A Drama in Muslin by George Moore

Realistic critique of the Victorian marriage market

The Irish author George Moore (1852–1933) was an open admirer of the writings of French novelist Emile Zola. Influenced by Zola’s school of Naturalism, Moore argued for more realism in Irish and British literature, and he practiced what he preached. His novel A Drama in Muslin was published in 1886. In later editions, Moore changed the title to simply Muslin. A type of cotton fabric, muslin is meant to symbolize the white dresses traditionally worn by young women at balls and parties as they “come out” into society. When actually describing women’s garments in the novel, however, Moore more frequently references silk and satin.

The Bartons are a well-to-do family of Galway. Mr. Barton is an absent-minded painter preoccupied by his own little artistic dream world, presumably living off of inherited wealth. His wife, Mrs. Barton, as they say, wears the pants in the family. The Bartons have two daughters. The eldest, Alice, is a very intelligent young woman, somewhat plain in appearance, who exhibits characteristics of what we today might call a feminist or at least an independent woman. Her younger sister Olive is a beautiful young girly-girl who embraces the traditional doll-like Victorian gender role of the feminine sex. Like all aristocratic young women of their time, the two young ladies’ primary goal in life is to find a suitable husband. Fortunately or not, Ireland had an established and regimented system for accomplishing this. For part of each winter, the girls and their mothers would relocate to Dublin where they would take part in a series of dances, dinners, and parties in which the prospective would associate with eligible prospective grooms. This was known as the “castle season” because some lucky ladies would be invited to balls at Dublin Castle. When the Barton women venture to Dublin for their coming out, the beautiful Olive is hailed as the belle of the season, with a possible royal title in her married future, while Alice is less enthusiastic about the whole process.

Meanwhile, back home in Galway, the Bartons and their set of land-owning aristocrats are having trouble with the Land League. The tenant farmers of Ireland have essentially unionized in an attempt to combat exorbitant rents charged by abusive landlords. Much mention is made of Griffith’s Valuation. This was a survey of land appraisal values in Ireland, in this case serving a purpose similar to today’s Blue Book of automotive values. The tenants demand to pay only the rent appropriate to Griffith’s Valuation, while of course the landlords want more. This class struggle has become violent, leading to murders and destruction of property.

While the inclusion of this social issue is in keeping with the naturalist ethos, the material on the Land League is really just background context in this novel. The main issue under consideration here is the commodification of young women in the marriage market. Moore’s coverage of the social maneuverings involved includes a fair amount of satirical humor. Mrs. Barton is depicted as a calculated schemer trying to pimp her daughters out to the highest bidder. There are, however, more serious aspects to Moore’s consideration of women’s roles. One of the young women is an atheist, another is a lesbian, and another undergoes an unwed pregnancy. While Emile Zola’s novels were more overtly scandalous, Moore does push the envelope of Victorian literature into a realm of realism that was no doubt controversial for its time. Unlike most of his British contemporaries, Moore writes women well. Alice is a commendably well-drawn and intelligent modern woman, but even Olive and her more traditionally feminine cronies come across as quite realistic in this novel. With A Drama in Muslin, Moore manages to deliver a story in which drama and suspense are generated by the question of who will marry whom, while also calling into question and satirizing the restrictively sexist emphasis that Irish society placed upon that very question.

The Inner House by Walter Besant

A love letter to class inequality

The English author Walter Besant (1836–1901), though generally not known as a pioneer in the science fiction genre, did publish two novels set in dystopian futures. The Inner House, published in 1888, is one; the other being The Revolt of Man (1882). The Inner House opens with a German scientist calling a press conference in London. He announces that he has discovered a process to stop aging. This means immortality for mankind, at least as far as natural causes are concerned. Those undergoing this process will be frozen at their present age and able to survive for centuries, excepting any fatal accidents.

Flash forward to hundreds of years later. Most of the same characters are still alive. Society (the whole Earth or just England? it’s unclear) is now ruled by a socialist regime governed by an authoritarian intellectual elite, the Holy College. All individualism has been stamped out, all problems have been solved, and a tremendous apathy has settled over mankind. Humans have little interest in doing anything except eating, working, and sleeping. The past has been forgotten, until one young woman starts researching the 19th century. This sparks a small rebellion of disgruntled citizens who want what the past had to offer: individuality, capitalism, and love.

Besant’s intention with The Inner House seems to be a heavy-handed critique of socialism. In that regard, it reads like a precursor to Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, but without the sense of humor. It’s never convincingly explained how the discovery of immortality would lead to such a bizarre and extreme system of socialism, nor does the apathy and inactivity of the citizens ever seem logical. If they have so much time on their hands, and so little work to do, why wouldn’t they spend that time learning and amusing themselves, or striving for achievements in the arts and sciences? Instead, Besant depicts a very unintentionally cartoony caricature of a socialist society.

