another outstanding book from Broodcomb: The Settlements, by O. Jamie Walsh

 

9781999629816

Broodcomb Press, 2018

236 pp

paperback

The Settlements  is set in an area known as "The Peninsula," which, according to Broodcomb's webpage, "abounds in strange tales." It is  a place where "the settlers have found harmony," providing "tales both eerie and shocking" which also explore the "fantastic/everyday meaning of what it means to be human," and I can't begin to express how very happy I was to  be back there again.  One more thing: while the back-flap blurb notes that this book is "plotless and meandering,"  don't believe it.  

The narrator of this book is an omissioner, whose function is to "offer an ear," to serve as "a valve for the bleeding of grief or worry," in short, to be available for anyone in the Settlements who needs to have someone to talk to.  Each settlement is different, depending on the "world focus" its population espouses, and the omissioner must be able to adapt himself/herself to all of them.   For example, the settlement of Emotion 

"is a place of whiny indulgence, populated by the emotionally incontinent, the adolescent or the theatrical...The inhabitants are interested in how feelings live, how humans live within them and what emotions feel like to be inside"

 while the settlement of Fear (one of two the omissioner dreads visiting),  "focuses on visitors" and  which on entering, 

"the day darkens, which is less accident of mind or weather but achieved by light-inhibiting screens across which shapes can be projected to become shadows in the shape of raptors or devils when they touch the ground."

The narrator moves through the Settlements, going where needed and describing the places as well as the myriad issues faced by those who need him while also offering his observations on other matters both external and internal, including bits of  "mind-chatter."  That alone would make for great reading on its own, but of course, there's much, much more, with plot threads that appear and reappear, ultimately forming connections.  There's a certain Dr. Krab who has spent time exploring various patterns that lead to a startling conclusion, also channeling strange thoughts,  a murder, a strange "fox boy" with orange fur, a book entitled A History of Dice and Counter Games detailing  some of the strangest  (and macabre) games such as the deadly "Six Gates of the City" and "The Uncertain and the The Beguiled,"  as well as a rather sinister and creepy golf game.  And then there's a chapter from a new Judge Dee book, which, as an aside, I found absolutely brilliant since I  love van Gulik's Judge Dee novels. What is the significance of the number 63?   And just who is the strange and sinister woman who, impossibly, hasn't aged in twenty years but seems to be everywhere?   I haven't even mentioned the dead girl preserved in the "huge specimen jar..."  

Plotless and meandering? No way.   The Settlements is carefully and cleverly constructed, falling more on the surreal side than probably any of the Broodcomb novels that have come before, while taking a look at what it means to be human, to feel, and to make connections.     And speaking of those books that have come before, anyone who's read them will quickly notice the intertextual connections made here, especially in the case of The Night of Turns, which, in reality, I'm actually glad I read before this one.  Don't worry -- having knowledge of what happens in any of the other Broodcomb titles isn't a necessity for reading The Settlements.  

As was the case with Night of Turns, I found myself completely caught up in the strangeness and the lives of these people as well as the quirky happenings, and The Settlements also affected me on an emotional level.  I was beyond sad when this book was over, a little choked up, and left in a sort of daze just going over it again in my head once away from it.     Once again readers are warned that "This might not be for you," but by this point I know better.  

Absolutely stunning and superb.  

 

"a different domain: " The Nightfarers, by Mark Valentine

 

9781912586257

Tartarus Press, 2020

219 pp

hardcover

In the story "The Axeholm Toll," I marked a particular sentence which perfectly describes my experience with reading the stories in this book:

"We enter them, and a sense steals over us of being in a different domain."

The best writers, in my humble reader opinion, somehow manage to deliver stories that shut out the sensory realm altogether and deliver me fully into the world(s) that they've created.   That's certainly how it is in the case of The Nightfarers, in which the author's elegant, atmospheric and often ethereal writing takes you into (again quoting from "The Axholme Toll")

"...places which have their story stored already, and want to tell us this, through whatever powers they can..." 

with the people in these stories best personifying those spoken of in the epigraph by Angelus Silesius who  "would see The Light that is beyond all light," by "faring forth Into the darkness of the Night."  It is only there where they may stumble upon what "each place" will "reach out to us, to tell us, tell us what it holds." 

