I generally picture Alexandre Dumas as about 5'5 and 275 lbs, waddling sternly between rows of tables in a dimly-lit warehouse, occasionally yelling "Harder! Faster! Smarter!" (or, I suppose, the French equivalent) at the hunched-over, half-naked writers chained to their stools -- pale and skeletal, chain-smoking and furiously scribbling out passages of Queen Margot and the Man in the Iron Mask.
This is no doubt completely accurate, but of course only applies to Dumas in his later years; Captain Pamphile is from an earlier period, when he was primarily a successful playwright who wrote stories on the side, and is set among his real-life friends (even giving their actual, real-life addresses -- I'd like to try getting away with that in my next book), a bohemian set of artists, writers and one slightly pompous young doctor (who opens the story by conducting a rather mean-spirited experiment on his friend's pet frog) who spend all their time lounging around one another's apartments, eating, drinking, smoking, and collecting exotic animals. These anecdotes alternate with tall tales about the explorer Pamphile, source of at least one of these pets (a monkey named James I). Pamphile is a cheerfully ridiculous, foul-mouthed, arrogant cartoon -- we're introduced to him casually slaughtering a geographically-challenged tiger, a crocodile, and a hippopotamus, all while eating lunch.
I'm only about a quarter of the way in, but so far enjoying it a good deal. Not quite as much as One Thousand and One Ghosts -- and let me pause here for a shout-out to Hesperus Press, who do a fabulous job of dredging up out-of-the-way oddities and neglected little beauties by great writers -- but enjoying it all the same.
This is no doubt completely accurate, but of course only applies to Dumas in his later years; Captain Pamphile is from an earlier period, when he was primarily a successful playwright who wrote stories on the side, and is set among his real-life friends (even giving their actual, real-life addresses -- I'd like to try getting away with that in my next book), a bohemian set of artists, writers and one slightly pompous young doctor (who opens the story by conducting a rather mean-spirited experiment on his friend's pet frog) who spend all their time lounging around one another's apartments, eating, drinking, smoking, and collecting exotic animals. These anecdotes alternate with tall tales about the explorer Pamphile, source of at least one of these pets (a monkey named James I). Pamphile is a cheerfully ridiculous, foul-mouthed, arrogant cartoon -- we're introduced to him casually slaughtering a geographically-challenged tiger, a crocodile, and a hippopotamus, all while eating lunch.
I'm only about a quarter of the way in, but so far enjoying it a good deal. Not quite as much as One Thousand and One Ghosts -- and let me pause here for a shout-out to Hesperus Press, who do a fabulous job of dredging up out-of-the-way oddities and neglected little beauties by great writers -- but enjoying it all the same.
1 comment:
Nice to see you up and running.
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