These rebels who idolize the past—what do they miss the most? For the women, it’s fancy clothes and shiny jewels. And hey, remember when men used to go off to war and kill each other? That was really cool! The men, of course, miss beautiful women in fancy clothes. What both genders long for more than anything, however, is the beloved British system of inequality. What I hate most about English literature is its relentless reinforcement of an oppressive class system in which one person is born with better “blood” than another. No nation buys into the trickle-down effect of the divine right of kings more than England. Wealthy people are born good and noble. Poor people are born evil. Hard work and education won't save you. Born a servant, always a servant. All Victorian literature endorses this genetic feudalism to some extent, but few authors or novels are as blatant about it as Besant and The Inner House. All of the rebels who so idolize the past are former “gentlefolk” who would no doubt prefer the way things used to be. One of the rebels defiantly scolds the Holy College with “You have made us all equal who were born unequal,” as if that were such a bad thing. (It’s not the “unequal” to which I object, but rather the “born.”) The villain of the novel is a former servant born in poverty, so naturally wicked. The hero is a former gentleman, so naturally virtuous.

Maybe The Inner House was the first novel to show a dystopian future in which individuality was prohibited. Since then, however, there’s been plenty more, and all of them better: Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We (1921), Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), Ayn Rand’s Anthem (1938), and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), to name but a few. Therefore, there’s no reason to read The Inner House. I read it so you don’t have to.

The Great Return by Arthur Machen

An underdeveloped quickie by an otherwise great author

Welsh author Arthur Machen (1863–1947) is a respected old-school master of the fantasy and horror genres. His novella The Great Return was published in 1915. Because it is quite short, it probably just barely qualifies as a novella. It is so short, in fact, that it’s difficult to summarize the plot without giving away any secrets or surprises.

The narrator, a Welshman, frequently scans the local newspapers for items about “remarkable occurrences.” This man’s profession is unclear, but he has an avid enough interest in the occult to investigate matters that suggest an inkling of the supernatural. Vague mentions in the papers of unusual goings-on lead him to the coastal village of Llantrisant. Some mysterious lights have been seen out at sea, and some folks have heard the peal of a bell from no apparent source. That’s about all I can tell you. Machen draws on a combination of Christian mysticism and old Welsh pagan folklore for this story. This isn’t really horror because it’s not really scary, but it does fit into the Twilight Zone range of spooky fantasy.

The Great Return, unfortunately, reads more like The Mediocre Return. This is more of an idea for a story than an actual story. One can imagine a Stephen King novel based on this premise, and knowing Stephen King, that novel would be way to long. As Machen presents it here, however, it’s way too short. Not much happens in the first three chapters. Some minor rumblings occur in chapters four and five. Then in chapter six it takes a big leap and goes full-on occult fantasy in the seventh and final chapter. The payoff is too little too late. A big problem with this tale is the way it’s narrated. The story is related by a long-winded narrator who’s full of himself and digresses into subjects you don’t want to hear about rather than focusing on the miraculous supernatural events at hand. His personality is obtrusive. A disembodied third-person narration would have been more successful.

I only recently discovered Machen, and I’ve been singing his praises in this blog over the past year. His novels The Great God Pan, The Terror, The Hill of Dreams, and in particular The Three Impostors are all very good. The Great Return is the first piece of writing by Machen that hasn’t impressed me. It’s not going to stop me, however, from continuing to work my way through his corpus of writings. 

Penguin Island by Anatole France

Satire in the tradition of Voltaire

The French writer Anatole France (1884–1924) won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Literature. His novel Penguin Island, published in 1909, is probably his best-remembered work, at least in the minds of English-language readers. In this comedic and critical novel, France establishes himself as the inheritor of Voltaire’s role as the great satirist of French literature.

Some time in the Middle Ages, a Breton monk named Maël (later Saint Maël) decides it is his mission to sail forth to unknown lands and spread the gospel of Christ to the savages. His boat drifts way off course, and he ends up in the Southern Hemisphere, where he lands on an island full of penguins. At 99 years of age, with failing sight and hearing, Maël thinks the penguins are an Indigenous race of people, so he baptizes them into the Catholic Church. The only witnesses to this sacrament are God and His angels in Heaven, who debate how to rectify Maël’s erroneous baptism of animals. God solves the problem by turning all the penguins into humans, albeit naked uncivilized humans. Maël then tows the Penguins back to Europe, where they establish a new nation in the area of what we know as France.

Spanning centuries in the history of the Penguins, the book is divided into eight related stories taking place in eight different time periods. The early chapters of the book, in which the newly humanized penguins are learning the ways of civilization, are the most funny and entertaining. France seems to be lampooning some of the Edenic noble-savage pipe dreams of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Like Voltaire’s Candide, however, Penguin Island doesn’t aim its mocking barbs at just one target but rather scatters its shots to make different satirical points in every chapter. In this book everything is game for absurdity and worthy of tongue-in-cheek scorn.