My very favorite stories in The Nightfarers are those relating to books, literature, or browsing in bookstores. No surprise there -- I'm very much like the narrator of  "The Axeholm Toll" who notes that 

"I am by nature solitary and prefer nothing better than quietness and my own company, with a good fire and a good book." 

I did have to laugh when I started reading The Nightfarers, a timely coincidence since when I started it I  was eagerly awaiting news of the winners of both the National Book Prize and The Booker Prize. The first story, "The 1909 Prosperine Prize," begins with several judges who have come together to decide who will win that award.  The shortlist for this literary award comes down to seven entries (Algernon Blackwood, Marjorie Bowen, William Hope Hodgson, Bram Stoker, 'Sabazeus', and MP Shiel), but it seems the judges cannot make up their mind. The secretary's plan to push through the indecision is nothing short of genius.  Major book love going on not just here, but in several of the other stories in this volume.    "White Pages," for example, finds a lover of "obscure old books" actually finding a sought-for,  "very scarce" book called Invisible Friends, so-named for a reason, while in "Undergrowth," a man who wants to be left alone while browsing bookstores without any help from the proprietor finds himself eventually roaming through books on his own in a rather unique way.  I had to read this one twice just to make sure that what I thought was happening was happening.  This story is a little gem, but there may be something in the advice given in "The White Pages" in terms of riffling the pages of any book you might read before starting it.  The rather ethereal  "The Inner Sentinel" is a story in which the narrator finds himself piecing together "some hints of a vast history" in his dreams which become more than a feeling that he's "lived another life" in the space of sleep.  This one is absolutely beautiful, transporting me into the narrator's visions as life outside  of myself faded to nothing; it is also as the author notes in the "About the Stories" section of this book, "a tribute to William Hope Hodgson's The Night Land.   "The Bookshop in Novy Svet" was another story that made me do a double take at the end, another absolutely brilliant work featuring an actuary, a bookstore owner, an artist and dying poets, all the while reminding me for some reason of Meyrink. Hmm. I think it's pretty obvious by now  that I absolutely loved "The Axeholme Toll," which begins with a mention of Robert Louis Stevenson's "The Merry Men" leading to talk of "enclaves within the solid land of the country, which are islands in a different sense."  

  Of the remainder of the stories, the eerie "The White Sea Company" also falls into the favorites category, as does "The Dawn at Tzern"   and "The Seer of Trieste."  The others I haven't mentioned due to time considerations,  "Their Dark and Starry Mirrors,"  "A Walled Garden on the Bosphorus" and "The Mascarons of the Late Empire" are all atmospheric pleasures which carry the feel of the fantastical, while "The Box of Idols" is a short but fun  little supernatural detective story. 

While it's a hard book to pin down as to category (and I don't think it needs to be)  The Nightfarers is an exquisite collection of stories from a writer of incredible genius and talent.  These stories should appeal to those readers who enjoy tales about what lies hidden underneath or alongside the material world that only a few rare people will ever experience, as well as to those readers who prefer being caught up in atmosphere rather than simply focusing on plot.  I can't recommend this one highly enough. 

two beautiful books from John Gale: Saraband of Sable; A Damask of the Dead

"For do not we all wait for something that we know nothing of, something that has not arrived, and possibly never will."  -- from "Vigil," A Damask of the Dead 

A few months ago for reasons I still can't put my finger on, I picked up a copy of his Saraband of Sable from Egaeus Press (the third book in the Egaeus Press Keynote Edition series), never having read anything by John Gale before that time.  Now I would read anything this man writes.

9780993527890

Egaeus Press, 2018

illustrated by Alfredo Guido

185 pp; hardcover

With absolutely no idea what to expect from this author on opening the book,  it didn't take me long at all to realize that I had something exquisite in my hands. By the time I'd finished it, I was telling everyone and anyone who reads dark/strange/weird fiction that they need to buy a copy of this short but sophisticated, highly-satisfying collection of tales, not just because the stories are so good, but also because of the unique quality of the writing.  I'm actually lost for words in trying to describe it, so perhaps I should refer to the description at Egaeus (from the link above) which says that

"Saraband of Sable presents eight of Gale's sumptuous strange tales; dreamlike at times, dense in their imagery yet delicate as dimming perfume."

