Monday, April 30, 2018

Christmas Formula and other stories by Stella Benson (1932)

This is a limited edition volume published a year before this author's untimely death. It contains only three stories, but they are belters. Benson comes from the era, typified and personified slightly later by Katherine Anne Porter, when the ending of a story was considered a vital part of the art. The first and third stories here show mastery in that element, and indeed many others. The second, the title-story, is more impressive for its ideas. The first piece, Tchotl, concerns itself with a 'typical' American living in China in the twenties and thirties. Nielsen is full of egalitarian ideals, notions of the Great American Way, and various plans for the future betterment of humankind. He is, as was consonant with American nationality at that time, a salesman of these notions. Along comes Chin Yu-Ting, a local Chinese with an eager attitude toward intellectualism and with cosmopolitan leanings. Nielsen's sales pitch is fascinating for him, even though he feels slightly at sea with some of the American's malapropisms. Eventually he finds himself waylaid from his deepest interest in comparative theology, and enthused by the idea of a universal language as sold by Nielsen. It is the pet project of the moment of some of his friends back home. Tchotl will solve the world's ills and make brothers of us all. As he goes to retrieve a textbook (cost, only 5 dollars!) for Chin, Nielsen strays across the latest newspaper from home, and sees that his friends have given it up as a bad job through lack of take-up. Of course, he carries on and sells the textbook to Chin, still promoting away, but is secretly intrigued by his friends' latest idea - making food from dirt! The title story is a horrified squeal of worry over what was seen at the time as the inevitable downslide of culture into contentless emptiness. The narrator takes a preoccupied boatride home, so busy that they only vaguely notice that things don't seem quite right. It turns out that they've time-slipped into a nightmare future. As they arrive back in Britain it is Christmas time. But every point of celebration is fake - they are "kissed by Mother" on the gangplank off the boat by an official grey-haired lady with an armband, then shoved along the queue. Before moving on, they receive a drop of Mother's Tears from a little bottle on their foreheads. They're required to pay a Merry-Christmas-Present Levy, which doesn't go to the poor, rather to the Board of Salesmen. They need a Licence to Enjoy-Merry-Christmas. They are welcome to go to Peter Pan as a celebration. But, once there, they discover that no-one really knows what the origin of this old 'Peeting Up Ann' ritual really is, and the huge hall is empty of anything except huge infantile ads up on the screen. While leaving they receive a Merry-Christmas-Present from Auntie - 'to YOU' of a camera, which turns out to be a token made of paper and falls apart in their hands. Inside its crumbled mess is its only picture - of YOU. A skull grins out of the image threateningly. The narrator desperately skedaddles back to the boat, the only passenger on it back to the old world. The last story also has a sinister edge. A Dream is a recounting of as much as was possible of one that Benson had. A very nervous lady, Mrs Wander, is awaiting a medical procedure, and in a flap about it. Her friend Mary, the doctor and the nurse appear to be holding something back. She gets more and more frightened and worried as the anaesthetist draws near. She decides to escape, fearing they will operate on her brain, the idea of which traumatises her even further. She wrenches free and finds herself outside in a blasted valley, where amorphous sound booms down through the searing sky, and the bare ground is littered with cracked boulders and fried bushes. As she reaches the desperately desired skyline, hoping for better in the next valley, things do indeed change. She sees before her a green empty decline, and a leaden sky instead of a fiery one. Tucked in to one side is a tiny cottage with a higgledy garden which she half recognises. As she approaches the door, a memory returns. Her nurse Zillah lives here! Wonderful! Zillah opens the door and is initially welcoming to her 'lambie'. But soon she appears preoccupied and concerned and a little awkward. Mrs Wander realises that something is wrong. The shock hits as she realises the truth. This can't be right, because Zillah is long dead. She confronts the figure of her old nurse with this fact very directly, almost accusingly - "you're dead...". Zillah, in the very last line, responds equally directly - "So are you." These three are incredibly satisfying, and show Benson's mastery of this form with bright, concentrated colouring and powerful skill.