After a while, the fact that these people started out as animals becomes irrelevant. The Penguins of Penguinia are simply another nation of humans, often a surrogate for the French. Some targets for spoofing include religion in general and the Catholic Church in particular, capitalism, feudalism, gender roles and sexual inequality, various factions in the modern French political landscape, and even Dante’s Divine Comedy. The most extensive parody is directed at the Dreyfus affair of the 1890s, in which a character named Pyrot is a substitute for Dreyfus and Columban for Emile Zola. To a French reader, the characters and events being satirized in this book would be readily decipherable, but it’s not always easy for an American reader to recognize all the players of every political plot. That doesn’t become too much of an obstacle, however, because enough of the humor and derision is universal to human nature and society, not French-specific.

The early formative years of the Penguins are laugh-out-loud silly at times, but the latter, more modern episodes of their history take the form of more wryly stated indictments of hypocrisy. There is also a science fiction element to the book as the final chapters take place in the future. After all the satire and cynicism, France ends the book on a surprisingly inspirational note of hope. Penguin Island is a work of great insight and much wisdom, but perhaps presented too cleverly for the non-French reader to grasp all in the first read. I think I’ll give it a second look, eventually, because it seems worthy of further scrutiny.   

Reeds and Mud by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez

Compelling Spanish regional naturalism

Reeds and Mud, a novel by Spanish author Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, was originally published in 1902 under the Spanish title of Cañas y barro. Blasco Ibáñez was a realist writer, and sometimes a naturalist (a specific form of realism), and Reeds and Mud qualifies as both. He was born in Valencia, a city on the Mediterranean Coast of Eastern Spain, and most of his fiction takes place within that district. Reeds and Mud is set in the town of Palmar in the Albufera region of Valencia. The Albufera is a large lake or freshwater lagoon, surrounded by marshes and separated from the ocean by a thin strip of land. It is to these marshes that the title of the novel refers, as well as to the homes of the area’s inhabitants. At the time this story takes place, about half of Palmar’s residents are still living in traditional fishermen’s huts of reeds and mud, while the other half resides in more modern wood-frame houses.

For centuries, the primary mode of life in the Albufera has been fishing, with eels being particularly bountiful in these waters. The residents of Palmar also do quite a bit of hunting, though much of it in the form of poaching in a nearby forest where they’re not supposed to venture. At the time of this story, agriculture is starting to gain a foothold in the region. The novel focuses on three generations of one Palmar family. The grandfather, Tío Paloma, is an elderly boatman, fisherman, and hunter who embodies all the traditional customs and lifestyle of the Albufera. His son, Tío Tóni, on the other hand, dreams of being a successful landowner and struggles to coax a profitable crop out of the marshy soil. This contrast in lifestyles­—old ways vs. new, fishing vs. agriculture—causes conflict between father and son. Meanwhile, the grandson, Tonet, is a lazy ne’er-do-well who would prefer to avoid work altogether; neither fishing nor farming for him. His grandfather feels some affinity towards the young man, but his father considers him a disgrace..

In addition to the drama within the family, Tonet is involved in a love triangle that brings further conflict and suspense into the story. There’s more going on in this sunny fishing village than just picturesque rural living. Blasco Ibáñez turns over some stones to reveal the darker side of this community, and the story occasionally ventures into some frightening scenes. Naturalist authors like Emile Zola were often criticized for their vulgar and disturbing subject matter, but Blasco Ibáñez includes one image in this novel that is so graphic and horrifying I would be surprised if this book wasn’t banned by the censors of its day.

The Albufera region has no doubt changed much in the eleven decades since Blasco Ibáñez wrote this novel. What’s great about Reeds and Mud, in addition to its compelling story, is that it functions as a historical document of the people, customs, and natural environment­ of this specific time and place. That’s one of the valuable aspects of the naturalist novel—when done right, it functions as a sort of time-capsule for historic preservation, like a National Geographic article but deeper and more personally engaging. Almost every chapter of Reeds and Mud centers around a traditional public event, like a religious festival or the drawing of lots to assign fishing grounds. Instead of photographs, the reader gets the rich empirical description of reality characteristic of naturalist texts. Blasco Ibáñez was one of Spain’s great realist chroniclers, along with Emilia Pardo Bazán and Benito Peréz Galdos.

Since I discovered Blasco Ibáñez a couple years ago, he has become one of my go-to authors for fiction. I can always count on him for a rewarding read. As good as Reeds and Mud is, I like his novels The Cabin (La Barraca) (1898) and The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1916) even better.   

Figures of the World: The Naturalist Novel and Transnational Form by Christopher Laing Hill

Zola’s effect on American and Japanese literature

If you read this blog religiously (which I’m sure no one does), you’ll know that one brand of fiction that Old Books by Dead Guys really likes is Naturalism. I started this blog by reviewing the complete works of Emile Zola, Frank Norris, and Jack London, all of them naturalist writers. The naturalist movement, spearheaded by Zola, was an offshoot of realism. It’s known for hyper-detailed and brutally objective descriptions of settings and social milieus. Naturalist authors often have an atheistic bent; they emphasize how human lives are influenced and governed by scientific laws of evolution and heredity, physiology, sociology, and psychology. I’m a well-read fan of French and American literary naturalism and have started to branch out into the naturalist literature of other nations. Wanting to learn more about naturalist authors in other parts of the world led me to Christopher Laing Hill’s 2020 book Figures of the World: The Naturalist Novel and Transnational Form. This book, published by Northwestern University Press, is available as an open access publication, meaning you can download a pdf ebook for free (or you can purchase a print copy).