It also noted there that the author's "previous collections" ... "garnered praise for their sophisticated and decadent prose styling," and I'd only add that I found a sort of ethereal quality to his work, but it really goes much deeper than any description that my non-writer's head can produce.  The most surprising quality of these stories, though, is that while basking in the sheer beauty of the writing, it's like the clouds lift and there at the heart of each story is the darkness that's been peeking through all along, finally emerging with gut-punching force. And while it seems that we're in the middle of long ago and far away, the essentially-human traits that are represented here are tragic, real and timeless. One more thing -- the incorporation of the natural world flows beautifully through each and every story, as in this description of a city's necropolis:

"... a few do venture here, to tarry for a while amidst the cypress and the ebony poplars, basking in the light which falls here like tarnished copper during the diurnal hours; they are the dreamers that revere the lank and elegant grasses that grow between the monuments of obsidian and chrysoberyl, the grasses that turn from jade to gold during autumn; and they love the jackdaws who inhabit the sable green of the elder yews and who often speak in the voices of the dead through eating the fruits of the trees that look like crimson pearls, the trees whose roots bind tight the ivory bones of the long departed."  (from "Lord of the Porphyry Nenuphar"). 

The truth is that even before finishing Saraband of Sable, I was so enchanted that I absolutely had to have more, so I tracked down a copy of the now out-of-print A Damask of the Dead published by Tartarus.

1872621635

Tartarus Press, 2002

100 pp, hardcover (#136)

The dustjacket blurb really tells you all you need to know about this book:

"The perfumes of the East suffuse these tales, of poets, lovers and kings who, despite the luxury and beauty of their surroundings, desire something beyond."

Immediately we find ourselves standing at the gates of  "Death's City", with "palaces with colonnades flooded with darkness, stretching away into infinity," moving later onto "a castle of many turrets that reared up from a cliff of dark rock," complete with "black tourmaline crypts," at some point reaching an "onyx-domed city."  The fourteen stories in this book transport the reader completely out of this world and into others where sorcery is a natural part of life, where poets can really fall in love with the moon, or where the ghost of a king appears one night to give advice to his son and heir, and more.

Fantastical these stories may be, but they are not breezy tales with rewards at the end; as with Saraband of Sable, there is only tragedy, unhappiness, and darkness to be found within.

On the dustjacket blurb of A Damask of the Dead, Mark Valentine has this to say:

"As Machen has observed, literature consists in the art of telling a wonderful story in a wonderful manner. Few writers today acknowledge the need for either element. John Gale is someone who has mastered both."

I couldn't agree more, and that goes for Saraband of Sable as well.  John Gale is a rare find indeed.

So highly recommended that no scale exists for how highly I recommend these books.

The Marvelous Story of Claire D'Amour, by Maurice Magre, adapted by Brian Stableford

9781612276526
Black Coat Press, 2017
254 pp

paperback

"They were all dreamers, and they were there because they had dreamed of the ideal on earth, and were suffering bitterly..." -- 175

After spending the summer exploring other areas of reading interest, I'm back here again with this book, which is the first of twelve in a series exploring the work of Maurice Magre, a French writer, who as Brian Stableford reveals in this book's introduction, was "one of the most far-ranging and extravagant writers of fantastic fiction active in France in the first half of the 20th century," and  "perhaps the finest of them."   The fourteen stories in this book are examples of "contes merveilleux," or "tales of enchantment," but as Stableford notes (and which quickly became obvious once I started reading), some of these are actually quite nihilistic, trending more along of the lines of tales of "disenchantment."  As I also discovered not too far into these tales, he's also on the money when he says that "in Magre's work the tragic component usually outweighs the comedic component, and sometimes swamps it entirely." [For a more complete take on Magre's work, I can point you to Stableford's articles in The New York  Review of Science Fiction  (NYRSF) vols. 341, 342, and 343; the last article is available for free online; the other two you can pick up as pdfs for $3.00 each.]

