).  Click on images for full appreciation.

You can find all sorts of information about this artist all over the internet. But I recommend starting here for the best variety of his artwork.

The endpapers