What I was hoping to get out of Hill’s book was an international list of authors and books for further reading, and I certainly got that. Some of those books may have never been translated into English, but if even a quarter of them are, they ought to keep me busy reading for years. Hill focuses primarily on French, American, and Japanese literature because he reads in those languages. The bulk of the book is comparing novels from those nations to show how Zola’s ideas spread from country to country. His detailed examination of works by Zola, London, Norris, Theodore Dreiser, Kosugi Tengai, and Tayama Katai brings up many interesting and thought-provoking points. Like most literary critics, Hill gives away the endings of all the novels he discusses, but I’ve already read all the French and American books, and it’s unlikely I’ll ever read the Japanese. In addition, Hill does mention and briefly discuss many other works from other countries. He gives particularly good overviews of Spanish and Latin American naturalism and East Asian naturalism. Hill says almost nothing about British and German literature, but he does reference plenty of naturalist authors from other European nations such as Denmark, Greece, and Slovenia. 

Having an avid interest in this subject, I naturally liked much of what Hill had to say. As a nonacademic, however, I can’t say I like the way he says it. Hill is a PhD writing for other PhDs, and the text is the jargon-heavy academic prose you’d expect for an audience of specialized professors. It drives me nuts how many words are used to make a point, how many times the points are made over and over again, and the pretentious, obscure vocabulary (ugh, the title). The word “figure” is used over 400 times to mean just about anything and everything. There are chapters on “the body figure” (anatomical imagery), “the Nana figure” (sexually liberated and/or independent women), and “the social figure” (just about any time and place, as far as I can tell). When Hill comments on the work of other Zola scholars, he points out exceptions to any proffered thesis as if to nullify its value. He then seems hesitant to say anything concrete himself for fear that his arguments will be likewise picked apart. Every statement has to be made with heterogenous multiplicity, so that nothing can ever be nailed down as fact, theory, or even an explicit opinion. 

Naturalist literature can be enjoyed and appreciated by nonacademic readers, not just the intelligentsia within academia. As intended by the author, this scholarly monograph only addresses the latter category. For the nonacademic audience, if nothing else, the bibliography and the index suggest myriad opportunities for further reading. With this blog I try to turn a few readers on to some readworthy naturalist literature, and hopefully the knowledge I’ve gleaned from Figures of the World will help me do that.

The Power of a Lie by Johan Bojer

Decent Norwegian realism built on a flawed premise

Johan Bojer (1872–1959) is a Norwegian novelist who achieved some popular and critical success in his native country. Several of his books have been translated into English. His novel The Power of a Lie (Troens magt) was published in 1903.

The story takes place in a rural provincial Norwegian town. I don’t believe the town is ever named, but it’s somewhere in the vicinity of Lake Mjøsa and the city of Lillehammer. Knut Norby is one of the wealthiest landowners in this region. In years prior, had invested in the business venture of a neighbor named Wangen. Norby co-signed a loan to help Wangen establish a brickworks. Desiring to keep this financial dealing a secret from his wife, Norby hasn’t told anyone about his involvement in Wangen’s business. Now that brickworks has failed, gone bankrupt, and the creditors have come a-calling. Norby is liable for about two thousand krone—not an exorbitant sum for a man of his standing.

Since nobody knows that Norby has co-signed as surety on Wangen’s behalf, a rumor gets started that Wangen forged Norby’s signature on the document. Norby does nothing to dispel this rumor, and, as the story of forgery spreads, he becomes hesitant to counteract the ever-growing lie. Hoping to avoid the ire of his wife and some embarrassment in the face of his friends and neighbors, Norby decides to affirm the accusation. Thus accused of forgery, Wangen faces prison time. If the forgery is disproved, however, Norby could also face a prison sentence for bringing a false accusation against an innocent man.

I had previously read Bojer’s novel The Great Hunger and liked it well enough. I was less satisfied, however, with The Power of a Lie. The premise on which the plot is based just seemed unreasonable to me. Once the lie gets started, then the book becomes a good naturalist novel with realistic human behavior and an inside look at Norwegian village life. Establishing the lie in the first place, however, seems to me a hurdle over which the novel stumbles. First of all, Norby himself doesn’t come up with the lie, so that lessens his moral culpability somewhat. Then, the fact that he would reinforce this false rumor feels unrealistic and farfetched. I’m certainly not a paragon of moral virtue, but I wouldn’t send a man to prison just to pacify my wife and avoid a little embarrassment. The hearings, depositions, and trials would be more trouble than it’s worth. This whole crisis seemed avoidable. Norby could have easily come out with the truth early on, and he really wouldn’t have suffered much from it. Instead, the novel needed a plot premise to get the snowball rolling, and here that plot premise feels forced.

