Zadig, or the Book of Fate (1747), is Voltaire’s first novella of ideas, and, although it lacks the inexorability of its disciplined younger brother C Zadig, or the Book of Fate (1747), is Voltaire’s first novella of ideas, and, although it lacks the inexorability of its disciplined younger brother Candide (1759), it shares its comic vision and realistic assessment of the world. Featuring a cast of Babylonians, Egyptians, and Arabs, Zadig clearly takes for its model the Oriental tale—Galland’s French translation of The Arabian Nights had been completed in 1717—which was already famous for its marvelous incidents and episodic from. Part conte philosophique, part apologue, and part picaresque adventure (with a bit of the detective story and Solomonic wisdom tale thrown in), Zadig never ceases to entertain.
The novella relates the adventures of Zadig, a shrewd, bright honest young man who experiences the vicissitudes of life: he becomes, in turn, a betrayed husband, a prisoner, a prime minister, a slave, a robber gang’s prisoner, a knight in shining armor, a fake physician, the companion of a hermit (who turns out to be angel) and, finally, the King of Babylon.
Zadig continues to seek for a pattern in the good and the evil, in the up-and-down, of life. Jesrad (the angel disguised as a hermit) gives him the closest thing he ever gets to an explantion:
”That great and first Cause has created an infinite Number of Worlds, and no two of them alike. This vast Variety is an Attribute of his Omnipotence. There are not two Leaves on the Trees throughout the Universe, nor any two Globes of Light amongst the Myriad of Stars that deck the infinite Expanse of Heaven, which are perfectly alike. And whatever you see on that small Atom of Earth, whereof you are a Native, must exist in the Place, and at the Time appointed, according to the immutable Decrees of him who comprehends the Whole …. Frail Mortal! Cease to contend with what you ought to adore.” “But, said Zadig — whilst the Sound of the Word “But” dwelt upon his Tongue, the Angel took his Flight towards the tenth Sphere. Zadig sunk down upon his Knees, and acknowledg’d an over-ruling Providence with all the Marks of the profoundest Submission. The Angel, as he was soaring towards the Clouds, cried out in distinct Accents: “Make thy Way towards Babylon.”
First published in two installments in The Atlantic Monthly (1871), A Passionate Pilgrim is the earliest production of his imagination which James inc First published in two installments in The Atlantic Monthly (1871), A Passionate Pilgrim is the earliest production of his imagination which James included in his collected works. It is not only a successfully realized tale, but it is thoroughly representative, containing what would later be considered frequent Jamesian themes: the innocence heart of the American, the calculating mind of the European, and how they appreciate—and exploit—the beauties of the European world.
In this story, naive American Clement Searle, middle-aged but already in declining health, is convinced by the narrator—a recent acquaintance—to tour Lackley, the English estate he had once hoped might be his, but whose claim upon it has been rejected as insufficiently strong. Once there he meets his charming cousin, Miss Searle, and a tender friendship arises. But her brother Richard considers Clement nothing but a fortune hunter. To avoid further conflict, Clement and his friend depart for Oxford. But the saga of Clement Searle and Lackley is not yet done,
One of the things I like best about this early work is the enthusiastic, almost touristy descriptions of the English countryside. Some critics have found them superfluous and excessive, but I think they are just right. Not only do they reflect the attitude of young Henry—28 years old at the time this novella was published—but they also embody the passionate attachment the ailing Clement feels for this English world he fears he will never be able to possess.
In this passage, Clement and his companion approach Lackley for the first time:
Within the range of these numerous acres the declining spurs of the hills continued to undulate and subside. A long avenue wound and circled from the outermost gate through an untrimmed woodland, whence you glanced at further slopes and glades and copses and bosky recesses — at everything except the limits of the place … The weather had just become perfect; it was one of the dozen exquisite days of the English year — days stamped with a purity unknown in climates where fine weather is cheap. It was as if the mellow brightness, as tender as that of the primroses which starred the dark waysides like petals wind-scattered over beds of moss, had been meted out to us by the cubic foot — distilled from an alchemist’s crucible. From this pastoral abundance we moved upon the more composed scene, the park proper — passed through a second lodge-gate, with weather-worn gilding on its twisted bars, to the smooth slopes where the great trees stood singly and the tame deer browsed along the bed of a woodland stream. Here before us rose the gabled grey front of the Tudor-time, developed and terraced and gardened to some later loss, as we were afterwards to know, of type.
“Here you can wander all day,” I said to Searle, “like an exiled prince who has come back on tiptoe and hovers about the dominion of the usurper.”
