Old Bestseller: Peter, by F. Hopkinson Smith

Old Bestseller: Peter, by F. Hopkinson Smith

a review by Rich Horton

Here's a very true Old Bestseller -- this novel was published in 1908, and was 8th on the Publishers' Weekly list of the top ten sellers of that year, and again 9th in 1909. And the author had the top sellers of 1896 (Tom Grogan) and 1898 (Caleb West). Tom Grogan seems particularly interesting -- about a woman whose husband dies, and who then dresses as a man and does his work in order to keep earning his paycheck.

Francis Hopkinson Smith (1838-1915) was a true polymath. He was a renowned civil engineer (perhaps most famously building the foundation for the Statue of Liberty, and the Race Rock Lighthouse). He was a major artist, noted mostly for landscapes done in charcoal or watercolor. He was a descendant of Francis Hopkinson, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. And of course he was a prolific novelist, writer of multiple bestsellers, beginning with his first successful novel, Col. Carter of Cartersville (1891). He had a reputation as a chronicler of the Old South, but I should note that none of the other bestsellers I mention -- Tom Grogan, Caleb West (about the building of the Race Rock Lighthouse), nor Peter, are particularly about the South. Autobiographical elements did creep regularly into his novels -- as with Caleb West, as already noted. Also, The Fortunes of Oliver Horn deals with the artist life, and portrays versions of a number of Smith's artist colleagues, and a number of Smith's heroes (including the hero of Peter) are natives of Smith's own home state, Maryland.

Peter was first published in 1908 by Charles Scribner's Sons. My edition is also from Scribner's, a 1913 reprint. There are four illustrations by A. I. Keller.

The novel is subtitled: "A Novel of Which He is not the Hero". It opens in New York, with the narrator, or Scribe, called only the Major, coming to Peter Grayson's worksplace, a distinguished old bank, the Exeter. Peter is about 60 years old, a teller. He is a bachelor, and he has a maiden sister, Felicia. The time is late in the 19th Century. The first couple of chapters slowly introduce Peter and his morals -- his belief in honest work, his devotion to his modest job, and the respect he is held in by numerous people. Peter and the narrator make their way to Peter's apartment, where they find an invitation to a party given by the architect Holker Morris for his employees. (It has been suggested that the character Morris was based on the famous architect Stanford White, a friend of Smith's, who had been murdered in 1906 by the husband of Evelyn Nesbit, an actress and one of the Gibson Girl models, who had apparently been seduced by White while only 14 or 16 (her birthdate is in question). I should add that the portrayal of Holker Morris in Peter gives no suggestion of White's scandalous history.) At Morris' party, he awards a prize to Garry Minott, a young star at the firm. Peter, however, is more impressed with Garry Minott's friend, John Breen, and he decides to take an interest in him.

Breen is an orphan, who has been taken in by his uncle, Arthur Breen. John (or "Jack") is working in his uncle's financial firm, but he has become concerned over what he thinks are potentially shady dealings -- nothing illegal, but immoral. The last straw comes when an acquaintance is ruined due to Arthur's maneuverings. Jack is also slightly importuned by Arthur's stepdaughter, Corinne, a vaguely pretty but spoiled girl who seems to regard Jack as her rightful property. And as Jack grows closer to Peter Grayson, he is offended that Corinne -- and Garry Minott, who has begun to see Corinne socially -- seem unimpressed, to the point of rudeness, with the old man. With some subtle prompting by Peter, Jack quits his uncle's establishment, leaves his house, and looks for a job -- eventually finding one with the engineer Henry MacFarlane -- who, as it happens, has a beautiful daughter, Ruth, whom Jack had met and been entranced by at a party given by Peter and his sister Felicia.

The story begins to jump forward, with Jack Breen beginning to do good work for Henry MacFarlane, and beginning to get closer to Ruth. Peter Grayson stays in contact, and so does his sometimes meddling sister Felicia. Ruth and Jack are clearly in love, but Jack's pride stands in the way of marriage. Then a dramatic disaster threatens Henry MacFarlane's life and livelihood, and Jack is instrumental in saving the day. Meanwhile, Garry Minott has married Corinne and started his own business.

Jack and Ruth finally plight their troth, but they need to wait to get married until Jack is financially able. He does have one piece of property, though it is apparently worthless. Arthur Breen also has an interest in a neighboring property. And Garry and Corinne's marriage seems troubled -- Garry is under a great deal of stress. Things come to a head with a melodramatic suicide, and a noble effort by Jack to save his friend, or at least his friend's reputation. Arthur Breen again proves his moral weakness, and also his stupidity -- and Jack is helped at the last minute by an unexpected agent -- Peter Grayson's friend Isaac Cohen, a Jewish tailor. Jack is given a lesson in the wrongness of his reflexive anti-Semitism, but things turn out, in a slightly deus ex machina fashion, quite wonderfully ...

This is by no means a great novel, or even a very good one, but it's not a bad read. There is one point to make -- this book was published 3 years after Edith Wharton's great novel The House of Mirth. Wharton's novel is almost infinitely better -- but it is noticeably accepting of its period's anti-Semitism, and Smith's novel is quite pointedly critical of that attitude. There is another point of connection with The House of Mirth -- each novel features a slightly ambiguous suicide, by the same means (chloral hydrate).

Peter Grayson, as noted in the subtitle, is not officially the "hero" of Peter, but he is the linchpin: a highly moral character, dismissive in particular of those who lust after money. He is a good friend to Isaac Cohen, even as his whole set (including his beloved sister Felicia) automatically reject him due to his religion. Peter is certainly an implausibly saintly character, but he's interesting and someone we like. Ruth and Jack are also implausibly wonderful people, but that's the way this sort of novel goes.

There are noticeable details that reflect Smith's own life. Henry MacFarlane, the engineer, surely resembles that aspect of Smith to a degree. There is a short section discussing artists that seems to comment on Smith's views of art, and his place in the art world. None of this comes off as tendentious -- rather, Smith's clear knowledge of both milieus gives the book a certain believability. Once again, this is a novel that seems quite plausibly a bestseller of its time -- but not a novel that especially demands our attention over a century later.

A Couple George MacDonald Books: The Light Princess and The Golden Key

The Light Princess and The Golden Key, by George MacDonald

A review by Rich Horton

Looking for a book to cover this week, and not wanting to dip again into my trove of Ace Double reviews, and not quite finished with my latest Old Bestseller, I figured I'd cover a couple of lovely children's fantasies by the great George MacDonald.

 George MacDonald (1824-1905) was a Scottish clergyman of the latter part of the 19th Century, rather Universalist in his views, a significant influence on C. S. Lewis (to the extent that Lewis made him a character in The Great Divorce), and the author of several excellent children's fantasies, and some fine work for adults as well. My favorite of his books has long been At the Back of the North Wind. Other fine children's work includes The Princess and the Goblin and The Princess and Curdie (the first of which was made into a (so-so) animated movies a few years ago), and Lilith is a fine adult novel. Phantastes, which I have not read, also has a reputation as a good adult fantasy. As with Lewis, most of his work is at least partly Christian allegory, or at any rate heavily imbued with Christian themes, though MacDonald could be much stranger than Lewis. 

In the late 1960s, Maurice Sendak illustrated a couple of shorter MacDonald children's stories (about 10,000 words apiece). These were The Light Princess and The Golden Key. Thus these aren't really forgotten: indeed MacDonald has settled into a fairly established place in the canon of 19th Century religious fantasists. The Light Princess is very light-hearted and funny, while The Golden Key is a mystical and lovely fairy tale. 

The Golden Key is the story of two children, a boy and a girl, who live (not together) on the border of Fairyland. The boy has been told that at the end of the rainbow he can find a golden key -- it is not to be sold, and no one knows what door it may open, but it will surely lead somewhere wonderful. One day he sees a rainbow, and decides to follow it into Fairyland, where it seems the end of it might be -- and there he finds the golden key. Meantime, the girl, much mistreated, wanders into the forest of Fairyland, following a strange owl-like flying fish. Soon she meets a beautiful, ageless, woman, and she learns that she and the boy must journey together, looking for the keyhole into which the golden key will fit. Their journey is long (though the story is short), and quite wonderful. They meet some strange and wise old men, and encounter many beautiful and curious sights. At last, of course, they find the doorway with the keyhole.

