Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, by the Sieur Louis de Conte (1896)

I was tiring of Mark Twain somewhat after diligently reading a fair portion of his work, mostly chronologically, I almost skipped this gem and its strangely reverent fictionalized treatment of the life of Joan of Arc. The narrator of the formal long title, Sieur Louis de Conte, is based on a real person who grew up with Joan. She is a historical figure I never learned much about, only what I know from the epic silent movie of 1928, The Passion of Joan of Arc, which is only about her trial and death. This novel tells the whole weird, glorious story—tells it well, too—of the illiterate country girl of 17 who restored France’s faith in itself and was burnt at the stake for her troubles two years later, at 19. She has “Visions” (Twain’s capitalization). Sure, here in the 21st century we may be more inclined to account for a lot of it as mental illness. As if to shore up her credibility, Twain includes anecdotes that seem to indicate supernatural powers. Not sure how true some of these stories are. It’s fair to call the Joan of Arc story, even in its simplest terms, amazing—and of course it gets better when you make up miracles to go along with it. But it seems unlikely to me that Twain made up the apparent miracles we see here. He did have long-honed journalistic instincts, after all, although he is also plainly smitten with Joan, so maybe gullible in his readings. The same story about seeing through a ruse to correctly identify the king of France on her first meeting with him, for example, also appears in the 1999 Luc Besson movie The Messenger, but it’s not corroborated in Wikipedia. Now I want to seek out a good biography. Anyway, I found it interesting that Twain considered this his best novel, which is saying something considering the high general regard in the 20th century for Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. But I’m inclined to agree. Huck Finn, the only other contender (or maybe The Mysterious Stranger?), has beautiful passages that cement it with American experience in unusually pure ways, but as a novel it is deeply flawed. Even its most ardent advocates tend to dismiss the last third wholesale. Twain spent much of his career mocking and excoriating Romantic literature, yet here he betrays certain affinities with it. At the same time, Twain has much latitude to exercise his misgivings and prejudices about organized religion, as the trials of Joan of Arc represent a low point (among many) for the Catholic Church. A lot of the most annoying yarn-spinning tics of Twain are restrained here, though they do appear. It is historical fiction and a swooning romantic story, but it’s easily the most competent novel Twain ever wrote. If it doesn’t hit the heights of some of those Huck Finn passages, the voice that made them work commands this whole novel.

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

Tom Sawyer, Detective (1896)

I can be as impatient as anyone with the way Sherlock Holmes is portrayed as capable of the most uncanny feats of deduction. Look close in those stories and you see it’s usually a bunch of lucky guesses, though yes based on close observation. We don’t even get that much in Mark Twain’s sendup, just the wild guesses served in a lukewarm stew of familiar tropes: twins separated at birth, riverboat culture up and down the Mississippi River, and Huck Finn narrating admiring stories of that rascal, dreamy-headed Tom Sawyer. This was one I meant to get to as a kid (the cover above was on the on the copy I had). Somehow along the line I got the impression Tom was grown up in it, an adult. Turns out that’s not the case. It’s Huck and Tom at home in St. Petersburg (based of course on Twain’s hometown of Hannibal, Missouri), and unfortunately it is the worst of all the Huck and Tom novels and/or stories I’ve seen so far. Tom Sawyer Abroad at least has some charming moments. Tom Sawyer, Detective just felt tired and uninspired. At this point, I resent a little the way I imagine Twain must have rationalized things like outrageous coincidence as just part of the parody. It’s more like just part of the laziness. One good thing here is that Jim is spared the indignities he suffers in most of the other Huck and Tom tales. Detective feels like a hurry-up job in many ways. The last chapter is four times longer than any other and intent on tying up all loose ends, unconvincingly—because that’s part of the parody! It just seems empty of any goodwill. It’s also quite short—maybe 70 or 80 pages?—and I’m a little mystified to see it referred to as a novel. But then I’m the one usually complaining about designations like “novella” and “novelette.” Maybe Twain was jealous of Arthur Conan Doyle’s success with Sherlock Holmes (note to self: read a Twain biography). Because it fails so abjectly at it, Tom Sawyer, Detective is a practical demonstration in how difficult it actually is to construct a mystery story that passes the smell test. Never mind that it doesn’t seem to understand the appeal of them at all, let alone Sherlock Holmes. Disappointing in every way.