“To think of ‘others’ having hugged this all these years!” he answered. “I know what I am, but what might I have been? What do such places make of a man?”
This 1752 novella by Voltaire is the first of his philosophical romances, but it is a long way from being his best. The best of course is Candide, tha This 1752 novella by Voltaire is the first of his philosophical romances, but it is a long way from being his best. The best of course is Candide, that magnificent skewering of that worst of all philosophical ideas, namely, the best of all possible worlds. But there are two other prose romances of Voltaire’s—Zadig and “The Huron, or the Pupil of Nature”—that are much better than “Micromegas” too, and both are based on much the same premise: an outsider examines contemporary society, and finds much that is baffling, ludicrous, and contemptible there.
In this case, the outsider is from outer space, an inhabitant of one of the planets of Sirius. (Thus Micromegasis, among other things, an extremely early work of science fiction, and therefore of considerable history interest. Banished from his own planet for heresy, he decides—accompanied by the Secretary of the Academy of Saturn—to investigate our solar system. So of course they check out Earth.
The central conceit of the novella—and the continual source of its humor—is that both the protagonist Micromegas and his friend the Secretary (who is so small that Micromegas considers him a dwarf), are both incredibly huge by earth standards, much smarter than humans, live much longer than we do, and are equipped with scores of senses as opposed to five. As a consequence, it is very difficult for these two aliens to take the pretentions of earth people seriously.
Here’s a sample passage, in which one of the philosophers of earth explains the “the Sirian” the human institution called war:
”Did you know, for example, that as I am speaking with you, there are 100,000 madmen of our species wearing hats, killing 100,000 other animals wearing turbans, or being massacred by them, and that we have used almost surface of the Earth for this purpose since time immemorial?”
The Sirian shuddered, and asked the reason for these horrible quarrels between such puny animals.
“It is a matter,” said the philosopher, “of some piles of mud as big as your heel. It is not that any of these millions of men that slit each other’s throats care about this pile of mud. It is only a matter of determining if it should belong to a certain man who we call ‘Sultan,’ or to another who we call, for whatever reason, ‘Czar.’ Neither one has ever seen nor will ever see the little piece of Earth, and almost none of these animals that mutually kill themselves have ever seen the animal for which they kill.”
“Oh! Cruel fate!” cried the Sirian with indignation, “who could conceive of this excess of maniacal rage! It makes me want to take three steps and crush this whole anthill of ridiculous assassins.” “Do not waste your time,” someone responded, “they are working towards ruin quickly enough. Know that after ten years only one hundredth of these scoundrels will be here. Know that even if they have not drawn swords, hunger, fatigue, or intemperance will overtake them.”
This classic Philip K. Dick tale, first published in Fantastic Universe (January 1956), is a richly rewarding work, at once an absorbing mystery, a na This classic Philip K. Dick tale, first published in Fantastic Universe (January 1956), is a richly rewarding work, at once an absorbing mystery, a nail-biting thriller, an exploration of a plausible social application of of precognitive abilities, a prescient glimpse into the coming surveillance state, a meditation on free will, and a wise assessment of the limits human character—all wrapped up with an honest and satisfying conclusion.
Dick’s long short story—almost novella length—is set in a future America that boasts a system of predictive policing called “Precrime” in which three precognitive mutants (otherwise congenital, unemployable isolates) look into the future, foreseeing crimes before they happen and thus enabling the authorities to arrest and exile the potential criminals before they become felons in fact.
But is such a system foolproof? What if, for example, there is a “minority report,” that is, what if one of the three mutants predicts a result that differs from the other two? What happens then? This question becomes personal for Police Commissioner John A. Anderton—a firm believer in the value of the Precrime system—when it predicts that he himself is destined to commit a murder. His attempt to save himself—and solve the dilemma and save the Pre-Crime system too—makes up the rest of the story.
One final note. Without giving anything away, I’d just like to say that the conclusion of the fine Spielberg movie differs from the book, and I believe it is inferior to Dick’s original conception. It transforms Anderton into a much simpler Hollywood-type characters—a servant of the system who sees the error of his ways and becomes a hero because of it. Dick’s Anderton is a much more conflicted, complex character, and his decisions—and their consequences—are both more tragic and more believable because of it....more
Seldom does a writer of natural horror equal in ghastliness the best of supernatural terror, but Jacques Chessex—in this novella about a defiler of yo Seldom does a writer of natural horror equal in ghastliness the best of supernatural terror, but Jacques Chessex—in this novella about a defiler of young girls’ graves active in the Swiss Canton of Vaud in the year 1903—manages to do just that.