The ending is unexpected and quite moving and beautiful. It is tempting to try to analyze this story -- is it an allegory of marriage? or the story of a joint journey to salvation? Perhaps, though, as W. H. Auden suggests in an essay published as an afterword to this edition, it is best to simply let yourself be absorbed by the story, to enjoy its lovely and haunting images.

The Light Princess is the tale of a princess who is cursed by a mean, jealous, witch so that she has no gravity. The book is full of puns, so MacDonald makes much both of her weightlessness, and the lack of gravity in her character. Naturally her parents are upset and try to have her cured, but to no avail (although the efforts of a couple of Chinese philosophers to provide a cure are rendered amusingly). However the Princess is quite happy with her "light" state (of course it is in her nature to be always happy). In the way of things, a Prince appears, and falls in love with the Princess. Then the witch realizes that her curse has failed to make the Princess unhappy, so she takes further steps, which are thwarted by the selfless behavior of the Prince, and which result in the Princess recovering her gravity: not an unmixed blessing, but one which her new maturity allows her to realize is best in the long run.

This is a delightful story, told with just the right mixture of whimsy and mildly serious moral comment. The characters are lightly and accurately drawn (the Princess` parents and the Chinese philosophers in particular, are delightful), and the story is predictable but still quite imaginative, with a number of nice touches to do with the Princess` weightlessness.

My first post on the 2016 Hugo Final Ballot

Over at Black Gate I have made a post about the 2016 Hugo Final Ballot, and its problems. This is all fairly familiar ground, mind you. I'm planning another post sometime in the next few months which will review the ballot category by category, with my thoughts on how I'll vote, but that'll have to wait until I read what I haven't read yet.

Anyway, the post is The Hugo Nominations, 2016; or, Sigh ...

Another Ace Double: Empire of the Atom, by A. E. Van Vogt/Space Station #1, by Frank Belknap Long

Ace Double Reviews, 96: Empire of the Atom, by A. E. Van Vogt/Space Station #1, by Frank Belknap Long (#D-242, 1957, 35 cents)

a review by Rich Horton

Both authors of this Ace Double are fairly significant -- Van Vogt of course is a legend, and an SFWA Grand Master. Long is less prominent, but he did win a World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement, and he has -- or had -- a significant reputation as a Horror writer, and a disciple of H. P. Lovecraft. Both were also very long-lived.

A. E. Van Vogt was born in 1912 in Canada, and died in 2000. He worked for the Canadian Ministry of Defence, doing some writing on the side, beginning with true confessions stories, and turning to SF in 1938, inspired by John Campbell's classic "Who Goes There?". His first sale, to Campbell at Astounding, was "Black Destroyer", still considered a classic. He made a huge splash in 1940 with the Astounding serial Slan, and another splash with "The Weapon Shop" (1942), which was fixed up into a novel, The Weapon Shops of Isher. (The term "fix-up" was, I believe, a Van Vogt coinage.) His most famous novel is probably still The World of Null-A (serialized in Astounding in 1945). He became a full-time writer in the early '40s, and moved to California in 1944. He was an early adopter of L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics (later Scientology), though he apparently left the movement around 1961.

There is no denying Van Vogt's immense importance and influence in the field of SF, and I certainly don't dispute that he deserved the Grand Master award. But I confess I've never much liked his work. By and large I agree with the points Damon Knight made in his famous essay on The World of Null-A. I've generally found Van Vogt's work illogical, not very well-written, downright slapdash on occasion. But a lot of people I truly respect really love his work, so I admit without reservation that I am missing something important. Sometimes that's the way it is.

So I approached Empire of the Atom with some caution. It is another "fix-up", though a fairly coherent one, comprising five novelettes first published in Astounding in 1946 and 1947. It was published in hardcover by Shasta in 1957, followed the same year by this abridged Ace Double edition. (It's still fairly long for an Ace Double at some 56,000 words.)

I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by the book: I quite enjoyed it. One reason is that the plot is more controlled, more logical, than in other Van Vogt books, only veering off in a Van Vogtian direction right at the end. There's a reason for that -- I realized immediately that his had to be a retelling of some portion of Imperial Roman history, but my knowledge of that history was not sufficient for me to recognize the exact correspondences. But Wikipedia helped immediately -- the story is based on the life of the Emperor Claudius, most specifically as portrayed by Robert Graves in I, Claudius. This anchoring in actual historical events, I feel, kept Van Vogt on course, as it were.

It is set some 10,000 years in the future, after humans have colonized the planets of the Solar System, and then been reduced to barbarism on each of these worlds. A city-state, Linn, arose, and in the recent past it conquered the world and began to try to annex the barbarians on Venus, Mars, and even outer satellites such as Europa. The ruler, or Lord Leader, is a vigorous man but getting older. A new child is born to his scheming second wife, Lydia. (These are, of course, analogues to Augustus and Livia.) The new baby, named Clane, turns out to be a mutant -- Lydia was accidentally exposed to radiation -- this society uses radioactive metals (and worships the "Atom Gods") but has no idea how they work. As a mutant Clane should be killed. However, a leading Temple Scientist wants to raise him and show that mutants, if treated properly, have the same potential as anyone. So Clane is raised, somewhat isolated, and becomes an unusual but very intelligent young man.

The succeeding episodes show Clane learning how to function amidst his scheming relatives, the worst of whom is Lydia, whose prime desire is to place her son by a previous marriage, Lord Tews, on the throne. Clane has no wish to rule, but he does wish Linn to do well, and he does have relative favorites among his relatives, and so he helps one of his Uncles to win a great triumph on Mars, only to have the maneuvering of Livia and Lord Tews mess things up. The dueling continues, as a rebellion on Venus is also crushed, as Clane makes some significant discoveries, and as Tews finally achieves his goals, only to be threatened by an unexpected barbarian incursion from Europa -- a crisis that at last forces Clane to the forefront. Here at the denouement the book finally takes its Van Vogtian turn, but I actually found that aspect kind of cool. There is a sequel, The Wizard of Linn, serialized in Astounding in 1950.

Frank Belknap Long (1901-1994) began publishing in 1920 and his 1921 story "The Eye Above the Mantel" attracted Lovecraft's attention. He published quite a lot of horror-tinged fiction in the next couple of decades, contributing to Weird Tales from its first year (1923). His most famous story might be "The Hounds of Tindalos". He also wrote a fair amount of SF, and he wrote in several other genres (including comics, some Ellery Queen stories, a Man From Uncle story, and Gothics).

I first encountered Long with the Doubleday collection The Early Long, from the mid-'70s, part of a number of books that followed Isaac Asimov's The Early Asimov, in featuring early stories by well-known SF writers along with extensive material about the early careers of these writers. Even then I thought Long a curious choice for such an anthology, and I admit I've felt that way more and more as time goes by -- I've been very unimpressed by everything I've read from him. But I must admit that his reputation in the Horror field is actually pretty good -- I'm not really a Horror reader, so I must defer to those who really love that genre, and especially those who love Lovecraft. The most interesting SF story I've read by Long is "Lake of Fire" (Planet Stories, May 1951), not because it's all that good, but because it is a very direct prefiguring of Roger Zelazny's "A Rose for Ecclesiastes".

Space Station #1 is some 55,000 words long. This appears to be its first publication (and it may be Long's first novel-length fiction). It opens with a certain Lieutenant David Corriston in a desperate fight for his life in the bowels of the title Space Station. It turns out that this fight is the result of a murder he had witnessed just a few minutes earlier, and perhaps more to the point, of his conversation with Helen Ramsey, the daughter of Stephen Ramsey, who controls the uranium mining on Mars, apparently by oppressing the colonists. There follows a somewhat wild sequence of events, as Corriston meets Helen, the two fall instantly and implausibly in love, Helen's bodyguard is killed, she disappears, Corriston barely survives his fight, a uranium freighter coming to the station suddenly loses control and veers to the surface of Earth in a terrible disaster, Corriston is imprisoned by the station's Captain, he discovers that a number of people, including Helen and the Captain, are wearing very sophisticated masks ...

For several chapters I found this quite entertaining, but somewhere along the way it went wildly off the rails. It devolves into a silly and implausible (but of course!) battle for the soul of Mars, as Corriston must convince the Martians that neither the oppressor Stephen Ramsey nor the thug they have hired to oppose him are worth respecting ... only, it turns out, Ramsey sort of his (if mainly for having a wonderful daughter) ... And Corriston proves his worth by trekking across Mars and beating up a guy and etc. etc.