The novel does have its moments, however. Potential witnesses face compelling moral dilemmas of whether they should testify of not. There are some interesting revelations of class struggle in the story. Within this isolated country corner, Norby is somewhat of an aristocrat, a feudal lord of sorts who governs over a corps of peasant laborers. He has conservative views on capital and labor, while more liberal views are starting to encroach into his domain. Wangen, on the other hand, is decidedly less well-off, and the destruction of his reputation clearly creates a financial burden on him. His wife, who suffers along side him, is a particularly sympathetic character. The Power of a Lie is a decent but flawed work of Norwegian literature. Bojer’s probably got better novels in him, but I can more consistently count on the works of his countrymen Knut Hamsun and Alexander Kielland.

The Complete Tales of Edgar Allan Poe, Part III: 1844–1849

Treasures are few in this batch

This year I set out to read the compete short stories of Edgar Allan Poe. To make this task manageable, I have broken these 65 tales into three sizable portions. The first and second installments in this series followed Poe’s published output chronologically. This, the third of such reviews, covers the last five or six years of Poe’s career.

In this third batch of short fiction, you won’t find much of what is considered classic Poe. “The Cask of Amontillado,” a story every American reads in school, is the headliner here. “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar,” about a mesmerist who hypnotizes a dying man to see if the trance will survive the transition to the afterlife, is another skillful tale of horror and suspense. “The Purloined Letter,” is the third and final mystery starring Poe’s detective C. Auguste Dupin. It’s a familiar title in Poe collections, but a bit overrated. It’s the least ingenious and satisfying of Dupin’s trio of adventures.

A few other tales of horror, suspense, or science fiction include “The Premature Burial,” “The Oblong Box,” “The Sphinx,” and “Von Kempelen and His Experiment”—all capable efforts, but none of them earth-shattering. As with the previous two batches of Poe tales, a good portion of these 24 works are humorous stories, or at least intended to be. Such titles as “The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq.,” “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether,” and “X-ing a Paragrab” give some indication of what you’re in for. In most cases, Poe’s comedy has not held up well over the intervening century and a three-quarters. “Some Words with a Mummy,” however, really is quite a funny piece of social satire.

Another interest of Poe’s was gardening. “The Domain of Arnheim” is an expanded retread of his 1842 story “The Landscape Garden.” Neither of these are really stories but rather essays in which Poe pontificates on what makes a good landscape garden. Poe’s final published story, “Landor’s Cottage,” is also devoted to this subject. Poe describes his perfect landscape, perfect house, perfect furnishings, even his perfect woman. None of these three “tales” have any plot, they’re all quite boring, and when it comes to nature, Poe is no Henry David Thoreau or Walt Whitman. His natural descriptions read as surprisingly geometric rather than poetic.

Overall, reading Poe’s complete stories has proved rather disappointing. If you buy any collection of Poe’s tales of mystery, horror, and/or suspense, you’re probably going to get twelve to fifteen stories that are the cream of the crop. Most of Poe’s comedic attempts won’t be included in such collections, as they have deservedly faded into obscurity. On the whole, I would say Poe missed more than he hit, at least for a 21st-century audience, but the same could probably be said for his contemporaries Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville. At least Poe did leave us with some masterpieces­—like “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Masque of the Red Death,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and “The Cask of Amontillado”—that are among America’s best works of short fiction.

Stories in this collection

The Spectacles

A Tale of the Ragged Mountains

The Premature Burial

Mesmeric Revelation

The Oblong Box

The Angel of the Odd

Thou Art the Man

The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq.

The Purloined Letter

The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade

Some Words with a Mummy

The Power of Words

The Imp of the Perverse

The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether

The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar

The Sphinx

The Cask of Amontillado

The Domain of Arnheim

Mellonta Tauta

Hop-Frog

Von Kempelen and His Experiment

X-ing a Paragrab

Landor’s Cottage

The Lighthouse (a fragment left unfinished)

The Haunted Woman by David Lindsay

Interesting Freudian take on the haunted house

Scottish author David Lindsay is best known for his 1920 debut novel A Voyage to Arcturus, a trippy work of science fiction that was years ahead of its time and influenced many later sci-fi writers. Lindsay published a half a dozen novels in his lifetime, none of which brought him any success, but over time Arcturus has developed somewhat of a cult following. Lindsay’s second novel, The Haunted Woman, was published in 1922. This story is more down to Earth, taking place in recognizable present-day England. As the title suggests, however, this novel belongs in the horror genre, and it also dabbles in a bit of science fiction as well.

