Invisible organs that flex

“Le Drapeau noir” by René Magritte (1937)

The Last Days of New Paris:
A Novella by China Miéville.
Picador, 2017 (2016).

‘In the post-blast miasma, all Parisians grew invisible organs that flex in the presence of the marvelous. Thibaut’s are strong.’ — Chapter One.

Manifs. Fall Rot. Exquisite corpses. S-blast. Miéville’s alternative history requires the rapid assimilation of new vocabulary by readers who happen to find themselves in an urban landscape, one however that makes little or no sense despite a litany of familiar Parisian streets and landmarks.

And who are these characters from 1950 who negotiate the mean streets of Paris where Nazis, demons, partisans and surrealist manifestations play cat and mouse? Who is Thibaut, whose name recalls Tybalt the Prince of Cats from medieval beast fables and who, not unnaturally, seems to have nine lives? Who is Sam, a photographer whose gender neutral name suggests she may not be what she either seems or claims to be?

And who is Jack Parsons, en route to Prague but holed up in Marseille in 1941, having fallen in with a diverse group of Surrealist “artists and radicals, writers, the philosophers that bleeding-heart Americans wanted to smuggle out of France”? These are questions that eventually find their answers but not before we too find ourselves growing invisible organs that flex at the marvels that litter the pages of this novella.

Intercity armchair travel

Photo of Hong Kong harbour by Nitin Sharma on Pexels.com

At heart I’m an urban child: I was brought up in Hong Kong, only transferring to Bristol as I approached my teens, a city where I lived until a couple of decades ago.

Since then we’ve either lived in an isolated Welsh farmhouse or a small town in the Welsh Marches, but I still have a fascination with cities, either through physically spending time in them or doing so virtually, through books.

As part of my determination to tackle my personal Mount TBR three or four titles have worked their way to the surface, and it won’t surprise you to know that they each have the word “city” in the title.

Missing links

© C A Lovegrove

The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge.
Macmillan Children’s Books, 2015.

‘Listen, Faith. A girl cannot be brave, or clever, or skilled as a boy can. If she is not good, she is nothing. Do you understand?’
— Chapter 9: Confession.

A novel that hovers in the No Man’s Land between the borders of magical realism, fantasy, myth and social commentary is sure to draw me in, and Hardinge’s award-winning novel does exactly this.

But it’s also an angry novel, and despite a slow-ish but scene-setting start it soon becomes clear where the anger comes from: patriarchy, patronising sexism and misogyny which, although The Lie Tree is set in 1865, is no less rampant now even if expressed in different ways.

And it’s also a murder mystery cloaked as historical fiction, and a metafictional narrative, one that in exploring the effects which falsehoods have on truth, is meant – I think – to cast suspicion on the role of the author in presenting fiction as fact, and to question our willing acceptance of this state of affairs.

Mangled or misattributed?

Hemingway at the original Shakespeare and Company in Paris

Us bibliophiles, we all know the stories about the puzzled browser who wanders into a library or bookshop, don’t we?

You know, the one who enquires about a book they don’t know the title of or the name of the author – indeed, often both – who supplies a vague description such as “It’s blue,” “It’s this sort of size,” or “My friend recommended it.”

My favourites though are mangled or misattributed titles – such an easy mistake to make that even hardened ‘tome travellers’ like us may misquote them: Jane Eyre’s Charlotte Brontë, for example. (Yes, I once actually said that.)

Here are some mangled or misattributed titles, mostly ones I’ve made up, though the first one – apparently genuine – I spotted as a quote on social media. Repeat them often enough and they start to feel genuine – or so I’ve found!

To the Wounded City

One of Piranesi’s ‘carceri’ or prisons.

The Relic Master by Catherine Fisher.
Volume One of The Book of the Crow Quartet.
[Also published as The Dark City,
Book 1 of The Relic Master series.]
Red Fox, 1999 (1998).

A wonder worker and an apprentice are wandering through a sparsely populated, almost desolate landscape, bearing dangerous secrets and in fear of both strangers and of a ruthless authority.

But someone is following their trail with motives of her own. And then a horseman appears to ask for the wonder worker’s help. How will Galen and his young apprentice Raffi respond to this and other potential threats?

“The Relic Master was the first book I wrote as a full-time writer,” the author tells us, “and I think a lot of pent-up energy went sweeping into it.” That transferred energy is evident right from the start and continues right to the end of this first instalment.

Spine tingles

Haunting bedtime reading? © C A Lovegrove

A Touch of Chill:
Stories of Horror, Suspense and Fantasy by Joan Aiken.
Fontana Lions, 1981 (1979).

These fifteen short stories, six published for the first time in this collection, are full of mystery and surprises, not least because UK and US editions feature — apart from a core of eight — different selections.

