“Vampyr” (1871)

I should start by noting that Jan Neruda’s very short story (also known as “Vampire” and “The Vampire”) is not the basis for Danish filmmaker Theodor Dreyer’s 1932 film of that name. That honor goes to Sheridan Le Fanu. Neruda is on Wikipedia as an important figure in Czech realism and a member of the May School, although I don’t know what those things mean exactly. But probably this story is a one-off of some kind. It features a small Polish family touring the Greek islands, with a daughter who is sick. This being a vampire story, I was instantly suspicious of the family members, especially the daughter’s new husband. That’s how vampire stories can tend to go. But the vampire in the story, eventually identified as “The Vampire,” is a Greek man, a traveling young artist renowned (or notorious) for making sketches of the corpses of people recently passed. But he does them ahead of time, before their deaths. The daughter who is ailing appears to be merely ailing, but it's possible the Greek man is doing a vampire thing on her too, that is, sucking her blood or energy somehow. The story is not really clear about the matter, nor even about who the vampire is, though eventually it is spelled out more or less. The Greek artist guy shows up after the family has been settled into a hotel and begins to sketch the daughter. He does so discreetly, with his back turned so no one can see his work. He’s less like a vampire and more like a social misfit with uncanny intuition. (I will note also that daylight does not seem to bother him, nor do we know whether the daughter has puncture wounds on her neck.) That’s basically all the story is giving us. I didn’t think it was very effective or interesting and also it seems to be out of step with Neruda’s main currents and larger career. I think vampire stories by definition are not realism of any kind, not even magical realism. So possibly this was written for the money? The story is quite readable for something in translation from the 19th century, but I would have to say it’s fatally slight.

Vampire Tales: The Big Collection, pub. Dark Chaos
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“About Barbers” (1871)

This short piece by Mark Twain is another one that seems strange to call a short story or an essay. Humor piece will do, I guess, as implied by Twain’s title. I imagined it would be about overly talkative and/or obnoxious barbers, or perhaps some antics from patrons. It has some of those things, but more goes off in a sitcom direction. Our guy is there for a shave, maybe a haircut. The barbershop has three barbers. By coincidence, by the chance of letting someone else into the shop first as they arrive, he sees the worst of the three barbers will be his. He tries to switch this up by leaving for a 15-minute stroll, but alas, when he returns he sees that this worst barber will still be his. It’s a short piece, but Twain elaborates these scenes with a good deal of detail that verges on tedious. He also details the reading choices available to him as he waits. Finally he’s called to the chair and of course it’s the barber he was trying to avoid. Things go like this: “Then he lathered one side of my face thoroughly, and was about to lather the other, when a dog-fight attracted his attention, and he ran to the window and stayed and saw it out, losing two shillings on the result in bets with the other barbers, a thing which gave me great satisfaction.” As far as essay forms go, I like the ones that are “About” something specific or general or mundane or whatever. It suggests a meditative approach, but of course we have nothing like that here. Twain is merely riffing up anecdotes that happen to involve a barber or barbers. I mean, that’s OK too. Another essay form that I like is the much more difficult humor piece. I have laughed very hard at humor pieces by Woody Allen and Ian Frazier, and then been baffled by them on later rereading—or vice versa, puzzled the first time. I include Twain as someone worth trying on humor pieces. He has the instincts and sense of timing, and his stuff has worked for me / not worked for me that way. He’s worth a try. You never know. But you should be at least a little inclined to like it before you start, or don’t even bother.

Mark Twain, Humorous Stories & Sketches
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"At Chrighton Abbey" (1871)

This long story by the Victorian author Mary Elizabeth Braddon may be a bit of a dud in the payoff, but it's so much fun getting there I'm inclined to overlook the fizzle. Another story I know by her, "Good Lady Ducayne," a vampire story from much later in Braddon's career, has much the same strengths and weaknesses. There's a very strong pull to her tales from the start—she starts in laying on the class details in order to fix her characters in place. I suspect in general that she was a little disapproving of the supernatural. Both stories feature important characters who are notable skeptics, proved right in the vampire story. Here, not so much—our feet-on-the-ground hero, everyone's favorite beloved poor cousin Sarah, has a vision that must be taken as otherworldly (even as she resists it as such herself). So score one for the supernatural—a family curse that will not be denied—but I still get the sense Braddon disapproves. This is mostly a splendid Victorian Christmas story. The extended family gathers at the family estate, Chrighton Abbey, for all of the month of December and into the new year, which is how Christmas should be done. It's my favorite part of the story as long as the ghost bits are going to go bust. It's social manners with a keen eye. Cousin Sarah is dropping in for the first time in 12 years and everyone is so happy to see her. A marriage is in the offing between the Chrighton heir Edward and a proud young woman. As eldest son and chief heir, Edward is the target of the family curse, which is executed in the last third of the story. Sarah's vision foretells it too. There's another ghost story of about this vintage, John Berwick Harwood's anonymously published 1861 "Horror: A True Tale," in which the ghost goes corporeal and is seen actually wrestling in bed with the poor cousin hero—whoa! No such bolts of inspiration here (for that, see also F. Marion Crawford's 1885 "The Upper Berth"). There's not even really a ghost. Just a family curse that always seems to bear out. Even so, I like the style of the storytelling here, laying out the history of a great family and its estate and holdings and all the incidentals of how they live, for better or worse, with great problems and small. It's a terrific story of the holiday season, like the movie Fanny and Alexander, which also happens to be weak in the scary ghost story department. Apparently some of these people didn't get the memo from Andy Williams.

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"A Passionate Pilgrim" (1871)

This longish story bears interest because it's a very early example of one of the themes Henry James is known for, the contrasts between Old World and New. It focuses on an impoverished American, an elderly gentleman, who has traveled to London to seek claim to an estate for which he may be legally entitled. It's told in the first-person by another American, who intuitively believes in the justice of his cause. Fortified by this support, our hero, Clement Searle, pays a visit to the site in question, with a fine old mansion on spacious grounds. He meets the brother and sister who presently occupy it and are distant relatives. The sister is unmarried and immediately falls in love with Clement somehow, but the brother furiously resents Clement's legal actions. At first he is polite and almost friendly, but finally erupts with his grudges. Then, because it's a bad scene around the mansion after that, Clement and the narrator travel to Oxford for a visit, which they find so wonderful they decide it must be the very epicenter of the known universe. I suspect that's James. This overwhelming response to England adds up to the "passionate" of the title. The "pilgrim" should be self-explanatory. I enjoyed this but rarely believed any of the action—I will let you find the ludicrous resolution for yourself, on grounds it would be "a spoiler." In many ways it's fun to find the theme of worlds in collision in early form. It almost feels like an accident, as if James were working out the setting and character as he went, and ended up with this strange American in London. Clement Searle is not the kind of American Christopher Newman would be (in The American), but more of a loyalist in sympathy with the crown, etc. That makes him less interesting, which is something James appeared to figure out relatively quickly. Also interesting in this story is that for once it's barely at all about marrying. The element of the chemistry between Clement and the sister is just weird and feels forced in more than anything, perhaps for commercial reasons or maybe just because James often had the impulse to turn things in that direction. It's a strange and interesting piece, with a real sense of discovery propelling it.

"interlocutor" count = 0 / 40 pages

In case it's not at the library. (Library of America)