It really reads like Long started writing and every so often lost his way and just hared off in a new direction until he had written a novel's worth of words and then resolved things. The hero gets the girl, the villain(s) are vanquished, and, oh, by the way, at the last second he introduces Martian lampreys just because he needed to extend things a few thousand words more. Oh well.

Old Bestseller: Two Black Sheep, by Warwick Deeping

Old Bestseller: Two Black Sheep, by Warwick Deeping

A review by Rich Horton

I knew, when I started to write about old bestsellers from the early 20^th Century, that sooner or later I would cover a Warwick Deeping book, but I have to confess that I could never get interested in the copies I saw of his most famous novel, Sorrell and Son (1925), even though it’s marginally Science Fiction. So I waited until I came across another novel – Two Black Sheep, from 1933. My edition is from Grosset and Dunlap. There is a curious note on the dust jacket: "The issuance of this new edition at a reduced price is made possible by a) use of the same plates made for the original edition, and b) the author's acceptance of a reduced royalty". The "reduced price" was 75 cents! As noted, the dust jacket, and the binding, indicate Grosset and Dunlap. However, the reuse of plates from the original edition extends to an internal designation as "A Borzoi Book, Alfred E. Knopf", and the copyright page says "Published September 8, 1933. First two printings before publication. Third Printing, September 1933.", which must also be from a Knopf printing. This does suggest it sold fairly well. The G&D edition must have been not too much later, as the back page listing of other Deeping novels shows none later than Two Black Sheep.

The first UK edition was from Cassell’s, earlier in 1933, and the novel was serialized (as “Black Sheep, Black Sheep”) between September 1932 and February 1933 in the Hearst magazine International-Cosmopolitan. There was apparently a movie version, called Two Sinners.

Warwick Deeping (1877-1950) was an English writer, originally a Doctor (apparently following in the footsteps of his father). He began publishing novels in 1903, but continued in his practice for some time. He served in the Royal Medical Corps in the First World War. Not long after that he stopped practicing medicine to concentrate on fiction.

He was very prolific, publishing some 70 novels and over 200 short stories. From the mid-‘20s to the ‘30s  he was remarkably successful, with a novel on the Publishers’ Weekly list of the 10 bestselling novels of the year for 7 consecutive years between 1926 and 1932. (So that it seems that Two Black Sheep may have been the one to break the streak!) The first of these huge bestsellers was Sorrell and Son, third on the list in 1926 and again fourth in 1927 (in which year his Doomsday was third). His literary reputation was never very high – he was disparaged for his melodramatic plots, his somewhat platitudinous beliefs, his sometimes strained views of sex and indeed of women, and, as George Orwell wrote, as one of those writers who simply “don’t notice what is happening”. That said, his novels were interested in significant and controversial social issues: the Wikipedia entry lists themes such as rape, euthanasia, women posing as men to achieve equal rights, slum conditions, pollution, and a wife justifiably killing her husband because of abuse.

I found a really delightful blog about Deeping, My Warwick Deeping Collection (warwickdeeping.blogspot.com). The writer became obsessed with collecting Deeping just a few years ago, and has copies of each of his books, and some of the periodical versions as well. He includes a brief description of each book, with some useful details on publication history as well, including sometimes serial versions, and also picture of multiple editions. Just my thing! With the blog owner's permission, I've reproduced a couple of those images here, one the original Cassell edition dust jacket, and the other the cover of the Sunday Ledger reprint.

Two Black Sheep opens in about 1915 as Captain Henry Vane, on leave from the front, visits a certain Mr. Belgrave, pulls a gun on him, and shoots him. Vane turns himself in immediately, and is sent to prison for 15 years. It seems that Mr. Belgrave had been fooling around with Mrs. Vane while Captain Vane was fighting in France, and got Mrs. Vane pregnant.

Now in 1930, Henry Vane has been released from prison. He’s an engineer, but has no job prospects due to his record. Luckily, he’s quite well off, and he decides to travel, figuring his case will be unknown outside of England. He ends up in Rome. Meantime, Elsie Summerhays, a woman in her late 20s, and her mother have been impoverished after the death of Mr. Summerhays (a writer) revealed a mountain of debts. Elsie decides she must take a position, and is hired as a governess by a spoiled and vulgar young widow, Mrs. Pym. Mrs. Pym and a friend are planning to spend some months in Europe, and she needs a woman to look after her daughter while she fools around with whatever men she fancies. So, Elsie too ends up in Rome, in the Pym entourage, dealing with young Sally Pym, a terribly spoiled little girl. As it happens, her room is next to Henry Vane’s, and they meet while relaxing on neighboring balconies.

Over the next couple of months, Elsie and Vane begin to fall in love. And Elsie, after much difficulty, seems to be making progress in taming Sally Pym. But a couple of disasters happen – first, Vane confesses his criminal history to Elsie, and she reacts in shock. Before she has a chance to reconsider and to talk again to Vane, Mrs. Pym, embarrassed both financially and romantically, runs off to the Riviera. And Elsie learns that her mother is dying. She asks Mrs. Pym for her salary, which that nasty woman refuses her, claiming she has no money on hand. When Elsie finds a bunch of cash that Mrs. Pym was saving for the casino, she takes enough for a ticket home (way less than she is owed), and is arrested, and thrown into jail – Vane having tracked her down just a day or so too late!

The rest of the novel is a depiction of Vane building a home for the two in the South of France while waiting for Elsie to serve her time – and it never surprised from that time forward, despite a couple of manufactured crises (a local woman has her eye on Vane, and Elsie falls sick in prison). I found the ending, thus, a bit lacking in tension, a bit overextended. I was also disappointed never to learn what became of Mrs. Pym (one hoped for a comeuppance for her), nor of Sally (one hoped for redemption for her) … but to be fair to Deeping, this aspect was fairly realistic and avoided convenient clichés, such as Sally ending up a happy adopted child in the Vane family.

All in all this was a reasonably entertaining piece of popular fiction of its time – somewhat melodramatic, somewhat sentimental, a plot based on coincidence, yes, all that, but still enjoyable enough. The depiction of Elsie and Vane’s romance is noticeably sexless, but rather nicely depicted in their conversations. Not a very good novel, and in this case not even really interested in any of the social issues that Deeping sometimes tackled – which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, mind you! One of those cases where it’s easy to see why a writer sold well in his day, and easy to see why he’s decidedly a niche interest now – though, I think, less forgotten than many of his contemporaries.

A Significant Ace Double: The Genetic General/Time to Teleport, by Gordon R. Dickson

Ace Double Reviews, 95: The Genetic General, by Gordon R. Dickson/Time to Teleport, by Gordon R. Dickson (#D-449, 1960, 35 cents)

a review by Rich Horton

So this time an Ace Double featuring a pretty significant novel in SF history, by a pretty significant writer. The Genetic General is much better known as Dorsai!, the title under which it was serialized in Astounding in 1959. The first couple of book editions were called The Genetic General, but the original (and in my opinion far better) title was restored, permanently I think, in 1971. The book version is also abridged (not uncommon for Ace Doubles), and apparently a full version didn't see print (except for the serial) until the mid-'70s.

The book on the reverse was also by Dickson, a short novel (really a long novella) called here Time to Teleport, though as far as I can tell the original magazine title was "No More Barriers" (Science Fiction Stories, September 1955). In this version it's about 37,000 words (quite possibly the same as the original, or just slightly longer). The Genetic General is perhaps 65,000 words. The Eds were responsible for the covers, Valigursky for The Genetic General, and Emshwiller for Time to Teleport.

Dorsai! was the first major story in Dickson's central series, called The Childe Cycle. (A short story, "Act of Creation", preceded it in 1957, and another possibly related story, "Lulongomeena", appeared in 1954.) The Childe Cycle was a very ambitious undertaking that Dickson never finished. It was to consist of three historical novels, three present-day novels, and six SF novels. Only the SF part ever appeared, the six novels, as well as some shorter pieces, and some pendant novels, including one finished after Dickson's death by his long time assistant, David Wixon. The central theme of the cycle was the three central human traits, Courage, Faith, and Philosophy. One story, "Soldier, Ask Not", from 1964, won a Hugo, and was later incorporated into the novel of the same title.