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

“The Phantom Riders” (1896)

This story by Ernest R. Suffling is not bad but leans very hard into its effects, which are not that interesting or effective. It’s in that style of horror which assumes just mentioning or describing ghostly sightings is enough. Maybe so for another age, or in other circumstances. I can see this working as a story told aloud after dark, when the mood is gullible, for example. It feels to me like an Anglo-Saxon type of story at its heart, with virtuous values. One man, who is a slothful local guy, takes for granted that a woman in the neighborhood is his to have when he’s ready to marry. But another man comes along and falls in love with her. She feels the same about him and they are engaged to marry within three weeks. The date set for the announcement is Christmas Eve. That’s about all it has to do with Christmas, incidentally. The local guy won’t hear of this union and murders his rival off-stage. Then it’s on to the ghost effects, which are quite explicit. The ghost of one and then the other appear at the Christmas Eve gathering for the announcement. Separately, they appear and go behind a curtain in an alcove. Everyone at the gathering is petrified. The next day the body of one is found and later the body of the other. The one is murder, the other an accidental death. The following year this same bunch (more or less) travels on Christmas Eve to the site where the first body was found, where they witness the murder reenacted by ghostly figures. This scares the hell out of them too. And the year after that, so two years on, an intrepid band of sleuths views the reenactment and gives chase to the ghost of the murderer to witness his fate (the accidental death) and also to learn where he hid some documents he stole from the victim. It finishes as a ridiculously rational story, losing most of what punch it had by trying to explain too many things. The documents are irretrievably ruined after two years in the elements—I kind of like the bleak note there, and in other places in this story. But mostly it feels like “comfort horror,” perhaps best related in campfire or similar situations. At Christmastime, sure, why not, sounds good for the ghost story hour after dark before putting the kids to bed, etc. I like the story pretty well on that level. Also, the ghost effects are pretty good—predictable and obvious, yes, but they can work.

Yuletide Frights, ed. William P. Simmons

Chillers for Christmas, ed. Richard Dalby (out of print)
Read story online (scroll down).

The Spoils of Poynton (1896)

For once, my rooting around in all these obscure Henry James novels has paid off. Caveats: Well, first, I'm not sure how obscure The Spoils of Poynton counts as being. I recall it being assigned in an undergraduate class, in a volume that paired it with another short James novel, The Aspern Papers, an interesting tale in its own right (and which might equally have been the assigned reading). I want to say the difference between The Spoils of Poynton and others I've been reading and mildly carping about lately (The Other House, The Tragic Muse, The Reverberator, The Princess Casamassima, The Bostonians) is that James appears to have finally given up his quest for topicality, either with issues of the day or flirtations with genre and/or theater. He's just hammering out a little thing here with all the stuff he likes: European customs (again, it's pretty much all British characters), the appreciation of collecting and collections and all attendant matters of taste, and one Fleda Vetch, who wanders into the action to become Mrs. Gereth's sidekick. The conflict is between Mrs. Gereth and her son Owen, over the furniture and art she has amassed and must now give up, because he is about to marry a woman who insists that it all "goes with the house." Owen inherited the house when his father died (some years ago in the story), contingent upon his marriage, an eventuality that has arrived. It's a great symbol James has struck on here with the furniture and bric-a-brac, better captured I think in his original title, The Old Things. Fleda Vetch is the best part, a wonderful apparition, stepping out of the pages of a Jane Austen novel as the impoverished cousin with exquisite manners and taste and her feet on the ground. The tensions get to a nice fever pitch when it appears Fleda and Owen have fallen in love with each other. I don't like the ending, but that's only because I like these three characters so much: Mrs. Gereth, Owen, and Fleda Vetch. The whole thing is handled with authority, confidence, and humor. It may not be James at his "greatest" but I hazard to say it's James at his best.