Before launching into just brief sketches of each story, I'll add here that while not true for every tale, there's no missing the message (as Stableford tells us)  that "amour, although irresistible is invariably fatal because it is blinded by illusion" (NYRSF, 341, 7), which may reflect on events in Magre's own life and how they influenced his fiction.  In the introduction, for example, we learn about the author's breakup with "the first woman with whom he became infatuated as soon as he discovered that she had slept with someone -- someone he found particularly loathsome," and that this same motif also runs "incessantly" through Magre's stories. It may be that the author "changed his philosophy of amorous relationships abruptly in 1903", and if so, it is probably

" not a coincidence that Maurice, in "Histoire merveilleuse de Claire d'Amour" is blinded by illusion, and thus immunized against jealousy. Such, so far as it can be determined, is the personal context of Magre's early fiction, insofar as it deals with claire d'amour -- i.e., the bright light of amour in the broad sense."

Whether or not this background is of interest to anyone else or not, the bottom line is that I fell in love with this book while reading it, and as brutal as it can be sometimes, it is absolutely delightful.

In this collection of tales, it is "amour," "the flower of youth," the power of illusion, and "the ideal" that takes center stage, beginning with "Marcelle."  Unlike the stories that follow it, there are no elements of the fantastic to be found anywhere, just a man whose lover deceives him with other men. He breaks it off in anger, later bemoaning that he'd killed "amour...by virtue of stupidity and pride."  "Doctor Faust's First Love" follows a young student named Fritz in love with the daughter of the local burgomaster, Elsbeth. Sadly, Elsbeth has a "mediocre soul" under her outer beauty and accepts her father's choice of husband, a "rich and aged lord." Fritz, believing that "science and labor might perhaps bring a remedy to his woes," goes to visit local sage Dr. Faust and arrives at just the wrong time. "Marinette and Old Water-Sprite" is a delightful tale about a sad young girl and those who love her, including a water sprite, a simple young man "full of gaiety and charm, and a "very rich lord," born under the sign of Saturn. The centerpiece of the book, and the titular story is next, "The Marvellous Story of Claire D'Amour. "  One would think that when one has Jesus Christ and the Holy Virgin as godparents, life would be great for young Maurice.  It may have been except for the "gift of illusion" bestowed upon him by the Sandman that will permit Maurice "never to see life as it is." When he meets and falls in love with the poor, amoral but beautiful Claire, that extra gift will cost him.   Beyond excellent, it is my favorite story in the book and while this one is definitely on the nihilistic side, it is a joy to read.

Maurice Magre, from Black Coat Press

"The Toy Merchant" is the story of Lubin and Colette, who vow as children to love each other forever.  It starts out sweetly enough and then BAM!, end of that.  How I won't say, but it's another good one.  Next up is "The Story of Lili-Des-Roses and the Black Prince," in which Lili, "the glory of the country" scorns the simple pastor Jean-des-Bois and his "limitless love for her" in favor of the black prince"because he is rich."   This one is followed by "The Poor Musician and the Little Genie," which also touches on amour but also something a bit different -- the love and dedication of an artist for his art.  "The Flower of Youth" comes next, a true quest story in which young Joël must find the flower of youth in order to marry Princess Raphaële, who has sworn to love only the "King of France, the Devil," or the man who brings her this treasure.  She is, of course, taking advantage of his "naivety" and being cruel, but he doesn't know this, and off he goes, abandoning everything previously dear to him in his search.  A very twisty ending has this one, catching me completely by surprise.  In "The Story of an Unlucky Grenadier," a young man who has, since childhood, had the worst luck ever, desperately wants to impress the parents of the woman he loves after they refuse to consent to the marriage.  All I'll say about this story is that maybe he should have rethought that idea.  "The Doll" is its own way a poignant story, focusing on a man whose attraction to a beautiful actress causes him to rethink his career choices in order to get her attention while he wonders what he can do to make her love him.   "The Goatherd King" has a lovely touch of irony, beginning with a prophecy made to young Eloi by a witch who reveals that he is destined to be a king; this is followed by "The Last Siren" who is discovered by a man in the Seine after deciding to end it all.  Finally, the end of this book offers  "Jeannett's Three Professions," reminding me a bit of a rather twisted "Parable of the Talents."

