Radio BBC 4 : LUD-IN-THE-MIST

 So, as a special treat this Halloween, BBC 4 put on a one-hour radioplay adaptation of Hope Mirrees' much admired but little read 1924 novel LUD-IN-THE-MIST. Neil Gaiman, a longtime advocate of the book, appeared as Duke Aubrey, a sinister figure who is essentially the King of Faerie: this essentially requires Gaiman laugh menacingly from time to time, which he pulls off quite well.

Listening to this radioplay is no substitute for reading the book, but it's a great refresher if you're like me and it's been a long time since you've read the original. And for those who have never read the book it offers them a glimpse of what they've been missing.

Now having heard this, I cdn't say whether her story is better suited to audioplay or film adaptation, but I'd like to have the chance of comparing the two.

--John R.

P.S.: The next day after the Lud-in-the-Mist, the BBC broadcast another one-hour radioplay of another work from 1924: LOLLY WILLOWS by Sylvia Townsend Warner Townsend.  A very different kind of story --in fact, the case cd be made that it's not a fantasy at all* --but also very good. I know it's made me want to seek out the original. Recommended.

--John R.

*i.e. I think it fits in Todorov's category of The Fantastique

Tolkien's Panama

 So, would you like to own Tolkien's hat?

Do you have a quarter of a million pounds lying around?

If so, check this out:

https://www.tolkiensociety.org/2015/11/collection-of-tolkien-family-letters-and-photographs-on-sale/

What this comes down to is that  Tolkien's brother Hilary's family is selling off some family letters. Some of these might be among those items printed in BLACK & WHITE OGRE COUNTRY back in 2009. Also, "Tolkien family ephemera such as Tolkien’s own panama hat, "  In addition, I suspect some of the letters listed in this offering wd have appeared in the cancelled book WHEELBARROWS AT DAWN (2009-2010). 

I'll be interested in where this material turns up, and how accessible it is afterwards. 

--John R.

THE WIFE SAYS: 

God help us.

L.T. Meade, Postscript

So, one detail I forgot to add to my post about Meade relates to the title story, "Eyes of Terror". This tale involves a plucky young woman who's being haunted by a sinister figure with glowing eyes. In the end all is revealed: the haunting is a fake staged by her cousin, who wants to break down her resistance to marrying him where he cd get his hands on the family fortune.

All this is pretty standard stuff, and a good example of what Todorov calls 'the uncanny', in that in the summing-up the mechanism behind the haunting is explained.

Except that the explanation doesn't hold water for a modern reader.

We're told the villain has been using radium, which, "as you know, when held near the eyes, can give them a luminous and very ghastly appearance" (Meade p.224). Thus he's using doses of radium to make his eyes glow like Gollum's. 

It's that "as you know" that gets to me here. I've seen this kind of hand-waving around the lesser-known properties of new radioactive elements before -- e.g. in an old episode of THE SHADOW (which revealed the dubious solution that exposure to radium causes whatever pathogens are in the body to re-assert themselves --- thus each victim dies of a different disease from the same cause). Here it makes me think that Meade's scientific and medical advisors were perhaps behind the curve so far as expertise went.* 

One other detail that caught my eye was the jingoism of the recent Boer War** that forms an important part of the background to the tale. We are told that the detective agrees to help the point of view character because she is "the daughter of that Colonel Dallas whose gallant action, when he sacrificed his life for his country on the march to Pretoria, is the talk and admiration of the country" (Meade .201).

So, does the story remain Uncanny, as it wd have been at the time of writing in the intent of the author? Or does the passage of time here undercut the credibility of the solution, transforming the tale into an impossibility, or Marvellous in Todorov's terms? At least we know it's not in the middle category, Fantastique (Fantasy), a designation reserved only to strories which end without the Uncanny vs Marvellous dichotomy being resolved. 

--John R.

--current reading: BARDS OF BONE PLAIN

--today's song: THE BOSTON RAG

*to be fair, after his capture the villain does complain repeatedly that his eyes hurt and that the radium seems to have affected his vision.

