The Wallet of Kai Lung, Ernest Bramah Smith

   I am new to Ernest Bramah. After a number of Japanese pieces of literature, I wanted to read something Chinese. The Wallet of Kai Lung certainly sounds Chinese. Ernest Bramah certainly doesn't sound Chinese. Is it a pseudonym? No it isn't. He's from England. Well, by the time I had that figured out I was already well into the story.
   Bramah's article on Wikipedia states that his works would be compared with those far more famous. That is to say, "His humorous works were ranked with Jerome K. Jerome and W. W. Jacobs, his detective stories with Conan Doyle, his politico-science fiction with H. G. Wells and his supernatural stories with Algernon Blackwood. George Orwell acknowledged that Bramah's book, What Might Have Been, influenced his Nineteen Eighty-Four. Bramah created the characters Kai Lung and Max Carrados."
   To be honest, until reading that bit about "What Might Have Been might have influenced his Nineteen Eighty-Four", I might never have felt the need to read another of his works. That is not to say that The Wallet of Kai Lung is bad. It is in fact a series of short stories, two of which I enjoyed in particular: "The Story of Yung Chang" and "The Vision of Yin, the Son of Yat-Huang." I also enjoyed, though to a lesser degree, "The Vision of Yin, the Son of Yat Huang." The writing style is good, but I could not read more than a single chapter in a single sitting without having to prop my eyes open with pins. Another issue was I had a hard time keeping track of the names. I don't know why I didn't have this problem with the Japanese stories that I read.
   Wikipedia's quotes from the stories are as follows:

•     "He who lacks a single tael sees many bargains"
•     "It is a mark of insincerity of purpose to spend one’s time in looking for the sacred Emperor in low-class teashops"
•     "It has been said there are few situations in life that cannot be honourably settled, and without loss of time, either by suicide, a bag of gold or by thrusting a despised antagonist over the edge of a precipice on a dark night"

I only recall reading the first two.
   There are another four of these books. Will I read another? I don't think so. But, that does not mean I recommend against it.

The Country Doctor, Franz Kafka

   Franz Kafka's novella, "Metamorphosis,"  and short story "The Hunger Artist," has forever placed Kafka as one of my personal top 10 or 20 preferred writer's list for the 20th century. So, when I found "The Country Doctor" by Kafka on feedbooks.com, I of course had to read it. It would seem that it is supposed to be a series of stories. I must hunt down the rest of them and be a bit more diligent in hunting down as much of his work as I possibly can.
   I'm not sure how to look at this story. It's like a backtrack to a very distant age when doctors were largely incapable of doing very much to help people. Their equipment was extremely primitive. For instance, when he listens to the heart of the patient, he must place his head against the chest rather than use any instrument.
   He discovers that the problem with the farmer is that he is infested with worms. There's nothing he can do to help him. Regardless, he is stripped naked and forced to lay with the dying man by the family. He is instructed to save the man or be killed should the man die. Fortunately, he is able to escape through the window with his clothes in hand with the assistance of a powerful team of horses which he had been able to borrow.
   I had no idea what kind of story this was when I started it. But it was definitely a journey into a very strange world. What a loss to literature it was when he died so young. What amazing literature he left behind. He really has very very few peers.

The White Stocking, D. H. Lawrence

  

   D. H. Lawrence is one of a few legendary English literature writers of the last century that I have not read anything of. I'm not sure why. I guess I have always had this idea that his writing would be dreadfully boring. This is rather silly I suppose. For what reason I have this impression from him I could not say. Did I see a movie or film adapted from one of his stories or novels and find that boring and used it to forever tarnish my impression of him? I cannot really say. Well, I often see his name on lists of controversial books. Controversial books and writers are often more interesting than the rest. So, I guess I finally found myself motivated to read this short story of his. "The White Stocking" is available in various formats at goodreads.com.
   I think that if I had read this story 10 years ago I might have found it to be boring as expected. But I found some perverse pleasure in reading it. It's the story of a yearling wife who hasn't quite moved on past the other relationships with other men that tempted her before her choice of husband. The other man had decided to send her earrings and the stocking she had lost at a party which had ultimately defined her choice of husband.
   She hadn't quite moved on from that scene and hung onto the fond memories of her with this other man. As her husband discovers that she still has some interest in her former admirer, and she becomes internally cognizant of her lustful desires, and aware of the lustful desires he had had for her, he becomes enraged. On the verge of uncontrollable anger, he strikes her.
   At least for the moment, she is subdued. They fall asleep together in each others arms.
   This story seems to be about how to own your wife when she's thinking of other men. I can't help but wonder that feminists haven't torn this short story to shreds. Where is Lawrence on this? There's the idea that a writer can write a story about something while holding it at arm's length. This is the story free from any judgment. But I think it was an endorsement.
  