Marshall Stokes and Isbel Loment are engaged to be married. Isbel, an adult orphan, lives with her wealthy aunt Mrs. Moor. Although all three are Londoners, Isbel and Mrs. Moor are temporarily residing in Brighton, Sussex, where Marshall frequently visits them. Mrs. Moor is in the market for a new home, and the trio decide to look at a country estate named Runhill Court in nearby Worthing. Marshall is acquainted with the owner of the house, a widower named Mr. Judge. Judge had previously consulted Marshall for his opinon regarding some strange occurrences that took place within the house. Marshall has yet to see the house, however, so he decides to kill two birds with one stone and turn his visit into a family outing. Judge is absent from the house at the time, but the visitors are granted entrance by the caretaker.

For years, rumors have circulated about strange happenings at Runhill, not necessarily ghost stories but tales of inexplicable sightings, such as a phantom staircase that appears on occasion. Such unusual phenomena, if any, seem to revolve around a certain upper chamber called the East Room. When visiting the house, Marshall and Mrs. Moor encounter nothing unusual, but Isbel hears a faint and persistent music that the others do not detect. Later, when left alone in a corridor, Isbel finds a mysterious staircase and feels compelled to ascend.

The Haunted Woman is a horror story more eerie than terrifying. It won’t scare the pants off of you, but it definitely delivers a creepy feeling. The story deals in psychological horror, and in fact, one of the things I like best about this book is the psychological authenticity with which Lindsay draws his characters. Unlike most British fiction of this time period, these characters aren’t the impeccable betrothed lovers with their stereotypical spinster aunt. They have flaws, quirks, and ulterior motives, just like real people, and their relationships are far from perfect. There is an undercurrent of sexual infidelity throughout the book, which is unusual for prim and proper English lit. Many of the characters, though in committed relationships, seem to have wandering eyes.

The horror elements of the story are more unexpected than typical haunted house fare. Lindsay’s story is quite original, I cared about his characters, and he kept me anticipating what would happen next. I was firmly gripped and involved for most of the book’s length. I wish it had more of an ending, however. The build-up of tension deserves a better payoff, and it almost feels as if a chapter were missing at the end of the book. I don’t demand total resolution, but I was not satisfied with the outstanding ambiguities of the conclusion. That’s a shame, because for the most part, this was quite an enjoyable read.

Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett

Hard-boiled carnage with no one to care about

Red Harvest, published in 1929, is the debut novel by Dashiell Hammett, who would soon after author The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man, which both became classic American films. Hammett is the author most associated with the genre of American noir crime and detective fiction, with the possible exception of Raymond Chandler, who came along a decade later. Red Harvest may very well be the inaugural novel in that genre. France’s leading noir author, Georges Simenon, didn’t start cranking out books until a year later.

Red Harvest is narrated by an unnamed agent of the San Francisco office of the Continental Detective Agency. He is engaged by a client—Donald Wilsson, a newspaper editor—to come out to Personville, a mining town so rough it’s nicknamed Poisonville. It’s a city of 40,000 people, and judging by this novel, most of them are criminals. The exact location of Personville is never specified, but it seems to be roughly in the vicinity of where Utah, Nevada, and Idaho meet. When the operative arrives in Personville, he finds that his client has been murdered, before the two could even meet to discuss why the detective’s services were needed. As he looks into Wilsson’s untimely demise, the detective discovers a network of organized crime and corruption. He decides to clean up this rat’s nest, and he finds another client who will pay him to do it.

This novel is about as hard-boiled as they come, and for that I admire it. Most gangster stories from the pulp fiction era read as watered-down or phony compared to Red Harvest. In this novel, if a killer wants to kill somebody, he’ll actually kill them (or try to); he won’t talk their ear off before shooting at them. There is a refreshing realism to the book’s utter lack of morality or restraint. Criminals act like criminals.

The problem with that approach, however, is that there is no one or nothing to really care about in this novel. The hero has no name and very little personality. The only woman in the book is a greedy, sleazy whore. The villains are all nondescript thugs who differ in name only. Hammett constructs this very complex web of intrigue in which all these characters blackmail, double-cross, or rat on each other. It’s all very confusing, and the reader doesn’t care enough to want to figure it all out. Never at any time did I understand why the detective was pursuing all these criminals. He has no reasonable motivation. There’s some money involved, but it’s treated almost as an afterthought. What does he really get out of this, other than the triumph of good over evil, law over corruption, which is totally antithetical to everything that happens in the book?

Red Harvest has never been formally adapted into film. A film noir version might have been more successful than the book, since some charismatic actors might actually convince you to care about these characters. One can easily see Humphrey Bogart or John Garfield in the lead. Red Harvest was likely one of the influences behind Akira Kurosawa’s samurai film Yojimbo, which in turn set the template for many subsequent gangster thrillers, from Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars to Walter Hill’s Last Man Standing. The latter film is the one that most obviously resembles the novel. It takes place in the 1920s in a Western town (but Texas), the Bruce Willis character very much resembles Hammett’s nameless detective, and the plot consists mostly of gratuitous mayhem and violence. Both that film and this novel have a direct-to-video feel about them. If this genre is your jam, however, then by all means read Red Harvest. For better or worse, it’s the Homer’s Odyssey of hard-boiled crime fiction.