The Genetic General is about a young man of the Dorsai people, from the planet called Dorsai, orbiting Fomalhaut. The Dorsai are mercenaries, and Donal Graeme, as the book opens, is a very young man just ready to go out into the wider human civilization and take on his first assignment. Immediately he encounters a beautiful but scared woman, Anea, the Select of Kultis, one of the Exotic worlds. She has taken a contract to be an escort for the powerful merchant William of Ceta, and wants Donal to get rid of it. He of course realizes that would be a crime and a mistake, and so refuses, but he is set on a collision course with William.

The novel continues, to an extent a travelogue of human interstellar society. Donal take a contract as a Mercenary for Harmony, one of the Friendly worlds (religiously oriented). After doing his job there too well, he takes another contract, and has another spectacular success ... and he continues to gain experience and knowledge, for one thing spending time with the powerful and mystical Sayona the Bond, one of the most important people of the Exotic worlds. And things come to a head as William's maneuvering seems poised to deliver him power over the entire human civilization, and as he chooses Donal as one of his game pieces in this effort -- but naturally he has again underestimated Donal.

There are broad swathes of cliche to this plot arc, and indeed (as I noted elsewhere), a number of points of contact with the story of Miles Vorkosigan -- odd young man from a militaristic world becomes a mercenary, along the way attaches a nearly-psychopathic man to him as a loyal retainer, supplying the man's conscience ... To be sure, Graeme's ultimate fate is more grandiose that Miles's (very much more grandiose, as I understand from summaries of the remaining Childe Cycle books). And it's early Dickson, not as well done as some of his later work. But it is quite exciting, and Donal's military feats make good stories. And Dickson's ambition is quite apparent -- he is interested in deeper themes than just good adventure. I quite enjoyed the book.

Time to Teleport, the other half, is an earlier work of course. Indeed, in a sense it's Dickson's first novel, even though not quite novel length, as its magazine publication preceded any other Dickson story ever published as a book. It's set in a future in which humanity is divided based on the types of work people do; groups like Transportation, Atomics, and Metal. Eli Johnstone is the head of one of the smaller groups, Underseas, but he has managed to be a power broker, maintaining a tenuous political balance between rival factions.

One of the main controversies facing the world involves a group of philosophical researchers who call themselves Members of the Human Race. They are hoping to understand the evolution of new human powers, psi powers, as part of the next step in human evolution. But their opponents fear them, believing that "normal" humans will be swept aside.

Now Eli wants to retire, just as his main rival, Tony Sellars of Transportation, is stepping up rhetoric against the "Members". But Eli is ready to volunteer for an experimental operation, that will replace his worn out body parts with new ones. And so he leave, while Sellars increases his pressure, and makes his move to take over the world. At the critical moment, Eli must finally face his true nature ... which is not so hard to guess!

This is a minor work, but still somewhat interesting, and still showing Dickson interested in deeper philosophical themes. It was clunky enough to not quite work, but it's still an moderately enjoyable story.

Old Bestseller: The Perfume of the Lady in Black, by Gaston Leroux

Old Bestseller: The Perfume of the Lady in Black, by Gaston Leroux

A review by Rich Horton

Back to the original focus of this blog with a true Old Bestseller, though this book’s best sales might have been in France. Gaston Leroux (1868-1927) was a native of Paris who inherited a lot of money and earned a law degree. But by about 1890 he was broke and working in journalism. He became an international correspondent for Le Matin, most significantly covering the 1905 Russian Revolution (one that didn’t stick). He began publishing fiction as early as 1887, and his first novel appeared in 1904 (La Double Vie de Théophraste Longuet, known as The Double Life in English). He quit journalism in 1907, more or less simultaneously with his first major novelistic success, The Mystery of the Yellow Room. That was the first of ultimately seven novels about a young journalist who acts as a detective, Joseph Rouletabille. He is of course best known for his 1910 novel Le Fantôme de l’Opéra (The Phantom of the Opera), which has been made into numerous films and one very famous musical.

The Mystery of the Yellow Room was a locked-room story, and is still regarded as one of the best locked room mysteries of all time. The book at hand, La Parfum de la Dame en Noir (The Perfume of the Lady in Black), from 1909, is a direct sequel to The Mystery of the Yellow Room, and it is also a locked-room mystery. Of necessity, the following will involve spoilers for the first book.

The novel is narrated by M. Sainclair, an older friend of Joseph Rouletabille, who seems fairly openly a Watson figure. We begin in a shabby church in Paris, as Mlle. Mathilde Stangerson marries M. Robert Darzac. We gather that Mlle. Stangerson and M. Darzac were involved in the events of the previous book. Mathilde’s father, Professor Stangerson, had been accused of a murder, investigated by a detective, Frederic Larsan, with the assistance of Joseph Rouletabille. At the end, Rouletabille proved that the actual killer was in fact Larsan, a master of disguise who was also known as Ballmyer and as Jean Roussel, under which name he had married Mlle. Stangerson in America. She had a child with him, who died young, but had become estranged, and fell in love with M. Darzac. After Larsan is convicted of murder, he escapes, and flees to America, but falls overboard and drowns on the way there, freeing his ex-wife to marry M. Darzac.

The book is interrupted for some extended exposition about the childhood of Joseph Rouletabille, where we learn that he was actually the supposedly dead son of Frederic Larsan and Mathilde, who ended up at a strict boarding school, before he was expelled on a false charge of theft. Living on his own, he managed eventually to work his way into journalism.

The scene thus set, the newly married couple head off on their honeymoon to the South of France. But on the way, Mme. Darzac is shocked to see Larsan. Sainclair and Rouletabille follow them to their destination, a curious castle/island just on the Italian side of the Riviera, owned by Mr. Arthur Rance, an American, and his wife Edith. Mr. Rance, it seems, was once desperately in love with Mlle. Stangerson, and Edith is terribly jealous of her. Their party consists, then, of the Rances, the Darzacs, Sainclair, Rouletabille, Edith’s uncle, Old Bob, an anthropologist who believes he has discovered the oldest human skull of all time, and occasionally a neighbor, Prince Galitch, a Russian who is a rival  of Old Bob, and who also seems inappropriately close to Mme. Edith. Other players are several servants, and, all fear, the mysterious specter of the apparently not really dead M. Larsan – whose continued survival would invalidate the marriage of the Darzacs.

All this takes a long, and frankly tedious, time to set up. Then the action commences, with strange behavior by Old Bob, flirtation and jealousy from Edith, and eventually a shooting, and the apparent disposal of the victim in a potato sack. But is he really dead? And, despite all Rouletabille’s efforts to make the castle impregnable, has Larsan found a way in? And how did the “extra body” somehow make his way into the Darzac chambers? And who was actually shot? And who is responsible for the death of one of the servants?

The whole thing is kind of convoluted and, as I suggested, often tedious. The characters never really come to life – it’s hard to much like any of them. (Part of this, to be sure, is because each character – even the narrator, Sainclair -- has to be presented as plausibly Larsan in disguise.) Leroux painstakingly describes, with diagrams!, the layout of the castle and of some key interiors. Things eventually come to a head, leading to a traditional wrapping up, with the detective gathering everyone in a room and explaining who is guilty – and with the bad guy, as is traditional, removing him- or herself  from an inconvenient potential trial by some precipitate actions …

The mystery, I suppose, is nicely enough solved, if it does depend rather too much on Larsan’s incredible ability to disguise himself. But beyond that, the novel just doesn’t work – it’s too long, too boring, with an uninteresting set of characters. Some of this, I suppose, might possibly be laid at the door of the translator. My edition, I should add, is a 1909 edition, probably a first American, from Brentano’s (I assume possibly related to the bookseller). There are numerous illustrations (including the diagrams). The illustrator and translator are both uncredited. (I note that the science fiction writer Brian Stableford, who had translated an immense amount of French popular fiction from the 19^th and early 20^th Century, has translated at least one of the Rouletabille books.)

I have no idea if other Leroux books are better – I’m not terribly likely to try any. I have, of course, seen a couple of versions of The Phantom of the Opera – the musical, at least, is very good.