Chessex accomplishes this in three ways: 1) he relates his detailed descriptions of sexual mutilation in a spare and disciplined prose, never once recoiling in disgust or smacking his lips in delight, 2) he envelops these otherwise sordid crimes with a supernatural aura, with references to monsters, charms, and prayers, and 3) he paints such a convincing portrait of the Swiss mountain people—fierce Calvinists ready to reach for a rosary when the going gets tough—that, although we never quite share their vision, we are affected by it, and experience both the clinical horrors and the spiritual terrors as they do.
This will give you an idea of the terror caused by the “vampire”:
“He didn’t touch her, the bastard, but he was there all the same, just look at the broken pane, and there, where the snow melted on the wood floor. You have to think he was scared off by the cloves of garlic and the crucifix she was sleeping with!”
For everywhere folk have again taken out the Christ they’ve kept hidden since Catholic days. Now, in every village and hamlet, you can see braided garlic and the holy images repugnant to the monster of Ropraz haning from the window frames and catches, from lintels, balconies, railings, even from secret doorways and in cellars. Crosses are erected again in this Protestant countryside where none have been seen for four centuries. The vampire fears the symbol of Christ? “There, that’ll make him think twice. And the dog is loose!”
This novella, first published in Galaxy (October 1954), is one of Philip K. Dick’s early masterpieces. This story of psychic mutants who dominate an E This novella, first published in Galaxy (October 1954), is one of Philip K. Dick’s early masterpieces. This story of psychic mutants who dominate an Earth colony, of the normals who live among them, and of a withdrawn little boy named Tim who—although distinctly not normal—appears to have no particular ability at all, not only welcomes the reader into a rich believable world and entertains him with a suspenseful plot, but presents him with disturbing moral choices too. Although brief, it is as compelling and fully-formed as any science fiction novel, and looks forward to other mature Dick works like Ubik and Martian Time-Slip.
l like Dick’s mutants a lot. First of all, they are not merely humans with superhero abilities; no, they are complex beings growing from their humanity into something distinctly other, with their own psychologies, their own moral codes. Most of all, they are not humanity’s saviors. Some of them are good, some evil. They have their own destinies, their own paths.
I particularly like the character of little Tim, and Dick’s way of presenting Tim’s methods of exploration, of his way of perceiving his world. Tim’s ways are both a complex mystery for the reader to solve and the basis of a satisfying moral conclusion.
Often Dick mars his great stories with bad endings. He doesn't make that mistake here....more
If you are a reader of taste and discernment, a reader who values their time, you could do worse than pick up this little volume of tales by Nikolai G If you are a reader of taste and discernment, a reader who values their time, you could do worse than pick up this little volume of tales by Nikolai Gogol. How many books of a merely 231 pages can offer you four masterpieces (three short stories, one novella) and one delightful, expertly crafted short story that might convince you it was a masterpiece too if you had discovered it almost anywhere except in this august company?
From the first, Gogol was an outsider. Ukrainian-born but descended from Cossacks; a gentleman but of the lesser gentry; fiercely ambitious, but moody and solitary, his schoolmates called him “our mysterious dwarf.” His early work was a series of Ukrainian stories, but his mother had to help him research the details, for he had only a little knowledge of his own history. His later tales are set in St. Petersburg, the governmental capital of Russia, from whose closely regulated social hierarchy he felt alienated, and which he held in great contempt. Still an outsider, he was a Ukrainian in a Russian world. Fortunately, though, St. Petersburg recognized great work when they saw it: Pushkin admired him, his play The Government Inspector was a success, and Gogol was welcomed into the literary world.
The tale of Gogol’s life grows darker from then on, but all the works in this small volume are taken from this early period. Taras Bulba is a romantic epic in miniature, an account of the Cossack people at war with the Poles, filled with savagery and heroism. The other masterpieces here are all taken from his “St. Petersburg Tales,” ironic depictions of petty men obsessed with their position in a bureaucratic hierarchy: in the ghostly tale “The Overcoat”—perhaps the greatest of the works here—a bureaucrat seeks (and loses) a new coat to uphold his declining status; in the surrealistic work “The Nose,” a bureaucrat’s own nose abandons him, and goes off to seek social status on its own; and in wildly funny and pathetic “The Diary of a Madman,” a bureaucratic clerk obsessively in love with his employer’s daughter disintegrates into increasingly delusions. (The other tale, the comically anti-climactic “The Carriage,” though it is set in a little town where the cavalry is stationed and features a local landowner and former cavalryman, is filled with same concerns for social status as “The St. Petersburg Tales.”)