**the story was first published in THE STRAND in 1904.

The Prolific L. T. Meade

So, a few weeks ago a new collection of weird/suspense stories by L. T. Meade arrived --  an author I'd never heard of before ordering this book. Now that I've read it I'm somewhat disappointed; the stories are readable but uninspired. The best ("The Dead Hand") is a first-person narration by a palmist who is called in to read the palm of a murdered child in order to identify the killer: this one benefits from a sympathetic and appealing narrator. Meade wrote a book's worth of stories about the character (THE ORACLE OF MADDOX STREET, 1904) that might well be worth tracking down. For those interested in ghost-hunters there's A MASTER OF MYSTERIES: THE ADVENTURES OF JOHN BELL -- GHOST EXPOSER (1897).

Historically Meade is more interesting for her career rather than by any literary virtue of her work. A professional writer for venues like THE STRAND (famous as the home of the Sherlock Holmes stories), she more than held her own as a woman thriving in a man's world. She was also amazingly prolific, averaged a bit over 2000 words per day for a total of some 300 books, either novels or short story collections featuring one of her many series heroes or villains (and villainesses), in addition to many non-series stand-alone stories. As if this were not enough, she edited ATALANTA, a literary journal of fiction for girls.

Her productivity was no doubt in part due to her never taking a vacation and to her working method. She dictated each story or novel chapter to a secretary, then revised the resulting typescript.* 

Finally, readers of Dorothy L. Sayers' work may be interested to learn that one of Meade's many collaborators whom she relied upon for scientific or medical advice was Rbt Eustace, who later played the same role with Sayers'  THE DOCUMENTS IN THE CASE.  Embarrassingly enough, he gave her inaccurate information which invalidated the crucial bit of evidence that enables that mystery's solution, which is probably why she didn't collaborate with him again.

--John R.

*this was also the method of Earl Stanley Gardner, who famously took 5 weeks to write each of his Perry Mason books.

current reading: THE BARDS OF BONE PLAIN  by Patricia McKillip

today's song: "Get It Straight" by The Rossington-Collins Band

The Cat Report (11/5-21)

 

With only three cats in the cat room it was walks for everybody. Unfortunately I was so busy walking I didn't make any notes, hence this light-on-detail report.

CADDIE, our beautiful marbled brown and black cat, had a good forty minutes out walking and made good use of it. She tended to ignore people, walking right past them, but was nonetheless much admired. She knows about doors: discovering the door between the cat room and aquariums she sat down facing it and waited for it to be opened for her (which of course didn’t happen).  She tried to exert moral pressure once she discovered the cat-beds, taking the position that since they were cat-beds and she was a cat, she shd be allowed to climb inside and try them out. But on the whole she did great and I think enjoyed herself.

That left our little sandy lions, one longhaired (Simba) the tother shorthair (Zoey).  

SIMBA got half an hour, filled with lots of petting: he walks up to people and invites attention. Between his sunny disposition and beautiful long fur he was much admired. At one point he was in the perfect pose: on the store’s main aisle sitting next to the red ‘Adopt’ sign with an arrow. Unfortunately I couldn’t take a picture and manage the leash at the same time.

ZOEY also got a half-hour or so. She spent the first ten minutes huddled up on the little cabinet thing just outside the cat room door that holds the key. Then she shook herself, jumped down, and started exploring. She went further than either of the other two, and took time to roll over belly-up on the cool tile floor. It was interesting to see that she's okay with dogs so long as dog is well behaved with no barking.

health issue: the bit of what looks to be cat acne on Zoey’s chin has taken the form of a small scab.  Suspect it’d be better to keep an eye on it but otherwise let it heal up on its own.

—John R.

An Evening of Poe in Renton

So, thanks to Janice's having seen a mention of it on Facebook, the night before Halloween we went to see an evening of Poe at an old theatre in downtown Renton.