The River Sumida, Kafu Nagai

   In my previous entry about Japanese literature I mentioned that I generally detest romance in stories that I read. I mentioned that I found the finish to be quite lovely and poetic. Well, if that was a flourish at the end, this story is a romance largely from beginning to end. Further, I enjoyed the sweet sorrow, romance, and poetry of the novella. "The River Sumida" can be found freely, courtesy of Archive.org.
   Both stories follow the life of a young boy who grows up to become a young man. However, "When I was a Boy in Japan" ends in a happy picturesque moment: a unity of affection between two good and happy middle class people. "The River Sumida" leaves with scant hope for Chokichi, the main character.
   He lives a happy enough life. His mother takes care of him. They are poor, but they manage. That is, until his childhood love gets turned over to a geisha house. Geisha aren't really prostitutes, are they? Or is that naive? I have heard some say that they are not. But surely that is an unrealistic distinction. Perhaps they are not supposed to, but they do. In any case, the house swallows her up.
   This causes Chokichi a great deal of depression. He largely gives up on school. He skips much of it as he tries to deal with his crippling depression. He watches a play in which he sees himself, the young man, who loses the one he loves to a geisha house. The young man dies in the play, and it ends in a kind of sad farewell between the play's two characters. So, seeing that play, he decides to follow in the character's footsteps.
   One cold day during an early Spring rain he attempts to throw his life away. His uncle, left behind to guard the house as his mother goes to try to save him, ends up nosing around in the boy's room, and discovers a half written letter, sees the unhappy fate of love between the two, and swears to himself to help his nephew better in the future. However, it is unclear whether or not the boy will survive. Survival is for those who have the will for it, not those who have discarded the will.
   Therefore, the two tales are in fact contrasts with one another. While the first was enjoyable, "The River Sumida" is rich in metaphor, visualizations, descriptions, and poetic nuance. If some reader of my blog exists, then I would recommend reading this one without reservation.

Diary of a Madman, Nikolai Gogol

    I am always interested in strange or weird fiction. I'm not sure how I discovered this particular story or this particular author. There are numerous sources for this text. Gutenberg.org is often a favorite of mine, even though their output is more anemic than many other sources, the quality of their work is often adequate. Wikipedia writes, "...(it) is considered to be one of Gogol's greatest short stories." In any case, on to the story.
   The diary is fictitious: the main character, Aksenty Ivanovich Poprishchin, is a kind of protagonist whose adversary is himself, or the illness which takes hold of him. He starts off like any one of us might: a normal, underachieving bureaucrat. He is pretty much fine. What instigates the descent into madness is unknown. But it does seem to stem from unrequited love. Though, to blame that would be to ignore the fact that similar descents into madness.
   The madness would be cliche today. Perhaps it was already cliché by the time Gogol got around to writing his story. He comes to believe that he is a Spanish emperor and assumes the mantle. It reminds me somewhat of Don Quixote who suffers from a similar delusion: that of becoming a knight. His irrationality, however, does not bring him to an asylum. Quixote, of course, believes himself to be someone or something much more common than that of an emperor. Another difference is that with Quixote everything was real: what was not was the interpretation of everything. So he saw a hotel and interpreted it as a castle. For Poprishchin, he hears the dogs' conversations and intercepts their letters. 
   What separates us from this madness of believing ourselves to be someone we are not. Surely we all start at that point and either become that person or fail to become that person. Even if we become that person we might be judged to be unworthy of that title. So, someone like Neil Degrasse Tyson says he is a scientist. He has the degree. He talks about politics and science. Does he practice science or does he merely talk about it with his degree and name on a paper along with a parade of other scientists. How does he become a scientist. Is it his own perception of himself? Is it the recognition of the institution that he has graduated in a scientific field? For myself, I would say that a scientist is one who practices science, and that I have not seen any evidence that he does so. A child, who experiments, is a scientist. For, that is what a scientist is. That is my definition, which I appropriate from Picasso on his decree that everyone is born an artist, and that the challenge is how to remain an artist. Perhaps one might say the same of Poprishchin: the challenge is not to be the emperor of Spain, but rather how to remain the emperor of Spain despite the many people who would try to convince him otherwise. 
   In any event, I am sure I will be all too happy to read another of Gogol's short stories.

The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha is often referred to only as Don Quixote. This is a classic piece of literature. In the past, I have made two attempts to read it, but due to its length and other factors, I never got around to finishing it. I started reading it again from the beginning and this time have completed it. There are numerous free sources online, I'm sure. My copy comes courtesy of Gutenberg.org.

The novel is widely regarded as the first modern novel. Where there are famous novels, great popular works of literature, whose titles most people know of even if they have never read them, and even if those works are better known, Don Quixote is legendary. It is a ground breaking exploration into a new art form which remains one of the most popular and integral to basic education.