The Whitsun Weddings, by Philip Larkin

The Whitsun Weddings, by Philip Larkin

an appreciation by Rich Horton

My favorite poet is Wallace Stevens, but my favorite British poet, I think, is Philip Larkin. Larkin (1922-1985) was a long-time friend of Kingsley Amis, one of my favorite novelists. He was a rather sad man, somewhat by choice I’d suggest (though I’d caution of course that that’s just me projecting my feelings on an outside view of his life), and on the evidence perhaps not a very nice man, certainly not above (in private letters) expressing some queasily racist notions, and also some rather sexist notions. He doesn’t seem to have treated the women in his life very well either. His longest relationship was with Monica Jones (sometimes suggested as the model for the awful Margaret Peel in Amis’ Lucky Jim) – it lasted from 1950 to the end of his life, though they never married: but Larkin had significant relationships with several other women in this time period, indeed at one time juggling three affairs at once. Larkin’s primary job was as librarian, most importantly at the University of Hull. He seems to have been highly regarded there, both for his work and as a colleague. Despite mostly living fairly modestly, in the end he accumulated a significant fortune, enough so that his primary beneficiary, Jones, left an estate of over £1,000,000 at her death in 2001.

Larkin’s early poems were primarily imitative of W. H. Auden, with other significant influences such as Thomas Hardy and W. B. Yeats. (Larkin was to some extent responsible for the rehabilitation of Hardy’s poetic reputation relative to his novelistic reputation.) His first book of poems was The North Ship (1945), which was all but ignored and has remained but a minor part of his oeuvre in the minds of most readers. To be sure, he was only 23. In the next decade he found his true voice, partly in association with the “Movement” poets (such as Amis, Donald Davie, Elizabeth Jennings, and Robert Conquest). His three major slim collections were published at intervals of roughly a decade: The Less Deceived in 1955, The Whitsun Weddings in 1964, and High Windows in 1974. After that book he was all but done as a poet, even though he was only 54 – “Aubade” and “Love Again” are the only significant poems written later, the rest being often occasional poems, or unfinished. (I am also quite fond of an earlier uncollected poem, a bit of a joke based presumably on the sexual exploits of either Amis or Conquest, “Letter to a Friend about Girls”.) He refused an offer to be named Poet Laureate in 1984, a year before his death.

Larkin’s reputation suffered some blows after his death, mostly to my mind a result of score settling by rivals and by those whose poetic philosophies differed, and as a result of the publication of his letters and other revelations of some quite racist expressions. It certainly seemed to me that some second-raters were happy to suggest “Don’t read him, read me!” – as if anyone with sense would read their anodyne lameness. (OK, so I took some of that controversy a bit hard!) Larkin’s reputation has recovered, however, largely to my mind because people actually read the poems instead of obsessing about the personal life. It is probably fair to say that Larkin’s range was somewhat narrow, but I’m not sure that matters. And his rather po-faced attitudes can sometimes seem almost self-caricature. But within that range, and understanding the point of view he expresses, his poetry is stunning: lyrically expressive, syntactically complex and interesting, emotionally intense if not flamboyantly so.

Of his three major collections, I think the best is the middle one, The Whitsun Weddings. There are 32 poems, including several of my very favorites: “Faith Healing”, “Water”, “The Whitsun Weddings”, “MCMXIV”, “Dockery and Son”, “Reference Back”, “Wild Oats”, and, to close the book, possibly Larkin’s greatest poem, “An Arundel Tomb”. (There are of course other candidates for that title: “At Grass”, “Church Going”, “If, my Darling”, “High Windows”, even “This be the Verse”.)

I think best perhaps is to quote some lines …

From “Faith Healing”, I am always devastated by “That nothing cures.”

From “Water”: “A glass of water/where any-angled light/would congregate endlessly.”

From “MCMXIV” – another candidate for my favorite Larkin poem – and a poem which makes me think of Christopher Priest’s great story “An Infinite Summer” – the last stanza:

“Never such innocence,

Never before or since,

As changed itself to past

Without a word – the men

Leaving the gardens tidy,

The thousands of marriages

Lasting a little while longer:

Never such innocence again.”

From “Dockery and Son”, the famous final four lines:

“Life is first boredom, then fear.

Whether or not we use it, it goes,

And leaves what something hidden from us chose,

And age, and then only the end of age.”

From “Reference Back”:

“They show us what we have as it once was,

Blindingly undiminished, just as though

By acting differently we could have kept it so.”

And, finally, “An Arundel Tomb”. That of course has a very famous last line: “What will survive of us is love.” So often quoted as a cloying sentimental truism. Which is to ignore the previous line: “Our almost instinct almost true:” – so undermining of the sentiment in the final line.

It’s just such a lovely poem, from start to finish. The first stanza loosely describing the somewhat faded tomb, with the crucial detail: “The little dogs under their feet.” The second stanza, revealing the most critical element of the carven tomb: “His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.” “What will survive of us is love”, eh?

But then the next line, opening the third stanza. “They would not think to lie so long.” Is this a pun? To be sure, the Earl and his Countess are not thinking of “lying in state”, as it were, for centuries. But are they also not thinking of the “lie” the sculptor tells?

The next two stanzas suggest the changes wrought by time – both just by decay, but also by changes in attitude. I just love the fifth stanza (beginning at the end of the fourth):

“Rigidly they

Persisted, linked, through lengths and breadths

Of time. Snow fell, undated. Light

Each summer thronged the glass. A bright

Litter of birdcalls strewed the same

Bone-riddled ground. And up the paths

The endless altered people came”

And, sure, let’s quote the great final lines:

“Time has transfigured them into

Untruth. The stone fidelity

They hardly meant has come to be

Their final blazon, and to prove

Our almost-instinct almost true:

What will survive of us is love.”

Surely the point here is that the love of the Earl and his Countess – real as it may or may not have been, is not what survives. What survives, over centuries, is our hope, our sentimental hope, that our love will survive – that love is the most important thing, despite the possibility that the love was not real.

A Little-Known recent novel: The Language Nobody Speaks, by Eugene Mirabelli

A little-known recent novel: The Language Nobody Speaks, by Eugene Mirabelli

a review by Rich Horton

OK, this wasn't a bestseller -- not even close. And it's not all that old. It might be sort of forgotten, alas. The real reason I'm covering it is, well, that I like Eugene Mirabelli (and his work), and that I hadn't finished my latest "Old Bestseller" (a novel by Gaston Leroux that I'm find hard going) and that I just finished my latest Ace Double (a Gordon Dickson pairing).

Eugene Mirabelli has written a number of mainstream novels ... the first of them dating all the way back to the my year of birth, 1959. (Indeed, he was born in Massachusetts in 1931 -- as was my father!) He came to my attention with a number of quite lovely SF/Fantasy stories, in F&SF, Asimov's, and Not One of Us. I used a couple of them in my Best of the Year books, and we've reprinted another at Lightspeed. I figured I ought to try one of his novels, and I picked The Language Nobody Speaks, which dates to 1999. I supposed I must admit that I was partly convinced to choose this one by the cover photograph, of a very beautiful and not very clothed woman.

The story is set in about 1956 for the most part. The narrator is Bart, a young mathematician. His car breaks down in Albany, NY, and he happens to run into Erin, a girl he had met and become very attracted to at a wedding a year or so before. She has a little time, so she agrees to have lunch with him. At lunch they happen to sit with a somewhat older married couple, Hollis and Lida, who seem quite taken with them. The older couple (not really that much older -- Bart and Erin are presumably in their mid- to late-20s, and Hollis and Lida in their 30s or perhaps early 40s in Hollis's case) convince the younger pair to accompany them on a brief excursion to Saratoga. Bart and Erin quickly realize they are falling in love, and they end up staying the night at a hotel in Saratoga, with Hollis and Lida in the neighboring room.

By various happenstances, the stay is extended a bit. Bart and Erin sleep together, talk a lot, about things like Bart's disenchantment with mathematics, and about how people can really know each other, and so on. They also witness by accident some of Hollis and Lida's sex life, which seems to have an S&M element. But though they are disturbed by this, they enjoy the older couple's company in the days, as they visit various New York locations. Inevitably, they are drawn closer and closer to Hollis and Lida, eventually visiting their home in the Berkshires, where certain variously ominous events occur -- some sleeping around, of course, and revelations about Lida's past (she was a Czech refugee who ended up in Italy at the end of the War, where her mother apparently became a collaborator, and where Hollis met her), and further revelations about Hollis's habits, and about their marriage, which is not nearly as strong as had first appeared. The question is, can Bart and Erin's relationship survive all this, even prosper, or will it founder on all this stress. Or will something more sinister happen?

