Le Livre des Fourmis: The Book of Ants

 

Le Livre des Fourmis: The Book of Ants by Robin D. Laws
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

One of my favorite games is the old Surrealist game Exquisite Cadaver. I'm not only a proponent, I'm a teacher of the game. I spread the gospel of Exquisite Cadaver far and wide, whenever I have the opportunity. My primary reason for loving the game is that it breaks my brain and causes me to look at live in a whole new way. It's the cognitive equivalent of cubism - seeing objects (in this case, either grammatical objects, if you are playing the "sentence" version, or illustrative objects, if you're playing the "three part drawing" version). Through what appears to be an aleotory excercise, but is really a channeling of the sublimated unconscious, one discovers new ways of looking at (or reading or writing or drawing) Things. I capitalize "Things" because I think of those creations as entities - self-sufficient, complete entities created by a group of people exercising the collective unconscious in a double-blind experiment. These Things emerge as we take our disjointed thoughts or pieces of thoughts (memes, perhaps?) and force them into a relational structure that causes disparate bits of our processed perceptions to be ordered in a template that we would normally use to create "meaning" - sentences and/or drawings. Through this, we form a new "reality". Or, at least, we form a new perception of reality. And if perception is reality, well, you get the picture.

In The Book of Ants (I will use the English title, because, to be honest, there is very, very little French in the book, even though most of the protagonists are French Surrealists), we are introduced to all the most famous of the surrealist cadre, and quite a few minor, even peripheral players of that artistic/poetic era. The book is told from the viewpoint of one Henri Salem, but don't go researching him, he's not real. At least not in this reality. In the reality of The Book of Ants, however, he is a young poet who develops relationships (and rivalries, and sometimes downright mutual loathing) with Breton, Dali, Bataille, Magrite, and many others you have likely never heard of, who keeps a diary set in two worlds: The world of the Great War and the interwar years of Paris, and the strange "place" underlying the conscious world, The Dreamlands.

As others have pointed out, this book serves as a sort of addendum to an RPG book, The Dreamhounds of Paris (which I shall review at some future point), written for the Trail of Cthulhu gaming system. It is referenced in the rulebook as a possible history from which players and game-masters might leverage for their own game play.

That said, there is nothing game-specific about the book at all. It reads quite well (outside of some annoying typos). The style is sparse, at times elegant, but not "purple," which is a bit surprising when the narrator and many of the characters are French poets and artists and even more surprising when once considers the overly-ornamented prose of H.P. Lovecraft, who brought The Dreamlands into the popular conscience. It helps to know the Cthulhu mythos and The Dreamlands, specifically, but those aren't absolutely necessary to understanding and enjoying the story, in fact, that knowledge isn't necessary at all. There's enough context and explication to allow the reader "in," though some references, such as the names of certain creatures that inhabit The Dreamland, might miss their full impact. In summary, no experience with the game or the subgenre is necessary, though knowing the subgenre is helpful.

I acknowledged the annoying typos. And I've edited and written enough books to know that eliminating all typos from a manuscript is a herculean task and, in many cases, nearly impossible. But the number of typos in the book can throw one out of the "dreamstate" of the book, which is a real shame. One might be luxuriating in the strangeness of it all, only to be suddenly jettisoned back to grammatical reality by obviously missing words (or obviously "extra" words). Can this be forgiven? Sure, but not without losing a star on my rating.

But when it's flowing, this story will capture you, slowly at first, intriguing you through the historical relationships of the surrealists one to another, then accelerating with the discovery that many of those sensitive enough (note: Breton was not) might enter the dreamlands, then, with the discovery that the surrealists could not only enter that place, they could manipulate it, create, and destroy, the pace becomes almost frantic. A new reality is discovered, then it is manipulated, subverted altogether, and disintegrated by those who have crossed over. There is a strong thread of the responsibility of those who colonize and the heinousness of the erasure of another's culture. Some serious ethical questions are asked and the answers to those questions affect not only The Dreamlands, or early-20th-Century Paris, but our own waking reality today. This isn't a book about strangeness and horrific caricatures of monstrosities - it really is about what it means to have influence, and about the consequences of one's actions, intended or not. This takes the work a step further than any other book I've read that was based on a roleplaying game. This isn't a "real play". It's much more than that. It will cause something that roleplaying games rarely do, and which the best gamemasters will engender in their players: introspection.

It's not just a book based on a game. It has, dare I say it? Meaning.


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Decasia: The State of Decay. A film by Bill Morrison.

