“What Was It?” (1859)

Fitz-James O’Brien was among the earliest writers of horror stories but died in the US Civil War at the age of 34 and didn’t leave many stories behind. I found this one in The Dark Descent, where editor David G. Hartwell is typically effusive, calling O’Brien the heir apparent to Edgar Allan Poe. And it’s a pretty good story—I like O’Brien’s clean and straightforward language (for the 19th century). A couple problems, the first of which is foreshadowed in Hartwell’s intro, and that is that it is rotten with explanation. It’s also a typical early horror story in that it doesn’t try hard to scare and it does try hard to soothe. That is, merely mentioning strange supernatural details is considered sufficient to provoke anxiety. We are all generally more corrupted by now and need more effects to goose us up such as jump-scares. I thought the story’s most interesting point was the invisibility of the phenomenon, whether ghost or extra-dimensional creature or whatever. The idea was popular in the late 19th century, with Ambrose Bierce, Guy de Maupassant, and others chipping in their versions. As an effect, interest in it seemed to be done by the early 20th century, perhaps marked by H.G. Wells’s 1897 novel The Invisible Man (and the 1930s Universal movie based on it). As a kid, I ranked invisibility high among my desired superpowers, but the impulse was (and probably would be still) voyeuristic. As for encountering some invisible thing, yes, as described here, it would certainly be creepy and disturbing. But I can’t say it’s ever been the stuff of my nightmares, sleeping or waking. “What Was It?” covers most of its bases pretty well, but I thought O’Brien missed a trick by not using flour to make the thing more visible. Instead, they used the bedsheets to get a general idea of what they were dealing with, and later plaster for more specific details. I guess that works too. Hartwell also identifies O’Brien as a pioneer in science fiction at least as much as horror, and in many ways this story does feel closer to SF. My problem with taking it as horror is the whole invisibility thing. It’s just not something that seems very effective to me. In fact, the story reminds me a lot of Maupassant’s “Horla” stories, equally weak sauce or more so. “What Was It?” is probably the best of the invisibility-themed stories I’ve read so far—I still need to get to the Wells—and I think it may be the earliest of them all. Is invisibility as a horror idea all played out now or is that me? It’s hard to think of examples after about 1910. I don’t think H.P. Lovecraft even tried it.

The Dark Descent, ed. David G. Hartwell
Read story online.
Listen to story online.

The Village of Stepanchikovo (1859)

The Friend of the Family
My version of this short novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky was unfortunately a reminder that these massive kindle products with everything an author ever wrote (Delphi, in this case) can also come with flaws. Besides an unusually heavy rash of OCR typos (e.g., “He110!”) which are now and then impossible to parse, one long passage was duplicated, possibly obliterating other text. It’s hard to guess what’s not there, or even whether anything indeed is not there (it’s always hard to know what you don’t know), but I think I got the gist and anyway it seemed to be a relatively minor episode. I think this might also be a place to register the general complaints about Russian novels. The names—they are confusing and it gets worse when, as here, there are numerous characters. Between last names, formal constructions of a first name with (I think?) a “patronymic,” and familiar forms of first names, sometimes I think there are two or more characters when actually there is just one. The Village of Stepanchikovo is another lampoon of a buffoonish upper class, focusing on the betters in a small village and a uniquely manipulative character named Foma Fomitch. He is enraging and a reminder of how well and how viscerally Dostoevsky can do hateful characters. One scene in particular, Foma’s first, lengthy appearance, practically made me murderous. All attempts to thwart him inevitably fail. Although the novel is relatively minor, as much as anything part of Dostoevsky’s literary rehabilitation after 10 years in Siberia, it has plenty of the hallmarks of his best stuff. The characters are real and so is much of the psychology. Foma Fomitch is basically a con man getting away with it right in front of our eyes. His superiors have no control of him, partly because they are too genteel and partly, and most significantly, because he has the matriarch of the village upper class entirely snowed. She is twice widowed and steadfastly blinkered about Foma. An approximation of the dynamic can be found in the 1936 movie My Man Godfrey in the murky relationship between the matriarch of a very rich family and her protégé, or something, Carlo, who entertains them with impressions of an ape. The Village of Stepanchikovo is another farcical, acidic critique of manners, courtship, and wealth. There are probably too many characters and too many red herrings with all their ridiculous names. But the narrator, his uncle, and Foma Fomitch are all vivid, believable portraits. Dostoevsky’s voice, as always, sings.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.

Uncle’s Dream (1859)

This short novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky was his first in more than 10 years, the first since his imprisonment on political charges and 10 years of exile to Siberia. He opposed the serf system and associated with an activist group, and along with imprisonment and exile he suffered a mock execution, a form of torture. Uncle’s Dream is short enough to classify as novella and works as a story of manners, perhaps as only Dostoevsky could do it. There’s a matriarch and her attractive 23-year-old daughter. And there is a prince of the realm, ancient and doddering—BUT presently unmarried. The matriarch has her eye on him for her daughter. The matriarch blames all the world’s ills, or perhaps just her own, on Shakespeare, which strikes me as singularly Dostoevskian. As the story goes along it appears it is Romeo and Juliet that she specifically objects to. Her daughter has other suitors, one of whom is the nephew of the prince. The prince is a wonderful character. He stammers (one of the least annoying I’ve seen in literature, it even gets to be kind of fun) and he melts into reflexive lust whenever a young woman is nearby. At one point there’s a lot of whisking around as the matriarch schemes to get her daughter alone with the prince to manipulate a proposal. They pull it off, but to get him out of it the nephew and others scheme to make him think it was all a dream. The prince is mostly oblivious. The others are trying to bluff the matriarch and her daughter out of forcing the issue. The prince seems willing to marry her if that’s how it has to be, but after a point the daughter can’t stand the humiliation any longer of all this intriguing. The ending is strange, dragging in a new character for no apparent reason, although the finish beyond that, a long view of the daughter and matriarch, is inspired. This has all the stuff I like and expect from Dostoevsky, with the outraged and the indignant sputtering their rages past one another. I am already inclined toward these marriage-seeking stories, which tell us so much about the way people behave. I love the Shakespeare detail, and the prince is a perfect example of Dostoevsky’s contempt (laced with envy) for the aristocracy. Welcome back from Siberia, Fyodor.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.