I enjoyed this short novel a fair bit. It's reasonably erotic without being pornographic at all by my lights. It's very well written, and quite well observed. The denouement has elements of patness, but really it makes sense, it's believable -- just not, as the narrator even observes, entirely what the shape of the narrative may have seemed to promise. Good enjoyable work.

Mirabelli's other novels seem worth a look as well. He often writes on Italian or Italian-American subjects, and occasionally ventures into fantastical territory. He's still writing, and a new novel is due sometime this year.

Another Obscure Ace Double: Sanctuary in the Sky, by John Brunner/The Secret Martians, by Jack Sharkey

Ace Double Reviews, 94: Sanctuary in the Sky, by John Brunner/The Secret Martians, by Jack Sharkey (#D-471, 1960, 35 cents)

a review by Rich Horton


I've read some weak Ace Doubles lately, so I tried to improve my fortunes by picking one with a John Brunner half. I can almost always count on Brunner for entertainment with a thoughtful edge. Brunner (1934-1995) of course was one of the field's greats, a Hugo winner for Stand on Zanzibar (1968). He had a bifurcated career a bit like Robert Silverberg's: beginning around the same time as Silverberg he was extremely prolific early in his career, publishing a lot of quickly executed and competent work; and then sometime in the early to mid '60s seems to have consciously raised his level of ambition, beginning with novels like The Whole Man and The Squares of the City, and continuing to his famous quartet of long novels, beginning with Stand on Zanzibar, then The Jagged Orbit, The Sheep Look Up, and The Shockwave Rider. But that distorts the case a bit -- for he remained very prolific, producing a whole series of shorter novels at the same time, some highly regarded (I like Total Eclipse a great deal, for instance), and some not as good (I was quite disappointed by The Infinitive of Go). He died fairly young, and shockingly -- at the 1995 World SF Convention in Glasgow.


As for Jack Sharkey, he was a near contemporary of Brunner's, born three years earlier and also dying three years earlier. He began publishing in 1959, and was active only until about 1971, publishing four novels, an Addams family novelization, and a fair quantity of short stories, many for Cele Goldsmith's magazines (Amazing and Fantastic). Indeed, his career in the field really ended in 1965, when Goldsmith (by then Cele Lalli) left the magazines after they were sold. Sharkey only published three further SF/Fantasy stories. Apparently he concentrated on plays after that.

The cover to the Sharkey novel is by Ed Valigursky, I don't recognize the artist on the Brunner novel -- it's not really a good representation of any scene in the book, looks almost Flash Gordon-like, or trashy TV serial anyway. The ISFDB tentatively suggests Basil Gogot, a name I've never seen, though Todd Mason informs me that they must really mean Basil Gogos.

I have said before that in comparing Brunner and Silverberg, I like early Brunner better than early Silverberg, but late (or middle) Silverberg better than late Brunner. I really do enjoy Brunner's early novels, many of them Ace Double halves -- they are all of course quite short, and sometimes show signs of hastiness (especially in their conclusions), but they are generally good fun, with interesting ideas and some real thoughtful speculation. Sanctuary in the Sky isn't one of my favorites of this group, alas, but it isn't bad either.

A group of people from different planets come by spaceship to Waystation, a huge space station serving as a sort of neutral point between a group of competing planets. The planets are Cathrodyne, a warlike planet which oppresses the people on Lubarria and Majkosi; Pagr, a likewise warlike matriarchy which oppresses Alchmida; and neutral Glai, which controls Waystation. The people are Ferenc, a fanatical Cathrodyne officer; Ligmer, a Cathrodyne scientist; Dardaino, a Cathrodyne assigned as a priest to the Lubarrians; Mrs. Iquida, a Lubarrian; Toehr, a Pag of high status; Vykor, a young Majko steward; and, most important, the mysterious Lang, who comes from "out of eye range" -- that is, a planet whose Sun is not visible from any of this local group of planets.

The main character is Vykor, who is working as a spy of sorts for the Glaithe people, hoping that this will lead to independence for his Majko people. Vykor is also sort of in love with Captain Raige, the Glaithe woman who is heading the Waystation staff and who is Vykor's contact. But most of the action is set in motion by Lang, who has the knack of mysteriously appearing almost anywhere, and of asking the sort of questions that greatly discomfit his listeners. We get glimpses of the political questions central to this planetary group; and of the scientific questions, mainly centering on the question of "Who made Waystation"; and of the odd nature of Waystation, with its reconfigurable spaces and secret passages. (I was strongly reminded of Robert Reed's Great Ship*.)

The plot mainly turns on the chaos caused by Lang, and on the question of his true identity (which is pretty easily guessed, mind you). The resolution, as usual for early Brunner, is a bit rapid, but it's also fairly thoughtful, and to some extent easy answers are avoided. As I said, not really one of my favorite Brunner stories, but decent work.

The Secret Martians, on the other hand, is a pretty silly mess. It opens promising to be a bit of a romp, and as such it might have been OK. Sharkey worked for a while in advertising, and his hero, Jery Delvin, is an advertising man. His special talent is as a "spotter" -- he can always see through the deceptive claims of advertising. Except when distracted by beautiful girls. Evidently that talent gets him chosen, by the Brain, a huge computer which helps run the government, to be sent to Mars along with the Amnesty, a badge that gives him authority to do anything, and with a collapsar, the weapon reserved for governement Security, in order to solve the problem of the disappearance of a bunch of Space Scouts -- young boys who had been on a trip to Mars.

His main problem is a gorgeous girl with the implausible name Snow White, elder sister of one of the presumably kidnapped Space Scouts. Her ability to distract him allows her to steal his Amnesty, and he vacillates between anger at her and helpless lust. He keeps trying to solve the main problem, even without his Amnesty badge, and he ends up encountering some of the lizardlike aliens, the sugarfeet, who are regarding as mere animals. Of course, they aren't, and the plot descends into real stupidity, with the Devlin, Snow, the sugarfeet all cooperating to some extent, and with the title "Secret Martians" assuming a somewhat ambiguous role, while the villains are a rather obvious group. Will the Space Scouts be found? Will Jary and Snow get together? Will the sugarfeet get the recognition they deserve? Will the bad guys be thwarted? Will anything make sense, either plotwise or science-wise? Do you really need to ask?

So -- in the end, another pretty mediocre Ace Double, but just sufficiently redeemed by the fairly decent Brunner novel.

*SPOILER for Sanctuary in the Sky





... it turns out that Waystation is even more like the Great Ship than we originally realize. I really do wonder if this novel might have been at some level an inspiration for Reed's conception.

Not a Bestseller, once perhaps forgotten: Party Going, by Henry Green

No Longer Really Forgotten: Party Going, by Henry Green

A review by Rich Horton

This novel was not, I think, a bestseller, but the writer, Henry Green, did apparently have one novel that brushed the bestseller list in the US, Loving, from 1945. Party Going, his third novel, was published in 1939. It and Loving are generally considered his best.

Henry Green was a pseudonym for Henry Vincent Yorke (1905-1972), the son of a wealthy industrialist in the North of England, and the grandson (via his mother) of a Baron. Yorke was a near exact contemporary of Anthony Powell, and the two were friends at Eton and Oxford. Yorke was also close to Evelyn Waugh (whom he knew at Oxford), and knew others of that notable generation at Eton, such as Cyril Connolly and a certain Eric Blaire, who, like Green, became much more famous under his pseudonym. Little celebrated there or at Oxford, Green became the first of his cohort to publish a novel (Blindness, in 1926). He left Oxford without a degree and took a position at his father’s firm, which made machines for making beer bottles, among other things. (Yorke used to claim they made toilets, which as some wag pointed out made for a rather unusual case of vertical integration along with the beer bottles.)

His life story, on the whole, is rather sad, or so it seems to me, though on the other hand perhaps it’s unfair to project my notions of it on him. He married his second cousin (a grandchild of the same Baron), Adelaide Biddulph, called “Dig”. They had one son, Sebastian. Yorke had countless affairs, not always happy (one woman, referring to his habit of giving his novels gerunds for titles, said “Your next novel should be called Hurting.”) He was a heavy drinker, and eventually lost his position in the firm when he was discovered to be drinking pure gin at a meeting, passing it off as water. His last novel was published in 1952, and in the ensuing two decades he published almost nothing, apparently starting and abandoning at least a play and a memoir of his time on the Auxiliary Fire Service during the War. One assumes his inability to write was tied to his alcoholism, but, again, who knows? He spent the last seven years of his life as a recluse, essentially never leaving his home.

