“Green Tea” (1869)

This long story by Sheridan Le Fanu is considered among his best, in part because it’s in his rightly much-celebrated collection, In a Glass Darkly. Many of the stories feature the German psychic investigator / occult detective Martin Hesselius. “Green Tea” is first up and thus has a few things to do, introducing Hesselius and his case study approach. It’s good when it’s on the case under examination. But it’s hampered by awkward construction, hemming and hawing and dancing around the subject a lot. It takes too long to get to the good stuff, which may or may not be that good. A minister is haunted by a malevolent monkey only he can see, which randomly appears to him even in public, staring and glowering. Understandably, it unnerves him. The result is that the minister often freezes up and/or breaks down and can’t be trusted to do Sunday church services without incident. After introducing Hesselius and his case study approach, the story spends some time on some metaphysical / philosophical business about duality and materialism and such. The proto-theosophist Emanuel Swedenborg is a recurring reference. The influence on Lovecraft and the occult detective subgenre generally is obvious but with all the setup “Green Tea” can be slow going. Once the minister finally stops being evasive and we get to the monkey, however, it’s not bad. The clinical tone works well—it just needs to be quicker getting to the point (according to my impatient modern sensibility). It reminded me in some ways of Nathaniel Hawthorne, especially the tormented minister. As a 19th-century Irishman, Le Fanu occupies an interesting place, outside of the British mainstream but not Continental or American either. Some Irish writers register strongly as Irish (J.P. Donlevy, for example, or Joyce) but I never get much of that from Le Fanu. I like his case study approach, which often feels close to detective fiction or true-crime fare, especially when it gets down to accounts. As the first of the five stories in the collection, you have to grant “Green Tea” some leeway for its setup work. Doubtless that explains a lot of the throat-clearing. The stories in the collection get better as they go—the last, “Carmilla,” is the best, an essential vampire story.

Sheridan Le Fanu, In a Glass Darkly
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“Journalism in Tennessee” (1869)

This very short piece by Mark Twain, even as relatively early as it is in his writing career, feels typical of his humorous sketches. Calling it an essay seems a little misleading—it’s all obvious lies, basically. But, perhaps because of the way it’s presented, “short story” doesn’t really do the job either. The first-person narrator who gives it more the feel of a memoir tells of his experience working for a small-town newspaper in Tennessee. The editor gives him a stack of press releases and tells him to make a story out of them from the highlights. He does so, with polite summaries. The editor goes to work on the typescript as soon as our guy hands it off to him. At that point the ridiculous action starts. Someone fires a shot through the window. A hand grenade comes rolling down the stovepipe. The rewrite is an obvious specimen of yellow advocacy journalism. “The inveterate liars at ... “ it begins. The seams are showing, but in a general way it works. It’s the deadpan quality Twain manages so well. As the extremes of violence ratchet higher, it starts to feel like a Buster Keaton picture. Here’s this guy trying to do his job—he came to the South in the first place on doctor’s orders, for his health. Now: “Both pistols rang out their fierce clamor at the same instant. The chief lost a lock of his hair, and the Colonel’s bullet ended its career in the fleshy part of my thigh.” It piles on until finally our guy tenders his resignation to the vicious, fightin’ editor. “After which we parted with mutual regret, and I took apartments at the hospital.” That’s how the piece ends. It's short but eventful and silly. It’s also weirdly constructed, lurching about randomly across the through-line of mounting violence. “Journalism in Tennessee” has the sloppy anecdotal structure that makes me hesitate to call it a story. Does “humorous sketch” fall within the definition of an essay? Oh, whatever. It’s entertaining and a reasonably good jolt of Twain for beginners and everyone. Much better, in fact, than that jumping frog thing we were forced to read in school.

Mark Twain, Humorous Stories & Sketches. (Library of America)
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The Innocents Abroad (1869)

According to Wikipedia, this early travel book by Mark Twain, his second book after a collection of stories, was his bestselling book during his lifetime and is still one of the bestselling travel books of all time. Certainly it established Twain's basic approach to the form: lighthearted, irreverent, anecdotal, and reasonably thorough as travelogue. This one details a long trip of several months, starting from and returning to New York. It ranges across Europe, into Russia, and then through the Middle East, which he calls "the Holy Land." He's skeptical and mocking of much that is European, much of that based on romantic literature. He's more long-faced and pious in the Holy Land, but his skepticism never disappears entirely. I was often struck by how old this book is now. Louis Napoleon was still emperor of France at the time. Jerusalem's population was 14,000 (today it is 874,000). We are closer in time to Twain than he was to the Crusades but they still feel fresh to Twain. His biases against Muslims are right on the surface and often unpleasant, while the European Christian Crusaders are lauded continually. Part of his problem with Muslims is the problem they have with Christians but I wouldn't say Twain is making himself part of any solution here—more like pandering to an audience. Still the book is interesting enough, packed with literary sketches of one sort or another, lots of short chapters and variation. The sights he sees and places he visits are worth it for seeing them from more than 150 years ago. In many ways Twain was a typical mixed-up American. He is reflexively antimonarchical yet also seems to believe aristocrats could well be superior, and not just for their advantages. It ends up as a strange mix of mocking and almost toadying—immature. It gets even worse in the Holy Land, although, in fact, it remains interesting to see the storied places of the Bible as they were in the mid-19th century—impoverished, Christian-minority, dry, featureless, unattractive. Again Twain is skeptical about some of the claims he encounters such as all the pieces he sees in churches of the "true cross," but he is also overcome by the sight of Calvary, or so he says. It's altogether an odd but often interesting enough travel journal.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic. (Library of America)