 

My first forays into "experimental" film were courtesy of the International Cinema at BYU when I was an undergrad. Though not as highly-experimental as Morrison's Decasia, my early exposure to such films as Svankmajer's Faust and Wender's Wings of Desire whetted my appetite for more. When a friend of mine, who shared a shift as a security worker at night on campus, invited me and a few others over to watch Lynch's Eraserhead, I was hooked. 

I stumbled on Morrison's work while searching for clips from my favorite directors, The Brothers Quay (if you don't know how much of a Quay fanboy I am, you obviously have not been reading my blog for long). Morrison's Light is Calling came up in my search, and my interest was piqued. I watched it and was entirely blown away. 

Now, while Light is Calling is done in a warm sepia-tone, Decasia is purely black-and-white, which suits my (very mild) hue blindness just fine. Like any experimental cinematic work, this one takes patience and, in places, pure endurance. I admit to nearly shutting the whole thing off during a sequence in which an anonymous diver is climbing a ladder up to a high diving board (at least that's what I think was happening). Everything is in fairly slow-motion. Not super slowmo, but slow nonetheless. Morrison is willing to make you work for your insights. 

What we're given is a series of black-and-white films damaged by time either by smeared development fluid or outright disintegration of the cellulose acetate medium. The images are often difficult to discern, sometimes inscrutable. At other times, there are moments of relative clarity - the many cuts of whirling dervishes that seem to thread the sparse motifs together are decidedly old and far from perfect, but they offer the eyes a bit of a rest from the more challenging segments. 

I find it interesting that so much of Decasia is set in, well, Asia, whether Asia Minor or the Far East. Though Morrison has said nothing of colonialism that I can find in his interviews, a fair amount of footage is taken from documentary film of the middle east and Japan, among other locales. One of the more haunting segments is that of a pair of Catholic nuns standing as sentinels as a group of young uniformed schoolgirls, likely Vietnamese, if I am correct in my surmisings, marching past into what I presume must be a Catholic mission-school, probably in French Indochina. In one particularly attention-grabbing moment, one of the girls looks back at the camera and we see her full face for the first time. There is a strong look of suspicion in her eyes. It's probably just childhood curiosity for seeing a film camera for the first time, but I like to think of her as telepathically saying "I will be freed from this. If not me, then my children, or my children's children. We won't tolerate this forever."

Other segments are mostly banal documentary pieces, with a few bits from dramatized silent movies scattered throughout. I didn't recognize any of them, but my silent movie mental catalog is quite minimal. When such dramatized performances were presented, there was, for me, a mixed tale of the wonder of acting with th tragedy that, while these images survive, the actors clearly did not. It didn't help that there were, in close proximity to these sections, film of underground miners' bodies being dragged out from mines. A strange contrast. 

The music for the film was originally the film for the music. The initial performance of Michael Gordon's composition was the occasion for which the film was initially created. The music came first, then the film came as a reaction to that music. It's obvious that Gordon and Morrison played off of each other, though, to produce the "final" version that appears in Decasia. Gordon's atonal, intentionally de-tuned avant-classical orchestral piece and Morrison's abstract, surreal imagery play well of of each other.

A PRI interview on the DVD provides some insight into both Morrison's motivations for creating the movie and Gordon's thought process behind the music. Though the interview claims that you can't have one without the other, I'm willing to accept that as a challenge and watch Decasia muted with, let's say SunnO))) playing as musical accompanyment. Actually, I can think of a number of bands whose work would compliment the visuals. The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble jumps right out front. Much of Wagner Ӧdegard's work would work, as well.

Morrison claims that the work is both existential and life-affirming. There is no doubt about the former. The film throughout evokes an existential dread through a two-fold process of obscuring and revealing, forming a sort of pulsating rhythm between the eerie and the weird. The viewer often feels trapped between several worlds at once: The world from which they are viewing the movie, the world in which the film was initially captured, and the world that some of the captured film is trying to portray (this is particularly true of pieces that show actors from the 1920s or '30s portraying scenes in historical costume).  Decasia is not only a film, it is a place, its own strange world of mixed up timelines bubbling in and out of perception. Needless to say, it is a very strange place to inhabit, even if only momentarily, a discomfiting space that reminds one of one's mortality in the strongest of ways. 

On the flipside, there is a strange element of hope throughout, as well, that maybe something of us can survive that change called death and still affect the world. It's not an overtly spiritual plea by Morrison, but a little whisper of what might possibly be. Just maybe. Time will truly tell, right?