I have a set of mixed feelings about the central character, Don Quixote. There are certain parallels between his character and mine which are similar. Don Quixote has decided to become a knight errant, believing in the fictional universe which the books of knight errantry, a popular form of fantastic literature of the time, including the fantastical elements.

The scene between Don Quixote and the windmills wherein he mistakes them for giants, is comical, to be certain. In the literal sense, I laugh because of the physical comedy. But looking at it allegorically, Wikipedia has an article about the idiom, 'tilting at windmills', which means to attack an imaginary foe. Although I am wondering about the implacability of the windmills. Quixote cannot even begin to dismantle or really damage his foe, imaginary or not. The windmill does not react to his attack, but rather a quirk of the wind turns the wheel and the blade of the windmill defeats him. How often, I wonder, does one come against a foe such as this in another form? Imagine for instance a government who goes on undamaged, but the mere whimsy of the wind suffices to destroy the attacker. 

The writer writes, and the characters submit, and even Quixote decides, that it was the books of chivalry which caused him his madness. However, today we might call it dementia. In those days they called it humoral theory: "not sleeping adequately — because he was reading — has caused his brain to dry." (wikipedia) But in some ways his particular dementia is a kind of gift. This creates the contrast of the beauty which he sees and the common ugliness that most of us exist and live within. The description of the Asturian lass goes as follows:

... a broad face, flat poll, and snub nose, blind of one eye and not very sound in the other... (later described as a dwarf of short stature and broad shoulders).

Later she goes to his bed thinking that it is her lovers, and the contrasts between his vision and the so called reality becomes clear. I say so called reality, because reality itself is common perception. It's a kind of loose agreement between perceivers what the definition of a certain thing is based on its looks and or attributes.

He (Don Quixote) then felt her smock, and although it was of sackcloth it appeared to him to be of the finest and softest silk: on her wrists she wore some glass beads, but to him they had the sheen of precious Orient perals: her hair, which in some measure resembled a horse's mane, he rated as the threads of the brightest gold of Araby, whose refulgence dimmed the sun himself...

The beauty he sees, and the fineness of the textures, are what most of us have and see except in the twinkle of youth. He is blind, but his blindness is sweet.

There is a grudging kind of respect for the Moors whom the Spanish had recently (before the time wherein is the setting). And, though it is a single line throughout the book, the anti-semitism is quite remarkable as Sancho declares "... I am a mortal enemy of the Jews..." It is a kind of anger against the Jews for killing Jesus that has fuelled this long lived hatred. What irony it is, since Jesus, his apostles and mother, are all Jews. How fortunate for me, the reader, that this hatred resides in just this one line.

But as I go through the many trials of Don Quixote, many of which were unnecessary, I found myself coming to admire him. Though he sees common inns as castles, common beauties as profound, and his own abilities with arms the equal of any in the popular fictions of his day, he is experiencing a grand life of adventure and displaying a level of courage that he probably never felt or gave in his lifetime.

The second book of this two part story brings home an empathy for the central character. I hope for him victory, love, and success. But he is made into a famous clown by those around him. A duke and duchess discover him, bring them into their castle, to make plays and mockery for their entertainment. They turn Sancho into a pretend governor, who governs so well that they say of him that he was their best governor and made changes that at least until decades later in Saavedra's day, are still in place. Nonetheless, the people must keep playing their tricks on him: forcing him to starve, pretending an invasion in which he gets beaten badly. But, the treatment makes him realize that it is better to be a free man than a governor. He shows his true intellect here: uneducated, but of a stout wisdom. My favorite display of his wit is when he resolves disputes, and one in particular involving one man who loans to another some money but does not want to return it but says that he has. Sancho has him swear that he has given the other his money back, which he does. The trick is that before swearing he gives the other his staff before swearing that he has given it to him. Having done that, he asks for it back. Sancho then takes the staff, breaks it open, and there is the money which was owed. There are many other little trials, but this was the best and made those who watched him marvel and perhaps regret having to deceive and treat him so poorly. 

The end comes from a friend. His neighbor defeats him in combat, and demands that he return home to give up knight errantry for one year. The way back home, they are subjected to further trials. But Quixote is done with fighting as he has sworn not to any more. He is slowly coming to realize how people really perceive him. When he gets home, his melancholy quickly kills him. When he approaches death, even those who had contrived to bring him home back to his senses would rather him go back to his madness. But by then, the blinders that had been on his senses have been removed. He makes out his will, commends himself to his religion, and perishes. But truly, he was the most heroic, most chivalrous knight errant ever to grace the literary kingdom. 

Reading this book was at times a trifle difficult for all the side stories. But I did enjoy it, and highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys a monumental work of literature.

The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka

image from metamorphosisonfilm.com

I haven't read a lot of Kafka's work. But what I have read has been quite impressive. I am rereading "The Metamorphosis." I think this is my third or fourth reading of it. It is my first reading of it on my Kindle. It can be found freely at Gutenberg.