The translation here is a good one, and flows easily. I didn’t find the afterward by Priscilla Meyer all that helpful. But at least it is mercifully brief....more
It may seem ironic that in 1845—the year the Irish potato failed, the Andover workhouse scandal began, and Friedrich Engel’s The Condition of the Work It may seem ironic that in 1845—the year the Irish potato failed, the Andover workhouse scandal began, and Friedrich Engel’s The Condition of the Working Class in England was first published—Charles Dickens decided to forgo the social criticism evident in his first two Christmas books, A Christmas Carol and The Chimes , and to concentrate on a sentimental tale of the English family instead. Perhaps Dickens was responding to criticism that The Chimes was too radical; perhaps he merely wished to develop a few narrative fragments left over from his abortive periodical The Cricket, intended to be a tribute to the English hearth and home. Whatever the reason, Cricket was popular, and profitable, though the critical reception was mixed.
It is certainly sentimental. The middle-aged John Peerybingle, due to a set of deceptive circumstances (the sort common to sitcoms and romcoms), fears that his devoted young wife "Dot"—mother of his infant son—has been unfaithful to him. He is wrong of course (this is a Dickens’ Christmas entertainment, after all!), and—once confidence has been restored and tearful faces dried—the Peerybingle abode is once again what it had been: a humble, happy English home. There is the usual wealth of characters with memorable names: the loyal but reckless nanny Tilly Slowboy; the miserly old toymaker Tackleton, old Caleb Plummer who carves Tackleton’s “noah’s arks” and his blind daughter Bertha who sews the “unseeing eyes" on the faces of Tackleton’s dolls. Watching over the Peerybingle household is the Cricket, the lares and penates of the English hearth, chirping his joyous and protective song.
I enjoyed The Cricket on the Hearth, both because of and in spite of its sentimentality, but—trigger warning!—it contains passages so frolicsome, so candied, that they may be dangerous to the health of diabetic readers, particularly if they are sensitive to style. For example, take the following excerpt, where "Dot" Peerybingle’s wifely virtues are enthusiastically exemplified by the pains she takes to clean and fill her husband’s pipe:
She was, out and out, the very best filler of a pipe, I should say, in the four quarters of the globe. To see her put that chubby little finger in the bowl, and then blow down the pipe to clear the tube, and, when she had done so, affect to think that there was really something in the tube, and blow a dozen times, and hold it to her eye like a telescope, with a most provoking twist in her capital little face, as she looked down it, was quite a brilliant thing. As to the tobacco, she was perfect mistress of the subject; and her lighting of the pipe, with a wisp of paper, when the Carrier had it in his mouth — going so very near his nose, and yet not scorching it — was Art, high Art.
And the Cricket and the kettle, turning up again, acknowledged it! The bright fire, blazing up again, acknowledged it! The little Mower on the clock, in his unheeded work, acknowledged it! The Carrier, in his smoothing forehead and expanding face, acknowledged it, the readiest of all.
It would be unfair, however, to close with this glimpse of Dickens at his worst, Dickens so close to self-parody. Instead, consider this reflective statement made by old John Perrybingle the Carrier, who blames himself for whatever temptation his young wife Dot may have faced while married to him:
‘Did I consider,’ said the Carrier, ‘that I took her — at her age, and with her beauty — from her young companions, and the many scenes of which she was the ornament; in which she was the brightest little star that ever shone, to shut her up from day to day in my dull house, and keep my tedious company? Did I consider how little suited I was to her sprightly humour, and how wearisome a plodding man like me must be, to one of her quick spirit? Did I consider that it was no merit in me, or claim in me, that I loved her, when everybody must, who knew her? Never. I took advantage of her hopeful nature and her cheerful disposition; and I married her. I wish I never had! For her sake; not for mine!’
Ah! There's a glimpse of a Dickens’ character at his best, touched by the self-knowledge and compassion that comes after great travail, the kind of insight that, through their difficult journeys, Copperfield, Carton, Pip and even old Dombey came face to face with at the last!...more
The short novel The Captain’s Daughter (1836) is the last of Pushkin’s great achievements; he published it in his thirty-seventh year, months before t The short novel The Captain’s Daughter (1836) is the last of Pushkin’s great achievements; he published it in his thirty-seventh year, months before the duel that led to his death.