Mysteries by Knut Hamsun

Inside the erratic mind of an eccentric outsider

Norwegian author Knut Hamsun’s literary career spanned seven decades, during which time he produced a plethora of novels, plays, stories, poetry, and essays, not all of which have been translated into English. Hamsun, who won the 1920 Nobel Prize in Literature, was an innovative literary pioneer who had a profound influence on modernist literature, not just in Norway but worldwide. His first novel, Hunger, published in 1890, is probably still his most renowned and widely read work. His second novel, Mysteries, published in 1892, is not as well known.

The title Mysteries is as generic as it sounds. It could pertain to anything or nothing going on in the story. Like many of Hamsun’s novels, it is difficult to summarize the plot of Mysteries in a couple of sentences. The plot just kind of meanders from scene to scene, without any overt agenda, much like real life itself. The novel follows Johan Nagel, an eccentric outsider who shows up one day at a small coastal Norwegian town and decides to settle there. Nagel states his profession as agronomist, but although only about thirty years of age, he seems to have inherited a sufficient sum of money so as to be no longer required to work for a living. Upon arriving in the unnamed town in which the novel is set, he takes a room at a main-street hotel and decides to stay indefinitely, as something of a retiree.

Nagel may be a stranger, but he’s no recluse, and he soon becomes involved in the social life of the town. He gets to know some of the citizens, both the fashionable set and some of the lower classes. He attends parties, where he is both a popular attraction and a gauche curiosity. Nagel has a habit of saying whatever’s on his mind, whether it’s socially appropriate or not. He talks a mile a minute and often runs on into extended stories and soliloquies. He will regale a crowd of partygoers, for example, by recounting the details of a dream he has had. This hardly seems realistic among polite society, but his audience listens enrapt while the dream goes on for several pages. Being socially active in his new hometown, it’s not surprising that Nagel would fall in love. His choice of soulmate is a complicated one, however, and their relationship is anything but easy and smooth.

Early in his literary career, Hamsun had an antipathy towards realist and naturalist literature. He is considered the leader of a neo-Romantic resurgence in Norwegian and Western European fiction. Mysteries is realistic in the sense of this is what provincial Norway was like in the 1890s. The story touches on political and social issues of the time, but not so much as to be obtrusive to ignorant outsiders unfamiliar with Norwegian history. The novel is predominantly Romantic, however, because it’s almost entirely concerned with what’s going on inside Nagel’s noggin: his struggle for love and self-actualization. Through the love story that arises, Nagel eventually develops into a modern variation on Goethe’s Young Werther.

In addition to Nagel’s extensive and revealing blatherings, Hamsun employs some early use of stream of consciousness narrative. Such interior monologues do not venture into the abstract excesses of later modernist authors but rather quite brilliantly capture the authentic imaginary conversations that we all engage in from time to time. Hamsun’s work reads as if influenced by the psychological studies of Sigmund Freud, but Mysteries actually precedes by a few years almost all of Freud’s published works. Nagel’s dreams and interior monologues show that Hamsun is clearly interested in the power of subconscious thought on human behavior. By exploring both the subconscious and conscious components of Nagel’s mind, Hamsun constructs a character that is much deeper and more multidimensional than the typical literary protagonists of his era.

Hamsun’s writing was years ahead of its time, and his work is still far and above most of today’s literature. He has become one of my go-to authors. I’ve never read a bad book by him, I can always count on him for a thought-provoking read, and I intend to eventually read my way through his complete output of novels. Growth of the Soil is my favorite thus far.   

The Three Impostors by Arthur Machen

Brilliantly constructed web of horror

Welsh author Arthur Machen (1863–1947) is a recent discovery of mine, and I have been greatly impressed by everything of his that I’ve read thus far. Machen primarily wrote in the horror and fantasy genres, but his work has the quality of great literature that transcends genre fiction. His writing is somewhat analogous to Edgar Allan Poe’s horror work, but Machen’s books, written from the 1890s to the 1930s, are naturally more modern in style. Readers of today will be surprised by how Machen’s novels and stories were ahead of their time. His horror fiction is still scary, and he’s admired by many contemporary writers in that genre, like Stephen King and Peter Straub.

Machen’s novel The Three Impostors was published in 1895. The table of contents might give the impression that this is a collection of short fiction. The chapters have names like “The Novel of the Black Seal” and “The Adventure of the Missing Brother.” These are not stand-alone stories, however. All the elements of the book fit together like an ingeniously integrated puzzle. The stories don’t necessarily follow a linear chronology, and the various scenes are intertwined in unexpected ways. The way the story unfolds is somewhat reminiscent of the circular narrative structure of the film Pulp Fiction.

