That'll Learn Him

For eight bucks last winter, on one of my used-book store binges, I picked up a leather-bound, closely printed (in columns), 840 page book called World's Great Detective Stories, published in 1928 by Walter J Black, Inc (never heard of them).

It's about as odd a collection as you can imagine. My guess is that Mr Black, Inc paid for the bare minimum of copyright material by popular mystery-writers, in order to attract readers, and then just filled up the rest of the book with anything old, copyright-expired, and vaguely crime-related that he could get his hands on.

There's a few of the names you'd expect (Poe, Doyle, Sax Rohmer, Edgar Wallace) but there's also excerpts pulled as if at random from writers like Boccaccio, Balzac, Tolstoy, Cervantes and the Thousand and One Nights -- even one excerpt from the Koran. No translators are credited anywhere, 90% of the stories are given no source at all nor even a date, and typos abound.

But the real glory of the book (and I didn't realize this until after I'd bought it and brought it home) are a host of anonymous stories taken out of the penny-dreadfuls of the early Victorian period, which tended to be true crime digests (as opposed to the mid- and late-Victorian penny-dreadfuls, which went more for serial fiction). They're given by-lines like Robber Tales, Prison Chronicles and French Court Records and they range from the merely curious ("Ghosts in Court") to the infamously bizarre ("Sawney Beane").

I was reading a couple of the stories last night, as kind of a palate-cleanser amid all this piracy, mainsprit-jibbing and Madagascarity, and came upon this sweet little proclamation of justice, courtesy of Parisian Criminal Records:

"Jean-Baptiste -- guilty of murder and parricide -- condemned to have both hands cut off; his arms, legs, and thighs and body to be bruised and broken; afterwards to be fixed upon the wheel, there to linger so long as God shall please; after which, his body to be burned and scattered to the winds. A fine of ten livres to the king."

I know, I know, it's an old joke, but it made me laugh out loud. Since his whole family is executed along with him (they having all participated in either killing the old man or covering up the crime), I wonder who they levied the fine from?

Your Own Private Pirate

So, you're Daniel Defoe, writing volume two of a bestselling compilation of pirate biographies. Needless to say, you're going to slip in your own private pirate, entirely fictional, and pretend it's a true story (Fuck you, Oprah!) -- you'll even pull the old "a private manuscript has come into my hands" gag. You cleverly dovetail your fictional pirate's story with actual, historical events and people, in order to give your man's story an air of veracity -- and then you so cavalierly ignore chronology that a careful reading of the dates given elsewhere in your own book prove that the story can't be true. Why? Because that's just the kind of dude you are.

Unfortunately, I have to report that -- apart from the fun-and-games with fact & fiction aspect -- Capt Mission is a bit of a dud. The good captain is a ridiculously idealistic figure, who together with his trusty lieutenant (a lapsed priest given to long, Thomas Paine-esque speeches about the equality of man and the iniquity of churches and states) founds a Utopian colony in -- wait for it -- Madagascar. The colony is done in by bad luck and some poor planning (fortifying heavily against attacks from sea, but underestimating the danger of attacks by land), but there's every implication that, with a little luck, it could have flourished -- a thoroughly workable model of church-free democracy and racial equality.

The "racial equality" bit is the most interesting part, here. Mission and his men all marry native women, and there's none of that nonsense about christianizing or civilizing them, nor a trace of racial anxiety in their attitude; they also make a habit of raiding slave ships, rescuing the would-be slaves, and then integrating them as equal citizens in the newly founded nation of (I shit you not) Libertalia.

This goes some ways towards atoning for the truly atrocious, cringe-inducing middle section of Colonel Jack, which devolves into little more than a pamphlet on why slave-owners should treat their negroes kindly (ie, because it will maximize your profits in the long run). But it doesn't make this section of the General History of Pyrates any more entertaining.


(Since I already mentioned Col Jack, I can't resist the urge to quote its full title, which is my favourite book-title ever:

The History and Remarkable Life Of the truly Honourable Col. Jacque, commonly call'd Col. Jack, who was Born a Gentleman, put 'Prentice to a Pick-Pocket, was Six and Twenty Years a Thief, and then Kidnapp'd to Virginia, Came back a Merchant; was Five times married to Four Whores; went into the Wars, behav'd bravely, got Preferment, was made Colonel of a Regiment, came over, and fled with the Chevalier, is still abroad compleating a Life of Wonders, and resolves to dye a General.