If Kafka had written "The Metamorphosis" and published a decade later, and perhaps better in English than in German (due to his Jewishness in an antisemitic country), he would have developed a following and been better encouraged in his art. But, perhaps it might be said that it is because of stories such as "The Metamorphosis" that there came Weird Tales magazine. It is a shame that his works should have remained in Germany, considering how much was lost, courtesy of the Gestapo, the 20th century's most famous and vicious intolerance.

"The Metamorphosis" is a masterpiece. It's true that I have an English literature background, and many of us are like stinky cheese eaters: we only make sense to one another. However, I detest James Joyce as a drunken buffoon who would have saved students countless wasted hours trying to comprehend that monstrous pile of steaming kak, Shakespeare was a cheating hack (though, such plagiarism was no crime in his day), and Hemingway brought about the death of good journalism. So, I do not subscribe to the general consensus of belongs on the list of greats and what does not. I suppose this should already be clear considering that most of what I read is not academic literature.

So the basic story is that one day, this salesman who has an otherwise very uninteresting life, wakes up and discovers he's at the end stage of being transformed, or metamorphosed into a caterpillar or other many legged creature.

There is some debate I ran into about whether or not Kafka was gay. If he was, then I can see the parallel here. In those days, gays were the scourge of the world. Germany in particular was intolerant towards those it saw as inferior or degenerate. Gays were definitely on their list of degenerates.As such, if the case can be made that Kafka was gay, I can see how this story is really about waking up and realizing that you're gay.

Both the character of Gregor Samsa and Kafka are of the same age. Samsa was 31 in the story, which was published when Kafka was 32 (so let's assume it was written the year earlier.) Samsa also sounds very similar to the name Kafka with obvious rhymes between the two names. Kafka also had a stint as a salesman which he quit out of hate for the work. Finally, while Samsa dies at 31, Kafka moves out of his family's home to live on his own at 31 (see Wikipedia's article). The story on where his family lived after he left the apartment, however, is not in the article and I doubt if I can find any information to answer that question. Suffice it to say that there are too many parallels between the story of Samsa and the story of Kafka to walk away from the assertion that Samsa is in fact Kafka, and that it is a kind of Twilight-Zonesque cross between a parable and a fable. Whether or not the physical change of being turned into a many legged monster is a result of his sexuality is a guess. The following will be my interpretation of how turning into a bug was actually a metaphor into his becoming a homosexual. Yes, I am aware of the theory that homosexuality is something people are born into, not constructed (there are good arguments for both theories). However, this could very well be the defining moment, these months of transfiguration in his room, between when he realizes he is homosexual and when he accepts that he is homosexual. The death of the bug itself might in fact be when he himself has accepted it and has moved on.

Gregor Samsa must have felt great pressure to provide for his family despite the fact that he detested his work.

Image from greatbookstudy.blogspot.com.

...he felt a great pride that he was able to provide a (quiet) life... But what now, if all this peace and wealth and comfort should come to a horrible and frightening end?

A metaphor for his increasing alienation from the family and his anxiety about the change:

He spent the whole night (under the couch). Some of the time he passed in a light sleep, although he frequently woke from it in alarm because of his hunger.

Optimism, or a positive way to interpret his sister's fear of him,

Then, out of consideration for Gregor's feelings, as she knew that he would not eat in front of her, she hurried out again and even turned the key in the lock so that Gregor would know he could make things as comfortable for himself as he liked.

Obviously, she locked the door so that he could not get out of the room and terrorize the family, not out of consideration for himself. For, she is free to lock or unlock it, as is anyone else who chooses to enter. But he cannot.

The only family who cares enough about him to feed or otherwise take care of him, is disgusted enough that she cannot touch any of the food that he could not eat. She sweeps it all into the trash.

Nobody wanted to be left home by themselves and it was out of the question to leave the flat entirely empty.

They hold onto the hope that one day Gregor will return to them the way he was before. He rarely mentions, however, wishing that he could return back to his 'human' form. Is this because he knows he cannot? His family wants him to change back.

Towards the end, the sister has reached the limit of her tolerance for her brother's change. She seems either ready to turn him out or kill him.

I don't want to call this monster my brother, all I can say is: we have to try and get rid of it.

As Samsa is dead, and we never do discover what is done with the body: perhaps the maid has something important to say, but she is cut off and we never learn what she had done with it. She is furthermore fired as well as everyone else that knew of their relation to the bug.

The way the family treats Samsa is in fact a big clue as to how Samsa is in fact still a human being. That is to say, they know it's their son/brother even though there was never a reason to see the similarity between the bug and Samsa. What it is in fact, I suspect, is that they know about Samsa/Kafka's homosexuality, and are no longer treating him like a human being. He doesn't feel like a human being. As such, he wastes away and they all try to avoid him as best as they can. When the father throws the apple at him and hits him, the injury never heals and in fact the apple is stuck on him until Samsa's death. In fact, this is not a physical thing so much as it is an emotional thing. The fact that things are thrown at him, at Kafka, even long after the apple is thrown away or eaten, the emotional injury never leaves.

