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 Lifted Veil, George Eliot

   Adam Bede was required reading for me in my university education. It gave me a certain respect for the author, George Eliot. It's been my intention to return to another of her works. More than ten years has passed since graduation, so it's been more than ten years. A part of the reason for that is that I'm just not fond of literature which is focused on human social schema. In any case, so I happened across the novella, "The Lifted Veil," and gave that a read.
   To summarize, the main character, Latimer, has some clairvoyant abilities. He can sometimes foresee the future and read the minds of others. He foresees his marriage to Bertha, the woman he at once loves, fears, and despises. Yet, he is compelled into her as his will is quite weak.
   Over time, in his marriage to Bertha, his ability to read her mind and the minds of others weakens. The cause of this is unknown. However, it might have something to do with her taking on a maid who has her own abilities. Or, it might have to do with that he tries to avoid using it. He doesn't like reading people's minds. He would rather shut it out. Finally, Bertha tries to poison him. This, too, might be the cause of losing his ability. I suspect that this might be the case since after the discovery of the poison, he flees to another country, and his supernatural gifts return to him.
   The knowledge of the attempted murder comes about after her maid is revived momentarily by a blood transfusion. It is a somewhat odd finale to this novella.
   There's a kind of silly feminist essay about this story called, "Bertha as the Failed Hero?: Analysing The Blood Transfusion Scene in George Eliot’s The Lifted Veil." It argues that Latimer was somehow forcefully penetrating others through his use of clairvoyance. Considering how hard he tried to avoid it, and how it worked on both genders and not just the female, I don't know how well I can buy her arguments. "...man becomes the giver of life to ‘Woman’" and "Thoroughly confined to her role as Other [and apparently little above the rank of a dehumanised animal], Mrs. Archer, in her deathly state, is compelled to accept male penetration in the form of a phallic needle full of blood." It seems to me a rather tenuous relationship. Naturally, Mrs. Archer is dead. We don't know if Meunier chooses her for the experiment because she is a woman or simply out of curiosity to see if the blood can bring back the dead. There is no statistical data to examine to demonstrate whether this is an assault on femininity or a comment thereof. We have no idea if Meunier has done this to a male or female before or if he chooses females only. I wonder if the author, who leaves his (or more likely) her name as 'letitbeprinted' would consider a life saving procedure of blood transfusion from a male nurse or doctor to a female patient a form of rape or sexual assault? I love feminism, but feminism of this form is logically little better than patriarchal religion.
  We also don't know why the maid confesses at last. Perhaps a look into the void of death is a heavy prospect with knowledge of the murder in progress on her conscience. She seemed ready to take it with her to the grave one moment, but not on her second chance of parting the world with such information left unsaid.

The Invisible Girl, Mary Shelley

   "The Invisible Girl" is a romance tale by Mary Shelley.
   She, the invisible girl, Rosina, is an orphaned girl who falls in love with the son of the widower father that adopts her. Peter, the son, waits to declare his love for Rosina until she approaches an appropriate age.
   This brings to question: what was his age, what was her age? What does "lovers in after days" mean exactly? The ages between the two is not clear. However, it cannot be so different, since they were 'companions in childhood...' But, there must be some difference since, if they were of the same age she would mature faster than he would, and he would not be waiting for her to come of age. At that time it was not uncommon for men to marry very young girls, even fewer years than 12. So I cannot help but wonder about that.
   In any case, unlucky for them all, the father's sister's husband dies, and she joins the family. She does much mischief and has Peter sent away and Rosina banned from the house and made homeless. She was a bitter woman, perhaps. Perhaps she had Peter's best interests in heart: what is an orphan doing with the son when the son should be married to a wealthier family. Whatever her intentions were is not made clear. She is merely described as a nasty woman.
   When Peter comes back, he finds that Rosina is gone. He thinks that she is dead. One evening, during a storm, a light shines and shows him the way to shore. The light saves his life. When he looks to solve the mystery of this fairy light, he discovers Rosina half starved. They reacquaint and marry.
   It's not a bad story. However, many of her qualities are those of the docile and submissive girl. This is not the type of character I expect from a writer famed for her early feminist politics. Having recently read The Last Man, I can say it is not the only book which lauded such aspects of submissive nature to a girl. On the other hand, this story may simply be her reporting on a story she discovered from a painting, as she mentions earlier in the story. However, this sort of thing, a fake back story, is not so uncommon. So, real back story or not, I cannot tell.