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Hellebore #7: The Ritual Issue

 

Hellebore #7: The Ritual Issue by Maria J. Pérez Cuervo
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is only the second issue of Hellebore I've read, having read issue 1 previously. Now I think I'm going to have to go back and collect the intervening five issues! Because while I really liked the first issue, this one really knocked my socks off! As with any great anthology, the sum is greater than the parts. But that won't stop me from looking at this issue piece by piece.

Francis Young's article "The Making of a Folklore Bible" traces the sometimes surprising historiography of how Folklore, Myths, and Legends of Britain not only came to be, but came to be beloved by so many. A series of anecdotes about the place the book holds in many contemporary folklorists lives and work.

In "Killing the May Queen," Catherine Spooner disabuses us of the notion that the white dress worn by the May Queen and even the notion of the May Queen are of ancient origin. In fact, the association of the dress and the supposed sacrifice is of quite recent origin. Spooner outlines the historical ambiguity of sartorial choice and ritual in a clear, concise manner accessible to scholar and stan alike.

Lest you weary of May Queens, Victoria Pearson unveils a wide variety of folk traditions from throughout the British isles in her article "The Ritual Isles". A nice grab-bag of celebrations from England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and Northern Ireland.

In "Ancient Antlers, Clashing Swords" Clare Button expounds on the Morris dance and analyzes not only its history, but ways in which it has been and can further be updated to meet societal needs.

The beautifully illustrated (by Richard Wells) article "May Day on Summerisle" is an examination of the hodge-podge of traditions mashed up in The Wicker Man written by Hellebore editor Maria J. Pérez Cuervo. It's a good reminder, along with the other essays in this issue, that cinema does not equal reality, though much can be gleaned from that medium, if one is careful.

In "Possessed, Magical, and Dangerous to Handle," Hannah Armstrong expounds on the feminizing influence that Jane Ellen Harrison had on ritual and its interpretation. It's a fascinating mini-biography that shows how the talented Harrison has affected modern ritual, possibly as much as Frazer. This has gotten me wanting to know much more about Harrison and her history.

Aleco Julius provides an excellent primer on labyrinths, their history in the British Isles and in Europe, and dances associated with these mystical structures in "The Path of the Labyrinth". There is so much more about labyrinths that one can study, but this gives a great basis from which one can spiral inward in their study of these ritual devices.

Angeline Morrison pens a poignant and provocative essay in "Ghost Hunting in the Ruins of Empire," in which she engages in intentional subterfuge of British society's quieting of the black voice. As I've read and reread, I've found that this is possibly the most important of the pieces in this volume. Notions of Fisher's "Weird" and rituals of misrule lead to many salient points regarding historical whitewashing and a sort of inverted colonialism that leads to the denial of black history (especially pre-colonial black history) of the British Isles. The structure of this essay, with it's "slippery" transitions between philosophical and historiographical arguments reminds me of Michel Foucault's writing, truth be told. This is an essay worth reading and re-reading, the kind of genre-breaking, media-spanning (and I mean, here, the academic notion of media as various ways of analyzing data, not the popular media) heuristic kit-bashing that spawns fresh, new thought. It's a bit of a jarring transition, going from the previous articles to this final trickster of an essay. But I can't think of a better way of planting the largest gem in the ritual crown of this issue of Hellebore.

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Herald of the Hidden

 

Herald of the Hidden & Other Stories by Mark Valentine
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"Four stars?!?" you scream.

I know, I know, it's Mark frickin' Valentine!

And I love Mark Valentine's work. Love, love, absolutely love.

But everyone has to start somewhere, right? And this is what we have here: several early tales, more raw, more . . . "cheeky" is the word that comes to mind. Does this mean that it's bad? No, not at all. It's excellent. But when comparing these tales to his more mature work, one must consider that what we see in the voice of such masterpieces as The Collected Connoisseur took years to hone and perfect. Here, we see a younger Valentine, obviously incredibly gifted, finding his way, showing "flashes" as they say in the sports world, but lacking the full consistency of later work. I understand that completists will give these stories the same sort of reverence that one holds for a black metal band's "demo" tapes - a sort of worship of the raw, the untamed, the under-produced - and I can surely appreciate that sentiment. But once one has read his later work, it becomes clear that these were early tales, for the most part. One must note that certain of these stories were, of his own admittance, published in low-circulation zines back in the '80s, a sort of literary-weird samizdat that evokes the punk and metal zines of the same period.

Speaking of metal, maybe it's because I'd been listening to Watain and Cult of Fire while reading, but Ralph Tylor, lead protagonist of "St Michael & All Angels" struck me as The Connoisseur dressed in a denim jacket, black jeans, and high tops. That picture is probably all wrong, but it's how I pictured him and I'm sticking with it. Tyler is just the sort of person I loved to hang out with as a teen - smart, a bit bookish, interested in the outré, but also a bit . . . metal. This probably has to do with my teenage years spent in England breaking into haunted medieval priories and such (usually to drink and make out with girls - as one does as a teen. Or at least I did.) while absorbing as much metal and punk as I could. I see a little bit of myself in Ralph Tyler. Maybe more than just a little bit.