The proof of its genius is that, although it often seems to be many books at once—a near-parody of a naive young officer’s memoir, a realistic depiction of a godforsaken military backwater, an accurate historical novelization of an often brutal Russian rebellion, an unabashedly romantic tale in which the hero rescues his eponymous heroine, a surprising fairy tale with a denouement in which the captain’s daughter’s returns the favor—it also never ceases to be one resplendent unity: a sincere homage to the works of Sir Walter Scott but a criticism of him too, refining the scotsman’s themes and concentrating his effects with a more disciplined, though still romantic, style. As such, it resembles Hugo’s historical meditation Notre Dame de Paris (1831) and foreshadows the swashbuckling Dumas novels to come.
Here, to give you a taste of Pushkin’s realism and humor, is our hero’s account of his arrival at the isolated border fort where most of the story takes place:
“Is it far from here to the fort?” I asked the driver.
“Why, you can see it from here,” replied he.
I began looking all round, expecting to see high bastions, a wall, and a ditch. I saw nothing but a little village, surrounded by a wooden palisade. On one side three or four haystacks, half covered with snow; on another a tumble-down windmill, whose sails, made of coarse limetree bark, hung idly down.
“But where is the fort?” I asked, in surprise.
“There it is yonder, to be sure,” rejoined the driver, pointing out to me the village which we had just reached.
I noticed near the gateway an old iron cannon. The streets were narrow and crooked, nearly all the cottages were thatched. I ordered him to take me to the Commandant, and almost directly my wagon stopped before a wooden house, built on a knoll near the church, which was also in wood. No one came to meet me. From the steps I entered the ante-room.
. . . I looked out of the narrow window. I saw stretching out before me a bare and dull steppe; on one side there stood some huts. Some fowls were wandering down the street. An old woman, standing on a doorstep, holding in her hand a trough, was calling to some pigs, the pigs replying by amicable grunts.
And it was in such a country as this I was condemned to pass my youth!
Henry James wrote the long short story “The Madonna of the Future” (1873) at the age of thirty, but although it features his early, relatively straigh Henry James wrote the long short story “The Madonna of the Future” (1873) at the age of thirty, but although it features his early, relatively straightforward style, it is subtle in the way it combines its themes: America’s discovery of Europe, the American artist’s particular challenges, the representations of woman in art (as contrasted with actual women), and the plight of the cerebral and tentative artist who wraps himself in preparatory notes and theorizing, afraid to begin the work which summons him now.
The narrator is a Mr. H—, an American, “a clever man who had seen much of men and manners,” who relates an after-dinner story of an artist he met during his first trip to Italy. While taking a walk his first night in Florence, he encounters Theobald, another American, a painter, who guides him—on this night and subsequent nights—to some of the great artistic wonders of the city. He also speaks of the dilemma of the American artist:
“We are the disinherited of Art!” he cried. “We are condemned to be superficial! We are excluded from the magic circle. The soil of American perception is a poor little barren artificial deposit. Yes! we are wedded to imperfection. An American, to excel, has just ten times as much to learn as a European. We lack the deeper sense. We have neither taste, nor tact, nor power. How should we have them? Our crude and garish climate, our silent past, our deafening present, the constant pressure about us of unlovely circumstance, are as void of all that nourishes and prompts and inspires the artist, as my sad heart is void of bitterness in saying so! We poor aspirants must live in perpetual exile.”
Eventually, he shares with his young friend some knowledge of his one great work, a painting of the Madonna, and even introduces him to Serefina, his model for the painting. The young Mr. H— is surprised and disappointed to observe that she is something less than aetherial ("She had been that morning to confession,” he tells us, “she had also been to market, and had bought a chicken for dinner"). But the most dismaying thing about her—though she is undeniably beautiful--is her appearance. Theobald—ever theorizing, ever taking notes--has too long delayed the completion of his painting: his perfect Madonna Serafina has grown old.
The rest of the story is melancholy, but moving and instructive. It haunts me, for I am a would-be novelist, given to too much note-taking. Who knows? Perhaps this story will haunt you too....more
This Philip K. Dick novella (first published in Space Science Fiction in 1953) is inventive and interesting, but it lacks the reality-challenging pers This Philip K. Dick novella (first published in Space Science Fiction in 1953) is inventive and interesting, but it lacks the reality-challenging perspective that characterizes most of his best work.