"interlocutor" count = 6 / 256 pages (includes "interlocutress")

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

The Other House (1896)

In which Henry James takes his turn at murder mystery, based on a play idea for which he never found financing. The murder mystery story at this point in history arguably still barely existed, in terms of what it would become in the 20th century, although Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories were on the scene by this time, and mystery stories in general already had a long history. But I think by most standards The Other House is an unusual version of the type, certainly different from what we'd learn to expect from a Holmes story or, say, Agatha Christie or Raymond Chandler. For example, the murder in this novel does not occur until the end of the second third. For various reasons the whole thing is a grotesque exercise. The comedy of manners, a game of who marries who, is still the main point of the action and informs James's guiding instincts. It's a heartless crime, which nonetheless no one seems much bothered by. And no, this is no send up of British aristocracy, though they populate it almost exclusively. The motive for the crime is to make a marriage possible, the result of a strange deathbed scene and a promise made. It plays more like comedy, and the killer gets away. How droll. James is again using a novel to play with current trends. Previously it has been feminism, Marxism, and bohemianism, and now, at a remove from life itself, it is the murder mystery, originally intended for the stage. I admit I enjoyed it as I enjoy reading all James to an extent, and I admit I was equally exasperated, also more or less as usual, by the strange indeterminacies of the language. Lots of pronoun abuse, elegant turns of phrase rhythmically that obscure their meanings (sometimes fatally) and always require us to do most of the work. He's in a more formally British period now, with fewer Americans and Europeans dominating as types, or even around at all. I guess in some ways I'm reading all this so you don't have to. You're welcome. This is low priority but worth a look for anyone casting a wider James net. He's another American author, like William Faulkner, for whom finding a single definitive masterpiece is tricky business and rarely agreed on beyond pluralities. Regardless, this will never be high on the list for James.

"interlocutor" count = 10 / 340 pages (include "interlocutress")

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

"The Figure in the Carpet" (1896)

Here's a funny story about art and criticism. I like the stories from this period, when Henry James was thinking very hard about the place and meaning of art. An example of his most exalted form of art goes floating by here, the portrait painter, but this is actually about a great novelist, which makes it more interesting. It's about a great novelist and one of his admirers, a newspaper book reviewer, who is also our narrator. After accidentally insulting the narrator for a review he wrote of his book, the novelist confides that no one has yet ever caught his most profound theme, which exists across his body of work like a figure woven into a Persian rug, hence title. The narrator, so great is his regard for the novelist, takes that as a personal challenge. He studies very hard, and he discusses the problem with a friend, who becomes equally obsessed. While traveling in India the friend hits upon it. He telegraphs the narrator: "Eureka. Immense." The novelist meets with him, hears him out, embraces him. At last someone understands him. Then things happen, one thing and another, and the narrator never learns the secret. And now people are dead, so he never is going to learn it. The only one who knows, the widow of the friend, refuses to tell him. There's a certain finality of interpretation here that surprises me coming from James. This is after The Turn of the Screw so it's not like he didn't appreciate ambiguity and multiplicities of interpretation. But everyone in this story is after the one true thing. I almost want to take it as satire—it certainly has comic elements. But I also suspect this is some kind of shriek of frustration on some level. Most regard for James came after his death so he didn't see much of it, and was denied a certain level of gratification. Reading him more thoroughly, I've seen some severe ups and downs. The high points are still taught in college classes, and the low points are often strange and interesting pratfalls. What's good is really good, and can be tremendously subtle. The Turn of the Screw is as good an example as any. That narrative is so mysterious in its intentions, tones, textures, and details that it almost seems there must be a greater pattern just back of it, almost discernible but not quite, that could potentially open all his work wide—the figure in the carpet, so to speak. The story is also interesting in regard to the critical enterprise. James clearly seems to respect it and see its validity. He's frustrated with it like we all are—critics get so many things so wrong so often. I know I do. But I think he understood too, if sadly, that it's got to be done.

"interlocutor" count = 0 / 37 pages

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