This book is excellent and really addresses the feelings of anxiety associated with being different. It's not just homosexuals who are different. However, they of course have had some very rough treatment at the hands of the intolerant as a result. What I mean is that being a homosexual, especially in Kafka's when and where, would have been a mountain, whereas most of us have to deal in hills.

I wish more of Kafka's work was available freely online. However, since they are translations, one must exercise patience. Kafka's short stories are among my favorite and he is among my most admired writers.

The King in Yellow, Robert W. Chambers

I think I found this author through an author reference: H.P. Lovecraft or Stephen King. I can't be sure, but it was a recent search and find. There are several of his books for free on Amazon, which is where I got this edition. Despite the book being a small collection of short stories, the Amazon edition offers no tabbing between stories. Therefore, I suggest going to Gutenberg.org if you decide you want to read this book. Gutenberg does a better job of formatting books than this publisher did. They are both free.

There is some variety in the stories here. Four of them seem to have a link to the title. The rest do not. The references to the King in Yellow are sparse. I wonder if the references were added after the stories were written or if they were important. In any case, reading The King in Yellow (the fictional one in the first four stories) is a kind of curse that only ends in the ruin of whomsoever reads it. The first story nearly had me giving up on the text. I don't really recall why. Momentarily I thought I was reading something of poor quality. However, the quality does pick up considerably and it is well worth reading.

Ironically, when I first read them, I thought the stories toward the end were the best and the ones at the beginning not so great. Having reread them, however, I find the inverse true. The best stories are about the King in Yellow. The rest are entertaining, but romance is not the equal of horror.

Sadly, the author himself disappoints me as a person.

...this was an Anglo-=Saxon country. Then the average intelligence of the nation was higher and the taste in literature better. But there came the great rush of immigration to the United States from Europe, and the Anglo-Saxon culture of the country was diluted...

 From "What is Genius?" Robert W. Chambers

It just goes to show that a great writer doesn't have to be a great human being.

Dedication

Image from AZ Quotes

Along the shore the cloud waves break,
The twin suns sink beneath the lake,
The shadows lengthen
In Carcosa.
Strange is the night where black stars rise,
And strange moons circle through the skies
But stranger still is
Lost Carcosa.
Songs that the Hyades shall sing,
Where flap the tatters of the King,
Must die unheard in
Dim Carcosa.
Song of my soul, my voice is dead;
Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed
Shall dry and die in
Lost Carcosa.

 

The Repairer of Reputations

It was this story I nearly ended my relationship with Robert W. Chambers. The language felt fake. Like it was written in a vernacular that wasn't really the writer's. This is probably an accurate assessment considering he is American. I suppose there's nothing really wrong with that. After all, half of a writer is fiction: he lives in the books he (or she) reads and the characters and language of those writers and writers' characters becomes the vernacular of the author, does it not? In any event, I'm quite happy that I fought past this impression and read through. The story itself isn't bad, and there are several that follow it that are much better.

The first chapter of this story caught my attention: that of the lethal chamber. A government sanctioned method of ending one's life. But for all but the tail of this tale, there is little or nothing to do with the lethal chamber.

The character, Mr. Wilde, is a repairer of armour. This is his passion and hobby. But his bread winning comes from repairing reputations. If someone has a bad reputation, they merely go to him, offer a lot of money, and his network of social manipulators.

The story is told in first person. Most interestingly that person goes quite crazy at the end and dies in a footnote after killing Mr. Wilde's crazy cat and terrorizing a doctor.

I'm unsure whether I like or dislike the disconnects that go through this story. It only makes sense since the narration is from a mad-man. But then that puts in doubt the truth of the narrative. But what is truth? Truth is a perspective from the interpretation of the observer, and not necessarily truth in some scientific truth or fact.

Of the four stories related to the title, this is the only one where it makes much sense. A kind of mad reference, if you will. The other three which reference it look contrived: as if they were added later to make them somehow better connected to the title of the book.

The Mask

This story is the first of a series based on some art students or artists (both, sometimes). I really enjoyed these. It's nice being transported to these times and places. The perspective though is definitely American with its Puritanical aesthetic which, in my opinion, reduced its appeal. "Geneviève was lovely. The Madonna-like purity of her face might have been inspired by the Sanctus in Gounod's Mass." But nonetheless, the story was highly entertaining.

At this point in my review, I have already read all of the stories. I am scanning the stories trying to remember what they are about. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? In any case, this story feels out of the timeline. These are artists, not students. Later stories include a war and students. Why Chambers chose to arrange them so (or his editor) I cannot guess.