The Last Man, Mary Shelley

   I have a tremendous amount of respect for Mary Shelley. While there are arguments and evidence to state that she was not, ultimately, the original founder of science fiction, there are none who argue that she is not the first to write one natively in English. Further, her novel might be construed as the earliest science fiction work still in print today. The other thing that is rather outstanding about the author is that she was an early feminist. One might not see that in either of her novels. Neither of them feature a prominent or particularly strong, or even important, female character.
   The story itself is true to the title, as far as the narrator knows. He is the last man. How this was brought on exactly isn't exactly known. It rises from the defeat of some Muslims in Constantinople. Were they the creators of their own destruction, or did they merely see it coming? They were not the only ones, as the conqueror himself felt the ominous fate breathing at his back. Though, he would not face the plague, he would be crushed by the wreckage caused by an explosion, he thought plague would bring about his end.
   How exactly this plague was brought about is an unsolvable mystery. However, there are a few suggestions. When a ship lands on England's shore from America, there were "strange sights ... averred to be seen at night, walking the deck, and hanging on the masts and shrouds." But the next passage which describes the cause has given me a great deal of thought concerning Shelley, and has perhaps damaged my remembrance of her forever when the narrator saw "...a negro half clad, writhing under the agony of disease, while he held me with a convulsive grasp... he wound his naked festering arms round me, his face was close to mine, and his breath, death-laden, entered my vitals." I don't know if these were supposed to be demons or a representation of disease, but obviously it instigates heavy suspicion that Shelley, for all of her good qualities, was a racist. It isn't quite as painful as reading The Deerslayer so recently where racist ramblings were frequent and severe. It's also not absolute, as there might be some other meaning that I cannot penetrate. But, whatever excuse I make for it seems like a thin veil.
   Some other things that gave me trouble was the hard romance or romanticism of the novel. The characters are overly good in a way that I find distasteful and boring. Their feelings of pure love were difficult to get through. There were so many pages of them that I had almost set down the book to never return. It wasn't until I read a partial review that I decided to go back to finish what I had started.
   There is also this notion of having read about a whole life. This story starts with the narrator as a boy and follows until the year 2100. This, of course, means that the story was set in the not so distant future (though I will probably be extinct myself by the time that number is the calendar of 'now').
   It is easy to poke holes through the naiveté of Shelley: there are horses, no machines. There are no cell phones. There are no technologies that one might associate with a science-fiction story. There is only a plague far from Shelley's lifetime.
   The plague kills everyone, except for those closest to him. Those two he loses to a storm at sea. Then, he is utterly alone save for a sheep dog.
   One noticeable absence is that Shelley fails to consider that in a Europe without men, the populations of predators would rise, and quickly. Bears, boar, and wolves would quickly become major problems to survivors. Though, they are never seen. Even lions would return to Europe if humanity were suddenly gone.
   Despite its failings and despite my dislike for some of the sentimentality that became tedious for me, her craftsmanship on this novel is at times quite amazing and by far more masterful than her Frankenstein. As some have said, this novel was 'a forgotten treasure.'

The Danger Mark, Robert W. Chambers

Cover photo from Abebooks.

I have read a few of Chambers' books over the last few years and have generally come away rather impressed. On Wikipedia, however, there are a few criticisms of him which are not at all flattering: Frederic Taber Cooper, "So much of Mr Chambers's work exasperates, because we feel that he might so easily have made it better." Who is this Cooper? Then there is the much more famous H. P. Lovecraft who writes, "Chambers is like Rupert Hughes and a few other fallen Titans – equipped with the right brains and education but wholly out of the habit of using them." As I've said, I don't know who Cooper is, but I certainly know who Lovecraft was and have read a few of his stories. While he is more famous than Chambers for the great monsters he crea
ted, in no way would I consider him superior in any way.