In the second century of the second millennium, the Terrans, new to intergalactic conflict, are at war with the old empire of Proxima Centauri. Recently, their conflict has been a “cold war” of sorts—consisting of weapons development, intelligence gathering, and probability estimates—but the Terrans have now developed a weapon so original and devastating that they are determined to use it. They have almost perfected Icarus, a bomb which not only travels at a speed greater than light, but uses its increased mass from traveling at such speeds as an integral part of its power. Recent probability estimates have been distinctly in favor of Terra, until, of a sudden, they begin to fluctuate wildly: due to a technological glitch, an itinerant 19th century “Mr. Fix-it” type has been scooped up and dropped into the world of present-day Terra. He is Thomas Cole, “The Variable Man,” and now that he has entered the Terran time continuum, all bets are off.
I thought this was a fine idea for a short story, stretched to novella length by a conventional (and uninspired) account of Cole’s flight and Terra’s pursuit. Nevertheless, it makes for pleasant reading, and redeems itself with a surprising and thought-provoking conclusion....more
This story was written in 1922 for publication in the humor magazine Home Brew. Although it is far from being one of H.P.’s best tales, it is an early This story was written in 1922 for publication in the humor magazine Home Brew. Although it is far from being one of H.P.’s best tales, it is an early example of his ability to create an effective horrific setting, and because of this it should be of interest to any true Lovecraft fan.
The story is narrated by an unnamed seeker of “strange horrors” who is investigating the massacre of a community of some six dozen backwoods degenerates in an obscure region of the Catskills, a massacre which occurred during a particularly violent electrical storm and seems to have been perpetrated by an unidentified clawed beast. The narrator soon discovers that the most sinister legends of the region center around the abandoned Martense mansion, and he decides—together with two companions—to spend the night in the big old house. And thus our lengthy, four-part tale begins.
Oh, speaking of those four parts… the editor of Home Brew George Julian Houtain—the same man who commissioned “Herbert West, Re-Animator.”—once again instructed Lovecraft to construct a story in discrete parts, each to be published in a separate issue of the magazine, and requested that he end each installment with some kind of mini-climax. This story isn’t nearly as goofy and whimsical as “Herbert West”, and consequently suffers more because of Houtain’s editorial demands. The little climaxes tend to interfere with the tale’s serious atmosphere and menacing setting.
My hunch? "The Lurking Fear" was supposed to be humorous and exaggerated too. After all, its theme of hyper-rapid de-evolution is preposterous, even for a ‘20’s pulp horror tale (“Rats in the Walls” and “Innsmouth” handle the same thing much better), and the final revelatory detail about the monsters’ appearance strikes me as silly rather than horrific. I think Lovecraft got so caught up in imagining the mountainous New York woods that he lost track of his humorous objective. But the fact that he lost track is fine with me. I think these descriptive passages are one of the finer things in early Lovecraft....more
Soviet writer Yury Olesha really pulled something off with Envy (1927): he published a scathing satire of the pomposity and limited intellectual visio Soviet writer Yury Olesha really pulled something off with Envy (1927): he published a scathing satire of the pomposity and limited intellectual vision of a typical Soviet official, a satire which was favorably—and enthusiastically—reviewed by Pravda. How did he accomplish such a feat? By satirizing even more viciously the reactionary opponents of that official, demonstrating how a romantic self-conception may distort a person’s vision of achievement, until he is filled with nothing but a poisonous, corrosive envy.
The plot is simple. The layabout, drunken Kavalerov is befriended by Andrei Babichev, the manager of a meat factory who, because of this kindness, earns Kavalerov’s endying loathing. Bibichev’s goal is to open an affordable restaurant, the centerpiece of which will be his holy grail: a substantial, high quality, inexpensive sausage. Kavalerov soon joins forces with Andrei’s envious brother Ivan, and together they set out to smash Andrei Babichev’s dream.
Although the book bored me and puzzled me at times, I get the feeling some of this due to the translation, and some of it to my own inadequate knowledge of the culture of the early days of the Stalin's Soviet Union. Still, the novel has much to recommend it: biting satire, raucous humor, odd surrealist details, unsettling narrative shifts, and—above all—unusual metaphors and colorful language.
To give you an idea of the metaphors and language, I offer this passage this description the closing of the town market (heralded by its own metaphorical a sunset):
The afternoon was rolling up its stalls. A gypsy in a dark blue vest with painted cheeks and a beard hoisted a clean coper bowl on his shoulder. The bowl’s disk was bright and blind. The gypsy was walking slowly, the bowl was rocking gently, and the afternoon was spinning in its disk.