The novel opens with a prologue in which three shady characters appear to be leaving the scene of a murder—a murder that they have collaboratively committed, at least that’s what we gather from their conversation. At about the same time, two gentlemen bystanders happen upon the scene, Mr. Dyson and Mr. Phillipps. What follows is a series of stories, each more imaginative and brilliantly crafted than the last, in which these five characters—as well as the alleged murder victim, making an even half dozen—are continually brought together in a series of terrifying and suspenseful situations. The characters are all well-drawn, and the dialogue captivating. There’s also a mysterious gold coin involved that unites the various narrative threads (calling to mind Pulp Fiction’s briefcase).

Although The Three Impostors is one unified novel, it has enough creepy content and sick shit to fill up five or six novellas. Torture, murder, mob violence, cults, witchcraft, ancient demons, and monsters all make an appearance. What I like about Machen’s writing is that he presents macabre material in a way that is, for lack of a better word, realistic. His characters are skeptics, and he assumes his readers are skeptics, so he explains bizarre phenomena in a manner that has a scientific feel to it, drawing from concepts of evolution, anthropology, religious studies, and more. Though written in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Machen’s books call to mind some of the classic horror films of the 1960s and ‘70s, like Rosemary’s Baby, The Omen, The Exorcist, The Wicker Man, The Dunwich Horror, and The Shining (except some of those examples have to do with The Devil, while this book does not). Yet much like Poe’s work, the stories are lusciously narrated in the intelligent voice of an erudite gentleman of a century ago.

The Three Impostors is really a remarkable read. Machen grabbed my attention at the first page and kept me enthralled all the way through. The way all the parts fit together is really brilliantly conceived. Upon finishing the book, I want to read it again just to catch any details I might have missed. If it sounds like Machen might be up your alley, also check out The Great God Pan and The Terror.

Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini

The unentertaining oxymoron of the gentleman pirate

Rafael Sabatini (1875–1950) was an Italian-British writer of adventure novels. His books often feature swashbuckling heroes who would go on to be played by the likes of Errol Flynn, Tyrone Power, and Stewart Granger in Hollywood film adaptations. One such novel (and a film role for Flynn) is Captain Blood, published in 1922.

The auspiciously named Peter Blood is a middle-aged Irish-born ex-soldier and -adventurer who now plies the gentler trade of physician in the English town of Bridgewater. In the 1680s, when rebels supporting James Scott, the Duke of Monmouth, rose up against the English King James II, Blood could care less about the politics, but one of his neighbors, a Monmouth rebel, is injured in the fighting, and Blood dutifully tends his wounds. For this service, Blood is arrested by royal forces for aiding and abetting the rebellion. Under normal circumstances, he would be hanged, but instead James sentences a number of prisoners, Blood included, to slavery on the English plantations of Barbados. Even as a slave, Blood manages to gain a reputation as a physician in Barbados, but needless to say, slavery is not to his liking. He escapes his captors, commandeers a ship, and assumes the role of a pirate.

As a pirate story, Captain Blood has its enjoyable moments. The scenes of naval battles and sword duels are well-done and exciting but few and far between. The problem with Captain Blood is that Sabatini constantly wants to emphasize that Blood is a gentleman and only a reluctant pirate. This preoccupation with gentlemanliness, so common to English literature of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, takes almost all the fun out of the story. One might hope for a Han Solo-type scoundrel-with-a-heart-of-gold, but no, that’s not what you’re getting here. Instead, Captain Blood is a dull, smug, self-righteous prig.

Sabatini clearly wants to hold Blood up as the exemplar of manhood, and in doing so he makes the character practically flawless. Blood is the smartest mind in every argument, the most skillful sword in every fight, and the wiliest strategician in every naval engagement. When you think about memorable heroes, they often lose before they can win. We like to see them struggle to earn their victories, but Blood never struggles for anything because he’s perfection incarnate. The only area in which Sabatini allows the character any vulnerability is his heart. Blood develops an unwise and unrealistic infatuation for a beautiful young woman who happens to be the daughter of the slavemaster who owns him. Contrary to his martial heroics, in emotional matters Blood is an absolute milquetoast, and it’s difficult to admire his abjectly submissive way with women.

In between the few action scenes, Captain Blood consists mostly of conversations in which honor is debated at length. Each character asserts: I live by a code of honor. My actions are honorable; yours are not. These are the qualities of a gentleman; you sir, are not a gentleman. In addition, there are the familiar tropes of sworn enemies who “give their word” that they won’t attack their adversaries or try to escape captivity—as usual, that comes across as unrealistic and silly. Again, this English obsession with nobility and gentlemanliness. Credit to the French where it’s due: you won’t find these tedious debates in The Three Musketeers. Instead of wasting so many words on honor, just show us the definition of honor through your character’s behaviors. Alas, Captain Blood could have been a much more compelling book without all this sanctimonious posing. The plot of this novel would have made a good adventure novel along the lines of Alexandre Dumas’s or Robert Louis Stevenson’s work, but the telling is tiresome and reduces this story to a middling pirate tale at best.