This is the second of the four stories which have a relation to The King in Yellow. Two artists love a single woman. The narrator is the loser in the worst way: the woman, Geneviève, goes for his friend, Boris, but really loves the narrator. Perhaps she said that to make him feel better about his loss.

The couple, his friend and his unrequited love, fall into the fabled King in Yellow and thereby invite a curse upon them. The curse turns the living into marble: Boris, a white rabbit, and Geneviève. She, however, comes back to the realm of the living. She does not know. She is surprised and remarks, "the marble rabbit had been stolen and a live one had been brought into the house." She does not know that she herself had been one of the marble statues brought back.

IN THE COURT OF THE DRAGON

"I was worn out by three nights of physical suffering and mental trouble: the last had been the worst, and it was an exhausted body, and a mind benumbed and yet acutely sensitive, which I had brought to my favourite church for healing. For I had been reading The King in Yellow."

There is a certain poetry of doom in this story. The soul of the narrator is doomed because of his reading The King in Yellow. The narrator is trying to escape an awful death: not death itself. For the religious, death is a kind of release: a release into heaven or hell. It's the latter I believe the author is fearful for. He is trying to escape an already dead gatherer of souls through the church.

I don't know if the narrator is living, dying, or dead at the end:

Death and the awful abode of lost souls, whither my weakness long ago had sent him, had changed him for every other eye but mine. And now I heard his voice, rising, swelling, thundering through the flaring light, and as I fell, the radiance increasing, increasing, poured over me in waves of flame. Then I sank into the depths, and I heard the King in Yellow whispering to my soul: "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God!"

Who is the living God that the King in Yellow refers to? Is it God and His sidekick, Jesus? Is it the God of the King in Yellow (presumably some Satanic figure, if not Satan himself--even if Satan is never mentioned by name).

The Yellow Sign

This is the last of the stories related to the title The King in Yellow stories in this book.

The narrator is again an artist. He is painting his canvas from a nude model posing. But his painting is overtaken by some kind of plague. Did he paint it that way and suddenly notice it, or was it somehow cursed? But it starts with his noticing a watchman.

Tessie, the model, dreams of the artist being dead. The dream terrifies her and resembles a scene: a kind of deja vu preceded by the dream. Their relationship of artist and favourite model transforms itself into a marital one. But in the end, not even the death of Death Himself saves the narrator:  "I think I am dying. I wish the priest would—"

The Demoiselle D'Ys

This is a romance of science fiction proportions. A man travels back in time to meet a beautiful falconer. He falls in love with her. But as he is bitten by a snake, he finds himself awake back in his own time. He has nothing to remember her except that his name is on her tombstone, somehow survived all those centuries for him to see.

The Prophet's Paradise

This is the title to a series of sketches. Beautiful and dark. 

On the hearth a tongue of flame whispered above the whitening ashes: "Wait no more; they have passed, the steps and the voice in the street below.

Who cannot but love such a vivid image? The more I work on this blog entry, rereading bits and pieces to remind myself on each story, the more I fall in love with this author's work. It is no longer any marvel to me that H.P. Lovecraft should love these stories so much.

The Clown turned his powdered face to the mirror.
"If to be fair is to be beautiful," he said, "who can compare with me in my white mask?"
"Who can compare with him in his white mask?" I asked of Death beside me.
"Who can compare with me?" said Death, "for I am paler still."
"You are very beautiful," sighed the Clown, turning his powdered face from the mirror.

 

The Street of the Four Winds

This story is almost as magical as something that Oscar Wilde would have written--but with a macabre twist.

A lonely artist, Severn, speaks with the animals, and they speak with him. A cat comes to him in a terrible state. Her fur is in nasty shape and she is hungry. He feeds and takes care of her. Then they have a kind of conversation. Severn wanders around but eventually discovers that the owner of the cat is dead.

The kiss at the end of the tale is disturbing. But it is written so eloquently that it is almost forgivable that she is a corpse of indeterminate age.

She was pale, but not as white as he; her eyes were untroubled as a child's; but he stared, trembling from head to foot, while the candle flickered in his hand.
At last he whispered: "Sylvia, it is I."
Again he said, "It is I."
Then, knowing that she was dead, he kissed her on the mouth. And through the long watches of the night the cat purred on his knee, tightening and relaxing her padded claws, until the sky paled above the Street of the Four Winds.

The Street of the First Shell

What do artists do in Paris as the city lay in a siege? The Prussians are shelling Paris and starving her citizens. Even wealthy people are paying expensive sums for sewer rat meat. Regardless, the sculptor sculpts and the painters paint, as much as they can even as shells explode. They have relationships.

One couple finds extreme happiness in each other's affection. Surely love seems stronger at such a time: like how a star twinkles in the night sky. The story follows a rather exciting push back against an invisible enemy. The enemy is never really described. The narrator describes the grisly deaths of French fighters. I don't know if the resistance in this instance proves successful. But it is better to fight and die than die from hunger I think.