Tuesday, April 24, 2018

Concerning the Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli by Ronald Firbank (1926)

Firbank's last completed novel is as camply exotic and hesitatingly brazen as his others. It deals with a Catholic archbishop in southern Spain who has come to the notice of the Pope because of his 'eccentric' ways, which include not only looseness of method in carrying out his duties, but sensualism of a variety of kinds. This is rightfully sensitive material these days. I don't think it would be right to attempt to excuse Firbank his fascination with these things, rather one needs to record them as emblematic of the period. And it is needful to separate his literary legacy from the legacy of attitudes which contributed to a lot of misery. It is this literary effort which is, after all, Firbank's claim to note. Cardinal Pirelli is omni-sensual, as so many of this author's characters are. He is noted here as a chaser after women, and of the young postulants of uncertain age who form part of the cathedral community. What is undeniable is the by now well-known ornate, name-tasting, exclamatory, fulsome-hinting, bracingly coloured forced bloom of style erupting in stripped bursts over every page. These denominators ramp up into a breathless apogee of High Camp iconoclasm. Having recieved hints of the fact that the pontiff is concerned, Pirelli holidays for a period in the mountains above Clemenza, his diocesan centre. All the intrigue and vying for position among the community and the congregation that has been so lovingly recorded by Firbank carries on in his absence much as before, with the added fillip of gossip about Pirelli. Then, in a dreamlike last scene back home, he wanders at night into the Cathedral, where he has wolfishly arranged a rendezvous with a young chorister, who avoids his physical advances. In a strangely Gothic twist, silent lightning flickers over the scene. We are to presume, I think, that the youthful agility of the chorister wears the ageing Pirelli out in the chase. He slumps to his demise and is discovered nude by a doleful female sycophant who has been keeping loving watch on him. The age of the chorister is remarkably unclear and I think it is this which gives many readers cause for concern, quite rightly. The fact that this superceded attitude is given expression with such extortionately original vitality is, though, the key balancing care.

Saturday, April 21, 2018

The Last Days by Raymond Queneau (1936)

This is the story of a few young men, and three old ones, milling around a part of Paris in the early twenties. The young men are all students and one of the old men is one of their teachers. We don't see them at the ecole, though, rather at various bars and occasionally at their homes. It represents the last days of the title in being the period just before all three old men die, and also being the time just before the young men graduate and divide off into their further lives. It is typically Queneauian in that it has a fair amount of play in it, both literally and in the sense of room for movement. His predilection for enjoying angles which illuminate these characters from odd viewpoints, or celebrate them in a way which treats them half-seriously, toying considerably with their obsessions, seeing through them ruthlessly and yet somehow fondly in an attitude of "it's all a game of cards, let's throw them up and see where they land", is prominent here. His special outlook of amused detachment is decorated in this instance quite sparingly with wordplay - it doesn't happen often, but just often enough to be notable. Words like chathowling, or bombinated, or lumbricated, or anticfray spitter through the text giving it the unmistakable look of the modern for its context. The old man who is their teacher is beset with doubts as to his right to teach geography, given his lack of travel. One of the other old men is a crook, devising schemes by which he might fleece people and acquire the cash to keep his mistress interested. One of the young men is quite retiring and tender and yet envious of his more explosive fellows. Another of them disappears overseas in an attempt to kickstart more of a life for himself. Another prepares to enter the army. Another tries to get a job as an assistant with the crook, but is upstaged by another wilier one, who then grows quickly disenchanted with his new boss' silly schemes. Women flit in and out of some of their lives, but never seem to stick. We take a tumble through all of this, amusedly looking at them without ever becoming haughty in the process - Queneau keeps us grounded. His final view of them is that of a barman who has recurred at points throughout our amble, and who has developed his own semi-mathematical and semi-astrological scheme of predicting events from a combination of cards and calculations, mainly for the purpose, when the time is right, of betting on the horses and repaying a giant debt of his father's, but also for giving advice to anyone who asks at the counter. This comes to fruition after the deaths of the three old men, and in the last chapter he watches with some self-congratulation at his window as the crowds of Paris mill by on all their schemes of life, mulling over how different everyone is, and yet how the same. It's a good point of reference for this gently funny, but also fateful and amusedly sour tour.