Despite the apparent modest success of Loving (likely his most accessible book), his novels do not seem to have sold well on the whole, and  according to Wikipedia, at any rate, they soon fell out of print. However, as Roger Allen suggests in the comments, there is reason to doubt the assertion in Wikipedia -- I have just bought a 1967 reprint of his last novel, Doting; and I know of a 1964 reprint of Concluding. I would suggest that he more likely remained generally in print (at least in the UK), but that sales were glacial. 

He was generally treated well by critics when active, and, after he ceased writing, his books, almost forgotten by the wider public, seem to have achieved almost cult status among their aficionados, mostly other writers. Terry Southern, who conducted a 1958 Paris Review interview with “Green”, famously called him not a “writers’ writer, but a writers’ writer’s writer”. Other admirers included old friends like Powell, and younger writers or critics such as Sebastian Faulks, Brooke Allen, and John Updike. There was almost a sense, for a while, that to discover Green was to join an exclusive society. However, a variety of attempts with varying degrees of success have been made to revive general interest in him, including several versions of an omnibus edition of his three perhaps best known novels, Loving, Living, and Party Going. (I have one of those editions, the 1978 Penguin trade paperback (with an introduction by Updike), and the combined title always brings forth an earworm of Led Zeppelin’s “Livin’ Lovin’ Maid – specifically the lyric “Livin’, Lovin’, she’s just a woman” – but don’t mind me!) Perhaps the Dalkey Archive editions (around the turn of the millennium) were most successful, and while I’m not sure how much of Green’s work is in print now, his novels do appear fairly readily available, and I'd say that he has attained an established place in the canon of 20^th Century British writers.

Green wrote nine novels in all, a few short stories, and a well-regarded memoir, Pack My Bag, published just before the War (as he was convinced he might die). His prose is highly individual, evolving from the curious decision to all but abandon articles in his first mature novel, Living, through the flowing, almost careless-seeming, constant POV-shifting of Party Going, to his last two novels, Nothing and Doting, written almost entirely in dialogue. He was known in his life as an aristocrat (of sorts) with considerable sympathy for the working class, who wrote two novels (Living and Loving) largely centered on working class characters (factory workers in the first case, servants in the second) – but many of his novels (including Party Going) were more closely centered around upper class characters.

Well, that’s a lot about the author. What about the book? Party Going is a striking and involving novel, with essentially no plot. It’s about a group of wealthy young English people, sometime in the ‘30s, ready to take a train to a house party in the South of France. The novel takes place during a few hours as the party waits, in the station and at a hotel, while the train is delayed by fog.

The main action of the story follows a couple of threads. One is mainly centered on the group’s host, Max Adey, who is thought by his friends to be interested in one of their number, Julia Wray, and who has abandoned his current lover, Amabel, to run off to France with Julia and a few other friends: Clair and Robert Hignam, a married couple; Alex, Evelyn (or Evelyna) Henderson, and Angela Crevy, who is not quite part of their set, but who perhaps is also of interest to Max. Amabel, realizing what Max is up to, manages to track them down and attach herself to the party. There is a lot of time spent inside the rather shallow heads of the characters, their various insecurities, Julia’s interest in Max matched with a fear of his sexual advances, Amabel’s manipulative nature and her half-desperate, half-knowing sensuality, Angela’s feelings of inferiority as an outsider.

Another thread revolves around Clair’s maiden aunt, Miss Fellowes, whom we meet first, picking up a dead pigeon and for some reason cleaning it. She is at the station to see her niece off on her trip, but she falls suddenly ill – or perhaps she has drunk too much? – and she spends most of the book in a hotel bed, attended off and on by a pair of nannies and by the women of the party. And there are a few scenes among the servants of the travelers, stuck in the station while their employers have retreated to the relative comfort of the hotel.

There are a couple of striking set pieces, most notably an extended scene of Amabel taking a bath. There is an ongoing somewhat comic, and never really explained, series of scenes involving a curious man who seems unusually interested in Miss Fellowes, and who speaks in an ever changing set of accents. Another subthread concerns “Embassy Richard”, an acquaintance of theirs who has got into a bit of trouble over his habit of showing up at parties, even state parties, uninvited. All this is often quite comic. Somehow, though nothing quite terrible happens, and though the tone is, as I said, often comic, there is a sense of darkness to things. Partly it’s just the fog. Partly it’s that this is a set of awfully spoiled and shallow privileged young people – though there is no real sense that they are any worse than other people, just not any better either, and with less excuse for their shallowness and insincerity and insecurity.

The prose, as I’ve noted, is loose (in a good way), flowing, constantly shifting. It’s a very interesting novel, fascinating despite the shallowness of every character and the lack of real action or plot. It reads, I would say, true. I read Loving with much enjoyment several years ago, and I like Party Going – I shall soon, I think, be reading more by Henry Green.

Edith Wharton Stories: "Roman Fever"

Just one more story I want to cover, and that’s probably Wharton’s most famous short story, “Roman Fever”. This was first published in Liberty for November 10, 1934. As such it comes very late in Wharton’s career: she died in 1937, and the common view is that her last major novel, if probably her best, was The Age of Innocence, from 1921. She was still a prolific writer, at all lengths, however, and “Roman Fever” is evidence that she could still do remarkable work in her 70s. It is sometimes dismissed as an effective but fairly trivial story, and it is true that it turns on a killer last line, and that the concerns of the story, at a first glance, aren’t earth-shaking – the rivalry between two wealthy widows, both of whom will still be comfortably situated no matter the events of the story, may seem a minor thing. And so it is, perhaps, but that’s missing the point. It’s also true that the story is shortish for Wharton – most of her major short stories are at least 7000 words, often 10000 or more, and “Roman Fever” is not quite 5000 words long. Again, not important.

The story is set in Rome, presumably about at the time of writing. (Wharton wrote it in 1934, after a trip to Rome.) Alida Slade and Grace Ansley are the main characters, two women who have know each other for a very long time, who were neighbors in New York, and who lost their husbands within months of each other not too long before. They are visiting Europe with their daughters, each of whom is in her early 20s. The daughters go running off together at the start, leaving “the young things” (their mocking term for their mothers) to “their knitting”.

Slowly we learn a little more about the women, mostly through the lens of Mrs. Slade’s thoughts. It seems that Mrs. Slade made the more brilliant marriage, to a dashing lawyer. And Mrs. Slade fancies herself to have been an important ally of her husband, especially in social circles. Mrs. Ansley and her husband are both regarded as sort of colorless, though she acknowledges that Grace was a beauty when young. And, she has to acknowledge, much as she loves her daughter, Barbara Ansley is the more impressive figure …

Eventually the conversation turns to their last mutual visit to Rome, when both were unmarried, though Alida and Delphin Slade were courting. It seems that Delphin also showed some partiality to Grace, enough so that Alida became terribly jealous. As all this goes one we realize that Alida still harbors dislike for Grace Ansley (enough so that we must color her evaluations of Grace accordingly). And then Alida reveals to Grace that, in fact, a certain letter that Grace had received from Delphin on that last trip to Rome had in fact been written by Alida – she pretended that Delphin was inviting her (Grace) to a tryst on a chilly night at the Colisseum. Alida hoped that Grace would contract “Roman fever” (that is, malaria), which would take her out of the running for Delphin – or perhaps that her reputation would be ruined. And, in fact, Alida did take ill and was rushed away … (I should add that this plot point is to some extent a deliberate allusion to major events in Daisy Miller, by Wharton’s close friend Henry James.)

Alida has her own secrets to reveal, of course – the most devastating given in the famous last line, which I’ll leave to the reader to learn.

Like many stories with great last lines, there is a tendency to regard this as a stunt, or something trivial, but I don’t think that’s fair in the case of “Roman Fever”. The story is exquisitely constructed, and beautifully written, and rereading it after learning the trick ending opens it up immensely. Minor details take on greater significance, and subtle early lines now seem stunning. Much is made in the critical literature, for instance, of the fact that only Grace Ansley knits … Much is made, and should be made, of the way the story looks at the relationships of women. Or of the implications it makes about the changes in social mores in the preceding decades, and how they affect women. Even, perhaps, of the changes in medical care. It’s not my favorite Wharton story (that would probably be “Autres Temps …”), but it’s close, and I think it’s a great story, and a great introduction to Wharton.