So, to the novel The Danger Mark. To be sure, The Danger Mark is not what I had wanted, or hoped for, when I began reading it. I had hoped for something along the lines of some hard weird fiction. That was not what I got. I got a romance. After having read The Deerslayer by James Fenimore Cooper and suffered from some of the worst melodrama in years, it was actually quite easily read and digested.

The story is roughly that of a privileged circle of people who become a part of the Seagrave twins. For a long time, I held out the hope that there would be a dark turn and some interesting weird fiction would poke its nose out. But the danger mark, though referenced a few times, was nothing more than the risk of alcoholism for one of the principal characters, Geraldine Seagrave. She fights it off successfully at the end, but not before it claims the life of a much less likeable character.

Over-and-over I had to remind myself that Chambers was not European. His turns of phrases are often beautiful, sometimes poetically beautiful, which made the whole go down more easily. An example, "... one still, sunny afternoono, standing alone on the dry granite crags of the Golden Dome, he looked up and saw, a quarter of a million miles above him, the moon's ghost swimming in azure splendour. Then he looked down and saw the map of the earth below him, where his forests spread out like moss, and his lakes mirrored the clouds..." These types of gorgeous landscapes come up with some frequency.

I also appreciated the fact that Chambers was clearly not one of those who saw women as particularly inferior to men. Geraldine, from early on, is able to stand up to her brother and beat him up. There is a scene where Kathleen, the love interest of her brother, mentions that when she marries Duane, he will be able to mold her as he pleases. While that was unpleasant enough, I have certainly seen worse. When hunting for boar, it's not the men who take down the dangerous boar, but the skillful shots of Geraldine and even another female character, Rosalie.

I don't really recommend reading the book. It's definitely a good read. Perhaps if you're looking for a romance between the child-like descendants of wealthy families, it will have an appeal for you. If, on the other hand, you're looking for weird fiction, I'm afraid that this is a blank.

The Deerslayer: James Fenimore Cooper

I have heard much good about the skills of James Fenimore Cooper (September 15, 1789 – September 14, 1851). This novel, The Deerslayer, certainly has an intriguing name. There's something wonderful about the beautiful forests of Canada and Northern USA. I love the old western movies. If you, dear reader, are at all offended by racism or, to a lesser extent, sexism, then I suggest leaving this book aside. It was unpleasant to read and required quite some endurance.

Cooper has a good vocabulary, and he is certainly decent at using it. However, his style is heavy in sentimentality. But the hardest thing for me was the abject racism and, to a lesser extent, sexism of the story that harmed this book.

For Deerslayer, the idea of marrying a 'red skin' is so abhorrent, that he would rather be killed than marry one. He says to Hetty, a 'feeble minded girl,' when she proposes that he marry the 'Indian' widow, "Ought the young to wive with the old--the pale-face with the red-skin--the Christian with the heathen?" Racism is very heavy throughout the novel. Hetty, as mentioned already being a half wit, is a half wit only insofar as that it is "a mind beneath the level of her race."

Cooper's novel will certainly offend the feminists, as the ideal woman "... shouldn't be forward, and speak their minds before they're asked." A good wife's place is there to, as Judith puts it, is "...ready to study your wishes, and healthy and dutiful children anxious to follow in your footsteps..."

This book took me a long time to read, and it wasn't pleasant. I'm glad it's over.

The Slayer of Souls, Robert W. Chambers

The Slayer of Souls(1920) is the second book of Robert W. Chambers' that I have read. It is available for free at Gutenberg.org and Feedbooks.com. The edition I am reading is from Feedbooks. The difference between the two is generally that the transcriptions on Gutenberg.org are better than that of Feedbooks.com. On the other hand, the Feedbooks edition has a preface. After having read it all, I highly recommend reading the Gutenberg edition, as the Feedbooks edition has so many errors in it. They don't often obscure much, but it's like listening to a great album with a lot of scratches on it. Sometimes I had to stop and look around to figure out what should have been written in Feedbooks' edition.