Sabato’s The Tunnel (1948) resembles Camus’ The Stranger (1942), for both are spare, short novels featuring murderer-protagonists as first person narr Sabato’s The Tunnel (1948) resembles Camus’ The Stranger (1942), for both are spare, short novels featuring murderer-protagonists as first person narrators, men who are profoundly alienated not only from their societies but also from any meaningful personal relationship. But the two protagonists are very different from each other too. Camus’ hero Meursault, a shipping clerk, is an unimaginative man alienated from his own emotions; Sabato’s hero Castel, a well-known painter, experiences his emotions intensely but projects them all onto a woman, the only woman—he believes—who can ever fully understand him. Meursault’s alienation leads to a murder of indifference, Sabato’s to a murder of obsession.
The reader watches in growing frustration and horror as Castel poisons what might have been a brief, sweet dalliance with a married woman who notices something in one of his paintings he believed only he and his ideal woman could ever see. His relentless, all-consuming hunger for her absolute devotion devours each romantic encounter, draining it of joy, and further intensifying his isolation. Then one day, that isolation blossoms into crime.
This is a fine book about the desperate loneliness of romantic obsession. If such an obsession has ever touched your life, you should find this short novel both disturbing and fascinating.
So why is it called The Tunnel? Sabato—and Castel--explains this metaphor toward the end of the book:
...it was if the two of us had been living in parallel passageways or tunnels, never knowing that we were moving side by side, like souls in like times, finally to meet before a scene I had painted as a kind of key meant for her alone, as a kind of secret sign that I was there ahead of her and that the passageways finally had joined and the hour of our meeting had come...What a stupid illusion that had been!...that the whole story of the passageways was my own ridiculous invention and that after all there was only one tunnel, dark and solitary: mine, the tunnel in which I had spent my childhood, my youth, my entire life.
This long short story, first published in the English Illustrated Magazine (1884), may appear to be little more than a "morbid" family drama (James' o This long short story, first published in the English Illustrated Magazine (1884), may appear to be little more than a "morbid" family drama (James' own word) further darkened by a melodramatic conclusion, but it is in fact something much richer and far more complicated. Unfortunately, its riches remain largely unearthed, its complications still bewilderingly entwined, its resolution far from satisfactory.
The story itself is simple. Mark Ambient is “the author of Beltraffio,” a celebrated novel which exemplifies the single-minded devotion to beauty prefigured in the pre-Raphaelites and expressed in the aesthetic movement of the 80's. Ambient's wife Beatrice, although the embodiment of beauty, detests her husband's amoral devotion to it, and, fearing his ideas may corrupt their beautiful—and sickly—seven year old son Dolcino, she does everything she can to keep him from being alone with his father. The unreliable narrator—a naïve young American, a devotee of the great writer—gives us an account of how this intensifying conflict affects the lives of the family during his visit to their country estate.
To understand the themes of this story, it is useful to inquire into its source. James, in his Notebooks, reveals that his initial inspiration was the marriage of John Addington Symonds. Art historian Symonds' conventional wife hated his writings for being “pagan” and “hyper-aesthetic” (in the words of Edmond Gosse), and the writer eventually left England for Italy where he sought the company of beautiful young men. Around the time “Beltraffio” was written, Symonds' treatise Male Love: A Problem in Greek Ethics. was being privately circulated in England.
Yes, this story is clearly about the conflict of Victorian Christian morality with the epicurean principles of the new hedonism, and how the war between them may be in danger of stifling beauty in blossom, but it is also about the new hedonism's embrace of sexual expression in general, and homosexual love in particular, and how that embrace may awaken the fears—legitimate or exaggerated—of the guardians of the Victorian family, how these very fears—not the tolerance of homosexual love itself—may be what puts our children in danger. Still, although we are called upon to side with the narrator and Mark Ambient, there are dark details which also lead us to share Beatrice's fear: the extraordinary beauty of the seven year old Dolcino, the hint of pederasty and incest, even the meaning of the word “Beltraffio” (“trafficking in beauty”).
James was no fan of the aesthetic movement (he once described Oscar Wilde as “a fatuous fool, a tenth-rate cad”), but I believe his guarded attitude toward his own sexuality kept him from achieving the candor and nuance which would have coherently unified the ambitious themes of this tale, transforming it from a very good story into a great one.