The second story, "The Folly," was anything but. A clever tale with a moralistic streak, it will appeal to many a vegetarian, and cause horror in the hunter. This furthered my feeling that Ralph Tyler is a less refined and less controlled individual than The Connoisseur. A sort of Hardy Boy to the Sherlock, all of which is meant as a compliment to the writing.

Ralph Tyler differs from The Connoisseur remarkably in one way, as evinced in "Madberry Hill": he is not above rank deception and might (and does) willingly endanger others to sate his curiosity about the supernatural. I had earlier thought that Tyler might be a rougher version of The Connoisseur, and, after reading this tale, I'm convinced of it. Ah, the recklessness of youth! Slap a patched denim battle jacket on that young man!

"The Ash Track" struck me on a couple of different emotional levels. First, the story itself, which I won't spoil, is melancholy and poignant, thick with pathos. Secondly, it takes place, partially, in Bedford, which is the city I lived closest to while living in the UK, so there's some emotional resonance there for me. Who knows? I might have walked the Ash Track myself, given my many ramblings about the countryside?

"The Grave of Anir" is an unsurprising story, but satisfying. The ending is something straight out of the M.R. James playbook. A nice Arthurian mystery that may or may not be a ghost story. You decide.

I loved the gothic and morose "William Sorrell Requests . . ." a great deal. The dreary funerary atmosphere lends the perfect backdrop to a story of either mass hysteria, possession, or communal guilt. Or, perhaps none of these. But then, maybe all of them. Only William Sorrell knows for sure, and dead men tell no tales, as they say. Brilliantly gray and sodden, this story sticks in the brain.

"The Hermit's House" is a little more straightforward than most of the stories in this volume. Make no mistake, it is firmly in "the Weird," but the resolution is fairly straightforward. A simple plot, but written so well (as Valentine always writes) that it can't just be dismissed as a "minor" story. Valentine's pen lends weight to what might otherwise be a flighty, ephemeral tale.

"Herald of the Hidden" is the closest I think I've seen Mark Valentine get to "cosmic horror," though of a decidedly English variety, meaning that those horrors are rooted deeply in the history, nay, pre-history of Avalon. Here is a glimpse (and we almost see altogether too much) of what came before, of what lurks in the hills and dales among the trees. It's a wonderful sort of departure from his "typical" work.

Valentine takes a shot at colonialism, by way of Ralph Tyler, in "Heritage of Fire". I honestly thought the esoteric investigator was going to meet his end here, but then who would explain the cultural implications of English development in the denouement, had he died? Someone has to bring bad news to capitalist developers, I suppose.

The Almanac" was one of my favorite stories of this volume (though not the favorite - see below). It shows a growing maturity in Valentine's writing, something that would later manifest in The Connoisseur stories. The unresolved mystery adds to the weirdness, taking it a notch further than those clearly-explained revelations of earlier tales. There's an abstract quality to it that I love about Valentine's work, that I consider his "signature". It's difficult to explain, as it seems so ephemeral. Maybe that's all that needs to be said.

"The Guardians of the Guest Room" is a ghost story proper, something that would have been right at home in the four-color horror comics of the pre-code era, but with a step up in eloquence. I'd be curious to see this one illustrated in that old, '50s graphic style. Valentine would have at least one customer for this grisly comic; namely, me.

Words are important, even critical. But Valentine's tale of crucial misunderstanding in "Go to the West," which could have become a mere trifle of a story, something that any child could write, is instead transformed by the last sentence. Oh, those words are so critical. You must understand. You absolutely must! Be careful with your signs and wonders, seekers of gnosis!

Tree Worship" is a mythic idyll of understated tone, but brilliant atmosphere, a good story to read as winter turns to spring. It is a thread of pagan Genius Loci only briefly interrupted by modern intrusion, a suburban hiccup preceded and followed by the long, steady breathing of the land itself.
Odd. Though one of the earliest stories in the volume, chronologically-speaking, "Woken by Candlelight" reads like Valentine's later, more mature works: subtlety of mood, languid action, an emergent realization of wisdom in the form of a mystical revelation. This beautiful tale is a herald of things to come in Valentine's poetry, the Connoisseur, and The Nightfarers. Definitely re-readable. The best story in this volume and one worthy of any weird-best-of collections. You need to read this tale!