The fact that the title as a whole is not particularly accurate as a description of the book's contents is pure bonus. If I'm not mistaken, the first edition title-page had the visionary and beautiful mistake "Four Times Married to Five Whores", which he should have known better than to correct. )

Sorry, Ladies

I was shewn the Bark of one [tree] (whose name I do not know) gravely affirmed to have a peculiar Property of enlarging the Virile Member; I am not fond of such Conceits, nor believe it in the Power of any Vegetables, but must acknowledge, I have seen Sights of this kind among the Negroes very extraordinary; yet, that there may be no Wishes among the Ladies for the Importation of this Bark, I must acquaint them, that they are found to grow less vigorous, as they increase in Bulk.

John Atkins, naval surgeon, as quoted in Defoe's Pyrates
(St Thome, Del Principe and Annabono)

I love the idea of Dr Atkins wandering around coastal Africa, stealing surreptitious glances at the local cocks and assuring himself (and the Ladies back home) that hey, it's okay, I hear those really big ones have a hard time keeping it up anyway. Better small and energetic than big and flabby, right?

Just for the record, my Virile Member is both Bulky and Vigorous, thank you very much. And he called himself a doctor.

Defoe or Not Defoe?

There's a famous bit in Robinson Crusoe, chapter 4, when Crusoe has gone back out to the wrecked ship to see what he can salvage. He finds a stash of money in one cabin, and delivers a very pretty little soliloquy:

I smiled to myself at the sight of this money: "O drug!" said I, aloud, "what art thou good for? Thou art not worth to me - no, not the taking off the ground; one of those knives is worth all this heap; I have no manner of use for thee - e'en remain where thou art, and go to the bottom as a creature whose life is not worth saving." However, upon second thoughts I took it away...

This is ultra-typical Defoe, not just the dry humour of it, but also the basic theme or idea. Again and again, Defoe's characters complain about what a burden money is, but they can never actually bring themselves to leave it alone -- a conundrum that Defoe is obviously amused by but thoroughly understands.

In the Plague Year, the narrator lets himself linger too long in the city because of his business interests; in Colonel Jack the young hero -- a homeless orphan who has to beg for food -- gets money for the first time in his life (as a share of a pickpocketing racket) and spends the night alone, awake, crying and terrified -- he can't really spend it without creating suspicion, and he's afraid that if he spends the night in his usual haunts he'll get his throat cut for it, but he can't bear the idea of just stashing it somewhere and hoping no one will find it. And his short novel the King of Pirates is pretty much all one parable on the theme. The narrator (based on the legendary Capt Avery) is so successful as a pirate, that he and his men are trapped by the wealth they've accumulated, stuck in Madagascar together, bound by mutual distrust, chained to money they can't actually spend.

...

The first chapter in Defoe's Pirate book is on that same Captain Avery. Avery was probably the most famous pirate of the time (he and Kidd were the only two pirates excluded from the General Amnesty proclaimed by England at one point), and a number of legends grew up around him -- most importantly (to Defoe), the legend that he founded and ruled a colony in Madagascar.

So in King of the Pirates, Defoe debunks the legend and suggests the colony was little better than a makeshift, self-imposed prison, where the pirates bided their time until they could figure out how to get back to Europe and enjoy their wealth. But in the chapter on Avery in the General History of the Pyrates, he goes much much further: he treats Avery as a complete sham, who had one lucky prize in his first and only expedition, never went to Madagascar at all, and eventually died in poverty after returning to England and unsuccessfully trying to fence the load of diamonds he stole from his companions. (There's apparently no documentary evidence for Defoe's version of Avery's latter years -- he probably just made it up.)

This is funny stuff, and it's an hilariously cynical way to start the book. (Happily, the second chapter -- on William Teach (Blackbeard) -- is much more what you'd expect: classic piratey stuff, with lots of fire and brimstone and drunken recklessness. No "Arrrrr, matey"s, though.)

So based on just a couple chapters so far, I'm leaning towards "yes" on the Defoe authorship question. I should say that 1) there's apparently no documentary or other definite evidence one way or another, the most anyone can say is he definitely could have written it, and the rest is just basically arguing from similarities to his other work, style, subject matter, etc; and 2) I'm far from a scholar (or expert on Defoe) so my opinion is worth precisely squat, but I'm enjoying forming it.