Later, when his style had grown in subtlety and power, James found a way to give this story's original impulse a richer artistic expression. Without completely jettisoning the theme of homosexuality, James decided that the central concept—the effect of a conventional woman's moral panic upon the children in her care—was best expressed from inside his female character, her fears and desires generating an astonishing complexity of themes. In this way, I believe, the masterpiece “The Turn of the Screw” was born....more
Henry James—who wrote not only novels of genius but also some very fine ghost stories—is known as the author of The Turn of the Screw, the most ambigu Henry James—who wrote not only novels of genius but also some very fine ghost stories—is known as the author of The Turn of the Screw, the most ambiguous ghostly tale ever written: so subtle, so evanescent that the reader can never be sure whether it actually contains a ghost, or not. But I think he should be known equally for The Altar of the Dead: a tale which contains not one hint of the supernatural and yet demonstrates with absolute clarity the firm hold that the dead may maintain over the fate of the living.
George Stransom, marked by the early demise of his fiancee Mary and the subsequent deaths of a host of his friends, is inspired—although he is in no sense religious—to endow a side-altar in a Catholic church, with one candle as a memorial for each of his dead. He visits his altar frequently, and soon begins to notice that another—a woman somewhat younger than himself—has begun to use his altar as her own. He is touched by her devotion, and for some time they join each other in mutual silent communion. Eventually he speaks, the two of them become friends, but then he learns something about her that not only ends their friendship, but destroys even his peacful contemplation of his cherished altar of the dead.
James wrote this story in 1895, soon after after he had lost his sister Alice to breast cancer and his good friend Constance Woolson to accident or suicide. He was fifty-two years old, and his list of personal dead was growing. All of this, I am sure, contributed to this deeply felt novella.
I like this tale because it is a “ghost story without a ghost,” but also because it is one of the most sincere tributes to ritual and remembrance ever made by a thoroughly secular writer. Those looking for conventional religion will not find it, but there is much of the spiritual, much of true reverence here.
What follows is the moment when Stransom first realizes that the idea of such an altar has taken up residence in his heart:
Quite how it had risen he probably never could have told you, but what came to pass was that an altar, such as was after all within everybody's compass, lighted with perpetual candles and dedicated to these secret rites, reared itself in his spiritual spaces. He had wondered of old, in some embarrassment, whether he had a religion; being very sure, and not a little content, that he hadn't at all events the religion some of the people he had known wanted him to have. Gradually this question was straightened out for him: it became clear to him that the religion instilled by his earliest consciousness had been simply the religion of the Dead. It suited his inclination, it satisfied his spirit, it gave employment to his piety. It answered his love of great offices, of a solemn and splendid ritual; for no shrine could be more bedecked and no ceremonial more stately than those to which his worship was attached. He had no imagination about these things but that they were accessible to any one who should feel the need of them. The poorest could build such temples of the spirit--could make them blaze with candles and smoke with incense, make them flush with pictures and flowers. The cost, in the common phrase, of keeping them up fell wholly on the generous heart.
It is not surprising Kafka loved this novella so much that it often brought him to tears, for here, a hundred years before Kafka, Kleist created a her It is not surprising Kafka loved this novella so much that it often brought him to tears, for here, a hundred years before Kafka, Kleist created a hero whose single-minded attempt to right one act of injustice leads him into a nebulous world of bureaucratic timidity, familial influence, and existential absurdity where he is transformed into a criminal, defined as a terrorist, and eventually deprived of everything in life except one final secret, one silence.
But the marvelous thing about Michael Kohlhaas—this absurdist narrative, this existentialist precursor—is that it is also an exciting. realistic narrative based on actual 16th century events, filled with concrete, colorful details and an instructive glimpse of 16th century politics.
The outline of the story is simple: horse-dealer Kohlhaas is compelled to stop at a tollgate where two of his horses are unjustly seized as collateral by the men of Junker Wenzel von Tronka. When Kohlhaas returns and finds his horses have been beaten and abused, he demands they be restored to their original condition and returned to him. The nobleman von Tronka refuses, and soon Kohlhaas is at war with the powers that be, not only in Saxony but in his native Brandenburg as well.
Although I like Michael Kohlhaas for the absurdity of its universe, I love it for the Romantic folly of its hero. He is a relentless man who requires one small thing, a thing which is owed him, and he is prepared to burn down a country to get what he is rightly his due. But my favorite detail of the novel is the mysterious aura surrounding the small paper Kohlhaas carries with him, the paper which makes his last triumphant gesture possible: is it the gift of a random fortune teller, or the gift of a loving ghost in disguise?...more
There are pleasures for the Nero Wolfe addict in this wartime collection of three novellas, but this is far from Rex Stout's best. Highlight: chafing There are pleasures for the Nero Wolfe addict in this wartime collection of three novellas, but this is far from Rex Stout's best. Highlight: chafing under WW II rationing, Wolfe the gourmet works for a crime boss in order to obtain good black market meat....more
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