In a village with little secrets running about, that crazy old lady might not be so crazy after all. Maybe she sees things as they really are and, if so, she'll fit right in with those that know "Their Special Glee". It's a story of folk and horror, of a sort, but of a sort that never confronts one directly as so much folk-horror does, but nips at the heels and toes. Clever and sly in little ways, I loved this understated tale.

In the end, I'm conflicted. On one hand, I want to recommend this to anyone who hasn't read Valentine's work, but that's not the way I encountered his work. I was thrown in the deep end with The Nightfarers, and I've not been the same reader (and indeed not the same writer) ever since. I suppose everyone needs to travel their own path, but in the end, I think that most would agree (and those that disagree are, well, just plain wrong) that Mark Valentine is one of the greatest living writers of weird fiction in practice today. So, however you choose to do it, start reading Valentine's work (I've included lots of links to reviews of some of his other books in this review). If you start here, fine. If you end here, fine. Valentine's weird fiction is a sort of ouroboros of excellence. You can't go wrong, wherever you begin.

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Gustav Klimt: Complete Paintings

 

Gustav Klimt: Complete Paintings by Tobias G. Natter
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I first saw this beautiful book at the gift shop of Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum when my wife and I visited there in 2019. I lusted after the book, but I had already shot my wad on book spending, mostly when we visited the "booktown" of Hay-on-Wye, Wales. Keep in mind that I had just consumed possibly the largest amount of art treasures (consumed with my gaze, that is) that I had ever seen. And I have visited a fair amount of art museums in my day. So, for me and this book to look out across the room and catch each other's eye was nothing short of love at first sight. Of course, one sets themselves up for failure when they romanticize a relationship that has not yet happened, and we did hit a couple of rough spots in our little 663 page fling. But all in all, I'm wrapped up in the afterglow. We loved and we loved with great gusto. Granted, it was all one sided - me indulging in the beauty of my lover. Love is sometimes like this.

As with any great book, I learned a great deal. I had never actually read a bio of Klimt (sorry, Wikipedia - I'm seeing someone else), and his life had a fair amount of twists and turns, from his young talent being recognized and rewarded, to the deaths of this brother and father (which greatly affected him), to the many, many love affairs he had (he sired 14 children - yes, you read that right). Klimt was a very, very interesting person.

This is not to mention his skill as an artist. His early work was intimately tied with some background in architecture and his greatest commissions were for artwork in state buildings or upper-class residences. Many of the "paintings" you've seen are actually murals. The cover of the book itself is a prime example of this. I was very excited to read the section about the secession building in Vienna, which my wife and I visited. He didn't do all of the art on the building, but he had a very, very strong influence on it, being the official leader of the secession movement. It is, to be candid, one of the most beautiful buildings I've seen in my life.

Taschen, the book's publisher, spares no expense in showcasing the fabulous art. For instance, pages 119-122 are a four-page full-color fold-out spread of the Beethoven Frieze. This is only one of four such fold-out spreads, if I am counting correctly. I didn't realize these fold-outs were a part of the book when I first purchased it (the book is bought wrapped tight in plastic). The book is littered with beauty. It's almost overwhelming. Such is Taschen!

I sort of knew that Klimt did portraiture, but I was unaware that he drew so many beautiful portraits. Klimt was a master at capturing personality. The Portrait of Rose von Rostborn-Friedmann is a good example. There is an adventurous spirit there (she was an alpinist who was one of the first women to scale two notable peaks), with a strong, sensual attractiveness that equals her pioneering elan.

As I alluded to earlier, I didn't agree with the editors all of the time. At first, I didn't buy the argument that Klimt was influenced by the Fauves after his golden period. The colors were all wrong: not fauvist at all. Later, though, I could see some Fauvist influence in the backgrounds of his later portraits. It wasn't as obvious as the authors portrayed it, but it's there, I'm willing to concede. Also, It's in landscapes, Tobias Natter (the editor) claims, that Klimt is most like the Symbolists. While I see that in some of his landscapes, I think it's in his mosaic works that I see the resemblance in a more profound, concrete way. Yes, the early landscapes are ethereal and hazy, like some of the Symbolists, and even his portraits show influence from Fernand Khnopff and Jan Toorop, but the outright iconography in his golden, bejewelled works speaks more to the mythic and symbolic to me than either his landscapes or portraits.