I can't begin to say how very much I enjoyed this book and how I looked forward to coming back to it every time I had to put it down.  I've been stockpiling books from this series for a while, and now that I've had my first taste of Magre, I don't doubt that I'll be reading as many of them as I can.

yes, yes, yes, highly recommended. 

as we venture into the realm of the fays: Bluebirds, by Catulle Mendès

9781943813254
Snuggly Books, 2017
originally published as Les oiseaux bleus, 1888
translated from the French by Brian Stableford
163 pp



"...who would assume the task of writing fairy tales if he did not have the right to transform, in the course of his tales, the most hideous individuals into young ladies dazzling with beauty and adornments?" -- 110



I just loved this collection of French tales  -- it's one of those "sorry, I'm out of the real world right now so please leave a message" kind of books that I look forward to finding and only every so often do.

In describing this book to others, I've said that it's a collection of "fairy" tales for adults, but that description isn't quite accurate as I embarrassingly discovered after finishing the book while reading the introduction that talks about the evolution of the French conte.  For our purposes (beware of what's coming next  - I love reading about the history of literature so it will be a moment before I actually get to the book),  in the seventeenth century, a new "fad" was created when

"collections of reconfigured folktales and imitations thereof began to appear in several European nations," 

and became a hit with the "literary salons associated with some of the leading ladies of Louis XIV."  Authors of this sort of  "salon literature"

"deliberately employed and exaggerated the elements of the merveilleux in such traditional tales, in calculated flagrant defiance of the dawning 'Age of Enlightenment' that ruled such material superstitious, obsolete and unworthy of credence."

One particular "promoter of salon literature" of the time was the Baroness d'Aulnoy, who, in the same year that Charles Perrault published his Contes de ma mère l'Oye (Tales of Mother Goose),  put together a collection of tales called Les Contes de fées.   This little factoid is noteworthy since (and I swear I'm getting around to my point about wrongly labeling this book a collection of fairy tales in case you've wondered where the hell I'm going with all of this)  as Stableford goes on to say that

"The nearest equivalent to the French word féerie is "enchantment," and fées are, strictly speaking, enchantresses (as in the enchantress of Arthurian legend known in English as Morgan le Fay), but the title of Madame d' Aulnoy's first collection was translated into English as 'fairy tales,' thus foisting that label on an entire genre of subsequent English fiction, most of whose included stories do not, in fact, feature 'fairies' as prevously defined and deployed by such influential domestic writers as William Shakespeare and Edmund Spenser." 

He also notes that while Mendès' stories often feature "individuals very similar to the fairies of previous English literature and art," the "genre defined by Madame d'Aulnoy," became adapted for children's literature. The truth is though that "the production of such tales in the French salons was intended for the use of adults."  Finally getting down to where I said I'd be going, the stories in this book are less "fairy" tale than as Stableford puts it, "fakeloristic contes" and a "specialized collection of pastiche folktales"  which happen to involve "fays" in most cases, and trust me, there are several here that are certainly not meant to be bedtime reading for children.

Because there are twenty-seven of these little contes to be found here, there is no way to quickly go through each one, and I probably wouldn't anyway since the joy is in the reading and I wouldn't want to mess that up for anyone considering this book.   There are quite a few that made me laugh -- offering just two examples here, "The Dreaming Beauty,"  a sort of riff on "Sleeping Beauty," carries the traditional tale to a new level as a prince gets his comeuppance after waking the sleeping princess; "The Bonnet Collector" gave me a serious case of the giggles after reading Stableford's footnote about the French usage of the term "flinging (or throwing) one's cap or bonnet over the windmill," which was likely not taken from Don Quixote.  Then there are the darker ones in which I could clearly see elements of later Decadent fiction, including "The Lucky Find," in which Amour and Beauty step into a property shop to find something they've lost.  And, while they're all wonderful little tales, to add to the few mentioned above, I did have my favorites  -- "The Beauty of the World" (in which the author makes a great point), "The Maladroit Wish," in the vein of "be careful what you wish for...", and "Isoline-Isolin," the nature of which which I won't even hint at, and "The Three Good Fays," another one with a beyond-true ironic ending.