This was really an enjoyable story. It's definitely out of my usual reading genres. But it was exciting and provocative.

The Street of the Lady of Our Fields

Another story about artists. This time it follows a character who is American and Puritanical. For being Puritanical, he is praised up and down and wins the respect of fellow artists immediately rather than having to earn it in the usual fashion (over time).

It is charming, romantic. But there is nothing of the King in Yellow here.

Rue Barrée

This story is a romance. A poor but beautiful woman enchants all the artists. One of the wealthy ones even offers marriage to her, but is refused and is later very grateful. She never has a name and is referred to as Rue Barrée. It's a cute story, but there is no macabre delight here.

The Old Curiosity Shop, Charles Dickens

I have a love-hate relationship with Charles Dickens. Sometimes I love his writing, sometimes I hate it. Everything he writes comes in a mixed bag. It's the sometimes brilliant prose which keeps me coming, periodically, to read his novels. The Old Curiosity Shop is available for free on Gutenberg.org.


If this book has a message, it's stay away from gambling. Nell is a main motivator in this novel, but not a main character as suggested in some reviews of the book. There is no real hero. If there is, it's a little keyhole spy who manages to unravel a twisted plot to ruin Kit. But she is barely mentioned aside from the pasty ending which relieved me of the burden of feeling compelled to finish this book.

There is an exception to this general feeling I have of this novel. There is the scene of Nell's grandfather stealing from her which is so brilliantly narrated. If there is some real evil character in this book, the one that brings the flawless 'Nell' to a very early grave, it is in fact her grandfather.

The grandfather, having already openly stolen Nell's purse for gambling, goes another step by robbing her in secrecy while he imagines her asleep.

"The dark form was a mere blot upon the lighter darkness of the room... it busied its hands in something, and she heard the chink of money.

Then, on it came again, silent, stealthy as before, and replacing the garments it had taken from the bedside, dropped upon its hands and knees, and crawled away. How slowly it seemed to move, now that she could hear but not see it, creeping along the floor...

It crept along the passage until it came to the very door she long so ardently to reach...

The door was partly open. Not knowing what she meant to do, but meaning to preserve him or be killed herself she staggered forward and looked in... ...at the table sat the old man himself... his white face pinched and sharpened by the greediness which made his eyes unnaturally bright...

In the end, it was not the men of that public house who would rob her, but rather her own grandfather.

Another interesting scene is when Nell is sent to collect some money from a mistress at a school.

The chief mistress, Miss Monflathers, of the school for whom Nell's caravan had entertained, chooses to torment her rather than pay her bill:

"Don't you think you must be a wicked little child... to be a wax-work child at all?"

She then suggests that she ought to pursue high education and work...

Nell cries, drops her handkerchief. One pupil picks it up for her and returns it. This act elicits more verbal lashings (for the kind pupil, Miss Edwards).

Miss Monflathers says to Miss Edwards, "... you have an attachment to the lower classes which always draws you to their sides..."

Miss Edwardes is then threatened to be turned out: her reason for feeling empathy.

'This young lady, being motherless and poor, was apprenticed at the school--taught for nothing--teaching others what she learnt, for nothing--and set down and rated as something immeasurably less than nothing by all the dwellers in the house. The servant maids were better treated; they were free to come and go."

The opportunities for Nell to lead a happy life come and go. They come to her, but go whenever the old man gets trapped by his addiction to gambling. As she manages to find one place for them, he manages to find someone who will make him a willing victim of some gambling scheme. It drives them both through villages on foot and several times to the limits of her endurance until they come to rest at an old sleepy village, guests of school master who had come to love her (platonically, in a grandfatherly way). This village would end her, or offer her her final rest before her end. Either the village kills her or the trek to the village killed her.

Kit is the other main character. His character is also flawless as Nell's, but he has a strength which preserves him. Or perhaps his ordeal is not so great. The malignant character, the dwarf named Daniel Quilp, hates Kit as he represents the other end of the character spectrum as he. Quilp hates what is good and does everything he can to torture and destroy it: his wife, the Nell and her grandfather, and Kit. He succeeds in destroying everyone except for Kit and his wife who both come out on top after Quilp manages to get himself drowned.

Parts of the book are quite brilliantly written. But the dull parts are quite extensive. If not for Dickens' ability to make phrases this book would be a lost cause. In fact, somewhere near the end of the novel the author has a) gotten an understudy to continue the book or b) just gotten clumsy and bored with a listless plot, to the extent that even the masterful narrative isn't enough to carry the book along. Nell dies, Kit survives and is made better for his weathering the trial, Quilp's wife inherits Quilp's wealth and remarries to a good man.

