In the Land of Time (2004) by Lord Dunsany

Cover of the 2004 Penguin Classics Lord Dunsany compilation- the first- over a hundred years after he started publishing stories. 

Book Review

In the Land of Time (2004)

 by Lord Dunsany

  Lord Dunsany is the greatest fantasy writer you've never heard up.   Even if you haven't heard of him:

Dunsany can nevertheless be seen as the source and inspiration of much of the writing that followed in his wake; such figures as H. P. Lovecraft, J. R. R. Tolkien, Fritz Leiber, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Moore herself are deeply in Dunsany’s debt for the example he set as a prose stylist and as a creator of an entire universe of shimmering fantasy. 

    The strongest look is between Dunsany and Lovecraft.  Dunsany's breakthrough came with The Gods of Pegaana, 1904- self published.  The achievment is described S. T. Joshi, who provides the introduction:

 What Dunsany had done was to create an entire cosmogony, complete with a pantheon of ethereal but balefully powerful gods—a cosmogony, however, whose aim was not the fashioning of an ersatz religion that made any claim to metaphysical truth, but rather the embodiment of Oscar Wilde’s imperishable dictum, “The artist is the creator of beautiful things.”

 

     His secret, it turns out was a combination of a style derived from the English translation of the Old Testament with the classic-revivalism of Nietzsche:

  Dunsany read Nietzsche in 1904, just around the time he wrote The Gods of Pegaāna, and we can detect the presence of the German iconoclast in numerous conceptions and perhaps even in its ponderous phraseology, so similar to the prose-poetic rhythms of Thus Spake Zarathustra. In effect, Dunsany was seeking to fuse the naïveté and spirit of wonder that had led primitive humanity to invent its gods with a very modern sensibility that recognized the insignificance of mankind amidst those incalculable vortices of space and time that modern science had uncovered.

      Joshi also addresses one of my favorite questions, "What happened?"  Dunsany was huge in his day- though Joshi points out that his best work was published early, and the stories from the end of his career including the sadly Wellsian  Jorkens stories, published towards the end of his career.   Joshi has this to say on the subject of "what happened" to Dunsany's literary reputation:

How did a writer so well known in his time, and so showered with critical acclaim, lapse so far into obscurity? A number of factors having nothing to do with the merit, or lack of it, of Dunsany’s work conspired against him. First, fantasy has always been relatively restricted in its appeal, and in the course of the twentieth century it gradually dropped out of mainstream fiction and became a narrow “genre” somewhere between science fiction and horror fiction, and incurring the critical disdain that those literary modes suffered. Second, Dunsany’s ambiguous involvement with his Irish literary compatriots—to say nothing of his Unionist sympathies at a time when most leading Irish writers were Nationalists—caused his work to be either scorned or deliberately ignored by those who should have been acknowledging it as a distinctive contribution to the national literature. And third, Dunsany, like so many writers, wrote too much.

         There is a strong argument that only the first two sections, Pegaana and Environs and Tales of Wonder.  The rest of it- including his "prose poems" is more for the completest than the casual reader of the antecedents of weird fiction.

      

Maximum Bob (1991) by Elmore Leonard

Ad for the ABC version of Maximum Bob by Elmore Leonard- it bombed. Leonard specifically described the main character as looking like Harry Dean Stanton, and he was not casted.

Book Review

Maximum Bob (1991) 

by Elmore Leonard

   Despite it being a late career success- winning the first Hammett Prize when it was released and inspiring a seven episode television miniseries on ABC, best-seller, etc. I think Maximum Bob is one of Leonard's worst, and a clear indication that after the success of Get Shorty, he began to "go Hollywood" as they say.  Here, the strong evidence is Leonard's repeated characterization of Judge Bob Gibss- dubbed Maximum Bob by Newsweek (!) for his strict sentencing policy, as "looking like Harry Dean Stanton."  That is a pretty specific reference point, and a weird one, considering Stanton's status as a muse for David Lynch during his most productive period.

  Beyond that, the plot is classic Florida-period Leonard, with some particularly cringey details beyond the repeated references to the main character looking like Harry Dean Stanton.  Specifically, the wife of the Judge is a spiritual channeler who is frequently possessed by the spirit of a 10 year old African American girl who lived before the civil war.  She is the only African-American in the book.  It's...awkward.

Thomas of Reading (1612) by Thomas Deloney

Book Review

Thomas of Reading (1612) 

by Thomas Deloney

Replaces: Cecilia by Fanny Burney

  The original 1001 Books list adhered closely to the idea that the novel was basically invented in 18th century England, giving short shrift to everything written before the 18th century, whether written inside or outside of England.  Thus, the revised 1001 Books list includes titles from outside Europe, and titles from Spain, German and France written before 1800, all of which shows that while the modern industry of the novel did emerge out of England in the 18th century, the form of the novel was source from many places.  The tradition also extends back inside England- Thomas of Reading is an example of an Elizabethan "novel"- published after Shakespeare died but before his "first folio" in 1623 cemented his status as the writer of the English language world.  Shakespeare's exclusion from the 1001 Books list is puzzling, I can only justify it on the grounds that he did not write "books" but "plays," since the 1001 Books list doesn't contain any other plays- even by included authors like Samuel Beckett- who is one of the most frequently selected writers in the original edition.

 The copy of Thomas of Reading I located was a 1912 edition of Thomas Deloney's works, in an olive green library bonding- apparently from 1912 itself.   The works contain a lengthy essay of Deloney's status in the development of the Elizabethan Novel.   In this edition- which is still standard, I think- the introduction is written by Francis Oscar Mann.  Mann identifies Deloney as being from Norwich, subsequently scholars have decided that he was from London, not Norwich, and that he was a silk weaver.  Besides the "old timey" language- closer to Chaucer than Shakespeare.

   The "plot" is scatter shot, reflecting the subheading, "Or The Sixe Worthy Yeomen of the West."  The best tale is the yeomen/cloth merchant who is murdered by a couple who run a road side in with a trick bed that spins around so that the target is dumped into a cauldron of boiling water from a dead sleep. The other five tales didn't stick out as much.  The original, 17th century orthography is maintained- it makes reading difficult but not impossible.