There is great wisdom to be discovered in the sheer irony of these tales, so even though they're short, they're also quite complex, deserving of a slow, careful read.  I just love when I find works like this, and this time, it's left me wanting more of the same.  Hint hint, Snuggly.

Highly, highly recommended, it's absolutely beautiful. My copy came from Snuggly, so a huge  merci bien, mes amis to the great people there.

Che vuoi? That is the question: The Devil in Love, by Jacques Cazotte

9781907650055
Dedalus European Classics, 2011
originally published 1772 as Le Diable Amoureux
109 pp

paperback

After a short bout of food poisoning I'm back with The Devil in Love, by Jacques Cazotte, who (as the story goes), predicted whom among his friends would be meeting Madame Guillotine as the horrors of the French Revolution unfolded; sadly, his prescience didn't include himself.

I was very much looking forward to reading this short book, but when I opened it and saw this illustration,




I knew instantly that  I'd seen these words before ("che vuoi?" -- what do you wish?)  so after some research online,  I went to my library of stuff no one else would ever read but me and dug out my copy of Écrits, by Jacques Lacan (1981) and sure enough, there they were.  It's not like you need to get Lacan's theory to understand The Devil in Love,but Lacan's work offers a clue as to how to approach the story. I'm a lazy person at times, so instead of rereading the whole shebang, I found a link to an online intro on his stuff.  Distilling it down from that page, what's relevant here is the idea of

“man’s desire is Other’s desire”: the subject desires only insofar as it experiences the Other itself as desiring, as the site of an unfathomable desire, as if an opaque desire is emanating from him or her. The other not only addresses me with an enigmatic desire, it also confronts me with the fact that I myself do not know what I really desire, with the enigma of my own desire."

That absolutely put Cazotte's work into perspective for me here, but since someone might want to read this little gem of a book and may not agree with how I see it, I'll leave it there for now.

The Devil in Love is narrated by the main character, Don Alvaro, a Spanish captain in the king's guard at Naples. When his company ran out of money for gambling and chasing women, they would "philosophize in our own quarters," and one evening, the subject of conversation turned to "the Cabbala and cabbalists."  Most of the group agreed it was "a mass of absurdities, a source of knavery, fit to dupe the credulous and to amuse children," but  the men eventually cleared out, except for Don Alvaro  and an older Flemish guy, Soberano, whose talk on the subject interests Don Alvaro enough that they meet up again.  Soberano leads Don Alvaro to believe that he can "give the spirits orders," and the young captain tells his friend that his "dearest wish" is to do the same.  He is told that it will take at least two years for the "necessary preparation", but Don Alvaro eventually gets his way after bragging that if he met the Devil himself, he'd pull "his devilish ears."  He is given the opportunity, told what to do, and sure enough, he summons the devil himself in the form of a camel's head, who on being summoned asks "che vuoi?." Our hero is petrified, but somehow manages to get over his terror enough to start commanding the Devil himself; his first order is that the camel transform into a spaniel.  This is only the beginning of several transformations that occur in this book; the spaniel then transforms into a young page named Biondetto who becomes Don Alvaro's servant.  Biondetto eventually becomes Biondetta, a beautiful blonde who has to the power to thoroughly distract Don Alvaro.  But let's not lose sight of the fact that the title is "The Devil in Love..."

However you choose to read this very short book, it is a delight from beginning to end; the ending itself leaves much pause for thought and actually sent me back to the start for a second read.  The short of it is that questions of gender identity, sexual desire, reality vs. nonreality, and much more  make their way through this tale; however, it's also a book that's just a fun read that I can definitely recommend.

This coming year I plan to spend a LOT of time with Dedalus classics -- this is just the first of many.