Apparently

while I was at the lake this week, I missed seeing Frank Thomas hit number 500; and even more regrettably missed, in the same game, seeing AJ Burnett have a hissy fit and toss his glove into the stands. That's too bad -- it's moments like those that make being a sports fan worthwhile, even when your team is idling in a Traffic Jam of Tediousness on the Freeway of Mediocrity.

On the whole, however, I'd rather still be at the lake.

Of Dumas, Cruelty, & Capt Pamphile

-- which might have been better titled the Gratuitous Slaughter of Many Interesting Animals.

As I said below, the book alternates between anecdotes about Dumas' artist friends and their exotic pets, and tall tales of Capt Pamphile, the hunter/explorer/pirate/all-around-crazy-person who was responsible for bringing many of these animals to France.

I have to say that, on the basis of this book, there has never in the history of the world been a worse bunch of pet-owners than these Parisian artistes. One by one, a frog, a parrot, a cat, a trained black bear, two monkeys and a tortoise all die atrocious deaths, all because of their owners' negligence and stupidity. Some of the animals are mourned (such as the monkey James I, who not only gets an elaborate and sentimental death scene, but who also gets one of the best footnotes in the history of footnotes: 'If you get a voucher from M. Jardin,' Dumas kindly informs the reader, 'you can purchase the death mask of James I for the price of the moulding. M. Jadin lives at 5b, rue de la Rochefoucald.') but most of them are seen dispatched with callous disconcern.

And Dumas saves the final, most horrifying death for the final page of the story (not counting appendices) -- tucking it in with hilarious insouciance, almost by way of afterthought. "Ha ha," he seems to be saying, "You thought I was going to let one of the animals get off with just being maimed, didn't you? Well, you thought wrong: he dies too..."

...

If there's a moral to the story -- and probably there isn't -- it might be in the words of Black-Serpent, a Huron chief who says contemptuously to Pamphile, '[A] Huron is not a white man, pointlessly destroying the creatures of the Great Spirit.'

But probably, you know, there is no moral -- just a genial and completely thorough misanthropy, something like, "Aren't people completely awful? Luckily they're pretty funny too."

Intriguingly, Dumas often interjects comments along the lines of, "Even though Pamphile was an irreligious old reprobate who had already seen many wonders, he couldn't help but feel a sense of religious awe when he saw [insert phenomenon of nature here]." Statements like these occur often enough to be a kind of leitmotif.

But it ought to be added that many of the animals are almost as awful as the humans, especially the two monkeys, James I and James II, who are greedy, nasty and violent -- and appropriately enough, particularly beloved by their human counterparts.

...

I've read the Three Musketeers maybe half a dozen times over the years, I love that book -- except for one episode, the mock-trial and execution-style-murder of Milady, which I read once and have never been able to stomach reading again.

A few years ago, I ploughed through the Count of Monte Cristo with a kind of horrified fascination. If you've never had the pleasure, I can give you a quick breakdown: the first two hundred or so pages (basically, everything up to and including Dantes' escape from prison) are wonderful and exciting; the next eight hundred or so pages are excruciating and horrifying, an overblown, histrionic, turgid and bloated piece of sustained cruelty, with a heady dose of crass money-worship thrown in to boot. It was so fascinatingly awful I couldn't put it down; so fascinatingly awful that lately I've been thinking about reading it again.

There was only one part of Captain Pamphile that reminded me of this side of Dumas, the execution of Milady/Count of Monte Cristo side. The Captain and a young and injured Sioux warrior seek refuge in the cabin of a shrewish old woman near Lake Superior. In the middle of the night, the old woman and her two sons attempt to murder their sleeping guests. Pamphile and his companion kill the sons; then the young Sioux lynches the old woman, stringing her up from a tree, and burns her cabin to the ground.

In the introduction to the Hesperus edition, translator Andrew Brown comments that Capt Pamphile is 'entertainingly amoral rather than villainous' until he 'indulges in the slave trade... The slave trading episode in his career is the book's heart of darkness.'

This is trite and politic nonsense. First of all, if Mr Brown thought Pamphile was some kind of lovable rogue up until then, I wouldn't want to meet him in a dark alley. Second, it's overwhelmingly clear that Dumas disapproves of the slave trade (he was the grandson of a Haitian slave himself); but it's not at all clear that he disapproves of lynching old women, especially when it's an heroic Sioux warrior committing the act. There's a heart of darkness for you.

Nefarious Forgeries at Devil's Gap

Family cottages and cabins can be great places to find books -- especially if they've been around for a couple generations, and are shared by several branches of the family.