So, that’s the end of my brief survey of my favorite stories from R. W. B. Lewis’ selection of his favorites of her corpus. I’ve skipped a couple more stories I like quite a lot, particularly “Kerfol”, another ghost story, in this case about ghost dogs, haunting an old French house that had been the site of a strange death centuries earlier; and “After Holbein”, not quite a ghost story but almost, about two elderly people, a man and a woman, reenacting their social roles as they seem at the cusp of death.  Lewis misses the boat a couple of times as well, particularly in choosing “All Souls”, one of Wharton’s very last stories, and another supernatural story, but a great disappointment to me, in the thudding and silly revelation as to what was “haunting” a wealthy woman in her remote country house.

A Largely Forgotten Ace Double: The Games of Neith, by Margaret St. Clair/The Earth Gods are Coming, by Kenneth Bulmer

Ace Double Reviews, 93: The Games of Neith, by Margaret St. Clair/The Earth Gods are Coming, by Kenneth Bulmer (#D-435, 1960, 35 cents)

a review by Rich Horton

Here's an Ace Double featuring a couple of authors I've discussed before. I bought it partly because of that -- both writers have proved enjoyable in the past, St. Clair often more than that, and, partly, frankly, because of the quite gorgeous Emswhiller cover on the St. Clair book, which for some reason reminded me of Wendy Pini's cover for the June 1975 Galaxy.

I wrote before about Margaret St. Clair (1911-1995) as follows: "she was one of the more noticeable early women writers of SF, but somehow her profile was a bit lower than those of C. L. Moore, Leigh Brackett, and Andre Norton. Perhaps it was simply that those writers did just a bit more, and were just a bit better (taken as a whole) than her, but it does seem that she's not quite as well remembered as perhaps she deserves. One contributing factor is that she wrote some of her very best stories pseudonymously, as "Idris Seabright". 20 or so of her 50+ short stories were as by Seabright, including some of the very best (such as "Short in the Chest" and "An Egg a Month from All Over"). She also wrote 8 novels (four of them published as Ace Double halves). Her career in SF stretched from 1946 to 1981. Her husband, Eric St. Clair, was also a writer (of children's books), and the two became Wiccans more or less when the Wiccan movement started."

Reading this book made clear to me another reason St. Clair is not as well remembered as Moore, Brackett, or Norton -- she was much weaker at novel length than at shorter lengths. At least, that is, based on those I've read. The Games of Neith was a terrible disappointment to me -- it's really just a bad, silly, book.

It's set on Gwethym, a planet colonized by a mix of Chinese, Norwegian, and French settlers, who seem to have been united by belief in a god named Jovis. But now, a long time later, they have adopted belief in an avowedly made up goddess, Neith. The main character is Anassa, the chief priestess of Neith. Her lover is the physicist Ehr-Li Wan. There have been recent problems -- rumors of a place in the ocean (this is a mostly water world) where people lose energy and seem wholly listless; and also a renewal of belief in Jovis, and especially in human sacrifice. A couple of attempts have been made on the life of Anassa, some thwarted by her cyon, a dog-like creature native to Gwethym.

Wan has learned that the energy loss phenomenon might be explained by a leak of energy from our universe to a parallel universe, caused by the use of the space warp to travel between planets. He believes there is a leak, located on Gwethym, near where people have reported listlessness, and further he believes the Old Ones, who formerly lived on Gwethym, had a way to stop the leak. He convinces Anassa to accompany him.

And so it goes, in an oddly episodic fashion. (One wonders if St. Clair had a hard time plotting at greater than novelette length.) They find the Old Ones' material, but also learn some horrible things about their predecessors on the planet. They somehow manage to bring a creature from another universe onto Gwethym -- she manifests as a goddess, and is immediately taken as the true Neith. There is an incident with human sacrificers, and with other nasty people, including a corporate type who doesn't want the space warp blamed for the energy leak. There is the mystery of where the Old Ones went (you'll guess the answer). And finally there is a wrenching decision to do with the various consequences of actually stopping the leak once and for all (one consequence being cessation of all space travel).

As I said, it's terribly episodic, and not in a good way. The science is ridiculous. The plot is a string of convenient happenings. The prose is fine, and the characters are OK. But as a novel, it's a disaster. But don't give up on St. Clair -- her shorter work is often very good.

Kenneth Bulmer, born in England in 1921, was a very prolific writer from the early '50s, under his own name and many others, most notably "Alan Burt Akers", the name under which he wrote the Dray Prescot series for DAW. He was primarily an SF writer, but also did a lot of work in other genres. He was editor of the New Writings in SF anthology series after the death of John Carnell. He died in 2005.

I've read a few of his novels, and they tend to be competent adventure fiction, but not at all distinguished. The Earth Gods are Coming is more or less typical of his work. It opens with a man charged with releasing one of the Prophets of Earth over another planet. These are androids who deliver the message of the rational and peace-loving Earth religion to other planets. However, the man is accidentally ejected from his spaceship with the Prophet, and rides it down to the surface.

Then we switch back to Earth, where Roy Inglis, a Space Marine officer stuck in a desk job after his marriage to a rich woman, is suddenly recalled to service. It seems there have been encounters in deep space with inimical aliens, who attack ships without warning. They are dubbed the Evil Ones, and Roy is sent on a fishing expedition hoping to find them. He finds this a relief in some ways, as his marriage is unhappy.

Roy's ship is attacked as well, as they reach a distant planet. He and a few others manage to reach the surface -- again, this planet is a water world, in which the intelligent aliens live in floating cities of ships. After some time desperately surviving in their barely seaworthy lifeboat, they encounter the aliens, who welcome them aboard. By now Roy and a lovely lieutenant are making eyes at each other -- just in time for an interlude on Earth where we see his wife jumping at the chance to divorce him on the presumption that he's been killed. Then a mysterious alien spaceship descends projecting hypnotic messages, and both the humans and the natives of this planet are brainwashed into worshipping the "evil ones". What if they are captured? The Evil Ones will easily learn Earth's location...

Luckily, rescue is on the way. But what can overcome Roy's brainwashing? And what about when the Evil Ones return? Well, remember how the story opened ...

I kind of enjoyed myself reading through the book, even though it's kind of implausible and silly. And one does have to wonder, what's the difference between the Evil Ones mission to various planets, and the human "Prophets of Earth"? In the end, another fairly weak book.

One point to make about both novels this time ... besides both being set on a water world, both feature a lot of (mostly implied) sex, and certainly a lot of interest in descriptions of beautiful women. SF in that time frame had a reputation as being still somewhat prudish in content, but I don't really think that was the case. Not that these rise even to the level of soft porn -- not at all -- but they aren't what one supposed was regarded as kids' stuff, either.

Edith Wharton Stories: "Xingu"

The next Edith Wharton story I’ll talk about is a bit different to those preceding – it’s laugh out loud funny. This is “Xingu”, which first appeared in Scribner’s in 1911. It’s a satirical look at lady’s discussion clubs – they had book clubs in the early 20^th Century, it seems. As the story opens: “Mrs. Ballinger is one of those ladies who pursue Culture in bands, as if it were dangerous to meet alone. To this end she had founded the Lunch Club, an association composed of herself and several other indomitable huntresses of erudition”.

For their next meeting they have invited the celebrated novelist Osric Dane, author of The Wings of Death. All the members dutifully read the book except Mrs. Roby, who is continually a sad disappointment to her fellow members – for instance, when one of them mentions the pterodactyl to a biology professor, Mrs. Roby “confusedly murmured: ‘I know so little about meters –‘”. And for this meeting Mrs. Roby confesses that instead of reading Osric Dane she has been reading Trollope – and why? Because he amuses her. “Amusement is hardly what I look for in my choice of books,” says Mrs. Plinth.

When Osric Dane appears, she seems a bit offputting – somehow none of the members seems to be able to respond to her ripostes to their pretentious responses to her book. But then Mrs. Roby brings up another subject – Xingu. What, she wonders, does Mrs. Dane think of Xingu? And she begins to ask Mrs. Roby about it – and Mrs. Roby describes it in deliciously but totally undescriptive terms. This is very funny stuff, especially once you get the joke …

I don’t want to give it away any more – but the story is lots of fun. It’s not terribly deep (unlike Xingu!), and it’s target is kind of a case of fish in a barrel, but that’s not the point. It’s just funny.