If you think Klimt's paintings are good, take a look at his drawings. The editor calls them "a parallel universe, existing alongside his painterly ouvre". So very true. Klimt's paintings and drawings are two sides of the same coin, each distinctive and each valuable. As with coins (I've collected a few medieval silver coins), one recognizes that both are beautiful and equally valuable, but any given viewer tends to prefer one over the other. It's obvious how Klimt's paintings have endured, but his much less-well-known drawings show a deft hand that might be overshadowed by the renown of the paintings. One thing I appreciated about the book's presentation of the drawings is that the editors chose to view Klimt's drawings not just through the lens of subject matter, but through the lens of mood and emotion. While they aren't always convincing in their categorization of this drawing or that, the mere attempt is bold and causes the reader to look at Klimt's drawings in a different, more interesting light.

Klimt's obituary provides great insight into the artist's influences, providing, with hindsight, a great window into his creative world:

What initially struck the viewer as being Klimt was not him, but something with which he was connected. Japan, China, Byzantium and the ancient and modern Orient. Italian and modern English Pre-Raphaelitism. French decorative and magical painting of the Moreau kind, Low Countries mysticism from the region of Khnopff, with colonial goods and gods in between. But if he took something from everything, it was because he was nothing less than an eclectic. He simply used this as nourishment and transformed it into Gustav Klimt.

The end of Klimt is, however, not quite the end of this review. I love works that push me into other stories, and this book is no exception. Here, the never-finished portrait of Ria Munk, who committed suicide after her scandalous affair with Hanns Heinz Ewers has stolen my attention. I will take many things from this book, but this portrait and the story before it, around it's unfinished creation, and it's aftermath (pushing well into the World War 2 era - Ewers was a noted Nazi supporter who was later considered "deviant" by the regime) is the sort of thing that epic myths are made of.

I think I'll be feeling the influence of this book for a long, long time.

Gustav Klimt is dead: Long live Klimt!


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The Best of Beardsley

 

The Best of Beardsley by R.A. Walker
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Next year, I will have been alive twice as long as the ill-fated Aubrey Beardsley lived. And yet, it was at about the age he died that I became enamored of his work. I has seen his work here and there, but remember that this was before the internet had been populated with every desirable image you'd ever want (and many you wouldn't). My real introduction to his work came as an undergraduate humanities student nestled comfortably away in the Special Collections (read: Rare Books) room, where I discovered a set of books that would fix my love for late Victoriana forevermore: The Yellow Book: An Illustrated Quarterly.

When asked about why I became so enamored of Beardsley's work, I respond: "Why wouldn't I?" I really think it best to just let the work speak for itself. You know, a picture is worth . . .?

The Best of Beardsley a few of his images from Yellow Book Quarterly, but steps far beyond that short-lived (and seemingly doomed, once Oscar Wilde was arrested) relationship between Beardsley and editor John Lane. These were the drawings that really cemented his reputation, but before this there were earlier illustrations for Wilde's play Salome and the romantic poem Mort Darthur (none of which are included in this volume, being considered a sort of juvenalia), among others. And, of course, his art continued for several years after his ignominious departure from Lane's publication. The opprobrium that struck Wilde did little to taint Beardsley's output and, in fact, increased his fame and exposure to adherents of fin-de-siecle decadence. Unfortunately, tuberculosis killed him at the young age of 26 years, just as his art was hitting new heights of style and composition.

The introduction to The Best of Beardsley is one of the better introductions to an art book that I've had the privilege of reading. Of course all the biographical details are there (but let's face it, you can just go to Wikipedia to find this information), but what really stands out is R. A. Walker's analysis of the four phases of Beardsley's work, four phases that I had missed until I read this introductory essay and was able to cross-reference if with the full-page black and white plates that compose the vast majority of the book. But even at about 110 illustrations, we still are only seeing "The Best of". Notably absent are his explicit, one would have to say downright pornographic works, which even the Tate Museum housed in a different, restricted-access room in their 2020 exhibition of his work.

I see you combing the internet for those. Naughty, naughty. Honestly, I prefer to retain a little Victorian prudery in this regard. Besides, as Walker points out several times, Beardsley's sumptuous costumes are oftentimes the center of attention, and rightfully so. Take the Pre-Raphaelites' attention to detail and distil it down to sweeping, textured black-and-white illustrations, add a touch of whimsy, a pinch of, one must admit, Orientalism, and some intentional disproportion and, voila! Beardsley!

This art collection is not nearly enough Beardsley, but it can legitimately argue for being "The Best of," in large part because of the context given the illustrations by Walker's essay. Recommended.