I first read these tales in the early eighties, but apart from the odd déjà-vu moment I regret I didn’t remember any of them in this reread — my failing, not Joan Aiken’s, because these are wonderfully dark narratives.

I don’t know who made the final choice for the order of the UK edition but it was curious that pairs of succeeding stories are often linked — witches both black and white, Irish or Welsh characters, youngsters climbing through windows, murder intentional or otherwise, sinister automatons, and finally tales which somehow become true. But despite commonalities each story is very different, very distinct.

A Soviet era fairytale #ReadingTheTheatre

© C A Lovegrove

The Dragon:
A Satiric Fable in Three Acts
by Eugene Schwarz [1944]. 
Дракон. Пьеса в трех действиях translated from the Russian by Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood (1961),
introduction by Norris Houghton, 
production notes by Gillian Phillips.
Heinemann Educational Books, 1969.

In his introduction to Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood’s translation of Evgeny Schwartz’s play Norris Houghton outlines how Soviet-era authors often camouflaged their satire and closet criticism of Soviet policies by presenting them as fairytales, a practice with a long tradition in Russia.

And so it is with The Dragon: superficially a pantomime with comic characters, romance and a mythical beast, it nevertheless has a deadly serious purpose underlying the fun and games. Does the dragon get slain? The audience waits with baited breath to see if the hero fulfils his task and gets the girl or dies in the attempt.

But if the beast is indeed defeated, who or what will take its place, and will the replacement be an improvement or simply a repeat of what came before? And what would be the reaction of the townsfolk if the hero did succeed?

Mischiefs feed like beasts #ReadingTheTheatre

Doorknocker © C A Lovegrove

Volpone,
[or The Foxe: A Comedie]
by Ben Jonson (1606-7).
Edited by Philip Brockbank.
New Mermaids: A & C Black / W W Norton & Company, 1989 (1969).

‘Riches, the dumb god, that giv’st all men tongues;
That canst do nought, and yet mak’st men do all things.’ — Volpone.

I:1

Ben Jonson’s play, first performed around 1606 and published the year after, is set in Venice, a setting which Shakespeare had already used for The Merchant of Venice and for Othello and a city state which had a reputation for mendacity and duplicity.

Above all Venice represented the wealth that comes from extensive trading and banking, and which Tudor and Jacobean traders envied. But, as the First Avocatore or prosecutor declares (Act 5 scene xii) ‘These possess wealth, as sick men possess fevers, | Which, trulier, may be said to possess them.’

Here then is a story about possessions – possessing riches, being possessed by the desire to have riches, and faking possession by disease and by devils. It’s not a pretty story but it’s entertaining – and there’s a very moral ending.

Caterwauling time

Moomin Week @ LiteraryPotpourri.com and Calmgrove.wordpress.com

As we’re nearly a third of the way through the year I feel as though it’s a good moment for me to pause and not only consider what’s passed but also what’s to come – bookwise at any rate!

I started 2024 with the intention of making it my Year of Reading Randomly – but it’s not quite happened that way, what with #NordicFINDS, the Japanese Literature Challenge, Vintage SciFi Month, #ReadingIndies, #Dewithon, #Begorrathon, #MarchMagics, National Poetry Month, National Unicorn Day, Reading the Theatre, and the #1937Club . . .

But at least, with just one exception, I managed to restrict my reading – 26 books to date – to titles selected only from my personal Mount TBR or else borrowed from the local library, an achievement I’ve found extremely satisfying. So I wonder if with the events coming up I can continue whittling down the mountain? Time for a yowl of anticipation!

No cure for nostalgia: #1937Club

Gulácsy, Lajos (1882-1932): ‘Apparition’ 1903.

Journey by Moonlight (1937)
by Antal Szerb,
Utas és holdvilág
translated by Len Rix.
Pushkin Press, 2000.

We carry within ourselves the direction our lives will take. Within ourselves burn the timeless, fateful stars.

XX

In the 1830s Franz Liszt began an affair with a married woman, spending time in Italy, out of which sprang the celebrated piano compositions entitled Années de pèlerinage, meditations which frequently referenced Italian themes.

A century later a fellow Hungarian, Mihály, embarks on a honeymoon in Italy with the former wife of Zoltán Pataki, Erzsi, travelling from the northeast of the country across the Apennines to the Eternal City; thereafter any parallels with Liszt become less obvious.

Much of Mihály’s pilgrimage, moreover, won’t be in the company of his wife; and much of it will involve an internal odyssey even while he follows a roundabout route to where all roads are said to lead. A strange journey it will be, full of coincidences, nostalgia, lethargy and near-death experiences.

Intrepidity personified: #1937Club

Detail from front cover design.

The Black Island (1937) by Hergé (Georges Remi).
L’île noire (1956) translated by Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper and Michael Turner (1966).
Egmont, 2009.