I had expected this to be a one-man show, like the one we saw just off the Maple Valley Road two years or so ago, which focused on EUREKA, or the excellent John Astin performance we saw near Chicago over twenty years ago.  Instead it turned out to be readings by a three-person troupe.

First up came THE RAVEN, as was thoroughly appropriate.

But they followed this with a piece I cd have done without: THE BLACK CAT. I can see why they'd want to do this one for Halloween but still its a story of animal cruelty and mutilation I cd have done without. I'd have much preferred THE TELL-TALE HEART if they were going the first-person-told-by-a-madman route.

Then came THE HAUNTED PALACE, which I think of as one of Poe's minor poems and not one I wd have picked, given the riches they had to choose from (ALONE, A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM, ULALUME, ANNABELL LEIGH, EL DORADO).

Oddly enough, rather than end up with THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER (which 'Haunted Palace' wd seem to have set up), they closed with the tale USHER II  by Ray Bradbury. Not one of his more subtle pieces, but despite the main character's tendency to shout they did a fairly good job of it.

All in all, an enjoyable evening.  But given the Poe/Bradbury juxtaposition, I don't want to let the opportunity pass to share Bradbury's poem about Poe. I've posted it in this blog before, but that was as far back as 2008, so it seem high time to share it again.

--JDR

"I Have A Brother, Mostly Dead" 

I have a brother, mostly dead
And angels curled upon his head
Most of my life, mostly unseen,
And yet I feel with him I've been
A cohort playmate friend of Poe
Who tours me where live friends can't go . . .

And so my brother, dead, you see
Is wondrous literate company.
Thus if my Muse says: Nevermore!
I hear a tapping at my door;
My brother comes to saviour me
With graveyard biscuit, rictus tea . . . 

So Idea Ghosts sit up again . . . 
And shape themselves with words for clothes.
All this my long lost brother does
This sibling spent before my cause . . .

. . . sweet brother, flower my tomb
With words so rare and phrase so bright
They'll bonfire burn away the night.

All this to me lost brother is
And I his live sweet Lazarus.
His shout ignore? his cry refuse?
No, no! Much thanks, long-dead fine Muse.

--Ray Bradbury

The Cat Report (Friday October 29th 2021)

So,  

We had eight cats in four groupings, each of which got about a half hour’s attention.

FIrst up I let our beautiful little dark torbie, SADIE, our senior cat (I think she’s about nine). It took some tugging,  but once she was out she joined me on the bench, being petted and purring up a storm while grooming my arm. Thought a walk wd be too alarming for her, so we settled for a thorough exploration of the room instead, to help her get her bearing and hopefully feel more comfortable.  An adorable little lap cat in search of a lap of her own.

Next up were our lion-colored returnees SIMBA and ZOEY, a bonded pair a little younger than Sadie (seven I think).  Both had walks. He was calm and unflappable, and actually did some exploring.  ZOEY was more nervous. Did notice what might be some cat acne on Zoey’s chin, but we were outside the cat room on her walk at the time, and she didn’t want me checking on it.

The mother/daughters marbled tabby family CADDIE (2yr) and FLOPPER/SQUEAKER (1yr) were next. I think the one with the red collar must have been Caddie, since the other two played together their whole time out while she kept mostly to herself. F&S love string games and catnip spray. C is quite friendly but likes seeing what she can find while the other two draw attention. Since she had a collar on already I snapped a leash to it, but she immediately moved away from the door, which I took as ’no thanks’ on her part.

The two little black kittens (3 month old) SEBASTIAN and BARNABY finally, finally got their turn with out, after an hour and a half of plaintive cries. They love the string game, and were willing to play from outside the cage with Flopper/Squeak inside it, which was fun to watch. Their cries at being put back in their cage when the time came were just as heartfelt as those from before.

Quite a few people walking by stopped to look at cats but didn’t notice any serious potentials.

Here’s hoping we have a final burst at the end of October that gets a few of these great cats to new homes.

—John R.