I don't know why I have such a hard time with this toothless narrative. It is well written. It just says very little. What little is said has the taste of cheap corn syrup for the most part and I feel like my time was badly wasted on a thick wad of pointless leaves. There were maybe two or three excellent pages of prose while the rest, mostly well written, had no point at all.

Lord Jim, Joseph Conrad

I think I have read a few of Conrad's stories, but I can only recall having read A Heart of Darkness. I wouldn't be surprised if I'd read it at least twice. That was a good enough book to recommend me to this novel, Lord Jim.

Jim is a sailor who seems to fit the mold of the ideal sailor: unafraid of anything the sea can throw at him; large and strong; one who took to the sea because of some reading he had done and consequently fallen in love with the trade.

But, he is unfortunate in that he gets work as a first mate on the Patna. A ship fated by chance to strike a submerged log which severely damages her. She may have survived, but an oncoming storm makes such survival impossible. These two circumstances quickly sink her. The white crew: captain, engineer, and a few of the others, order Jim to not wake up the others. There are many men and few boats. They reason that no one should escape if they should be awakened to the emergency.

Jim is severely caught between his obedience to his captain's orders and his natural courage and chivalry which demands that he shout out to the many crew members who sleep through, oblivious. The crew make their getaway on a row boat. Jim jumps onto the boat, but regrets his decision. Shortly thereafter, The Patna sinks and all the men with her.

The surviving crew members are tried for their desertion, but none of them are punished. But, while the others get away with no repercussions, Jim himself is weighted heavily by his actions. His life from then on is spent escaping the terrible story of the Patna's sinking. People discuss it around him, not even knowing that he was a part of the story, and consequently lose him as a member of their company: Egstrom, one of his employers who runs a company to supply visiting ships says of his work ethic and ability, first, "'That's a reckless sort of a lunatic you've got for water-clerk, Egstrom. I was feeling my way in at daylight under short canvas when there comes flying out of the mist right under my forefoot a boat half under water, sprays going over the mast-head, two frightened niggers on the bottom boards, a yelling fiend at the tiller. Hey!! hey! Ship ahoy! ahoy! Captain!... more like a demon than a man. Never saw a boat handled like that in all my life." and then,  "... it seemed as though he wouldn't mind going a hundred miles out to sea in an old shoe to nab a ship for the firm. If business had been his own and all to make yet, he couldn't have done more in that way." He is a fearless character, but one of extreme sensitivity. Such that, one day when the Patna is mentioned, Egstrom puts out that of the crew of the Patna, "It's a disgrace to human natur'--that's what it is. I would despise being seen in the same room with one of those men." But later, as he is told by the narrator that Jim had been one of those very crew members, he exclaims, "And who the devil cares about that?" as to say, he wouldn't have cared at all. His value as a man of courage and valour had been well established. He would have thought no less of him. But of course, Jim was gone and the damage was already done.

One of my favourite passages in the book I had to copy here which I find so remarkably true of men and women, and how they view themselves: people want to be a saint, and they want to be a devil--and every time they shut their eyes they see themselves as very fine people--so fine as they can never be... In a dream..." Surely this is so very true: human beings like to see themselves as a saint even when they do great evil.

Jim goes through a major shift in his life when he is brought to a remote jungle where he is able to escape his reputation (even if no one knew who he was or how he was related to the abandonment of the sinking vessel). Through the strength of his courage, he wins the emancipation of a small village from a petty tyrant, and his reward is their great respect and the love of a young woman. But, as is the case with life, this new found self respect and love which he longed for comes at a heavy price: the sacrifice of wanderlust; the sailing and adventure that the endless vast ocean offers.

Ultimately, it is a similar sacrifice I think some men make: it's love or the high seas. Conrad puts it wonderfully,

...his wandering days were over. No more horizons as boundless as hope, no more twilights within the forests as solemn as temples, in the hot quest for the Ever-undiscovered Country over the hill, across the stream, beyond the wave. The hour was striking! No more! No more!--

However, his fate is not that of living a long family life amongst a people grown to love him. Rather, it is far less noble. Chance throws a bad cast at him. A ruthless captain, out of desperation, hungry and thirsty, looked to raid his village. He was no match for the village, and only by diplomacy, manages to negotiate a peaceful resolve: an escort back to his ship. On his way back to the ship, led by a traitor, Cornelius, they attack and kill the very men who had lead them to safety. The head of which was the son of the king, Doramin.

Jim, rather than fleeing the jungle with his love, returns to Doramin who exacts his revenge on Jim by killing him.

Why was Jim like this? Was it his father who taught him that there was only one way to live and to die? While Jim may not have subscribed to the same narrative or ideals that his father did, did he not have his own unfaltering script which lead him to his fate?

The first half of the book certainly drags on relentlessly. For awhile through the middle of it, I even considered giving up on it. Once through the it, however, the action and pace pick up. I definitely recommend it.