Commonplace Book

'...Pfuel was one of those hopelessly and immutably self-confident men, self-confident to the point of martyrdom as only Germans are, because only Germans are self-confident on the basis of an abstract notion - science, that is, the supposed knowledge of absolute truth. A Frenchman is self-assured because he regards himself personally both in mind and body as irresistibly attractive to men and women. An Englishman is self-assured as being a citizen of the best-organised state in the world and therefore, as an Englishman, always knows what he should do and knows that all he does as an Englishman is undoubtedly correct. An Italian is self-assured because he is excitable and easily forgets himself and other people. A Russian is self-assured just because he knows nothing and does not want to know anything, since he does not believe that anything can be known. The German's self-assurance is worst of all, stronger and more repulsive than any other, because he imagines that he knows the truth - science - which he himself has invented but which is for him the absolute truth.'

from War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (Book 9, Chapter 10)

Wednesday, April 4, 2018

Love and the Soul Hunters by John Oliver Hobbes (1902)

I am very much enjoying Hobbes' 'recovery' from her perhaps Anthony Hope-inspired, perhaps simply Catholic, perhaps Wilde Trial-wary detour around the turn of the century. This one is a confirmation of her return to her second manner - a tale of Edwardian high society, centred on love and decorated with high aphorism. It also engages what must have been a key subject for the author, given her background - the interconnection and rival status of America in British society at that time. The key American player here is the mother of the female protagonist, who is known as La Belle Valentine; a forcible, handsome and blowsy woman of mixed reputation who would have been perfectly played by Ava Gardner in her prime. She left her dreary English gentleman husband years ago, and hasn't seen her daughter since she was a child. Seeing her again in a hotel in Salsomaggiore for the first time as an adult, she is struck by her daughter's beauty and intelligence. Also staying at the hotel is someone whose profile almost seems a stock one for this period, the exiled prince of Urseville-Beylestein, Paul. He has with him his trusted secretary-assistant, Felshammer. Paul is charming, good looking and well capable of making women feel delighted that he's fixated on them. Felshammer is colder and less appealing, but more intense. Both of these men fall for Clementine, Valentine's daughter; Paul in his usual vein, with ultimately superficial play at the heart of his approach, while Felshammer falls heavily because unaccustomedly. Clementine is gifted some of the best conversational lines in the piece in her awareness of Paul's lack of seriousness (despite his protestations otherwise) and her verbal beating off of Felshammer's unwanted intensity. As fortunes swell and wane and the centre of action moves to London, Clementine confirms to herself that neither of their 'loves' is what she wants, but that, if Paul was able to drop his attitude of flippancy and value her above and beyond other playful conquests, she would more than welcome his advances. She's besotted with him, but also understands his weaknesses and is determined not to capitulate. Felshammer she respects, but cannot bear the idea of love in relation to him. Amongst the lesser characters gambling debts pile up, financial deals are lost and made, trips to America are mooted, society hostesses fight among themselves...and then, in a wooded lane in Kew, Paul is shot while coming away from seeing Clementine. It soon transpires that Felshammer's jealousy has overmastered him. Paul's injury is life-threatening, and this is what he needs to make him realise what he needs to change in his life. He finally renounces all claim to the Urseville-Beylestein throne (much to his dragon-mother's disgust) and opens his heart fully to Clementine. Felshammer feels he must secretly come clean as the shooter, and the two men reach a semi-respectful and very private agreement never to see one another again. This one has a few faultlines, a major one being that we don't really get a sense of Paul's change of heart near the end. But it's still highly entertaining, and the aphoristic prose is a thing to savour.

Sunday, April 1, 2018

Commonplace Book

'...Our greatest passions can be traced to our meanest instincts, and the fine names we have invented for successful selfishness mean no more in reality than the base ones which we contemptuously bestow on the selfishness which fails...'

from Love and the Soul Hunters by John Oliver Hobbes (Chapter XXVII)