Young reporter Tintin doesn’t find trouble; trouble finds him. As with Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot, say, he just happens to be on hand when dastardly deeds are being committed; yet despite setback after setback he remains intrepidity personified.

This is no more evident than when his efforts to help those in a stricken aircraft during a casual stroll in the Belgian countryside are viciously rebuffed, leading in time to an impromptu cross-channel trip to Sussex followed by a flight to Scotland.

And all the while we are left to wonder how a teenage newspaper reporter somehow always seems to be the subject of press reports but never the writer of them, and how the long arm of the law seems to always be grasping the wrong end of the stick.

Horrors! #1937Club

From Weird Tales 29/1 (1937): ‘The Thing on the Door-Step’ by Virgil Finlay

The Thing on the Doorstep
by H P Lovecraft.
CreateSpace Publishing, 2017 (Weird Tales, 1937).

Written in 1933 but not published till 1937 – the year Lovecraft died – ‘The Thing on the Door-Step’ is typical of the author’s weird fiction with its overused adjectives implying horror too obscure, obscene and terrifying to be described, often expressed by an innocent narrator too appalled by what they’re witnessing to join up the dots until it’s too late.

On one level the writing is laughable, the familiar clichés piling Pelion upon Ossa in their determination to shock the reader, the repeated alien names, the constant references to prohibited arcane texts to imply ancient but forbidden knowledge.

On another level Lovecraft’s fiction is deeply uncomfortable to read, here as elsewhere, not for the horror (which by modern standards is tame enough) but for what I and other critics abhor, namely the misogyny, homophobia and racism implicit in the narratives.

A fearful thing: #ReadingTheTheatre

© C A Lovegrove.

Magic Flutes by Eva Ibbotson.
Also issued as The Reluctant Heiress (2009).
Young Picador, 2008 (1982).

‘I believed it. I believed it all,’ said Tessa. ‘That you served music, all of you, because it was above pettiness and rank. Because it makes everybody one: rich and poor, sick and well. Because it comes to us from God.’

Chapter 8

As the 1983 winner of the Romantic Novelists Association award for the year’s best romantic novel there’s little doubt that Magic Flutes fits all the criteria for that genre – girl meets boy but then events soon threaten a happy ending. Yet Ibbotson’s novel is so much more than the expected fairytale clichés.

Like Tessa believing in the power of great music to achieve good things I wanted to believe that the details of this story reflected truths about life, and that was because of the positive effect Ibbotson’s craft had on me. I wanted to believe that although I know bad things happen and bad people exist that wrongs could be righted and the balance of things could be restored.

As the title strongly hints, Magic Flutes is related to a single performance of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, a performance which takes place in 1922 in an Austrian castle within sight of the Alps. And, as if to add resonance to Ibbotson’s story, much of the action of the story seems to echo details and characters from the opera – but not so closely that we can guess exactly how things will turn out!

Rooted in truth

‘Landscape with Psyche Outside the Palace of Cupid’ (‘The Enchanted Castle’): Claude Lorrain (1664).

The Little White Horse
by Elizabeth Goudge.
Lion Hudson, 2000 (1946).

“As this world becomes increasingly ugly, callous and materialistic it needs to be reminded that the old fairy stories are rooted in truth, that imagination is of value, that happy endings do, in fact, occur, and that the blue spring mist that makes an ugly street look beautiful is just as real a thing as the street itself.” — Elizabeth Goudge, 1960.

When, as a founding member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association, Elizabeth Goudge wrote that fairytales are rooted in truth at the same time as she commended imagination and happy endings, she could equally have been giving a heartfelt justification for the optimism and positivity of her award-winning The Little White Horse.

For this postwar children’s fantasy has all the same hallmarks as any fairytale or medieval romance – hearty dollops of imaginative details, a satisfying serving of what Tolkien called eucatastrophe, and the recognisable quintessence which Charles Kingsley defined as a concept so beautiful it must be true.

Set in 1842, in a hidden valley that’s not in the outer world but partakes of Faërie, this novel may present as pure escapism but there’s no denying that it reminds us that there is goodness to be found in the world, that reconciliation is possible, and that spring is a time of hope and renewal.

The last visions

The flag of San Marino showing the three towers of Monte Titano

The Third Tower: journeys in Italy by Antal Szerb.
A harmadik torony translated from the Hungarian by Len Rix.
Pushkin Press, 2014 (1936).

I felt bereft when Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy stopped mid-sentence only in sight of Lyon. Mr Yorick was due to travel down western Italy via Turin, Milan, Florence and Rome as far as Naples but, unhappily for all, the full account was cut short by the small matter of the writer’s death.

Fortunately there was Antal Szerb’s The Third Tower recently published in English to console me, though the Hungarian’s travels were essentially down the east coast of Italy only as far south as San Marino.

But, just as with Sterne’s writings, this was as much — if not more — about the person than the places visited.