First, the preface: Included is a criticism of legendary writer H. P. Lovecraft's, in which is excerpted, "Chambers is like Rupert Hughes and a few other fallen Titans - equipped with the right brains and education but wholly out of the habit of using them." The preface also includes a criticism from Frederic Taber Cooper, which reads, "So much of Chambers's work exasperates, because we feel that he might so easily have made it better." Regarding Lovecraft: I have only read a few things of Lovecraft's stories, "At the Mountain of Madness" and "The Alchemist". So, perhaps I'm missing something. However, I see his work as significantly inferior to that of Chambers'.

Take The Slayer of Souls which I am reading as an example: the descriptions are vivid. There is good dialogue, which is something which feels so lacking in Lovecraft's writing. Further, in the types of literary exposition, there is what is called 'show' and 'tell.' Lovecraft's two stories I have to go by is mostly 'tell' with some 'show,' whereas Chambers' is skillfully described.

The story could occupy several genres: fantasy, speculative fiction (according to Wikipedia), weird fiction, and horror. In this world which is set in the real world is an older one with magic set in the period just after world war one.

The main character, Nan-Yang Maru, aka Tressa Norne, has a great deal of this magical power. She was forged in magical China where demons are worshiped. She is a very powerful female hero, which is considerably rare. In fact, I cannot recollect any books that I have read prior to 1920 or even around that period where women are the heroes and main characters in this kind of fiction. For this reason alone Chambers has invoked a great deal of respect from me.

From the beginning, Chambers gives a taste of her power as she faces her most powerful nemesis: Sanang. Sanang breaks into her room on a boat headed to San Francisco from China, using psychokinetic powers, "(She) saw the double locked door opposite the foot of her bed slowly opening of its own accord." She holds a pistol at him. She uses some of her magical power and throws at him a yellow snake which terrifies him.

The first attempt at her assassination comes from a tough character, Gutchly Kan. He plots her dath, deriding Sanag's love for her and his fear. But Gutchlug instead is killed by one of her snakes, sent psychically from below his own room.

Senang and his surviving assassins are refereed to as Yezidees, and the demon they worship is Erlik.

When Tressa Norne finds herself in the US, she is unable to provide for herself. She tries to become a magician to entertain. But rather than using the typical setups of a magical show, she uses real magic instead. However, this does not amuse the audience, and she cannot make a living. There is no family for her, and she is extremely vulnerable.

Physically, she is described as boyish, her breasts being 'undecided.'

To survive, she is prepared to sell herself as a prostitute. But this is implied and never explicitly said. She is given an alternative: work for the US government for 3x what she was receiving before as a magician. Of course she agrees, despite knowing that by doing so she violates her promise to never reveal the inner workings of the Chinese assassins' guild, the Yezidees.

She was brought to China by her father. But, it would prove fatal to her father when the Yazidees "took Yian in 1910, threw him into a well in his own compound and filled it up with imperial troops" when she was 13. Some years later, her mother is killed, and she is forced to become a temple sorceress.

Her biggest problem is that she believes her soul is already dead. As soon as her body dies, she dies with it. For this reason, she will do anything to survive, as long as she can. The man she meets that recruits her is Victor Cleves, who ends up marrying her to save her reputation. A couple living together unmarried, apparently, would harm her reputation. She consents. As time goes on, however, it becomes clear that they are quickly falling in love with one another. Perhaps it is this love which helps her overcome the sorcerer-assassins.

Tressa is a remarkable character: horribly weak in some ways, and in others, perhaps, the most powerful person in the world. She defeats one after another of those who would kill her and subvert America into communism, but sees herself as completely unworthy of Cleves.

The prose is often poetic. It is well written, even romantic at times. I am very impressed with this novel and highly recommend it. I can't help but wonder if Chambers' harsh critics were jealous of his obvious talent.