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Weird Walk #4

 

I was not born in England. Though I have Welsh (thanks, Mom) and Irish (thanks, Dad) ancestry, I was born in Germany. But I am not German (well, Mom's mom was German through and through, I suppose). I'm an American, a mongrel, and my Dad's service as a United States Air Force veteran is what brought me to England, back in spring of 1985. I was 15 when we arrived and 18 when I left in 1987. To say my time in England was a formative experience is a pithy understatement. Everything I've done and everything I am since then was profoundly affected by my time there. My wife and I visited in summer of 2019, and I got to see some of my old haunts again (as well as some new ones). I may never be able to afford to go back again, but I hope to. I sincerely hope to. I'd be quite happy to die in the Cotswolds or Wales, out on a day hike. Quite content to lie down on a hill for a nap and never wake up. For now, though, I have to forego my death wish and "travel" from afar. Even if I did have the spare change to take a trip there: coronapocalypse says "no"!

So, I dutifully bought a copy of Weird Walk issue 4. It's the first issue I've bought, and maybe an admittance that I might not make it back there, I don't know. After reading this issue, though, I am sure to continue buying more, forward and backward through the issues. Though I don't want to get too spoilery, I'd like to introduce you to the different essays and reminisces here, as they are well worth your five quid fifty (plus shipping). 

First, the zine itself and the layout evoke the old '70s and '80s childrens' shows that Americans were mostly spared, but I had the "pleasure" of seeing (as reruns, by the time I got there). Something about the fonts, the polaroid-quality photos, and the colour-which-I-cannot-quite-identify on which the articles are printed (or in which the words are printed against a black background) makes me think of Children of the Stones. Of course, the seemingly running commentary on megaliths might have something to do with it, too. 

We start with Zakia Sewell's outstanding "Questing for Albion," a reminisce about an idealized childhood in the wilds of Wales, before the realization fully set in of what it meant to be a person of mixed-descent in a country founded on colonial exploitation. Moody and poignant, yet hopeful. Cynicism isn't swept entirely aside, but it is kept at bay.

In "Boundary Sounds," Archer Sanderson gives  us "The solo rambler's edgelands primer" to music from the edge, beneath the buzzing pylons, on the periphery of town and country. Good recommendations, though I found the absence of any mention of The Soulless Party to be a profound oversight. Perhaps they are mentioned in another issue and I've just missed it? Glad to see a small shout-out to Pye Corner Audio (another one of my favorites), however. It's difficult to go wrong with the recommendations here - something for everybody. 

Stewart Lee takes us on a ramble through Lamorna, in Cornwall, a guided tour of the erstwhile (is it still current? I don't know.) artists colony on the very tippy tip of southwestern England. I've never been to Cornwall, though I have been just north of there. Given Lee's little Baedeker here, I think I shall have to visit there sometime. I do love their pastries!

Apparently a regularly-recurring section of the zine is "Dolmania". It's about, you know, dolmens. If you can't figure that out, you're not allowed to be my friend. The particular dolmen in this issue is the re-jiggered "Hellstone" in Dorsetshire. Peter Jackson missed out by not having this be the barrow-mound (I know, I know, it's not the same thing, but Americans don't know/won't care) where Frodo and his companions find their swords. Oh, that wasn't in the movies? Well then read the freaking book!!! Sorry, I'm still bitter about that. And Tom Bombadil. But I digress.

The next section, an interview with Nick Hayes, is about something near and dear to my heart. It's entitled "How to Trespass". And it is, at least in part, about trespassing. But, really, it's about the activists who are fighting for the legal right to cross another's land. Many countries have laws that state a citizen's right to walk across land owned by another person. England is not one of those countries (hint: neither is America). Hayes and company mean to change that by trespassing - leaving the place better and tidier than it was when they came on the land, but crossing the forbidden boundaries nonetheless. My wife and I found ourselves inadvertently doing this when we got lost off the King's Way in the Cotswolds . . .let's see . . . on four different occasions? After a while, we said "screw it," picked a landmark (the town hall of Morerton-In-Marsh) and just walked toward it. I'm pretty sure we were all sorts of places we weren't supposed to be. And you know what? It felt good! It felt right! So, tread on, I say! Of course, easy for me to say, we had the excuse of being tourists and we were honestly lost. I kept having visions of stumbling into Wakewood. 

This issue wraps up with an educational and fascinating look at the Neolithic of the island, a piece about the London Stone that I admittedly hardly understood, and a final piece on a walk through Glastonbury and its environs (another pilgrimage that I must make). 

All-in-all, it's quite the excursion. No, it's not the same as wandering the hills, stumbling across ancient stone circles and ruined churches, and finding sweet solace at a pub in the middle of a day-long hike in the heat of summer (trust me on this one), but you know what? This might be the next best thing. I'm looking forward to more excursions this way. They're way easier on the pocketbook.