At my family's cottage, a few weeks ago, I found the incomparable Cleanliness & Godliness. At my wife's family's cabin this week, the hunting wasn't as good, but I did discover an oversized hardcover reprint called the Casebook of Sherlock Holmes. It had the Study in Scarlet, the Hound, and three or four of the better-known stories, and was apparently aimed at eleven-year-old boys, with exciting pictures and all the longer words glossed in the margins.

What made it a find, though, was what came after the Holmes stories: a fairly arbitrary (and completely anonymous) article on how to detect forged documents. Now, none of the Holmes stories were about forgeries, and none of the techniques discussed had anything to do with the Holmes period, but I did learn that ball-point pens were unavailable before 1945, that if you ever find two signatures exactly alike you can be sure that one's a forgery (I think I already knew that), that old people's hands often shake (knew that too), and that you -- yes, you -- could enter the exciting profession of document verification!


I wish publishers did this kind of thing more often. I hope that if Sandbag Shuffle is re-printed after my death, the publishers throw in instructions for building a teepee, or a recipe for homemade root beer, or something.

...

I hate it when translators try to approximate dialects. A Parisian cab driver, circa 1830, shouldn't speak with a cockney accent -- he just shouldn't.

Also: a tiger in Africa strikes me as a mundane if amusing mistake. A giant boa constrictor eating a wolf along the banks of the St Lawrence River strikes me as frankly bizarre, though who knows? If I were Nigerian instead of Canadian, maybe my reaction would be reversed.

Capt Pamphile

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.

Finally Arrived Yesterday

in the mail, from Amazon, my long-awaited copy of Defoe's General History of the Pyrates. (Except, of course, that it may not be by Defoe at all -- I'll get into that later.)

I love introductions, postcripts, notes, indices, glossaries and all that scholarly apparatus crap -- they're like foreplay, to me -- and this edition is absolutely stacked. Even more I love maps and diagrams. One of my abiding ambitions is to write books that will make publishers want to put maps in, and this one has tons of maps, illustrations, and even reproductions of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century diagrams of ships.

This is practically porn -- like, really good porn, with hot lesbians and professional camerawork and everything. Best twenty bucks I've spent in a long long time, and I haven't even really started reading it.

My Wife Has Decided

that she wants to get the little nipper baptized. Even though she hasn't gone to Church in something like twenty years, isn't religious, was married (to me) in a civil ceremony (which may or may not make our child a technical bastard, I'm unsure of the current policy) -- still and all, she was raised Catholic and therefore, she feels, her daughter should be raised Catholic as well, so that she has a chance to learn about and then reject religion the same way her mother did. Plus of course the in-laws are all thrilled, and hey, we're all about spreading sweetness and light, you know?

Me, I don't much give a shit -- plus it gives me a chance to meet and converse with nuns and priests, a new experience for me, so I'm excited about that.

So we had to attend a baptism class last night. Three quick observations: one, there were four babies at the class, three girls and a boy. All three girls (including ours) had names that begin with "A". Coincidence, or trend? (Ours was the only baby to have a saint's name, however. This made me smug. I felt like saying, "We gave our baby a good Catholic name, didn't we Father Massey?" But I didn't. Though it would've been funny.)

As for the boy (name beginning with "C"), well, the priest had asked us to explain why we chose the names we did, and the boy's parents explained that they are both elementary school teachers, and it was one of the few names they could think of that wasn't tainted by association with some snot-nosed brat they've had to teach. The contempt for all their students, past present and future, was absolutely palpable. Bet they send their kid to a private school.

Second observation: man, that Father Massey had a great vocabulary, and without a hint of ostentation. Just slipping those polysyllabic gems into conversation, smooooth like silk. Let's give it up for a Jesuit education, everybody.

Finally: at one point we were shown a ten-minute video detailing the ceremony itself (where to stand, what to say, etc). Fairly boring, but it was all worth it for the opening, pre-credit sequence. First we see a drawing of Christ's face (70s style animation, white outline drawing). The camera pulls out and reveals that Christ is holding His cross out in front of him like a rifle; then the camera swings around so that the "barrel" of the cross is pointed right at our faces. Baptize your baby, or Jesus will shoot you dead.

I thought that my brother-in-law (attending as the designated godfather) was going to pop a blood vessel from the effort of not laughing out loud. This didn't just make my day, it made my week.