Now, I'm off to bed . . . after watching a few episodes of Cruising the Cut. Some day . . . some day . . .

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The Sound of His Horn and Other Stories

The Sound of His Horn and Other Stories by Sarban


I had heard the name "Sarban" whispered in mysterious tones for years. The pseudonymous author's works were difficult for me, an American with very limited resources at the time I had heard of his fiction, to procure. Now, more well-off and a beneficiary of the internet age where the acquisition of books from across the world is much easier, I ordered The Sound of His Horn and Other Stories from one of my favorite publishers, Tartarus Press.

Expectations had been building for some time - many years, in fact - and I had, in my imagination, a certain type of story, a certain voice that I associated (with no prior experience) with Sarban. I suppose my imaginary Sarban was a mixture of Machen and Aickman, influenced by Arabic poetry.

I was not terribly far off.

But I was off just enough that my expectations were . . . sidestepped. It's not that expectations were not met, not at all - this is a fabulous collection of stories that will immerse your reading mind - but what I imagined I was going to read and what I read in reality were overlapping, but slightly offset from each other. This created a pleasant sense of familiarity that was also full of surprises and a bit of bafflement that added to the mystique of the act of reading. What more could a reader ask for?

I am usually not a fan of alternate histories (probably because I am a historian by academic training) but knowing that "The Sound of His Horn" is alternate history did not encroach on my enjoyment of the story. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised that I quite liked the tale: the first bucking of expectations.

Somewhere between "The Most Dangerous Game" and "The Great Escape," the titular story is well-crafted, borderline "literary," but shot through with pulp sci-fi elements. It mostly works, despite some of its intentional anachronism. Four stars.

The second story, curiously, was about a subject that I'm usually not interested in - that is, mermaids (or maybe mermaids) - hooked me and reeled me in. "The Sea Things" is a creepy one set in the Middle-East. Questions of the relationship between colonials and the colonized pop off like fireworks, but in the background, not at the main focus of the story. The tale is of its time, when the sun was, indeed, setting on the British Empire, with echoes of the Arabic poets mentioned above. As far as the horror element, this was a "B" creep factor for me, not chilling but definitely attention-grabbing; still worthy of four stars, one for each mermaid and their hapless victim.

"Number Fourteen" is, by far, the creepiest of the stories in this volume. There is a strong proto-Aickmanesque vagueness to the resolution of this story that heightens, rather than resolves the mystery. Sarban realizes, here, that the reader's flights of supposition are the most powerful plot-engine available to the author. My thoughts have gone places I'd not care to revisit after this horrific tale, including the far reaches of colonialism, which play a vital part in the plot. This was exactly the Sarban I had been seeking! Five stars to this powerful story.

A classic English weird story, "The Sacrifice" is precisely what I had hoped for when I picked up this volume. I'm glad for the variety of tonal textures between the stories, however. Because of the differing voices, this story stood out for what it was. Had more of the stories been more similar, "The Sacrifice" might have been drowned (pun intended) by same-ness. Again, the far reaches of India play a critical role in this story. It seems that most of the stories in this volume are a sort of lingering swan-song to the diminishing British Empire and some of the unforeseen consequences of contact and retreat with conquered peoples. The empire touched many places, but those places left their mark, in turn, on Great Britain. Strangely, though, one does not find the bigotry one might expect in this story. There is sort of a fearful respect of the Other, not altogether prejudice-free, but not as condescending and loathing as, say, Lovecraft or Howard. Five stars. This one will become an RPG adventure, I will see to that!

Lastly, a pair of English adventurers, young women with a penchant for exploration, go into the Sahara for "The King of the Lake". It's interesting to see the late- or post-colonial influence on these stories. They are of their time, and yet, somehow, timeless. Maybe because I studied so much about colonialism in college and was raised on U.S. military bases overseas - spending some of my most formative years in England - yes, my perspective may be different than that of most Americans.

"The King of the Lake" further shows Sarban's fascination with forcibly turning humans into animals . . .of a sort. There is a demonization of the autochthonous inhabitants of the desert here, or, perhaps, a nod to the justifiable revenge of the colonized on their colonizers, it's difficult to tell. One's demon is another's Angel of Vengeance. Four stars.

The more I ruminate on this volume, the more I am struck by the complexity of the tales here. Sarban is still a bit of a mystery to me, even knowing his real name and a bit of his background. I'm okay with leaving some mystery in this puzzle so my imagination can continue to fill in the gaps between my expectations and his printed words on the page. That shadow cast by the light of a book is one of my favorite places to take shelter.

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